Steve Benen notes that Republicans may look to punish President Obama by refusing to let him come before Congress in next year’s State of the Union address. It’s petty, it’s obnoxious, it’s childish, in short, it’s perfect for today’s GOP.
Proponents of this idea tend to note that Congress isn’t required to welcome a sitting president onto the House floor to deliver an annual national address. That’s true. According to the Constitution, the president “shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union.” For much of American history, this led the White House to deliver a written report to lawmakers.
But with the advent of radio and television, nearly every president since Woodrow Wilson has taken advantage of the national platform a State of the Union address provides.
And now there’s a push to deny President Obama that opportunity in early 2015, all because conservatives are unhappy about the administration governing on immigration policy.
I continue to believe Republican leaders won’t go this far. In fact, if they did, the backlash would probably be pretty brutal – imagine the message it would send to the nation and the world if a far-right Republican Party, for the first time in American history, refused to allow the first African-American president to deliver a State of the Union address from the House floor, all as part of an extended tantrum over immigration.
In 1999, a Republican Congress welcomed President Clinton to deliver a SOTU even after he’d literally been impeached, despite the fact that the GOP-led Senate was still weighing whether to remove the sitting president from office. They let Clinton speak a month after impeachment, but they’ll block Obama? Please.
Here’s my question for Benen: after six years of hideous, awful racist behavior, ranging from yelling “YOU LIE!” at a previous SOTU address to openly questioning the place of his birth to sitting party officials sending out photoshopped pictures of the President as a witch doctor to calling him a traitor over, well, just about everything, what inside Steve Benen’s head indicates that there will be any backlash whatsoever to the GOP telling President Obama to go screw himself rather than be allowed to speak? We gave the Republicans control of Congress anyway.
These assholes shut the government down a year ago and have regularly threatened to do everything from impeach the guy to taking away health insurance from millions just be be a bunch of spiteful harpies. What the country thinks of treating the nation’s first African-American president like subhuman scum was made painfully apparent a month ago by two-thirds of America not giving enough of a damn to even vote, and a majority of those who did vote rewarding the Republicans for doing it.
There is nothing foul enough that Republicans can do to or say about President Obama that voters will ever punish them for and they know this. In fact, we’ve proven time and again that voters will blame Obama for his own treatment and instead give the Republicans more power and influence over our country at all levels of government in order to specifically allow the GOP to take increasingly outrageous action against the man and his positions.
Hell, if the GOP canceled the State of the Union address, the majority of America would approve. It’s not like we’d actually listen to what he has to say anyway, right? We don’t give a damn in this country anymore about the state of this goddamn union, and last month’s election made that fact indelibly clear.
Benen may very well be correct that the Republicans may not follow through on this little Mean Girls burn book plan of theirs, but man you are completely kidding yourself if you think for a picosecond that “fear of a brutal backlash” has anything to do with their calculations. America tuned out GOP tantrum-throwing long ago and just decided that it was all Obama’s fault anyway, and if he’d just go away the Republicans will stop crapping on the carpet every 35 minutes and we could get back to work here in America, right?
Even completely melting down our economy bought the Democrats all of two years in charge, and Obama was under 50% approval by December of 2009. Let’s not kid ourselves more than we have to in order to get through the day without having to drink before noon here.
dmsilev
Actually, I think there would be a backlash. Not necessarily from the country as a whole, but from the political press. They love their theater, and the State of the Union speech is a big theatrical event. Depriving the press that event might actually convince a few of our dumber pundits that the GOP is indeed extremist.
Hunter Gathers
@dmsilev:
Obama’s Unforgivable Blackness will ensure that no such thing happens.
Mudge
One response would be to define “from time to time” as the next time he was welcome to address Congress. The Constitution does not appear to say “yearly”. Or he could just give a TV address from the White House and send them a DVD.
Tim C.
This might not be a popular opinion, but I’ll say it anyway. The main backlash from this notion wouldn’t come from the voters, it would come from the village.
In order to maintain the fiction that we have a functional, not-at-all-racist-and-crazy Republican party, the GOP still has to keep up a few appearances. We have to have a few pretend moderates or ‘nice’ guys and gals to show up on the Sunday shows and to allow the village to say “both sides” Orange Julius knows this, so does the corporate wing of the party. This is why so much effort went into making Romney the nominee a couple years ago. This is why Boehner tried so hard to keep the shutdown from happening. It’s a pathetic threshold, but shutdowns and too-obvious temper tantrums upset the villagers. Lying us into war and torture are okay you understand, but upsetting the narrative is a big no-no.
Michael G
If you wanted to make a statement that you were racist, there would be no better way than denying a black president entry to your clubhouse.
“But we’re doing it for other reasons!” Sure, they’ll try to spin it that way, but even that’s hard in this case. “It’s not that we’re racist against the black president. It’s that we’re racist against Mexicans!”
Maybe they don’t care, and hell, being racist is a selling point for a lot of their base.
Violet
The President could give the address from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, could send over a written copy and spend quite a bit of time pointing out during the speech that not being invited is unprecedented. The Village gets their political theater, the President gets a great photo op and regular people can attend. Seems like a win to me.
dww44
I actually wish they would deny the President their forum. It would be a fitting predictor of what we are all going to face for the next two years. As Zandar says, we’ve no one to blame but our fellow non-voting and not paying attention citizens. Add in a large dose of non-motivational weak messaging from a whole coterie of GOP lite Democrats who lost anyways and we have where we are right now.
Burying one’s heads under the covers is not a solution, but advocating for a newer and better Democratic leadership that sees building from the ground up as the only path to success is. No more of this “demographics will do the GOP in sometime soon”. Will NOT happen.
skerry
If the president did not address the congress, it would somehow be turned around to be that he disrespected them. Watch Fox news for details.
Cluttered Mind
@dww44: We had that for a brief, shining moment with Howard Dean’s 50 state strategy. The problem isn’t that the Democratic leaders don’t understand what has to be done, it’s that the big money people would prefer not to do it. My number one rule for politics is “ignore everything that people say and look at their record and their backers, then you’ll have a good idea of what they really want”. Seriously, just ignore EVERYTHING that they say, and look at what they do. It’s why I try never to watch any sort of TV news, and just gather information online. The bigger picture is easier to see from a few steps back.
Sherparick
The articles and the comments by MSM journalists and pundits on this really reflect this groups “Group think” and repeated refusal to accept the radicalization of the Republican Party. By now, it should be obvious what the immediate polls would say if the Republicans did this. A large majority of Republicans would say this was a good first step in putting “Obama in his place” and correctly reflect their view that he is not a legitimate President of the United States. Of course the majority of Democrats would be outraged, and then the people poll without part identification would be say “both sides” since they take their cue from mainstream media. Which gets to the heart of the problem, as most MSM media and center right pundits (David Brooks, Kathleen Parker, Clive Crook, and Ron Fournier, would bemoan the “breakdown of norms and civility” but blame Obama’s Immigration enforcement EO for provoking the crazies on Speaker Boehner’s and Majority Leader McConnell’s caucuses. As Steve M. says on “No More Mister Nice Blog” and suggested in this piece by Ed Kilgore in the Washington Monthly, the Democrats, liberals, and progressives have to adopt the permanent outrage with both the Republicans and the MSM media as we have to acknowledge we are in a non-shooting (for the moment) civil war with Movement Conservatives. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_12/gop_obstructionism_stealth_cam053156.php
schrodinger's cat
Well let the Confederate Party do it, it will open the eyes of at least some of the squishy headed independents who buy the both sides do it BS, that the MSM peddles.
schrodinger's cat
@Sherparick: Immigrants and other minorities have been accurately aware of this, at least ever since Obama got elected.
Mnemosyne
I tend to agree with the commenters who think the backlash that Benen is predicting would come from the MSM, not citizens, but I also think it would be a 24-hour news story (at best) before they all climb right back on the Blame Obama bandwagon.
SatanicPanic
“majority of America would approve.”
I think you’re taking this too far. Even at his lowest, Obama is vastly more popular than any Republican and I don’t think people would like this.
Goblue72
@dww44: The willingness of far too many (even here at BJ) to buy into that demographics is destiny meme is astounding. You’d think super red Texas, with its long already large Latino population would buy some folks a clue.
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
Which is a huge reason that some traditionally Republican immigrant groups, like Arab- and Asian-Americans, have swung Democratic for the past few elections.
CONGRATULATIONS!
“Bitch keeps making me hit her” won’t fly anywhere else in this society, save when it comes to how whites treat blacks.
Obama’s only the most visible victim.
SatanicPanic
@Goblue72: How do you explain California then? Because I don’t remember the Democratic party doing anything special in the 90s to build support.
Goblue72
Shorter GOP – Blackety black, don’t talk back.
Tommy
@Violet: These are not the exact words nor dates, but the Constitution only says he has to deliver a report to Congress on the State of the Union. It wasn’t until the early part of the last century that the POTUS actually went to the Chamber and addressed the joint body. He just sent a flipping report. Pretty “new” occurrence.
If they did as suggested here, I don’t know what would happen. If there would be a backlash. But the one thing Obama’s staffers do well is handle stuff like this. Case in point the blame for the government shutdown. In many instances, I think they are terrible, but when the far right, OK Republicans at this point do shit like this, it always seems to boomerang back to them.
Not saying they will lose elections in coming years over it (they will not), but they will take an ass kicking for more then a few news cycles, because as others have said here, the political, inside the beltway press, love this “theater.”
lol
@Cluttered Mind:
Will liberals ever drop the hagiography with the 50 State Strategy? It’s like listening to conservatives go on about Saint Ronald Reagan. Prime example that myth making isn’t something exclusive to the right.
SatanicPanic
@Mnemosyne: It’s worth noting that Benen is part of the MSM.
Roger Moore
@SatanicPanic:
I remember them being sane, interested in governing, and generally on the side of the average voter. It may not seem like a lot, but it provides plenty of contrast to the Republicans.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@dww44: Thank you, finally someone with a clue. Hispanics will not save this party. A better party, with more combative members and FAR better leadership – all willing to fight fire with fire, instead of fighting fire by rolling up into a ball, moaning about the unfairness of it all on the internet, and praying for someone to save us – is needed.
For those who still think Hispanics are going to save the party, I ask you to do one thing. Go do some reading and take a look at who the Hispanics in Mexico elect as their leaders, what the party platforms are, and what legislation gets passed. There’s no lack of better candidates, but the people who routinely make it into power make the GOP, in comparison, look like the most liberal and decent political party on Earth.
JMG
Your comment that nothing the Republicans do can hurt them would seem to ignore the fact Obama got reelected. Something between 2010 and 2012 got a majority of voters to conclude they did not want total Republican control of government.
Goblue72
@SatanicPanic: Prop. 187 – probably one of the most stupid political decisions of any political party or politician in the last 50 years.
samiam
Nonsense. The last election had NOTHING to do with Obama and everything to do with voter apathy! Just like the last midterm.
People still turn out for Presidential elections just like they did to elect Obama the second time. So don’t try feed me this bs that low midterm turnout is because of Obama.
Steeplejack
@Goblue72:
So your views have changed? This was you a month ago:
SatanicPanic
@Goblue72: So you don’t think Republicans aren’t well on their way to doing something similar at the national level? I agree with Roger, if your opponent is a raving lunatic, sometimes all you need to do is be competent.
SatanicPanic
@CONGRATULATIONS!: “Go do some reading and take a look at who the Hispanics in Mexico elect as their leaders, what the party platforms are, and what legislation gets passed.”
err, I suspect there might be a difference between people who stayed in a country and people who left. Also, some of us never lived in Mexico and our parents didn’t either.
dww44
@lol: I agree with the 50 state strategy. The Democratic party has to rebuild an infrastructure at the grassroots level particularly in red states like mine where there’s not a single Democrat in a state wide elected post.
We have to build a party infrastructure from the ground up that we’ve NOT ever had here going back to the Solid South era of the pre-civil rights era. This is the only way we can develop candidates who can win at the state level. IMO, it will be easier to build from the ground up because the outside and special interest money is not so pervasive. If we Democrats want to have a viable presence nationally we must exist outside the left coast and the Northeast. There are lots of citizens and voters here in the Red South.
Iowa Old Lady
I think there would be backlash from a portion of the public who voted R because they think it’s a way to reduce divisions by giving one party control of congress.
The day after the election, the aerobics teacher at the Y said that now they better get things done. Because the State of the Union is normally televised, people would realize this is out of the ordinary when the news is broadcast, which it would be. They’d take far more notice of this than the immigration action.
jayjaybear
@Tommy: I wouldn’t call a 100-odd-year-old tradition “new”, actually. Wilson was the first, and Wilson was president in the 19-teens.
Kryptik, A Man Without a Country
I agree with most here that this will end up being an MSM thing rather than raising the ire of the ‘common man’. Unfortunately, I also believe the MSM wouldn’t waste time blaming Obama for it somehow, for inviting it on himself, and instead lauding the GOP for such a bold action against someone so ‘polarizing’ as Obama.
Goblue72
@Steeplejack: Man, are you stupid. The GOP has adopted an explicitly race based strategy for decades designed to play on race-based biases of white people, thus predictably leading to increasing white identification with the GOP and white voter support for the GOP.
That is quite different from sitting on one’s hands waiting around for Latinos to get to be a larger share of the electorate hoping for them to vote for your party (and hoping for them to show up at the polls). When the record shows those voters don’t show up at the polls consistently.
Mike in NC
Hell, I’m already planning a trip to the liquor store and it ain’t even noon yet. The politicians elected here in November are some of the most regressive scum imaginable. If they could choose a new president, it would be Jefferson Davis.
Belafon
@SatanicPanic: Demographics would be destiny if Latinos in Texas voted at the same rate as those in California. Which is why Republicans are buys restricting voting.
Goblue72
@SatanicPanic: When the GOP in Congress passes a Jim Crow statute for Latinos sure. But that’s not going to happen. Obama is trying to force their hand with his EO, but I expect GOP leadership to basically do nothing on immigration and just continue to punt on the issue while making appropriate dog whistles at their base.
Tractarian
Shrill. Pessimistic. Hyperbolic.
And very hard to deny.
SatanicPanic
@Goblue72: How do you know it’s not? They’re talking about mass deportations at candidate debates. How do you explain how Bush got such a larger share of the Latino vote? Did Democrats do anything to get that or did Republicans just shoot themselves in the foot?
drkrick
@jayjaybear:
It might qualify as an innovation in England, but in the US that counts as ancient and well-established.
Belafon
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
The party that is willing to allow minorities in real leadership positions is going to have trouble as long as those minority groups don’t participate like angry whites. LBJ practiced leadership. The Democrats in 2009 – including Obama – kept the economy from collapsing and passed the ACA. Everyone knows the Republican immigration platform is kick everyone out with darker skin.
Your belief that “more leadership” will fix everything is just as green lanternish as some of the other calls.
SatanicPanic
@Belafon: Yup. Why take our word for it that Latinos are going to be a problem for Republicans in coming years, when we could just look at what Republicans are doing?
Mnemosyne
@SatanicPanic:
I made up a new pithy saying yesterday that some people seemed to like: the MSM is 90 percent Republican and 10 percent Both Sides Do It.
Benen’s in that 10 percent now that he’s at MSNBC. (Don’t get me wrong, I like him and would read him more if MSNBC’s website didn’t suck donkey balls, but he does sometimes fall into Both Sides Do It.)
SRW1
If they do disinvite him, Obama should tell Boehner as the Speaker of the House in a very polite letter that he feels immensely saddened about the lack of interest in the state of the union by the House, but that he would of course be prepared to deliver the usual SOTU report at any point the House would be ready to listen. And Obama should then not provide a report until Boehner caves. I think that would put the onus on Boehner.
Roger Moore
@SatanicPanic:
If you look at historical voting patterns, it’s W’s relative success with Latino voters that stands out. He did substantially better with Latinos than any other Republican candidate in a generation, but even he didn’t get close to an absolute majority of the Latino vote. As far as I can tell, he did as well as he did by actually courting the Latino vote and sounding reasonably sincere about it. I don’t think any Republican candidate could afford to do that today, and I doubt they’d be believed if they tried.
Mnemosyne
@Belafon:
In California, we have non-partisan redistricting. In Texas, they have redistricting that was so partisan that their map was thrown out by federal courts and is still being fought over.
That’s the difference between “our” Latinos in California and “their” Latinos in Texas.
Mnemosyne
@Goblue72:
I found this out fairly recently: Texas had Jim Crow for Latinos. AFAIK, no other Jim Crow state did the same.
I am sadly not surprised that it’s the states that had Jim Crow laws that are still restricting voting rights for those people who were forced to live under Jim Crow.
SatanicPanic
@Roger Moore: GWB’s apparent lack of discomfort with people of color is one of his few redeeming qualities. I actually liked that he tried to speak some Spanish. But I agree, the right indulged him in these things because of his pedigree.
SatanicPanic
@Mnemosyne: I remember when non-partisan redistricting came up. Arnold was pushing it and I think a lot of Dems were suspicious but I’m pretty happy with the results and even if I weren’t it was the right thing to do. I’m going to pat our state on the back for having elected a Republican who occasionally did good things.
kc
Please proceed, Republicans.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
There are also a lot more attempts at voter suppression in Texas. For example California doesn’t have Voter ID, and we make it really easy to vote absentee. Add in the general suppression effect of long-term failure, which is damaging Republicans in California and Democrats in Texas, and you get the kinds of differences you see between the two states.
Archon
I’m probably not quite as pessimistic as this article, but yeah to hear Democrats talk as if victory over radical right-wingers is assured because of demographics at this point makes me think of how some mercilessly bombed, surrounded, and demoralized German soldiers must have felt as some good cheer fellow soldier yapped about their eventual total victory over the Allies once those super weapons came online.
Spinwheel
My lord!
What mindless drivel. Just admit that Obama’s been the best Republican president since Reagan and fall on your sword already.
Cluttered Mind
@lol: If you’ve got an argument you’d like to make, I’m listening. Why am I wrong to credit the 50 state strategy for the 2006 and 2008 congressional and senate gains? Why am I wrong to blame the cessation of that strategy for the 2010, 2012, and 2014 congressional and senate losses? I’m completely willing to engage on this, but I’d like to hear an actual argument instead of just a statement that I’m engaging in hagiography and mythmaking.
Steeplejack
@Goblue72:
Dww44’s mention of the “demographics will do the GOP in sometime soon” trope is shorthand for the commonly repeated claim that the Republicans are hanging on mainly because of old, racist white voters and that the GOP will lose power as those old whites die off and are replaced by younger and browner voters who will inevitably lean Democratic because reasons. Dww44 says that is not inevitable, and I agree.
You seemed to agree as well: “The willingness of far too many [. . .] to buy into that demographics is destiny meme is astounding.” Yet a month ago you were gleefully promoting the idea that the dying off of old white people would automatically help the electoral balance, which seems to be at least a partial buy-in to the “demographics is destiny” meme.
Your two points at #35 are unobjectionable non sequiturs. Neither has much to do with the point above. Yes, the GOP has long conducted a race-based strategy aimed at whites—old and young—and, yes, Latinos need to actually vote to have an effect. Nothing I said denies that.
NonyNony
@Spinwheel:
Obama is easily hands down the best president we’ve had since well before Reagan. He’s easily the best president we’ve had since LBJ, and depending on how the next two years go might end up ranking as the best president we’ve had since Harry Truman (LBJ had the distinction of being great on domestic issues and lousy on foreign policy – getting us mired in Vietnam so bad he couldn’t even run for a second full term and destroying the chunk of the Democratic Party left behind when the Dixiecrats defected post-CRA).
I invite anyone who thinks otherwise to name the President in that span of time that was better. As someone old enough to have experienced a number of them I expect to laugh heartily at the proposals. (Especially if they include either James Earl Carter Jr. or William Jefferson Clinton – anyone who thinks that Obama is an awful Democrat apparently slept through or is too young to remember either of their administrations).
MCA1
@Mnemosyne: You really think that? I recall being very fond (back before that horrid msnbc site basically cut off my readership of anything he’s written over the past two years) of Benen’s longform parade of horribles style listing of GOP misdeeds, outrageous actions, outright lies, or whatever else. He seemed thoroughly committed to debunking the lame metanarrative of both sides do it, and to pointing out in excruciating detail just how far the Republican Party had descended into madness. Has his positioning changed?
Another Holocene Human
@SatanicPanic: Good point, compare/contrast German voters in MN and WI during the 20th cent and German voters in Germany.
Another Holocene Human
@NonyNony: There was a time when Americans considered LBJ to have been the worst president in living memory, likely for the reasons you cite. Conservatives hated him for social programs and liberals for Vietnam. I think he’s been reevaluated since those tapes came out. And, obviously, the backlash to CRA and VRA kind of put more focus on how they got passed.
Obama is a lot like Truman, not in terms of background but in terms of how things have played out politically with the GOP!!
eta: actually, I forgot the midwestern ties, also others have pointed out when Truman did that order to desegregate the armed forces that trolled the GOP just as bad as this deferred action order which is way less sweeping in my mind
Mike in dc
He can just tell them that he will do it on the National Mall in front of Congress, and that members of the public will be welcome to attend.
Another Holocene Human
@dww44: 50 state strategy is a partnership between local groups and the national group, not ground up organizing. There probably is ground up organizing going on in your state, just not within the Democratic party because your party is probably useless and whatever resources it has goes to keep a few pols in power in their little bailiwicks so why would anybody working on labor issues or justice issues to name just two waste a minute of their time dealing with them except to lobby elected officials at the appointed time?
This is exactly what we mean by mythologizing. By mythologizing, 50SS becomes all things to all people.
OfA had an electoral college strategy and built its own infrastructure in states like Florida, cooperated with the local party to a degree, and then rolled up and left. It’s both discouraging but in some sense necessary because the state parties in red states have a different agenda than the national party. That’s stunningly obvious if you take into account all the ticket-splitting.
If you want to take back the D party then you need to look at how it’s structured and maybe change some things. But you’ll go against what remains of an establishment and waste a lot of effort in a civil war. (That’s the reason most D civil wars happen in blue states.) You’re better off working with groups more aligned with your interests and working on local election campaigns and not wasting your time with D party stupidity. Local elections and state delegate/rep elections will be the stepping stone for state wide office later so you want to get decent, competent people in there. And push your issues on the local level. It’s not glamorous and it’s not automatic. You’re not going to fix these fucked up state parties in one day. What was rolled out over 12 months will roll up in two days. Stop crying about 50SS.
Now, do we need better leadership at DSCC and DCCC? Um, yeah. “Feckless” would be one way to put it. I don’t give them any of my money.
Another Holocene Human
Think about the fact politics attracts Narcissists.
Okay, think about the fact that party leadership will thus be full of Narcissists.
Now, think about two people, one who cares about others and service and one who is a Narcissist. You have two choices, one is to be a community activist in a place where people really need help, and the other is to be a gerrymander-district congress critter in a minority party under the no earmark regime with essentially no chance of making any changes in DC although there is possibility of constituent services.
Which one is more likely to get the Narcissist?
Do Narcissists play well with others? Do Narcissists put themselves out to build organizations that won’t have their name on it? Do Narcissists ever stretch their boundaries and grow (hint: this would mean admitting to themselves they didn’t know something)?
Once a minority party becomes a minority party there is a vicious cycle where that party gets taken over by EXACTLY THE SAME PEOPLE who have NO skillbase OR MOTIVATION to take that party back to something viable.
This is why GA is in play and AL and MS are not. GA has ATL, and ATL is big enough to support its own political ecosystem, which means a vital D party in that region which has politicians with guts and not just the usual ones with personality disorders, and they are launching outwards across the state to organize the unorganized.
AL and MS have red cities except for Jackson, which is kinda blue with a red ring (it’s on the IC line to CHI). If anything happens in MS it will start in Jackson. Also the problem with northern FLA … Pensacola is red (though slowing getting purpler), Jacksonville is quite red, very Christofascist in fact, though Tallahassee is blue and put a Dem into their seat, now that was nice to see.
Betty Cracker
@Steeplejack: You’re supposed to quail in the face of bluster rather than respond with quotes and reason and logic and stuff. Jeez!
dww44
@Another Holocene Human: Re this:
Atlanta is a huge area and its suburbs are probably way more conservative than the rural areas surrounding this midstate blue city. Yeah, ours are conservative, but those areas north of Atlanta tend to vote way right. After all name any Ga GOP Congressman who’s become infamous over the last decades, Gingrich, Westmoreland, Broun, Barr, to name a few, and they hail from north of the fall line and mostly north of ATL. So while ATL inside the perimeter may be purple to blue, they are no harbinger of blue to come.
Our state Democratic party IS the path to future political viability. Movements built around causes outside of the party structure, except for the Open Carry ones, just aren’t a factor in our state’s politics. The local party is the place to work for change, IMO, and I’ve worked in Obama’s campaign and most recently in Nunn’s campaign.
The perception that the Democratic party is the sole province of African American voters has to be changed if we are to win electoral victories. The candidacies of both Nunn and Carter this past election are proof of that effort and attempt. Most of our AA voters/pols recognize the need of our party to attract more white voters. Most likely they are gonna be young ones.
rikyrah
POTUS at the Lincoln Memorial…all lit up….
the imagery would be wonderful.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Violet:
I like it. Imagine him doing it on an early Sunday afternoon with 1 M people there to hear it. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack
@Betty Cracker:
I stand corrected! Steep only pawn in game of life.
RaflW
Yep.
Perhaps he should open his next presser by gesturing vigorously and saying “Hands up, don’t shoot!” At which point, I’d recommend he tells us all to f.o., and that Biden will be immediately filling the role of Miss Runner-up.
Another Holocene Human
@dww44:
Dems are popular with more highly educated white voters (not, not college only–those are republicans by a long shot). So again, you’re looking at ATL with high tech industry and also the college towns of Athens, Savannah, etc. (But those aren’t base towns, they’re much too small, like Alachua County in FLA, it does NOT drive state politics by any means … now GA Tech and FSU/FAMU may be a fair comparison.)
From what I understand the original inner ring white flight suburbs are turning more brown and more young/educated and more Democratic and the very angry very red folks are in the exurbs.
And the rural areas have this voter suppression thing. This is where an organized party in ATL can help. It’s not just state senators and state office campaigns but also your city party infrastructure, you need to have that area of 50%+1 where actual governing is going on. Otherwise it’s all Allen Wests and Alan Graysons and those jokers ain’t gonna build shit.
karen
1. We lost the Senate because we tried too hard to turn red states purple that we forgot about retaining what we had. Maryland. We lost fucking Maryland! Thanks to whoever wants to bleat about how there is no difference between the two parties and why bother voting. FOAD.
Thanks to you, “cut spending” will be here in Maryland in 2015. Cut spending means my disability, my HUD subsidized independent living and most of all, my state Medicaid will all be fucked with. With the state Medicaid, the state covered what would easily be over a hundred thou with my double mastectomy, surgery and reconstruction. I hope that’s the case in 2015 but I know the words cut spending usually mean that the poor and the sick suffers.
SFAW
@Steeplejack:
As long as you don’t open any Candy-grams, you’ll be OK.
SFAW
@kc:
Can we please get rid of that stupid phrase? It worked once, with Willard, and has been overused ever since.
If there had ever been a hint of a scintilla of evidence that the Rethugs would EVER pay for their traitorous/seditious behavior, I might not be so annoyed by the repetition here.That phrase implies that they will.
But they HAVEN’T. And they probably WON’T, until the so-called Press stops cowering, screaming “Please don’t hurt me!” to the Rethugs.
dww44
@Another Holocene Human: You’ll probably never see this, but why say that about Alan Grayson? From what I can tell he’s quite a good and effective Congressman. He was re-elected, No? What was his margin of victory? Why do you lump him and Alan West in the same category. Whacko, Grayson is not.
SFAW
@dww44:
Seconded. Shrill? Perhaps. Strident? Maybe.
Stupid? Absolutely not. Crazy? No way. West, on the other hand …
Steeplejack
@SFAW:
Words to live by.