You all know by now that SC-5 ended up being closer than GA-6. You probably also know that SC-5 is full of hopeless rural idiots whereas GA-6 is full of well-educated suburbanites who just need a little non-ideological persuasion to start voting Democrat. David Atkins nails it:
The lesson of the special elections around the country is clear: Democratic House candidates can dramatically outperform Clinton in deep red rural areas by running ideological, populist campaigns rooted in progressive areas. Poorer working class voters who pulled the lever for Trump can be swayed back to the left in surprisingly large numbers—perhaps not enough to win in places like Kansas, Montana and South Carolina, but certainly in other more welcoming climes. Nor is there a need to subvert Democratic principles of social justice in order to accomplish this: none of the Democrats who overperformed Clinton’s numbers in these districts curried favor with bigots in order to accomplish it.
But candidates like Clinton and Ossoff who try to run inoffensive and anti-ideological campaigns in an attempt to win over supposedly sensible, wealthier, bourgeois suburban David-Brooks-reading Republican Romney voters will find that they lose by surprisingly wide margins. There is no Democrat so seemingly non-partisan that Romney Republicans will be tempted to cross the aisle in enough numbers to make a difference.
The way forward for Democrats lies to the left, and with the working classes. It lies with a firm ideological commitment to progressive values, and in winning back the Obama voters Democrats lost to Trump in 2016 without giving ground on commitments to social justice. It does not lie in the wealthy suburbs that voted for Romney over Obama in 2012, or in ideological self-effacement on core economic concerns.
I think it’s quite possible to run different kinds of campaigns in different areas, and I’m not faulting Ossoff for running the campaign he did. But I do think there’s something fucked up about the Democratic party’s idea that it should run civil, non-ideological campaigns. We’re not running to be the president of Fred Hiatt.
No amount of civilitude and centrist common sense is going to get suburban upper-middle class white voters who have spent their entire lives voting Republican to reconsider their obsession with tax cuts and become Democrats en masse (yes, you can pick off a few I’m sure).
The whole non-ideological civilitude thing smacks of class bullshit. We don’t need to fight, we’re all reasonable here, not like the poors! That’s what it sounds like to me, at least. Republicans have gotten lower-income white Americans to vote Republican by feeding them xenophobia and resentment. Xenophobia doesn’t pay your medical bills. Obamacare does. We just can’t cede rural America to Republicans, not when Republicans are offering so little to rural America policy-wise.
NCSteve
Man. The scene of a mass strawman massacre is never a pretty sight.
Hunter Gathers
So, after making the economic, populist pitch, how do you suppose Democrats answer the only question that really matters in rural America:
“What are you going to do about all the niggers?”
Doug!
@NCSteve:
You really think that the Democratic party doesn’t waste too much time trying to win Fred Hiatt types over? Rahm Emmanuel talked to David Brooks constantly when he was CoS.
Doug!
@Hunter Gathers:
Parnell didn’t feed them anything racist and he almost won.
Jeffro
Here is what rural Americans voted for and embrace lustily: a president* who insults them to their face, lies to them, and then lies some more
Trumpov Turns an Iowa Rally Into a Venting Session
Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em all.
We’ve got some serious, wideband voter registration to carry out, fellow Dems. And then we need to get those folks their damned not-needed-because-there-is-no-voter-fraud-but-whatever IDs, and then we need to get ’em to the polls in 2018 and 2020. Let’s get to work and also fuck rural Americans who’d vote for someone who treats them like the slack-jawed lie-swallowing morons that they are.
msdc
Sorry, Doug, but the whole premise here is bullshit. In the April special election, Ossoff essentially tied all the other Republican candidates combined. The margin for that “non-ideological” campaign (whatever that’s supposed to mean) was a lot closer than Archie Parnell’s. The only lesson to be gained from comparing the two is that it’s a lot harder to win an upset special election once the race has been nationalized, because that mobilizes the opposition’s support as well as your own.
Also, somebody needs to explain why the left keeps insisting we can only win if we follow the model of approved left candidates who also lost their elections.
Mike J
Who has won a big blowout victory over fascists lately? Macron.
D58826
Not sure where Howard Dean got his numbersd last night but he said that if you can show the same 8 point improvement in less red states the D’s can pick up 74 seats in the House. Now that seemslike at lot but all they need to do is flip the 23 districts that Hillary won but sent an R to congress and the pick up two more and they control the House. By a razor slim majority but control none the less. Deans comments seem a lot less plausible for the Senate where the D’s have to defend 24 seats 10 of which are in Trump states. They then have to pick up 3 more to get to 51.
Teddys Person
Like what? They seem perfectly happy with the conservative/Republican ideology that Hunter Gathers articulated so well in comment #2.
Doug!
@Teddys Person:
Uh, sarcasm
Chris
@msdc:
This. As I’ve repeatedly pointed out a few thread backs, with no response.
Mike in DC
1. Recruit and run good candidates everywhere.
2. Localize the campaign message, along with the national one
3. Spend good money for good results
4. Register voters and fight suppression
5. Re 2: have a unified message and platform to run on, not from
Mnemosyne
@msdc:
Also, are we allowed to mention the ratfucking letter and mysterious white powder that were sent to Handel to make her look like the victim of eeeevvvviiiillllll leftists, or are we supposed to pretend that never happened?
ETA: I am cynically assuming that it’s a crime that will mysteriously never be solved.
Doug!
@Mike J:
True but Macron is pretty far left, just not as left as French socialists.
geg6
It also has a much larger African American population than GA-06. He apparently went all out to get them to the polls and increased their turnout by quite a lot. But I’m told that we shouldn’t cater to anyone but white male far leftists. So it must have been a fluke there in SC.
trollhattan
@msdc:
In retrospect it may be that a bigger push for Ossoff in April puts him in office since it was the Republicans who were in disarray at the time. We’ll never know but each district is unique unto itself and deserves a unique strategy. This ain’t tube socks and one size does not fit all.
BTW, from every video I’ve seen, Handel is a uniquely awful person and candidate. She comes off like an HOA board president-Mary Kay regional manager who will grant your paint color only if you order an extra crate of bronzer.
Doug!
@msdc:
You make a good point, but I still think Dems should contest rural districts more and do so with left-wing populism.
Robin G.
I suspect SC wouldn’t have been so close if the national party apparatus had gotten more involved. One whiff of “elites” and the rural voters’ fangs come out.
My hot take is, compete everywhere, send money where you can get the most bang for your buck, and keep the national spotlight clear.
Doug!
@geg6:
Fighting to maintain and improve access to health care should appeal to people regardless of race. That’s the beauty of it.
Crashman06
I think Doug is on to something here, and it worries me that some Democrats are so dismissive of it. Democrats need to be offering concrete, easy-to-understand left-wing policies that can make people’s lives demonstratively better. Or at least we need to try this approach and see if it works. Last November’s campaign tried to appeal to the civility and centrism of upper middle class white suburban voters, and it failed.
RareSanity
As a resident of GA-6, I am.
Of course I was going to vote for Ossoff, but he yielded so much ground in a Republican district with his “I think both parties waste too much money”. So you think that people in a Republican district are going to trust a Democrat to correct that situation?
Also, the way he overplayed his “national security” experience, and it hurt him dearly. Saying that he’s “sent a team into harm’s way” to film a documentary sounds like someone trying to bullshit you. He was already young and inexperienced, people didn’t need to also feel like he was full of shit too.
Doug!
@Robin G.:
Bingo
D58826
@Chris: Lizz Warren wins in Mass. but loses bigly in Alabama. Have to run someone who fits in Alabama. I don’t care if they are bluedogs (well I might if they want to make Hitler’s birthday a national holiday). Enough with the mostly Bernie inspired purity ponys
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
Wait a goddamn minute here. I thought this was all Nancy Pelosi’s fault. JFC, I can’t keep up with all the hot takes.
liberal
@Doug!: I thought that by French standards neither Macron nor the “Socialists” are all that left-wing.
Hunter Gathers
@Doug!: Dems in blood red districts will get close, but only going Full Metal Bigot will get them over the hump in those districts. I never put much stock in the results oif special elections. Remember when Scott Brown was the New Hotness?
msdc
@Mike J: We’re not supposed to talk about center-left candidates who actually win their elections!
One other thing I want to point out about these Ossoff-Parnell comparisons: nobody ever mentions that until very recently (i.e, 2016), GA-06 was actually *more* conservative than SC-05. SC-05 was represented by John Spratt, a conservative Democrat, until the 2010 wave. GA-06 was Newt Gingrich’s turf. Relative to their baselines, Ossoff actually moved his district more than Parnell did.
But we’re not supposed to talk about that either.
joel hanes
Ossof was leading until :
– the damned baseball-game shooter
– Handel and some of her assistants found some suspicious white powder along with a flyer calling her a c#nt in their mailboxes, called the cops, and screamed “liberal terrorism”.
Ossof still beat the D percentage in Price’s most recent run by a considerable margin, and electrified a moribund local Democratic Party.
From this we can conclude that Ossof’s messaging was at fault?
Chris
@Mike J:
I really, really, really, really love the fact that Corbyn has been adulated as Showing Us The Way after he achieved exactly the same result as Hillary Clinton (a meaningless moral victory after which the conservatives were still the ones actually running the government), but Macron the ultimate neoliberal establishment centrist fucking destroying everyone to his right and left caused… no commentary at all.
I mean, don’t get me wrong: in both cases the really smart comment is probably “different countries have different politics and we should be wary of translating the results from one into the other.” But is it really so much to ask that Corbyn actually win before anyone starts treating him as the way to the future?
Another Scott
Dunno, Doug! I guess I need to pile on a bit, too.
The people who do politics day in and day out at the state and national level (as opposed to for any particular candidate) aren’t stupid. They want more than anything to find ways to win. Because winning is the first step to getting one’s hands on the levers of power to actually change policies.
If the DNC or DCCC or DSCC or the state parties thought that there really was a magical 50%+1 that could be had by running farther left, don’t you think they would jump on that with the proverbial 16 ton weight? Maybe they could do better (of course we all can), but maybe they actually are doing what they think the evidence indicates is the best way to win.
Nobody would be happier than me to have more Lefty McLeftish people in government. It’s a long, long process to change the direction toward where we need to go. It’s not as simple as just Running Left if it doesn’t fit the environment…
Only 25-30% of the people in the country call themselves “liberal” and it has been that way for decades – since at least 1974.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
D58826
@RareSanity:
I read an article by Rich Lowrey (yea I know) in which he commented that Ossoff looked so young that it seemed more like he was running for 8th grade student council.
Now aside from the fact that the age requirement in the Constitution is is 25 years old, has Lowrey looked at Jared? He looks like he is a JR High student. Sen Tom Cotton started growing a beard to give him a more mature look when he runs for president.
msdc
@Doug!: I have no problem with either of those points, but it doesn’t require devouring our own to do it.
The Man Bun Ken table in the school cafeteria decided they liked Parnell (a former Goldman Sachs employee!) and hated Ossoff (former aide to perfidious neoliberal John Lewis), and that’s the only reason scorching hot takes like Atkins’s got written.
joel hanes
@Mnemosyne:
I am cynically assuming that it’s a crime that will mysteriously never be solved.
Nor even pursued. Much like the non-search for the forger of the TANG documents that took down Dan Rather.
liberal
@Doug!: Exactly. You can push more liberal (“populist”) economics without compromising your position on, say, race.
IMHO the problem here is that, regardless of what was put in the primary platform—which, incidentally, HRC didn’t really run on, given that her campaign was one of the least issues-focussed in recent history—the people attacking this idea of trying to broaden the Dem’s appeal by moving left on economics are, deep down, simply opposed to more liberal economic policies.
hovercraft
@Hunter Gathers:
Two thumbs up !!!!!!!!!!
All the people who are bitching about non-offensive centrist now, are the same fucking assholes who said after the ass whopping we got in 2010, that it was actually a good thing that the blue dogs got wiped out. Show me one election where a “progressive” has won in a red district or state, just one, please. I live in fucking New Jersey, and I know that my congressman couldn’t get elected in South Jersey, never. Frank Pallone is not some raging liberal, but to the in bred idiots who live down the shore, he’s a commie bastard who wants to give their hard earned money to the blacks and browns who are trying to take over the state and the country.
RareSanity
@joel hanes:
– The GOP money started flowing into the district in large amounts
For a very long time, he was the only person in the race that could afford any large scale advertising. Even in the final weeks, the majority of pro-Handel ads were not actually from her campaign. The attacks dogs came in and I don’t think Ossoff understood how vulnerable he was to their attacks.
RareSanity
@D58826:
Jared didn’t have to campaign for his job, Ossoff did.
liberal
@Chris: Yawn. He drastically outperformed everyone’s expectations, just as HRC underperformed (in the EC at least).
Not to mention: if you think the media treatment of HRC was unfair, it’s a nothingburger compared to the nonstop attacks on Corbyn.
Chris
@D58826:
Well, yeah. That’s the part the Berniebros refuse to acknowledge: you can either run somebody in every district or you can run pure real progressives, but not both. Red states aren’t going to approve massive redistribution programs that they know will mostly go to black people and immigrants.
germy
@trollhattan:
Holy shit, you nailed it! That’s exactly her vibe.
What happens in 2018? Who runs against her, and does she lose? Any predictions?
tpherald
You look so pretty in your new lace sleeves
Chris
@liberal:
Oh, I agree entirely on that last one. Like I said: he pulled off exactly the same thing that Hillary Clinton did.
But that still doesn’t explain why he’s being brought in as a meaningful guide to U.S. politics while Macron just one country over is being completely ignored. (And not because there was any lack of True Progressives in that race, ones who made Bernie Sanders look like Michael Bloomberg).
Raven Onthill
“Lie to the bourgeoisie all you want, because they will hear only what they wish, and to the aristocracy, because they will not hear at all, and certainly to the government, the organ of the other two. But never to the working class.” — fictional Fredrich Engels, Steven Brust and Emma Bull, Freedom and Necessity
This Troskyist opinion (Burst is a Trot) holds up pretty damn well, doesn’t it?
tobie
Hogwash. Of all the special elections we’ve had thus far the two decidedly non-populist candidates (Ossoff and Parnell) did best. Populist Quist did the worst in the most winnable contest in Montana, where a Democratic governor just won reelection in spite of Trump’s solid win in the state. Remember Price won by over 20% in GA-06 2016; I don’t have the results for the district in the 2014 gubernatorial race but I’m sure the Republican candidate won overwhelmingly.
Progressive populism plays well in the midwest but it won’t work everywhere. Sorry, Doug, but the facts do not fit your narrative. What’s going on with all this Monday morning quarterbacking? Is it a dude-bro thing?
I’m all for thinking about policies and messaging. I just can’t take the posturing by amateurs who’ve never run or won an election.
cintibud
Republicans – the anti-democratic party
germy
@joel hanes:
If they pursued it, the trail might lead back to a republican operative. And that would be… awkward.
Belafon
It sounds to me like Ossoff chose the campaign to run, because of the people around him.
I live in a highly Republican area, and a very well off one. If I were to run against John Ratcliffe, I would have to run in a way to sway a whole lot of Republicans to my side, because the district he’s in is 75% Republicans. My campaign would probably look a whole lot like Ossoff’s because of the people around here. And I guarantee there’s a floor of at least 48% who are racist enough to never vote for a Democrat no matter what I’d say.
Another Scott
@Crashman06: You weren’t paying attention to Hillary, then.
The problem isn’t the message. The problem is all of the other structural impediments:
– Gerrymandering
– Media being owned by conservative/reactionary companies and individuals
– Voter suppression
– Other reactionary state and national policies that make it hard for normal people to feel that they have a stake in the outcome and that their vote matters
– and yes, consequence-free interference by external actors (foreign and domestic)
Cheers,
Scott.
Turgidson
Ossoff ran the kind of campaign he probably needed to run to give himself the best shot in that district. It sounds from the post-mortems like he backed too far off the “if Trump freaks you out, vote for me” talking points during the runoff, but a fire-breathing mini-Bernie would have done no better with a bunch of wealthy suburban Georgians. What I think happened in GA06 is that the nationalization of the race over such a long period of time eventually galvanized the loyal GOPers to vote for Handel as much as the district’s Dems and anti-Trump indies and some GOPers were excited to vote. I also think, as lame (and to voters like us, terrifying on many things) as Karen Handel is, she’s basically out of central casting as a milquetoast GOP candidate. She didn’t freak out the same voters who may have voted for Hillary or 3rd party because Trump is a wackjob. They’re used to candidates like Handel. The extended runoff period gave her a chance to run as a typical Georgia Republican, and that was enough to hang on.
The candidate in South Carolina who came close to pulling it off probably ultimately benefited from the lack of attention his race got. I doubt a splashy entry by the national party into that race would have tipped the scales – more likely, some of the typical GOP voters who didn’t bother to vote would have seen the ads, etc. and decided to vote to keep a godless commie from the Democrat Party from stealing that seat while no one was looking.
I don’t think there’s a one size fits all answer. And the GOP will keep going to the “ZOMG Pelosi hippies sockulism” scare tactics until that well runs dry, which is clearly not the case right now – maybe by 2018 when Trump has blundered us into some international crisis, said a bunch of idiotic shit that freaked out the markets, and antagonized Mueller’s team to the point where the WH is visibly buried in subpoenas, that shit won’t work well enough to save them. But right now it still is. Obviously the Party needs to provide resources to challengers. But I don’t know how they do it without drawing unwanted or unhelpful national attention to rural/suburban races where some GOP mouthbreather screaming “HIPPIES, etc.” loud enough is enough to flip the tribalism switch in enough GOP-leaning voters to keep the seats red.
Let’s just hope all the stories we heard about the Democrats being overwhelmed with potential candidates earlier this year turns out to be true and we run good candidates in as many races as possible, and give them enough resources to at least get their names out to the voters. If voters really want to stick a finger in Hair Furor’s eye in fall 2018, hopefully that will enough to build a wave.
D58826
@RareSanity: True but I would rather have a youthful Ossoff as a back bencher in the House than risk that Jared is so close to Der Fuhrer that one day when Der Fuhrer was out on the links he asked Jared to hold the nuclear foot ball while trying to make a difficult putt
smintheus
All true, but the truth can be boiled down even further. Republicans always run campaigns centered on socially divisive b^llsh!t, fauxrage, and inconsequential distractions. They can’t run on issues because voters don’t agree with them on the issues.
So if Democrats try to run as innocuous civilitudinarians, then inevitably they’re going to be fighting on the Republican turf of b^llsh!t, fauxrage, and distractions. The best way to avoid that trap is to center your campaign on issues that matter enough to voters that they won’t pay attention to Republican attempts to dumb down the campaign.
msdc
@liberal: Parties to the left of the Socialists and their coalition partners currently occupy a whopping 27 seats in the 577 seat National Assembly.
Macron is a centrist by French terms, which means he’s said he wants to rebuild the French economy along a Nordic model.
Snarki, child of Loki
Dems need to use Truman as a model, for how to fight the GOP.
The Moar You Know
Any Dem who advocates this ought to be publicly flogged. It’s beyond fucked up. Literally the last thing Dems, or the nation, needs right now.
James Powell
@Hunter Gathers:
This is exactly the problem every Democrat faces. I am at a total loss for a solution.
The Moar You Know
@joel hanes: Did you see that flyer? Damn false flag Republican plant if I ever saw one. Dems don’t talk about the “bourgeoisie”. That’s the communists, circa 1935, and they don’t do that anymore either.
Mnemosyne
@joel hanes:
It’s weird to me that those two things are being shoved down the memory hole and we’re only supposed to criticize the things Ossoff did directly without pointing out the ratfucking that happened to drag his campaign down.
Major Major Major Major
Bouie wrote this week about the Obama-to-Trump vote flippers. New analyses found that these are people who are right-wing reactionaries socially and leftists fiscally; what we might call White Socialists. Up until now they’d been torn between voting for white people or voting for socialism. Trump, in his campaign rhetoric, said that he would protect the “virtuous” (“white”) entitlements like Medicare and Social Security. Trump, in his campaign rhetoric, said he would bring back jobs and repair our crumbling infrastructure and make healthcare affordable for all. He would also repeal Obamacare so that the blackity blacks wouldn’t be mooching via Medicaid, never mind that these White Socialists are the majority of people on Medicaid. In his campaign rhetoric, Trump promised white socialism.
Now, a voter who isn’t paying close attention might have thought Trump actually meant it. Obviously enough of them did. For once, they didn’t have to choose between whiteness and socialism, so they voted for the candidate of white socialism.
We can’t ‘win’ these people’s votes with a lefty economic message; the very best that we can do is make them once again have to decide between the two.
Bobby Thomson
@Doug!: upstate New Yorker who knows dick about the Midwest says what?
D58826
@tobie: Some guy by the name of TIP once said all politics are local. When the D’s recruit candidates they have to keep that in mind. It doesn’t mean you run away from the national platform but you might have to de-emphasize some things and emphasize others based on the local race.
And the D’s who can come up with a message that convinces those WWC voters that 1. their economic problems are not the result of POC and
2. as the old saying went ‘you might not want one to move in next door’ but your economic boat is tied to the economic boat of the POC. The only way forward is to vote for candidates that will raise both boats because the GOP will sink the WWC boat just as soon as they finish with the POC.
Now that guy should be given a life time pension to live on the Rivera after he retires from politics.
RareSanity
@tobie:
You’re looking at this the wrong way…it’s not that the district is so Republican that a Democrat doesn’t stand much of a chance. It’s that if you are going to win, it’s not going to be by you presenting yourself as a milquetoast version of a Democrat…or the always bad “Republican Lite”.
Over the past 10 or so years, GA-6 has had a YUGE influx of immigrants and transplants He needed to get all of those communities out to the polls. His campaign was so bland and boring, if I was contemplating whether or not I would sit on the sidelines, vote for the Republican, or vote for Ossoff, I’d have a hard time coming to the conclusion that he was the best of those three options.
Like I said in an earlier comment, the whole “I think both parties waste too much money” was not a good main message in a Republican district. If the district leans Republican, chances are that the proverbial “common wisdom” is that the GOP is fiscally responsible compared to the tax and spend liberals. After saying this over and over again, he offered no evidence/examples of how the GOP wastes money, and what he would do to combat it. The main premise of his campaign was basically a “throw away line” to people that may be open to being convince to vote for a Democrat in a traditionally GOP district.
dww44
@msdc: while I agree that it’s personally more palatable if a Democratic candidate runs as a real Democrat and eschews the milquetoast broderism that so many of our candidates have chosen to adhere to, I do think that this:
Explains Ossoff’s underperformance vis-a-vis SC 05. The race whose results I always thought should have been audited (to the extent they could even be audited with no individual vote paper trail) was that April Jungle primary when Ossoff came oh so close to winning the seat outright. That would have been so sweet. I'd still be reveling in that victory had it happened! Plus I so hate our voting system now that if those results could have been changed via an audit, we might be a step closer to getting a voting system with verifiable integrity.
D58826
@Hunter Gathers: and/or spics
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Seems to me Bullock-Gianforte would be a better case study for this than any post-trump specials. Did Bullock run an “ideological, populist campaign”? Did the obscure Goldman Sachs exec in South Carolina? I don’t think the guy in KS was particularly lefty but I’ll defer to anyone who was on the ground or closely followed it. IIRC he had won elected office in KS before (as a state legislator?) and was a veteran, which is a hobbyhorse of mine for these districts, at least some of them, and depending on the rest of their bio/persona/platform.
RareSanity
@Mnemosyne:
Well, if we are expecting that there isn’t going to be ratfucking afoot from the GOP during an election, then we may as well pack it all in now.
I don’t say that to be snarky, quite the opposite. Although Democrats should not abandon their ideals to win elections, not assuming that the GOP is going to cheat in elections seems to be an equally dangerous threat to winning.
Chris
@Snarki, child of Loki:
McCullough’s biography of Truman includes a non-trivial section where, in the post-war 1940s, he’s getting all kinds of headaches from that era’s hardcore leftists/liberals who don’t trust him and think he’s a sellout – even after he’s spent years in Congress showing himself as a very reliable New Dealer.
These days, it’s hard not to be reminded of, or sympathize with, his “my God… what do these people want?”
Peale
@geg6: So basically he wasn’t running a populist message campaign.
Citizen_X
@Raven Onthill:
“Oh yeah? Just watch me.”
-Donald Trump
Major Major Major Major
@Chris: That would be Truman, the VP for that awful dynastic oligarch FDR who hired banksters for economic oversight, right?
Paul B.
Since I’ve stopped banging my head against the wall I’m feeling much better!
Maybe I should start it up again, so I can stop and get that feeling again— like when the pain stops.
Peale
IDK. Between 2012 and 2016 there was an about 20K vote upswing for the Democratic candidate in GA 06 (comparing presidential election to presidential election results). Were those 20K voters coming to the polls Democrats who hadn’t bothered to vote in the past? Or were they newly disgruntled GOP who didn’t want to be associated with that Trump guy? Ossoff was trying to hold those and it might have made more sense to appear to be a Democrat that was safe to vote for? I don’t think he took any positions that would turn off core Democrats. I could be wrong.
tobie
@RareSanity: As I said above, I think it’s good to consider policy and message and evaluate what could be done better. I just don’t see how an agenda that would be pitched as a massive income distribution program would work in an upper-class Republican district like GA-06.
It did and does perhaps work in Kansas-04, which includes the urban area of Wichita. It may or may not work in Montana, though I suspect a strong streak of libertarianism would help there. The fact that the state elected a Democratic governor and has a Democratic senator means it’s not a lost cause. We just needed a better candidate than Quist.
From the little I saw of Parnell’s campaign literature and videos, he too emphasized elimination of waste in procurement and the like. I imagine like Ossoff he was trying to court fiscally conservative but socially open Republicans. Those folks make up a large part of GA-06. And Ossoff did bring over many Republicans and independents, while also holding onto the Democrats–minority party though they are even with a “YUGE influx of immigrants and transplants,” to use your words. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough and part of the problem may be that Ossoff had a “D” after his name.
We’re all frustrated if not downright irate at the direction this country is going in and we all want to win. It’s a long haul, and we need to be prepared for disappointments along the way. 3 of the 4 special elections were in hindsight fought in difficult if not unwindable districts for Dems…but I see many promising signs for races in VA, PA, and CA in 2018.
Chris
@Major Major Major Major:
Yes, that’s essentially correct. (Although a non-trivial number of the bashers were former Roosevelt supporters themselves, I understand).
Fair Economist
@Doug!:
By French standards he’s center-right. He’s planning to revoke large sections of their labor protections, and he picked a conservative for his Prime Minister. He pretty much ran on the reviled “Centrist Dem” approach of business-friendly economic policies with a decent safety net.
dww44
@Turgidson: Thanks for your whole post. It was a sane and hopeful analysis of what just happened. I so hope that this part of your post reaches all state Democratic and local parties and the DNC. I do have faith in Tom Perez.
Steve in the ATL
@Mike J:
So the takeaway is we need to nominate investment bankers with mommy issues. Got it!
Fair Economist
With the current Republican healthcare plan, we could run on “we’ll make it possible for entrepreneurs to buy health care”. Because they can now, but they won’t under the Republican plan.
JMG
It’s bound to be a one-issue national platform for Democrats from here on in. Repeal Trumpcare and Replace it with Good Old Obamacare. If those white socialist voters prize their racial identity more than their actual physical health and personal finances, the country’s doomed anyway as a democracy. But I’ll bet a lot of them don’t.
Major Major Major Major
@Fair Economist:
Like his proposal to let companies negotiate things beyond a 35-hour work week? Or is there anything actually drastic in there?
Raven Onthill
@Citizen_X: They get it eventually; that’s why SC-5 shifted more than GA-6. It takes them a while, but once they get it, they get it, and “They will know, and they will never trust you again.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chris: a couple of the big names from the kitchen cabinet, no? Harry Hopkins, Truman’s predecessor as Veep and… I”m drawing a blank, the guy who’s son was part of the Clinton White House?
Major Major Major Major
@JMG:
We don’t need a lot, we just need enough. The coda to my post above @58 is that just restoring it to the balance where they have to pick one, white or socialism, will probably be adequate, and we can do that without throwing minorities under the bus.
joel hanes
@Mnemosyne:
those two things are being shoved down the memory hole
We’re not supposed to remember the four to five inches of rain that fell on the more Ossof-friendly precincts on election day, either.
smintheus
@Chris: A lot of Democrats were outraged when Truman was selected as VP candidate in 1944, largely because they thought he was a corrupt Pendergast Machine politician. Many of them were supporters of Henry Wallace, whom Truman replaced. They never forgave Truman that grudge.
sunny raines
happy to have trump voters on economic justice as long as it is not at the expense of social justice. But the problem with this argument is several fold including that the dem platform Clinton ran on already was WAY more on economic justice for the working class than the republican platform, but trump voters were too biased to care (even at their own expense), and/or were hungry to swallow obvious trump lies, and/or were too apathetic to learn the truth. It is not clear that running more left than the Dem platform already is does anything to overcome lies that people will not see as lies, and that doesn’t push away some large number of middle of the road Dems not interested in more left.
Elie
@Mike in DC:
THIS THIS THIS
That is all!!!!
And let us remember, EVERY candidate will have flaws being human and all.
I am sick reading some of the comments from so-called Bernie supporters on the newspaper column comment sections. I am assuming that many of them may be paid trolls who are purposely sowing demoralization and discord, but not all. How do we BUILD something with that negative energy? What is left to unite if the Democratic Party is just trashed?
GA-6 was always uphill and yet we lost by only 4 percentage points compared to 20 points the last Congressional. We have to have patience to build in red states and districts. How was it that we would completely flip these districts after years of being solidly Republican? Why was the test for the Democrats to convert the most resistant Republicans in the most resistant states in 6 months????
Honestly, Doug — STOP IT!!!
RareSanity
@tobie:
I hear you.
I think my frustration comes from actually living in the district and seeing that it is no longer the conservative stronghold it once was. I think Ossoff’s success was fueled mainly by frustrated Democrats that would have voted for anyone with a ‘D’ by their name. However, to flip a district like GA-6, a stronger candidate was going to be necessary. Not that Ossoff was particularly weak, but he did not have that certain “presence” that just kind of draws people in. He is/was young and inexperienced, and that’s how he came off during the campaign.
This is a symptom of the national party not searching for, or developing, candidates in as many districts as possible. Ossoff caught lightning in a bottle with all of the support from Kos in the first round, which in reality was his best chance to win. The longer the race dragged on, the less effect money he spent had.
Fair Economist
@Major Major Major Major:
That’s pretty drastic. Just because the French have it better than us doesn’t mean them slipping back to where we are isn’t drastic.
He’s also going to make it a lot easier to fire people. Hmm, could that possibly affect the above negotiations?
Chris
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That I don’t know. I do remember Hopkins, but not the person you’re mentioning.
@smintheus:
Yep.
From what I understand, there was a lot of the opposite reaction, too: a lot of the urban machine politicians and Southern Democrats who’d controlled the party before 1932 looked at his background, assumed he was One Of Them (a rural Southerner who’d then risen in politics through a big urban machine) and would be a welcome return to normalcy after twelve years of Roosevelt radicalism. They were shocked when he turned out to be not only a staunch New Dealer, but went even beyond their radicalism in other ways (i.e. being the first president in seventy years to make civil rights a serious issue again).
Fair Economist
@Elie:
THIS THIS THIS
Jim, Foolish Literalist
We used to have a couple of regular commenters from MT. I’d really be curious to know the on-the-ground view of Bullock and Quist
(just tried the Senate switchboard again: “Your call cannot be completed at this time”.)
gene108
Hillary Clinton did not run a non-ideological campaign.
She ran the most openly liberal campaigning of my lifetime openly championing gay rights, police accountability, raising the minimum wage, expanding the safety net, having a scheme to make college affordable again, etc.
And that scared the shit out of a lot of white folks.
FlipYrWhig
David Atkins is a fucking idiot.
Librarian
H@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Harold Ickes.
Major Major Major Major
@Fair Economist: there’s a big difference between poking holes in a mandated workweek cap and sliding back to US labor standards.
ETA: I’ll allow that it would be a big-ish change but most of the candidates were proposing changes.
Mnemosyne
@gene108:
Plus she put Black women front and center in her campaign. White people did NOT like that.
StringOnAStick
@Fair Economist:
This. My husband would like to form his own company and contract with his current employer, but he now has a pre-existing condition so that plan is over with. I’ve talked to other small business owners (the rare liberal ones) and they brought it to attention before I thought about it. Why risk starting your own company when the risk includes running without coverage for you and your family, or crap insurance if you can maybe afford it? The AHCA has all these penalties for being uncovered for any reason; that was aimed at people who drop in and out as their income makes them ineligible for subsidies, but it is also a perverse disincentive to anyone contemplating starting their own company. By trying to slap around “those people”, they also whacked the creation of small businesses.
I expect to see a lot of disruption in employer-provided health care plans as well, since the AHCA is going to produce race to the bottom effects in individual plans, and ones offered by your employer are going to have to follow in order to adequately offer tribute to share holders/mammon.
Keith G
Yes, yes, yes. Even members of the brain trust that once guided Barak Obama to the presidency are saying this. I do not know why so many here cannot adjust to this. I guess once a position is staked out, it’s just easier to dig in. The GOP are in the process of fucking everyone who isn’t making $50,000 or more and the ones making $30,000 and below are getting fucked and then pissed on before getting repeatedly kicked. They will give their attention to a passionate fighter. Equivocation will be punished.
FlipYrWhig
@tobie:
tobie, unlike David Atkins, is not a fucking idiot.
Waratah
Please do not forget the local elections like county, city, mayor judge district attorney etc.
My children were raised liberal but when I asked my daughter to just vote straight democrat ticket she could not. She knew and liked the lady running for mayor who was Republican. These are the people that continue up to state and federal elections and are the ones the voters are more likely to know.
Chris
@gene108:
Yep.
And the usual suspects couldn’t take “yes” for an answer.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chris: Harold Ickes, FDR’s Sec of the Interior. His son was a close aide to Bubba
Steve in the ATL
@Peale:
You are correct
@tobie:
You are also correct.
My FB feed is full of non-GA-06 people who are certain that Ossoff would have won if he had run a proper Marxist campaign instead of running as a rightwing neoliberal sellout.
HeleninEire
So I know this is totally OT and BJ blasphemy, but y’all need to go to Wonkette and read the comments on Rebecca’s post about starting an advice column. They are FUCKING epic.
It’s just like when (every once in a while) the comments there devolve to “that time I got drunk.” Absolutely Fabulous. You go look! Especially if you need a laugh and a break from whateverthefuck today’s Trump scandal is.
You’re welcome!
FlipYrWhig
I like how Archie Fucking Parnell, who literally worked for the investment bank that people like David Atkins think is the source of all evil, can get ret-conned into a crusading populist just in the nick of time to be the focal point for a stupid unfalsifiable theory of progressive victory. He is one of the stupider fuckers other than the ones who post here to make similar arguments.
Mnemosyne
@RareSanity:
You got what I was saying exactly backwards. I’m saying that if we don’t acknowledge that this loss partially happened because of ratfucking, we won’t take proper precautions to fight it in the next race.
If your house gets robbed and you don’t from that moment forward take the basic precaution of locking your front door, you’re going to be persistently puzzled as to why your house keeps getting robbed.
FlipYrWhig
@Crashman06: Let’s see ONE PERSON run for office on this strategy AND WIN where it wasn’t expected before concluding that it’s an unstoppable juggernaut, mkay?
Steve in the ATL
@RareSanity:
I agree with you here. My hope is that Ossoff will be to GA-06 politics what Big Star was to power pop music. He may not have struck gold, but he will have inspired other, better candidates by showing that a D can kick ass in this district.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Keith G: funny, both the text you cite and the text you add are meaningless, and yet you still manage to be douchey and supercilious.
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s the Keith G “brand.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: Yeah, I’ve missed his shape-shifting but always pompous contrarianism lately.
glory b
@liberal: “…given that her campaign was one of the least issues-focussed in recent history…”
Do you have a cite for that?
A while back, I think it was in Vox, I saw one of those word cloud things for HRC’s campaign. The word she used moist often? Jobs! Their explanation was that while she said those things, about jibs and training and infrastructure, What the media reported on most was her mentions of Trump.
And remember, they’d run an empty podium waiting for trump to arrive, rather than a speech by Hillary.
Jeffro
@Mike in DC: Move #4 to the top and I’m in. ;)
RareSanity
@Mnemosyne:
Sorry…I misinterpreted your comment.
I agree.
Elie
@Keith G:
But NEITHER “LOST BY LARGE MARGINS!!!!!!”
Osoff in fact closed what had been a large gap in performance from the last Congressional election where the Democrat lost by 20 POINTS!!!!
There is no cookie cutter candidate. Ideally, the candidate should be a local who is well aware of the culture and sensitivities in the area. As far as Hillary, she decided to run a hands off campaign ON BERNIE!!! And it was Bernie who did most of the damage to her and is doing most of the damage STILL not only to her reputation but to the brand of the Democratic Party.
I am personally looking for unity in this party. I acknowledge it will be a very imperfect unity built of our crazy quilt of cultures and priorities but we need bridging — not further fragmentation! How does Bernie’s approach bring us anything but a fractured and demoralized party. I don’t get him and I don’t get those who support humiliating Hillary and those who ran her VERY CLOSE campaign further. Every word out of their mouths further infuriates people like me who have worked very hard for this party to build it. To insult the party is to insult ME and MY EFFORTS.
Thanks for listening.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
MSNBC chyron: “4 GOP Senators oppose health care bill”
no “for now”
SatanicPanic
I very much agree with this, but I don’t know that populism is the way forward. A lot of that stuff is dumb.
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
…for now.
I’ve seen speculation that Mitch just wants this the fuck over with whether it passes or not, but there’s also pretty much nothing I can do at any rate.
Jeffro
@gene108: @Mnemosyne: True indeed.
Chris
@Elie:
This.
tobie
@RareSanity: Thanks for the local insights! They strike me as very apt. I was crestfallen after the first round because we came so close and I thought that was our best chance. I hope the local Democratic club has gotten larger after this election and that a candidate with more gravitas will emerge. I gather that Ossoff was the only serious Democratic contender to run for this seat. I forgot the names of the other two in the first round. Were they more convincing?
By the way…while we’re busy navel-gazing on Dem losses it looks like there have been a few developments. Trump admits he has no tapes of his conversations with Comey (liar, liar, liar) and 3 Republicans have expressed opposition to the AHCA. Keep fighting folks.
FlipYrWhig
Just to grind one more jagged piece of whatever into David Atkins’s stupid fucking face:
Source: South Carolina’s 5th District: The Forgotten Special Election
David Atkins is a liar and a fool, as per usual.
Turgidson
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Exactly. They’ll proclaim themselves to be satisfied when the cruelty of this abomination masquerading as a bill is reduced by .000002%. Just like just enough of those “moderates” in the House did when a rounding error’s worth of money was very publicly added to the high risk pool’s funding.
germy
I’m not sure how a democratic candidate should address the ratfucking. Because in this case (the letter to the republican candidate) the above example would be more like “The crook next door pretends his house was broken into, and blames it on you.”
Should Ossoff had said “There’s something fishy about that letter. Doesn’t sound like it was written by a liberal. I suspect a dirty trick by a republican operative.” ?
I’m not sure how effective locking doors is when the opposition is running disinfo campaigns.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Yup, things may change, move a few commas, Flake and Heller (or whoever, they’re not giving names) say their satisfied with the substantive changes. Collins gets to pose for pictures, Murkowski gets some kind of pay-off…
But the phone lines are jammed. Maybe a certain would-be wizard will even summon his millions and millions of young people to Mitch McConnell’s window.
ETA: ETA: @FlipYrWhig:
Ryan of Ohio? THE Tim Ryan? Tribune of the Rust Belt Prole-Penis-Tariat? A country club?
D58826
@Chris: Sounds like that old saying ‘if you want it done right do it yourself’ . only way to get the perfect candidate running the perfect election is do it your self. :-)
gene108
@Keith G:
I think a lot of people – not political junkies like us – are fairly fed up with the acrimony in politics today. They don’t want a Revolution of the proletariat to usher in the golden age of socialism.
They just wish the Big Evil Corp they work for, when they post profits, would pass more of it into their pockets.
They aren’t plugged in and they don’t like politicians fighting and not accomplishing anything. They want a calm, civil government, which isn’t always in the headlines as BREAKING NEWS!.
I don’t know what the way forward is, but there are a couple of big factors that hinder Democrats: (1) the media, B-J commenters understand the issues of how bad the media is and how slanted they are towards Republicans, and (2) 37 years of Republicans proving “government is the problem”.has discouraged a lot of voters faith in government to the point they want to “burn the place down”.
I think a lot has to happen to make people open to a liberal-partisan platform, which needs to work against the entrenched interests that want to block and control a lot of this country. Until that happens, I’m not sure it’d help to really start trying to convince people that government is not the problem.
SatanicPanic
@The Moar You Know: This. I don’t think we have to agree on every last policy, but the idea that we’re not up against people who want to hurt us is stupid. There’s no more room for polite disagreement.
Jeffro
In the meantime, this is what I’ve been saying: you don’t have to prove collusion (although we will, and then some) in order to point out that the president* has betrayed his oath of office already.
Face It: The President’s Actions Say “Guilty!”
Gee, ya think, Josh? But here’s the kicker:
tobie
OT…after calling Capito and Toomey this morning to vote no on the AHCA, I called Tim Ryan’s Youngstown office to tell him that he should be fighting the Republican healthcare bill, not Nancy Pelosi. It felt good. Do the same.
(I’m in MD but figured I could say something to WV and PA senators as a resident of an immediately neighboring state.)
trollhattan
@gene108:
You’re correct but I must add a coda: a LOT of voters asserted she did not have policies at all, or completely misstated her policies. I repeatedly heard examples of both for a year before the election. If there’s one thing we can all agree on, Hillary was prepared as she has always been. Every policy was fully fleshed out and accessible for all to see. And yet we elect somebody who believes in a future for coal and steam power, who can’t articulate the difference between federal and state law and who finds raping women and girls to be entertainment.
Turgidson
@Major Major Major Major:
McConnell wants to win. I think maybe he went into this process expecting it to end with a doomed vote on a shitty bill, and then moving on to plain old tax cuts. But when his 13 angry men committee actually coalesced around a bill relatively quickly, it was pretty similar to the House’s pile of vomit, and most of the “moderates” expressed a willingness to slit the throats of their own constituents and hopefully their own electoral futures by voting for this thing or something close to it, I think he decided he was all in on getting this travesty passed.
Hopefully, for the sake of millions of people who don’t deserve to die from being buried by their own medical bills, I am wrong.
FlipYrWhig
I mean, for Christ’s sake, Doug. “This moderate pragmatist’s close race proves the appeal of ideologically red-hot in-your-face liberalism, unlike those moderate pragmatists, who suck!” That’s what you’re citing approvingly? Is it the beard? Is every Democrat with a beard automatically a lefty pugilist now?
Aimai
@msdc: bingo.
Major Major Major Major
@germy: What if you did something less specific, along the lines of, these people are trying to steal your votes — to silence you while they pick your pocket! Don’t let them, make your voices heard!
If they keep one of us from voting with voter ID, we need YOU to help us get two more to vote by talking to your neighbors and volunteering!
Fair Economist
@glory b:
Yes, the criticism of HRC for running a “centrist” campaign ring false because it was easily the most leftist Democrat platform since Dukakis – considerably left of Obama, even.
I do think she made a mistake by not focusing on it in the debates. As you pointed out, the media ruthlessly suppressed her policy messages and the debates were her only chance to be heard on them. She mostly chose to focus on Trump’s unsuitability – a perfectly valid message, but one that was getting through already. Mind you, this is a mistake to learn from, not a demonstration that hillarywastheworstcandidateever or some such nonsense. Like Elle says, everybody has flaws and everybody makes mistakes.
Yutsano
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s the three most conservative (and Ayn Rand Paul Jr) who are saying it doesn’t go far enough. The amendment process will not have enough popcorn.
lamh36
OT…but looking at the video from outside McConnell’s office and Mahn…look. My grandmother was wheelchair bound and my mom has a disability. if my grandmother Beulah decided to go peacefully protest this bullshit health law and then these mofos did this to her…when i tell you ALL 10 of her kids and ALL 25+ grandchildren/great/great great children…would be down there fuqn shit up!!!
NCSteve
@Doug!: Anecdotes are anecdotal.
The strawman is the idea that there’s some monolithic party organization that whose Central Committee or Presidium runs candidates through an ideological acceptability filter, runs them by Third Way for a background check, grooms them for office, and chooses who runs where.
Jesus, would that there was.
Ossoff chose to run and he was who he was. To whatever extent there’s a recruitment process, it’s slapdash, haphazard, unofficial, and local. A bunch of people like you and me threw a shitton of money at him because the DNCC proved itself foolish and feckless by not throwing all of its resources behind the Democrat running for Pompeo’s seat in Kansas for fear of making the Dem’s branding problem worse. They leaned hard on the party to not repeat that “mistake” in Georgia and managed to bid that race up into the most important by-election ever. And now that it’s over, we get your 20/20 hindsight recrimination because Ossoff wasn’t a True Progressive with a True Progressive message which is somehow now the DNC’s fault? Because Fred Hiatt and David Brooks?
Seriously?
Yeah, okay, maybe a strawman or two was slain there, too.
Mnemosyne
@germy:
Probably something more like, This is terrible! I am so shocked that someone would threaten my opponent that way. I have been in touch with the police to get updated on the investigation so we can find the perpetrator as quickly as possible.
Though, in retrospect, it was probably the shooting in DC that did more damage. Now I can’t remember which happened first, the shooting or the letters.
Turgidson
@lamh36:
And watch the GOP ghouls and their media apparatus, along with the idiots in the MSM, spin this as “the dirty hippies are getting violent! All the opposition is from Leftist agitators!”, get away with it, and even use it as a justification for passing this travesty.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
How does this sac of dryer lint not blow away in a strong breeze. Or a weak one.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
This. But the purity ponies are too busy whining about how their perfect dreamboat of a candidate never runs to bother trying to change that.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Mnemosyne: The letters.
AnonPhenom
@tobie:
The posture of the professionals who lose more than they win elections, and manage to get paid big bucks either way, is so much more palatable… /s
liberal
@NCSteve:
Not sure about things at the level of the House, and not sure about “monolithic,” but there are obviously filters in place at the level of presidential candidacies.
Here in MA the hopeless Martha Coakley has blown at least two general elections. I’m relatively new to MA, but my impression is that she was selected not because she was a superior candidate, or because she was put forward by the grassroots (yes, obviously she won primaries, but there are filters before the primaries), but because while she’s a crappy campaigner, she has extensive ties to the Democratic establishment here.
liberal
@tobie:
LOL. Jesus, I hate this fucking trope with the passion of a thousand suns.
Mnemosyne
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
Ah, okay. So, unfortunately, we were probably fucked once the shooting happened, because it seemed to validate the threats in the letters.
Alex
It may be “class bullshit,” but it’s also yet another example of respectability politics. You know: if black men speak standard English and pull up their pants, they won’t get shot by police. And if gay men act straight and never associate with drag queens, their government would never point and laugh instead of responding to an epidemic killing them in droves. Respectability arguments are meant to divide political coalitions and marginalize activism in favor of tepid professionally managed messaging. And it doesn’t work.
FlipYrWhig
@liberal: This seems like a rather sinister way to put something that could also be described as “person who has already won a statewide election might be a strong candidate to win another statewide election.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: that’s how The Man keeps the Sheeple in the veal pen, Man.
Mike J
liberal
@Fair Economist:
Bullshit. There was a study that showed that HRC’s had the least issue-oriented messaging of any general campaign for many, many years. Just because they signed off on the Party platform doesn’t mean the campaign was left-leaning.
FlipYrWhig
@Alex: Oh, definitely, that’s totally apropos here. The lesson we all should take from Archie Parnell’s success is that we should all say “fuck that!” to The Establishment and dare to be as boldly disreputable as a… Goldman Sachs employee.
FlipYrWhig
@liberal: You’re talking about ads. Ads are not the sum total of “messaging” and “messaging” is not the sum total of the campaign.
liberal
@FlipYrWhig: Martha Coakley? If that’s what you’re referring to…Are you fucking kidding me? She makes HRC, who I think is a piss poor campaigner, look like the one of the greatest politicians of all time.
tobie
@AnonPhenom: My understanding is that Tad Devine and Jeff Weaver were very well paid. And they squandered tons of money on commercials and media buyouts in CA that had little effect on an already decided race. It’s a pity they didn’t put more money into down ballot races besides Tim Canova. Maybe, just maybe, you might want to look at some of the underlying dynamics in US politics since the election of the first African-American President. How easy it is for dudebros to demonize putative neoliberal shills? How hard it is for them to vilify out-and-out racists.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@“liberal”: Which study? And is that the only one?
SatanicPanic
@liberal: If the campaign didn’t run on issues how can you say it’s a centrist campaign?
BruceFromOhio
This, this, this. And fuck CNN, NYT, and all these others click-baiting op-ed assholes with the ‘Democrats are DOOMED’ bullshit. Stop reading it! It’s not useful!
Fair Economist
Dunno how somebody can say Hillary wasn’t “messaging about issues” when her #1 word was “jobs” and almost everything else in her top 10 was issue oriented too. It was Trump who didn’t talk about issues. Also, even if she hadn’t talked enough about it, it was still a very leftist message, and she was very serious about actually getting it done. One of the remarkable things about Hillary’s platform was that it wasn’t just empty promises, it came with lots of doable detailed mechanics. I don’t ever recall that level of seriousness from any other platform on either side.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
Are we sure this isn’t just DougJ trolling?
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Fair Economist: She didn’t really mean any of it.
SatanicPanic
@Fair Economist: He talked about issues. STUPID issues, but he did talk about them. Build the Wall is a dumb platform, but it is one. Obama is a guy who ran less on issues, and he won. I think that’s the sad takeaway for Democrats- run on platitudes, govern on real things.
Sab
@trollhattan: My one consolation on that election result is that people in her district will have to rely on her for the usual constituent services that constituents with normal congress-critters can count on.
FlipYrWhig
@liberal: Coakley won the Attorney General race in 2006 by a margin of 73% to 27% and in 2010 by 64-33. People who win lower statewide offices are generally considered viable candidates for higher statewide offices. She might suck but she certainly didn’t get foisted on an unsuspecting public by THE ESTABLISHMENT.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SatanicPanic: and when he did talk about real issues, he said they were easy to fix, health care, Isr/Pal, ISIS, trade, taxes, so easy. And a lot of people bought that, because they want to believe it.
ETA: @? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: He does sometimes sound like he’s following a script Norman Lear’s unfunny step-son wrote in 1975
tobie
@BruceFromOhio:
That’s exactly what the party has been trying to do. The party didn’t move to the right in 2016. It didn’t try to run as Republican lite. It had the most liberal platform ever, and a candidate who did make policy speeches that were inevitably ignored. How do you work in that kind of media environment where the only question was “What about her emails?” This is a real problem for Dems. How to manipulate the media? How to reach the low information voter? But the idea that the party or the candidate supported a neoliberal agenda is frankly bullshit. Putin’s bots were unbelievably effective in dividing the party.
liberal
@Another Scott:
Completely meaningless and irrelevant. You don’t go after voters by arguing “vote for me; I’m a liberal!” You go after them by talking about issues. What someone calls themselves isn’t necessarily predictive of what they think about a particular issue.
After all, if most people “aren’t liberals,” and if we make the reasonable presumption that most people like the American Constitution, why would so many people think
is in the Constitution?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Aimai
@gene108: yup.
les
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Need a good bridge?
Fair Economist
@SatanicPanic:
I think the sad truth is that Americans mostly vote *against* and things happen mostly when the previous administration screwed up enough to give the next one a free hand, and what happens has a big luck factor, because it depends on who got elected.
Doug R
@Chris: What’s a neoliberal? Citations please. Keep your answer as brief as possible.
Also please explain why it’s bad.
NCSteve
@Crashman06: I disagree with that. People who can be moved by “left wing policies that help them” already vote Democratic. The people we’re not getting are the ones who find “vote your own pocket book” pitches either grubby and offensive or else a big lie to cover a big plot to steal their hard-earned and give it to lazy, shiftless Others.
What those people need is for the stuff we’re for, which is the same stuff we’ve always been for, fits into a higher, more patriotic, narrative. They need to have addressing income inequality through progressive taxation put into terms of the national interest, not how it will benefit them personally–or, possibly even more importantly, how it will benefit people who are Not Them or Theren.
They need to be told what we already know–that income inequality is at historic highs and that no democracy can survive the kind of income inequality we have today.
FlipYrWhig
@BruceFromOhio: If “to the left, and with the working classes” is THE WAY FORWARD, why is it that every attempt to accomplish such a thing loses? Atkins, who is an idiot, is trying to prove something to be true by pretending that a big pile of evidence _disproving it_ is actually proof. He can continue to _think_ it _should_ work, but he has no foundation for alleging that it’s already working. Also, he is an idiot who sees what he wants to see to the point where a close call by A GUY WHO WORKED FOR GOLDMAN SACHS proves that what the working-class public actually wants is left ideological something something. There is no fucking way he would ever, EVER say such a thing under any other circumstances than his addle-brained potshots from thinking Ossoff is the kind of candidate he doesn’t like and trying to invent a contrast where there is none. He is one stupid motherfucker.
SatanicPanic
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Exactly. We need to run that way. Somehow get everyone to believe stuff. Obama did that. run more Obamas!
FlipYrWhig
@tobie: David Atkins is intent on being a spectacle of foolishness, and it helps his made-up case to pretend that things that obviously aren’t so are so.
SatanicPanic
@Fair Economist: This is true too, which is why I’m not too worried about PERMANENT REPUBLICAN MAJORITY. Their ideas are stupid and will fail.
Captain C
@Chris:@msdc:
For some, I would assume posturing and losing = winning. Plus, if they don’t have actual power, they can be as pure as they want and not put their ideas to real world tests. And then there’s the whole Judean People’s Front/People’s Front of Judea mentality.
FlipYrWhig
@NCSteve: Alternatively, those people are Republicans and will continue to vote for the Republicans on account of being Republicans, and we just give up on trying to persuade them with super cool promises, and find other people to vote for us who aren’t hateful assholes.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
Would it be possible to sabotage the Republican Party or ratfuck them?
Iowa Old Lady
@gene108:
FlipYrWhig
@Captain C: Hey, it works in theory, so, to paraphrase Allen Iverson, fuck practice.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Captain C:
Isn’t that a “moral victory” I keep hearing about?
O. Felix Culpa
@Keith G:
Those are the ones who voted majority for HRC.
ETA: To be more precise, people earning $50K and under voted majority HRC.
Mnemosyne
@liberal:
Linky? Note: a link to a “study” by the Jacobin automatically disqualifies you from any future comments being taken seriously.
Fair Economist
@SatanicPanic:
My only long-term concern is voter suppression and gerrymandering. Enough of that could leave the Republicans in control for decades (viz VA, with a statewide Democratic majority – and an overwhelming Republican legislature.)
Of course the short-term could still leave tens of thousands dead and waste hundreds of billions. Even a few years of this Republican wealthcare bill would be very bad.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: I’m pretty sure what he means is “too many of the TV ads were about how Trump was gross.”
Lizzy L
Reposted from prior thread:
Disabled protesters were dragged out of their wheelchairs and down the hallway to stop them from protesting the AHCA outside Mitch McConnell’s Senate office. I called Mitch McConnell’s Senate office number, and got through to a staffer.
She asked if I had a message for the Senator.
I said that I thought he should tell the Capitol Police that they were behaving in an unconstitutional manner by abridging the right of the people to peaceably assemble.
202-224-2541 CALL CALL CALL.
Culture of Truth
Democratic house candidate Josh Gottheimer ran a suburban, non-populist campaign calling for tax cuts and fewer regulations. His opponent, Scott Garrett, (7 terms) tied him to Hillary Clinton. He tied Garrett to Trump. Both were well funded. Gottheimer won.
msdc
@Raven Onthill: SC-5 shifted less than GA-06. It started out with more Democratic voters and a much more recent history of electing Democrats to Congress (2008 vs. 1976).
None of this is to take away from Archie Parnell’s campaign, by the way – he did a fine job and he had the advantage of flying under the radar. I just don’t understand the impulse to use him as a stick to beat Jon Ossoff with.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Doug R: “Better Living Through Privatization”
Has use of “neoliberal” as an all-purpose insult reached the point of meriting an Internet law? It’s already a jargon example of the Scopie heuristic.
FlipYrWhig
@msdc: Especially when Parnell shows zero evidence of running anything like the campaign Atkins claims he did, and under any other circumstances Atkins would be lashing Parnell as a bankster patsy of the neoliberal moderate whatever.
piratedan
@Fair Economist: well… SHE talked about the issues… the media talked about her foundation, her e-mails and everything BUT her campaign issues when she was mentioned at all considering the click bait campaign that her opponent ran.
The problem is that the media gives a fuck-all about issues, they’re about generating revenue creating clicks.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Lizzy L: Did they respond?
Mike J
Even when only Democrats voted, Bernie got blown out 3/1 in GA,
Dabbado
@FlipYrWhig: Atkins is, indeed, a fucking idiot. His relentless trashing of Joy Reid on twitter has completely destroyed his credibility for me.
cranky
@Mike in DC:
Repeat that over and over and over.
There are House elections every 2 years in this country. You cannot shut down on election day and then come back up again 18 months later for the next election and expect to win.
amk
wtf is the left wing populism? a stupid talking point you picked up from some loony blog?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@FlipYrWhig:
Seriously. Dudebros gotta dudebro – it’s mutating into a deadly virus on the left, and spreading like wildfire. I’m at the point now where the only comments on this blog I give automatic weight to are from rikyrah, hovercraft, glory b and ruemara – the opposite of dudebroism.
Brachiator
What are progressive values? Who cares? And how do “progressive values” relate to the daily lives of people?
Too abstract, and misses the Trump Effect. In California, for example, conservatives convinced themselves that illegal Latino immigrants were moving into the country, sucking up resources without paying enough back in taxes, and magically becoming Democrats and outvoting “real” Americans. They also saw both Republicans and Democrats doing nothing about the problem. Nothing. These people voted for Trump because he promised to bypass the bullshit coming from both the Democrats and Republicans and because he promised to address their problems.
Trump also promised to protect “real” Americans from Muslims. This is bullshit for all kinds of reasons. But again, the mutha fucking point is that he promised to do something that would address their fear.
Democrats want to lecture people and come off as though they know better what they “should want.”
Bill Clinton felt people’s pain. Obama at least promised something new, a new approach to old problems. And he listened to voters and promised to fix the tangible economic fuck up of the Republicans in 2008. McCain was flustered and incoherent.
There’s an old song. Find out what they want and how they want it and give it to them just that way. That is not the same thing as this obsession with wanting to argue about incrementalism v progressive unicorn fucking.
AnonPhenom
@tobie:
Who gives a flying fuck. We’re talking about yesterday’s news, not last years…and hopefully preventing the same conversation from happening in ’18.
Re; The DCCC and their ability to help on the margins, but more often than not screw the pooch from the outset –
The DCCC recruits candidates and influences primaries by signaling who is viable or not to donors and state and local party actors. Mega-donors and independent expenditure groups take cues about which races matter and which messages work from the DCCC. Young but experienced political staff are often directed to campaigns by the DCCC — there are a lot of arranged staffing marriages where candidates and staff, even campaign managers, barely know each other. And candidates pick and choose messages with an eye toward being in line with the DCCC’s thinking, as they know direct contributions and independent expenditures go to campaigns in line with the DCCC. When Ossoff went wholly bland and didn’t run on Trump, Russia, or almost anything else readily identifiable as an issue, that represented a campaign following DCCC directions.
If you are a Democrat and think Ossoff blew an opportunity and fear more of the same in 2018, you need the DCCC’s theory of the electorate to improve.
Mnemosyne
@Mike J:
Didn’t you hear? That just proves that we need to stop having primary elections, change everything to caucuses, and throw the whole process open to anyone who wants to participate, not just registered Democrats. That’s how we’ll get a Real True Democrat, not these Fake Corporate Democrats like Obama and Hillary and Nancy Pelosi.
Kay
They’re dragging protesters away from Senate offices. Literally dragging them. Yay for the protesters and shame on these horrible, phony-ass Senators who have no respect for democratic process or the public.
Compare how these people are being treated to the Tea Party protesters in 2010. They’re treated with absolute contempt – as if they have no right to protest this sleazy back room deal these crooks cobbled together because they were too cowardly to do it in public.
I don’t see any GOP Senators in the photos. Are they hiding in their offices? Cowards, the lot of ’em.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@amk:
Another name for the Southern Strategy, except for white dudebros. I mean read some fucking history – in a majority white country with a sizable minority population, economic populism will tip into white nationalism every goddamn time. You’d think this would be a thing that is known, but apparently a lot of us are goldfish in the bowl and the castle is a surprise every time.
FlipYrWhig
@AnonPhenom:
And yet somehow Dave Brat successfully primaried deep-pocketed insider Eric Cantor anyway. Why do you suppose that hasn’t happened within Team D since Ned Lamont, and failed that time too?
Mnemosyne
@AnonPhenom:
Uh, you realize the DCCC has absolutely nothing to do with state and local elections, right? They’re not deciding who runs as a Democrat for mayor or the state legislature or state attorney general. They only look at House races, and they pick from people who have already won state or local offices.
Lizzy L
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: Staffer said “Thank you.” Is that a response?
Sab
@Steve in the ATL: Did your wife get her provisional ballot issue straightened out?
Jeffro
@Jeffro: @cranky: Well, that’s two of us…anyone else up for registering voters and fighting suppression?
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
It’s the system, maaaaaan. The system. If we just get rid of all of the gatekeepers, then a thousand flowers will bloom and we’ll be greeted as liberators!
Elie
@NCSteve:
Thanks for your comment. My response feels somewhat scattered but I think you know what I mean.
Man, you really seem to know our REAL Democratic politics. There is no central filter recruitment process – esp on local levels, though people get encouraged sometimes as they come up. Those folks who keep pointing to some Democratic central committee with absolute power as being “incompetent”, don’t get the reality. We are very much dealing with a mixture of candidates selecting themselves and the party partially grooming some, but mostly not or very very imperfectly. I tell ya, on a local level, we have some mentors of some candidates, but we do not have a dyed in the wool, criteria based, candidate recruitment process that covers all positions. Potential candidates make up their minds sometimes very last minute and have imperfect support and we have imperfect information about them. We do our best. We (the State democrats) run candidate prep classes for those selecting in enough time – but many do not take them or select themselves fairly late. We talk about messaging but each candidate generally runs their own campaign. We do not pour a message into them, though we do make suggestions and try to coach where it looks to be needed.
Mostly, we need to really be encouraging and do really careful message shaping and really prep them for the blistering scrutiny and criticism that they will receive. It gets light years more sophisticated and intense the higher the office they are running for, of course,but people mostly learn by doing. Osoff needs to run again and maybe again after that if he doesn’t make it the next time. It takes that kind of commitment and stubbornness. Being a candidate is not for the faint hearted. How would anyone lazily reading this blog feel reading the shit that has been said about Osoff about themselves? Unless you are ready to jump into the fray, people need to be mindful of the wear and tear of this very tough process. It ain’t easy and it don’t look easy, does it?
DougJ
@Alex:
I agree
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Mnemosyne: Or alternatively, “Clinton should’ve never even been allowed to run in 2016, even though she’s certainly qualified and I’ve provided no evidence that her loss caused any significant damage other than ‘Republican presidency.'”
Also:This post gave me cancer.
Elie
@Mnemosyne:
These folks treat all opponents the same and whine the same message whether their addressing the opposing candidate or anyone they see in their way in the “Party”. Both are the “enemy” and must be crushed, so that as you say, the “flowers can bloom”…It overlaps certain types of messaging on the right, in my opinion and is as destructive.
rikyrah
@Doug!:
But it doesn’t, Dear.
Otherwise, they wouldn’t have voted in Bevin, who told them that he would take away their Healthcare
trollhattan
@Mnemosyne:
No shit. “There was a study”?!?
There was this supermodel who told me I had the body of an Adonis, the sense of humor of Twain and the humility not to talk about it. Trust me.
glory b
@liberal: Once again, a citation for this?
Captain C
@FlipYrWhig: Come to think of it, a ballhog who never won the big one is a good metaphor here.
SatanicPanic
@Brachiator:
I don’t understand- Trump was roundly rejected in California. Are you suggesting they believe too much nonsense to be reasoned with?
glory b
@tobie: Yes, Tad Devine (who represented Goldman Sacks and who worked with Paul Manafort in the Ukraine, paid by Putin, go figure) was paid $800,000 a month by the Sanders campaign.
I don’t remember the figures for Jeff (“The African American votes in the South don’t count”) Weaver, but his association with Sanders has made him a rich man.
Steve in the ATL
@Mnemosyne:
We are well past taking this poster seriously. Might I suggest the pie for dessert?
ruemara
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Jacobin is possibly the stupidest of supposed liberal thought magazines and this comes from a woman who calls Paste, “Eat Paste” magazine. Seriously stupid and making liberals stupider.
@Doug!: It’s like you’ve caught white male liberal syndrome and now neither hear nor comprehend. Have you been here all of 2017?
trollhattan
@SatanicPanic:
Yeah, word salad. California Republicans have been on a continual decline for decades and while the suburban Rs tend towards “moderate” by the national litmus test the rural Rs are as hard-core as any, although I can’t accuse any of openly embracing the Klan. But that’s not new, it’s baked in at least as far back as the mid-1900s.
They did flirt with a virtual gun-humper, across-the-border Mexican-yeller to run against Jerry, but he came in second in the primary.
tobie
@AnonPhenom:
Could you give a source for this statement re the DCCC’s directions?
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@ruemara: It’s not yet completely useless or automatically discrediting, and there are other publications that are far worse (looking at you, Counterpunch), but not for lack of trying – this thread discusses some of the biggest problems with the magazine.
Captain C
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Definition No. 5 in the Urban Dictionary would suggest it’s on its way:
StringOnAStick
I heard on Nice Polite Rethuglicans that Cruz, Lee and Paul are no votes. The reason is because the AHCA is “Obamacare-lite” and does not tickle their libertoonian naughty bits in an adequate fashion.
Anyone here actually believe these 3 POS’s?
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@trollhattan: IIRC Orange County has one of the biggest neo-Nazi gatherings in the country.
joel hanes
@RareSanity:
GOP money
Can’t argue with you there. Astonishing spend.
I would love to see a diminishing-returns plot of contribution effect per dollar vs contribution date for each side.
I don’t think such a thing can be prepared, but I have a guess as to what it looks like.
Early money is the thing, and early organization.
That’s a really easy thing to say;
actually making it happen, and in the right places,
is a much more difficult proposition.
Shoulder to the wheel, comrades
Uncle Cosmo
I’d like to compare Ossoff’s performance with HRC’s at the precinct level. I’m guessing they’ll track fairly well except in his parents’ home precinct & his opponents’, & I would suspect a whiff of anti-Semitism did the rest.
Ossoff was toast about 2 minutes after the race was nationalized – which was a function of the Village whores hungry for a horse race & not something he could control.
@Mike in DC: Taking your bullet-points one at a time:
Where are you going to find them? I.e., people who are more or less in harmony with their eventual constituents & who have the time, energy, and resources to campaign pretty much 24/7 for months if not years? Hard to find Democrats who are independently wealthy (which has its own associated can of worms) or own a business that can run on auto-pilot. Who do we end up with? Lawyers, some doctors, retirees, the unemployed – how appetizing. And any candidate busting their butt & managing to get elected is rewarded with – the necessity to turn right around & run for re-election, with no “wingnut welfare” awaiting them if they lose. Lotsa luck with that.
The campaign will inevitably be nationalized, because the GOP deals in anger & hatred, & the figures they use to generate that are all national. Democrats will have Hillary, Obummer, & Nancy Pelosi thrown in their faces for at least the next generation.
No clue what you’re driving at. Define “good money” & it might be less opaque.
No argument with the first part. Try getting them to the polls though. And how do you propose to “fight suppression” when a fair amount of that goes on “down in the weeds” & even if you had a legal SWAT team in each precinct (an obvious impossiblity) you won’t get the courts (even the ones run by honest judges) to move in time – & after-the-fact findings & injunctions are worthless.
Good luck with that too. Too vague & you get slammed for vagueness; too specific & you just accumulate people who’ll vote against you because they don’t like some small aspect of it. It would be great to say “I’m a Democrat because I believe in what my party believes in & this is why what Democrats believe in is good for the people of our district.” National and district-specific at the same time. But it takes real skill to thread that needle, & most of our prospective candidates (& parasites, I mean “consultants”) just aren’t up to it.
MCA1
Can’t the answer here be “All of the above?” Democrats should combat bullshit disenfranshisement and voting restrictions and gerrymandering, and loudly insist that Republicans are venal and unfit for office and traitors to American democracy, and talk about progressive policy prescriptions for what ails the population. And mix some combination of those things as necessary within a given race based on what they think will work best there.
That said, by and large, I actually kind of agree with Doug here.
One thing that seems clear to me, from the last election and through to Tuesday’s results, is that in the immediate term, winning a given election means getting Democrats out to vote. Because in the short term, by and large, partisan identities are stable and static. Maybe it used to be different, or maybe not, but at the end of the day the idea that enough Republicans would be sufficiently embarrassed by the horse’s anus their team chose as Captain last year to actually cast a vote for a Democrat for President turned out to be folly. Some did, I’m sure. But not nearly enough. Trump was the outer bound stress test of partisan loyalty – it’s like he was designed by a political scientist to see just how far someone could go before tribal fealty broke down. In a fluid world where the partisan wall isn’t so strong, Clinton should have won by 40 points by doing nothing different than she did.
That seems to make it even less likely that shaming them about Trump and whatever skullfucking of the middle class Ryan and McConnell are up to will get them to vote for a Democrat in a less significant race, where you’re trying to tie a candidate to the national party.
In other words, trying to get the nicer, more polite NPR Republicans to just this one time vote for the Democrat is a fool’s errand. “It’s really not that icky; see, we’ll even allow that [token half embrace of GOP mantra and/or both-sides bromide]” does not work (and it leaves the Overton Window waaaay over there). What seems to be a shining, clear truth right now is that “My Republican isn’t like those Republicans” will win the day among Republicans. Ossoff and Parnell benefitted as much from lack of enthusiasm on the GOP side (offset by the massive national party spending in Georgia) and the opposite on the Dem side, as they did from anything central to their own personalities or their campaign tactics or anything else. As a general matter, Republicans didn’t vote for them at the same rate they don’t vote for other Dems in other years.
So, in the short term, making sure the enthusiasm boost among Democrats inherent in having a GOP President hellbent on destroying America is fully leveraged probably wins the day in the blocking and tackling of winning a current election. My personal opinion is that the best way to exploit that enthusiasm is to pour gasoline on it by as aggressively as possible tying Karen Handel to every shitty thing the Republican Party stands for, and making the contrasts as stark as can be. In other words, unapologetically being a liberal and a Democrat.
Likewise longer term. The goal there should be to make more Democrats, and make them loyal Democrats. Running as a more palatable Republican, blue dog, whatever have you and then watching out from both flanks at all times for short term gain in Missouri or wherever on the off chance you win doesn’t really generate more Democrats over the long haul. You benefit from Democratic enthusiasm and partisanship that will overcome your blue dogness when the environment’s right, but not as much as you could, and more importantly you’re not creating new adherents. It’s a longterm process to get tribe members to first start questioning their loyalty and then eventually give it to the other side, and being Harold Ford is never going to get that process rolling.
And to that end, a couple points re: the initial theory posited by Doug, which was focused on rural voters: 1. in the Midwest, it was only 40 years ago that the Democratic Party (post-Civil Rights, mind you) dominated small towns and agricultural areas. Rural Wisconsin and Minnesota and Iowa were the cradle of pre-New Deal Progressive politics in America, and Dems had a stranglehold in those places as well as in unionized Michigan and Ohio smaller towns. Things have changed, but too many seem to think they’re just forever red and all Democrats can do is consolidate their advantage in denser areas and let the glacier of demography win the war. And 2. yeah, some of the MAGA folks in these areas have become consumed by resentment of the Other, as they’ve been the exact part of the middle class that happens to have been hollowed out and seen their hierarchical status wash away. But there are plenty of people out in the sticks who don’t honestly give a shit about these memes about cultural genocide, but they do perceive (we can spend all the time we want diagnosing why they perceive this and trust me, it infuriates me, too, but perceive it they do) that the Masters of the Universe and big corporations run exclusively by white dudes, and white urban elites generally, and both political parties, have abandoned them. They’re gettable without sacrificing liberal principles or appeals to racial animus, but only over a long period of time. A lot of them have become Republicans over a generation, because Republicans scared them off liberals and made it supremely uncool to be a Democrat and convinced them that the one party that actually did anything to try and help them was a bunch of condescending God hating unpatriotic sellouts, and Democrats ceded that ground too easily.
Here again, being Republican Lite is not going to change the underlying fundamentals. So why not take a different tack? Trump sold these people out in a heartbeat, hasn’t changed a damned thing for the better in D.C., and is using the White House as a money printing exercise paid for by their nation’s dignity. Say it loud and proud and MAKE them regret that vote, not trust they eventually will naturally if you’re just polite and responsible.
Brachiator
@SatanicPanic:
California is a blue state, and will be for a long time. But California conservatives caught Trump fever early and once they were hooked, they never let go. And you can see in them and what they want what Trump supporters in other states want.
Trump was never going to get California votes. But he came here for that sweet California fund raising money. For example, in July 2016:
joel hanes
@Turgidson:
that shit won’t work well enough to save them. But right now it still is.
I endorse every letter in this comment, and wish to subscribe to its newsletter.
Kay
The brave, brave Senators are afraid of disabled people. It isn’t even “off with their heads!” They won’t come out of their offices to defend their crap, low quality work. I don’t know- is this what the public intended to fund when we agreed to pay for security? Helping Mitch McConnell hide from the scary disabled people?
O. Felix Culpa
@Jeffro: I’m a voter registrar and successfully supported a Democrat for Secretary of State in 2016. I’m also recruiting more people in my ward to become registrars, so yes, I’m in.
glory b
@BruceFromOhio: Interestingly, larger and larger percentages of the working class consist of people of color. And they don’t seem to be turned off by the current Dem message.
But the white working class is. I wonder what could be the difference? It’s a puzzlement!!
trollhattan
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD):
We certainly have Nazis and the Nazi-curious, I’ll grant that. It’s leaked past the biker gangs, too
Goblue72
@msdc: How a candiate performed in a primary featuring the opposition fielding multiple candidates, and in which Republican votes did not fully turn out is indicative of precisely nothing. It is entirely possible that Ossoff topped out in his potential vote share in the primary while many GOP voters stayed home until the general.
Which it appears is what happened.
Goblue72
It is entirely possible for an economic populist message that doesn’t give up on a social justice message to pull in economically struggling whites DESPITE how those rural poor whites and working class whites feel about immigrants or Muslims or black folks or etc. Its exactly that which got a good chunk of UKIP voters to swing to Labour.
You don’t need to get ALL those voters. You just need to get SOME. Trump didn’t win in the big urban cores of the Midwest. But he picked up BIGGER margins than Romney did in LOTS of small population districts outside the big cities in those states. Each district provide a smidge more votes than Romney got. Each one on its own doesnt tip the scales. But as you start piling them up, it starts to tip the balance.
You win by reversing that. By eating into the GOP’s margins in those districts and those census tracts. That’s not radical. That is precisely what President Obama did – and what he himself has stated was part of his campaign strategy.
It feels good to yell and scream and be self-righteous about “we don’t need their votes!” but thats all complete bullshit. You need their votes. You don’t win without their votes.
Because upwardly mobile Republican whites who are somewhat uncomfortable with racism are by and large not going to switch sides, not going to vote against their class interest – and for the small portion that might, they don’t amount to a hill of beans.
But some poor rural whites and white working class voters, if offered an economic package they believe will be delivered, WILL vote in their class interest even if they are somewhat racist in their personal beliefs. They have before and they can again.
We don’t need all their votes. We just need enough to win.
Steve in the ATL
@joel hanes:
Anecdotally, I can tell you that the consensus in Metro Atlanta is that everyone was fucking sick of seeing their ads and finding their flyers in our mailboxes
FlipYrWhig
@MCA1: This is all well and good and has zippo to do with the original Atkins idiocy that generated the post. Atkins says that the relative performance of Parnell and Ossoff shows that the Ossoff strategy (allegedly non-ideological, allegedly civil) doesn’t work. Well, funny thing about that: Parnell didn’t run an ideological or uncivil campaign, so whatever Parnell did proves fuck-all about Ossoff and fuck-all about running as a liberal or running as a populist. Thereby negating the entire thing. Thereby making the whole idea hypothetical, which is what it always has been. Sure, IN THEORY confrontational populist liberal grrr is super cool. But there’s no EVIDENCE that it has worked, or will worked, and the closest examples anyone can cite are close-call losses that look _not meaningfully different_ from the close-call losses of this supposed other thing that’s an obvious failure.
zhena gogolia
My GP and I had a depressing conversation today. He said he’s seen on the ground how the ACA worked for his patients, who were now able to get mammograms, or a CT scan if they had abdominal pain, instead of skipping needed tests in order to put food on the table. We got each other totally depressed.
FlipYrWhig
@Goblue72:
Also, if you build a bamboo control tower, cargo WILL fall from the sky, because it has before and it can again.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Goblue72: Ok. Prove it. Run somebody doing just that. If they win, then more will copy that playbook
FlipYrWhig
@Goblue72: So far the candidate who has come the closest in that Georgia district is… Hillary Clinton. Who, it is always alleged, sought the votes of mainstream Republicans. So, if that’s so, it looks like she got some number of them to switch sides. Why is it so self-evident that running some kind of populist something (involving… what? saying banks are bad, and also millionaires?) is going to outdo the Hillary Clinton tactic that’s supposedly such a failure? If it _was_ her tactic — which I don’t think it was — THAT’S WHAT WORKED BEST. No one who’s trying to make this argument has any fucking evidence for it. It’s just a creed. You’re saying the same things you’d say irrespective of events. That’s proof that it’s all bullshit.
FlipYrWhig
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: BUT THE ESTABLISHMENT
Julia Grey
@msdc:
You are correct that the difference between the two races was that one was nationalized and the other wasn’t. It was an anomalous result for that electorate because it was under the radar. Parnell only came as close as he did because it was South Carolina and therefore everyone simply assumed the Republican would win it, therefore there wasn’t much attention paid, therefore the turnout was terrible. If it had become a high-profile race like GA-06, the Republicans would have come out like gangbusters and buried Parnell.
Because, you know, SOUTH CAROLINA.
FlipYrWhig
“We need more populism because I think it would totally work” is a totally different argument than “we need more populism because look how well it works.” Atkins is trying to pull the latter. Have I mentioned that he’s a lying idiot? Because he is.
DCF
@liberal:
When the current Democratic party stops focusing primarily (no pun intended) on the top ten percent (10%) of the population – in contrast to the Republican Party’s obsession with the top one percent (1%) – it will make significant future electoral gains. The question for me – in response to your post – is this: Why do a significant number of Democrats oppose more liberal/progressive economic policies?*
*The answer to that question requires genuine honesty and self-examination. The successful pursuit of that query can reinvigorate the possibilities for real progressive change(s) in this nation.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@FlipYrWhig: Its far easier to play Keyboard Kommando on the internet as opposed to doing real work
Doug!
@Steve in the ATL:
Yeah, I think once you’ve spent a certain amount, you’re just wasting money.
FlipYrWhig
@DCF: Who lit the fuckface signal? It’s like Suicide Squad in here today.
DCF
@FlipYrWhig:
Measured and articulate as always, eh?…evolution is more than a theory, and your brand of retrograde and reactionary politics is fast becoming endangered – and hopefully, extinct….
Miss Bianca
@liberal: why, because that trope describes you to such a T?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@DCF: Yes, expanding medicaid, raising the minimum wage, early childhood education, LGBT rights, environmental protections, advances in renewable energies, international cooperation… all things that only benefit the “top ten percent”.
WALL STREET STILL EXISTS! BOTH PARTIES ARE EXACTLY ALIKE! WHY DIDN”T SELL-OUT OBAMA MAKE MY RIGHT WING STEP DAD CRY!
Elie
@Uncle Cosmo:
Well, thanks for that.
Really — all negative — no encouragement, nothing positive.
You took up a lot of space saying nothing.
FlipYrWhig
@DCF: You are unfathomably, mind-bendingly stupid, to the point of an infinity that infinite Confucian sages working for infinite years could never hope to comprehend.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@DCF: Unfortunately, another brand of reactionary politics is growing unabated. It’s called the alt-reich and the GOP. Keep complaining about those awful corporate Dems. Maybe that will save you from getting thrown from a helicopter out at sea miles from land for being a domestic libtard terrorist
joel hanes
@Steve in the ATL:
and I want to know when the knee in that curve manifests
I suspect that the basic parameters were set by April at the latest, and that all the Sturm unt Drang after that, including my own late contributions, had effects smaller than the noise in the polling.
Elie
@DCF:
So should Democrats dissuade the intelligent wealthy folks who want to support them?
Do you understand that by voting for Democrats, you strengthen their ability to put in the policies that you want?
This has been already said ad nauseam, but a whole lot of Democrats who voted for ACA got voted out BECAUSE they voted for it and not enough citizens (who ultimately benefited from it) votes to support their risk? And yet you want single payer and higher education for all for free and we could barely get folks to support the leanest health care solution?
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Miss Bianca: Has he ever offered ANY evidence of having personal experience with participating in a campaign?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Steve in the ATL: @joel hanes: since you guys are locals: The only ‘take’ that struck me as even remotely interesting, and I have no idea how valid cause I don’t know the district or the region, but a local atlanta reporter said that if either candidate had talked about gridlock and traffic, which Ossoff could have tied to infrastructure spending, it would have moved the needle. Again, struck me as interesting from the “all politics is local” POV. No idea if it actually would’ve been a good idea
liberal
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Go. Fuck. Yourself. I gave $2000 to Democratic Senate candidates in 2016, and picked them based on making the biggest impact, not ideology. WTF did you do, you maggot-ridden POS?
DCF
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
When you seek out (and accept) corporate monetary largesse as a primary funding mechanism, you are then bound to the will of those same corporate (and billionaire) donors. It’s the economy (and wealth distribution) that are the issues here. The progressive social issues that you delineate here need not be sacrificed…it’s not an either/or proposition….
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@DCF: And I’m sure pixie dust will fund campaigns while Republicans are not to held to the same standard. Moron
DCF
@FlipYrWhig:
Somewhere in space, fast-approaching our solar system, is an asteroid with your name on it….
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@“liberal”: Getting testy are we?
DCF
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?:
No…organized groups of (progressive/liberal) people will do so…corporate/billionaire fundraising, as currently practiced, is both lazy and self-defeating for the most part….
Molly Ivins said that ‘…You’ve got to dance with them what brung you…’…oligarchs and corporations expect a ‘return’ on investment…what do you believe those expectations are?….
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@liberal: So you donated to Democratic campaigns. Good. And my involvement with the 2016 or 2012 political campaigns was peripheral at best – mostly passive registration drives – so that is a valid point. (Though my financial situation means I can only donates tens of dollars here and there).
However, I recognize that I’m well out of depth on the ins and outs of campaigning and campaign strategies, which is why I haven’t offered much input on the subject.
And note that this still has very little to do with advice on directly running a campaign, as opposed to funding them. Authoritative declarations on campaign mechanics, messaging, the party, etc. are all very fine ideas, but preferably one would have some intimate knowledge backing these up for them to be more inherently valuable than the theoreticals and spitballing of your average commenter.
Especially when one, with similar authoritativeness, dismisses the idea that personal experience is all that relevant in critiquing said campaigns, with no further elaboration.
So if you’re so certain that you know the ways to running a successful, or at least reasonably-performing campaign (and you have offered no evidence to the contrary), then…go out, work with/run a campaign, and prove their validity.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@DCF: “And then a miracle will happen…”
That’s about what I expected
liberal
@Elie: the Democrats should do things that are good for the bulk of their party members, and indeed for the country. Like push to stop the disparate treatment of capital gains and to introduce a financial transaction tax. If wealthy supporters can’t get behind such just positions, they can shove it.
liberal
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD): Sorry, dumbshit. At root it’s an ad hominem argument. By this criterion, we should all be listening to Mark Penn, Dick Morris, and Tad Devine.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
like the Affordable Care Act? you marble-headed, Salon dot com reading dumb fuck
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@liberal: No one is saying those people are worth listening to; indeed, any random commenter can tell they’re full of shit .
And you can’t even get your fallacies right; it’s an argument from authority (ad verecundiam). I never said you’re wrong because you’re you, I said that your speculation on the motives, behaviors, etc. of campaign personnel have little in the way of weight that makes them intrinsically worth listening to more than anyone else who isn’t actually involved in campaigning.
And it’s worth noting that all the above have, through their actions actually running campaigns, have proven themselves to be full of shit. If you’re so sure you’re right, then do something and actually try to prove it.
TenguPhule
@DCF:
And will never amount to a hill of beans in actual funding dollars.
Crowdfunding is Chump change.
Emphasis on Chumps.
Elie
@liberal:
What does that MEAN bro? I am sure it means something to YOU– but how do you make the argument to the average Joe. The bulk of folks who are not rich have to support that as well as a few of the rich — but they have to have a STORY better than what you just gave me. Think.About.It. Make this a compelling story we can promote as Democrats. Stop throwing bullshit “ideas” or “slogans” over the fence and expect people know what YOU mean or more importantly, what it means for THEM.
Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD)
@Butthurt Jordan Trombone (fka XTPD) @liberal: …and no, Brad, this doesn’t mean we could’ve never known for sure about/reached a conclusion on the merits of named personnel’s campaign theories – rather, to the extent their experience reflects in their arguments, it can – and in their cases, does – only negatively affect their credibility.
And forgive me for thinking “experience is irrelevant in critiquing campaigns because Penn/Morris/Devine” is not a convincing argument; a few prominent morons in a field may indicate a larger problem, but it does not automatically make expertise in said field worthless…and if it does, then it is on you to provide reasons why. And since you’re now explicitly saying “experience is worthless,” then the additional question arises as to why you’re so averse to – and from the looks of it, offended by – the idea of taking the next step of working on a campaign, because from here it looks like cold feet.
Of course, none of this would have happened had you actually bothered to defend your initial statement in the first place.
MCA1
@FlipYrWhig: I think you’ve missed my point (which would be easy to do given my shitty, ridiculously verbose writing). It’s that in a world where neither of those strategies is a magic bullet or a clear loser, or alternatively you’re going to get about the same result all things being equal, I’d prefer the strategy with the better chance at long term creation of more Democrats. Which would be the unapologetic shrill one. Sorry that doesn’t directly address the original linked article, but you know, we’re usually fairly far afield by 230 posts in ?.