I want to build on Mister Mix’s post over the weekend about the challenge of running as a challenger in a tough seat. I think everyone should read that post first.
2017 is mostly a local election year. It is a year for mayors, it is a year for school board members, it is a year for county commissioners to be elected. There are a few state wide races:
So my question is can this community adopt a candidate or two for these down ballot races. Can we provide the seed funding and some of the door knockers needed to win a county council seat in Pennsylvania? Can we seed a good candidate for mayor in Kentucky? Can we focus on one or two races and start rebuilding? And if so, where and who would be the good candidates to adopt who would not run petrified at the thought of being backed by us heckling jackals?
My preference would be on the More rather than Better Democrat side right now.
Baud
Always should have been.
RSR
There’s an intriguing program in PA and a number of other states to provide training for Democratic women interested in running for office; alas, the application window for 2017 has already closed:
Emerge Pennsylvania
And this article talks about fixing “Philly’s Elite, Boring, Anti-Competitive Democratic Party” by running for such ‘farm team’ roles as election official and state committee, and provides links to guides about doing so in Pennsylvania.
Mai.naem.mobile
Hey,Mayhew, did you see that Jared Kushners brother was a cofounder of Oscar. According to the Forbes piece from yesterday,hes apparently very close to his brother. I am figuring with this family’s penchant for crony capitalism Oscar will get some of whatever replacement plan and redo of Medicare Congress comes up with
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: But there is a line that should not be crossed.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Apparently, that line is 50% in each voting district.
Richard Mayhew
@Mai.naem.mobile: yep. I still can not figure out what Oscar is doing that is so amazingly different but I figure they will become profitable somehow now
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Not in my voting district, here it’s 70+%. On the more serious side, I am speaking of the equal rights for all line.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: I know and agree. But is there any Dem who isn’t paying at least lip service to equality?
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Not now, but from what I hear there are a # who are saying we put too much emphasis on it. They must be economically secure white men.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: Right. But I wouldn’t hesitate to vote for them if they were the nominee in any election I could vir in. I’m not sure the feeling is mutual.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: They make me very insecure.
Baud
@Baud:
Vir = vote
WTF spell check?
Mary
I wonder if Christie will bother to run again. His chances of winning seem not good.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Mary:
He can’t run. He’s term-limited.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I figured it out.
Emma
Kentucky might be a long haul project but it might be worth it.
Mary
@Steeplejack (phone): So he is. What’s sad is that I double checked the text in the OP to see if he was and still completely glossed over it.
liberal
Sounds like a riposte to Lenin’s “Better Fewer, but Better.”
rachel
If Nikki Haley leaves South Carolina to be Trump’s ambassador to the UN, would that open up her seat for a special election?
bbleh
This is an excellent idea. It gets people engaged, it easily could yield a win or two, and it starts the long-haul process of rebuilding the party at the local and state levels. It’s a shot in the arm, for people who need it.
I would strongly advise picking targets that are relatively easy to win. Walk before you run, and get some points on the board. We can worry about spearing some big fish later.
I would also be careful to coordinate with — or at least not conflict with or ignore — other efforts. We can’t all sing in perfect harmony, but it’s best if grassroots efforts are not a completely incomprehensible babble.
This is how the Republicans did it. We just need to do some of the same.
Another Scott
Terry Mac has been the only thing that has kept Virginia from turning into East Brownbackistan. It’s vital to elect Ralph Northam as his replacement, but we need to do more. All 100 Delegates are up for election (they serve 2 year terms) – it’s a 32D / 66R / 2 Vacant split at the moment. Getting the majority again would take a miracle, but we have to flip as many as we can. The filing deadline is sometime in June, I think. There are lots of hurdles to jump through, and the pay is abysmal ($17,600/yr – “but it’s just a part time job!!11”) so too many qualified and sensible people don’t bother. We have too many uncontested races here (gerrymandering doesn’t help, of course).
It’s a long slog, but we’ve got to keep pushing.
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
@Baud:
I would think giving them a very large microphone would be more effective than money. Here in Ohio, the GOP is constantly drowning out other voices.
And in that regard, I nominate PG Sittenfeld for attention.
JAFD
Greetings from New Jersey!
Election day went well. No protesters or challengers, only a pair of sheriff’s deputies, came by about noon to check turnout – were extraordinarily attractive young ladies – “Yes, Please! Take me into your custody!” ;-)
But walking back after lunch, had this feeling of dread (play ‘dum – dum – dum’ from Jaws here).
Had been up since about 3 AM, so after we’d dropped return printouts and machine cartridge at courthouse, I went home and crashed with thud. Played ‘Knowledge Runner’ till Thursday, finally gave up, read the 538 liveblog…
Was at the meetup Monday, at Shanghai Cuisine, with Ms. Rettig and others. Went very well, great conversation, more on that otherpostwise.
There is a storefront office already in progress, on Broad St in downtown Newark, for Phil Murphy’s campaign, and his Email list sends out about a message a day. Will try to keep y’all updated on that.
Hope all of you, and your families and friends and pets, have a joyful Thanksgiving.
Now, for anyone seeking five minutes or so of distraction: There’s a board/card game on various science fiction themes, Race for the Galaxy. A computer version – PC, Linux, Mac – is available for free at
keldon.net/rftg/
The rules for board and computer game are downloadable at
riograndegames.com/uploads/Game/Game_240_gameRules.pdf
More on the game at
boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/28143/race-galaxy
(and if you are interested in games, and know not of BoardGameGeek.Com, be enlightened.)
and a version of the rules, formatted to printout in 12-point text – easy reading for old eyes – at
boardgamegeek.com/filepage/48832/readable-race-galaxy-rules
Glidwrith
@RSR: Yes, I was going to suggest the same thing. Blue America is another one.
Barbara
@Another Scott: The Virginia Senate, however, is at 19D/21R and even one pick up would change the trajectory. Finding the three most likely pick ups and supporting them is worth doing, as is supporting Northam. Northam’s team, however, has to find a more sophisticated email approach. Right now, they are just bombarding people with the equivalent of spam political fund raising messages.
Emma
One other option would be to “adopt a state” and work with democrats there. The Virginia and Pennsylvania ideas are intriguing.
Tim Ellis
A lot of Berniecrats are taking this seriously and running in local races. There’s one in Rochester I’m supporting, Mary Agnes Lupien. I’m sure there are many more (and I am sure Hillary style Dems are doing it too, if that’s more your thing).
One of the things about those races is that even a few bucks or a few vol hours go a LONG way, so I think this is a great idea! Lots of bang for the buck.
Redshift
@Another Scott: We just barely got back enough seats to keep the Republicans from having a supermajority in the VA House (with a Dem Lt Gov tie breaker) so continuing to add to that cushion is a good goal on the long slog back to a majority.
The remaining GOP seats on Northern Virginia are good targets, and I know of one candidate who’s already running, Karrie Delaney. She looks quite good.
Also, my good friend Jennifer Boysko is a first-term delegate who will be running for re-election. I don’t expect her to have a lot of trouble, but the first re-election is the toughest, so I’m not complacent either. Also, stupid low turnout off-off-year elections.
Redshift
@Barbara: I agree on the Senate. As for Northam, there isn’t really much they can do that’s useful at this point other than fundraising (and building their list for future fundraising.) I agree it’s annoying, but I can’t really fault them for it.
Meanwhile, I was pleased to see AG Ralph Herring (who’s running for re-election) quoted in a WaPo article about Democratic AGs being prepared to resist the Trump Administration. (Geez, hard to write that without gagging…)
Botsplainer
Feels pointless. Votes clearly don’t matter.
Another Scott
@Botsplainer: Votes always matter. The way to prevent them from stealing close elections is to not allow them to be close.
(In general,) When Democrats turn out, Democrats win.
We can’t get discouraged. We have to keep fighting. Every vote matters.
Cheers,
Scott.
Emma
@Botsplainer: Votes matter. There’s an old Spanish poem that goes more or less like this: the Saracens arrived and beat the crap out of us; God always protects the bad folk when there’s more of them than us. But, if the popular vote is to be counted, there are more of us than them. Our problem was that until Obama’s election we didn’t realize or really accept in our gut that they would actually trample the Constitution for power. It took them thirty years of concerted planning. We need to start now to claw back territory.
O. Felix Culpa
We took back the state house in New Mexico and retained the state senate. We also won the Secretary of State, which is especially important with respect to voting rights and expanding access. In 2017 we have school board and other local elections. In 2018 the governorship and congressional elections. Some friends and I are meeting with local Democratic officials to discuss next steps to pose a winning case to the electorate and to do the groundwork necessary to get folks to the polls and win.
I am reminded of Rudi Dutschke’s words from the German Student Movement of the ’60’s, about “the long march through the institutions” as the strategy for establishing the progressive agenda. Sadly, the Koch brothers and Tea Party understood and executed that strategy better than we did (with an ungodly amount of financial resources behind them). We need to play the local and long games too, while also fighting the undoing of our civil liberties and democratic institutions in the (hopefully) short term. The local slog may not be sexy or exciting work, but it’s what builds the foundation for good governance and winning elections at all levels.
Another Scott
@Barbara: Indeed, but the Virginia Senate isn’t up for elections until 2019. Holding on to every seat Team D has until then is very important (e.g. the ~ 2015 change of some down-state Senator from D to R).
Cheers,
Scott.
Barbara
@O. Felix Culpa: One problem with our side is that we actually do believe in the federal government, and want a certain level of federal uniformity in terms of entitlements and so on, which makes us more inclined to see politics as being most important at the federal level.
Barbara
@Another Scott: I always forget Virginia’s ridiculous election cycles. So gov is off year from president and from Virginia Senate.
The Moar You Know
If one more state lege goes GOP, the GOP can call a full Constitutional convention and rewrite the whole thing. I don’t think we want to go there.
And locally, our bench is tapped out. They’re either dead of old age, currently serving, or waiting for the next GOP challenger with funding from the national party to come get their lunch money. And yes, the national GOP is funding town and city level races. Dems need to get on board with that.
@Tim Ellis: Good, and I mean that with all sincerity. What I saw during this last election was Bernie and his people piggybacking off the Dem party and doing plenty of damage in the process. Not acceptable.
However, if they want to jump in and run and win, I am ALL for it. I have no issues with their goals at all. They are laudable. I just had issue with them torpedoing my party of affiliation while trying to catapult their message to the public at large.
Botsplainer
@Another Scott:
After 2012, in my voting jurisdiction (I live about 20 miles outside the boundaries of the wonderful blue city of Louisville), none of my votes have counted for shit, and now Democratic state house and senate districts are only reliable there. The city is getting squeezed hard, and is apt to lose a lot of luster in upcoming general assemblies as we get all kinds of retrograde Christianist bullshit enshrined in state law. Thus would begin the youth and brain drain. I also have to vote not in progressive KY-3 (delightfully represented in congress by the very progressive John Yarmuth), but instead I get Koch fellator Thomas Massie, whose presence in Congress seems to be wholly related to working on bills to stop abortions and fuck over blue states and cities.
I’m worn out swimming against the tide of stupid. Our Democrats are generally competent at government, not particularly “grafty” and are trying to do well by their people. They face an implacable wall of incompetents, and the voters are choosing the incompetents.
O. Felix Culpa
@Barbara:
I suspect you’re right. I have been guilty of focusing almost exclusively on federal government too. This election has changed or expanded my thinking.. It’s not local/state OR federal, it’s local/state AND federal, which the right wing fully understands and has captured in many places. This election has been a wake-up call for me and I hope for many others as well – prodding us into civic engagement where we live.
One specific local example that directly affects the outcome of federal elections: voter registration and voting rights. Those are determined by the states. Elect Republicans to state government and you get voter ID laws and reductions in voting hours and polling places. Two states with Republican leadership and significant voter restriction laws: North Carolina and Wisconsin. Although the court overturned NC’s laws, the damage was done in terms of confusing and intimidating potential voters. We can only wonder how the election might have turned out if our great democracy actually, you know, encouraged and enabled all its citizens to vote. As far as I can see, only Democrats in local and state office are likely to do that.
MomSense
@Botsplainer
About a million votes were suppressed and/or stolen this election. The same people who were nonstop drones, privacy, NSA have responded with we need to do more for left behind white people.
Our news media is a fucking disgrace. They’ve already normalized the idea that the head of the opposition won’t be prosecuted if the president doesn’t feel like it. I really don’t have the resources to adequately protect my kids from the shitstorm that is coming. There is no point in swimming against this tide. It’s a tsunami and I don’t have the energy.
O. Felix Culpa
@MomSense:
Oh friend, I totally understand the weight and fear this election generates. I’m there too, about eleventy times a day. I’m grateful for this community and others that keep me from sinking utterly into the slough of despond. I currently live in a blue area in a purple state, but I remember well the challenge of living in a blazing red area.
We can’t all move to action at the same pace, but I hope we all eventually do what we can, knowing we’re not alone. The thought of my children’s future motivates me. My mother’s stories of growing up in Nazi Germany – the political terror and the horrors of war – energize me as well. Remembering the extermination of my father’s family during that era strengthens my resolve. I do not want these outcomes for any of us. I feel the fear…and I choose to fight. Small steps, perhaps, but for me any movement is better than paralysis.
NMgal
@O. Felix Culpa: Maybe BJers should check in their states on the status of the Secretary of State or other top elections officer and what can be done to ensure it stays/goes blue. I heard that Oregon, of all places, had theirs flip red this election.
SenyorDave
@MomSense: Our news media is a fucking disgrace. They’ve already normalized the idea that the head of the opposition won’t be prosecuted if the president doesn’t feel like it. I really don’t have the resources to adequately protect my kids from the shitstorm that is coming. There is no point in swimming against this tide. It’s a tsunami and I don’t have the energy.
I agree with you, but I hope to keep engaged. One thing I would urge all Balloon Juicers to do is get as involved as possible in long term financial planning for you and your family. Long term prospects for the middle class are not positive, and in four years Trump and the GOP cam do a huge amount of damage. My wife and I have our six year old granddaughter with us for a couple of days and it has got us thinking about this subject. We are going to make damn sure that the first thing we take care of is our family. We will make sure that our granddaughter and grandson go to the college of their choice, and we’ll set up some trust funds for their early adulthood. We also plan to educate them financially because their parents are close to financially illiterate even though they both make a pretty good living.
The funny thing is that one thing going for our side is that Trump wants to be loved, and his advisers (Bannon and Kushner) might push him to oppose the more draconian Republican shit. They might not want Trump to go down in history as the president who destroyed Medicare and Social Security. they are still popular in content if not in name.
IMO, the US is fucked. If we could elect a Donald Trump 8 years after George W Bush, it shows our electorate is functionally illiterate. Our media is actually significantly worse than I thought, and that is saying a lot.
MomSense
@O. Felix Culpa:
My stepdad lost his entire family in Hungary. He was kept alive because he managed to get to Paris where the prostitutes in a brothel sheltered him. He was a musician and played for their “parties”.
One of my teachers lost her mom and sister. Her dad was off fighting. She was hidden by her ballet teacher. She was too scared to go home after the war and then couldn’t because her house was in East Berlin.
Stan
@RSR: Thanks so much for this link. I just sent them a nomination for a young, smart-as-hell, environmental engineer and experienced canvasser.
O. Felix Culpa
@MomSense: You have some powerful stories. I too had family trapped in East Germany. No fun living under Stasi oppression. Other family members made it to the West, but lost two babies to hunger and disease as they were fleeing the Russians.
Growing up with these stories, I’d always wondered what how I might respond if faced with the threat of a totalitarian regime. Silly me, I never actually wanted that fight and certainly not in my dotage. But it’s here in incipient form and I refuse to yield. The stakes are too high and I believe we still have a chance to win.
Botsplainer
@MomSense:
For any swimmer caught offshore in a rip current, the trick is to move obliquely.
That’s what I’m doing with “Medicare for All or Medicare for None, No 55 Cutoff”. The rhetoric goes like this – seniors are vulnerable now, what makes me less vulnerable as a senior when I’m in my dotage? And if the health insurance free market is going to be so amazing and great for me, why shouldn’t today’s seniors enjoy those benefits too?
If it becomes apparent to the AARP and other senior advocacy groups that the demographic lump between 40 and 55 is going to be truly enraged and looking to float Granny off on an iceberg in the future, than they’ll get their people energized to advocate as well.
SiubhanDuinne
@rachel:
No. The current Lieutenant Governor, a RWNJ and staunch Trump supporter named Henry McMaster, would automatically become Governor. McMaster hates Obama and is an avowed foe of the ACA.
O. Felix Culpa
@Botsplainer:
That’s an excellent strategy and first target. Protecting Medicare should be low-hanging fruit, as it’s a popular program benefiting both red and blue alike. I’m sure many GOP seniors would be horrified to learn that their party is intent on dismantling their benefits. I don’t know the best way to do this, but we need to make sure they learn of these plans through media and people they trust. Ms. O’s immediate family is of that ilk and she is working on building bridges of communication. Small steps, but someone who isn’t me has to do it. Plus we still have the advantage of numbers on our side, if we mobilize.
SiubhanDuinne
@O. Felix Culpa:
Fun fact (albeit O/T): One of my closest friends from high school (and still a FB friend) is Rudi Dutschke’s widow and the keeper of his flame.
Botsplainer
@SenyorDave:
Kushner doesn’t have the sense to do that, and Bannon drinks like a Russian mafiya thug and has extreme lapses of judgment.
He reminds me of that Gazprom asshole who got drunk and stumbled himself to death in a DC hotel last year.
Botsplainer
@SiubhanDuinne:
Yeah, Haley torched her own career by taking the nothing of the UN slot.
She’ll spend months justifying war crimes and vetoing resolutions condemning Israeli war crimes before quietly stepping down.
O. Felix Culpa
@SiubhanDuinne: Very cool! O/T fun facts like that are most welcome.