Toward the tail-end of one of our open threads yesterday, there was some discussion about how the Democratic Party is performing at the local and state level. I suspect many of us care deeply about this and are involved in our districts. But we don’t discuss it a lot here because this is a sprawling, global, almost-top-10K blog, and these issues are hyper-local.
But it’s worth discussing because the party has lost a shit-ton of ground at the local and state level over the years. There are many reasons for that, including a concerted effort by Republicans to destroy unions, which used to form a pillar of institutional support for Democrats, and a hyper-national focus among party members. We have to address it, and I know many of us are involved in that struggle.
So let’s talk about it: How’s it going in your local meth laboratory of democracy? Is your county-level party effective? How about the state level? Is the DNC helpful, or are they AWOL? What’s your understanding of their role? How do you see governor and state legislature campaigns shaking out? How are you directing contributions, if any? What non-party political organizations do you support?
I’ll start us off by answering these questions for my area. Our county party has done a terrific job; we’ve steadily made progress electing Democrats and ousting Republicans. After the election, the party had to find larger meeting spaces because so many more people became involved. There have been challenges harnessing all that new energy, but I am hopeful.
At the state level, I’m worried, but that’s nothing new. We’ve fielded such crappy candidates for governor that an obvious crook like Rick Scott was able to win not once but twice, albeit with less than 50% of the vote both times. And it looks like we might be getting ready to screw the pooch again, unless the state’s most famous ambulance chaser decides to throw his hat in the ring as a celebrity candidate for the Democrats. We could do worse, to be honest, but it frustrates me that we can’t do so much better.
I believe the outlook at the state legislative level is better. We recently won a special election in a district that Republicans thought was safe and where the Democrat was heavily outspent. County parties did phone banking across the state to help make that happen, and disgust with Trump is thought to have been a key factor too.
As for the DNC, I confess I don’t really know how much to expect of them at the state and local level. Maybe someone who understands how that’s supposed to work can enlighten me. I was an early supporter of Tom Perez for party chair, but the jury is out on his performance so far, IMO. Since I focus on ground-level stuff, I have no real sense what’s going on there except what I read in the media, which is geared toward peddling “Dems in Disarray!” narratives.
In addition to my local party, I’m involved in political organizations that support women’s rights, LGBTQ equality and immigrants’ rights, and I donate paltry sums to those causes. I also contribute to and volunteer for organizations that protect enfranchisement. (Reading this over, I realize it sounds like I do a lot, but that’s not really true — I probably spend more time watching cooking shows and sports than I do on all of these activities combined. I should be doing more.)
Anyhoo, before turning it over to you, a plea: Let’s not rehash the 2016 primary in this thread. I realize lingering hard feelings among factions within the party might be relevant to your response, and if so, please feel free to describe that. But gratuitous bashing will just derail the thread, so can we not? Thanks!
rikyrah
I’m in Illinois. My goal for 2018, and I think it’s the universal goal of the Illinois Democrats is to rid ourselves of Rauner. That muthaphucka MUST GO!
I don’t really have a preference on the Dem side. I’m inclined towards Pritzker cause he picked a Black female for his Lt. Governor running mate.
Nelle
Paging Dave Anderson to respond to this. Is it true? – ALERT: Sen. Johnson has an amendment to the budget to allow full ACA repeal to pay for tax cuts for the rich with 51 votes.
rikyrah
On a real tip..
1. we should be going all in in Virginia
2. we should be going all in in Alabama. If, as Democrats, we can’t put all in for someone WHO PUT THE KLAN IN JAIL…then, who are we?
3. For 2018- There are 23 GOPers in districts Hillary won. We need to add another 30 and go all in after them too.
4. If we don’t have a GET ID FOR VOTER PROGRAM coming from the DNC – then, they aren’t serious about winning.
5. EVERY GOPer who voted for Trumpcare should have that hung around their neck.
cmorenc
Purity doesn’t win general elections – especially once a particular candidate has won the party primary. And our impure candidate nearly always is vastly better than even the most purportedly “moderate” Republican.
Also: it’s vanishingly rare for voting for a third-party candidate because they’re “more progressive” than the democratic candidate will EVER accomplish anything to advance progressive causes. Unfortunately, the two entrenched parties have quite effectively stacked the system against third-party candidacies, despite occasional exceptions in some places, e.g. Maine’s Angus King -I , but note that even he and Sanders caucus with the Dems.
Baud
At the end of the day, it starts with candidates, so I would like people’s guesses as to why we seem to have not enough acceptable candidates given how awesome we are at the rank and file level.
I’m not sure what the DNC should be doing at the state and local level. I’m frankly confused as to when the DNC Chair became the Dungeonmaster for the entire party apparatus.
SatanicPanic
We’ve been steadily getting bluer here in San Diego but we’ve ignored the country board of supervisors, which is dominated by Republicans. we need to win that so we can get better policing.
Served
@rikyrah:
Amen. I can’t wait until Bruce and Diana Rauner are out of our lives.
I am volunteering for Pritzker right now. His campaign is blowing everyone else out of the water, especially the comms staff. And as much as I don’t like putting up a megarich candidate against Rauner, but he’s the best we have right now.
The AG race is going to be very interesting as well.
rikyrah
@Nelle:
I went to Toper Spiro. This is what he says:
The Johnson Amendment allows for waivers of essential benefits and pre-existing conditions to pay for tax cuts for the rich with 51 votes.
Corner Stone
Re: my specific TX CD I am fairly hopeful at what I am seeing. Not about winning any actual seats at any level, that’s miles away from now. But there have been a few times when I have been embroiled in bit of nonchalance with local rwnj’s and had a voice or two from the darkness speak out to support me. That led to some quiet organizing which led to some very useful voter education. The next step is to get more people willing to run. Which as Kay says, is not very frickin’ easy.
ruemara
I’m working on flipping & using my social media feed to keep people on issues. I’ve supported Jones in AL and will be cracking open the wallet for other races. Mostly, I’m tired. Frustration with fragile white feelings on the left and the constant attempt to describe bigotry as populism from the right and center.
Corner Stone
Re: the D party in TX. Is there a word for deader than a flatline?
All the activism is in trying to get more voters registered and to turn out in the South Texas are, stretching west to El Paso, etc. And that is scaring the hell out of every Good Old Boy D Party Leader in sight.
I attended a Beto rally not too long ago, and I am mildly interested in him as a candidate but I just can’t see him stressing Ted Cruz too much this time around. If we can’t get rid of Abbott for God’s sake…sheeeesh.
Baud
@rikyrah:
I don’t disagree, but I think the level of involvement should be Jones’ decision. It’s Alabama, so I’d imagine allegation of outside interference would play there.
SatanicPanic
@Baud: We’ve got some great people running here for congress in San Diego- a veteran, Doug Applegate (who almost won last time) is running to replace Issa, and a young Latino Muslim fellow Anmar Campa is running to replace Duncan Hunter. I don’t know if he’ll beat Hunter- it’s a very red district, but that guy’s been running hard all year, showing up everywhere, so even if he loses I suspect that kid’s going places. He’s only like 28.
Baud
@Corner Stone: Right, in a lot of these places, we still have our own racial fissures to deal with.
Baud
@SatanicPanic: That’s great. I think it’s very uneven across the country though.
kindness
I live in the Central Valley in N. Cal. It’s a mixed red area. Demographically one would think it should be blue as so many middle/poor and poor live out here. The problem is they are under educated and they don’t vote. I’ve talked to some I know and tried to convince them they need to vote no matter what. They don’t. I’ve stopped trying at this point. I think the Republican war on good educations won and these citizens are their prize. The low education thing sucks even worse because some of these ‘challenged’ people believe everything Fox throws at them and would vote for the hard right because they are stupid. Their ‘tribe’ affinities overcome their economic position in the chain of things.
Kinda sucks but what are you gonna do? So I do what I can. That’s all I can do. Yea, my Congress Critter is a Teahaddist.
Major Major Major Major
Darn, I was going to complain that my assembly district is full of idiots who want to do that and keep doing things like suing the state party when they lose an election.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker, OP:
I’m sure I should know who that is, and when you tell me I shall smite my forehead and exclaim “Of course!! Duh!” — but right now I can’t think of a likely Florida Man name.
les
Kansas may be making progress, of sorts. In 2008, Obama/Biden were literally the only identified Dems on my ballot. Now, the party is finding actual candidates, and making some noise about it. Problems: it’s Kansas; and Kris (K.) Kobach has been running voter suppression for years. I have no idea whether the national party apparatus exists here.
Chyron HR
I’m not worried. Our Revolution is going to be out there in 2018 challenging every Republican-held seat with true progressive candidates that embody the democratic socialist values that red state white working class voters yearn for.
Adam L Silverman
@Nelle: He’s filed it. That doesn’t mean it will actually be brought to the floor or adopted.
SatanicPanic
@Baud: I guess, I don’t know about other places.
rikyrah
The Department of Justice is allegedly investigating Harvard’s admissions practices
Abby Jackson
The Department of Justice (DOJ) is allegedly engaged in an ongoing investigation into Harvard University’s admissions practices, BuzzFeed News reported Wednesday.
The investigation appears to have been confirmed after a government watchdog group and a civil-rights organization submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request about a possible investigation into admissions practices at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
While the letter, which was obtained by BuzzFeed, noted that there was no such record concerning UNC, it did not confirm the same for Harvard; instead only saying that the records requested were exempt from public disclosure.
The news follows similar reports in August that the DOJ would soon take up an investigation related to alleged discriminatory admissions practices at Harvard against Asian-Americans. The New York Times published a bombshell report stating the DOJ would start investigating affirmative-action practices on college campuses, and the department soon confirmed it had begun seeking volunteers to investigate the Harvard complaint.
That news rattled many in the higher-education community, who thought the issue had been quieted last year when the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of affirmative action at the University of Texas Austin (UT).
The response to the FOIA request is the clearest indication yet that the DOJ is taking aim at affirmative action at Harvard.
Marc
It’s pretty frustrating in Ohio (Columbus area). Although there are rumors about Rich Cordray running for governor, he hasn’t yet committed to it – and he did lose a prior statewide run. The other candidates are low profile – mayors, state representatives and so forth don’t historically do well in statewide races. We got badly burned in 2014 with a disastrous gubernatorial candidate, and the Republican ones this cycle are experienced, not obviously nuts, and well-known. The congressional districts are badly stacked here, ditto the state legislature seats. Dems control all of the local levers of power in the Columbus area / Franklin county, but the party machine had some embarrassing scandals around payoffs for red light cameras and they’re not terribly inspiring. I’m looking forward to working on Sherrod Brown’s re-election campaign and I’m optimistic that he’ll pull it off – the big worry would be a wild card like having Kasich (very popular, term limited) decide to challenge him. The usual suspects probably can’t beat him. Overall it’s really dispiriting, although there is a good level of grassroots energy.
SatanicPanic
@SiubhanDuinne: Alan Grayson?
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: If people don’t start paying attention to the Virginia governor’s race you’re going to wind up with Ed Gillespie winning. The polling is all over the place and Gillespie has gone full Bannon (never go full Bannon!).
Read this thread:
Major Major Major Major
@rikyrah: that makes more sense. Full repeal won’t pass a Byrd bath. It also sounds like that proposal wouldn’t either, but what do I know.
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
I know that one factor in red areas is intimidation. Republicans are hateful, violent people.
gene108
@Baud:
I’m confused by that too. The DNC used to just be a fundraising organization. American politics is very decentralized, with each state party apparatus being independent of any other state party apparatus. There’s no central party organization here, unlike countries with parliamentary systems, where the parties power structure is very centralized.
randy khan
So, Virginia.
The best news is that the Democrats are seriously contesting a lot more seats in the House of Delegates. I don’t think there’s a huge likelihood of taking control, but it’s a good start and if the latest gubernatorial poll (Northam +13) is right, you never know.
The second best news is that the slate at the top of the ticket is pretty good, too – 2 candidates who’ve already won statewide elections and another strong candidate, and all of them are about as progressive as you could want in Virginia. (We were co-hosts for a fundraiser for Northam, and I thought he was thoughtful and cared about the right things. Also, as I think I’ve mentioned before, the state director of NARAL *loves* him, and has supported him from the start of his political career.)
I don’t have a great handle on local organization, unfortunately.
We’re directing our money to Northam and Herring at the top of the ticket, and to the statewide Democratic House of Delegates caucus. We don’t know enough about individual races to make a judgment about where the money would do the most good, so the general HoD fund seems to make the most sense.
cabby
MA tends to get a lot of good people in the primaries, only for the state party to throw all their support behind the least likeable, most problematic person on the menu because they’ve “earned” it. Hence, two rounds of unsuccessful Martha Coakley campaigns and the Bro who proudly and loudly voted for Trump out of spite running in a special election this year. Yeah, if you’re as obsessive about researching your candidates as I and most of the people who post here are, you’re going to vote D anyway. But most people aren’t, and the state party needs to stop assuming that they can run anyone and win because it’s Mass.
Major Major Major Major
@gene108: It was as soon as the DNC became boogeyman A-#1 for their [nonexistent] malfeasance during the 2016 primary. The position wasn’t seen that way before, now DWS will be a household name for an entire generation of activists.
I don’t want to re-fight the 2016 primary here either but that’s my answer to the quandary.
Psych1
I believe the progressive neoliberal rift is too wide to heal. There are lifelong democrats who have left the party.
Baud
Well, Joe Biden just sent me an email about Doug Jones. That’s good, right?
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: Jonathon Morgan of Morgan and Morgan. He means well, I think. But he’s got all the charisma of wall paper paste, which is par for the course for who Democrats in Florida run for governor. I’ve heard rumors that Bob Graham’s daughter may run. And, of course, the mayor of Tallahassee who is African American. He’d have a huge lift largely because of the state of Florida GOP concentration in Tallahassee as the state capitol. I guarantee that the GOP folks have been collecting oppo on him from the day he started running for mayor and have every municipal misstep, flub, inarticulate utterance, etc to bury him of he were to get the nomination.
Baud
@Psych1: I agree. We need to rebuild without them.
Humboldtblue
If California makes any changes it will be in the Central Valley, Orange County, and maybe San Diego County. Northern California is already blue, the state leg is a Dem super majority and to be honest I wish we didn’t have term limits (which are nonsense anyway) because Jerry Brown has done an excellent job and four more years with him would be nice.
We won’t see much change at the local level in the rural areas to the east and in the valley, but grabbing three or four Republican house seats down south next year would help.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: At least he wouldn’t have to move.
randy khan
@Adam L Silverman:
I just was in a discussion about this on LGM. The polling is not particularly all over the map – basically, the really close results are old and the less close results are new. The WaPo poll this morning (mentioned at #30 above) is an outlier, but the trend line is positive even without it.
That said, history does suggest somewhat better R turnout than D turnout is a possibility, so we do need to take the polls with a grain of salt. That much Ruffini is right about.
James Powell
@Baud:
Not THE answer, but perhaps AN answer is that the Democrats don’t seem to have anything like the wingnut welfare system that keeps the developing candidate wannabes employed and, at times, on TV.
Related to the last primary and a common response to the “Why Hillary?” argument was “Who else do we have?” We don’t really have a lot of nationally known presidential timber types, do we?
Baud
@randy khan: Good. Thanks.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks, Adam. You’ve saved me the pain of smiting my forehead, as I’ve never heard of him — although it sounds as though any Floridian would know his name instantly (I assume through obnoxious and ubiquitous TV commercials).
TomatoQueen
Northern Virginia. Northam v Gillespie, which two weeks ago was characterized by a two or three part televised snoozefest debate and now has Gillespie running Willie Horton-style attack ads that have no basis in reality at all and Northam continuing to sound like a very sleepy Mr Rogers. Northam polling ahead amid much hand-wringing. Meanwhile Richard Spencer’s office in Old Town Alexandria is next to a boutique chocolatier and is visited weekly by die- hard demonstrators. Charlottesville is an hour away. Richmond, the state capitol, is 3 hours south and a world away, although I think it might be unbending a little.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: I’m not sure this is entirely correct. Even before DWS, there was a lot of attention on Dean’s 50-state strategy. That might have been the genesis of highlighting the DNC chair role.
Corner Stone
@Frankensteinbeck:
It absolutely is. Because they are horrible, vengeful, hateful people. I spoke with a number of people in the general election period who had purchased HRC campaign items to support her but were afraid to display them anywhere. They feared they would be marked and suffer in some way, or have their kids suffer. And they were right to feel that way. The fucking Sheriff SUV’s here all have “IN GOD WE TRUST” in big white block letters across their back windshield.
Psych1
@Baud: not possible
rikyrah
@Baud:
Yep, please give.
SiubhanDuinne
@SatanicPanic:
Have never thought of him as an ambulance chaser.
Baud
@Psych1: Only one way to find out.
rikyrah
Who is the Secretary of State in Virginia?
Baud
@rikyrah: I think I have but I’ll give again.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Psych1: I grew up in Chicago. I knew a whole lot of “lifelong Democrats” whose last Dem vote in race above the county level was for LBJ. They didn’t leave the party because it drifted too far to the right.
Jean
@Adam L Silverman: I’m phone banking for the campaign in VA. In the past two weeks, canvassing has ramped up, and we’re calling for more and more volunteers.
rikyrah
Isn’t the Lt. Governor candidate in Virginia a Black guy?
Humboldtblue
One subject I’d like to see the Democrats push nationally is an all mail-in ballot (Kamala Harris may have touched on this already among the three thousand other policies she has spoken to). Get rid of the polls, get rid of the lines, get rid of the chore on a work day to go vote, simply mail a ballot to every registered voter (and registration info to the unregistered) and make it far easier and simpler to participate. Oregon regularly gets 65-70% return on mail-in ballots (that’s all they use) while in California we giggle with glee if we hit 50%.
Booman says we need to focus on messaging and he’s correct, but making it more convenient and easier to cast a ballot would mean a lot more votes for popular liberal policies.
Baud
@James Powell: I think we have a decent crop of people, but I agree that the media doesn’t really present them as stars like they do the GOP.
Corner Stone
@Psych1: I tried to neoliberal somebody just the other day and they threatened to have me charged with unwanted touching.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Agree. We’re seeing the same thing now.
Major Major Major Major
As for California issues, the race for the next governor is sure to be depressing, with in-the-dictionary-next-to-“empty-suit” Gavin Newsom as the presumptive favorite. There’s a bunch of other people running, most notably current Treasurer John Chiang, who is better but not exactly inspiring. I’ll be sad to see Brown depart, but so it goes.
One thing that worries me is the ‘jungle primary’ we have, which has some very troubling game-theoretical possibilities. So far none of them have come to pass but just because it’s working in our favor right now doesn’t mean it always will be. However, maybe it’s a better way to hold an election than the one-person-from-each-of-two-parties system?
I’m extremely pleased with my freshman state senator Scott Wiener, who’s gotten some big changes to how housing development happens in California through (here’s a Voxsplainer, “How 2 state legislatures are quietly making America a better place”, that includes a discussion of it).
Pelosi is my representative, and I’m pleased with her too. I think the calls for her to step down are shortsighted, especially since the only people of note suggesting it are Republican strategists. Why Democratic activists are taking their lead is beyond me. These people are not trustworthy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Ah ha! so you must know what it means!
Barbara
@rikyrah: The result of investigating Harvard will be for Harvard to stop requiring SAT scores. Nothing requires a school to use SAT scores as a benchmark for admissions, and this is what most of the accusations of discrimination by Harvard are based on.
sherparick
@randy khan: It will be important to reach out to Afriican-American voters on this issue. Doug Wilder and the African American churches are keys in this regard. Wilder is often difficult and can be cold toward Democrats who don’t give him respect.
Across local and state Governments, it is important to make them efficient and responsive and corruption free as possible. The Republicans find that misgovernment serves their interest, as this quote from the Vox story on the effects of the Puerto Rico out migration makes clear.
“… Almost everyone we spoke to said that Katrina made them even less politically active than they had been before,” she says. “They had not been active before the storm, and Katrina taught them that government was not looking out for people like them. They felt like it was useless to vote or to try to organize because government was unresponsive and did not care.” See https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/5/16403952/hurricane-maria-puerto-rico-migration
Baud
@Humboldtblue: I’m warming to this idea too. I still wonder how well it’ll work in less moral jurisdictions than Oregon, however.
Corner Stone
@Humboldtblue:
I wonder if a certain Joey Brown may be interested in running…
Adam L Silverman
@James Powell: It goes beyond that. There isn’t even a parallel for identifying the thinkers and concept folks and providing them opportunities to work when the Democrats are out of government/the majorities at the state and Federal level to produce strategic assessments, policy papers, strategy and policy analysis, etc. I know how the process works on the conservative and Republican side. There’s nothing equivalent on the Democratic side. About a month ago Dan Nexon at LGM ran a guest post on the development of a new, liberal foreign policy. One of the best ways to do this is to get folks who are center left to left of center across both the domestic and foreign and nat-sec policy spectrums into research institutes and think tanks and let them do their things. And then use those institutions to push them onto TV and into the news and onto the mainstream. There’s an entire set of structures and institutions on the right that are almost completely missing on the left. And where they do exist on the left they’re impenetrable to most in terms of getting employed.
Major Major Major Major
Hi all! Friendly reminder that user Psych1 had this to say on Wednesday:
@Baud:
Maybe, but that was something that only insiders and netroots types followed. DWS is a household name now much more so than Howard Dean was.
randy khan
@TomatoQueen:
I have a feeling that Northam’s ads featuring him talking play better in other parts of Virginia than in NoVa. I suspect that the big point of those ads is to make sure people hear his accent. (That said, the one I saw last night that ran during NCIS on Tuesday was pretty direct about opposing everything Trump does, which ought to work pretty well in NoVa.)
Boatboy_srq
@rikyrah: Add to that that we should be all in in Virginia THIS year. State elections are next month, and the governorship and AG are up for grabs along with the legislature.
VA is improving. Delgaudio is justly miserable in his retirement, and some other more reprehensible figures have been shown the door. But the state house is still far too Red for comfort.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: Agree completely.
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: Here you go. Also, for those Florida political junkies, Morgan hired Charlie Crist when he was out of government between his stint being governor and now a member of Congress again.
ruemara
@Psych1: good. Bye. They were and are racist, misogynist assholes.
Elie
@Baud:
Finding good people out in the hustings is hard…. you have to get really familiar with local community groups and causes and track who the formal and informal leaders are… People from local party organizations like mine (the 42nd Legislative District in rural Whatcom Co WA) have to get familiar and spend time to find the pearls, so to speak. It takes time. At the less local level, the recruitment is done by other people who reflect their own issues. I try not to be overly judgemental because it is truly difficult to attract good people to the hurley burley of politics — running for office — even at the most local level is very hard and raising money and people to help is a tough process… putting your family through the long hours and sometimes major and emotional disappointments is very hard. Still, we do find them and we have to keep doing our work so that the potential candidates actually see that the Democrats care. Unlike the Republicans who use Chambers of Commerce and/or churches as assists in finding and supporting candidates, we rarely do so ours have more tenuous roots to the community.
I have to say that similar to what Betty reports, our organization has burgeoned in size since the last election, but its still a push to get folks to do things sometimes. Recruiting younger people to the cause is really difficult as they tend not to be party members and don’t like meetings. We are trying to figure that out. Trying to get the regular Dems to try new approaches like Meet Ups is more difficult than you would think…
Anyway, we are optimistic but also cautious as we build. The extreme polarization makes trying to flesh out positions really difficult… Emotional literacy and how to relate to people from the gut are very important traits I think. Progressive/liberals have tendencies to believe what they believe without much wiggle room to at least listen to what is being said by opponents and why. We have to get much better with how to counter the emotional and fearful messages that the other side gives.
We have tight elections coming up for the County Council and city councils. Wish us well… we are out doorbelling (not my favorite thing) and phone banking (I tolerate this ok but also hard). Next time you find yourself asking whey “The Democrats have lost so many state and local positions”, stop asking and join up. Help us — please. We need your energy and talent very much!
rikyrah
Best description of Dolt45 and that PR visit:
Corner Stone
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Of course. Doesn’t everyone?
Humboldtblue
@Major Major Major Major:
It certainly helps that the California GOP is in actual disarray. They didn’t have one candidate on the ballot above county level in 2016 and it’s going to be that way for at least two more cycles. The state party vice chair just stepped down, GOP registration is at its lowest ever and there are real signs of breaking off GOP seats down south.
Adam L Silverman
@Jean: Excellent to hear.
rikyrah
@Barbara:
You do know that a majority of this year’s incoming freshman class at Harvard is NON-WHITE.
You don’t think THAT got the attention of Attorney General White Citizens Council?
Quit now
Here is the best option, cancel your registration Like i did. elections don’t matter anymore
Barbara
@Adam L Silverman: I do need to get my rear end in gear and keep canvassing, but I think you are interpreting the tea leaves out of proportion to what they can reasonably predict. Gillespie has never led in any of the polls, not even a close one. In 2014, Gillespie came out of almost nowhere to nearly take down Mark Warner. People outside the region don’t necessarily understand some of the local dynamics at work. It was a good year generally for Republicans, and Democrats might have been less likely to vote with the notion that Warner had it in the bag. But one very specific thing happened two weeks before election day — think of it like the Comey announcement about Clinton — and that was, it turned out that Warner had gotten involved in some state level politicking over the distribution of favors to the daughter of a state legislator — whose vote would have been pivotal to enabling Medicaid expansion in Virginia. He was threatening to resign so his daughter could be appointed to a judgeship and Warner was trying to see what could keep him from resigning. This was at the same time that our last governor, Bob McDonell was being prosecuted for receiving favors from a donor — so let’s say, Warner lost his reputation for being squeaky clean at a time when the polity was particularly disgusted with the idea of doing political favors for people in a year when Republican fortunes were particularly strong. And Warner did pull it out.
Elie
@Psych1:
Get lost, troll. You have no idea.
Baud
@rikyrah: I did not know that. I hope Harvard uses its massive endowment to fight back hard.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman:
What seems to happen, IMO, is that any org such as you propose that actually does exist – eventually gets penetrated by progressively right leaning people over time. So they either lose their organizing premise, or their credibility, or both.
Adam L Silverman
@Humboldtblue: Stayetz Raihtz!!!!
Humboldtblue
@Baud:
We already have elections being tampered with, removing the chance for voting machines to be hacked is a big help and quite simply, ensuring more people have in front of them, in their hands, a chance to vote for a cause or policy that’s important means overcoming shit like watching popular liberal ides win the vote count only to be short circuited by the the electoral college. The more people who vote the better chance popular and effective policies regarding employment, schooling, health care … ad infinitum are enacted.
Baud
Looks like the bat signal went up in Moscow.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: It’s nice to feel wanted though, isn’t it?
SiubhanDuinne
@Adam L Silverman:
I see what you mean about the charisma (lack thereof). But the commercial wasn’t quite as obnoxious as I had imagined.
Barbara
@TomatoQueen: Umm, Charlottesville is 2 hours away and so is Richmond and Richmond has been midnight blue for a long time now. Even Henrico votes blue, but Hanover is red.
opiejeanne
@SatanicPanic:
Yes, you do. They killed a friend of mine during a traffic stop about 12 years ago, then claimed he was reaching for a gun in the back seat that turned out to be a stage prop for a play a youth group was putting on at his church. He was the organist for one of the United Methodist Churches in SD.
You also need to win because of the terrible way San Diego doesn’t pay for enough firemen, unless that’s changed in recent years. The retired Anaheim Fire Chief, a Republican, was screaming about that during a bad fire season about 10 years ago; he was critical of the way Republicans had mismanaged the problem and he pointed them out specifically.
msdc
@cmorenc: Also note that, while King has been a reliable Democratic vote in a remarkably solid Democratic caucus, he absolutely did not campaign as one of our progressive betters. He ran as the independent centrist type that a certain subset of Maine voters are absolute suckers for, to their own destruction (see also: Eliot Cutler). Purity most definitely does not win elections there.
randy khan
@rikyrah:
The Secretary of the Commonwealth (never “State” – Virginia is a sovereign commonwealth, y’all) is appointed by the Governor. The current occupant is Kelly Thomasson.
But she’s not in charge of elections, if that’s your question. The Commissioner of Elections is appointed by the Governor, and the Board of Elections is, too. So the Dems are in charge.
Barbara
@rikyrah: Statistics show that the main beneficiaries of Harvard’s alleged discrimination are white men.
Humboldtblue
@Adam L Silverman:
I hear ya, but I’m not talking about a Federal voting policy, just the concerted effort from the national level to the state level to the local level of liberals pushing this idea in their districts. I am stuck on the results of the election and it sticks in my craw because we see time and again liberal policies being undone or which die in the womb because of the roadblocks erected by the GOP to keep folks from voting. Push for mail-in ballots on all fronts and get more people casting a ballot is one sure way to overcome some of the more stubborn roadblocks.
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major: I really don’t think Debbie Wasserman Schulz is a household name.
Like Baud, I think all of the hullabaloo about the supposed importance of the “DNC” started with Dean and the “netroots” who decided to make Terry McAuliffe into Establishment Satan after Bush beat Gore. They loved Dean for the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” thing and for the “50 State Strategy” and then concluded that he had been kneecapped by RAHM! Seems there was someone Establishment thwarting all good things, BOO, and someone insurgent who could change everything if not for the Establishment, YAY. Good thing we’ve gotten beyond that.
Major Major Major Major
@Humboldtblue: Right, but a sufficiently organized minority party could cause a lot of mischief with this system, especially with a sufficiently disorganized majority like the Dems have right now. A 12-person Democratic field splitting the vote with a single Republican could get a Republican into the runoff even though they have no right being there based on partisan vote totals, which is then a much bigger risk in the general than having no Republican on the ballot. Etc.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
Wow, what an uninspired list of gubernatorial aspirants. I think that Ashley Swearengin, who has said she is not running, might actually be the best bet for the Republicans. On the Democratic side, Gavin Newsom is, I suppose, the front runner. I really like Chiang, but it seems difficult for Asian Americans in California to ever vault out of the administrative/financial state offices.
dnfree
@rikyrah: I’m also from Illinois. Along with getting rid of Rauner we should in a bipartisan way try to get rid of Madigan (the father, not the daughter, who has already said she’s resigning). If there is any one force responsible for the state Illinois finds itself in, Mike Madigan is the poster child (actually, old rich man). It has been years since he could even claim to be working for the betterment of either the party or the state rather than his own personal gain.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: It is what it is.
Elie
So much focus on VA, which I definitely understand to some degree but it is just one state and pretty much blue. Has B-J ever done a survey of juicers to see where we come from? How many of us reside in the south or middle of the country? I would guess most of us are east and west coastal, but have no idea. Also, how many of us belong to local social or related things like churches, environmental groups, etc, where they really relate to the other members and have regular meetings? My guess is not very many. The Republicans are like bees and hives. They glom to each other and are mortally loyal. Our nature is to wander and do our own thing. We can’t change completely but we have to be more aware of this difference and figure out how to mitigate it for political purposes. It affects our fundraising an membership in local parties. Just my thinking anyway…
Jack the Second
Yeah, I don’t really pay attention to the DNC. I know who my local delegates are to the state committee are but after that I stop caring, and just worry about the local/county committees.
The local elections are underway in New York, with our glorious offset cycles. Which is what really chapped my ass about the “oh, we need to reform the New York primaries to be open” people. We need to reform the New York elections by syncing our local elections to our congressional elections while holding all the damn elections at the same time (as opposed to separate school board, fire commissioner, town board elections). Oh, and eliminate multi-lining so we can stop dealing with that bullshit every year.
The local committee has gotten a lot more vibrant. We now have a quorum show up for most meetings, as opposed to two or three sad, lonely Democrats, and we’ve gotten a lot of support from Indivisible to do a lot of early canvassing. The local committee suffered a particularly harsh crash five-ten years back, with a former chair taking their ball and going home, so I don’t know if this is just recovering to normal or if we’re seeing a post-2016 boom.
Baud
@Corner Stone: I hear you, but I don’t see how we can ignore the need to engage in that manner.
Major Major Major Major
@FlipYrWhig: DWS is more of a household name than Dean was. The netroots was a small but committed group of younger activists, like kos, fifteen years ago. (Now they’re ‘establishment whores’, also like kos, because fuck consistency.) The whatever-you-want-to-call-it-now group that the netroots spawned is much larger and much louder, and they’re the additional ones I’m talking about for whom DWS is a household name, many times the size of the original people for whom Howard Dean was a household name.
That’s what I meant. What was a smallish insider gripe about DNC leadership has exploded, because of 2016, into the DNC chair election being an all-out war for the soul of the party as a result of 2016. It certainly didn’t happen when DWS was installed. What changed between then and now?
Humboldtblue
@Brachiator:
I may be talking out the side of my neck, but I wish he had waited for 2022. Chiang would be an excellent candidate but he’s not going to stand out in this crowded field and four more years of top state level exposure may have helped next go-round.
opiejeanne
@SatanicPanic: Applegate has opposition from another D candidate whose name I keep seeing splashed all over Twitter but can’t remember. Could be either Kerr or Levin but neither rings a bell. I remind them about Applegate every time I see the other guy being pushed. I’m helpful like that.
Adam L Silverman
@Humboldtblue: I was just having some fun…
janeform
I’m on the Executive Board of my county party in Michigan. For the first time in a long time we have a permanent office. We have kick-ass phone banking to influence state-level legislation. We’re trying to rebuild a permanent precinct-based organization, forming teams to go door-to-door now to understand what concerns neighbors have, give them information on issues and how to contact their elected officials. And, of course, our aim is to recruit people locally for current and future efforts, including canvassing/GOTV in 2018. We’re also attempting to form relationships with other county parties and share ideas, and our resources and knowledge across the state. In 2016, a county commissioner seat flipped from red to blue, and we retained a state rep seat in a tough district. Our state is heavily gerrymandered, so it’s difficult but crucial for us to make inroads in the state legislature and in Congress. As far as where to contribute, we have a great candidate, Elissa Slotkin, in the 8th congressional district. There’s a non-partisan organization called Voters Not Politicians that is currently successfully gathering signatures to put a proposal for non-partisan redistricting on the ballot. If anyone is interested in training materials on canvassing and precinct organizing, let a front-pager know so they can contact me. Also, even small donations to our county party wouldn’t hurt!
Humboldtblue
@Major Major Major Major:
Bernie Sanders. The hard push on Democrats in California has come from Sanders supporters who still claim the California primary was rigged and that corporate Dems like Clinton and DWS were hurting the party at all levels of government.
randy khan
@Elie:
It’s one of two states with a statewide election this year (and unless something really strange happens, there are no issues in New Jersey), so there’s less to talk about elsewhere. Also, the last gubernatorial election was unexpectedly close, even with the Republicans running a nut job. And, sadly, it’s not “pretty much blue” in the General Assembly – the Republicans have about 2/3 of the seats in the House of Delegates, and the State Senate has been essentially 50-50 (actually 20-20) for quite a while.
Baud
FWIW, I think one thing that would be helpful would be for Dems top to bottom to improve their IT and information dissemination tools. They are way outdated and operate as a barrier to participation IMHO.
SatanicPanic
@Humboldtblue: They’re not so much in disarray as they don’t have any ideas now that white supremacy is off the table. Tax cuts aren’t that appealing, and what else do they have?
rikyrah
@dnfree:
I am no fan of Madigan. Far from it. FAAARRRRR from it.
But, Rauner is Priority #1 for me.
Major Major Major Major
@Humboldtblue: It was a rhetorical question.
@Baud: IMO what the dems need is better data. Just as the GOP had the data advantage in 2000 and let it wither during two terms of a GOP presidency, Dems did the same. Microtargeting such as Cambridge Analytica does is one of the new fights on this front, but it’s (probably, at least according to that new “campaigns don’t matter” paper) not as important as turnout, which is all about the same kind of voter data campaigns have been collecting for forever.
To my mind tools are much easier. What sort of tools would you like to see?
Jack the Second
@Major Major Major Major: I’d like to think at least a part of the answer rhymes with “prussian ptrolls”.
msdc
@randy khan: I’ve just reconnected with the local Democratic group I canvassed with in 2016 (the Lee district in Fairfax county). They’re as organized as ever, and already running their voter turnout efforts with the same precision they brought last year. Fairfax should be very good territory for Northam – but since the Democratic turnout there often exceeds the statewide margin of victory for Dems, it has to be. Looks like they have good people on it, though of course they can always use more.
SatanicPanic
@opiejeanne: Levin. I’m hoping he drops out, because he’s really not needed.
Kay
I went to a county meeting and they were all complaining. They complain all the time though so it’s hard to tell.
They feel like there’s lot of anti-Trump energy but no one is channeling it, in the way they were able to channel anti-Bush energy. There seems to be some hesitancy, like they’re spooked by Trump’s win and just sort of flailing around blindly.
O. Felix Culpa
@Baud:
I don’t have time to read the entire thread, but running for office is costly financially (a winning local candidate told me she spent $30,000 on her campaign – for county commissioner) and personally (have you seen the attack ads lately?). You also need lots time to spend on the campaign trail, going to events especially evenings and weekends, etc. So no family life for you, compounded by potential personal attacks on you and your family.
That said, I went to a recent Emily’s List training for potential candidates. They do a fantastic job and I was impressed with the many women who were putting themselves forward for local office of various kinds. There is hope. :)
Baud
@Major Major Major Major:
Have you ever visited Dem websites? The DNC probably has the best one, and it’s not all that great. Try the ones for the DSCC, DCCC, DGA, and the DLCC. I bet most state party websites are worse. And they are all disconnected from each other. No business could operate their website that way. I don’t know what the answers are, but it would be nice if they actually develop and implement a coordinated info strategy plan.
randy khan
@sherparick:
No argument from me on any of that.
Kay
It can be hard to explain to new candidates what an uphill climb it is in this area, because they misread numbers. They say “look at all the independents” but I know they’re not independents. They’re GOP voters who want to say things like “I vote for the man, not the Party”
They also don’t understand what a big margin 5 points is in Ohio. That’s the whole thing. If it were easy more people would succeed at it! :)
Still, Trump does inspire passionate loathing among the base, and that should be worth something, should be able to be translated into turnout.
SatanicPanic
@Major Major Major Major: man can we not poop on Newsom? Sure, he’s not my first choice, but so what? Unless you have evidence that he’s Filnering people I’d rather we just get behind him and not start the “holding my nose and voting” talk. That didn’t work out so well in 2016.
Kay
I do think you have to be careful with parachuting into states and turning races national- just be aware that you’re also firing up the other side. I’m convinced national attention actually hurt in Wisconsin, with Walker. You can’t just throw money at it. At some point it reaches Peak Effectiveness and it’s up to voters.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Corner Stone:
Probably could have pleaded down to following too close.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Cambridge Analytica is hiring like crazy. Using recruiters and head hunters as fronts and not revealing who the company is until one reaches the invited for an interview stage. Which tells you something about what they think of how they’re perceived. But they are also building capacity with the intention of being able to determine election outcomes all over the planet.
StringOnAStick
School board elections happen this fall here. This is the county where RWers took over, did crazy shit and got recalled at a resounding 67% even after the Koch’s dumped a million bucks to fight the recall. Now we have all mail-in ballots, something we didn’t have during the recall, so that should help the good folks keep their seats.
People are still pissed here about the crap the 3 RW school board members pulled and how expensive it was. The mommy Mafia on our street is working this election hard so I expect continued success. Now I need get more involved on the state level. It makes no sense that our federal representative is quite liberal but our state senator is a gun range owner and a guiding member of the Rocky Mt Gun Owners assoc a group even crazier than the NRA.
CaseyL
Considering how ineffectual the National Democratic Party seems to be, in terms of fielding and supporting local candidates, I am beginning to wonder if it, too, has been infiltrated with operatives (Russian or not) who want to see Democrats fail. Such an operation wouldn’t take much: just make sure the campaigns are badly run, underfunded, and use piss-poor messaging.
Major Major Major Major
@SatanicPanic: If I can’t express my opinions on the relative merits of the Democratic candidates during the primary, when can I? I didn’t even say anything particularly harsh. He has a very thin record and I don’t find him impressive.
JPL
Local races where I live are non partisan, so you make partnerships with strange bedfellow. I’ve been knocking on doors, distributing signs, helping with meet and greets for the local mayor’s race. The one thing that I learned is you ignore areas, where the support is strong for the other candidate. This is especially true in a runoff, where you have the results from the previous election. You don’t want to get out the vote for the other side.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Some of the local D party websites haven’t been updated since 2015. Of course Rs didn’t even field a candidate here for Congress.
Baud
@Kay: Agree. Pierce put up a stupid post on this yesterday.
Kay
One thing you can do is if you have a Dem Congress member ask that person to recruit. They go to tons of political events. They know everyone. They meet SCORES of local officials who could be promoted.
It’s wholly in their interest. They want to be in the majority in Congress. Marcy Kaptur is an excellent recruiter. She calls people she meets and asks them to run. They’re flattered, so they do.
Get on your Senator and tell him or her to find candidates. They meet all these people.
trollhattan
@Humboldtblue:
Notable things ahead for California include the aforementioned governor’s race, which won’t clarify until DiFi formalizes whether she’s running or retiring. State senate and assembly super-majorities are both on a bubble and Republicans are banking (heh) on voter-driver dissatisfaction with the forthcoming bumps in fuel and vehicle fees and taxes to flip that. Winning either house isn’t remotely possible but the tyranny of the minority reigns for budget and tax issues without the super-majority.
A crapton of bills still rest on Jerry’s desk awaiting his signature, one being the one bumping our primary to March. That’s significant in 2020.
Locally, my state rep, state senator and US house rep are all Dems, and good ones. Our county DA is a fire-breathing death-penalty loving Republican, as is the county sheriff but at least he’s not seeking reelection after papering the entire county with concealed carry licenses. Fucker. He wants to run for congress again and I’m sure he’ll parachute into a red county to do just that.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Right. I think that’s something a national umbrella organization like the DNC can help with. Information helps get people invested in the organization IMHO.
Tazj
One thing I’ve noticed this year is that the local Democrats(Hamburg NY) have made a point of going door to door and introducing themselves. I’ve lived in my house for a number of years, and this has never happened. I would only see Republicans or see their flyers on my door. These are people running for town supervisor, town council, and county legislature that are Republican held or controlled at the present time. It has almost become kind of funny because it’s almost like every time I turn around it’s one of them, but I’m glad to finally see it.
Kay
@Baud:
There’s just no sense of “enough”. Wisconsin is half the size of Ohio.There’s a finite # of resources that should be expended. At some point you’re just burning money to prove “commitment” and that’s dumb.
Major Major Major Major
@trollhattan: Brown signed the 2020 primary bill.
Baud
@Kay: Agree. I’m not on board with some of the more strident attacks on Dems for considering how to approach the Alabama race.
janeform
I skimmed the thread, and should add that, as others had said, it is a slog to organize. But, we’re way ahead in terms of people, energy, and just getting things done since the 2016 election. It’s a challenge when everyone is a volunteer, many with full-time jobs. It would be hugely helpful to have a paid person dedicated to following through on some of the many tasks that need to get done. It’s a small investment that would make a big difference. The Dem Party needs to focus heavily on the state and county levels.
Kay
@Baud:
I worked closely with the people who ran the opposition to Kasich’s anti-union law and they expressly SAID they didn’t want it national. That was THE PLAN. Good plan! They won by 20 points. In that one REPUBLICANS brought in national operatives- Liz Cheney was their person. It was just clueless.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: @Kay: “national democrats are ignoring key races, and when they get involved the republicans start talking about national democrats like Nancy Pelosi, so we should fire Nancy Pelosi” is a pretty amazing train of thought I must say.
opiejeanne
The state senator for my district in Washington (King County) has been a Republican since we moved here. He died just after his re-election a couple of years ago and another R was appointed until a special election could be held, and that’s coming up in November of this year.
The Democratic candidate got more than 50% of all the votes in the primary, and is running against the Republican candidate, who is a carpet-bagger and who has praised Trump for his fine governance. She is Jinyong Englund. The Democratic candidate is Manka Dhingra. The huge signs for Englund don’t mention her first name. I worry that because Ms Dhingra has a non-European name that she will lose just because people are idiots. She’s a great candidate, by the way, but prejudice
against “furriners” has cost a lot of good candidates in other places.
I offered to volunteer for her but right now they just want to give me yard signs. I think that’s a good sign, that they don’t really need me.
Elie
@Kay:
Excellent idea!!!!
Baud
@Kay: That’d why I said upstairs that Doug Jones should decide what he needs.
Baud
@janeform:
Kay has been making that argument since forever.
Brachiator
@Humboldtblue: RE: I really like Chiang, but it seems difficult for Asian Americans in California to ever vault out of the administrative/financial state offices.
This is California. The field will be just as crowded in 2022.
Gavin Newsom and Antonio Antonio Villaraigosa probably have the most name recognition among a field of nobodies and strictly on the merits, both candidates are inferior to Chiang. If the Democratic powers that be got behind Chiang, he probably would have a chance at winning. And as he has won statewide office already, people should already know him more. But for all kinds of reasons, it is harder for Asian American politicians to make a big splash in California for the top state office. I don’t think that waiting until 2022 would make it easier.
Besides, Newsom, the probable front runner, could be vulnerable to backlash against his earlier stumbles. Villaraigosa may benefit from support from Labor and Latinos, but damn he is even emptier than Newsom.
Felony Govt (formerly Old Broad in California)
My Rep is Ted Lieu, who’s a rock star, and is working on getting more Dems into Congress. Our State rep (a good Dem) is slightly more vulnerable, so we’ll be trying to bolster his re-election efforts. Things are pretty energized and angry here, and there’s a lot of attention to flipping some of the Republican congressional districts. As to the Governor’s race, looks like Newsom will be the guy. Better him than Arnold!
SatanicPanic
@Major Major Major Major: I don’t know man, say what you want I guess, I’m just firmly of the opinion that we need less thought, more cheerleading.
Kay
@Baud:
This would be risky but if I were running it I would just work on mechanics of voting. Be the voting people. Be the “helper”, main role, and support Candidate X as a secondary factor. Just get them OUT. Trust them a little on what they do when they
get there.
Try a different approach. What the hell. No one thinks they’ll win anyway- it’s perfect for an experiment. The capacity to lose shouldn’t make them MORE cautious. It’s freeing! :)
O. Felix Culpa
@CaseyL:
In my experience, fielding and supporting local candidates is not the national party’s job, it’s the local party’s responsibility. The DCCC is going around the country training folks on how to run local campaigns, which is helpful, but they’re in no position to identify promising local candidates. That’s the role of local folk. Seriously, the party is us. There’s no national party daddy who is going to do the groundwork for us.
MattF
Here in Maryland (and specifically, in Montgomery County), it’s generally a Dem stronghold with some exceptions. The big exception is the Governor– Larry Hogan– who is quite moderate and, as a sensible Republican, avoids the whole subject of Donald Trump. Hogan is rather popular, and Dems are divided. I doubt that Hogan will be defeated next year, assuming he runs.
More locally, there will be significant electoral turnover in the County next year since term limits were approved in the last election and that will force many of the current Council members to retire. I can’t say that’s a bad thing. Also, the County Exec is going to retire, so it will be pretty much an electoral free-for-all. There are currently zero Republicans in County government and, as far as I know, no current Republicans have dared to say anything positive about Trump– which would be a kiss-of-death in Montgomery County. I expect there will be some Dem losses locally with Republicans clinging fast to Larry Hogan. We shall see.
janeform
@Baud: She is SO right.
prufrock
@Adam L Silverman: I thought for sure Bob Buckhorn would run for governor this time around. He’s popular in the Tampa Bay area.
Jean
@rikyrah: It’s Justin Fairfax who’s Lt. Governor candidate.
Shalimar
@Psych1: Bernie isn’t even a lifelong Democrat, though yeah, he technically did leave the party only a year after joining. I also seem to remember lots of controversy about how many votes Bernie lost because non-denominational weren’t allowed to vote on closed primaries.
Similar to most here, my experience with Bernie true believers is that they were much more likely to be Ron Paul supporters in the past than leftists.
Kay
I think electeds are touchy and defensive about “Party building” too because they know they’re supposed to be doing it, so ask them to do it.
They’re better positioned to find candidates than you are. They go to political events for a living. They meet THOUSANDS of local politicians and people who are interested and they have a staff and you don’t.
Major Major Major Major
@SatanicPanic: How does that work during a primary?
ETA unless you’re suggesting this kind of endorsement is the right track
@Felony Govt (formerly Old Broad in California):
SatanicPanic
@Major Major Major Major: We all know he’s going to win anyway, just like we knew Hillary was going to win. Might as well get on board now.
VFX Lurker
@Major Major Major Major:
I thought I smelled cult. Thanks for the tip — Psych1 is now in my pie filter.
HeleninEire
Hey all. Can someone tell me when Anne Laurie is generally here in person. I know she’s a day sleeper, but not sure when she’s actually here.
She sent me an email a few days ago. A BJ commenter wants to connect me with friend who will be visiting Dublin and is considering emigrating. I’d love to help her but unfortunately the email I got for her doesn’t work.
Also – said BJ commenter, if you’re here give me a shout out in the comments. I’m usually around live in the morning thread and then again about this time.
Thanks all.
Humboldtblue
@Brachiator:
Just read a piece yesterday in the Times that said he’s now in deep trouble with the unions particularly the teacher’s unions. What’s shocking is that they were his path to power in the first place.
Elie
@CaseyL:
Oh please! Stop making caustic asides and help your local party! There is no magic. Democrats are not as likely to have the hive based church and chamber of commerce organizing approaches — we are more freestyle. But it burns me to hear a progressive criticize if they themselves are not involved. If you are, great, but if you are not doing anything, consider doing something with your local group and stop shedding your poisonous opinions onto people who are working hard and need encouragement and positive energy, not another doubter. So put up or shut up.
Felony Govt (formerly Old Broad in California)
@Humboldtblue: Villaraigosa is not terribly popular with many Latinos anymore either, at least from my completely random sampling.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Psych1:
Hey dude do everyone a favor and take your racist sexist dudebro buddies and go primary Republicans from the left. If you think Bernie would have won over Trump supporters, that’s the place you need to start proving it and where you all belong, because the Dem base is never going to vote for that scoldy oldie after the shit he and his followers pulled.
trollhattan
@Major Major Major Major:
Missed that. Will be interesting to see whether the party punishes California by fiddling with our delegate count, something speculated upon prior to the bill passing the Leg.
The Moar You Know
CA state is doing fine at the moment and will for at least the next two cycles.
CA here in SoCal is a catastrophe waiting to explode. No local bench at all (never really had one).
SatanicPanic
@Elie: This. 100% this.
Brachiator
@Humboldtblue: RE: Villaraigosa may benefit from support from Labor and Latinos
Interesting. I will give Villaraigosa credit for working some magic with the unions and other parties during a Los Angeles transit strike. But otherwise, he was shockingly disappointing as mayor and threw away a lot of good will with his incessant need for empty photo ops.
trollhattan
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
C’mon now, throwing out all the furriners and socia1ist healthcare go together like country and western. All them Trumpers would have flocked to the other New Yorker!
Kay
Also,just get over the idea that running for office is so fabulous that there are “gatekeepers” stopping people from doing it.
No one wants to run for Congress in my district. We beg them. There is no “culling” of liberals going on. I’m almost pathetic I’m so welcoming. If you wear shoes regularly I’ll entertain the notion. This idea that there’s some Grand Council meeting and knocking people out is just nonsense- it’s the opposite of true. It’s a horrible way to spend a year. You have to be so confident you’re basically delusional and you must be as patient as a saint and also not need a paycheck or a family.
SatanicPanic
@The Moar You Know: you must be living in a different SoCal than I am.
Baud
@Kay: Kay for Congress!
The Moar You Know
@Psych1: Not at all concerned about this. The “progressives” never voted anyway, and the few Dems that have decided to take their toys and go home are so few in number it’s of no concern.
The Moar You Know
@SatanicPanic: I expect so. You know how widely things vary here. North San Diego County is a catastrophe.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@trollhattan:
What the hell do they mean when they say Bernie would have won? He was going to appease his precious white working class by shitting on identity politics, while courting the Dem base of women/POC/immigrants/Muslims? ORLY? Completely, utterly delusional.
SatanicPanic
@The Moar You Know: Doug Applegate is a fine candidate. He came very close to unseating Issa last time and I’m pretty sure he will this round.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack (phone): The problem was I was wearing my neoliberal a little too loose, it came open at the worst time. A wardrobe malfunction, if you will. All just a yoog misunderstanding, believe me.
smintheus
Charlie Dent is retiring in PA-15, and so far only a handful of obscure no-hopers have entered the Democratic field: a pastor, a guy who serves on an obscure community board, somebody else with zero political experience, and an Allentown city lawyer appointed by the notoriously crooked mayor.
A popular local DA may get into the race. But otherwise it looks like yet another feckless outing by the local Democratic Party.
Matt McIrvin
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I think the argument with respect to the Dem base is “well, where the hell else are they gonna go?” (Turnout, what does that mean?)
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
DWS was a HUGE punching bag on Fox News, right up there with Nancy Pelosi for the daily two minutes hate.
That’s why I’m so suspicious of people who claim to be on the left but have an out of proportion hate for DWS. Nine times out of ten, they’re parroting the exact same stuff said about her on Fox.
maurinsky
I’m in Connecticut, which is seen as a blue state but is decidedly red outside of the urban and large suburban Democratic strongholds.
I’m working with a group called Action Together CT, I am the administrator for our Hartford County chapter. We’ve been working diligently on local elections and on introducing mid-term candidates to our members. We’ve made over 40,000 phone banking calls to municipal voters in flippable races or races where we want to protect the incumbent.
My flippable campaign that I am diligently working on is for the City of New Britain. Registered Democrats outnumber registered Rs 6-1 (although there are as many unaffiliated voters as Dems), but they have a Republican mayor, who is popular personality wise but has made some mistakes, such as trying to sell their water supply to Tilcon during a drought. The Democratic candidate, Merrill Gay, is one of the finest human beings I have ever met, but not a natural politician – not a schmoozer, no ego, he really just wants to make life better for his constituents, with a specific focus on their schools, which are the 3rd lowest ranked in the state. I have knocked doors and made many phone calls for him. He is also endorsed not just by the Democrats, but by the Working Families Party, the Latino Center for Progress (first non-Latino candidate they have ever endorsed), several labor groups, etc.
We are hampered by two things: hatred of Gov. Dannel Malloy, the most unpopular governor in the United States, and a lack of a State Budget. Republicans are running HARD against Malloy at the local level. I am urging my reps (all Dem) to get a budget passed before November 1st so we can move past this. The state legislature voted in favor of the GOP budget because 6 Dems went to the dark side, and now citizens are apoplectic without fully understanding how bad the GOP budget was (for one thing: it was un-implementable because it was illegal, instituted a special tax just on teachers, and did not add up in any way, shape or form – it was magical thinking in a budget).
We are also keeping an eye on next year – I’ve met all the Democratic gubernatorial candidates. We have one who is running a very aggressive campaign but making some own goals – he sent a fundraising letter to the employees of the City in which he is the Mayor, for example. We’ll see what happens.
Kay
@Baud:
Fat chance. We had that thing for Ohio gov and people went into great detail on her dress. Please. like any of them dress appropriately :)
japa21
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: He and his crew figured they would all vote for a Democrat anyways. Of course, it turns out the white working class vote was a myth. Those people in Wisconsin that had economic issues as their highest priority voted for Clinton. Race was the biggest driver of the Trump vote.
So first of all, not sure at all that Bernie would have won, I consider it highly unlikely. Secondly, the WWC was not why Clinton lost.
Baud
@Kay: I’m sure there are Juicers who can give you fashion advice. (Not me.)
The Moar You Know
@SatanicPanic: I agree. But he’s national. I’m talking about the local level races. SD mayor, SD city council, my local city council/mayor, my school board. Y’know, the “quality of life” elections.
The GOP is dumping money into all those races. Not the Dems.
Betty Cracker
@Elie: If y’all figure the meeting thing out, let me know. It’s a problem here too. I’m middle-aged, and even I find them inconvenient and boring AF.
@Kay: Excellent point.
@prufrock: I think one of our problems is that the state is so large and diverse that a big fish in Tampa doesn’t mean jack in Jax, Miami, etc. That said, I was really hoping Iorio would run, but she seems to have meant it when she said she’s done.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
If I can make a guess, I think that what’s spooked them is the continuing rebellion of the Sanders supporters, who are vocally unhappy with any solution that does not involve everyone else in the party “bending the knee” to them and getting their own way on everything. But if the party acquiesces to the Sanders Bros, then they lose their actual base of women and people of color.
It’s a hell of a bind, and I have no advice for how to thread that needle.
ETA: Also, Trump won as the white supremacist candidate, and at least some percentage of white Obama voters switched to Trump. No wonder your local Democrats are freaked out — they don’t want to have to touch race with a 10-foot pole, but they’re gonna have to.
Kay
@Baud:
Her dress was too tight but it’s because they gain weight- it’s a stressful job. I would eat all the time too. Whole tables of snack food, like 10 events a day. Not everyone is Obama with his 8 almonds. He’s freakishly disciplined.
I just love the lack of self-awareness. Really? You’re going to stand in my driveway in your horrible sweatpants and comment on her dress?
Redshift
@rikyrah:
Yup, my good friend Justin Fairfax! Okay, not really friends, but he’s on our local (sub-county level) Democratic committee, and he knows me by sight.
I think his prospects are pretty good, but I don’t have a lot of solid evidence to back that up. My sense is that there isn’t a lot of love for the GOP candidate among Republicans. Justin will still have have enough of a margin to overcome the inevitable racism among the general electorate, but since his opponent is female, sexism may counterbalance that.
BCHS Class of 1980
@SiubhanDuinne: You have no idea! I’m in northern Hillsborough and ads with some Morgan on them are ubiquitous.
prufrock
@Betty Cracker: Iorio not running was a great loss for us.
But it’s a big ask of anyone to save us from ourselves.
Humboldtblue
California just became a sanctuary state. Brown signed the bill.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
In San Diego County, you mean. Los Angeles and Orange Counties are doing fine, thank you — OC is trending more blue with every election.
CaseyL
@Elie: Well, I’m a Precinct Officer, and I canvas, so I wouldn’t say I’m doing “nothing,” though I admit I could be doing more. And I’m not a progressive by any stretch: that word is poison to me now. I’m a liberal, a nice old fashioned liberal Democrat, and have been my entire life.
If we need to avoid nationalizing local elections, I think it behooves us to wonder why, when the GOP has done so to great effect.
The GOP makes every local election a referendum on Obama or Pelosi or “those New York
Jewsurbanites.” I think we should drag Trump and the GOP into every local race, and make it clear that Trump and the GOP are disasters for local people because of the destructive and cruel policies they’re pursuing at the national level.Spanky
Sigh. Well, it looks like this story fits in to the discussion here:
Not helpful.
Chyron HR
@Redshift:
Hopefully he gets votes in more areas than that.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Plus his zipper control problems. He lost a LOT of goodwill with his nasty divorce while in office.
Redshift
I’ve been on my local Democratic committee in Northern Virginia since the Dean campaign era, and it’s in pretty good shape. They keep expanding the maximum membership because new people want to join after every presidential election. I’m a precinct captain, which I don’t put as much effort into as I probably should, but I do canvassing regularly for the elections we have every frickin’ year, and contribute what I can.
Northern Virginia is the powerhouse that is turning Virginia blue, which is pretty impressive when you consider that all the counties further out than Arlington/Alexandria were solidly red not that long ago. In local elections, we have a steadily increasing majority on the county board and the school board (both of which happened since the time I got involved in politics.) And I’m pleased to say I have two actual friends who are now in the House of Delegates, and I worked my ass off to put them there.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
Let’s be very clear here — the Kochs and Mercers are dumping money into those races, not “the GOP.” It ain’t the RNC spending all that money on local races.
Elie
@Betty Cracker:
Yep — that meeting thing… Will definitely let you know if we come up with a better idea. We have discussed having internet meetings as one option — but a lot would have to be thought through. Social media has to be used with creativity. We need a strategy…
Major Major Major Major
@CaseyL:
Hear hear.
@Spanky: How convenient that the fifth in line thinks getting rid of the top three is a good idea.
BCHS Class of 1980
@Kay: My response to that is these races get nationalized anyway nowadays, particularly focal-point races like GA-06. I think that has to be tolerated and Dems have to push forward. If in the end more Republicans vote, así lo sea.
Matt McIrvin
@Chyron HR: I was gonna say, in Virginia that’s a name that might carry some disadvantages. If I remember Virginia rightly.
Mnemosyne
@CaseyL:
Hmm. I think you and Elie are talking past each other a little bit. Either that, or I partly agree with both of you. ?
I think that we probably do need to nationalize local elections more, and use Trump and his cabinet of fools as major boogeymen to show how their bad policies are going to affect local issues.
I am starting to think that we need to be careful not to bring our various races to national attention, though. So far, it seems like the under-the-radar candidates are winning big, while the ones who get national attention (like Jon Ossoff) end up losing in a tight race. That makes me suspicious that the Republicans are still using Russian bots and ads to swing the election to their candidate.
My advice for local and state races is, Run silent, run deep.
Cheap Jim, formerly Cheap Jim
For reasons that I don’t personally understand (I live in Baltimore, which city Mr Hogan seems to despise), Larry Hogan is a popular governor of Maryland. A half-dozen candidates have declared, none of whom seems likely to set the Chesapeake on fire, but early polling shows Hogan not getting 50% against any of them. And this is a year out from the election. The Congressional delegation is 7-1 in the House, and the General Assembly (our legislature) is strongly majority D, and very likely to remain so.
rikyrah
@Spanky:
Linda ‘ Who got her azz stomped by Kamala Harris’ Sanchez?
See, my thing with them is..
get the phucking votes to VOTE NANCY SMASH OUT.
Until then, you’re a bunch of phucking whiners with nothing to back you up.
Brachiator
@Humboldtblue:
Governor Brown’s suggested amendments were a dose of common sense as well as politically astute:
Still, Trump and Sessions ain’t gonna like it. It’s gonna be an interesting battle of political will.
Corner Stone
@Spanky: I’m not in CA but I have always gotten the distinct impression that she (Sanchez) may not be the sharpest of elected officials.
Redshift
The one gripe with the Wilmerites that I will bring into this thread is the near-monolithic idea that “Democrats have lost ground in state governments and the fact that what they’ve done hasn’t worked automatically means what we want will work better,” without bothering to learn anything about the local conditions.
My very earnest Wilmerites co-worker went to his congressional district Dem convention for the first time, and gleefully recounted how they voted out the entire slate of people who were running for reelection on their record. I asked him if he knew how well Democrats had done during their tenure, and he hadn’t even thought about it. In fact, we’ve been doing quite well. I suspect the incumbents probably didn’t make their case very well, because having been successful, they hadn’t prepared to respond to “we have to get rid of these miserable failures!”
I’m often sympathetic to insurgent challengers, and plenty of the establishment are fossils, but geez.
Major Major Major Major
@rikyrah: Ohhh, I knew I recognized Linda Sanchez’s name from somewhere. God, she was terrible during the campaign, she sounded like a Republican.
rikyrah
This Bears Watching
By JOSH MARSHALL
Published OCTOBER 4, 2017 3:19 PM
“MS-13 turns young girls into sex slaves…yet Ralph Northam supports sanctuary cities…” That’s the text from a radio ad from Virginia GOP Governor candidate Ed Gillespie, as tweeted by Fenit Nirappil, a Virginia politics reporter from The Washington Post. That comes on the heels of a series of TV ads with a similar topic and theme “Kill, Rape, Control.”
If you haven’t heard of it, MS-13 is a criminal gang based in Los Angeles but at least present in a number of American cities. It’s made up predominantly of Central Americans. But it’s seen more broadly as a Hispanic gang. It’s not made up. It’s a violent, merciless organization that preys mainly on immigrants, especially the undocumented who can’t easily seek protection. The key point here is that MS-13 has become a staple of right-wing media. You may not have heard of them. But your crazy right-wing uncle definitely has.
From what I understand the race is close. I don’t have a good sense of who will win. The Democrats have held the Virginia governorship, which is term-limited at a single four year term, for three of the last four terms going back to 2002.
……………………………….
Anything to win, I guess. But Gillespie is the kind of Republican who you’d normally expect to see saying Republicans need to expand their support among growing demographic groups. He’s not a Steve King type you wouldn’t be surprised to see going full race-baiting Trumper in Virginia. But he’s clearly decided this is his path to victory, a doubling down on Trumpism and the Trump base. It certainly seems possible that he might win.
If he does win, or if it seems like it helped him, I would expect this to be a major theme of 2018 mid-term campaigns and not just in deep red districts.
The Moar You Know
@Mnemosyne: Jesus, you’re gonna quibble about that? DOES IT FUCKING MATTER? It’s all the same bunch of assholes for chrissakes.
And FWIW, it is coming through the GOP so yeah, it’s the GOP spending the fucking money.
randy khan
@Redshift:
Not to be horribly cynical, but Justin Fairfax is a good name for a black candidate running for an office where a lot of people won’t see any photos of him. Much better than, oh, Barack Obama.
Corner Stone
@Brachiator: Sessions just got the biggest tiny elf boner ever recorded.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
Seem to recall California has line-item veto so an Ubernerd like Brown can massage bills upon signing in lieu of vetoing. Also believe bills pass as written if he doesn’t sign, the opposite of the pocket veto. I should read my kid’s government textbooks!
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
“Soft on immigration, soft on crime! Don’t vote to get yourself killed, your pets raped and your jerbs stolen!”
–Every Republican hit piece on every Democrat, ever.
BCHS Class of 1980
@Spanky: Seems like she like Ryan is butthurt that she hasn’t moved further up the ladder. I’m a Pelosi fan, but I’ll respect one of these declarations more when they come with the open support of 30-40 colleagues. Otherwise it’s just whining.
Spanky
@Major Major Major Major: And of course the press is going to pester every House Dem to either agree or disagree with Sanchez, right as the Republicans pass their budget. So nice of her to cause a distraction right now.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
No, it wasn’t Linda Sanchez who got stomped by Kamala Harris. It was her sister, Loretta, which may have been worse as far as hard feelings go.
msdc
@Kay: Nobody was able to channel anti-Bush energy until 2006. We’re way ahead of the curve.
Redshift
Oh, and the other big reason everyone should get involved in Virginia this year is this year and 2019 are our only remaining chances to take control of the legislature before redistricting. Virginia is heavily gerrymandered, and if we ever want to see our congressional delegation and legislature reflect the bluing we see in statewide races, we have to stop that.
opiejeanne
@Spanky: Damn! Linda Sanchez’s sister Loretta Sanchez was our Congressperson when we lived in Anaheim. I never thought Linda would demand Pelosi step down, but then we weren’t as aware of her as we were of Loretta. I still have at least one of Loretta’s Christmas cards.
Baud
@Spanky: Maybe Linda should lead by example.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
When the complaint is that the Democratic National Committee isn’t doing as much to support Democrats as unaccountable billionaires are doing to support Republicans, yeah, it fucking matters that you don’t point at a bunch of apples and insist that they’re secretly oranges.
Mnemosyne
@opiejeanne:
Loretta is the one who lost to Kamala Harris, and pretty badly, too. That’s probably why Linda is pissy about the Dem leadership right now.
Doug R
@gene108: I always felt there was a generous dose of miscogeny and Anti semitism in the Bernie dead enders demanding Wasserman Schultz’s head.
Even after she resigned, those jackholes still wouldn’t shut the f*ck up.
BC in Illinois
In the Missouri 2nd Congressional District – – mostly suburbs, R for the last 20 years or so, DJT 53% / HRC 42% – – I will be going this evening to see Mark Osment (one of several fine candidates but he’s my choice), speak about gun control at an event sponsored by “Moms Demand Action.”:
[Earlier today, our Rep. Ann Wagner (R – absolutely safe Republican vote) voted in favor of the FY2018 Budget Resolution that rips $1 trillion from Medicaid and $473 from Medicare, to give $1.5 trillion in tax cuts for the rich.]
Things can change, things have to change, and they can be made to change.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
I think you are right here.
Governor Brown has been good about signing bills or vetoing them. I love how the national conservative media love to bash him, but he has been overall good for California, and often a moderating force.
Redshift
@Kay:
Tell them to look at Virginia and stop hesitating. We’re contesting more seats in legislative races than we ever have before, and that’s all anti-Trump energy. Reach out to Indivisible and any other resistance groups and try to reel them in. I’m not sure what else, but unlike things like Occupy, the resistance is explicitly partisan; some parts just need a little help in learning how to get involved with local politics.
A Ghost To Most
@trollhattan: We should hit back hard on corruption and treason.
Doug R
@Psych1: I propose a BJ rule:
Anyone using the word “neoliberal” must clearly explain what they mean with a NON CONTRADICTORY definition with citations.
Doug R
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Lots of “Democrats” left the party after Johnson got the voting rights act passed. Didn’t think you’d want them back.
opiejeanne
@rikyrah: Loretta got her azz stomped by Kamala. Linda is her sister.
Betty Cracker
@Redshift: True! We had a similar push that mostly failed, but it was just as mindless.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: Was Loretta a bad candidate? I mean, did she behave badly during the campaign?
Mnemosyne
@opiejeanne:
She started veering to the right and made some questionable decisions about who to ally herself with. Plus she acted a little nutty during the televised debates, which is ALWAYS a bad call.
Mnemosyne
@opiejeanne:
Also, too, I never got a gossipy email from you? You can try emailing me through my blog link above, but it’s sometimes wonky. Adam and TaMara have my email address if you want to drop one of them a line.
opiejeanne
@Humboldtblue: We vote by mail in Washington, too. Last November we had over 78% response, but it’s much lower for midterms and primaries, between 26.9 % (so close to that number) and 38%.
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: I will email you with some gossip, maybe this afternoon.
Miss Bianca
Late to the party on the state of the Party in the states and localities, but here’s my sitch in a nutshell:
There’s one-party rule in my county. And that one party…ain’t the Democrats. Hell, at this point, I’m not sure it’s even the Republicans. Let me explain.
For the record, I am not only a registered Democrat, but am on the Central Committee for my local party chapter. That and a quarter is enough to get me a gumball most places.
There aren’t many of us, and those few aren’t inclined to be out and proud most of the time. That’s because the Republicans in our county have been infiltrated over the course of the last few years – not by Tea Partiers, that’s passe – but by “the Patriot Party”.
These self-styled “patriots” have coalesced around a rag called the Daily Sentinel, which also appeared a few years ago, right around the time, coincidentally, that a bunch of these self-styled “patriots” decided that the best way to celebrate Fourth of July was by open-carrying in the Fourth of July parade. When the editor of the local paper wrote an editorial satirizing these bozos, lo and behold – this rival paper, dedicated to what it called “conservative news” – sprang up almost overnight, and has been a scourge to our community ever since. Propped up by outside money, and propagating outsider positions, the people who write for it and read it have gradually taken over the central committee of the local GOP, and driven the moderates out of power. Sound familiar?
Why is this relevant? Well, in a one-party-rule community, you have to learn to game the system. Which the local Democrats – knowing that there’s no way in hell anyone here is going to vote for a Democrat – have learned to do. Enough of us crossed over and re-registered as Republicans during the last election season that we managed to get a slate of moderate Republicans – who would likely be Democrats anywhere else – elected to the Board of County Commissioners.
All well and good, so far. However, the radical right was not pleased, and I have to say that the new Board, while doing some good and useful things, shot themselves in the metaphorical dicks a few times – making some possibly necessary, but remarkably tone-deaf, decisions about county employees, for example. Getting the popular County Extension Officer booted. Stuff like that.
But mostly, their biggest sin has been in the mistaken belief that having been elected to county government, they were actually elected to *govern*, rather than sit around and obstruct any measure that is intended to spend county money on anything but their salaries and awarding contracts to their cronies. Enforcing our local “Dark Skies” policies that have made us one of the only internationally-recognized Dark Sky communities? Tyranny! Bringing up the notion of installing a Building Code for the County? OMG, JACK-BOOTED GOVERNMENT THUGS ARE FORCING US TO BUILD HOUSES THAT WON’T FUCKING FALL DOWN!!11!!
And so these “Patriots” have gone on a tear, demanding the recall of the BOC that was just elected *last November*. They managed to get enough signatures to force the recall election, in order to try and replace them with…surprise, surprise, surprise…the slate of sorry-ass candidates who were beat during the election. There have been subsequent complaints about the recall petition process, it may not surprise you to learn – people who were surprized and not best pleased to learn that their names would actually become a part of public record, for example. People who complained later of being lied to and intimidated to sign the recall petition.
So, what’s a good Democrat to do under these circumstances? Here comes the recall election – and oh, because we can’t have *two* elections – one a straight yes/no vote on the recall and a second to determine who should be the candidates to replace the current Commissioners – we can’t run any Democratic candidates. Hell, we’ve never been able to run any Democratic candidates. Oh, and if you speak out against this farce – say, write a letter to the editor or go onto one of the FB community pages to denounce this bullshit – you get doxxed or anonymous threatening letters in the mail. (this has already happened to friends of mine).
Oh, and don’t get me started on the BernieBro/Sis “progressive” snowflakes who are all into “Our Revolution”. To be fair, one or two of them have come to our meetings but for the most part they’ve been as useless as tits on a bull.
So I don’t know what good I’m doing, right now. I go to meetings. I write LTTE. I give money and time to regional, state, federal races and candidates. But I just don’t know how much good I’m actually doing.
ETA: My God, that’s quite a big nutshell. Maybe a coconut shell?
randy khan
@Redshift:
IIRC, the governor has veto power over redistricting plans, so even just having a Dem governor will improve things a lot (the Rs had the trifecta in 2011), but I completely agree that it’s hugely important to make progress in the General Assembly because it would be really nice for the Ds to have the trifecta in 2021 and it’s equally important to keep Dem control of at least one of the three players after 2021 to prevent mid-course redistricting, since that’s a favorite Republican trick.
Bokonon
@Redshift: I don’t want to sound cynical, but the Republicans always come home and vote for their own candidate, and vote in force, no matter how odious. Only a small number stay home or consider voting for the Democratic candidate.
I remember Ollie North’s campaigns in Virginia during the 1990’s. I watched my Republican friends go and vote for him, even though they thought he was an unqualified lunatic, because of party loyalty and long-term party goals. It was … shall we say … deeply revealing.
In contrast, the Democrats (and progressives generally) seem to just LOOK for reasons to stay home or vote third party, or get disenchanted with the process or their own candidate, or read an editorial saying the Republican candidate is a “moderate” who will really work across the isle, or just outright forget what day Election Day is … I used to canvas and campaign in Virginia, and it was like herding cats, all the time. I can’t tell you how frustrating this unfocused dynamic was back then. And the Democrats just did this sort of flake out on a national scale in the last election.
KS in MA
@HeleninEire:
Hi, Helen … That was me! I’d love to hear from you. My correct email is: kstall2 [at] comcast [dot] net. Thanks!
Betty Cracker
@Miss Bianca: Wow, that’s a real shit-show! Do you have any idea what outside groups are behind this “Patriot” propaganda business? I wonder how many other communities they’re meddling with?
opiejeanne
@Mnemosyne: she was always a bit nutty but not a terrible Congressperson, IIRC.
Posed with her cat for every Christmas card until it died, and she didn’t seem quite the same afterwards. One year she and the cat posed on a surfboard with a Hawaiian backdrop, silly/cheesy, and another they posed on a Harley. I’d have to check but I think they wore matching leather jackets. Of course the Republicans were scandalized by the surfing one because she was wearing a two-piece bathing suit.
pacem appellant
@SatanicPanic: I have a close family member in Issa’s district and it infuriates us that he sits in Congress. But I’m up here in the Bay Area, so I’m focused on Denham ouster in CA-10. In the State houses, do you know if there are any serious Dems running against Bates in CA-SEN-36 and Chávez in CA-ASS-76? T
pacem appellant
@Major Major Major Major: Maybe it’s just my household, but we like Newsom. I thought I’d hate Brown based on how much I hated him as mayor of Oakland and my parents’ ill memories of his governorship in the 70s, but he definitely turned around a made for a cunning and astute governor. Going forward, Newsom has played the national political mood–as filtered through CA politics–very deftly so far. He’s been way ahead of his more cautious rivals on being seen as the face of the Left Coast resistance to Trump. I think that Brown has shown CA Dems a bold, less technocratic path than the milquetoast Davises, Bustamontes, and Angelideses. Newsom has been a studious acolyte while Chiang has floundered to find an issue or a cause where Newsom hasn’t already staked out a position as the standard-bearer of progressive causes.
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker:it’s a long story – even longer than that one! But we are researching it. All we know is that ours is not the only county targeted – these “Patriots” are doing this all over the country. Be warned, all y’all!
KBS
@rikyrah: I’m from Illinois, and I agree that Rauner must go. Pritzker seems like a nice enough guy, but I think it’s a terrible idea to try to replace a billionaire with no political experience with…a billionaire with no political experience. If he wins the primary I will do whatever I can to help get him elected. But in the meantime, I’m volunteering for Biss, who is the only candidate with experience in the Illinois legislature. Super smart and progressive guy, but a bit of a long shot.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@randy khan: At our next Indivisible meeting we will be filling out post cards to mail to Dem voters in VA, to encourage turnout. Not sure which candidates (I’m in SoCal) but one of our members brought in the idea from SwingLeft who she does a ton of work with here trying to flip Red districts.