4Chan, Reddit and large rallies are good at building group solidarity and raising money as well as a mob. So far they are not a substitute for a boring, grind it out ground game.
North Carolina has some interesting data on early voting:
Registered Democrats continue to lead in the accepted ballots numbers, and are over-performing their 2012 same-day comparison numbers, at 129 percent of where they were in accepted ballots on the same day from four years ago. Registered unaffiliated voters are 128 percent of their same-day accepted ballots, and registered Republicans are 66 percent of where they were four years ago on the same day. Overall, the total returned and accepted mail-in ballots are at 96 percent of where they were on the same day in 2012.
Registered Democrats are running about 30% higher than they did in 2012. Registered Republicans are running about 30% lower. If we were seeing equivalent ground games, the Republicans are missing one vote for every vote that has been returned.
Time to keep on grinding away as a superior GOTV organization is worth a point or two in. And if you are in a non-swingable state, work down ballot as this data suggests that the downballot Republicans in North Carolina are not hitting their early voting marks either.
Update 1: A very good friend of the blog argued via e-mail that the independent/non-affiliated surge is very likely to be embarrassed Republicans and thus there is not a Democratic advantage. I can see that to some degree. However if we assume that every vote above last cycle’s non-affiliated vote is effectively an embarrassed Republican vote the combined Republican vote would be about 3% more than the current Democratic registered vote or in horse race turns the Republican adjust lead is 51% to 48% for the adjusted two party vote. In 2012 backing out the incremental embarrassed Republican vote, the Republicans had 58% to 42% two party vote edge.
JGabriel
Richard Mayhew @ Top:
Nationally, or just in NC?
Davebo
@JGabriel: Just in NC.
BR
Go here to sign up to volunteer — there’s only a month to go, and I know everyone can spare a month of time volunteering. Takes 30 seconds to find a local event and sign up.
Bobby Thomson
@JGabriel: Democrats are doing worse in Iowa.
Elizabelle
FLOTUS is doing two rallies in North Carolina today (Raleigh and Charlotte). Dems are hitting North Carolina, hard. It’s a winnable state.
JGabriel
@Davebo: Danke.
NCSteve
Election on election, it’s seemed like you could tie a boat anchor around Richard Burr’s neck and toss it over the side and he’s still just keep rowing and drag it along behind him to his victory party. No matter how bad his own favorables (and even name recognition in a state he’s represented in Congress for decades!), he makes it across. The other Senate seat seems to be under some kind of Voldemort curse that causes the occupant to never, ever, ever, be reelected, but not Helms’ old seat.
But this year, he’s unpopular, his party’s presidential nominee is loathed, his party’s incumbent governor has made himself deeply, deeply unpopular and the General Assembly, which his party controls, has made itself about as welcome as a dead and decaying skunk would be on the table at Thanksgiving. Oh, and his party’s GOTV is nonexistent, his party’s voter suppression laws have been greatly curtailed by the Fourth Circuit, and the people who were the target of those laws seem to have noticed someone doesn’t want them to vote–quite possibly because of the open admissions that that was the purpose.
I’m pretty Democrats will win NC’s electoral votes and the gubernatorial race. There is no data on how big a margin it will take to blow enough Republicans out of the gerrymandered districts to flip the General Assembly, so I don’t know. But if Burr doesn’t lose this one, we might as well make him Senator-for-Life and quite wasting time and money trying to unseat him.
Punchy
From the title, I thought this post was about Le’veon Bell.
yellowdog
@Elizabelle: Also, the Senate seat is crucial.
Dork
@Bobby Thomson: If HRC really wants to win Iowa, she’ll only need to promise to put HFCS into every processed food. She’d win the state 73–27%. It’s literally ALL they care about.
Matt McIrvin
There are semi-plausible scenarios where North Carolina puts Hillary over the top.
Nina
I wonder if some of this is attributable to worry about vote suppression in Democratic precincts? If I lived in a state with a hostile government I’d want to lock my vote in as early as possible.
Bailey
Well, I seriously hope this is true and, more importantly, sustainable.
Thus far, its hard to see how—despite all the awful revelations about Trump any enthusiasm for him has dampened. Or how there has been any more excitement for Clinton. Teflon Don is a real thing.
Bobby Thomson
@Dork: I know you thought no you’re funny, but excepting Kerry, Democrats have been winning the state since 92. It has one of the highest literacy rates and is stil relatively socially liberal, though demographic trends are changing that. Hardly anyone farms anymore.
Face
@Nina: Many of the “official” voter suppression BS was bounced by the courts. What I’m sure they’ll do next is the unofficial BS, like only having 2 voting machines in the urban areas, one of which will “break down”, or “mis-speaking” on locations and/or times of the voting sites.
Matt McIrvin
@Nina: My understanding is that African-American voters are really fond of early voting where they can do it, both for reasons of convenience, and because black churches do Sunday “souls to the polls” events where they can, and because they have just such concerns about Election Day suppression, long lines, etc. Of course, this is an overwhelmingly Democratic cohort, and they’re key to the Democratic Party in the South particularly. It’s why Republicans are so down on early voting and particularly Sunday early voting.
Major Major Major Major
@Dork: @Bobby Thomson: Also you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere to cram more corn syrup than we already are.
Botsplainer
Something I want to get off my chest.
I’m getting kind of sick about the concern for “hard working white people” – those voters without college educations who are going to break about 75%+ for Trump.
Can we quit pretending that they have anything useful to add or concerns to be addressed when it has become patently obvious that as a demographic cohort, they’ve been propagandized into a lumpenproletariat with a lizard brain attachment to racism and economic self-destruction, that their immiseration over the past 30 years is their own fucking fault, and that they are voting their interests?
We could have benefitted from some of those FEMA camps. Thanks a lot, Obama…
Bobby Thomson
@Bobby Thomson: actually, make that 87. Dukakis also won the state.
JMG
@Bailey: Polls taken since the debate indicate increased Democratic enthusiasm for Clinton. And if enthusiasm was all that mattered, President McGovern would’ve been a thing.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Botsplainer: According to the media those folk are the heart and soul of America.
Major Major Major Major
Anyway, this is great and kind of hilarious news. Curious to see what the final measure will be. Is the metric just outperforming polls by n amount?
Dork
@Bobby Thomson:
You’ve got to be kidding me. I went to school there. I visit the state 3-4 times a year. Yes, it has plenty of college towns and a very educated population (compared to KS or NE), but there’s still a shit-ton of farms in all parts of Iowa, and a vast, vast majority of it is corn. If you only drive I-80, maybe you’d miss them. But anywhere east of CR, north of CF, and north (and south) of DM is all farms. And they very much care about ethanol in gas and usage of byproducts of corn.
Josh of TPM has noted that many of the reliable Dem states seem to be slipping red (like IA and OH), while other traditionally red (VA, NC) are going blue. Likely demographics, as you say.
amk
Hillary hits the thug’s war on vets.
cleek
winning NC for Clinton, booting McCrory, and maybe even picking up a Senate seat would be such a beautiful thumb in the GOP’s eye…
Botsplainer
Another issue – does anyone actually think that their would be any serious military resistance beyond some resignations if a President Trump started ordering blatantly illegal roundups of political opponents or the application of torture methods, given the things we know for certain have been done already in the course of the GWOT?
Cermet
Great news – if Hillary wins NC, game over, tRumps gets to deny he ever really ran for POTUS.
shomi
WTF Ohio? Ohio might lose us the Senate. I still think that state will come around like the others have. They seem to be taking their sweet time about it though.
Botsplainer
@BillinGlendaleCA:
FTFY
different-church-lady
@Dork:
Isn’t it already in every processed food?
PhoenixRising
Hence the early voting totals. I think the 4th CA making GOP lawmakers say the quiet part loud in their briefings on the voter caging case–yeah, we used your tax dollars to do a study of how exactly all them coloreds voted for Obama…and made those methods of voting and registration illegal, ain’t we smart?–was yuuuuge.
Which is why that aspect of voting regulation is being widely discussed in Ohio, particularly among African-Americans…my peers from HS are dragging, pushing, pulling and just plain intimidating their 18-29yo children to get registered and vote early because They don’t want you to.
Know hope. Also, have you made 10 calls today?
Bailey
@JMG:
I don’t know what it was like in McGovern’s day, but I do know that voting for president now–in the demographics that Clinton requires–often means standing in line for hours on end. People don’t do that if they’re not voting for someone, but rather against someone else.
rikyrah
Well, considering that the GOP in NC has been trying to take away folks’ right to vote…that might make for an INCENTIVE to get out there and organize.
Major Major Major Major
@shomi: Pantswetter.
shomi
@cleek: Meh, I remember the same NC talk in 2012 about good early voting numbers good exit polls blah blah and Obama lost it. Only by 2% though and demographics have probably shifted left a bit since then.
amk
@Bailey: Polls, fwiw, are telling it otherwise. And yet you keep pushing that bs.
rikyrah
@JGabriel:
I think BooMan did a post about the registrations, and in Florida, the new registrations came 59% from Non-Whites.
schrodinger's cat
Bailey is here, to rain on everyone’s parade and to tell us how Hillary is awful. I predict NR will show up in short order to agree with Bailey.
dr. bloor
@shomi: Strickland isn’t beating Portman. It will be interesting to see how much time/$ HRC throws at Ohio, as it’s becoming increasingly irrelevant to her chances of winning the presidency. Too many other paths out there to bother with a state that seems determined to rename itself East Indiana or North Kentucky.
Cermet
@Dork: Yes; all small(er) farms are going or gone and have been replaced by big Ag – which means the state turns red as these corporate whores shallow down the vast welfare benefits we give big farms. Meanwhile, normal humans are moving towards the areas that have advanced – have jobs; which means Virginia near DC, NC around the big college towns. So these are turning blue (smarter, too.).
Bobby Thomson
@Dork: yeah, well I grew up there and my family’s roots went back generations. My cousins farmed. Again, not many PEOPLE farm anymore. Acres don’t vote.
OzarkHillbilly
@Botsplainer:
In a word, No.
Bailey
@amk:
I’m pushing bs that voting is an hours-long event and that people don’t normally stand in line that long unless they are really “pro” something? That’s pretty much just common sense.
The one thing that gives me any calm is that HRC has something of a ground game and Trump does not. But given the avalanche of unbelievably bad news this past week or so and his support hasn’t dimmed much. It is undeniable that HRC needs crazy good turnout–it’s just hard to see how she gets it.
I’d like to be wrong.
hovercraft
@Dork:
Nationally 34 % non college whites.
Iowa 56 % non college white.
So compared with the other swing states that Obama won, they have a far less educated white electorate, the same goes for Nevada. This came from Chuck Todd, not someone who would be eager to offer excuses for why Hillary is struggling in those two states. In Ohio, Sherrod Brown said last night that unlike most other states, the demographics there are not changing significantly, they are still 81 % white, and since Trump is drawing many of the white working class, it will be a dogfight till the end. I think he was being optimistic.
schrodinger's cat
@Botsplainer: Is this like a regional thing? The working class whites I have come across were pro Union and firmly in the Democratic corner. This was in ME and upstate NY. I speak of machinists in the lab, my ex-landlord and my neighbor who was in the roofing business. Last two were Obots too.
Botsplainer
@dr. bloor:
There’s value in Youngstown and Zanesville – you get media crossover into the western commuters into Pittsburgh.
AliceBlue
@Botsplainer:
Mr. AliceBlue and I were talking about this a few days ago. Something else to keep us awake at night.
schrodinger's cat
@Botsplainer: The media will go along with it too, just like they went along with the Iraq war and torture.
Continuing from my last comment. Most Republicans I have come across have been the country club types and fairly wealthy. Half of them are Democrats now and the other half that is still Republican has become completely cray cray.
shomi
@dr. bloor: Yea I see that now. Wasn’t following that race. Looks only a few senate seats are still in play.
Botsplainer
@schrodinger’s cat:
Midwest and south outside the cities has gone pretty damned ugly. Too invested in gun collections and tribal racial loyalties, they can’t be reached on their economic interests.
They’ve been propagandized for 30 years, as this was the cohort most open to it.
Remember that UAW vote at the VW plant in Chattanooga?
amk
@Bailey: Where do you get that people don’t vote anti and vote only pro trope?
Bailey
@amk:
From the entire history of this country.
Name one president who won election simply because the voters of “anti” were stronger than the voters of “pro.”
Botsplainer
@AliceBlue: @schrodinger’s cat:
There would be a compliant congress as well, with John Yoo occupying the Scalia seat on the Supreme Court.
Kathleen
@BillinGlendaleCA: yup. their votes are the only ones that matter. That’s why I’ve cut out all radio or teevee “news” including npr. i don’t have time or patience to listen to that.
sigaba
@BillinGlendaleCA: The press’s account of Real America and what voters in the “Heartland” want more and more resemble a segment from Mondo Cane. It’s attractive to the press exactly because the white working class has become a pathological and exotic freakshow.
Also I can’t help thinking that WCW voters remind white reporters of their parents, and are thus the most Real Americans they can lay their hands on.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
I’ll be adding mine to the total shortly.
BR
@Bailey:
Time to stop fretting and start volunteering. Here’s the place to go to sign up. The sun will shine a little brighter when you do.
schrodinger's cat
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): I was rewatching DS9 the other day and I thought of you when I saw Cisco. How have you been?
Botsplainer
Of course, as I think about it, Greenwald would kind of wring his hands about it.
On the positive side, all those rednecks do have their guns, so they can go in support of law ‘n order and roust those pesky rabble rousers from sit ins and protests.
RobertB
@dr. bloor: I’ll second that – Portman will get this. In Columbus, every third commercial is one that’s hanging 2008 around Ted Strickland’s neck. I wouldn’t mind being proven wrong, but,,,
amk
@Bailey: hogwash. repubs voted against dems and dems against repubs all the time.
WereBear
If we had mounted a giant social experiment to isolate all the most bigoted, unthinking, gullible, and hostile people into one easily identifiable cohesive group, we couldn’t have done better than the Republicans have been doing.
Now, what to do with them?
Redshift
@Bailey:
Then you’re likely to get your wish. Voting isn’t “an hours-long event” for the vast majority of people. Trump’s hard core racist base isn’t enough for him to win, no matter how enthusiastic they are, he needs more voters, and he’s not getting them. Hillary doesn’t need “crazy good turnout” to win, she just needs normal Democratic presidential turnout.
And against solid polling and early voting numbers, you have nebulous claims about “enthusiasm.” Your concern is noted.
Barbara
@Botsplainer: I told my husband that I think the one sentence that describes Trump’s appeal best is, “White people shouldn’t have to compromise.” Whatever that means to you — overt racism, nostalgia for a time when non-whites were barely visible, being the beneficiary of white privilege (conscience free and usually deniable), being able to maintain a great living regardless of educational achievement, or, for many some combination of these things — that’s what Trump represents for you. It’s easy to say that they are voting against their self-interest, but they see other people who make lots of money who are just as white as they are and what they seem to be voting for most is the great leveling of the visible world around them, without regard for invisible world of wealth that they barely acknowledge and don’t understand.
OzarkHillbilly
@Botsplainer: You need to go to your Doc and get some val!ums.
Barbara
@sigaba: This speaks to how monochromatic and undiverse most news and media organizations are. Too often, their bias becomes our bias.
O. Felix Culpa
Recent polling in New Mexico shows HRC leading with 35%, followed by Trump at 31% and Johnson at 24%. Apparently Johnson, as a former NM governor, is picking up Hispanic support. The Hillary campaign is ramping up GOTV and Hispanic outreach even more in response to this information (we were already plenty busy!).
I remain confident about the outcome in NM and the country. I have not seen much evidence of a Republican ground game anywhere, while the Hillary campaign has been building volunteer networks and data (my bailiwick) for GOTV for months. She’s got this. That said, please volunteer as much as you can (you can make phone calls from the comfort of your own home) and of course, vote!
Felonius Monk
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): I’m happy to see that you have gotten back aboard the Defiant. I hope life is treating you better these days. Stay strong.
Botsplainer
@WereBear:
FEMA camps, where every man is force gay married to a convicted felon, every woman is given a choice of miscegenation or lesbianism, all full white babies are aborted and camp staffers say “happy holidays” on a daily basis as they create effigies of gay Robert E Lee and hand out Confederate flag toilet paper printed on bible pages….
Joel
@schrodinger’s cat: Most certainly regional. A lot of the press likes to hold up the Mon Valley as an archetype of the deindustrialized rust belt where white working class voters are going for Trump, but most of those towns are blue as they can come. A long history of unionization and the fights associated makes sure of that.
The wealthier and more rural surrounding townships are red as satan’s asshole tho.
OGLiberal
@dr. bloor: If the Dems can lock up Virginia – which it seems they already have – and NC and turn FL into leans Dems rather than tossup I’d say good riddance to Ohio and Iowa. And focus future energy on places like Georgia. I’m sick of my party having to kiss up to white “real” Americans who reject any Dem who shows any sort of concern for the plight of the poor and/or minorities. And while I think diversity helps Dems it’s not all the states are super majority white that are a problem – Washington, Oregon and Vermont are all very white and very reliably blue.
WereBear
Sadly, it should only take a modicum of interest and time for them to figure out that our “elite” scam their way into wealth; they jigger the tax code and con the foolish and create ways of skimming the public trough. So NOT the grand geniuses and jerb creators Faux News likes to word-paint.
But I realize now it does not matter. Raw cash; that’s what they want and that’s what they admire. They really think they are voting for their eventual admission to this “club.”
schrodinger's cat
@OGLiberal: Also too, Massachusetts and NY (NYC is diverse, the rest of the state not so much)
Felonius Monk
@WereBear:
FEMA Camps? FEMA Camps in abandoned Walmarts in Texas?
O. Felix Culpa
Am I in moderation? Sheesh, I return from honeymoon and FYWP eats my brilliant comments without remorse.
schrodinger's cat
@O. Felix Culpa: A subtle message from FYWP that your honeymoon is over.
Keith P.
Anybody else suffer through Joe Scarborough’s WashPo editorial claiming that Trump is voters’ default choice? I find his arguments to be, uh, suspect. For one, he’s down 7 points, so evidently, voters have chosen away their default. Another argument is that Clinton should be very afraid because she should be up 20 points. I think what he is neglecting is the level of polarization and party loyalty. While 27% is the basement for a GOP candidate, that’s really for *local* elections; in a presidential election, turnout and interest are much higher, so the choice becomes more binary.
schrodinger's cat
@Keith P.: Why should I pay attention to Morning Joke? I have never heard one insightful idea come from his thin lips.
Chris T.
Late thoughts on the RWNJ who was quoted downthreads saying that Trumb (typo but I like it, I’m keeping it) has been “effective” at destroying things like big chunks of the Republican establishment, or the “both-sides-do-it”-ism of many big name media entities.
He has been effective at destroying things. In much the same way as a loose cannon, on a warship of old, rolls around in the ship’s armory, damaging and destroying things, and occasionally even firing cannonballs indiscriminately. The Trumbomb explodes a lot and damages a lot of things!
Felonius Monk
@Botsplainer:
Bots, you have a very fertile imagination today. Oxygen deprivation from too many deep dives? :-)
Bailey
@amk:
There is some of that in every election, but the winning candidate is always the one for whom more people voted for because they liked rather than voted for because they weren’t the opposition.
peach flavored shampoo
No way, Yoo too liberal. Trump puts Cruz on the court so he doesn’t attempt to unseat him in 2020.
Botsplainer
@WereBear:
“I might be rich one day, so I’m voting for tax cuts for the wealthy”.
Anybody know if Joe the Plumber has made his pile yet?
WereBear
Brilliant! Properly managed, they won’t even know they are in camps.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodinger’s cat:
Hehe! Yes it is, but the joy continues. As does my work for the HRC campaign as GOTV efforts ramp up bigly. She’s got this. :)
amk
@Bailey: Well, by your own logic, she has won through the primary with millions of ‘pro’ votes and those voters aren’t go to be daunted by ‘long lines’. Don’t project your ‘enthusiasm gap’ onto solid dem base.
OzarkHillbilly
@Botsplainer: I heard recently that he is in a union now.
Botsplainer
@Felonius Monk:
Just grumpy…
Botsplainer
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’d like to see him interviewed now, heh.
Jeffro
@Barbara:
That’s a pretty good take on it. That, or “Let Trump Say ALL Of The Things!” (but then again, the things they wanna say are mostly offensive, non-compromising things). But I like yours better.
Felonius Monk
@WereBear:
Exactly. Stock the Walmarts with crap made in “Jyna” with the Trump logo on it, hand everyone a fistfull of “Trump Bucks” and let them shop their little hearts out. They’ll think they’ve died and gone to heaven.
sigaba
@WereBear: They’re already in a FEMA Camp of the Mind.
Bailey
@amk:
Primary wins and general election wins are hardly similar. Don’t make the mistake of assuming they are. It isn’t “my” enthusiasm gap. It is one that shows up repeatedly in polling. (Yes, it shows up even though it has improved for Clinton, but the gap still appears to be there.)
Roger Moore
@Dork:
One of the things to remember is that the farms have been getting more and more automated so that they’re employing fewer and fewer people. The figure I remember is that every generation, the amount of land one person can farm* roughly doubles. There may be a lot of farm land, but there aren’t that many farmers anymore.
*For bulk commodity crops like corn. Vegetables and fruits haven’t been automated to nearly the same degree, which explains a lot about American agriculture, food processing, and diet.
amk
@Bailey:
You don’t say. Your concern noted and dismissed.
BlueDWarrior
@Keith P.: It really is a specious argument in an election season filled with specious arguments.
Anyone with half a brain knows how aggressively polarized a Presidential year electorate is, and that no Presidential Candidate in modern history has gotten less than 40% of the vote (if they were on the ticket of a major party). Trump’s problem is that his asinine speechifying means he might have a hard ceiling of 45%, which no one has won with, except maybe Bill Clinton once (I think he was at 46% for ’96, and 43% in ’92).
FlipYrWhig
@Bailey:
It’s almost like your whole “argument” is a dimwitted tautology fueled by faux savvy!
eric
Not wetting my pants, but cant one see the increase in unaffiliated voters as Trumps’s so-called “missing white voters”? Is there any way to know?
The Moar You Know
@Botsplainer: He went and got a UAW job, working the line building cars for Chrysler, full union member, swear to God. His co-workers all call him “teabagger”, which is awesome and gives me some faith in this country.
He never became a plumber or even started the apprenticeship to become one.
The Ancient Randonneur
@Botsplainer: @OzarkHillbilly:
As of March 2016
In other words he’s still a moron.
SenyorDave
@OGLiberal: If the Dems can lock up Virginia – which it seems they already have – and NC and turn FL into leans Dems rather than tossup I’d say good riddance to Ohio and Iowa.
Sometimes its pretty difficult to feel sorry for some of these people. If they are so ignorant as to believe that Trump is going to bring back any significant amount of manufacturing maybe they deserve what they get. I live in Maryland, totally blue state, but in the Baltimore metro region there are some areas where Trump is wildly popular because they believe that he will re-energize the old Sparrow Bethlehem Steel plant, which was the largest steel mill in the world at one point. It closed in 2011 and it is not coming back. In the mean time, these areas have some of the lowest percentage of college graduates because they are waiting for manufacturing to come back, and now they have a savior who will make it happen. I loathe Trump, he is like an evil P.T. Barnum, but it does take two to tango. A con man has to have a willing mark, and some of these people are only to happy to play that role. Oh, and just to complete the picture, some of these areas are the sort of places where minorities are not particularly welcome.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@WereBear:
Well, Elon’s building a massive rocket to Mars….
BlueDWarrior
@SenyorDave: With a lot of these communities, they almost don’t want to believe the fact their communities are dying, and without outside investment especially from the government, they will be dead and sometimes in short order; even when all the evidence says they should, and that voting for your typical current-day Republican is almost signing your death warrant as a small town.
But a lot of them have wrapped themselves so tightly in identity politics that requires them to be Christian Conservative Republicans, to vote for anything else is akin to asking them to slit their own throat. And the biggest problem is that there are enough of these people to where, if all of ‘us’ don’t vote in every single election that comes up, we all have to suffer the poor governance Republicans cannot help but provide us.
jl
Trump’s idea of a ground game is to Take All the Oil.
Edit: and AL’s snark on various Trump Fdns’ spending Fdn money for Trump pix earlier today: unfair, must retract! They are only doing it for us. After he’s elected, we’ll all get Trump pix, which I guess better be prominently displayed in place of honor in our domiciles.
Edt2: which means I am in trouble. I don’t think there is a place of honor in my domicile. Where the hell am I going to hang my Trump portrait that won’t get him in big trouble? You KNOW what I mean!
low-tech cyclist
Everyone’s heard of Sean Trende’s theory that ‘missing white voters’ from 2012 could swing the 2016 election for the GOP if they came out of the woodwork.
The problem, according to David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, is the MWVs mostly weren’t registered in 2012 (14.7 million MWV registered nonvoters in 2012 v. 40.2 million unregistered MWVs), and there’s no registration surge on their part this year.
You can rouse the rabble with rallies, but if they’re not registered, they can’t vote. Another failure of the mostly nonexistent GOP ground game – not that I’m complaining.
peach flavored shampoo
@SenyorDave: Bigger, more philosophical question — just what happens in the US (and elsewhere, too) when the supply of people continues to grow (thanks, abstinence education!) but jobs–specifically blue-collar–decrease (due to automation)? Just WTF are these people supposed to do?
Either the country (and planet) stops growing its population, or there’s going to be an absolute shit-ton of unemployed people, right?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Bailey:
The Revolution will Not Be Polled or Televised
You apparently fail to understand that there is BOTH enthusiasm for Clinton, AND determined opposition to Trump. If you’re a white male, which it seems like you are, you’re missing everything about this election.
schrodinger's cat
BTW what ever happened to Sparrow? She had become a big time Bernie sis during the primaries.
jl
@low-tech cyclist: Reminds me of interviews with rabid Trump fans at his rallies during the GOP primary. Many didn’t seem prepared to answer questions about if they planned to vote for the guy. That was something that they really hadn’t thought through. And IIRC, Trump consistently under performed his pre-election polling in the primaries, just usually his lead was big enough that turnout due to GOTV didn’t make a lot of difference. That lucky circumstance won’t hold during the general election.
rikyrah
@Barbara:
They long for the delusional world of Mad Men.
When all you had to be was White.
I didn’t say educated and White.
All you had to be was White.
When you could pretend that you were a big fish in a big pond. When, in actuality, you were a fish in a pond where 90% of everyone else was locked into sardine cans.
The cans are now open and NOBODY IS GOING BACK.
They have all the freedoms they could want. They can come up to me or any Black person/Non-White and insult us on the street.
What they want is not Freedom.
What they want is FREEDOM FROM CONSEQUENCES.
Time was, they would roll up on us, call us out our names, and we couldn’t do anything about it. Now, if you roll upon ‘ the wrong one’, your teeth will be on the floor like chiclets.
They wanna party like it’s 1948…
But, nobody is playing with them.
You can dismiss me if you want to…..
But, NOBODY is playing with them.
jl
@schrodinger’s cat: ‘Bernie sis’? I can’t keept track of all the species of candidate fanpeople.
There were Berniebros, Beniebots (I think I was a Berniebot), Berners.. and some others.
Joel
@low-tech cyclist: Sean Trende is such a piece of shit.
GregB
We can take advantage of the ignorance and paranoia of the Republican base by telling them that they shouldn’t vote because the system is rigged and Chairman Hillary will use voter rolls for the FEMA camp round-up list.
schrodinger's cat
@rikyrah: Love this! Just want to make one change, they want to party like its 1848, when women couldn’t vote and slavery was legal.
schrodinger's cat
@jl: Bernie sis = female version of Bernie bro. We got into a couple of verbal scuffles, that’s why I remember.
Your Bernie fervor was muted, I barely noticed it.
jl
@schrodinger’s cat: What are the names for HRC fanatics?
Fair Economist
@RobertB:
People seem eager to blame the problem on Strickland/the Dems/Ohio voters but the problem is the enormous amounts of money going for negative ads. The problem is similar in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. The money the Koch brothers and other billionaire Republicans would normally have spent on the presidential race is going to the swing Senate races and the amounts are staggering – over a quarter of a billion IIRC.
schrodinger's cat
@jl: Neoliberal corporatist
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@jl:
Hillzilla
liberal
@Fair Economist: There’s multiple problems. Just because the Kochs are being evil doesn’t mean Strickland isn’t a bad candidate (or the OH Dem party isn’t screwed up).
PA/NH are very close, or even have the Dems ahead, whereas Strickland is getting creamed in OH. That’s why I gave a ton of money to the two Senate candidates in PA/NH: they stand a very good chance of winning. I wrote OH off.
Amir Khalid
@jl:
“Hillbot” seems to be the preferred putdown. I’ve seen “Clintonista” used as a neutral term, but not very often.
liberal
@schrodinger’s cat: no, it’s Hillarybot.
And just because the nation would be in relatively good shape with HRC and a dumpster fire with Trump doesn’t mean HRC isn’t neoliberal. I mean, I despise neoliberals, but given the choice between a neoliberal and Cthulhu, I’d take a neolib, no questions asked.
This must be more of that nuance thing that Aimai referred to recently.
MomSense
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Go go go hillzilla.
NobodySpecial
@BR: Doesn’t seem to be his style, as he’s not getting paid in nickels.
WereBear
I see a few options:
*Farming comes back, only in an artisanal, organic, mode. This is what we have locally, where a lot of young people are employed with humane farming movements, creameries with grass-fed cows and goats, and vegetable farms. Farming is no longer a sentence to a remote and boring environment. It’s also a healthier way to eat.
*Hours are cut back further, so the work goes further over more people. We have an incredible amount of untapped capital that would allow people to live in a comfortable way if we didn’t have scam artists draining everyone’s productivity… and net worth. It would mean a lifestyle change, but we are undergoing an involuntary one right now.
*Overhead is already coming down. We don’t need stores and offices like we used to. While corporations are being evil about it, they don’t need to be. We can put in better minimum wage and worker protection controls. If they can’t do business that way, they can go out of business. They are taking unfair advantage now.
liberal
@peach flavored shampoo:
If everyone just learned JavaScript, there’d be no unemployed. /snark
schrodinger's cat
@WereBear: Yep I agree. There is nothing magical about factory jobs. If service jobs paid well no one would complain. Labor needs a seat at the table again.
liberal
@SenyorDave:
Agreed. One thing that really tires me is all the excuses for them that come from people of my ilk. These folks have agency, just like anyone else. The fact that they’re either rabid or stupid? I’m out of f*cks to give.
Brachiator
@JGabriel:
This is very interesting. You obviously cannot extrapolate this nationally, but it still complicates the idea that Republicans are more intensely interested in this election than are Democrats.
GOTV!
I also hope that Democrats pay attention to attempts to suppress the vote and counter them. I’ve heard stories about restrictions on early voting times, relocation of voting places, etc.
MomSense
@Major Major Major Major:
Maybe it’s because my middle schooler and I are home sick so I’ve been immersed in middle school boy humor all morning, but I got a good chuckle from that comment.
MomSense
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes can we just focus on paying good wages for honest work?! If Walmart’s starting pay was 18.50 an hour we wouldn’t be obsessing about factory jobs.
sigaba
@jl: Hillbots of course!
liberal
@Dork:
LOL. I grew up there, and visit my folks. It’s corn, corn, corn, corn, visible everywhere, including I-80. I guess sometimes farmers grow beans. And now, at least west of DSM, there are lots of windmill generators visible from I-80.
I’m not sure myself why it’s so much redder than when I grew up (the era of Dick Clark in the Senate). Though I think my dad said that, while he was a really good campaigner, Harkin’s vote margins were never that great.
randy khan
@Bailey:
Assumes facts not in evidence.
And a counterexample: Edwards-Duke, Louisiana Governor, 1991 (“Vote for the crook. It’s important.”)
liberal
@Bobby Thomson: Part of that is I think Judge isn’t a great choice (against that thug, Grassley).
Anoniminous
@MomSense:
But then the Walton family would have to struggle to survive on $100 million/year.
colby
@Bailey: 60% of the country hates Trump, and he’s never held a lead. “Teflon Don” is not a thing.
colby
@Fair Economist: Except McGinty and Hassan seem to be weathering the storm much better.
Matt McIrvin
@Dork:
It’s really not that dramatic a change. IA and OH are not reliable Dem states; Kerry lost both of them in 2004, Gore lost OH in 2000 as well, and they’re always close. (But neither of them won VA or had a prayer in NC, of course.)
VA has been turning from a swing state to a deep-blue state for several election cycles, and NC has clearly been a swing state since 2008 at least.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Botsplainer:
This sooooo wins Teh Interntzezzzz for today. Either that or you worked for the administration at some point and saw their plans.
aimai
@Jeffro: I also think its “white people shouldn’t have to compromise–with reality.”
MomSense
@Anoniminous:
Whatever would they do?
FlipYrWhig
@liberal: Harkin won in ’84 by 55-44, in ’90 by 54-45, in ’96 by 52-47, in ’02 by 54-44, and in ’08 by 63-37. ’14 was when fuckknuckle Joni Ernst got elected instead, 52-44.
Frankensteinbeck
@Bailey:
Cite your numbers, please. ‘I know every winner won the enthusiasm gap because they won’ is circular logic and not acceptable. Give us numbers, and we’ll respect your argument.
@rikyrah:
You remind me of an article I read about Britain during WWII. White American soldiers would see black Brits dancing in clubs with white women, and harass them. The blacks would beat them up, and the Americans didn’t know how to deal with it. They were used to a system where the black man would always back down.
FlipYrWhig
@randy khan: Perhaps you forget the outpouring of sheer love for Terry McAuliffe that carried him to the Governor’s mansion in Richmond.
Barbara
@rikyrah: I don’t know that I would put it this way. To the extent that whites think that the baleful consequences of voting in a certain way will only be visited upon other people — yes, I agree totally. If you vote for someone who gleefully slashes education it’s kind of hard to feel sympathy when your kid has to go in debt in order to get through college. But a lot of people have not done anything wrong for which they expected consequences. A lot of people are economically destitute through no fault of their own. What is jarring and wrongheaded and just wrong is who they are primed to blame for their insecurity or loss of status. I also dislike your violent imagery (teeth rolling on the floor like chiclets for rolling on the wrong one). I can’t go there, ever.
amk
@Barbara:
Yes they did, they keep voting for the same corrupt clowns, who hurt them in every possible way. They made that bed knowingly and willingly.
Matt McIrvin
@peach flavored shampoo: Automation is more of a concern than population growth, when it comes to unemployment–because more people means more demand for goods and services, not just more people looking for jobs. In principle the effect of increased population ought to be a wash. But automation means you don’t have to hire as many to make the goods.
The population growth rate of the US is positive but decreasing, not increasing. We’re below replacement rate for births, so without immigration the population of the US would eventually start shrinking as the population ages out.
Gelfling 545
@Bailey: I think you will find that a lot of voters who were not wildly pro-Obama voted anti-Palin in 2008. I also believe that we have never had a time in the history of our country when a candidate has been pretty obviously out of his mind. That can bring out a lot of against votes.
Eljai
Travelled to Reno to canvass last weekend. Our collected efforts brought in 300 new voter registrations on Saturday alone. A Nevada organizer said that’s enough to swing the county for the Dems, and they’re working to register people right up to the deadline. Early voting in Nevada starts in a couple weeks.
Barbara
@Eljai: I am canvassing in Northern Virginia again on Thursday. I was out on Labor Day Weekend. Last weekend, Democratic canvassers knocked on the doors of 10,000 households in Northern Virginia. My only dilemma is where I should spend the last weekend before election day — here, Richmond, or Western Pennsylvania (where my mother and sister still live). I am also considering doing the protect the vote initiative, and the only thing stopping me is that when I did it in 2008, I got placed in my own precinct, where the precinct captain used to work in the Voting Rights Division of the USDOJ. He was a one man voter protection organization all by himself. I felt a little superfluous.
Gelfling 545
@WereBear: “Behind every great fortune is a crime. “
JR in WV
@jl:
HilBots. We’re all HilBots here, right?
Brachiator
@Gelfling 545:
The weird thing is that a lot of Trump supporters don’t care at all. And the GOP establishment refuses to acknowledge any problem or weakness with their candidate.
And if the Democrats call Trump unhinged, the press whines about negative campaigning.
It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.
FlipYrWhig
@jl: I still think it should have been “Hillarians.”
schrodinger's cat
@FlipYrWhig: We are Hillcats or Hellcats if you prefer. We don’t do lovie dovie and touch- feely we do hissy-spitty and scratchy-bitey
Boo-Hiss
shomi
@O. Felix Culpa: I think you are forgetting about the Al Gore factor. Haven’t you heard? It’s going to be a YOOOUUGE problem.
Ben Cisco
@schrodinger’s cat: Sorry, duty called and I’m late getting back tothis. I’m OK, going to redo MRI on Friday. Dad’s out of MICU and will be transferring to a hospital/rehab center closer to home by the end of the week.
Rand Careaga
@SenyorDave: I toured the old Sparrows Point steel mill in 1985. Even at that point it employed, if I recall aright, only about 6,000 people, down from 24,000 a couple of decades earlier. At one point I looked down from the catwalk at their hot-dipped galvanizing operation. There was a young man using what appeared to be a railroad tie suspended by a chain from the plant ceiling to push blocks of zinc into an open vat full of the molten stuff. The zinc splashed, and the guy had to jump out of the way each time. “How much you paying him?” I asked the tour leader. “Dunno,” he replied. “Ten, maybe twelve dollars an hour.” I decided that I preferred my own, moderately better-compensated role in the steel industry as a trade analyst.
When the facility finally closed down a few years ago I remember reading the news and being surprised it had even lasted into the present century.
Bailey
@Gelfling 545:
Obama had an overwhelming amount of “Pro” Obama votes. I think Palin had very little to do with it except to seal the deal against McCain. (Frankly, by that point, the election was all but lost to McCain and, if you recall, Palin was the hail-mary pass.) 68% of Obama voters were very much “pro” him.
But to illustrate the pro vs. against voting trends of the past 16 years:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/02/for-many-voters-its-not-which-presidential-candidate-theyre-for-but-which-theyre-against/
Trump and Clinton are in a very different matchup. And Clinton cannot just count on that Obama coalition in the same way because they are not “pro” her as much as they were him.
Having said that, in doing the research, I see that “pro” Clinton has actually ticked up a bit, so this is an encouraging sign. However, both she and Trump are historically weak “pros”, especially considering a field that has a third party candidate sucking up more from HRC than from Trump.
As a side note, Bill Clinton now on the campaign trail calling Obamacare “the craziest thing he’s ever seen.” Oh STFU Bill.
Uncle Cosmo
@SenyorDave: Um, make that
& not “the Sparrow plant.” Anyone living in the Baltimore metro area for more than 3 weeks should know that. (How long you been in town, hon?)
Generations of blue-collar workers, including the fathers of at least half my Dundalk High School classmates in the mid-1960s (& many of them, summers & post-graduation), had well-paying jobs “downy Point, hon”. Always “da Point”. Only to an out-of-towner might you have to explain, also in classic Bawlmerese dialect, you meant “Spares Point, hon.” (Always “hon.”)
gex
@Barbara: Lee Atwater was the campaign manager for H.W., who as we recall initially called Reganomics voodoo economics. Atwater said POINT BLANK, that Republican policies hurt white people, but they hurt black people even more. This is what high ranking people in their party say. To act like there’s no way these poor, hard up white people could ever figure out that they were blaming the wrong people when they had to ignore the people they were supporting in order to keep on blaming the wrong people is to be way more forgiving of racists than racists deserve. Their choice of who to blame is heavily influenced by the fact that those people are who they wanted to blame anyhow.
philadelphialawyer
@Bailey: Fuck you.
philadelphialawyer
@Bailey: Fuck you.
philadelphialawyer
@Bailey: Fuck you.
philadelphialawyer
@Bailey: You are wrong. And fuck you.
philadelphialawyer
@Bailey: Fuck you.
philadelphialawyer
@Bailey: TL, DR. And fuck you.