Norm Ornstein’s piece on why right-wing nutjobs are getting tonguebaths from the DC Press Corpse is worth a read:
The most common press narrative for elections this year is to contrast them with the 2010 and 2012 campaigns. Back then, the GOP “establishment” lost control of its nominating process, ended up with a group of extreme Senate candidates who said wacky things—Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, Sharron Angle—and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in races that should have been slam dunks. Now the opposite has happened: The establishment has fought back and won, vanquishing the Tea Party and picking top-flight candidates who are disciplined and mainstream, dramatically unlike Akin and Angle.
It is a great narrative, a wonderful organizing theme. But any evidence that contradicts or clouds the narrative devalues it, which is perhaps why evidence to the contrary tends to be downplayed or ignored. Meantime, stories that show personal gaffes or bonehead moves by the opponents of these new, attractive mainstream candidates, fit that narrative and are highlighted.
The other day, The Washington Post carried a front-page profile of Joni Ernst by feature reporter Monica Hesse. The piece was particularly striking—a long, warm, almost reverential portrait of a woman candidate charming Iowans by doing it “the Iowa way”—no doubt, an accurate portrayal by a veteran journalist. Hesse did suggest, in passing, that Ernst has taken some controversial positions in the past, such as supporting “personhood,” but emphasized that she has walked them back. Not mentioned in the piece was Ernst’s flirtation with one of the craziest conspiracy theories, or her comments on dependency—or her suggestion that she would use the gun she packs if the government ever infringed on her rights.
Via Kevin Drum.
PsiFighter37
Most of the press is filled with idiots these days, and, as such, expect years like 2006, 2008, and 2010 to be the norm. It doesn’t compute that all elections aren’t wave elections, or that there are localized factors at play.
This is the problem with a very polarized electorate – there are broad assumptions that are made about what may or may not happen, and, as a result, it plays easily into what has happened in the past. It requires less intelligence and less critical thinking – which is pretty sums up the level of media discourse these days.
When the Democrats hold an effective 53-47 edge on November 5th, though, I won’t be getting paid big bucks for it, or parlaying it into a hacktacular website like 538.
Corner Stone
I wish Iowa would just get it over with and secede already.
Lolis
@PsiFighter37:
That’s optimism. I think there is slim chance Democrats keep 50 seats, but at this point it seems like a long shot.
srv
I wonder what it is like when the Iowa Dutch have reunions with the Dutch Dutch.
Mike in NC
The DC Press Corpse is dominated by “journalists” like Chuck Todd, Ron Fournier, and Mark Halperin. Too busy having cocktails with Darrell Issa to do any actual reporting.
schrodinger's cat
Snooze Hour’s Judy Woodruff did a piece on Braley and Ernst, where her portrayal of Ernst was fuzzy and warm, describing Ernst as a veteran and mom, while Braley got less than five minutes, which were dominated by a description of the retiring senator, Harkin.
ETA: To me, Ernst came off as a wild eyed true believer. I guess the MSM idiots are paid to be blind to the faults of Repubs.
Hunter Gathers
Watching Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Chris Christie and the other assorted Conservative assholes running in 2016 fight themselves over her endorsement is going to be fucking hilarious.
d58826
Will Rodgers supposed said he didn’t belong to an organized political party, he was a democrat. I think he overstated the case to which the democrats are a party. Sure the demographics favor the democrats but they DON”T vote. The GOP may be the old white person’s party but they VOITE in presidential years and off-years. While we laugh at all of the RINO testing (and I’m not suggesting DINO testing for the democrats) it has instilled a level of party discipline that resulted in 6 years of total congressional grid lock. The punishment for bringing the government to a halt – victory in the house and probably the senate.
There is an article on huffington about the GOP plan for Obamacare in the upcoming Congress. The first paragraph is ;
‘ENOUGH democratic support’? I didn’t spend good money on a democratic senate campaign to have these clowns vote with the GOP. I understand that our system of government requires compromise but it takes two to compromise. We have seen that for the past 6 years the GOP would have voted against a bill to invite Jesus to visit the white house if Obama proposed it.
Why should progressives vote for these invertebrates if they don’t have to courage of their convictions and are willing to standup for them. The tea party takes it too far in their demand for 100% loyalty but the D’s have to stand for something.
And yes I voted and will continue to vote in the hopes that the D’s grow a set at some point!
Corner Stone
@Lolis:
It’s something to ponder how all the polling in tight senate races are all suddenly starting to move the R candidate into a breakout leading number.
How were they all so tight for so long, and the last week before voting the R’s all seem to be the ones with momentum?
Hmmm…it makes one wonder.
schrodinger's cat
Snooze Hour’s Judy Woodruff did a piece on Braley and Ernst, where her portrayal of Ernst was fuzzy and warm, describing Ernst as a veteran and mom, while Braley got less than five minutes, which were dominated by a description of the retiring senator, Harkin.
ETA: To me, Ernst came off as a wild eyed true believer. I guess the MSM idiots are paid to be blind to the faults of Repubs.
schrodinger's cat
@Corner Stone: I don’t believe anything that comes out of the DC media.
Corner Stone
Seeing a lot of ads by Dan Patrick against the D candidate for Tx LtGov, Van de Putte. They just started recently, or maybe I didn’t see many before, which tells me Dan is worried.
I love how in one segment they call her Liberal Leticia, and his closing logo is “Secure the Border”.
He’s clearly not expecting to get any Hispanic vote. I hope she gets record levels of voter turnout against this buffoon.
gene108
The media will be the death of us all.
I think we need some sort of board certification for journalists, like we have with doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, pharmacists, architects, beauticians, and so many other white color jobs.
Clearly a self-regulating media is incapable of doing an adequate job of getting facts out to the American public.
Like an accountant faces sever penalties for detrimental reliance by a third party, whether knowingly or unknowingly, in misstating the books of a company he/she deals with, I think journalists should face strict legal penalties for fucking with the facts, especially if they are just being stenographers for those in power.
SatanicPanic
@Corner Stone: Republic of Iowa doesn’t sound that cool.
Corner Stone
People keep saying, “But the economy is doing better! The deficit is down! The stock market is up! Unemployment’s below 6! Consumer confidence!”
It’s simply not resonating with people because they look around and don’t see themselves or anyone they know doing better. A lot are still underemployed or paying higher bills with stagnated wages, if they are employed at all. They don’t see anyone making positive changes that effect them, and even though we know it’s not “both sides” here at BJ, the fatigue has just set in.
PsiFighter37
@Lolis: It is, but I think LV screens are too tight; the DSCC GOTV operation is miles ahead of the NRSC (and the Koch brothers); and that the national media is missing all of it because ‘Democrats in disarray’ + any bad news for President Obama is what they want.
But I think Democrats will pull out a lot of the tight races, and the one thing I haven’t predicted but am wishing for is for Mitch McConnell to lose. If that happens, I would be spectacularly overjoyed.
d58826
@Corner Stone: Let’s not fall into the polls are ‘fixed’ like the Romney camp did. It won’t be the first close election where a significant segment of the voters didn’t decide until the last minute how they were going to vote. Obviously the MSM whitewash has helped to push the undecided in the direction of the GOP. However you have to give the GOP credit, they have picked candidates, extreme though they maybe, who can stick to a moderate script and look non-threatening. Sure the political junkies know about Ernst’s reactionary views but for whatever reason she has been able to keep them in the closed.
PsiFighter37
@Corner Stone: And the reason that is? The Fed can only do so much via monetary policy – it’s Congress’ job to enact fiscal policy alongside monetary policy that will help the economy.
If Congress had bothered to do its job over the past 4 years, we would have had GDP growth well north of 3% for several quarters, and the Fed would have already been raising interest rates.
But, of course, Congress has done jack shit, because Republican congressmen are the true welfare queens they think the coloreds are. Sweet gig getting paid $175k a year to work 1/3 of the year and accomplish less than nothing.
SatanicPanic
@Corner Stone: I’m doing better. Almost everyone I know is. Maybe it’s just not doing better where you are.
Corner Stone
@d58826: I’m not suggesting they are fixed. Rather that the results, combined with the reporting, seem to me to be a pretty consistent message to deflate potential D voters.
Corner Stone
@SatanicPanic: That’s great to hear!
Amir Khalid
I am surprised that the optimism that the Democratic party might keep the US Senate despite the odds has so quickly turned into “OMFG we’re all gonna die” despair. I have trouble believing that the public mood would have turned against the Democratic party in so little time, particularly given the recent polling fluctuations which strike me as suspicious.
MattF
Yeah, it’s all about the narrative. Period. And, so what if Ernst sometimes says crazy things.. I mean that’s all just acoustic vibrations passing through the atmosphere that may or may not impinge on various unsophisticated sensory organs, right? What matters is the story.
d58826
@Corner Stone: I’ll agree with that. And if the Democratic voters are deflated and don’t vote, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy regardless of whether the MSM is in the tank for the GOP. Democrats have to get out and vote, even if the odds are way stacked against the democratic candidate. I knew that Mondale would be lucky to get three votes in 1984 but I voted anyway. If the demoralized democratic voters didn’t learn that lesson in 2010 then they never will.
Keith G
@Corner Stone: Generally at about this time they start weeding out those who are least likely to vote in their polling data. Is it possible that this is a reason for some of the changes in the polling data?
I am also wondering if there is a general sense of disorganization and confusion within the Democratic Party that is causing some marginal Democratic support to wither away.
@Mike in NC:
I don’t know who the press corps is having cocktails with, but it strikes me, that if they are not having cocktails with the Democrats it is the Democrats’ own fault.
To borrow from a past Secretary of Defense, you go into to an election with the press corps you have not with the press corps you want to have. I really do think that the Democrats just need to toughen the fuck up and learn to deal with the current realities of our press corps – put their advanced education and experience to some good use and learn how to be successful.
I’m tired of the bitching about the press. We choose leaders to fight tough battles and to find ways to succeed even against the hardest of obstacles. Sometimes that means trying things that are very different than what they’ve tried before and sometimes it means operating outside their comfort zone.
Corner Stone
Apparently, the poll by Des Moines Register that has Ernst up by 7% is an outlier. The others recently have been within the MoE.
So I wonder it’s the only one we’re hearing about.
Baud
@d58826:
Maybe Democrats really do take their political advice from Russell Brand.
d58826
@Amir Khalid: Poll after poll show that most Americans (the percentage varies depending on the issue), lean in the direction of what could be called democratic party ideas but they either don’t vote or vote against their own interests.
Poll after poll say that the majority of the public is opposed to Obamacare (some because it doesn’t go far enough). When the word Obamacare is removed and just the features are polled, they have strong majority support. The GOP has succeed in demonizing the ‘sizzle’ and the democrats have failed to sell the ‘steak’.
There is the well reported instance of the woman in Ky. Who has just gotten medical coverage after years without due to a pre-existing condition. It was Obamacare that made it possible. She is voting for McConnell because he has promised to repeal Obamacare. Between the demoralized base and the uninformed voter, the party is doing a lousy job in selling its ideas.
Corner Stone
@Keith G:
As am I. But it has to be a part of the conversation when talking about politics and policy.
gene108
@Amir Khalid:
Despite America being the greatest best country, God ever gave man on the face of the Earth (or so Sean Hannity says), there’s a level of pessimism that has set into this country for the past 13 years that has really worn people down.
I think 9/11/01 triggered it.
The lack of economic progress in the 00’s reinforced it, as real wages and income growth for most folks stayed flat or declined.
The financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent near destruction of the global economy just internalized the pessimism to an extant not seen before in most people’s lifetimes.
There was a general notion that your kids and grand kids will be better off than you. I do not think that is the case in the perception of many people.
You throw in an ineffective government, at the national level, and you have people, who do not see anyone in government doing anything for them or even giving the appearance of trying to do anything for them and are therefore discouraged with bothering to participate in a democratic government.
Add to this the rich getting richer and you have a people, who feel beaten down and do not have high hopes for the future as they struggle to grab up whatever crumbs those with money – either corporations or individuals – drop their way.
The people, who are energized to vote in this environment, are those who benefit the most from the current situation and they tend to vote Republican.
Full metal Wingnut
@PsiFighter37: You mean January 3rd. Not a damn thing will be different the day after the election.
Hildebrand
@Corner Stone: Waiting for the Hispanic vote in Texas is like waiting for Godot.
J.D. Rhoades
@Corner Stone:
Wouldn’t be an issue if Dem voters weren’t so quick to deflate.
PsiFighter37
@Full metal Wingnut: Actually, my stretch call is that Nunn wins on Election Night outright.
gene108
@Keith G:
The problem is that we do not have an objective press.
The right-wing has spent the past 40 years building its own “shadow press corp”, which has all the trappings of traditional media, but exists to push a right-wing agenda.
They are above the petty concerns of making a profit, which afflicts the traditional media, as they are often underwritten by billionaire sugar-daddies, who created those outfits to push their agenda.
The right-wing media is still treated as serious members of an objective press corp*, by the rest of the media, and therefore has a very strong influence in pushing their partisan agenda to the masses via other media outlets.
Whether it was right-wing muckraking of Whitewater 20+ years ago that eventually bled into the mainstream media to the current Time cover of how tech billionaires will make it easier to fire teachers, the right-wing has their thumb on the scales of our media and this makes it harder for any non-right-winger to get their message out and this will be a problem until serious changes are done.
In short, the right-wing has spent a lot of money to influence the rest of the media and we cannot get a fair shake by the current press corp, unless they come to realize they are part of the problem and changes are made in the media.
* The Obama Administration wanted to single Fox News out as the right-wing hacks that they are and this got a big pushback from the rest of the MSM, who treated Fox News reporters as regular journalists like the rest of them.
SatanicPanic
@gene108: That doesn’t explain 2008 though. It’s just a midterm, the party in power tends to lose those, I don’t think it’s much more complicated than that.
MomSense
The media are the biggest problem. The Republicans wouldn’t get away with their BS if the media were doing basic reporting of facts.
The things I hear people say in my phone banking calls are insane and they are getting them from media outlets, not even from crazy talk radio like Alex Jones or Rush Limbaugh. Fox asks some insane question like could ISIS be infiltrating the US from our porous southern borders and viewers hear this as ISIS is infiltrating the US through our southern borders.
Just the decisions that producers make about which guests to book determine how the issues will be discussed. That the tv news shows skew toward white male Republican members of Congress means that this is the dominant perspective that filters through.
hilts
Norm Ornstein and Tom Mann are the Lennon and McCartney of think tank scholars and their book It’s Even Worse Than It Looks is their Sgt Pepper album.
d58826
OT but a bit of good news. The people of Ohio are not going to die from Ebola. The 42 people in Ohio on the watch list ave been removed from the list. In spite oif the GOP’s best efforts (see Faux news) the viru is still very ard to spread. I guess the virus doesn’t watch Faux or listen to limpdick!
gene108
@J.D. Rhoades:
The Democratic Party never recovered from its late 1960’s identity crisis, which caused the party to fracture and lack direction in the 1970’s and 1980’s, leading to loss of control of the House in the 1990’s through today, which has crippled the ability of Democratic Presidents to enact sufficient changes to establish a new identity and new direction.
When a Party is rudderless, with no clear sense of where it is going, it is easy to get deflated.
d58826
@MomSense: They skew towards John Mccain and Lindsey Graham. Anyother white Gooper is jkust a bennie
Davis X. Machina
@d58826:
They vote against their own economic interests.
People aren’t just homines oeconomici.
Joel Hanes
@Corner Stone:
I wish Iowa would just get it over with and secede already.
I think Iowans will come to their collective senses after a couple years of unrestrained Republican lawmaking have shaken the complacency of the moderates who want so desperately to be not-liberals that they fool themselves about the Republican agenda.
But the best thing that could happen for Iowa would be a small-plane crash that killed Rupert Murdoch, (the bad) Roger Ailes, and Rush Limbaugh all at a stroke. Maybe we could hold a reception for them at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, and send them off in a chartered plane on a snowy night …
Joel Hanes
@MattF:
Yeah, it’s all about the narrative.
Two things that have contributed to that :
1. The formerly world-class Des Moines Register has been nearly completely ruined during its decades suffering under Gannett ownership.
2. The Republicans will no longer co-operate in debates organized by the League of Women Voters, because they Rs abhor hard-edged questions about policy, and the LWV didn’t do narrative.
gene108
@SatanicPanic:
Republicans are faced with the basic problem that their idea of governance sucks balls. The more they get total power for any length of time the more they will get to enact their agenda, which will hurt enough people to cause a backlash, unless the local and state Democratic parties have not been totally eviscerated.
This is happening in PA and I believe KS has become competitive because of it.
It happened in 2006 and 2008, when Republican greed and arrogance led people to see the corruption of Congressional Republicans and the lies Bush & Co told to start a bloody war in Iraq that seems to have no end.
I do not think people want to be pessimistic, but would love to think tomorrow will be better than today. Obama ran a unique campaign that tapped into this, but could not sustain it in the face of unprecedented Republican opposition and an economy going down in flames.
Baud
Has the NFL increased the number of commercials this year, or am I just getting less patient in my old age?
Keith G
@gene108: They have never been objective. I think the mythology of an objective press has been invention of the type of “feel good about America’s institutions” lionization that existed from the middle part of the last century onward. The great reporters that I remember and respected from my youth were crusading muckraker types with a liberal bent to their outlook.The press landscape is very different than it has been for almost 90 years. That’s just too bad. New realities call for new ways of thinking.
Corner Stone
@Hildebrand: Do you see that framed in the light of all the fearmongering and hard work R’s have put in to intimidate them (understandably a variable dynamic group), or something else?
d58826
@gene108:I think part of the problem is the party is a victim of its own success during the 1930’s-1960’s. For most voters Soc. Security/Medicare/VA benefits/GI bill/40 hour work week/etc are just part of the background of life. They don’t connect them with the Democratic party and don’t remember, or even know, that the GOP opposed all of these measures. The tea partiers demanding that the government keep its hands off their Medicare is just one of the most public examples of this. Another example is the strong Union state like Michigan allowing the GOP to pass right to work legislation. It was union pressure that helped pass the New Deal but that is just ancient history for many people. They don’t see how that history affects their lives on a day to day basis. All they hear is Benghazi and it’s a race between the IRS, ISIS and Ebola to kill them
policomic
Mistermix, that headline is a thing of beauty.
GregB
The premature triumphalism from the media and the Republicans remind me of the Youtube clips of bikers or football players starting their rejoicing before crossing the finish line or the goal line and losing control of their bikes or getting smashed into the grass by an unseen rival just shy of reaching the finish/goal line.
If things wash against conventional wisdom their will be sever gnashing of teeth amongst the beltway doucheratti and the fascist party too.
pseudonymous in nc
@MattF:
I’m increasingly convinced that the political press likes certain kinds of crazy GOPpers to get elected because they make life more amusing for them than Dems who want to do that dull boring policy shit. Pretty sure that Ernst is going to be part of the Ted Cruz / Rand Paul crazy gang if she wins.
Corner Stone
@pseudonymous in nc:
Indeed. Contrast Sen Chris Coons vs Christine O’Donnell. They were probably peeing themselves hoping Christine would get elected. Now they see just how damn boring Coons is and they are desperate to not let a tragedy like that happen again.
Ernst today, Ernst tomorrow, Ernst forever!
/media headline writers
GregB
Late edit. there and severe.
Baud
@GregB:
I’ll be interested in seeing how accurate the polls were after the election.
goblue72
The mass media are not our friends. They aren’t even neutral. They are the enemy. They are owned by the same multnational corporations & conglomerates throwing millions at each election to elect Republicans to give the ownership of those corporations more tax cuts, along with more de-regulation of their businesses and destruction of those pesky unions. The mass media are their wholly-owned mouth organs & propaganda mills. And the insanely well compensated talking heads on their programs know the score. Sure, they let few leftish types in the door like Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes – liberals watch TV too – but never in any numbers large enough to change the overall conversation.
We have only one job to do with respect to the mass media – learn how they work, learn what they respond to, and use that to manipulate them ruthlessly to our own ends.
Howard Beale IV
@gene108:
It’s a shame that the only good media we have access to is BBC World Service and Al Jazeera. The rest are nothing more than useful idiots for the corprotocracy, and the oligarchs have no use for them. And as for WaPo, Pando and First Look, they’re the oligarch’s new vectors.
MattF
@pseudonymous in nc: Yeah. If a pea-brained state legislator says something weird, it’s hardly worth even a paragraph in the news summary at the bottom of page A8, but if a U.S. Senator says something weird, it’s newsworthy.
Hildebrand
@Corner Stone: Down here in Deep South Texas I see a number of factors: One, local patronage politics has killed off the belief that politicians can get anything worthwhile done. Two, our Reps in the House (Hinojosa, Cuellar, Vela) are great if you are a wealthy donor, but they really don’t seem to care to actually get anything done for the hoi palloi. In fact, they tend to encourage our ‘otherness’ down here by resisting attempts at integrating this part of the state with the rest of Texas – which the rest of the state gleefully encourages. Three, we have a vocal wing-nut brigade which does a decent job of scaring just enough voters to stay home (the new voting laws do help in that regard).
Ultimately, though, the lack of interest, and belief that nothing will change, is the real killer. Worse, our elected Democratic officials don’t seem to think that this is really that much of a problem.
Howard Beale IV
@goblue72: What we need is a progressive John Legere in the talking head circuit. More bomb throwing, pearl clutching and fainting couches, please.
Chris
@MomSense:
Add to this – the fact that the media is still seen in the public, well beyond the 27%, as liberally biased.
I mean, no one’s confused about whether the oil sector, or the defense contractor sector, or Wall Street, is liberally biased. But the media – VERY widespread delusion. Which means that even when people can see the media’s full of shit, they’re still likely to misdiagnose the problem.
Sometimes I think the only point of the right wing media was to muddy the waters that way.
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: To most of the media elite, politics is just a joke, that’s the reason they cover it like sports.
Arclite
@Corner Stone:
It’s actually pretty typical, and the early polls usually don’t show the undecideds. Then when you get close, more people have made up their minds.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat:
Not at all.
If only they covered it as thoroughly as they cover sports, and provided as much context, we’d be in a much better place.
Elizabelle
@Arclite:
That’s so gracious, assuming they used their minds to get to a decision.
We just have to hope that many do.
Corner Stone
@Arclite: No, I get some of that. I dispute there is actually a statistically significant cohort of truly “undecided” voters.
But I question why all reports seem to indicate it’s the R’s that have gained ground with these “undecideds”. It seems fairly uniform.
Elizabelle
Steve Pearlstein has a good column today in the WaPost.
I agree with Pearlstein. Republican lite cedes Democratic strengths. Remind people of the differences. They’re huge.
However, that still leaves you up against the media and their self-serving, lazy narrative.
Corner Stone
@Elizabelle: But this also goes back to before the 2012 elections. The Republican Party was actively rehabilitated in 2009 and 2010. Their economic ideas and memes were put forth. People in power acted like the other side had a reasonable core to work with.
Even in the event people realize it’s the R’s who have been fucking intransigent, they look at what the D’s offered as a counter and said, whut?
Another Holocene Human
@PsiFighter37: From your lips to God’s ears!
I feel like we’re not going to pull it out in KY or GA, at this point, although GA is not over in the sense that all the stops are coming off there in 2016. However, I have heard anecdotally about a degree of white voter demoralization in GA because Perdue talked about outsourcing, one of the things that hurt Romney and fed into the missing white voter effect.
See, white voters love everything that fucks them in the wallet right along with African Americans but taking away factory jobs to them fucks them more than others (because they’re hard-working, deserving, etc). Right now they’re slogging it in an underpaid government job with Black or female or Black female supervisors, or they’re an “independent contractor” getting more in debt with every job, or they’re in sales or retail hell with all that entails and now this guy is BRAGGING about taking away their good job? Remember, “they took er jawbs” doesn’t just apply to Latinos. It’s the one populist wedge that alienates white male downmarket anger voters from their beloved Racist Party.
Another Holocene Human
@srv: You almost had me trolled there but then I remembered being in the actual low countries in high school with a classmate of NE African extraction and how some crazy middle aged lady with a yappy dog started screaming at us in the street with some racist anti-foreigners nonsense. This was in a big city, and to be fair, this middle aged dude came over, told her to knock it off (note: lot of casual sexism during this trip as well, hell we saw some public domestic violence and the mounted police laughed it off–btw, fuck you, Belgian police) and apologized to all of us. Still, pretty eerie. (And yeah, we were screaming at the lady that we were tourists from the US. She didn’t give a shit.)
stonetools
With all due respect, it’s not the media’s job to hang the crazy hat on Ernst. It’s Braley’s job. Where the eff was he when she was polishing her image as Little Ms. Hog Castrator, married mom and defender of our country?
Look, Harry Reid wrote the book on running against a crazy candidate. You start attacking her crazy statements on day one, keep repeating those attacks, and never let anyone forget her craziness.
It’s my understanding that Braley never starting hammering her until after Labor Day, when he suddenly realized he was trailing in the polls and her warm, fuzzy image was already set in stone.
Liberals don’t like this but sometimes you’ve got to be willing to be a knife fighter. It’s not all about graphs and who knows policy better
I will say she does seem to be a Teflon candidate, and Obama’s pull numbers were a drag on Braley. But Braley started off expecting to be coronated, stumbled early, and just wasn’t ready for the fight, according to this profile:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/10/bruce-braley-and-the-year-everything-went-wrong-for-democrats/381929/
Corner Stone
@stonetools:
BULLSHIT. The god damned pragmatic ex-Republicans nee Pragmatists don’t want a candidate who talks shit when appropriate.
Don’t talk shit about what liberals want with this bullshit.
Another Holocene Human
@Corner Stone:
Two things:
polls lag 7-10 days, if you go back in time the R’s were airlifting money for serious ad buys, including some really ugly negative ads
you have tightening of likely voter screens, remember from every election ever they can be off by a few points.
okay, three things: fuck the polls, I think Scott is done in Florida. Sure his stupid groupies will return to the polls and voter for him but all the people who were all “meh, there was an election? whatever” in 2010 that I know have all early voted this time. Voldemort’s margin in 2010 was razor thin. He’s finished.
Another Holocene Human
@Corner Stone: I do too. Out of all the campaigns I donated to, her volunteers were by far the most organized and professional. Even if she loses in the end, I think that a secondary goal is definitely going to be a bunch of downticket races in Southern Texas and increased profile and organization by Latin@ Texas. (With over half of a million voters purged off the rolls by judicial fiat, I don’t see the Democrats winning statewide in Texas this year.)
Wish I could say the same about Michaud … more enthusiasm than organizational know-how :(((
Another Holocene Human
@gene108: It doesn’t matter who your journalists are since they don’t own the media.
The captured media is both handmaiden to and result of increasing wealth concentration.
In other words, you won’t get better journalism until we start implementing redistributive taxation of high incomes and huge wealth pools again.
Another Holocene Human
@Corner Stone:
Actually, nobody is stopping them from Fighting for Fifteen but for some reason a lot of American workers making less than $15/hr erupt in enormous class snobbery when foreign born or female or low skill laborers start organizing for better wages and would rather piss and moan than have that lightbulb go off … hey … we need to jump on this bandwagon too.
Another Holocene Human
@d58826: I disagree with everything you’ve said.
Unaffiliated voters are NOT breaking for the GOP. Okay? Read the polls.
The GOP candidates are NOT more moderate this time around. They’ve got the usual mix of keep their mouth shutters and crazies (like Ernst).
The Democrats are defending more difficult seats than the GOP. In 2016 the shoe will be on the other foot. This is completely structural.
That said, the Democratic party threw up really lame candidates in at least two difficult races–Braley in IA and Fitzpatrick for governor in OH.
The really interesting story about 2014 is how much support the Independent and third party candidates are getting this late in the race. Several races have significant spoilers and in Kansas the Democratic party actual withdrew and is supporting and Independent. (See also ME, AK, SD, and also a lot of the SE races to a lesser extent, for example GA and LA.)
Another Holocene Human
@gene108:
That train left the station in 1980 but it seems like most people did not want to believe it.
Through the 1970s, wealth was redistributed from the rentier class to the middle class (through inflation and wage increases). Also, African-American households experienced the biggest increase in household income and wealth in American history as the result of affirmative action and good wages in blue collar professions. The reaction was awful. Wrath of God style stuff.
Anyone who paid attention to economics knew that the younger boomers already were doing worse than their parents (the white ones, anyway, which demographically were a majority) in the 1980s. A lucky few profitted from the tech bubble, and the fool’s gold of the 2000s mostly bankrupted households but there were a few who escaped with truly ill-gotten gains, made at others’ expense. (There were a lot of prosecutions, too, but not all of the crooked deals were illegal when they happened.)
The hyper-rich have gotten richer. Whoop de doo. As income equality soars, the fundamentals of the economy crumble because .001% of heads are not better than 300,000,000 million. They just aren’t. Behold these times and despair.
gian
@Corner Stone: likely voter models
Corner Stone
@gian: red thunder kittens
opiejeanne
@SatanicPanic: They’re doing better in the Seattle area and one indicator is how quickly houses are selling and how the prices have recovered the lost ground.
They’re also doing better in some areas of Southern California but not so much in some of the mountain resort areas. Values have dropped a bit over the past 5 months but they’re up considerably since the crash. Unfortunately, a lot of the little businesses suffered too much during the past 6 years and couldn’t hang on, so there are a lot of vacancies in the shops in places like Blue Jay and Lake Arrowhead.
StringOnAStick
I’m sitting in our hotel in Ecuador, hoping very, very hard that when we return from the mountains on Tue that the news is good for Dems.
I had a long talk with an Ecuadorian today with family in FL. He knew aboutvthe Electoral College and was totally WTF? about it. I daresay he knew more about US politics and policy than most US citizens, though being a citizen of a country we could potentially kick around tends to focus one’s attention, no?
AnotherBruce
@Corner Stone: At one point, the Register was one of the best newspapers in the United States. And then Gannett came along and bought them out and made them into another corporate McPaper. Gannett for a very long time has been consolidating and downsizing news staffs around the country. I’m not surprised that they are a wingnut vessel. It’s the point of what they are trying to do and are succeeding at doing it. We don’t scare these bastards enough.
merrinc
@Amir Khalid:
I’m surprised too but then, I’ve been busting my ass doing GOTV rather than sitting around listening and reading nonsense from pundits. My husband does insist on watching the nightly news and in passing I heard Chuck Todd marveling that voters seem to be more worried about jobs, the economy, and congressional gridlock than ebola or ISIS. Gee, do ya fucking THINK?
My canvassing partner and I knocked on 108 doors today in a primarily African-American neighborhood and those who hadn’t early voted had one question about our candidate: “Is she a Democrat? She is, huh? Then I don’t need to hear anything else.” They also were happy to take the NCDP Blue Ballot, seeing as how the GOP pricks in the NCGA did away with straight ticket voting.
People are angry and scared and they will vote. Fuck the polls.
Elizabelle
@merrinc:
Good for you with all the canvassing. Way to do it.
dww44
@Corner Stone: No one’s gonna read this, but I’ve been thinking and wondering the same thing.