A theory has been percolating around here to the effect that Democrats in red or purple states who failed to fully embrace President Obama and/or the ACA were idiot DINOs who could have made a better showing by being REAL Democrats and endorsing the Obama administration’s agenda. Here’s why I think it’s bullshit.
Charlie Crist embraced President Obama and sang the praises of the ACA. He lost. Allison Grimes was all “Obama who?” She lost. Grimes in Kentucky may have run a tone-deaf, ham-fisted campaign (I honestly don’t know), but it’s just nuts, in my opinion, to think she would have made a better showing had she embraced Obama. There’s every reason to think she would have lost by an even bigger larger margin.
Here’s the thing: Yesterday’s elections were regional contests on a national map that heavily favored the GOP, and they took place in a time of discontent. So the GOP did the smart thing and nationalized the election. They made it all about Obama, and they won big by trashing the president.
You may not like it. I damn sure don’t like it. But that’s what happened, and people who are saying the Dems in red or purple areas should have just doubled down on support for the administration sound just as loopy as the teaturds who were shrieking that Romney and McCain lost because they weren’t enough like Sarah Palin or Ted Cruz.
We’ll see a very different political landscape in 2016 because there is precisely ZERO chance that the Republicans won’t overreach and make a hash of their control of Congress. They’ve demonstrated repeatedly that they have no intention of governing in good faith, and they aren’t going to magically turn into patriots over the next two years.
And if politics over the next two years follows its usual pattern, the future Democratic nominee, whoever she or he is, would be stupid NOT to embrace the president and run on the accomplishments of the Obama administration, such as the ACA. Does that sound contradictory? It’s not.
In 2016, we’ll be in a presidential election year. It’s no knock on Obama to acknowledge that he’s deeply unpopular in some areas and that Democrats who wanted to win regional campaigns like those decided in yesterday’s election couldn’t afford to be seen as close to the administration.
By the same token, a 2016 nominee who wants to win a national election should tailor her campaign strategy to the unique circumstances of a presidential election year and avoid pissing off Obama’s supporters. It ain’t rocket surgery. And anyone who is peddling one strategy or the other exclusively for every scenario is full of crap, in my opinion.
Corner Stone
Man, why didn’t you just quote me?
? Martin
Every person under age 35 is standing around today saying “I can book a vacation on my phone and find someone within a 1000′ radius to have sex with, but I can’t do the most important thing the government expects of me on it? Why the fuck not?”
Omnes Omnibus
I agree wholeheartedly.
Mr. Prosser
Good post.
Alicia
This post is excellent and needed to be said.
Political Realist
I think this is about right.
Baud
Everyone has been talking all day about what Democratic leaders should have done or should do. What I’d like to see is a post talking about what regular liberal Democrats — including us blogging inhabitants — should do differently. Because whatever we have been doing doesn’t seem to be working.
Or maybe were the bee’s knees and should stay the same.
I just don’t know.
Corner Stone
@? Martin:
Die in the Middle East? Buy consumer goods?
Political Realism
Right on. The one thing I hate about the morning after elections is people rolling out their canned pet theories as to way the election went this way or that. Totally stupid.
BGinCHI
Agree.
I would only add that I suggest the next Dem candidate for President do the same thing she/he would do the first day in prison: pick a journalist and go apeshit on them. Set a precedent. I don’t think the candidate should treat regular people this way, but Beltway journalists need a sound thrashing.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: @Omnes Omnibus: Do the three of us usually converge in opinioneering like this? Wonder-twin powers, activate!
beltane
I was feeling depressed until I saw that yesterday was the oldest electorate ever in American history. Maybe we’ve been told to get off the lawn but I am now in a mood to fight.
BGinCHI
@Corner Stone: Cover up Benghazi.
FlipYrWhig
@beltane: My enthusiasm is dampened slightly by my realization that today is the oldest me in American history too.
Sherparick
All you need to know is how Obama lost states like Kentucky with presidential year turn out to know that Alison Grimes was making tough up hill climb and when the landslide started down she was a goner. Mid-term elections that fall in the middle of the second term (or in one case 4th term) of a presidency have gone bad for the President’s party in every election since 1906, with the one exception of 1998.
Omnes Omnibus
@FlipYrWhig: Just wait until tomorrow.
JMG
Excellent post as usual, Betty. I don’t wholly agree, as running from the party leader never seems to work, but it’s a valid argument and you made it well. Of course in 2016, the Democratic nominee will need not merely to embrace Obama’s work as President, but have him actively campaigning on her/his behalf to have a ghost of a chance to win.
As for Baud’s question, I didn’t do as much as I did in the 2010 election here in Mass. but then, my son worked on both Patrick campaigns. I did vote, and I made sure my family and neighbors voted. Wasn’t enough, I guess.
FlipYrWhig
@Omnes Omnibus: Shit.
Keith G
@FlipYrWhig:
With this type of convergence, I am expecting Gozer to appear very shortly.
Edit
Of which I type.
gogol's wife
Maybe you’re going to lose anyway, but you should not make a fool of yourself by refusing to say you voted for the Democratic candidate for President. That’s just ridiculous and disgusting.
I’m angry at the young people who didn’t vote — a change of pace from all the people on here spouting vitriol at the old people who did vote. And no, they shouldn’t have to be able to do it on their smartphone, for God’s sake.
FlipYrWhig
@JMG:
Neither does running towards the party leader if your district doesn’t like said leader. That’s kind of the problem. There are no good options. That’s why so many of the (D) candidates tried to localize instead of nationalize. It didn’t work. Not a bad notion in theory, though.
Elie
Good post,Betty. I agree. Now for working through the next two years and making sure that like you say, the republicans are definitely gonna overreach. The other thing brought up by others is that the repubs will have some serious internal power fights… it will be important or the administration to pay close attention for opportunities to show them up.
Meanwhile, who are the Democrats’ up and comers? Who is going to stand up and show their moxie besides the President?
FlipYrWhig
@gogol’s wife: The reason I’m vitriolic about old people is that the Democratic Party bends over backwards to help old people. I’m frustrated with young people too, but there’s not that same feeling of the betrayal of good intentions.
gogol's wife
When people actually see Obama (as opposed to the fictional Obama whom the media describe), they like him. He’s not aloof and professorial, he’s vibrant and charismatic (and I’ve seen him in person so I know). That’s how he got elected President twice. I do believe things would have been different if more candidates had had him come campaign for them.
BR
This is a bit OT, but folks really need to go read Al Giordano’s post on Clinton:
Help Wanted: The Case for a Generational Challenger to Secretary Clinton
This is something we need to be discussing…
Another Holocene Human
Betty, I’d love a county by county Florida autopsy. Why did we win some key races and lose others? I’m just finding the map weird. And some bad shit happened voting wise in Miami. But today is probably not the day for it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I think Kay’s suggested theme of economic security is one that Dems should embrace. One thing we can do to push this is to start talking to our Congress people about the issue. I have a D Rep and one D Senator, so, for me, that is a place to start.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Two years is a long time, but I get the feeling that the immediate response from a lot of Washington Dems is going to be to immediately treat Obama like he’s a fucking leper. After all, it’s “his fault” they lost.
Obama’s going to be pretty much going alone these next two years, and the public will crucify him because it’ll just underline how much of a failure he is thanks to the media hammering it home incessantly and wondering why he hasn’t just given up and resigned for the good of the country. You’ve already seen it just a few hours ago.
History might look kinder on Obama in retrospect. It damn well should, honestly. That and two bucks still won’t change that the country is all-in on treating Obama and Dems like they were goddamn Ebola themselves.
pattonbt
I think the next D prez candidate will pull a Gore and be afraid to embrace Obama and his accomplishments and will therefore distance her/himself from him. And I think the outcome of the elction could easily wind up the same as in 2000.
For those who think the R’s will die or can’t win the white house, you’re crazy. It’s a rigged two party system and each side starts with about 45% no matter what. And if things aren’t good at election time, the party out of power has a great advantage no matter what history would tell you.
And yes, even if Jeb Bush is the candidate (and I think he will be), he’ll be the nice daddy comforting figure the populace will want after all the catclysmic failues and drama of the Obama administration (that is how it will be sold and bought).
Then after another disastrous 8 years of R rule with cuts to social safety net programs, increased military spending, more wars, more draconian surveillance, higher debt, greater wage regression, higher concentration of wealth in lower number of people, etc. people, with now clear hindsight, will be wishing they had Obama back and be lauding his accomplishments.
Obama’s legacy is set as a net plus (and probably one of the best net plusses of any modern president). The accolades will only come later. It’s a shame but thats the way it is.
FlipYrWhig
@gogol’s wife: But not in Arkansas and Kentucky.
Trollhattan
Cripes, the Republicans spent all of 2013 overreaching and it looks like they
completely got away with itwere rewarded for it. What’s different this go-round?Trollhattan
@pattonbt:
Scotty Walker’s stock just went way up. I wonder how the investigation is coming along?
gogol's wife
@FlipYrWhig:
I understand that, but the Democratic Party tries to help EVERYONE, including young people (college loans, anyone?). But the other side has the Supreme Court (hence Citizens United) and the media, so people are very badly informed. The old people who voted for the Republicans are idiots (unless they’re rich, as my old dad always said, because he believed if you’re rich you should vote Republican), but so are the young people who stayed home — they’re also badly informed and ignoring what the Democrats have tried to do and how this disaster is going to affect them.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Makes sense. But even Kay was uncertain about what that message should be.
Violet
@BR: Agreed. We were talking about this in the thread below. Dems don’t have a strong bench. Their main contenders are old–Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden. Who else?
There are younger people who aren’t ready–the Castro brothers–but there is no one in the middle. No one ready to go now who is a generation younger than Hillary. Oh, wait. Martin O’Malley? Who?
Corner Stone
@Violet:
Doesn’t he host some kid’s game show on Nick Jr.?
I love it when they green slime that guy!
Mnemosyne
I honestly still think that Grimes could have dodged the question more artfully. I think her weak, waffling response hurt her more than it needed to.
And I’m still convinced this was the Ebola Election. Conservatives got everyone all jacked up on FearFearFear!!! and that always increases Republican turnout.
Violet
@Corner Stone: Don’t know. Not sure what he looks like. Vaguely remember an interview gaffe at the Dem convention two years ago followed by a lackluster speech. He seems bland.
Political Realism
I’m back.
That’s right folks, it’s me.
It may be two years late, but the Republican Red Tsunami has finally come–such that Maryland (MARYLAND!) has elected a Republican as their Governor and none other than Mark Warner is holding on for dear life in Virginia.
Not since 1980 have we seen anything quite like this.
What’s even bigger for me, and sweeter, is all the Governor’s races.
Wendy Davis? Clobbered.
Scott Walker? Victorious.
Rick Scott? Laughing all the way back to the Governor’s Mansion.
Rick Snyder? Victorious, and poised–poised for 2016.
McConnell? Senate MAJORITY Leader.
Obama’s Presidency? Over.
The last white Democrat in the Deep South lost last night.
The redprint (pun intended!) is here to be used again–I’ll have some thoughts later on what the blueprint–or redprint–for the GOP actually is.
The arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards the GOP. On to 2016 and VICTORY motherf**kers.
matt
the way republicans make progress even when they lose is they don’t ever run against themselves. democrats haven’t figured that out.
hilts
@BR:
Absolutely.
I haven’t recovered from my last bout of Clinton fatigue.
Keith G
@gogol’s wife: I don’t have a general disagreement with this except in the notion that this cake was baked a while ago. Democratic leadership did not ever find a way to get a marketing plan put together. This has been an issue for years and the leadership has acknowledged it for years. And yet….
With that reality, yeah, one round of “last two weeks” face time with POTUS was not going to be decisive.
There have been/are good stories to tell and a meaningful narrative to present, but it needed to be persistent and consistent. In his last answer at today’s presser, Obama talked about this. To his credit, he has said this was something that has needed to be done better. Today he said he would be willing to try anything, but I do not think that this is actually the case – if history is taken into account.
Baud
@pattonbt:
Well, there’s a possible idea for our blogging overlords. If we don’t want Dems to run away from their accomplishments, why doesn’t someone start a petition describing which accomplishments we are very proud of and send that to every Dem leader we can find, hopefully with lots of signers?
Political Realism
@matt:
Embrace the failed Obama presidency even more in 2016–please, please, pretty pretty please. Have him out there stumping nonstop for Hillary or whatever speedbump you put in the way for Rick Snyder or Scott Walker. Or, (dare I say it?) Jeb Bush.
So much for the Permanent Democrat Majority(tm) eh?
Trollhattan
@Political Realism:
UNLIMITED COPROPHAGIA CASH.
Also, too.
Birthmarker
The Republicans are very good at propaganda. It doesnt’ have to be true, necessary or kind, it just has to be consistently repeated. They also have an excellent media megaphone that keeps their ideas in the forefront. The dems will have to model this to succeed. This has been true for many years and still the dems don’t respond.
I promise the Republicans will start planning RIGHT NOW to win the presidency and maintain congressional control in 2016. The dems will start getting warmed up about May of 2016.
Political Realism
@Trollhattan:
How ’bout that Wendy Davis?
askew
Dead wrong. The election was lost because the Obama coalition didn’t turn out – young voters, minorities and single women stayed home. If you think these voters are going to magically turn out for a Hillary Clinton in 2016, you are deluded. The message people should have gotten from this election is that the Obama coalition is not automatically transferrable to any other politician. If you want them to show up, you have to run an Obamaesque campaign – run on hope, optimism, concrete plans on how to improve voters’ lives, and don’t trash Obama. The Dems ran a 1990s Clinton campaign of trying to scare voters about the GOP and adapting GOP-lite talking points while saying nothing. That didn’t work in 2010 and it didn’t work in 2014.
This isn’t rocket science and it should be clear to anyone who wants Dems to win in 2016. Run a campaign like Obama’s in 2008 & 2012 and win. Run like GOP-lite while standing for nothing and get your ass kicked. Those campaigns don’t work on the Obama coalition. Stop chasing the bitter white voters and focus on turning out a winnable coalition.
Political Realism
@Birthmarker:
Damn straight. Republicans are more organized, informed, and civic-minded–which is why we vote and volunteer far more than the Democrat base who can’t be bothered to put down the bong and get a voter ID.
gogol's wife
@Birthmarker:
So how do the Dems get a “media megaphone”?
Mnemosyne
@Political Realism:
Yes, and with President Romney in charge …
Oh, wait, that prediction didn’t exactly work out for you, did it? Funny how you laid pretty low after your ass got kicked for that one.
Enjoy your temporary victory. As California Republicans can tell you, Republicans never realize that they’ve gone a bridge too far until the electorate makes a turn they didn’t expect.
Political Realism
Ohh, here’s an idea for Democrats: talk about Ferguson some more and talk about white privilege! Nothing succeeds like calling 75% of the electorate racist!
raven
@Mnemosyne: She was fucking gutless and smelled of fear.
askew
@Violet:
You don’t have to be well-known now to win in Iowa, NH, Nevada or SC. There’s a reason Dems start out with small states. It lets candidates gain name recognition and be able to compete.
Political Realism
@Mnemosyne:
Greg Abbott got 44% of the Latino vote last night in Texas. He actually WON Latino men.
Chew on that for a few minutes.
WENDY DAVIS! She couldn’t even win the core counties Houston and San Antonio are located in, lol.
the Conster
@askew:
Agreed, except for one little thing: Obama is a once in a lifetime politician, and good luck finding someone Obamaesque amongst all the nervous Nellies that are our current crop of Dems.
Keith G
@Omnes Omnibus: I have felt that this is our kryptonite to use against the GOP. There are downsides to using it, but it has the virtue of being the one real (nearly) universal issue.
Deecarda
@Mnemosyne:
Her reply should have been “I’m a Democrat and I voted for the Democratic nominee, Barack Obama”.
askew
@Elie:
O’Malley showed moxie and worked his ass off in the midterms. Yes, he’s a longshot but I think he’s the only politician who is likely to run who has a chance at holding together the Obama coalition.
Political Realism
@askew:
Martin “More Taxes” O’Malley’s agenda just got rejected last night–BY MARYLAND. You can only raise taxes so high before people revolt.
Southern Beale
Yup, that’s what I said: Republicans can’t govern. We’re going to have two years of Ted Cruz demanding we pay attention to him and his kind because “mandate” and “political capital.” There will be impeachment hearings and other nonsense. People will figure out who the fuck Joni “ZOMG AGENDA 21” Ernst really is. And they will be reminded why they hate Republicans.
And in 2016 when the electoral map favors Democrats, we’ll take it all back.
In the meantime, let’s have fun watching the Republican creepy crawlies scurry around in the sunshine — again.
On another note, why the FUCK don’t our people turn out in midterms? What is up with that? ALSO, why the FUCK did the millennials not vote? Again? I’m over you young people who can’t be bothered. Jesus fucking Christ, I’ve voted in every single election since I turned 18. Every primary, every midterm, every county, state, and national election. ELECTIONS ARE EVERY YEAR, people. Not every four years. Not even every two years. EVERY YEAR.
BGinCHI
There’s a fly in here.
Political Realism
@Southern Beale:
The Democrat base is (1) lazy, (2) uninformed, (3) not very civic minded.
I doubt most of them even know midterm elections exist.
That’s why.
Elie
@askew:
Yeah, and he is not as old as Hillary.
Hillary is too old. Also.
Political Realism
So who is the front-runner for 2016?
I think it is Walker or Snyder–with Jeb Bush as the wildcard. And they begin with a real nice head of steam given the wave results of this midterm and the continuing implosion of Obama (he should be at 27% approval real soon).
EDIT: Will Obama even be invited to speak at the Dem convention? Last night proved BHO is political toxin for Democrats. Full stop.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: Ain’t it nice to see Pravda back? I though he had expired in his mom’s basement from over consumption of Cheetos.
pattonbt
@Baud: Problem with that is, it’s academic and voting and politics is not academic. A D prez candidate would be, to a large degree, crazy to run on Obama if Obama’s seen unfavorably. People live in the now. Policy will never win over emotion.
That’s the real handicap the D’s have is they are (to a substantially greater degree) primarily policy driven (facts have a liberal bias after all) but this makes them stagecraft weaker. On the flip side Republicans are policy deficient and stagecraft driven. R’s use resentment and fear well while D’s try to argue policy and nuance. The game isn’t rigged for rational discourse, never has been and never will be.
So you can make all the lists you want, it won’t make shit for difference in the end.
Omnes Omnibus
@Southern Beale:
For some, it is things like working three shitty part time jobs since that is all they can get get now that the plant closed up and left town, then taking care of the kids, and so on.
askew
@the Conster:
Yes, but you don’t need to be Obama to run a similar campaign. Dem voters respond to hope, optimism and need reasons to vote. GOP voters respond to fear and outrage. We did well in 2006 when we ran a national campaign saying what we’d do if we won Congress. In 2010 and 2014, we tried to localize races and pretend we weren’t Dems. Didn’t work.
Biggest problem is we have a likely nominee for 2016 who is ancient, hopelessly out of touch and past her due date. Good luck with her trying to inspire the Obama coalition with hope.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Southern Beale:
The problem is that, while Republicans can’t govern, they know how to blameshift, and make sure the other guy is held responsible for their ineptitude and corruption, or that they get rewarded by marketing their ineptitude as brilliance and propagandizing about how awesome this shit really is, if only it wasn’t hamstrung by those ugly Anti-American God-Hating Socialist Commie scum.
You saw it precisely this election: GOP doesn’t GET to pay any consequences for ineptitude. They only get to fail upward. That is just one of the messages the election sent to us.
BGinCHI
I try to keep in mind that the fly was once a maggot.
Wait, it’s actually pretty easy to keep in mind.
Birthmarker
@gogol’s wife: Short answer Fox News, though it’s pervasive throughout the media IMO. Republicans are the party pushing through the agenda of big business, and that’s who owns the media.
Mnemosyne
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Well, you have to admit, predicting the exact same thing that every pundit in the country predicted takes some major precognitive powers. Or the powers of a reasonably intelligent parrot. Your choice.
Political Realism
The blueprint for Republican victory was displayed in Texas last night:
Birthmarker
@gogol’s wife: Sorry, I misread your comment because frankly I need to be pulling some dinner together for the hubbs. Hope someone else can intelligently answer!!
Betty Cracker
@askew: Yoots don’t turn out in midterms. They didn’t before Obama, they didn’t DURING the Obama administration, and they won’t after Obama is off the stage. They didn’t stay home in a snit because some Blue Dog failed to praise Obama as effusively as you’d prefer; they stayed home because they always do in the midterms.
Kristin
The Nation had some similar points about the GOP overplaying its hand: http://www.thenation.com/blog/188257/people-voted-republicans-last-night-doesnt-mean-they-them
Democrats are afraid to really talk about the issues discussed in that piece, and they’re afraid of the beltway “both sides” narrative. Even my D Congressman was, up to the last minute, talking about “bipartisanship” and “cooperation,” and it made me not want to give him money. His race is “too close to call” right now, but he might have gotten ousted. In California.
srv
If you don’t have a plan for mid-terms then pissing off the youts you rode in with with drones and getting in their baseband is probably not a Grade A formulation.
What’s it matter if Warren gets elected and the dems hold a 1 or 2 vote Senate with four or five flip-floping Nelsons? You think we’re going to have more more progressive Senators in 2016?
That road leads nowhere. Me thinks you need a new strategery.
Mnemosyne
@Political Realism:
Wait, you mean that the underdog candidate that everyone said didn’t have a chance in Hell of winning didn’t win? Wow, amazing powers of prediction you have there.
Tell me, will the Cubs win the World Series next year? I bet you can predict that correctly, too, with your amazing powers of deduction.
Southern Beale
@gogol’s wife:
I really never understood why Grimes couldn’t answer that question — unless she truly did NOT vote for Obama and didn’t want to be found out. I mean, all she had to say was, “I would never vote for a candidate like Mitt Romney whose policies only benefit the wealthiest 1% and who flip-flopped on issues like healthcare. Of course I voted for Obama.” End of discussion. How hard would that have been? It’s not like the 2012 election was ancient history and we’ve all forgotten why we hated Romney.
Mike E
@BGinCHI: Ooh! I hope it’s the Jay Leno fly…funny bit on the Craig Ferguson(!) Show which wraps up in Dec. Gawd, I made myself sad again!
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: Or an orange fly.
Political Realism
@Mnemosyne:
It’s not that she lost–she even lost two urban areas that usally go Democrat. She lost Latino men (!!)
You were pointing to California–but Texas is already minority-majority too. And it’s Republican. ROCK…RIBBED….TEA PARTY REPUBLICAN.
Kristin
@BillinGlendaleCA: I think it’s hilarious that he cares so much about the Democrats. Just can’t get enough of talking about them, and to their supporters.
Another Holocene Human
@? Martin: Every person around 35 is saying, we win a popular vote but lose the legislature anyway and now the federal government can’t deliver oh and the SCOTUS can take away anything we do get right so now I have student loan bills, no degree, no health insurance, police want to shoot me, and the crazy people are getting their way.
Young people are impatient. Nature of the beast.
Archon
@Political Realism:
If your moniker satirical? Obama is the ONLY thing standing people us and the barbarians. Dems are gonna need Obama’s and his coalition more than ever in 2016.
? Martin
12% of voters were 30 and under. 37% were 60 and over. Those two populations are roughly the same size (slightly higher for 60+, but not much).
Knock off the blaming of candidates and acknowledge that when the people most pissed off about a black president, gay marriage, immigration, and all that turn out at 3x the rate of the people that support the Dem positions, then the Dems are going to fucking get killed no matter what the candidates do. It was harder than ever for young people to vote in many states, and the way we vote in this country is simply absurd.
Turnout is the ONLY thing that matters for Dems. Ever. When we show up and vote, we win. End of story.
askew
@Betty Cracker: They turned out pretty decently in 2006 and they turned out in droves for Obama in 2008 and 2012. But, silly bloggers and left media seems to think these youths will automatically turn out for any D politician in 2016. I think we could have had better #s with youth if we did what we did in 2006 and even better if the party didn’t collectively crap on Obama and refuse to run on any Dem accomplishments. But, we’ll see what happens when Hillary spends all of 2015 and 2016 shitting on Obama.
raven
@Archon: It’s probably corner stone trying to get people to talk to him.
Another Holocene Human
@Baud: I think that a lot of Dem volunteers and labor volunteers and civil rights volunteers did their darndest this cycle and deserve a pat on the back.
With the massive scope of voting barriers in place in certain states it could have looked a lot worse.
Birthmarker
@Political Realism: The Republicans are well funded by the very entities that benefit from the policies. I agree that the Repubs do a better job of propaganda but they have a well funded framework to do it from. Just start by researching who funds the Heritage Foundation, just to name one group pushing the Repub big business agenda. The social issues are just noise.
dimmsdale
I think I disagree with the thesis of the post, in that if you run away from your party’s legislative accomplishments, you better have SOMETHING ELSE compelling to say, to make your case to voters. A lot of the election postmortems I’m reading seem to agree on what sh*tty candidates the Dems ran this time–ineffectual, lousy campaigners, not very memorable as people, inept, unable to connect to average folks. And Howie Klein is commencing a series of posts (at Down with Tyranny) on the election that looks worthwhile, dealing with paid political consultants and their lousy advice, and the toll it took on already limping campaigns. The post is titled “A Very Bad Cycle For The Republican Wing Of The Democratic Party” and supplies part of an explanation as to why these lousy candidates had nothing much memorable to say, in the face of the usual “tough,” fire-breathing Republican routine their opponents employed.
I put “tough” in quotes because it’s one of those poses that Republicans love to strike, and invariably it rings the gong of the electorate, even though 99% of the time the R brand of “tough” translates to stupid, simple-minded, mean-spirited, and above all designed to distract the mark while you pick his pocket.
Then there’s the fact that Democratic policies are preferred by most Americans, whereas Democrats themselves are not. So, okay, don’t run on Obamacare, run on the right to health care for everyone: for God’s sake, run on SOMETHING.
I’d love to see the Democratic party assemble a slate of kamikaze candidates for the next election who commit themselves to running on principle, with boldness and passion, who would agree also to abandon all hope of re-election in the bargain. Meaning, beholden to no one, owing fealty to nothing but the fundamental principles of human decency that I imagine most of us here support, and committing to make them happen if elected.
There’s so much wrong with our political process any more, it’s hard to know where to start cleaning it up. Kamikaze candidates would at least be newsworthy, generate press, and possibly win. They certainly would make a welcome change from the usual scared-wabbit Democratic campaign strategy.
Political Realism
@Archon:
Obama will be a giant liability in 2016.
Rick Snyder, Scott Walker, or (again, here’s the wild card) Jeb Bush will have no problem rolling over whatever speedbump the Democrats nominate if they follow the Greg Abbott model:
white men+married women+latino men
That’s really all it takes.
RaflW
@Betty
Maybe.
But Clinton knifing Obama over middle east policy weeks before the midterms may have just been the overture to the bloody opera.
Mnemosyne
@Political Realism:
Again — the underdog candidate who didn’t have a chance in Hell of winning … lost. Gosh, stop the presses. What an amazing news story. I can’t imagine how you managed to predict it, what with everyone else in the country predicting the exact same thing.
askew
@? Martin:
It’s the candidates’ fault that the youth didn’t turn out. They turned out in decent #s in 2006 which is also a midterm. The difference was the type of campaign we ran and we had candidates who fought and weren’t afraid of their shadows.
Political Realism
@Mnemosyne:
Again, the Abbott Model:
white men+married white women+latino men
It’s the model Snyder, Walker or (especially) Jeb could follow very easily.
? Martin
@Another Holocene Human: They’re not necessarily impatient, but they’re pretty pissed off by the antiquated way that we do things. Why is vote by mail a fucking innovation? The first postmaster general was Benjamin Franklin, FFS.
TCG
This is very simple. Old white people vote all of the time and everybody else votes some of the time. Democrats have to figure out how to get their voters out all of the time. In other words how to get the Obama coalition to vote without Obama. Democrats win when voter turnout is high and the GOP wins win viter turnout is low. I promise you GOPers still have no idea how to win in 2016 and remain the under dogs. Even with Hillary as the nominee.
Steve M
I think the time in which a politician could localize an election has passed (perhaps because national media dominate, and local media are disappearing). So, given that every election will be a national election, and that running away from an unpopular president doesn’t work, I would suggest the only remaining alternative is to stand up for that president and fight. It won’t always work. It may not even often work. But the alternative is even less appealing. And in in any case, if enough people do it, perhaps it’ll affect the overall narrative.
Mnemosyne
@Archon:
Yes, it is a satirical name. S/he is a well-known (and frequently banned) troll, better known as UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH!!
Another Holocene Human
@Political Realism: Next morning? The screeching at GOS went on all night long.
Common wisdom on GOS last night, pace Kos himself, was that this election and electorate had NOTHING to do with race and everything to do with Democrats who Won’t Lead.
I saw few of the regular posters of color posting, actually, except Meteor Blades and kos and they didn’t engage the screechfest much. There was an anti-Kos post winning the overnight in the Wrecks List.
Dem activists have a white privilege/blindless/ego problem. It is killing us. Dunno what to do except keep reposting Scalzi because he said it best.
JPL
This is my two cents… The repubs have ads down. It’s the daisy ad all the time and the dems don’t or I missed it. One ad, unemployment down, gas down, drilling at an all time high and of course the job is not done until everyone in this country earns at least $10.10 a hour. If there’s enough money, do an ad about life without regulations. Lake Erie burning would be good.
Baud
@Another Holocene Human:
Yeah, absolutely. Campaign work is always valuable. But blogs do have some audience in between campaigns. I’m wondering what initiatives they could undertake to improve the playing field.
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Stone’s probably still in a panic about his pron supply if CA secedes.
weaselone
The problem is that Democrats running for national office couldn’t really distance themselves from the President. They were successfully tied to him regardless, especially the incumbents. They just looked disingenuous and spineless when they tried to do it. It also created a negative feedback effect. By running away from the President and putting effort in distancing themselves they fed into the negative narrative that was crafted by the Republicans. The narrative that made a President who has presided over a growing economy, shrinking budget deficit and who has generally been proven correct regarding foreign policy deeply unpopular. The more unpopular the President, the more energized the Republican base, the less energized the Democratic base and the more drag placed on their campaigns. The Democrats should have been making the case that the economy was improving and that the fiscal situation was stabilizing despite Republican obstruction. Through message discipline the Republicans managed to create and alternate reality that was accepted by the media and the public and the Democratic candidates actually fed into that alternate reality instead of combating it.
Mnemosyne
@Political Realism:
You keep shining on, you crazy diamond you. Remember when Paul Ryan was the dreamboat who was going to win over every woman in America with his corn-fed Wisconsin manliness? Good times, good times.
Political Realism
@Another Holocene Human:
Oh please keep yapping about “white privilege” right into 2016.
Pleaaaaasssseeee pretty pretty please keep calling 75% of the electorate a bunch of bigots who are blind to their “privilege”. I’m sure that will play well in Ohio.
Lol. Idiots.
Corner Stone
@raven: She still didn’t stink as bad as your stupid nutless fucking putrid bullshit. GFY.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Political Realism: Bush, I’ve heard that name before.
Oh, and nice to see you again PRAVDA.
Another Holocene Human
@gogol’s wife: The President gets why young people didn’t vote. Why middle aged people maybe didn’t vote is a better question.
JMV Pyro
@Political Realism:
Oh, I missed you pancake. Not going to deny, your particular brand of trolling has always amused me.
Now onto more serious business.
Last night I said that the Dem’s were bad with the message, organization, and GOTV this time around and I stand by that. I really don’t think you can chalk last night up to a shitty midterm alone. There was something rotten with the Democratic Party this time around that brought a huge amount of crap down on us.
Look, the fact that we have to brace ourselves for the elephant graveyard war march every other election says something. If we want to build a viable, governing party at a national, state, and local level we need to be able to win midterms, or at the very least hold the line during them. Crap like this just isn’t going to cut it.
Redshift
@Southern Beale: I would like to see some real political science research on midterm voting. I’ll have to try to hunt it up; I’m sure it exists.
We all have our pet theories and worldviews about what must be happening to produce that effect, but they’re more than likely wrong. Knowing the reality would be really useful. It was a revelation to learn about the research showing that campaigns are almost entirely about turnout, and not at all about changing the minds of undecided voters or winning weakly opposing voters to your side. I bet there’s some equally stunning information to be had about voting patterns (in addition to the aforementioned yoot vote problem.)
Tiny Tim
I think the issue is that in red states it’s easy to make the case that the best way to win is to run from Obama, but once too many people start doing it, the entire obama/Dem brand gets eroded. Grimes etc. were always extreme long shots, but their basic strategy didn’t just fail to work for them (Again, maybe the best strategy, but still long shot), it brought everybody else down.
Betty Cracker
@askew: No, they didn’t turn out in 2006. It wasn’t a presidential election year.
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Holocene Human: DNFTFT.
TCG
@Political Realism: I live in Texas and believe me when I say that as a Democrat I pray that the GOP will run a national campaign like a Texas Republican. Democrats will win 400EVs if they do. Please GOP, run in 2016 like everywhere is Texas. Pretty please!
Southern Beale
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah I know but that’s not everyone, nor is the issue with Voter ID.
Corner Stone
@askew:
Ha. Run on “hope”, “optimism” and , oh wait, “concrete” plans.
Shut up dumass.
Another Holocene Human
@FlipYrWhig: It’s also about Kentucky Democratic Party staying relevant. WV has thrown in the towel so you must compare Grimes to what happened next door. Very similar electorates outside of I guess Louisville.
raven
@BillinGlendaleCA: Huh, all I see is “trolling by Corner Stone”.
Political Realism
@BillinGlendaleCA:
And you may hear it again!
Speaking of Texas, George P. Bush–Latino son of Jeb Bush–won and won big.
So much for “changing demographics”.
Texas proves Latinos will vote GOP if the message is right–particularly Latino men who feel emasculated by seeing the likes of Wendy Davis on TV.
Corner Stone
@askew:
O’Malley Moxie? That’s kind of an interesting name for a candidate. Hope he gets as many votes as Zephyr did in NY.
Mike E
@Archon: Yep. The only regret I’ve been feeling lately is that the dead wood of a sclerotic NC Dem party can’t be cleared out sooner to make way for a vibrant slate of local candidates. Kay Hagan tried to not embrace and not run away from Obama, finding that perfect middle to lose just right.
h/t Corner Stone
TriassicSands
@Political Realism:
And, not coincidentally, that’s when things really started to go to hell in this country. (Unless you happen to be wealthy.) Thanks for reminding us.
Trollhattan
@Political Realism:
I live in California. How ’bout that Tim Donnelly?
raven
@Political Realism: I’m sure knowing about emasculation is your strength.
Elie
@RaflW:
Good luck with turning out a winning formula… unless she is a type of Muncharian candidate designed to assure a Republican victory.
TCG
@Political Realism: So you admit that GOP voters are driven by bigotry. Thanks, but we already know that.
dr. luba
My hope is that the GOP goes full metal teabagger and really does try to get rid of Medicare and Social Security as we know them. Of course, Obama would veto that……but I’d love the drama, the hearings, the speeches trying to sell it. And the reactions of the olds. We might lose a few to heart attacks or when their heads explode, but war is hell.
Corner Stone
@Southern Beale:
Huh Huh Huh Huh Huh.
Sure they will. In any event, she’s there til 2020.
Fuck Iowa.
Another Holocene Human
@FlipYrWhig: Our reliable olds are dead or dying. Canvassing earlier this year was depressing. “She doesn’t live here, she’s in hospice care.” “Hello? Who? Hello? Who?” “No thanks, Mom knows who to vote for.”
The Silent Generation are the original Fuck You I Got Mine generation. They are large and in charge right now. They are also probably more white than they were when they were born due to African American mortality rates, mainly heart disease, being poor, colon cancer going untreated. If you die at 55 you don’t make it to 65+ voting cohort.
JPL
My two cents again.. it’s about the ads. The repubs ran ads similar to the type that democrats use to air. If fear wins.. then embrace it.
‘
Political Realism
@TCG:
All voters or driven by bigotry.
At the end of the day Democrats hate white people, married women, and traditional-minded men.
But please, keep talking about “white privilege”. Also, dress up like giant vaginas and talk about uteruses. I hear that plays well in Colorado.
Mnemosyne
@TriassicSands:
Of course, what’s missing from the 1980 formula is a viable Republican candidate for president.
Anyone other than the troll: raise your hand if you honestly think Scott Walker is the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan. Wisconsinites get two votes.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus:
Wow. Uniquely American, isn’t it?
/GWB
JPL
@Another Holocene Human: My ex had a fifty/fifty chance with colon cancer. Although it had spread to the lymph nodes, it had not spread to the liver. He’s fine now. He was in a semi-private room with an African American who had colon cancer that spread to the liver. Your comment brought back those unhappy memories.
Mnemosyne
@Trollhattan:
C’mon, Neel Kashkari totally almost pulled it out against Jerry Brown. If you squint real hard.
askew
@Betty Cracker:
Wrong again. Turnout in 2006 was 25% for 18-29 year olds. It was 13% in 2014. That is a huge decrease. With 2006 #s we would have had a pretty good night. The difference is in 2006, Dems nationalized the election, gave concrete proposals on what they’d do if elected and ran an optimistic campaign. In 2014, it was all local, negative and based on not being Obama or a Republican. No one is inspired by that tired shit.
gogol's wife
@BGinCHI:
But it’s so fat and glossy-green as it flits around the pile of . . . .
Political Realism
@Mnemosyne:
Scott Walker has defeated the Democrat machine three times in six years. Three. Times.
You underestimate him at your peril.
Same with Snyder–he’s transformed Michigan for the better. Michigan is booming now–thanks to Rick “THE NERD” Snyder.
And again, Jeb is the wildcard. His entrance would turn the race on its head.
JPL
@Mnemosyne: Which Ronny, St. Ronny or the real one?
Jerry O'Brien
Here’s a link for you all.
Look at all the graphics and observe that within just about every one of the demographic segments we usually look at, Democrats did as well or better with Election 2014 voters that they did with Election 2010 voters (both midterms, so it’s an apples-to-apples comparison). Democrats improved their share of women voters, of age 30-44 voters, of voters over 65, and of independent or third party affiliates. Republicans made significant gains only with Asians.
There’s just one catch: that improvement was seen among voters who voted, not among all eligible voters. The Democrats didn’t improve turnout from their favorable demographic groups compared to 2010, but the Republicans did. That’s kind of what we were led to expect, so yeah, it came to pass, only worse than we thought.
gogol's wife
@Birthmarker:
I know — that’s why I don’t understand where the Democrats are going to get their megaphone from.
TriassicSands
@TCG:
The problem with your wish is that last night “everywhere” looked an awful lot like Texas. The stupidity and ignorance of the American people, coupled with the apathy of a substantial portion of the Democratic base, have never been more apparent. I wouldn’t hold out much hope that they’ll get any smarter by 2016.
Another Holocene Human
@Trollhattan: The Republicans and the RW noise machine, more like Radio Rwanda these days, whips up fear and hate over the summer to influence the election in the fall. They did it in 2010 and again this year. It starts with lies on white supremacist blogs, in 2010 it was Pam Gellar and in 2014 it was Jim Hoft. Okay? That’s how their game is played.
They try to pull that shit during presidential years I’m sure but that’s when those infrequent voters turn up and overwhelm their numbers.
The fascist voting bloc is a minority but they can win pluralities and do.
I don’t know at what point they stop gaining white electorate mind share. They’re not growing quickly, in fact they’re at a place of low marginal returns, but I mean at what point–ever?–does a generation of white voters stop falling for this play?
askew
@Mnemosyne:
I find Scott Walker appalling, but he’s won 3 decisive victories in a light blue state against real candidates. We’d be foolish not to take him seriously. He’s also about 25 years younger than Hillary and excites their base. Plus, he has a list of accomplishments to run on. They are horrible accomplishments but it is a big contrast to empty suit Hillary.
Political Realism
GOP BREAKS DEM BLUE WALL
Recipe for success in 2016?
Redshift
@dimmsdale:
I agree, though I don’t entirely disagree with the main thesis.
Case in point: Mark Warner. His brand is “centrist guy who works across the aisle and is against deficits.” People like him, and it’s a no-brainer to pull the lever for him if you’re already coming out to vote, as in a presidential election (which is when he first ran for Senate.) But if you’re running in an off-year base election, you’d better be able to point to what that “reaching across the aisle” has accomplished, because there aren’t enough totebaggers to get you re-elected, and Democratic partisans aren’t going to come to the polls because you cosponsored a bill with Bob Corker.
I realize I’m engaging in just the kind of theorizing that Betty warned against in the post, but since this particular result was one that was completely unexpected, I think I’m somewhat entitled. But on the other hand, since my theories about what was wrong exactly align with the things that always annoy me about Warner, maybe not.
pseudonymous in nc
Basic point: let’s assume that 2016 has the mobilisation and enthusiasm of previous presidential years, and that coattails and good candidate selection flips a handful of Senate seats, perhaps enough to put control back in Dem hands?
What happens in 2017? Is there a willingness to punish deliberate attempts by the GOPpers to run government into the fucking ditch? Is there going to be a Dem nominee elected to the White House that’s willing to fight for that?
The idiot political media are now going to be 2016ing for the next two years. The long game for Dems is having something to run on in 2018, and the party’s leaders need to start planning for that now, and be willing to cede central control to local organisations that are willing to commit for the next four years.
Corner Stone
@raven: How about you stop being such a coward, you little punk bitch?
This is what is so great about the pie filter. You get to shield your beautiful mind from me, and I get to keep insulting you for the piece of shit punk you are!
It’s pure gold, fucko!
cckids
Find the time to go read this, at Stonekettle Station. A realistic look at last night & the next two years. Small sample:
There’s more, and it is all spot-on. Go read it.
Omnes Omnibus
@askew: In 2006, the Dems nationalized the campaigns just like the GOP did this time. You that when you are running against a sitting president in his sixth year in office. It almost always gets you gains.
Political Realism
@askew:
Yup. Underestimate Walker at your peril.
Snyder, too.
Walker would drive the Ivy League eggheads nuts–no college degree, but President of the United States!
srv
It’s time to throw Obama under the bus.
Warren needs to come out with her own plan for fixing ACA or just cede the talking points to the Republicans for the next two years.
We need to look forward, not backwards.
TCG
@Political Realism: Democrats hate white people, married women, and traditional-minded men, you say? Well thank God there will be fewer and fewer of all of those people with each passing year. You just reminded me of our demographic advantage. Thanks, now I feel so much better!
P.S. Democrats don’t need Texas to win the White House in 2016, so it’s really not a good model for winning nation wide.
Trollhattan
@Corner Stone: We do so love our Randy Paul and Teddy Cruz, Joni will fit in like the third stooge. Gawd, what a clusterflock. Steve King’s gonna be jelly, though, I wonder what her calfs are like?
Keith G
@Elie: Yeah…old women…Who the fuck wants to be around an old woman? Right?
@askew: The Obama coalition will be important until another politician puts together the “fill in the blank” coalition. Yes Obama is once in a generation – young, brainy, mixed race, and all that experience in legislative and executive leadership. That next person may be Hillary. I figure she has a chance at showing us she the goods despite the clear drawbacks. Everyone has drawbacks.
To be honest, I want Hillary to be the nominee if she can show she has some mojo. We need her fighter’s mentality and we really fucking need the Clinton’s ability to raise cash. I hope that she can show that she is a wily veteran of the back alley partisan fights who can tough out the hard times and who has learned from her mistakes. If she has learned from her mistakes.
If we nominate a feel-good young’un who goes on to lose, the legacy of the vaunted Obama coalition will be shit.
Archon
@Political Realism:
Another reminder that the lefts saving grace as always will be the triumphalism and hubris of conservatives.
Thanks for cheering me up PR.
Another Holocene Human
@Mnemosyne: Right idea, wrong timing.
This has all been researched. It’s not what happens 2 weeks before, it’s what happens months before that translates into overhanging unconscious bias.
The ISIS thing fell into their lap, a little late, but they whipped up that “scandal” about Central American children, just as they whipped up nontroversy about the “ground zero mosque” four years ago. Note the timing. They also whipped up some crap about that Marine in Mexican custody.
When you see Republicans raging in June and July, look out.
tybee
@raven:
CS reminds me of a comment scrawled in men’s room in a lake charles bar:
here i sit with cheeks a flexin’, giving birth to another texan.
Corner Stone
@raven: Whatever, coward!
Political Realism
What Democrats should run on in 2016:
Talk lots about “white privilege”, “male privilege”, and uteri
Promise to raise taxes–lots and lots of taxes
Promise more money to people who don’t work
I hear it’s a real winner! I promise!
askew
@Baud:
What the blogs failed to do in 2009 and continue to fail to do is to celebrate Dem accomplishments. It can’t be all bitching about the GOP and how Obama failed us. You need to celebrate wins. Otherwise it is so depressing, people just tune out. Same reason MSNBC’s ratings are in the toilet. No one wants to watch hours of our side sucks, but theirs sucks more. It’s depressing.
Political Realism
@Keith G:
Nominate Clinton and Walker or Snyder can run as an outside-the-beltway politician with real results who will clean up the mess in Washington, while portraying Hillary Clinton as yesterday’s news who will continue the same old partisan gridlock.
This is too fucking easy.
But hey, I hear from Mark Udall that MOAR ABORTION and MOAR CONTRACEPTION will help! Really!
It turns out that the vast majority of women are not in the Lena Dunham demographic.
Imagine that…
raven
@tybee: I saw a very similar one in Lexingtion KY during the regional finals.
Her I sit
alone and hurtin
tryin to make
another Melvin Turpin
(If folks don’t know who Melvin was it doesn’t have much punch.
Trollhattan
@askew: Walker has that Willard blandness and blather that Republicans can project upon like a shiny Cinerama screen. They like their arm-flappers in the primaries but always go for vanilla in the end, and Walker has that down. Plus, he’d be a loyal corporatist.
gogol's wife
“Texas proves Latinos will vote GOP if the message is right–particularly Latino men who feel emasculated by seeing the likes of Wendy Davis on TV. ”
Comedy gold!
Thanks, I needed a laugh today. You really cheered me up.
FlipYrWhig
@askew: Call me a cynic if you must, but I don’t think the youth-minority fusion campaign strategy is going to get you very far if your goal is to win a statewide campaign _in Kentucky_.
Baud
@askew:
I tend to agree.
Another Holocene Human
@pattonbt: Obama is very popular among the Democratic voters in the states Dems need to win in 2016. Come on.
dubo
The wrinkle is that sure, Democrats in red states and reddish-purple states may fare better by running from Democratic accomplishments, progressive policies, and/or Obama, and trying to run as Republicans, but (1) with rare exceptions the “better” strategy still ends up being a losing strategy because no voter is going to trust a Democrat to out-Republican the Republican candidate and (2) when you have candidates across the nation trashing the Democratic leadership and acting like Democratic successes are something to be ashamed of, it hurts all Democrats
It’s the same “the strategy that’s successful for the candidate damages the party as a whole” issue the GOP faces with folks like Cruz, except that it’s not really successful for the candidate either
Corner Stone
@tybee: Man, that punk raven must’ve really put the lip smack down on you when he visited you in person!
I, for one, am glad you two finally found true love. If I need to be that lightning rod that gives you both release, and license, to comfortably be together I am honored.
Thank you for being so strong!
askew
@Omnes Omnibus:
There was still a national argument to be made by Dems this year. They could nationalized GOP obstruction and talked about what they’d do if they won Congress. It wouldn’t have given us record turnout, but it would have excited the base and got them to turn out. And judging by Obama’s closing comments today he feels the same way.
Keith G – As for Hillary and her much hyped fight, it’s a myth. The only time she fights is when she fights against fellow Dems. She didn’t fight once while in the Senate. She was a non-entity. We’ll see some fight in the primary but in the general election she’ll run as GOP-lite on Bill’s accomplishments while taking potshots at Obama. That won’t get our voters to the polls.
Betty Cracker
@askew: You consider 25% strong turnout? I’ll grant you that it’s better than 13%, but your explanation for the decrease from “severely anemic” to “abysmal” isn’t especially convincing. What happened in 2006 is that the Republicans got bit on the ass by the same bug that chomped us last night; they were saddled with an unfavorable electoral map and a president who was unpopular in the territories they were defending.
cckids
@Political Realism: Walker, seriously? He is close to being as skeevy as Ted Cruz, and he’s driving his state into a race to the bottom with Kansas.
WINNING.
Corner Stone
@askew:
What a dumbass. They nationalized 2006 because it was against GWB!
Get a clue, genyup.
Cervantes
@Political Realism:
Perhaps you can document this assertion?
So far as I know, Davis lost to Abbott among Latino men by 1 point — and beat him among Latino women by 22 points.
What were you saying again?
Political Realism
@cckids:
if he’s so awful explain how he’s defeated Democrats three times in six years in a purplish state
K thnx bai
tybee
@Corner Stone:
and i can thank you for being the whiny little girl that we all know you are.
now stamp your tiny little cowboy boots and wipe your chin.
Omnes Omnibus
@askew:
I am sorry but if you have to be excited by a strategy in order to turn out, you are not the base.
Rhoda
Mitt Romney ran a campaign nationally all about Obama; he lost.
Red State Democrats didn’t need to run all about Obama; they needed to reach out to the Obama base and he’s the best way to do that. Crist came close; but the President juiced the Latino vote in 2012 with help to the dreamers. Senate Democrats asked him to hold off on doing something about Immigration; that hurt Crist IMO. It hurt Udall.
Running away from Obama isn’t about Obama; it’s about the genuine accomplishments of the first two years of this administration. They’re historic. Similarly, it would have helped them not to make Ebola about Obama, make ISIS about Obama, make every catastrophe about Obama. They should have defended Obama and talked about the good he’s done; that would have helped them IMO.
Maybe it was inevitable; sixth year of second term, midterm election, red state playing field. But there was a chance for this to turn out differently; and it involved using the President IMO.
They decided not to and it hurt them. Crist and Hagan, you’ll note, came closer than Grimes did which makes it clear this wasn’t the President’s fault.
He won his elections in unfriendly climates and having made mistakes (hello first debate with Mittens).
Anne Laurie
@askew:
Well, then, they’re dumber than
stumpsRepubs and they deserve all the punishment they’ll garner for the next two years and counting. If your Special Snowflake coalition only turns out when there’s some very hot new exclusive artisanial model of an out-of-nowhere Miracle Pol(tm) to tickle their discerning fancies, they’re doomed. (And, hey, I’m old! I won’t be around when the last glacier melts!)The job of a political faction is to find the pol that’s the best approximation of what they want, and to alternately reward & beat on that pol until he or she rises through the ranks. Sniffing that no available pol is good enough don’t count. Obama can’t run for a third term — as if he’d want to, at this point — so it’s time to find some Dems who can, if we work hard, be elected in 2016.
Mnemosyne
@Political Realism:
Of course, the last guy that worked for was the son of a US President and the grandson of a US Senator. And even then, he had to have the Supreme Court intervene to push him across the finish line since at least 500,000 Americans didn’t want him to be president.
Tell me, who is Scott Walker’s father going to call to get some extra favors for Daddy’s Little Fuckup?
Corner Stone
@askew:
What stupid fucking cloud like alto world do you live in?
Voters really enjoy being told how the people they are paying can’t get anything done because some bad guys won’t let them be real professional adult type legislators. Waaaaaaahhh!!
Heliopause
Two different things are being talked about here.
You are correct that there’s nothing Grimes could possibly have done to win her race, and the same goes for many of the other victims of last night’s slaughter. What’s wrong with the Dems is the complete lack of a coherent long-term platform. What the tens upon tens of millions of non-voters are reacting to is a party that isn’t really even a party, on the federal level it’s a few hundred individuals who stand for nothing but their own skins.
Standing up for health care reform or whatever is not something you do to win the next election, it’s something you stand for because as a member of your party you are committed to the irreducible principle of promoting the common good. 150 million people don’t think your party is enough of a party for them to bother voting for, and they’re right, your party markets focus-grouped catchphrases to the people who are already going to vote. The handlers of Allison Grimes, for instance, told her to distance herself from Obama. Her potential answers to the question of whether she voted for Obama might have moved her vote totals slightly one way or another; more importantly, the answer she did give made her look like a fool to the millions of Kentuckians who don’t vote. Her only chance, and the only chance for so many Dem candidates, is to motivate the gargantuan pool of non-voters, who certainly would lean Dem if they voted, to vote, but why should they when they witness weaselly bullshit like that?
Selling the Dems as a party that stands for X, Y, and Z is not a cyclical strategy. It would be laborious, intense, long-term work. And it’s the only way you’ll ever get some of those tens of millions of people into the polling booth.
Baud
One other thing that occurred to me is that we can’t expect Dems to both accomplish things and fight Republicans. Those two things are mutually exclusive. The Republicans know what they prefer, and they will forgive lack of accomplishments in favor of obstruction every time.
askew
@Trollhattan: I wouldn’t compare Romney and Walker. Romney was weirdly robotic and smarmy at the same time plus being a giant weirdo. And I don’t think he excited anyone outside Mormon circles. Walker excites the base and he doesn’t have the Romneycare knock against him. Walker does have a long list of accomplishments that the GOP base will love. He’s a complete tool, but I don’t think Hillary would stack up well against him. She has no executive experience and can’t really point to any issue she successfully led on in her entire career. I think the GOP is going to nominate a Governor (Kasich, Synder, or Walker) and I think we’d have the best shot with a younger Governor (O’Malley or Patrick). Hillary is a bad fit and reeks of DC while Walker can run as an outsider who gets things done.
TriassicSands
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t know, Mnemosyne, maybe the viable Republican candidate will come from the Democratic Party in 2016.
As for Walker, I continue to be amazed. The guy is a dolt, but Wisconsin voters seem to prefer him to anyone in the Democratic Party. The roster of Republican governors who are as bad as any in recent American history is shockingly long, yet they win and win and win. Some, like Walker and Snyder, win easily.
I’m afraid that the combination of stupidity, ignorance, and apathy that deliver election after election to horrendous Republican candidates may be the key to 2016…and possibly many more elections after that. The demographics of the electorate may be changing in ways that should favor Democrats, but I don’t see any signs the stupidity, ignorance, and apathy of voters will improve at any time in the foreseeable future.
Redshift
@srv:
Well, that makes my head spin! Talking about “fixing the ACA” is looking forward? And it’s a strong contrast with Republican talking points?
The ACA has been an incredible success everywhere except where there are Republican majorities that have blocked any form of Medicaid expansion. Any candidate who makes a major issue out of “fixing” it, which in any administration that did not have lockstep opposition in Congress would be a minor technical matter (anyone remember all the candidates who talked about “fixing” Medicare Part D? I didn’t think so) is so lacking in vision and ambition that they shouldn’t win a single primary.
Warren is already projecting a strong vision and talking about things people actually care about, and generating a lot of enthusiasm doing it. Going into a defensive crouch about what Republicans might say about the ACA would not be an improvement.
Mnemosyne
@Another Holocene Human:
Yes, but “Ebola Election” is punchy and has some nice alliteration, better than “Immigration Panic/ISIS/Ebola Election.”
I say we stick with it. You start with the elevator speech and then explain from there as necessary.
Corner Stone
@tybee: It’s ok, man. We’re cool with that here.
Don’t stress, dawg.
Keith G
@Political Realism: So…you just type this shit up quickly or do you actually think long and hard about it?
BGinCHI
Best thing about this troll is the exclamation points.
Otherwise, how would I know where the emphasis is?
JPL
@Rhoda: During the election for President, Obama was able to air ads to fight back. How many ads did you see against Obama? How many for? It’s not a fair comparison, imo.
dubo
Counterpoint (h/t Digby):
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-very-bad-cycle-for-republican-wing-of.html
Ok, Schatz was from Hawaii so that’s a mulligan, but the fact is that every single “run from Obama” candidate lost their races and yet a handful of “hard left” candidates, including those in purple states, won.
tybee
@Corner Stone:
no, seriously, wipe your chin, you’ve spilled dumb ass all over yourself again.
askew
@Betty Cracker:
25% turnout would have saved MD-Gov, IL-Gov, NC-Sen, IA-Sen, CO-Sen, and possibly AK-Sen. That is enough to change the whole narrative about last night and given us a much more workable Senate.
Just Some Fuckhead
Yesterday’s election was just the latest exhibit that Democratic voters need to go vote. You can make it as easy as possible, as some states did, or as hard as possible, as some states did, and you will get the same fucking results if Democratic voters don’t go vote. There’s your referendum: Democratic voters don’t bother to vote and so Republicans win. And in the upcoming days, I’m sure we’ll find out it’s the same problem voters as every off year election.
Corner Stone
@Rhoda:
It’s not “the president’s fault”, but that is a silly comparison.
Another Holocene Human
@Political Realism: 75% whites but somehow not 75% GOP votes, huh? Racial solidarity not so solid?
You lost the Florida 2 and also failed to unseat Murphy (Allen War Crimes West’s seat) or Grayson (who lost in ’10). Hickenlooper survived the NRA. VA eked out. AZ was resilient. NC increased their electorate by 8x what the GOP did. Wake County white supremacist clowns on the school board got tossed and Dems did a clean sweep. Why am I even responding to you?
Political Realism
@Cervantes:
Coupled with an OVERWHELMING portion of the white male and married white women vote, this is enough.
Enough to absolutely fucking crush Obama’s coalition of stoners, basement dwellers, welfare bumbs and contraception queens.
askew
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s more than a strategy. It’s the political reality that Dem base responds better to hope campaigns and GOP base responds better to fear campaigns. And they are still the base, the Party just can’t take them for granted.
Redshift
@Omnes Omnibus:
If you think the base only includes the people will turn out to vote no matter what, then there’s not much point to discussing strategy for dealing with the base — the only people who will be affected by any turnout efforts are by definition not the base according to that formulation.
Political Realism
@Another Holocene Human:
LOL, it’s like the black knight in Monty Python.
Sure, you got your ass kicked by HEY WAKE COUNTY SCHOOLBOARD! ‘Ti’s a scratch!
The Democrat Party is losing white voters all the time. Babbling about Furgeson and “white privilege”, and labeling concerns about Ebola and ISIS “racist” isn’t going to help matters, methinks.
Mike E
@srv:
Fixteth for thou.
askew
@Anne Laurie:
What was the point of your response other than to be an ass?
Keith G
@askew: One does not go to the Senate to fight. One goes to the Senate to procure a job for the rest of one’s life or to step up to greater glory. Fighting there is usually an impediment to both types of plans.
Mnemosyne
@TriassicSands:
Not really. Statewide, California didn’t look anything like Texas. Neither did New Hampshire. Colorado pulled it out at the end, too. Mary Landrieu is headed for a runoff in Louisiana, which is pretty good for someone who was DOOOOOMMMMEEEDDDD a few months ago.
Mostly what happened is that places that had previously elected Republicans … elected more Republicans, and usually the same Republicans.
Political Realism
@Mnemosyne:
It’s just a flesh wound!
Mnemosyne
@Political Realism:
Yes, let’s look at the horrible death toll that Ebola has wreaked in the United States.
So far we have one (1) death (of someone who contracted it overseas) and two (2) infections. Total. In a country of 300 million people.
Ooooh, I’m pants-wetting scared now! Hold me, daddy, the Ebola is coming to get me!
Corner Stone
@tybee: Hey dawg, it’s ok. It really is. You don’t have to justify it to us here. We get it. And, truly, that is ok.
Mnemosyne
@Political Realism:
Hey, is the sun going to rise in the east tomorrow? I really need to know, and only someone of your amazing prognostic abilities can tell me.
Political Realism
@Mnemosyne:
Keep it up! But be sure to call it RAAAAACIISSST for good effect.
I hear that plays well in Kentucky!
Another Holocene Human
@JMV Pyro: You are right and it is the state parties. OfA didn’t rely on them and won in states that the state parties keep losing.
WI and FL are prime examples but you also have the much higher margins of IL, MD and MA which went ahead and voted down Dem gov candidates because of displeasure with the party or candidate. CT nearly went down too.
I don’t really blame the state party in ME because it’s not a situation where an incumbent state party fell apart so much as a big flag switch by the electorate that is playing out messily.
VT came close to going down.
WV Dems collapsed, although red state. It’s funny how everyone is throwing rocks at Grimes but I think Ky Dems look a lot better right now than WV Dems even though the electorates are broadly similar.
GA and NC Dems were a fuster cluck but they are rebuilding due to some really wonderful African American leadership. That is a bright spot.
FL can’t rebuild because the party has very comfortable regional power bases. They keep getting elected so why change?
Omnes Omnibus
@Redshift: In my mind, the base is the groups or groups of people you can count on. And a minimum as a vote every election day and preferable as volunteers, donors, etc. You have to make sure their needs are being met and their concerns are being addressed, of course, but the base is what you built from not what you are trying to bring in.
Elie
@Keith G:
I am an old woman (or older woman). I do think however that we need to look hard at all the possible candidates and what they bring. Age cuts both ways …
Your point is well taken though and age is not by itself necessarily a negative factor — as long as the rest of the “package” is strong
askew
@Mnemosyne:
Us Minnesotans had a good night. Dayton, Franken and other statewide Dems won convincingly and we held on to our endangered U.S. house seats convincingly. We did lose the state house, but that wasn’t unsurprising. We lost seats in the Iron Range which have been trending red for quite some time but also picked up a couple of GOP seats in the suburbs. Plus, GOP failed to flip any suburban seats in the state house.
Who would have thought that Franken would win by more than Warner back in 2008?
Mike E
@Another Holocene Human: Wake County commission… but spot on about the tossing part, and Jesse Helms son-in-law being chief among that crowd. 7-0 Dem now, yay…nice raft of judges got elected too.
FlipYrWhig
@Redshift:
Correct!
People say “the base” when they mean “liberals.” That’s textbook begging the question, though.
tybee
@Corner Stone:
you’re still a legend only in your own mind. now go clean up. you reek of dumb ass.
Corner Stone
@askew:
Then maybe we should have made it magically into a presidential year election?
askew
@Keith G:
She could have done more than just name a couple of post offices and co-sponsor a flag burning amendment. There have been fighters in the Senate – Ted Kennedy, Elizabeth Warren, Robert Bryd to name a few. Hillary was just a complete non-entity which gives her nothing to run on against an accomplished GOP Governor. Hell, Obama had 3 pieces of legislation enacted in 2 years in the Senate, which was 3 more than Hillary managed. He didn’t come to the Senate to just bide his time.
askew
@FlipYrWhig: I mean the base when I say the base – young people, single women, and minorities are the base of the Dem Party. They are the future. Stop chasing bitter white voters. They are never coming back to the party.
askew
@Corner Stone:
Only time I’ll respond to your troll ass. We got 25% turnout among young voters in 2006 a non-presidential year.
Another Holocene Human
@askew: Accomplishments like getting sued by a railcar manufacturer after you force them to lay off people in your state, then begging at the last minute for the Feds to buy your some rail cars four years later, having the worst unemployment #s in the Midwest, and being a flipping shitweasel? At least it’s an ethos, right?
Mnemosyne
@Political Realism:
Ohmigod, I have a one in 300 million chance of catching a disease! It’s the end of the world! I must run screaming in terror for Daddy to save me from The Ebola!
Why bother pointing out the racism when I can point out that I’m surprised you can get out of bed in the morning when there are so many things you’re terrified of? ISIS! Ebola! Immigrants with calves the size of cantaloupes! Wendy Davis is on my teevee! They’re all coming to get you! BOOGITY-BOOGITY-BOOGITY-BOOOOOO!!!
Birthmarker
@gogol’s wife: Well, salmon broiled, side dish microwaved and bong pipe refilled, so…
First I think the DNC is going to have to get straightened out. Things were a lot better when Dean was in charge.
I also thought the dozen emails a day I received begging for money–THROUGH election day-was off the wall. Meantime I saw NO ads countering the ridiculous sneering ‘Obama liberal’ ads.
There are dem think tanks and dem wealthy contributors. But they must work toward a coherent consistent populist message.
Why do you think John McCain is on TV every Sunday morning? BECAUSE HE MAKES HIMSELF AVAILABLE!
cckids
@Political Realism: I can’t begin to answer for Wisconsonites odd predilection for Walker. He’s not bright, he has no policy except for “fuck everyone who isn’t rich”, he is 100% Koch first, and he looks like a child molester. They are welcome to him.
Nationally? He’ll be lucky to beat Santorum.
FlipYrWhig
@askew: If they don’t vote, they’re not the base. You’re talking about demographic segments, which is also important, but the problem is precisely that the key demos don’t act like a base at all. If they did, they’d already be showing up.
Joe Bauers
@Political Realism: Kill yourself.
askew
@Another Holocene Human:
Look I think Walker is a total putz who has done incredible damage to Wisconsin but he has a laundry list of Republican policy initiatives to run on including damaging collective bargaining for unions, cutting funding for education, making voting more difficult with voter ID laws, rejecting Medicaid expansion, etc.
What does Hillary run on? Failing to pass healthcare and naming post offices?
Corner Stone
@tybee: It’s ok, dawg. We’re here for you and we support you.
Just Some Fuckhead
It would be a shame if Obama was impeached because his base didn’t know we have national elections every two years.
Corner Stone
@askew: Did you, now? I doubt that, troll.
Anne Laurie
@TriassicSands:
Walker’s got two things going for him — possibly three.
First, his state’s GOP is as corrupt as any machine from the first Gilded Age, and they’ve managed not to be successfully prosecuted… so far.
Second, there’s a lot of white racists in Wisconsin, they’re just not as noisy (around the national media) as their southern brothers-in-arms. As long as Walker and his chums can agitate about Those People in Milwaukee and Their Man in the White House, he starts with a big voting bloc locked in.
Third, I suspect Walker’s a pure sociopath, and our modern American political system is set up to reward sociopaths. In fact, there are times when I feel like the only reason our battered republic hasn’t collapsed already is that most of the sociopaths who succeed at politics are also stone narcissists, so they can’t go balls-to-the-wall Patrick Bateman for fear of being exposed. Walker doesn’t seem to have that particular complication (which may be why the paid troll lurves him so).
askew
@FlipYrWhig:
Then the Democratic base is college-educated white people because that is the only part of our base that shows up consistently. But, our actual base in minorities, single women and youth. The key is getting them to vote. The GOP has the opposite problem. Their base votes religiously but their base keeps shrinking and they can’t attract anyone else to their side.
Mnemosyne
@askew:
That’s what people said about Rudy Giuliani. It’s not uncommon for a politician’s appeal to not translate well outside of their home state.
In fact, that’s really the biggest issue for Republicans right now — they can slice-and-dice local and state races thanks to gerrymandering and other shenanigans, but they’re having a hell of a time finding a candidate with national appeal. As I reminded everyone above, George W. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and had to be dragged over the finish line by the Supreme Court.
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead: I’m a little confused, and I apologize. Who is the base this election?
Matt McIrvin
@Just Some Fuckhead: You know conviction in the Senate requires a 2/3 majority, right? The House could have impeached Obama at any time since 2010.
Keith G
@askew:
The point is…we are fix’in to see. She may have mad ammo, she may have blanks. I am looking forward to the exposition.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone: His base is anyone that Hillary thinks she can win without, because she has another think coming.
The Watcher
@Political Realism: Also, a place that is quickly turning into a desert and will be virtually unlivable within 20 years. It’s why I left. Texas will pay dearly for it’s foolish denial of reality. As will
you. Stay thirsty, my friend….
JMG
@askew:Hillary Clinton isn’t a perfect pol or candidate, but she’s way too smart to alienate Obama in the next 2 years.
Omnes Omnibus
@askew: If you don’t count African Americans as a part of a base that shows up and votes and works, you are sorely mistaken.
FlipYrWhig
@askew: Or, to put it another way, maybe some of those groups comprise the “Obama base” but not the “Democratic base,” which is a problem when Democrats who are not Obama try to tap into it.
@askew: Of course a figure like 25% _of the people who voted_ is tricky. Let’s say you have a group of 250 people, and 100 people vote, and 25 of those are young, that’s “25%” in one metric and “10%” in another. If the next time around you have a group of 250 people and 150 people vote, and 30 of them are young, do you call that “20%,” a drop? Or “12%,” a gain? We have to be careful not to overinterpret stats like that.
askew
@Keith G:
How is she going to have ammo? Did she secretly get a bill passed while in the Senate or single-handedly do something amazing while SoS? If not, she still has an empty resume to run on. That’s fine against a do-nothing Senator like Paul, Cruz or Rubio. It gets us in trouble against a Governor.
tybee
@Corner Stone:
no, you’re just covered in tex-ass dumb ass, although that would be redundant in your case.
Anne Laurie
@Another Holocene Human: Hey, Askew doesn’t care if the Repubs win in 2016, as long as Hillary Clinton loses.
In my worst nightmares, s/he’s actually channelling the Special Snowflake Youngs coalition, who think of the Presidential race as just another reality tv show, and who won’t award us their highly desirable
eyeballsvotes unless we target our marketing to their whims. But realistically I think s/he’s just the anti-PUMA, determined to see the Hildebeast punished though the whole world burn around her.In fact, the worst thing I know about Martin O’Malley is that Askew seems to be his most rabid supporter, and that’s not poor Marty’s fault!
askew
@Mnemosyne: You can’t compare Rudy to Walker. Rudy was never going to appeal to the GOP base. He was mayor of “liberal” New York City. He lived with his mistress and was ok with the gays. That guy was never going to win the nomination. Walker is a midwestern Governor who has survived 2 elections and a recall. He’s a darling of the rightwing and will have no problems competing for the nomination and he would be someone to worry about against Hillary. He’s younger, he’s done more than her and he doesn’t have the stench of DC on him. And Hillary is a mediocre candidate. People who think she has 2016 in a walk are sorely mistaken.
Kay
@Baud:
Oh, I have a lot of ideas. A lot :)
It could be Social Security, Medicaid, health care law, minimum wage, sick leave, consumer protection regulation and enforcement and updated labor laws.
One big thing could be offer pre-k thru 14 public ed instead of K-12. Two years at a community college or vocational school, guaranteed for anyone who graduates high school. Voluntary, but guaranteed if you want to go.
I think they could do a lot with updating labor laws. The employer scene has changed. Employers are getting around existing, ordinary protections with contracting and temps. They’re also going after workers comp at the state level.
I would love usury laws, too. Why did we repeal all of them, again?
tybee
.5T
FlipYrWhig
@askew:
In a lot of states and districts, yes. Which would explain why there are a lot of strategies based on non-ideological, non-inspiring get-the-job-done work-across-the-aisle stuff–the stuff that activists and most of the blogosphere hate. Because they’re trying to speak to a base that’s not liberals, youth, or minorities.
Birthmarker
@Heliopause: Well stated. But of course repubs will always attack STRENGTHS.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: askew is just a worthless troll. No facts that hold up, no interpretation that makes sense, nothing but HRC hate and pro-O’Malley love. For some inexplicable reason.
Enjoy trying to figure out how O’Malley brings in the O’Bama coalition in some meaningful way.
Because he’s so charismatic.
askew
@Anne Laurie: Go fuck yourself. I never said anything of the kind. God forbid that we acknowledge Hillary’s weaknesses and some of the GOP’s strengths. But, what can I expect from the frontpager who drove off ABL with her race-baiting. Fucking lunatic.
Corner Stone
@tybee: Stop being so defensive, you silly bones!
One loves who one loves!
We’re with you!
tybee
@Corner Stone:
sorry, you’ll have to go home with your dumb assery all over you.
have a lovely evening in tex-ass.
Corner Stone
@askew: Wow, so I guess one national vote for Walker if the D’s put HRC against him, then?
Baud
@Kay:
I wish you would run. It would make things easier. ;-)
Do you think those type of things would actually motivate voters? I can hear the media now talking about pandering and small ball and job killing regulations.
Just Some Fuckhead
@askew:
I was there and ABL didn’t race-bait very often. Only near the end when she got tired of being flamed by the trolls.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: I kind of like that: not that far removed from a classic “labor party” agenda. I do think there’s an obvious hole where “What do we even want to do?” should go. But there’s also no cost-free answer to that. Any answer is potentially alienating. That’s why Democrats are so often filled with trepidation: they want to keep together this bare-minimum coalition without losing 2% here and 2% there, and as tends to happen with strategies obsessed with avoiding errors, it ends up _producing_ errors. When people talk about “weakness” and so forth, that’s what they mean. But the reason Democratic candidates do it is because they feel like they’re tiptoeing through a minefield while squeezing a balloon, and chasing one group drives away another group and then they step on something a bit too solid and oh shit oh shit BOOM.
Corner Stone
@tybee: I shall, silly! Thanks so much for being so free in who you love!
We’re with you, dawg!
Jerry O'Brien
@Betty Cracker: You and Askew are confusing youth turnout rate with youth share of the vote. The youth share of the vote in 2014 was around 13% (13% of those who voted were in the 18-29 age range), but that is not the turnout rate (the percent of 18-29ers who voted). I haven’t seen an estimate for the youth turnout rate yet for 2014, but it’s probably same as usual, around 20%.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Baud:
No. The only way to motivate the Democratic base is to institute vote-by-sleeping machines.
Violet
@cckids: Yep. This is what people who think “running away from President Obama in red states is a good thing” are missing. It makes Democrats look like cowards who won’t stand up for their President. If they can’t do that simple thing, what will they stand up for? People don’t like cowards–they want candidates with a spine.
It’s not so much the President himself, but it’s owning the accomplishments, having a unified message and getting it out there. Dems were all over the map with that stuff. No message, mixed messages, Obama who? It was a mess. People want to believe in something, support something. That’s how you gain supporters and increase enthusiasm and turnout. Democrats didn’t do that.
FlipYrWhig
@Baud: Sure, they’ll carp and kvetch and deride, but the thing to do would be to smile and own it and say, “Yes, that IS the agenda, and it’s better than anything you’ve got.” The problem is that while it’s being worked out it might produce some 65-35 blowout losses, and strategists would always prefer to piece together 47.5% and then hope for the best.
JMV Pyro
@Another Holocene Human:
I know Betty will be giving her own prognosis, but in Florida the night was terrible. The one bright spot was FL-02, but otherwise Scott was reelected, many state house and senate seats were lost, a lot of county commissions were lost, and our ballot initiatives went down hard. This was a much worse night then 2010, I think.
Quiet bluntly, we failed utterly. And that albatross needs to hang around the party leadership in this state good and hard.
Mnemosyne
@askew:
I honestly am not understanding how you’re getting from “darling of the right wing” to “wins nationwide vote.” One of these things is not like the other.
It’s possible that Walker could win the Republican nomination. But it’s a big, big leap from that to automatically beating Hillary, or any Democrat. If someone as bland as Romney couldn’t do it, I really don’t see how a right-wing ideologue does it. W had to pretend to be a “compassionate conservative” and claim that he worked across the aisle with Democrats in Texas and he still lost the popular vote in 2000.
tybee
@Corner Stone:
so you’re home alone again. \well, you’ll always have your dumb assery to comfort you in tex-ass.
good night, missy.
Baud
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Don’t tease me.
Corner Stone
@tybee: Don’t tease me, dawg! I know you’re in a committed relationship in GA.
That’s just cruel to hint that you may want to tuck me in. Just stop, you silly man!
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone: Where did you get all these new friends? Last time I was here for more than a few minutes, everyone hated you.
FlipYrWhig
@Violet:
I’m not sure what the value is in “spine” that loses an election. I’m not voting or not voting in Virginia because of Allison Grimes’s answer to a debate question. Warner didn’t struggle because of The Democrats’ Non-message As Manifest In Other States. I don’t see the synergy. I see why people want to find it, but I can’t translate it into actual behavior. You’re voting for a candidate, not a suite of candidates in multiple states. I think this spine theory is wishful and wistful thinking.
Kay
@Baud:
I think they can use it as a jumping off point, “we’ll guarantee this base level of security and then you will go innovate and start businesses!” and that will keep media happy.
They did a bit of that with the health care law but they dropped it.
I think it would help bridge the divide between poor/working/lower middle class, too, because all of these things apply to everyone. It’s easy to demonize the safety net. It might be harder to demonize 2 years of community college included in the definition of a basic public education. Everyone and anyone could take advantage of that. It’s true, too. People do need two years past high school or they’re never making more than 12 bucks an hour. It should be public.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Kay: Maybe we should demonize people who can’t take 10 minutes out of every two years to go do their civic fucking duty?
Anne Laurie
@askew: ABL’s hard work earned her a paid gig with a much larger audience. Insofar as Balloon Juice gave her a springboard, I’m glad she was able to capitalize on her efforts!
Baud
@Kay:
I just have no intuition about what ideas will motivate people and what will be greeted by cynicism.
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: You’re right there. I was just Googling some stats, and it says here that yoot turnout was 24% in 2010, a year that didn’t go so well for the Dems. It also says here that young voter turnout was 22% in 2006, a year that did go well for Dems. The 13% figure being bandied about at present seems to be based on CNN polling, which is perhaps less reliable than the census data behind the stats linked above. Oh well. The bottom line is, midterm turnout generally sucks, and if we’re relying on the yoot vote to pull us across the line, we’ll be waiting a long goddamn time.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Baud: American Idol-style phone/online voting. But the candidates are going to have to sing instead of debate.
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead: Apparently, our good friend raven in GA at some point decided to pie me for some reason. tybee is his lover, not that there’s anything wrong with that, and so ipso facto also hates me for reasons not expressed.
I suspect tybee senses some kind of latent desire for me in raven, and is totes jelly. But, I promise, I have nothing but hilarity for valued commenter raven. Nothing sexual, at this time.
It’s just kind of crazy balls around here lately, and for whatever reason El Tiburon Group is not even involved at this time. I think.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I’ve been thinking again about what you said about the shift from “income inequality” to “inequality of opportunity,” and now I’m convinced you were right. Watering that message down was a mistake.
Gvg
@Redshift: Actually ACA does need fixing and saying so is not a put down of Obama. we used to say here that all the social safety nets needed revision and improvement with time. ACa was a few years ago and it’s time to talk about the next stage. that would also be something positive that a candidate can run on.
How do we get Medicaid expansion to the blocked states?
what can we do for the people whose employers offer terrible coverage when the exchanges offer so much better?
what else?
I think we need some really good ideas for legislation to force out more gerrymandering no matter who it benefits.Seems to me that history shows the party getting the most out of it has typically bought off a few of the other party legislators who choose their own election prospects over their parties. I want some kind of computer formula based on standard boundaries and populations with no holes or weird shapes and I’m even willing to ignore some demographics like race, age, profession or urban rural. Others may have other ideas and I’d like to hear.
another issue that I think is causing some of our media stupidity is not enforcing the antitrust anti monopoly laws which I think are impacting us in all kinds of economic ways badly. How can we build public support for cutting back too big to fail, too big to allow competition, conglomerate empires.?
Baud
@Just Some Fuckhead:
We need an app for voting. I can send a tweet from my phone, but I can’t vote for Obama? That makes no sense.
I blame Obama.
askew
@Mnemosyne:
Darling of the rightwing means he’ll be more successful than Rudy was in the GOP primaries and he’ll keep the GOP base more excited than Romney did in 2012. Basically, a national election is about who can keep their base motivated and attract independents. I think Walker keeps the GOP base more motivated than Hillary does the Dem base.
Hillary would of course get my vote as she would against any GOP. I just think that we are underestimating Walker’s appeal.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone: I thought you and Raven had the dudebrosports thing going for ya? That’s a real shame, white folks be throwing away a perfectly good relationship.
Keith G
@askew:
Notice that I used the word. “May” We will see.
That said, votes for President’s are not really about lists of accomplishments, are they? Ask President Gore or President McCain. Voters tend to cast their lot with an aspirational guess about where a given candidate will be able to take them One of Obama’s biggest problems was the high bar set by his aspirational rhetoric, but he is not that much different from other presidents in this regard. Leading a state government can be an asset for a presidential candidate. It often can also be a treasure trove of ugly decisions made for the basest of political motivations.
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead: Yeah, I thought we were all dudestrong and shit. But apparently he found true love with tybee and now I’m all like chopped liver or some shit. It’s enough to get a dudebro down, sometimes.
I wish him well, I guess.
Mnemosyne
@askew:
I still think we’re talking about two different things. You’re talking about Walker’s appeal to the Republican base. I’m talking about Walker’s appeal to the country as a whole. And I still don’t see him translating his right-wing support into 50%+1 of the entire country (or even enough states to win the electoral college).
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone: You should get a cat. My cat changed my life.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
They’d have to be really clear and dramatic on the security aspect. “Social Security will be there when you’re 67” The End. No waffling.
I know what you’re saying with media, they want “ideas!” but that’s not what economically insecure people want. They want constancy and reliability and guarantees. Public school after high school will make them feel secure. NO MATTER what happens, their kids will get two years college or training and they won’t have to work at Burger King.
There’s no better idea for a universal public retirement safety net than Social Security anyway. Conservatives had a million years to come up with one. They came up with individual retirement accounts. We already knew about those.
It would be a huge change for liberals, let alone Democrats, but it might be refreshing for the electorate. “I’m not going to the Aspen Ideas festival. Social Security is a proven idea. Let’s just stick with that” :)
After Democrats assure this basic security , then they can do all that bullshit that media love about inventing something in your garage.
Cervantes
@Political Realism:
That’s nice, really, but here’s the assertion you made that I asked about:
Would you like to take another stab at documenting it? (Thanks.)
Violet
@FlipYrWhig: I disagree. Candidates who stand for something are the type that create followers and enthusiasm. That in turn creates support and momentum. You’re a reliable voter so you’ll vote no matter what. You’re looking to get the people who voted in the presidential election but don’t show up for midterms. So you have to do something to get their attention. A candidate who seems weak and wishy-washy, who won’t support the leader of the party, who runs away from all the accomplishments is not the kind of person that creates enthusiasm. You add a bunch of those kinds of candidates together and you get meh. And “meh” does not get voters to turn out, nor does it win elections.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Baud: I don’t think an app will let you vote for Obama again, but I think it’s great you still want to. You should announce happily to everyone in the voting line, “I’m voting for Obama again, sixth election in a row!”
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead: That sounds nice. I’m still kind of foolishly holding on to the idea that raven will come back to me, and drop tybee like the old fucking broken pottery he is.
Maybe one day. *sigh*
Keith G
@FlipYrWhig:
And yet cultivating a persona of one who is solid, forthright, unflinching, and consistent is a high priority for those seeking high political leadership – and the lacking of it is amongst the easiest and loudest avenues of attack.
Can you say flip flop?
It is not black or white and it is certainly not applicable in all conditions, but to deny the value in being seen as behaving in a decisive (almost stubborn) manner would be to deny the dynamics at work in many recent elections.
Baud
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I guess I assumed all future Democratic candidates would simply change their names to Obama when they got the nomination.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone: Well, think about getting a cat. I know it seems crazy but it works.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: So Obama becomes a term like Caesar?
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Beats getting lousy airport named after you.
SiubhanDuinne
@gogol’s wife:
The old, cranky, traditional, getoffmylawn me agrees.
The part of me that actually wants to win elections says, let’s look at this.
I’ll bet the technology is already there, or could easily be with some small tweaking. If the ability to use smartphones is the difference between voting and not-voting, then for dog’s sake, let’s figure out a way to incorporate smartphones (and whatever the next generation is) into the activity. Register to vote by smartphone. Download the ballot specific to your precinct; cast your vote by a simple swipe or series of keystrokes. I’m no IT person, heaven knows, but I am pretty sure that given the technology that’s already out there, we could have a virtually foolproof (I said virtually, not 100% guaranteed) registered voter database. Voilà, no voter fraud!
We’re Democrats, FFS. Let’s join the 21st century and leave the 19th to the not-so-loyal opposition.
Kay
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I don’t do that. It just feels like a loser to me, blaming voters. Plus, I’m at the point in my life where I feel sorry for just about everyone :)
Maybe they were tired. Did you think about that? Tired and heartsick, probably.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Kay: I’m tired of giving a shit about people who don’t give a shit about themselves.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I still call the one in DC, National. Of course I know people in the Chicago area who still call the Eisenhower, the Congress.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t care that Grimes said it, and I think she would have lost anyway, but I do think it’s weird. I think the average person would think not answering that question is weirdly evasive. They really do enter into a kind of bargain where they have to answer questions. She might want to pick her battles there a little better.
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead: Do you think if maybe we “adopted” a cat together it could work out where he’d come back to me? That may be worth it, if it could be “our thing”.
Keith G
@Omnes Omnibus: Hmmm. Obama as Augustus.
Now that would be an interesting Photoshop
Okay, I typed in Obama Augustus and it has been done, but not well.
The classic image of Augusts as Pater was not the one used, the pikers. However that image of Augustus was shown and I clicked it to see the context, and it took me to an interesting bit of commentary about Obama’s transition from highly successful candidate to chief executive. It actually has some relevance to our back and forth here: Melting the Tripods: How to Build an Image Programme for Obama as President.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
My daughter voted in Pittsburgh and she sent me a celebratory email. I love that about her, how she’s one of those people who pays absolutely no attention to anything outside her small area of influence.
She thinks we all had a great night! She voted against Corbett the first time and now she’s been vindicated!
Violet
@Omnes Omnibus: I still call it Washington National too. That’s its right and proper name.
SiubhanDuinne
@? Martin:
This.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: May all her future elections be as successful.
FlipYrWhig
@Violet:
Well, sure, in the abstract. But you haven’t needed enthusiastic followers to win most political offices, either. Was anyone ever enthusiastic about Mark Pryor or Tim Johnson? And yet they won multiple terms. Then it stopped. Even Mark Warner, who created a kind of mini-dynasty, hasn’t ever made anyone enthusiastic. The number of politicians who actually create enthusiasm of the sort you’re proposing… that’s a very small number. So it’s not _necessary_: desirable, sure, necessary, no. A grudging vote is still as much a vote as an enthusiastic one. 50%+1 of the grudging electorate beats 33% of the enthusiastic electorate every time.
That guy on the other thread was saying that Grimes’s lousy answer on voting for Obama was so demoralizing that he didn’t feel like driving people to the polls _and he didn’t even live in Kentucky_. WTF is that? How many people think like that? Who cares? If I don’t like Mark Udall’s campaign strategy, I pout and sulk in Virginia? Buh? I’m not following the news from all these other races. I have a very hard time believing this supposed phenomenon amounts to a significant number of votes. The significant number of votes getting lost is people who care more about who’s President than about who’s their statewide government. That doesn’t have anything to do with candidates in other states in the same cycle doing stuff.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
I know this is no comfort to you now, but the truth is no great candidate wants to run against an incumbent governor in a six year Prez term of their own Party. They want to run for an open seat in a better year for Democrats. It’s easier. You’ll have a top tier candidate in WI next time and so will OH and so will MI.
We’ll have Cordray and shady lenders will spend a billion dollars against him :)
PIGL
@Political Realism: Especially when they are.
However, as to your large point, I agree, you are probably going to win. The Democratic Party and their voters do not have the balls to stand up to the Billionaires, who are just a few steps away from bringing out the death squads anyway now that it has become clear that they can get away with absolutely anything.
I think your party is well on its way to permanent victory, so that it can finish destroying your ill-starred nation. The rest of the world will watch in disgust, as at a middle-aged drunk violently throwing up in the streets, and finally decide to move on without you. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys.
Edited to add: In case anyone thinks I am singling out the USA, I believe that Canada, my home, is but one more Conservative Party victory away from the same state. You will be more than welcome to gloat after the 2015 Federal Elections, should Harper win again. The rest of the world, however, has already left us behind.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: I am still embarrassed for my state.
Cervantes
@FlipYrWhig:
I believe that was Patrick you’re talking about. As far as I can tell, he is simply dejected by the contrast (he perceives) between this election and the one in 2008.
You ask:
I don’t know, exactly, but I’m pretty sure it’s within the range of normal human responses.
SiubhanDuinne
@Joe Bauers:
What, and deprive the rest of us of the pleasure?
Kay
@PIGL:
I agree with you to a certain extent. If someone doesn’t get a handle on the pay to play and what is legalized bribery I think the US is in genuine, real trouble.
This should scare the hell out of people:
It’s an ethical collapse. They’re just shameless. You can buy them with a family vacation at a nice hotel. It’s cheap to buy one.
FlipYrWhig
@Cervantes:
Sounds to me like someone who demoralizes a bit too easily. I can’t feel the pain of bad candidates in other states.
Now, I’ll create an exception, and it seems to me that this is what Patrick was talking about: Grimes gave the media a chance to turn something she said/did into a little parable about The Democrats Running Away From Obama. So, sure, your reaction can be, “maybe I don’t want to help The Democrats, then!” But, here’s the thing. There’s no “The Democrats,” just Democrats. What Grimes is doing has nothing to do with what Warner or Burke or Crist or Begich or Nunn is doing. It’s just petulance to take out your frustration that way. All it does is reify The Narrative. Fuck The Narrative. “The Democrats” tried a lot of different stuff. They didn’t try just one disgracefully wrong thing to spite Patrick, they tried a lot of options, and almost universally the people who voted voted for the other guys. As we’ve been discussing all day, no one really knows what to do to make Democratic-leaning people who care about who’s President _also_ care about who their Senator or Governor or Congressperson is. We can speculate. But if it was obvious, it would be being done by now.
Cervantes
@FlipYrWhig:
Bit of an over-statement, methinks.
JimV
I’m too late to the party here, but must register a limited dissent to the post. I don’t know that having Democratic candidates who weren’t ashamed of being liberal would have made a difference in the results – probably not – but at least I could have voted without holding my nose. I voted practically the straight Independent ticket here in Western NY to show my dissatisfaction. Most were also on the Democratic ticket, except for one Republican/Independent whom I didn’t vote for, and one other seat whose Democrat candidate had a fraud conviction.
I am dispirited at having to choose the least bad candidate to vote for, and would have contributed more to candidates whom I respected. Maybe that was heavily outweighed by the benefits of pandering but it is nothing to cheer about.
In short this is the first and only Betty Cracker post that I did not enjoy. (I only hope she can get over the resulting disappointment.)
Omnes Omnibus
@JimV:
As much as you and I may deplore it, Democrat doesn’t automatically equal liberal.
FlipYrWhig
@JimV: There aren’t enough people like you to make inducing you to take your hand off your nose an important electoral consideration. I’d like candidates to sound like me and make me happy too. But we need a majority. I don’t know how you feel about your neighbors, but most human beings I interact with are a pack of slugs and morons. I don’t count on the things I like being the things they like.
correcty fairy
@Betty Cracker: Late to the party, but you’re reading that chart wrong. That is not a chart of turnout per voting cohort, it is a chart of relative percentage of the electorate that did turnout.
In 2014 seniors were a bigger percentage of the electorate than 2010, youth were at the same level. Turnout only up a point over 2010, so this means less middle aged people than usual. Yes, more seniors showed up but actually more youth showed up too because their relative figures stayed steady.
In 2006 the youth who were at 25% are now 8 years older and aged out of the youth cohort. That middle cohort is the one disproportionately not represented.
What this means isn’t clear without drilling into the absolute turnout figures.
xenos
@Kay:
We did not repeal them. Scalia, Rhenquist, Thomas, Kennedy and one other idiot did.
But you know that – it helps to remind people of how long things have been going downhill.
AxelFoley
@Political Realism:
Die in a fire, muthfucka.
AxelFoley
@askew:
This. 100%, this.
AxelFoley
@Mnemosyne: Don’t know why anyone is engaging with that asswipe. He’s a troll and nothing but. Tell him to fuck off and die and move on.
tybee
@Corner Stone:
you don’t need a cat. you’re already a pussy.
BretH
It’s not that standing with Obama and his policies makes a difference at the 11th hour. It’s just that Democrats have been lousy at promoting the many successes they have had and pushing back against the arrant bullshit that is churned out from the other side.
Maybe if the groundwork had been better laid standing tall and saying “I support the ACA for all the reasons you have heard us say over the last four years” would carry more weight.
Yoda Dog
@AxelFoley: Indeed. Was a waste of space and time. That assclown will be nowehere to be found in 2016 when Walker or whomever gets their ass handed to them.
tam1MI
@dubo: This is the hard evidence that convinces me that Betty is off base in her analysis.
tam1MI
@Joe Bauers: He doesn’t have to, his party will do it for them.
Mutaman
@BR: @BR:
“This is a bit OT, but folks really need to go read Al Giordano’s post on Clinton:”
Wasn’t Al the genius who sold everyone on the idea that Barry was about hope and change. Fool me once………………..