We had a lively discussion here last week about the Democrats’ inability to mobilize the very people who benefit most from policies Democrats support. It centered around a NYT article on states like Kentucky that benefit from policies like Obamacare but then turn around and vote in politicians who promise to slash the safety net.
The takeaway from that article, IMO, is that it’s not that the people who are using Obamacare hate it and want to see it stamped out (which is counter-intuitive no matter what very real sociological ills are attributed to the population) but rather that the people who are using it don’t vote.
Ezra Klein at Vox has a piece up today that looks at the findings of another NYT article about the possible Obamacare rollback in Kentucky that reaches a similar conclusion:
Carolyn Bouchard, a diabetic with a slowly healing shoulder fracture, hurried to see her doctor after Matt Bevin was elected governor here this month.
Ms. Bouchard, 60, said she was sick of politics and had not bothered voting. But she knew enough about Mr. Bevin, a conservative Republican who rails against the Affordable Care Act, to be nervous about the Medicaid coverage she gained under the law last year.
“I thought, ‘Before my insurance changes, I’d better go in,’ ” she said as she waited at Family Health Centers, a community clinic here.
There is something perfect about this anecdote: Bouchard clearly benefits from Obamacare, or at least believes she does, but less than a decade after the federal government passed the program into law, she’s decided she’s sick of politics and didn’t bother to vote. The result is that she may well lose her insurance — which will, presumably, leave her yet more disgusted by American politics, and make her that much less likely to vote.
Klein published a couple of charts that illustrate this vexing conundrum, including this one:
Klein says, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was making the natural response to disappointment with American politics apathy rather than participation.”
I think he’s right, but I don’t know how we solve it. In the Balloon Juice post linked in the first line, we talked about highlighting great things our local reps have done, and that’s a good idea. It might make us feel less hopeless. But it won’t reach the disengaged. Anyone got any ideas on that score?
ETA: In the above-referenced thread, valued commenter Heliopause said the following:
An example of where to start — this is an example, not a comprehensive program — would be a series of TV ads, run nationally to the largest possible audience, which basically say, “we are the Democrats and we stand for X, Y, and Z.” Make sure the ad is affirmative without being treacly, and keep the faces of Hillary or whomever out of it, this is about the party and not a personality. Keep hammering this message and stick with it, it’s going to take years before it starts doing any good.
That’s the only chance, and I’d love to be wrong, but I don’t think it can happen. Balloon Juicers are somewhat obsessed with personality politics; the MSM is completely obsessed with it. If you’re not into the Khardashians you don’t watch them. Same with our politics.
That rings true to me.
liberal
Elbow grease.
Bill Arnold
If she doesn’t vote, she is irrelevant (*) to politicians in a representative democracy. I wonder how many non-voters understand this.
(*) approximately
BGinCHI
More parades.
KG
There’s no easy fix. You have to remind people, every election, that if they want things to be better than they have to vote. That it’s not a one time thing, or that it only matters when the presidency is on the ballot. And you have to do it without being patronizing. Then you have to have politicians that people will believe won’t be more of the same. Basically, it’s relocating a mountain by hand.
Matt McIrvin
My experience is that the people who are refusing to vote because they’re disgusted with politics get really angry at you if you attempt to persuade or frighten them into voting. They’re not apathetic so much as they think of their refusal as a principled position. They’re alienated from the horrible clown show, or, in some cases, actually so disgusted with the society around them that they don’t want to participate.
BGinCHI
Mrs. BG were just talking about this and she pointed out that a good friend of ours, who happens to be a very smart professional, now in her late 60s, veteran of the feminist/lesbian politics wars, doesn’t vote because she says it’s her way of doing “civil disobedience.”
I find this so maddening I want to pull my hair out but I’m getting too old to take that kind of risk.
Mike J
If voting didn’t matter, why would Republicans all across the country be trying to make it illegal?
BGinCHI
@Matt McIrvin: Whoa. Jinx.
Ryan
I think the first thing that people need to understand is that this is not your parents’ Republican Party. The current version doesn’t simply want to slow the pace of societal change, they want to fundamentally roll back the changes that have taken place. Participation in voting amounts to holding the line against assaults on the safety net and your personal rights if you are not a lilly white male.
Matt McIrvin
…However, I am not convinced that the majority of non-voters are actually in the “disgust with politics/principled refusal to vote” category. I seem to recall a chart from a survey of voters’ stated reasons in which that was less than half of the non-voting population. Many of them simply stated they couldn’t get off work, or couldn’t get to the polling place, or had had some kind of trouble with voting or registration.
Ruckus
1. Everyone registered
2. Required voting.
CA is trying to accomplish number 1 or at least get close to it. The second will probably never happen, it is after all a democracy and we are usually free to do or not, that which may help us.
I also don’t think the apathy about voting is that hard to understand. You have someone who probably never has had much of anything from the government over many administrations, may be relatively uninformed and therefore can’t see the differences between politicians. And may be right that most of them in the past really weren’t all that much different. LBJ gave us Medicare and most of the Vietnam issues. Nixon screwed us over Vietnam to get elected and then ended it. Very few politicians have been really bad or really good, they are after all human. (Until now. I’m not too sure about a few of the republican candidates)
Hildebrand
Just looking at that graph the first thing that comes to mind is the most basic – make it easier to register and to vote. That is not going to solve apathy, but it may help the percentages. Second thought – better Democratic candidates. Seems that Kentucky has shot itself in the foot the last two elections (Gov and Senate) with flawed candidates that do as much to depress turnout as anything else. This means getting the DNC to actually start focusing on, you know, elections. If we had better candidates espousing what government ‘can’ do, we may actually win the argument against those who are always complaining about what it ‘can’t’ do. Politics is retail – get out there are sell the damned product.
Mike J
@Matt McIrvin:
As Richard Linklater said, “Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy.”
It has the same practical outcome though.
debbie
I don’t buy this. I’ve been plenty disgusted a number of times over the years with the national, state, and/or local level of government, but not once have I ever skipped a vote.
BGinCHI
@Matt McIrvin: I’m guessing participation is up in OR since they instituted mail-only balloting.
This is not to be confused with Kansas, which would like to institute male-only balloting.
Tom Levenson
One part of the puzzle is to make it as easy as possible to vote. Automatic registration via the DMV or other methods. Election day registration. Early voting. Weekend voting. Mail voting.
In other words, all the things the Republicans (understandably, if despicably) have worked very hard to block.
Making voting the default easy option is only one element — it doesn’t affect those who are genuinely, in a principled commitment, refusing to participate. But people are busy, none more so than poor people, and every hurdle in between someone and a vote removes some of the population.
April
Is it actually illegal to give away, say, free dinners to anyone who shows an “I voted” sticker from the polling place? Seems there may be overlap on the voting chart above with people who could use a free meal and those who cannot find it in themselves to vote. Don’t know where the money would come from, but it the only idea I have that doesn’t involve getting the government involved by making voting easier or even mandatory.
Kryptik
This is something so terribly frustrating, since it feels like the other side of the aisle is infinitely more motivated to vote on the assumption that they’ve lost something they were never at risk to lose in the first place, while our voters can’t vote on the consequence of losing something very real and tangible.
That said…I sympathize far too much with the apathy and withdrawal from politics. Considering how often I run into the usual ‘both sides same thing’ shtick, or have people run from my views out of sheer spite on one single issue and never seeing anyone creep leftward instead, there’s just a feeling of Sisyphean inevitability about the right wing and never getting punished period. The feeling like nothing from me or anyone like me will ever topple the fucking juggernaut.
KG
@Ryan:
I wonder if they won’t try to roll back the definition of “white” if they get their way. Italians, the Irish… there’s plenty of groups that are comfortably white today that weren’t all that long ago.
debbie
@BGinCHI:
That is probably the most ineffective act of civil obedience possible. Kind of like one hand clapping.
BGinCHI
@Hildebrand: This is incredibly true in IL, where the Dem party has been in power so long it’s just become a corrupt engine of shitty candidates and…well…corruption. That’s how Rauner got elected and Blago as well.
I’d like to see some serious housecleaning at the state level.
Ruckus
@Mike J:
It has the same practical outcome though.
But are far different processes to change. Apathy can be by information, changing disgust is far more difficult.
BGinCHI
@April: I think Tammany Hall might have done this.
Matt McIrvin
It’s interesting that the percentage gap between registration and voting is close to being a constant across income groups, about 20-25 points, rather than a proportion or some more complicated relation. I wonder what social/psychological mechanism would cause that.
Anyway, getting more people registered obviously couldn’t hurt.
Some guy
Get out the vote. Literally. Its how we win. Register AND gotv
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@KG:
I think they’re more likely to start paring back the rights of non-landowners.
schrodinger's cat
I hold the media responsible too. Their both sides do it rhetoric aids the apathy. Let’s not forget Ezra Klein’s meltdown when the Obamacare website was launched. Young Broderite is not so blameless actually.
Matt McIrvin
@Ruckus: My impulse would be to give up on the disgusted people in the near term; try to go for people who are not voting for some other reason.
What the disgusted non-voters lack is any kind of hope that conventional politics will help. This is a learned response, and it may take a large amount of contrary experience to change it, if it ever changes.
lonesomerobot
The problem is, what if they decide to participate this time, and Trump is their candidate?
Ruckus
@debbie:
Your level of disgust and you holding the concept that change can be made to happen is different than theirs.
JustRuss
@Matt McIrvin:
Hard to blame them when all you see of politics in our media is right-wing talking heads or “both sides” moderates.
Patrick
@debbie:
Amen. I have been plenty disgusted with the Democratic candidate. I still go and vote for something eventhough it is not Democratic (or the Republican) candidate I eventually vote for.
The people in the countries in Western Europe all have (correct me if I’m wrong) automatic registration. They all have much higher voter turnout numbers than we do. Some of them also have the election on a weekend, which also makes it easier to vote.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodinger’s cat: Media Broderism is aimed at elites, though, and the people who consume it the most actually do vote, though they might go for Bloomberg types. This is something more visceral and wounded.
aimai
A lot of us have been arguing for this kind of outreach for years. Up until Obama (I’m pretty sure) and OFA there was really no permanent Democratic organization tasked with marketing Democratic politics to the masses in between elections. The very voter lists were owned independently by candidates rather than the party. Dean’s 50 state strategy was a beginning but I’m talking about paying attention year round, between elections, and also nationalizing Democratic issues and platforms. I’ve wanted the Dems to spend the **&&^% money to put up Democratic shop fronts with internet connectivity and permanent staff in low voting areas–places where the machine politics attitude that everyone gets something for political participation could be reintroduced. Democratic politics are urban politics and urban voters need support and help year round. If you can touch people’s lives early enough you can get a voter for life. But you have to offer them something tangible.
Potential Tag Line “That’s why we pay taxes or “make the government work for you.” –there should be paragovernment Democratic organizations that hook people up with government benefits, government hotlines, information about how to get a pothole fixed, ways to connect with/badger your local reps to get stuff done.
Jeffro
@BGinCHI:
Radio/TV ad:
“Boycotts only work when people let the company being boycotted know WHY they’re being boycotted, so that the company will change its practices.
Unfortunately politicians don’t work that way. When you boycott voting, NO politician hears your voice and NOTHING changes. You’re giving your vote over to some other voter – one you REALLY might not agree with.”
(so easy to do a million funny versions of this…Grandpa ‘boycotting’ something or other by sitting on his sofa not saying anything…some cranky dude handing over his ‘vote’ to a loony, obnoxious next-door neighbor…)
Iowa Old Lady
We’re supposed to have a run-off mayoral election tomorrow. So first, we just had an election last month and people seriously can’t be doing this once a month. Second, we’re under a winter storm watch, looking for major snow.
I always vote, usually early, but I may very well not be able to vote tomorrow. Every election like this one chips away at the feeling that a vote matters.
Patricia Kayden
@Bill Arnold: True. I don’t understand the logic of being so fed up that you don’t exercise your right to vote so things can be changed so you’re not fed up any longer.
The chart Klein published is interesting. Wonder if it is a reflection of the fact that poorer people cannot spare the time/resources to vote — especially in areas squeezed by voter ID laws.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: Agreed. The non-voters I know wouldn’t have the foggiest idea who Klein is or Broder was.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
My answer to debbie above is exactly this. We can change the apathy, the disgust of the level we are talking about is hard to change. Probably can only be changed by them seeing things get different, which most don’t seem to think can happen, which is why they are disgusted in the first place.
BGinCHI
@Jeffro: Absolutely. It drives me crazy. Especially because she is such a great, smart person.
April
@BGinCHI: Nice link to your notorious home town past, but if the dinners go to anyone who votes and not tied to a particular candidate, I’d like to think it could be discussed instead of just dismissed with light snark. The chart above shows the only groups that vote over 50% are the two wealthiest brackets. They are getting paid more than a dinners worth for their vote. If rich and poor get the same free pizza coupon, it isn’t a party bribe.
Calouste
@Patrick: I’ll correct you. The UK doesn’t have automatic voter registration, although they do send a form each fall to each residential address to ask for the names of residents so they can update the voter rolls. So people do get a reminder, which makes it somewhat better than the American system.
Of course for automatic voter registration to work, it really helps to have a national population register, something that the USA doesn’t really have.
Betty Cracker
@aimai: I like those ideas and agree, but to do more than elect presidents (i.e., to give the Democratic presidents we elect a non-feral congress to work with), Democrats have to figure out how to expand their appeal in rural areas too.
bill
@BGinCHI: Agree about Illinois. We need to end one-party rule. Vote Republican, or Green, anything but the Dems.
rp
I really like Heliopause’s suggestion. Why can’t we make that happen?
The ad should be fairly easy to create. It’s a simple message that doesn’t require any actors or fancy graphics. I bet there are a few BJ readers who are graphic designers and good with video editing software who could do it.
We could start a PAC and try to raise the money to create that ad and have it air on various stations, youtube, etc. If we promoted the PAC on a variety of liberal blogs I bet we could raise the money fairly quickly.
Matt McIrvin
Another phenomenon I’ve seen, that I’ve mentioned before, is people who do usually vote choosing not to vote in lower-profile state and local races, not because they’re alienated, but because they feel uncomfortable about their own level of information about the candidates or positions. They figure they’re making a principled decision to bow out in favor of people who know more than they do.
Of course, the problem is that the people who do vote may well not know more than they do, or know mostly what isn’t so.
This is particularly acute in things like city-council and school-board races that might be ostensibly non-partisan, with no party affiliations listed on the ballot, and campaign information limited to some bland-sounding mail flyers and a few interview responses in the local paper. It’s a ripe situation for someone with some money and a slate of stealth candidates to infiltrate and take over, and this happens sometimes.
But I think it’s pretty common even in elections for Congress and the state legislature.
I try to convince people that it’s OK to vote in a race even if they actually only know a little. Because you know there are people out there who know nothing and have no such inhibitions. There’s going to be a lot of random noise that cancels itself out, and the hope is that in the noise you’re actually adding some signal.
Brachiator
In the age of the Internets, Facebook and other sources might be where you want to go. And I suppose the TV programs and other media that are popular with the demographic you need to reach.
The Guardian had also looked at some of the poorest white areas of Kentucky. An additional problem, and one harder to address, is the persistent belief among many of these people that the Democratic Party is, by definition, and no matter what Democrats say, opposed to white people and the party of (again by definition) undeserving nonwhite people.
I suppose if HRC wins the presidency, these people will no longer have Obama to use as a racist scapegoat, but they may desperately look for another reason to vote against their own interests, or not vote at all.
BGinCHI
@April: I like aimai’s idea of government service better. It’s important to link voting to not only “civic responsibility” (abstract) but also “the very social and cultural fabric that makes this country what it is and how it works.” The trick is to find concrete ways to do this.
It just makes no sense that people who badly need government services don’t see this as intimately linked to voting.
Tammany Hall was NYC, not Chicago. Our corruption was just called City Hall.
bemused
When I hear the phrase, “This is why we can’t have nice things”, I’ve been wondering why it doesn’t work for me. I think it’s more accurate to say, “This is why we can’t have basic things”.
Amir Khalid
@rp:
I know this would be a project for the Americans in the Juicitariat; but after our recent experience, I would not really recommend this.
BGinCHI
@Amir Khalid: This is why Balloon Juice Mustard was a failure in the marketplace.
Citizen_X
The apathy/disgusted withdrawal is completely partisan. I’ll look for a link, but there was a study a few months ago that showed that 28% of self-described liberals don’t vote. The number for conservatives was in low single digits. It’s a self-inflicted handicap.
kc
Right wing: [systematically takes over state and local governments and dismantles economic safety net]
Left wing: “Woodrow Wilson was racist!”
MaryRC
@Bill Arnold: She may think that she’s irrelevant already. There’s something so passive about her statement about “Before my insurance changes”, as though this is just something that will happen and there’s nothing she can do about it so why bother to try? She seems to have convinced herself that her vote doesn’t count anyway. I don’t know the solution to this.
Patrick
@Calouste:
I know at least some of the Scandinavian countries has automatic registration, and they usually have an 80%-90% voter turnout.
Matt McIrvin
@Calouste: Massachusetts has a yearly town-census form like that, but it can only hurt you with regard to voter registration, not help you.
We have motor-voter registration at the RMV, but if you forget to respond to the snail-mail town census, you can be put on an “inactive voter” list. Then the next time you vote you’ll be asked to supply printed proof of your address (if you don’t have something like a driver’s license with your current address on it, a utility or credit-card bill will work, but those are increasingly going paperless). If you can’t provide proof of address, you have to vote on a provisional ballot, and, I think, provide proof later so your vote can theoretically be counted.
I recall hearing about Tea Party groups around Worcester sending “poll observers” to harass people about this whole process and generally provide friction.
For all its liberal reputation, Massachusetts has some fairly retrograde procedures when it comes to voting and voter registration. We don’t have early voting or no-excuse mail voting either. At least we don’t use touchscreen machines.
cokane
To be honest, just having voting day on Sunday would do so much… or make that Tuesday a holiday.
Other countries have political apathy, cynicism and alienation just like the USA. It’s just that voting is way way more convenient when it’s not in the middle of the damn week.
Also push for early voting / vote by mail initiatives in your states. I think it’s always important to remember that if 100% of eligible voters actually voted at least every 2 years, then Democrats would win in landslides.
J.D. Rhoades
@JustRuss:
I’m convinced that a lot of the “both sides are equally bad” rhetoric is being encouraged by the Rethuglican Right with their knee jerk reaction to any criticism: “Well, Clinton/Sanders/Michael Moore/Barney Frank/etc. etc. did [insert outrage here]”. They never try to defend, because they’re just as happy with the undecideds walking away going “everyone sucks, I’m staying home on election day.”
thefax
@schrodinger’s cat: This is one of those things where I want every left-leaning pundit who freaked out about a website having a poor launch being a sign of the Democratic party’s fundamental incompetence–I’m particularly looking at Klein, Yglesias, and Jon Stewart–to revisit some of the nonsense they trotted out then and admit they blew it out of proposition.
Brachiator
@Patricia Kayden:
Some people are fed up because they don’t see that any of the people who are running are worth voting for. Democrat or Republican, those elected end up dividing up the spoils and making themselves comfortable, rather than doing anything for their constituents.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator:
I think that is an intractable problem and people who are deeply convinced of that might be unreachable, ever. But the question is how widespread that belief is. My sense is that it might be less prevalent than we thought (“we” being the prevailing conventional wisdom on this blog as I understand it), and the in-depth reporting in the two NYT stories we’ve discussed seems to bear that out or at least give a glimmer of hope that that’s not the case.
It’s generally acknowledged that the GOP “brand” is stronger — or at least simpler and easier to understand. There are a lot of reasons for that, but it seems to be the case, and if Democrats can’t or won’t define a strong brand that is independent of the individuals running for office, it’s hard to see a way out of this morass.
If we don’t define our brand, our opponents will. Or actually, they already have and have packaged and sold it as you described. I think it would be possible to turn that negative perception around — we should be proud to be a diverse party, and we should be unashamedly on the side of the working people, not the plutocrats. But so much dilutes that message.
Patricia Kayden
@Brachiator: Yet President Obama fought for and is still defending the ACA which has done a lot for poor people’s access to healthcare, including the woman featured in the post.
CzarChasm
This relates to a question I’ve been using as a
failed motivator to start a nonprofitthought exercise for 12 years now: How do you get non-voters to vote?I’ve got at least a dozen ideas, of which 4 are viable. The best one, so far, is an idea for a nonprofit that challenges, encourages, and lightly empowers folks regularly active at the polls to get those in their social/support networks that don’t vote in the polling booth:
1.) People sign up to this non-profit (website, mailings, etc).
2.) Non-profit sends communications to said people that provides coaching on how to convince the non-voting acquaintances to vote, along with tips to support these non-votes (offer transportation, accompany to the polling station, etc).
3.) ???? (I want to offer some sort of incentive, based on self-report from those that sign up, but haven’t figured this part out yet).
4.) PROFIT (In the form of increased voter turnout)
The key item here is non-judgement on all participants’ political view. Frankly, I don’t care who the non-voters choose, I just want them in the booths…establish a reliable behavior of annual voting first, then work on persuading them to vote informed.
I do think this could be a good idea for a regional/state/national non-profit, I just have no bloody idea how to make it a reality.
Monala
@Matt McIrvin: That would be me. On countless occasions, I have voted, and skipped some of the lower level races because I have no idea who any of the candidates are. I’ve even tried learning about the candidates in some of these races, and their online web sites don’t give me enough information to know for certain what they stand for, and as you note, it may not list their party affiliation, so I can’t even vote straight-Dem.
When you write, “I try to convince people that it’s OK to vote in a race even if they actually only know a little.” – what does that mean? Because if I know little about the candidates in lower level races, and I vote for someone (based on what? that I like how their name sounds?), what if I’m voting for the most heinous choice that way? Why would that be better than skipping voting for that race at all?
It seems like it would be better to make sure that those actively involved in politics do a better job of educating about the choices. I have gone to my local Democratic party’s web site to see their endorsements, and they endorse only a handful of candidates in a handful of races, providing me with no information about the races where they don’t have an endorsement. How about the local party include information about even those they don’t endorse, so at least I can cast a vote against someone who might be an especially terrible choice?
ruemara
@rp: I’d film in a heartbeat, if I had funding. I couldn’t get anyone interested the last time I tried to address the why you should vote question.
That being said, you Los Angeles juicers, I have an interview in San Bernardino. I’m not sure how to get there. Is the best route to hit union station and then the SB line? Or just fly to riverside?
cmorenc
@Matt McIrvin:
Even as a high-information voter in state and national-level elections, I run into this dilemma in some of the more local races that are nominally nonpartisan (i.e. candidates don’t bear partisan labels on the ballot) but many of the candidates are nevertheless strongly affiliated ideologically or with strong partisan ties. Every few elections, I inadvertently blunder into voting for some flaming jerk (but at least now he’s MY flaming jerk :=) – though this sort of error happens when I forget to take a voter guide from a normally like-minded independent local weekly newspaper in with me.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
But so much dilutes that message.
Including some of the politicians in the party itself who while expressing Democratic ideals, are just in it for themselves.
Bill Arnold
@Brachiator:
Yes, I hear people saying this occasionally, usually in-person. People who say this are sometimes sadly right, and sometimes very wrong. They have chosen to disengage from politics even though this disengagement is risky.
A not-over-the-top example is the electoral battles being waged over school system funding and control in communities with a large influx of Hasidic population. The Hasidic populations vote in their interest, at near 100% rates and vote to underfund public schools. (Simplified; the detailed stories are easily found.)
Anonymous At Work
DSW, head of the DNC, is very much of the “I don’t want to admit to being a Democrat” crowd, so I doubt she’d allow such brazen displays of Democrat-ness to go forward.
rikyrah
I’d feel bad if she said .
” I don’t pay attention and I didn’t know.’
But, the
” I know what he said, but didn’t vote’
is right up there with the
” I know what he said, but I don’t believe he’ll actually do it, so I voted for him anyway.”
How are we supposed to deal with either one except for shake the head in disgust.
Matt McIrvin
@Monala:
You don’t know, but by doing even a microscopic amount of research (say, determining that the candidate’s campaign slogan is not “if elected, I will eat ten babies on live television”) you’re adding a nonzero amount of information, and that should statistically bias your vote toward a lower probability of voting for the most heinous candidate.
Ruckus
@ruemara:
Just did a train trip to Richmond and back for the holiday. Look up Amtrak. The train doesn’t go all the way to SB, you will be on a bus from/to Bakersfield but they are OK and the price isn’t bad.
ETA Also, from a passenger that I talked to most of the way north, take the bus from Stockton to Davis rather than Oakland, saves about 2 hrs on the trip.
ruemara
@rikyrah: it’s why I’m not too tolerant of these folks. She’s not ignorant, she’s damned lazy. And now she’s scared? Please.
ruemara
@Ruckus: $144. Around the first of the month too. Not good timing and as is typical of GOs, it’s here’s your sole date and time. I need to either be there the night before and leave or fly in, fly out.
Matt McIrvin
@bemused:
I think it’s supposed to evoke an exasperated parent complaining about the children getting ketchup and chocolate sauce all over the furniture. The understatement of the stakes might be excessive.
Ruckus
@ruemara:
The train/bus takes an entire day each way but is about 1/3 the cost of flying. Of course if you have to stay over night 2 nights then the money is probably about the same so it becomes time. I took the train as I have time and my time isn’t worth near as much as it used to be so I’ll make the trade for the dollars.
Iowa Old Lady
Both sides do it is the politician/reporter equivalent of “but Timmy up the street did it too!” Any parent knows the answer to that one: “I’m not talking about Timmy. I’m talking about you.”
Monala
@Matt McIrvin: Except I do a lot more than a “microscopic” bit of research, and still often don’t feel I know what I need to to make a decision. If Candidate A and Candidate B are both saying similar things they’d do in office, how am I to distinguish them? Or if Candidate A is running un-opposed.
Ruckus
@Monala:
I may be lucky by living in a pretty blue part of CA but even then I have to look for info to make a reasonable choice. I find that it helps to look early and find out who is endorsing a candidate. This is sometimes a great clue to the person. On the other hand my congressperson currently is pretty far left but was so hesitant on some issue not long ago that I sent an email that basically said get off your ass and vote the way 90% of your constituents want. So even in a reliable area for candidates that you would probably like, you don’t always know. I’ve always looked and made an educated guess for local pols, a guesstimate if you will. I think that often that’s as good as it gets for locals.
SFAW
@BGinCHI:
Rather than have your frustration inner-directed (so to speak), you might consider offering your (allegedly) smart friend either a few doses of strychnine (or similar), or an unused razor blade, or perhaps a noose with 10-20 feet of rope, and say: “Listen, since you’re so intent on pursuing self-destruction by your own inaction, how about we cut out the middle man, and you just off yourself right now? It’ll save my hairline and my stress level. And you can still be a self-absorbed asshole, only your assholery won’t help the Republicans any longer.”
I see it as win-win – either she goes through with it, and you save your energy so you can work on things with a better rate of return, or she smartens up and starts voting Dem.
WereBear
I sometimes wonder if lack of voting participation comes from people totally misunderstanding what it is for.
I’ve been voting for women’s equality since the 80’s, and we don’t have it yet. But that’s not discouraging me… I know it takes time.
I swear, sometimes I think people are all brand-identification about it: “Oh, you don’t have the purple hoodie with the sunflower. So I’m not buying.”
Ruckus
@SFAW:
I get the concept but I think it’s a very, very risky strategy. Some people are borderline self destructive/suicidal, they can talk themselves out of it so even their friends may not know but if someone suggests it as a solution…….
LWA
I’ll weigh in with a reference to Stephen Fraser’s book The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power“, via the blog Sublunary Sublime.
The argument is that there isn’t any compelling narrative about labor that can connect the working poor with each other. The blog uses religion as a common bond, but I would assert that even a secular idea can work, just so long as it can craft a sweeping vision of what work is, why it matters, why society should value the common good of work rather than the private good.
If, as the theory goes, the current vision of work is merely an individual scramble for self-actualization, then labor unions and progressive policies don’t have much to recommend them. The worker in a WalMart store sees herself as an isolated individual, and her pursuit disconnected from the larger society. So her needs can be met with the most trivial ransom, at the expense of a more holistic goal.
Iowa Old Lady
@WereBear: Who was it that said if you want to send a message, call Western Union. That’s not what voting is for.
SFAW
@BGinCHI:
Or, you could have her read this, and stop acting like a spoiled brat.
Fucking unrepentant Naderites and their ilk, they drive me fucking crazy.
Matt McIrvin
@Monala: I think the key is to think probabilistically. The situation I encounter in these confusing local races is typically that there are, say, ten candidates, A through J, running for open seats on the city council and I can vote for up to three of them. I know that candidates B and H sound like horrible people, but otherwise I don’t know much about the other candidates, except that they say bland things about their character and devotion to our town in mail flyers. It’s probably better for me to randomly vote for some candidates other than B and H just to lessen the chance that they’ll get on the city council. Sure, I might be voting for somebody else who’s bad, but in the case of B and H I know they’re bad.
There may be cases where you have no useful information at all, in which case abstaining might be as good as making a completely random vote. But if I’m an activist in favor of an engaged citizenry it’s probably good for me to try to get you voting in that election anyway, in the hopes that you’ll be paying attention to it and maybe learn something significant about the candidates next time.
Ruckus
@WereBear:
We are an instant gratification society aren’t we? It’s a shame that the terrible twos can last decades. I think it’s actual adulthood which really teaches us that we can’t have everything and we can’t always get it when we want it.
SFAW
@Ruckus:
She didn’t sound borderline, except maybe borderline asshole.
Be that as it may: I wasn’t being serious, just “firing for effect.” Well, not about calling her a self-absorbed asshole – I was serious about that. There are only a few people I’d offer the suggestion (i.e., suicide) to in a serious manner – David Daleiden being one of those.
srv
It’s a good thing you can’t register when you get an Obamaphone.
I thought we had containment:
@BGinCHI: Voting. It just encourages them.
bemused
@Matt McIrvin:
Yes. When Republicans hear “this is why we can’t have nice things”, they think “nice things” means too nice, having too good, too easy. Saying “this is why we can’t even have the most basic things” (food, shelter, clothing, diapers…) describes the realities most people getting help are in. Not that this would sway too many resentful Republicans but maybe a few?
WereBear
Attributed to Louis B. Mayer, I believe :)
My biggest retort to non-voting whiners is: It’s not about you.
bemused
@WereBear:
I like that retort.
mai naem mobile
I love this crap about ‘apathy’ ,’selling’,’marketing’ and ‘it’s too hard.’ Really??? WTF. They’re too fucking lazy. I lurvvv the way these same people find the time to go look up Black Friday deals and then wait in line at Walmart for Black Friday and not miss the Kardashian whatever episode but they can’t show their asses up to vote. I’ll always remember how when Dubbya had stupid $100 or whatever rax rebate all these people who don’t know anything about current affairs all knew about the debate and found the time to file taxes to get this rebate. Don’t freaking tell me that for the average person it takes longer to vote
than file taxes. And please don’t bring up the Florida lines etc. We have way more people on our side. None of that crap would matter if we had a massive turnout of our side.
SoupCatcher
Under the category of “If I had the resources,” I would run a nationwide ad campaign attacking Reagan’s nine most terrifying words meme. My male peers grew up while Reagan was President, and it’s hard to overstate how internalized that belief is among a lot of them. A typical response, dripping with sarcasm, “Well who would you rather have solve the problem? The government?” Easy to do if you’re not thinking about all the people you know who work for the government and all the necessary jobs that government workers take care of.
So something like short commercials of individual government workers, a single person at a time, saying with utter sincerity the words Reagan vilified, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Bundle them in short videos that you can blast to your distribution list. As many different government jobs as possible, 30 seconds at a time. Education. Public Safety. Emergency Response. And on and on.
eta. And then the follow up is for government workers to proudly identify themselves and to stand up for civil service.
The Golux
@mai naem mobile: One thing that I figured was a no-brainer after Obama was elected would be to transform his superb campaign team into an organization to promote Democratic principles and support Democrats nationwide. They did such a flawless job in the presidential campaigns, and I would have liked to see their methods applied more broadly.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
In 2012, Kentucky voted 61% to 38% for Romney. Detailed exit polls are not available, but let’s look at North Carolina, where Romney won 51 percent of the vote. Even here with a closer overall contest, 68 percent of white men and 67 percent of white women voted for Romney.
This is a problem for Democrats, and may be a problem for Hillary Clinton, since there is often a significant gender gap with men skewing more towards Republicans when Republican voters show a strong conservative leaning.
So anything the Democrats can do to “rebrand themselves” may be useful. I agree that the Republican message can seem simpler. “We promise to cut taxes and produce more jobs” is more to the point than “we’re going to invest in infrastructure and re-regulate banks.”
But rather than “our party loves you,” or in addition to that, I would bring it down to individuals. I would have a clip of every president from FDR up to Sanders and Clinton giving a brief strong speech that emphasized that the Democratic Party was for the working person.
bemused
Who the heck are these black pastors endorsing Trump I’m seeing on tv? Better question is why.
glaukopis
The last few elections I’ve been glad I decided to do vote by mail, because I research every race and every person and it takes a while. I check the voter pamphlet, the Democratic Party recommendations and use google. You can usually find something – sometimes in those code phrases we recognize, but sometimes it’s pretty overt (‘Proud Republican’ in a supposedly non-partisan race, for example). Often it’s voting for the one who seems least bad, but I assume every bit helps.
WereBear
@SoupCatcher: There’s a great meme all over Facebook lately: a picture of a snowplow with the caption: Socialist snowplow just went by my house again. Will this tyranny never end?
GoBlue72
If you are reading this blog, you are not a normal voter & your views/perspective/habits on voting are atypical. You are like Pauline Kael not understanding how Nicon got elected when everyone she knew voted for the other guy.
You’re a reflex voter. You vote every two years like clockwork. When you get a GOTV call, you’re the name on the list that is easiest to check off.
You’re a partisan. You already know which party you are voting for. And it’s probably a straight ticket.
And more specifically, you are not only a partisan, but a political junkie. You vote in primaries and you know who the candidates are well in advance. Chances are you’ve door knocked, phone banked or donated to a campaign at some point in your life.
You follow politics regularly and get more interested in politics the MORE partisan your side gets. You treat politics like most people treat sports. You follow a “team”, you know who’s up, who’s down, who the veterans are and who the rising stars are. You also know who the stars are on the team you root against and who their biggest heels are. And so forth.
What gets you to the polls could very well be what drives everyone else away.
Brachiator
@ruemara:
Metrolink trains run to San Bernardino. But if there are delays or the train does not go near your final destination, you are wasting time and could be late. Best travel time for the train is about 1 1/2 hours.
From Riverside Muni airport to San Bernardino is about 30 minutes via the 91 and 215 freeways.
Doug R
@Brachiator: This is where Hillary’s plan for coal communities is brilliant.
mkro
You have to realize that many of these same people who benefit from liberal policies yet vote Republican against their own best interests are also watching Fox News around the clock and in their doctors offices, etc.
You cannot blame Dems and grassroots organizations when their message gets overwhelmed by Rupert Murdoch’s billions in right-wing propaganda that appears on Fox News every single day.
It’s just not possible to beat that noise machine.
Redshift
@cmorenc:
Yup, that’s why I’m out at my polling place every election handing out sample ballots. It’s one of the things our local Democratic Party organizes really well. (In off-off-year elections like this year, there can be 72 different variations of the ballot in different parts of the county.)
A few years ago one of my local Democrats (solid Democrat, but not an activist) accidentally voted for the anti-gay-marriage state constitution amendment because he assumed he knew how to vote on everything and didn’t take a sample ballot. Constitutional amendments on the ballot are usually things the Democrats are for, he figured. (Actually, that’s bond issues. Amendments are pretty rare here, and can go either way.)
Bill Arnold
@mkro:
That part at least can often be changed. Even if the doctor is a wingut (or doctors) you can often ask permission of people in the room to change to animal planet or hgtv or history channel or something more benign (than “News”), or turn the sound (way) down.
The Golux
My business partner is something of a nihilist. His procedure for voting is to arrive at the polls armed with a list of incumbents, and vote against every one. He wouldn’t care if the person he was voting for was Jeffrey Dahmer; he views all politicians as corrupt and only interested in getting reelected.
I’m not sure what his method is when there’s no incumbent. Maybe he flips a coin.
Frankly, I don’t know why he bothers.
Origuy
@bemused: They aren’t endorsing Trump, he was just claiming they were. They were having a meeting with him. It didn’t go well.
Bill Arnold
@The Golux:
As opposed to the politicians who are not incumbents, who are not interested in getting elected, and somehow through no mistake of their own got onto the ballot?
Redshift
@Matt McIrvin:
The research I’ve read shows this is a big factor in our low turnout — we have a complicated multi-level government, and lots of people don’t feel like they’re well enough informed to participate. The lower your income, the less leisure time you have to devote to becoming informed, or finding out where to get information (in addition to the obvious direct obstacles to getting to the polls on a work day.) This is part of why participation in presidential elections is much higher — election news is wall-to-wall for months, and you can’t miss it, even if you’re working three jobs.
This is why Oregon has the highest turnout in the country — you get a ballot in the mail, so you don’t have to keep track of when you’re supposed to go, or fit it into the work day. You see what’s on the ballot and then have time to look for information to make a decision, and then you vote.
So yeah, in any state or locality where Democrats are in control, they should be working to enact all of these things to make it easier to vote, easier to make an informed decision.
The tough nut to crack is how to get enough people out to vote before we have those changes. I’m all for trying anything that might work, though I’d like to see any plans incorporate an effort to measure their effects, so we know what works and what doesn’t. And I suspect that one-on-one local GOTV is still going to beat anything else, anywhere that the volunteer manpower can be organized to do it.
Shana
@The Golux: I’m with you about that. As a member of my local democratic committee I overheard a conversation a while ago on this very subject. As I recall the person who was supposed to know about it said that there were some conversations about turning over data but I don’t know what came of it. Sigh.
Redshift
Here’s an example of the kind of measurement I’m talking about, in the county where I grew up:
Cheryl Rofer
aimai @ 34 makes some good points. I’ll go a little further. I would like to see candidates talk about how we can make things better in specific and realistic ways. And yes, that would include paying the dues we owe to live in a civilized society.
Mike J
@Redshift:
The way you get people to vote for you in a local race is for them to know you. Black churches have been a major vector for introducing Democratic candidates to voters for a long time.
bemused
@Origuy:
It was Pastor Burns who I saw on msnbc. I wasn’t listening to the Pastor’s every word but that wasn’t the impression I got. Maybe he was being PC polite but he sounded a lot more supportive than anything else.
Redshift
@bemused: Supposedly, there are some who actually support Trump. The story as I read it (and who knows how much is spin) is that there was a group of 40 who arranged to meet with him, some of whom were actually prepared to endorse Trump, and it expanded to a group of 100. Trump’s campaign breathlessly announced a media event where he would be endorsed by 100 black pastors. Then a lot of the additional 60 said they had no intention of endorsing, they just wanted to meet with him, and he canceled the public event.
(The part I’m doubtful about is that the original group of 40 were actually all planning to endorse.)
Redshift
@Mike J:
That is certainly something to work with. Good candidates do go to all sorts of events to meet voters, but there are certainly more (and new kinds of events) that the existing campaign practices may not reach. One distinction with churches is that there’s a trusted authority figure telling people this is someone they should know, not just a public event where candidates happen to be (and where, frankly, a lot of people who aren’t already politically active will avoid them because they can’t think of anything to say.) Finding more events/organizations where that kind of connection can be arranged is extremely worthwhile, but not easy.
Matt McIrvin
@Redshift: And there are people for whom it’s probably a combination of circumstances.
Say it’s an off-year election mostly for city offices; it doesn’t have a lot of media coverage or salience for them to begin with, and they don’t feel like they know much about the candidates, so it’s at best something for them to get around to figuring out one of these days. The yard signs and flyers are no help, providing little beyond name recognition, and the only newspaper left in town is a silly wingnut paper.
Then, on the actual day, they’ve got a long commute and long hours at work, where nobody is even talking about the election because they all live in different towns, and probably aren’t paying attention either… and, dammit, when they finally get home they realize the polls are closed and they forgot to vote.
sherparick
1. It is often forgotten by liberals of the Tom Frank variety that “white privilege” is usually a pretty tangible benefit and that the the white “working class” (or rather the white working class that has no more than 2 years of college or less (HS, GRE, and non-HS graduates) has seen most of the decline of that privilege over the last 50 years that has taken place. No longer are they guaranteed jobs ahead of any person of color, no longer are all the supervisory and foremen positions “white males.” This decline of privilege is experienced as “discrimination” and resented.
2. The Republican Party and Conservatives have been waging total war on any organization that would unify Blacks, Hispanics,and whites along class lines such as unions and against organizations, such as ACORN, that made it their mission to get poor and working poor people to the polls.
3. There are lots of Conservative and Neo-liberal Democrats (think Rahm Emanuel) who find progressive organizations and the voters the represent nuisances to their corporate agenda and dream world. Unfortunately, Obama pretty much sided with these folks who also advance a theory of “meeting Republicans half-way” as a way to get big things done in D.C. Much of the first six years of Obama’s domestic administration operated on that premise and all it got him was two landslide defeats in mid-term elections and constant blasts from the Village media that Obama had failed to show “leadership” and “compromise” with Republicans, which usually means failing to destroy Social Security and Medicare and to start a 3rd land war for the US. in the Middle East. This all depressed the Democratic turn-out in the mid-terms.
Mike in DC
1. Automatic, universal voter registration, including ex felons.
2. Every 1st Tuesday in November is a federal holiday, and any employer who fails to provide the opportunity to vote will face a steep fine per instance.
3. 50 state strategy redux, part 1: decentralized party spending, revitalizing state party apparatus, including red states
4. More better Democrats : recruit candidates for every position, and work to put more progressive candidates in the mix.
5. Get out the vote: this includes party branding. Make sure people understand what’s at stake, every time.
BillinGlendaleCA
@ruemara: I’d fly into either San Bernardino(they have an international airport) or Ontario(about as close as Riverside Muni).
sparrow
@Mike J: “If voting could change your life, it would be illegal” (so say the useless anarchists in Greece). They have a point, but I’m more of a “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others” kind of girl.
LAC
@Brachiator: thank you for this. How do you reach grievance laden assholes who think that only a white male is an appropriate choice to lead and that everything done by the president is putting the white race back? These are people directly affected by these economic policies.
Keith G
The Koch’s political arm is holding events for Hispanics around the land.
I can’t imagine that they think this outreach will help them in 2016. I do imagine that they value the contacts and the experience that they are collecting. This is planning for events that are over the horizon.
Where are the visionaries on the liberal side?
Crickets…….
J R in WV
@bill:
Doesn’t Illinois have primaries? Can’t reform Dems run against the machine pols? Shouldn’t there be a democratic anti-machine party?
Sorry, I live where the Dem machine has just been rolled by the Repugnant machine, so I can’t muster much sympathy for you now.
Keith G
@LAC:
You buy them a meal and you listen…and listen some more. Get to know them and get them to know you. Supporters are best won up close, not from 2000 mi away or 36,000 ft up.
J R in WV
@Doug R:
I live right smack in the middle of “coal country” and I’ve never heard of Hillary’s plan for coal towns.
So they aren’t doing a very good job of getting that plan out to the people in coal country, where it night matter.
Where do you live? Where did you hear about Hillary’s plan for coal country? And what is her plan?
LAC
@Keith G: give me a break. I got to listen to some fucking paranoid white guy going on about something he heard on fox and how this didn’t happen back in the day because blacks were not so uppity and women didn’t try to be men and blah blah blah? Are you kidding me? The joke of this is that this racially based bullshit can be countered by us being the magical negro sent to help de white man figure it out.
If you think your gender and race is supposed to be on top and anything else is unamurrican, what magical stuff in the coffee is going to change that?
mclaren
@KG:
There’s a very easy fix. If these people in poor red states keep voting themselves out of health care and jobs, they’ll die, leaving the rest of us to vote for these things.
Chris
@BGinCHI:
This is incredibly true in IL, where the Dem party has been in power so long it’s just become a corrupt engine of shitty candidates and…well…corruption.
Yep. This is the real value of an opposition party to me. It used to be that there were a lot of state and local Republicans, especially in the North, that you could vote for as a check on corruption and complacency in the Democratic machines, and still trust that they weren’t going to use the opportunity to tear up the safety net, break the unions, and destroy the budget with zillions in giveaways tax breaks to the uber-rich.
Now, enforced purity and uniformity in the party has made that impossible – you’re either a right wing lunatic who’s completely or 90% on board with the teabagger agenda, or you’re not in Republican politics. So no matter how crooked local or state Democrats may get, you’re stuck voting for them when the general rolls around, because what else are you going to do? Tammany Hall level corruption on its worst day is still better than the Confederacy these lunatics are pining for.
mclaren
@J R in WV:
Hillary’s plan for coal country is to let the coal companies continue mountaintop removal until the drinking water gets so polluted everyone has to move out or die.
Hillary has a plan for people masters degrees and $100,000 jobs who live in tony suburbs. The rest of the people, Hillary doesn’t give a shit about.
That’s the diffference between Hillary and the Republicans — the Repubs have a plan for people who fly their helicopters to work and make 5 million a year. Hills is trying to help the little people, those families who only make $160,000 a year and have terrible trouble paying for those European vacations to St. Moritz.
Chris
@The Golux:
he views all politicians as corrupt and only interested in getting reelected.
Yes, and that (the reelected part)’s a good thing. Because you’re the one who gets to decide whether he gets reelected, you’re the one he has to keep happy, and that means you have the leverage to make him do the things you approve of.
Fuck! I will never understand why politicians alone are expected to have the moral purity of Steve fucking Rogers. Do they think the person who sells them their food does it out of a deep spiritual commitment to the action of filling plastic bags with groceries and then handing them to you, or does he just want your money? How about the ones who sell us our clothes, our furniture, the gas in our cars? How about us when we go to our job – do we expect it to be free? The entire fucking universe runs on this kind of “you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours” morality. When I tell the client “all right, you can have that hat, but only if you give me ten dollars,” nobody gives me any shit for it. But when a politician tells people “all right, you can have this policy you all want so much, but only if you vote for me next November,” that’s sleazy and terrible and wrong?
Barry
@BGinCHI: “Mrs. BG were just talking about this and she pointed out that a good friend of ours, who happens to be a very smart professional, now in her late 60s, veteran of the feminist/lesbian politics wars, doesn’t vote because she says it’s her way of doing “civil disobedience.”
I find this so maddening I want to pull my hair out but I’m getting too old to take that kind of risk.”
Charitably speaking, she may just be burned out and exhausted.
Non-charitably speaking, she’s an idiot.
Lurking Canadian
@Matt McIrvin: It seems like this is the ideal opportunity for somebody (or a group of somebodies) DLC, NARAL, NEA to start WhoYiuShouldVoteFor.com.
Tag line: We research the candidates so you don’t have to.
Betty Cracker
@LAC: Unfortunately, the people you’re talking about seem to already vote. I agree it’s probably pointless to try to peel those assholes off. I’m wondering how to get people who benefit from programs like ACA and don’t vote to the polls. The data clearly shows that the poorest are least likely to vote. If we can figure out how to change that, maybe we can get a non-psychotic congress someday, plus wrest some of the statehouses and governorships away from the nihilistic fucksticks who currently control them.
Heliopause
@rp: @Brachiator:
I was away from the internet a good deal of the day, but if I’d known I would be briefly front-paged I would have hustled back to make some comments.
I’m not a PR guy so I’m not going to pretend to know the precise contours of the campaign, but the crucial point is this; you’ve got to get people associating the party with a program and policies. 120 million-ish of your co-citizens don’t give a shit about Obama or Hillary or Bernie as people because they’ve never met them, they’re just images on a TV screen who speak mostly in platitudes.
We tend to deprecate non-voters as idiots who don’t know what’s good for them, but in some ways they’re smarter than the politically engaged people. They know when they’re being sold a bill of goods while the politically savvy sometimes can’t see it at all. So the challenge is to associate a party that transcends mere personalities with positions that transcend a single election cycle. It would be a long, painful slog, you’d have to stick with it, and you won’t see any results for years, and for that reason I doubt it can happen in this country, but maybe I’m wrong.
J R in WV
@mclaren:
Well, the economics of coal and gas are such that they can’t afford to keep blasting mountain-tops off to get to the tiny seams of coal left at this point. If coal was going for $120/ton that would be different, but with oil at $45 and gas just as cheap… coal is pretty much out of business here in WV.
The bankruptcy judges are letting the coal companies divest of their pension benefit obligations, as well as health care for retirees, so I think the coal bidness is over in the Appalachian mountains. Nearly so anyway.
Nothing Hillary OR the Republicans can do to remedy that, either. Economic shifts are what they are, and coal is over here. I’m hoping my state pension doesn’t go away – there’s no severance tax on frac gas, not like there was on coal. The state budget is broken, I hope not permanently.
But the R’s are in charge of the legislature right now, and they aren’t in favor of a new tax on gas production, are they? No, they are not.
Keith G
@LAC:
Not in the coffee, in the mind. Build relationships. If you are allergic to that, fine. Get people there who do not have those allergies – people who believe in nuts and bolts, on the ground, politicking.
You are not going to change all minds, but if you stay locked away behind castle walls of priggish self-righteousness, you will change no minds.
And as I pointed out above, the Kochs are willing to go into “enemy territory” in opposition to conventional wisdom, if for no other reason than to lay foundations for more fruitful work during better times.
Yes we can feel all warm and fuzzy that in 2016 the top of the GOP ticket (ie the candidates for nomination) is populated by grifters and losers. Meanwhile further down 31 states are run by Republican governors, seven of the 10 fastest growing states.
There are 20 states which have some form of split control of government. The GOP controls both the executive and legislature in 23 states and Democrats control 7 states.
7
We can be self-impressed smart asses all day long, but since we live in a federal republic in which our states have enormous power and significant influence over federal governance, We. Need. To. Get. Better.
LAC
@Keith G: if you think that the Koch brothers dabble into Hispanics 101 is some great leap, I got a bridge in Brooklyn you can buy and then take a leap off. And given your track record here, I doubt you have the temperament to win hearts and minds across the aisle either. But any time you want to walk your talk , let us know. Me? I am fucking tired of working my ass off twice as hard so that some dumb white person doesn’t lump me in as a welfare cheat, baby mama illiterate. That is the reality of my life 24 -7, living as a black woman in this country. When you are done shining up your millennial male credentials, please let us know what you plan to do besides nod your head and validate some looney wing-nut hurt fee fees. Because we got an educated man with a wife and two kids as president and yet post racial America is still a myth.
Bobbo
What about ads on the theme of “Your Vote Matters” using examples like the Bouchard story as a cautionary tale?
LAC
@Betty Cracker: Betty, that is where we need to focus. But it requires courage to not let the right wingnut force turn democrats into apologetic miletoasts for standing up for what is good in this party.
mclaren
@lonesomerobot:
This is where you have to have some faith in your fellow citizens.
Ultimately, I believe that my fellow citizens are decent and basically honest and sensible people. If you really truly don’t believe that, why the fuck are you still living in America? Emigrate. Go somewhere that has a better population.
Yes, on the whole Americans are selfish, greedy, shortsighted, sadistic, infantile, a silly people, a frivolous people, a cowardly people, a trivial people, a small-minded people, a superficial people, a feckless people, an easily-distracted people, a callow people. But in the long run, despite themselves, Americans usually end up doing the right thing. Typically only when all else fails. But still.
mclaren
@Heliopause:
Yes, exactly. But the way to do that is not the typically liberal recitation of abstractions you suggest. “I’m a democrat and I stand for [X], [Y] and [Z].” That’s just words. That doesn’t grab anyone. That doesn’t get anyone motivated to go out and vote.
What you really need is for the Democrats nationally to put on a series of TV and radio ads highlighting individual people who have been helped by progressive policies. Here’s some examples:
“My name is Jane Doe, and I got cancer. The Affordable Care Act helped pay my medical bills and now my cancer is in remission and I’m back at work, paying taxes, and helping to build a stronger America. If the Republican had their way, I’d be dead and the federal budget would be smaller by the amount of my annual tax payment, and everyone would be worse off. That’s why I’m asking you to vote democratic this tuesday.”
Or:
“My name is John Doe. I’m a student, and I just graduated because I was able to get federal grants that the democrats wrote into law. Now I’ve got a good job and I’m paying back my student loans and working at a job that makes America a better place. That’s why I’m asking you to vote democratic this Tuesday.”
Or:
“I’m a senior and the company that paid my pension just renegged and cut me off. Without social security passed by democrats and medicare passed by democrats, I’d be living on the streets and starving to death. That’s why I’m asking you to vote democratic this tuesday.”
Or;
“I’m a Latino and I just started a business. Now I’m employing six fellow Americans and building a business that helps make America stronger. The Republicans wanted to deport my family before we became citizens, and if they’d succeeded, I wouldn’t be paying taxes and employing other Americans today. That’s why I’m asking you to vote democratic this Tuesday.”
Make it personal. That’s what works.
mclaren
@Betty Cracker:
Scare the living shit out of them.
The Repubs do this with death panels and Manchurian-candidate Kenyan maoist moslem presidents and other imaginary bullshit, so we Democrats can do it with real boogey men — like Scott Walker.
Put on a series of targeted ads in each state. Introduce workers from, say, Wisconsin: “I had a good job in Wisconsin until the Republicans took over the state legislature. Then I got fired and the Republican governor slashes unemployment insurance. Now I live in a homeless shelter and I’ve lost everything — my car, my home, my wife, my family. Don’t let the Republicans do this to you. Vote democratic in your state this Tuesday.”
Or:
“I’m sick with a chronic illness and in Wisconsin, the Republicans just gutted our medicaid benefits. I can’t afford the medicine I need and now I’m going to die. Don’t let it happen to you. Vote democratic this Tuesday.”
Or:
“I was brutally raped and when the doctors told me the baby was deformed and would be born brain-dead I begged for an abortion, but the Republicans wouldn’t let me. Now I’m going to kill myself because there’s no other option. Don’t let this happen to you. Vote democratic on Tuesday.”
Oh-so-delicate effete liberals will shriek “Oooohhh, ooohhh, it’s fearmongering!” You’re goddamn right it’s fearmongering. That’s how you win. The Republican use fearmongering about imgainary horseshit like Obama’s concentration camps in Wal-Mart basements. Democrats need to use fearmongering about real deadly dangers, like Republicans who are trying to shut down medicare and end social security and eliminate a woman’s right to control her own body.
Keith G
@LAC: Well then, you may not be the bet person for such an out reach effort, but there are others.
We need to shed this all or nothing (silver bullet) mythology. There is more than one road to the mountaintop, but some of us are busy complaining that one road is too bumpy and ugly.
I agree with Mclaren:
I have lived in the center of a major city and on a farm surrounded by fields. I have found truth in the above.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: They are what we call: stupid.
Paul in KY
@Jeffro: Like it! Good idea.
Paul in KY
@bill: Fuck you.
Paul in KY
@The Golux: You & me both!
Paul in KY
@The Golux: That’s pretty stupid. The pure snowflake non-incumbents he votes for are by his own admission the same, so how does he know that he’s not fucking things up more by voting for the non-incumbent?
Paul in KY
@Mike in DC: That shit ain’t happening, barring a 70/30 Democratic majority in Senate & big one in House too.
We need to get out vote with the current crappy system in place.
Paul in KY
@mclaren: Unfortunately, they tend to breed before dying & pass on their stupidity to their offspring.
Paul in KY
@mclaren: Good ideas! Need hard hitting commercials.
LAC
@Keith G: BWHAHAHAHA!! You? The voice of reason here? Please…
Rather than quoting #dailymeds mclaren, I quote Chris Rock : “”if you’re black, you got to look at America a little different. You got to look at America like the uncle who paid for you to go to college, but who molested you.” That said, not going anywhere. Good luck on your outreach – you did gangbusters here.