In my first post yesterday, I pulled my punches on the New York Democratic Party. Hochul won, after all, even though our showing in the Congressional races wasn’t good. Well, now that we’ve had a day to savor that, let’s get down to it. To say that Hochul ran a bad campaign is wrong, because it implies that she ran a campaign at all. Now, ultimately, the blame goes on her, but she relied on the state party and they suck. So what does party chair Jay Jacobs do when it loses? Blames the woke left:
Instead, Jacobs placed blame on progressive politicians who have shifted the party too far to the left, costing them swing and moderate voters. “I’m not going to take responsibility for or blame, if you will, for losses that we had here,” Jacobs said, dismissing claims that he did nothing for vulnerable candidates by pointing to maxed-out donations and behind the scenes organizing he took charge of. He said that Hochul performed admirably given the circumstances and that her close race didn’t cost Democrats seats. “I think that it’s more the Democratic brand in New York that had difficulty in some of these tough, tougher districts, more competitive districts,” Jacobs said.
This wasn’t a case of progressives mounting a primary challenge or even dissing Hochul. In her person and in her politics, Hochul is pretty damn progressive, and she’s been beating the drum of reproductive rights hard. I know of no organized opposition to Hochul from progressives, nor even any disorganized opposition. AOC pushed her social media followers to get out and vote for her, for example. Blaming progressives is just lazy and stupid — Hochul just didn’t run a campaign.
I live in a purple-to-blue county (Monroe), and the place is blanketed in Zeldin yard signs. I saw not a single Hochul yard sign. Literally, without exaggeration, not one. I know that yard signs are anything but the sine qua non of an awesome campaign, but as far as I know, she didn’t do any campaigning up here.
Hochul has the chops, in my opinion, to lead voters to the polls. And I think she’s a fighter. She should have been barnstorming the state for those Congressional candidates. Hochul also won a tough special election in a blood red Congressional district a dozen years ago, by doing pretty much the opposite of what she did in this election (i.e., running hard). That’s why keeping her on the sidelines was such a terrible political decision. I don’t know who made it, but she needs start firing her advisors and working to clean house in the state Democratic party. She should be a force in Democratic politics for years to come, if she can straighten this out.
(Also, yes, redistricting – more on that in another post later.)
Proliferation of massive choice complexity on Healthcare.gov
Eolirin
It’s really looking like the Republican margin in the House is going to be the NY losses give or take 1-2. We fucked up bad here. We may have cost the House.
jonas
I, too, was befuddled by Hochul’s complete lack of a ground game throughout much of the state. I saw a few more Hochul/Delgado signs around my neck of the woods, but Zeldin/Williams’s people were definitely out in force. And this Jacobs guy is indeed full of shit. The NY-22 Dem, Conole, who looks like he will go down to a narrow defeat against the very Trumpy Williams, was hardly a woke progressive type. Virtually all his ads focused on his local roots and blue-collar upbringing. Conole’s problem was the same as Hochul’s, though: he had no ground game outside Syracuse. He was absolutely blown out of the water in Oneida and Madison counties. He may have had some campaign rallies or fundraisers out there, but I didn’t hear about any of them. I think he thought Syracuse would carry him over the finish line (admittedly, I thought so, too) and that he didn’t have to put his muck boots on and press the flesh in more rural areas, but boy was that a wrong bet. (Again, he may have done some of this, but damn, it was sure under the radar and it clearly wasn’t enough.)
Kay
Mistermix, I think youre great, but is it POSSIBLE than the various panics that were energetically sold by media and conservatives (wokeness, crime, trans people) resonated in NY and did not resonate in other states like MI, WI and PA?
It wouldn’t be that crazy. NY is, after all, the media center and they were ALL IN on the cancel culture/wokeness bullshit. You-all got an extra heavy dose of fear. Soaked in it. GOP/media sold crime panics in Detroit and Chicago and Philadelphia too. People in those places did not buy it to the extent that NYers did. Is that possible?
Cacti
The New York Court of Appeals letting some hayseed Republican Judge from Bug Tumble redraw the state map was a huge fuck up.
E&C’s Dad
I live in the city. One problem with the state Democratic Party is they know the city is going blue and hard, and why work for it? In the last couple weeks, I saw people campaigning for Hochul in public, but I would bet that those were local democratic clubs and not any campaign. You really can’t blame progressives here. The local progressive organization is much more focused on primaries and local races—city counsel, general assembly, state senate. I’m pretty sure Hochul was on the WFP line. I really do think we could have controlled congress if not for the redistricting decision by the court of appeals. In principle, the court was right, but, man, the republicans aren’t playing by the same rules in other states. So, I dunno. After Cuomo resigned and Hochul came in, there was talk about how she had a broad base of support across the state, including the more rural areas. Where was that on Tuesday?
Sorry for my jumbled collection of thoughts. I don’t comment on the internet much anymore.
Kent
I’m not at all in tune with local NY elections doings. But how much of this fiasco can be laid at the feet of Cuomo? He seems to be the gift that keeps on giving. I’m talking about the judges and redistricting, not the 2022 campaign.
Kay
I look forward to a dramatic reduction in crime as a result of the crime panic. Maybe they can hand another billion to NYC police. That’ll do it. Give them the whole municipal budget. Anything less is “defunding the police”. Jesus, they must think they died and went to heaven with this racket. All they have to do to get more money is stop doing their jobs.
Eolirin
@Cacti: This was a big part of it too, but honestly our maps seem fair. This is about the result you would expect when the top of the ticket only wins by 5 points. Even Schumer did worse than usual.
Fair is a problem when FL and TX can do whatever they want though.
Eolirin
@Kent: Well, if he had been the one running for gov we probably sweep the board instead of having a few narrow losses. So I guess a lot, by getting himself run out of office?
The Moar You Know
While we’re bitching about our state parties, goddamn, can someone get the fucking California Dems to PAY SOME FUCKING ATTENTION to judicial races? Their advice (because doing five minutes of research is too fucking hard) was to just vote “yes” for every judge on the ballot. Well, two of the ten are hardcore forced birthers, Federalist society Nazis, and thanks to that advice, they both got reconfirmed in office by 70/30 margins.
What the actual fuck was that, CA Dems? The Republicans take the judiciary seriously.
Jay C
I think a lot of the commentary on New York politics overlooks the fact that it is really something like two states inside one border (usually shorthanded as the “Upstate/Downstate divide”). Far-righties may be a mere fringe in the NYC area, but pull much better in the vast rugged expanses of Upstate, (population imbalance notwithstanding) and a peculiar-and dysfunctional – Statehouse culture in Albany has given the NY GOP an outsize leverage their sheer numbers wouldn’t allow.
but yeah, the redistricting fiasco in NYS was political malpractice to the max.
And FWIW, Hochul may not have been hitting the trail much, but her campaign had been flooding the local media with TV ads (entirely on the abortion issue) for weeks.
Eolirin
@Kay: I think, even putting aside Hochul and the dem party not putting in enough work upstate that given the media run up that Zeldin had a shot of winning, that Rs were really heavily incentivized to turn out. Winning the Gov after 3 cycles of Cuomo is a big opportunity, and Dems just didn’t have as much reason to care about this race; abortion isn’t under threat here.
Zeldin’s campaign down to the canvassers were pushing the idea that abortion rights were safe, that the anti abortion part of the Republicans were extremist fringe types who could never succeed at a nationwide ban; the Zeldin canvasser that came to our door was a Jan 6 apologist election denier and was still going on about how he supported abortion rights. The Zeldin campaign neutralized that issue effectively.
So I think it was a bit of a perfect storm, between local dynamics, the running of the campaign, and the maps. We got too greedy trying to compensate for FL and TX and it cost us.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Kay:
More that possible, I’d say probable. For example, I think that might explain the Long Island and Rockland County results (suburbs / exurbs of the crime soaked hellscape that is NYC). Also, as Jonas rightly says below and I forgot to mention, bail reform was ginned up as a huge issue by Republicans.
Still, Hochul was a non-presence. She wasn’t out there rebutting the crime b.s., mainly because she wasn’t out there, period. That’s what’s so puzzling to me. And I say this as a fan of hers, who sees the potential of having a woman from Western New York as a leader in the NYS Democratic Party.
jonas
@Kay:
I think the crime panic narrative resonated in NY more than other states because of the correlation (a false one) with the 2019 bail reform law that Albany Democrats made one of their signature pieces of legislation after getting rid of a group of “independent” Democrats who (along with Cuomo) had been preventing a Dem majority from advancing their priorities for years. Unfortunately, this happened to coincide with the pandemic and a rise in violent crime in a lot of places, esp NYC, so it got hung around Dems necks quite effectively by the NY Post and GOP campaigns. I think abortion rights was probably the one thing holding back a bigger red wave in NY and elsewhere and what little campaigning Hochul did capitalized pretty effectively on defending choice.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Jay C: I don’t watch commercial TV so I’m blind to TV ads. But I should probably be a target of social media ads, and saw zero for Hochul or any other Dems.
RaflW
Did progressives knock the DCCC chair out of his House district?
I know redistricting was a factor, but the epitomy of elite, moderate Dems couldn’t get thru. Maybe Hochul would have had coattails if she’d done beter campaigning? NY isn’t my area, so I am curious about that.
Eolirin
@$8 blue check mistermix: I think Rockland County will be more heavily red going forward. I expect we’ve permanently lost the Orthodox Jewish community over vaccination mandate and LGBTQ rights issues.
Geminid
I’m no fan of the leftier Democrats but I think that when when Mr. Jacobs blames them for his party’s losses he’s deflecting blame towards a scapegoat. That straw herring don’t swim!
I don’t live in New York and I missed out on Republican advertisinging. I can’t say how much traction Republicans got with “soft on crime” messaging. But blaming one group of party members for Republican success is a counterproductive way to avoid personal responsibility.
joey5slice
I agree with this 100%.
I don’t disagree with idea that the media narrative (fed aggressively by the Zeldin campaign) CRIME CRIME CRIME THE BLAHS ARE COMING FOR YOU hurt Democrats in New York. But that’s why campaigning is important! You need to counter that narrative.
I don’t disagree that the redistricting process made winning these races harder. But that’s why campaigning is important! When the redistricting process turns a sold D district into a swing district, you campaign harder! You don’t hope that you win and then blame redistricting when you lose.
NY-3 and NY-4 are both winnable for Democrats. I think NY-17 is, too, though I’m less familiar with the political geography in that part of the state than I am on Long Island. (The fact that SPM ran there makes me think he also thought it was winnable.)
The upside is that we have some low-hanging fruit for 2024. But it would have been nice to keep them blue in ’22.
UncleEbeneezer
@The Moar You Know: Where were all the Progressive watchdog voter guides on this stuff? I consulted several and none of them warned about what you mention.
Baud
@Geminid: My take too.
jefft452
“Instead, Jacobs placed blame on progressive politicians who have shifted the party too far to the left”
Ah, the perennial whine of the incompetent
Abigail Spanberger specializes in it. The fact that she barely wins could not possibly be because she isnt very popular in her district, nope must be “the woke”
eddie blake
@Eolirin: you THINK? those fuckers had mask burnings and huge anti vax protests/ riots during covid and invited the fucking proud boys to march through borough park.
fuck those selfish, regressive, misogynistic, parasitical zealots; the orthodox community in nyc just EPITOMIZES every negative stereotype about my people.
(yes, eddie blake is a red-sea pedestrian.)
Geminid
@Eolirin: Yesterday I ran into an interesting item about politics among New York’s Hasidim. Aron Teitelbaum, Chief Rabbi of the Satmar sect, had endorsed Kathy Hochul for Governor and someone tweeted an excerpt translated from his speech in Hebrew:
Grumpy Old Railroader
Exactly . Hardly anybody pays attention to those confirmations. That should be one of the Democratic Party’s main focus
Matt
Folks like Mr. Jacobs would 100% prefer fascism over ever having to admit the hippies were even 0.01% correct. That statement was probably pre-written a month ago.
MazeDancer
When I went to the Hochul website to order a yard sign, it wanted $25 and said allow 10 days for delivery. 10 days out.
My local township Dems do a great job. They email and keep us informed.
Had a fundraiser for Pat Ryan. Canvassed with the Assembly Rep. I had yard signs for both of them.
But there were maybe 3 yard signs for Hochul in the entire area. And the area is now 50-50 Dem-GOP. Bluer all the time.
Even defeated a long time GOP State Senator.
Rich people moving from the city.
Eolirin
@jefft452: Someone in a district like Spanberger’s or any of the ones we lost, will rarely do better only barely winning because their districts are full of Republicans.
And the dems that are in these districts are usually not super lefty progressives and they will be lost by going too far left. That bail reform bill definitely hurt us, even if it was bullshit, because culturally, in areas like these, even the Dems buy into tough on crime narratives.
Geminid
@jefft452: Abigail Spanberger does not “specialize in” this. She made statements in one Caucus meeting after the 2020 elections and whiny thin-skinned “progressives” have made her their whipping girl ever since. This is all they know about her.
Abigail Spanberger is every bit as good a Democrat as you or anyone else here. And by the way, go pound sand.
A Ghost to Most
It’s not the party or candidate, it’s the locals. But then, I only have 66 years of intimate and ugly experience.
Irishweaver
I live in the City of Albany and there were lots of Zeldin signs and nothing for Hochul. I wondered if her advisors feared backlash for the Buffalo Bills stadium deal, the pay to play allegations, and the prices of the Covid tests. We didn’t hear much about them although they seemed (to me) vulnerabilities.
Eolirin
@eddie blake: Since I haven’t done a proper break down of Rockland County’s population trends and how large of a percentage the Orthodox Jewish population actually is, yeah I only think.
I’m very certain we’ve lost them though. And I feel the same way, I’m also Jewish.
Omnes Omnibus
@Eolirin: Even on a left of center site like this, one consistently sees commenters calling for harsher sentences for crimes. It’s endemic.
Eljai
@Kay: Interesting point. In Illinois, Gov. Pritzker won re-election handily by 10 points over his right-wing challenger. We even expanded the number of Democrats on the IL Supreme Court. All this, despite a deluge of ads warning about criminals roaming and pillaging because Pritzker signed a law that eliminates cash bail.
JPL
@Geminid: Good job!
The Moar You Know
@UncleEbeneezer: same deal. I get a couple of those and most just ignore the judicial races entirely, save for the State Supreme Court – the ones that didn’t just said, literally, “vote yes on all of them”.
It’s not that hard to figure out who the bad guys are: just get a REPUBLICAN voter guide and they’ll tell you who they want. But CA dems, man…they just do not give a shit. And that’s a long-term way to lose.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
Agree. I took her comments at that time mostly as an expression of frustration in the immediate aftermath of a tough campaign.
Eolirin
@Matt: Eh. I think it’s pretty standard ass covering since he was personally involved in the outcome. And it’s (probably) gonna lose us the House, so it’s a big fuck up.
@A Ghost to Most: I mean, okay, in the sense that if there were no Republicans no one would vote Republican, sure.
Geminid
@Eolirin: It’s not the Republicans in Spanberger’s district she needs to worry about. It’s the Independents. A lot of Blue district Democrats do not appreciate that, like or not, Independents account for the winning margin in purple districts and states. Joe Biden and Mark Kelly won Arizona in 2020 both by bringing out Democrats and carrying a majority of Independents. Just maxing out turnout by Democrats alone would not have done it.
And if Lauren Boebert loses the Colorado 3rd race it will be because Fritsch cleaned up among Unaffiliated voters. Democrats are a distant 3rd there in registrations.
But that district would an outlier among winnable districts for Democrats. The Virginia 7th that Spanberger won, on the other hand, is a very typical purple district, perhaps even a median one demographically.
eddie blake
@Eolirin: yeah, that scene was something out of nazi germany. (which doesn’t SURPRISE me; if they’re not gonna study math or science, they sure as shit aren’t gonna study HISTORY.)
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/we-dont-protest-borough-parks-mask-burning-demonstrators
Mike in NC
Getting ready to fly home from National Airport after a horrible week battling insane traffic in NoVA. Found a copy of the Washington Post calling Fat Bastard the biggest loser of the midterms. Hoping Ron DeSatan slices and dices him.
James E Powell
@The Moar You Know:
Did California Dems actually say vote yes for all of them?
I’ve spent most of my political life banging my head against the brick wall that is Democratic voter indifference to judges & justices.
PaulWartenberg
I seriously think extreme gerrymandering has a bigger effect on voter turnout than you realize.
Florida suffered massive gerrymandering for the Congressional districts thanks to DeSantis’ veto and intervention earlier this year. Forcing a 20-to-8 GOP favorable map created districts where the state Democrats failed to place challengers. As a result, even WITH Governor’s and Senator’s races at stake, there was a significant drop in Democratic votes (down to 3.1 million) compared to 2018 (when there was 4.2 million). Republican voter turnout remained mostly the same (4.6 million in 2018 and 2022), so it was not like the Republicans won over more voters. DeSantis just depressed turnout, without even sending Proud Boy thugs to the polls to scare away Dems.
Biden and the DOJ need to work overtime to kill gerrymandering and fix district maps before 2024 rolls around.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think that’s OK. For those committing or fomenting or aiding-and-abetting insurrection/sedition, that is.
Baud
@PaulWartenberg:
DOJ can’t do anything about gerrymandering unless they can prove it’s race based, and often not even then with this court.
Baud
@James E Powell:
Don’t blackmail me with California superior court judges.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@SFAW: Don’t forget financial crimes.
kindness
I know it’s not the right thread but I want to thank the good people of Maine for kicking LePage’s ass in this election. Thank you Maine.
jefft452
@Geminid: “She made statements in one Caucus meeting after the 2020 elections”
So… 50% of her elections till now
We wont be hearing her whine this election?
Qrop Non Sequitur
@kindness: Every thread is the right thread to appreciate that LePage lost.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: I know that I am an outlier in that I think the vast majority of sentences are far too harsh. Across the board.
Geminid
@A Ghost to Most: Well. you do have a perspective! I’m curious, though: whats your take on Boebert’s photo finish in the Colorado 3rd?
Baud
@kindness:
That was wonderful. Almost makes up for reelecting Susan Collins.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Omnes Omnibus: I tend to agree except I don’t see accountability reaching many white collar types, so I don’t have a fair basis for comparison.
ian
@SFAW: Harsher sentencing is not linked to crime reduction.
Alce_e_ardillo
I worked with a state senate campaign in my neck of the woods and I went to a campaign event there, and I swear, I am almost 66 and I felt like I was the youngest one there. The lack of energy was palpable. We knew it was going to be a tough race but I didnt see any out reach to younger voters or other type of campaigning. The candidate was great in my mind and would have made a great senator, but the kind of lazy sleepy campaigns that have been the norm in NYS will not cut it any more.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
A lot of the outrageously harsh sentences for what look like relatively minor crimes are because of recidivism statutes.
hueyplong
@Baud: “Almost” is a word capable of fairly Herculean effort.
O. Felix Culpa
I haven’t lived on the East Coast in years, but the apparent lackadaisical approach to D campaigning in NY is shocking to me. Apart from Hochul (and who was advising her?), where were Schumer and the other big guns in the critical congressional races? I mean, both Biden and Harris, plus Deb Haaland came to New Mexico in the final weeks before the election, and we’re tiny in comparison to NY representation. I don’t get it.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t necessarily disagree with you, especially considering the unequal application of “justice.”
But I would dearly love to see certain insurrectionists and their “helpers” spend a shitload of time in prison.
Eolirin
@Geminid: I’m not saying she has to worry about the Republicans, she’s not going to win any of them, just that there’s a lot of them, and so she has smaller margins within which to work. Spanberger can’t win by 10 in her district, ever.
SFAW
@ian:
Yes, and … ?
Please re-read the entire comment, and my reply to Omnes.
Martin
@James E Powell:
Yes.
SFAW
@Baud:
You and I have a different understanding of the word “almost.”
Miss Bianca
@jefft452:
I doubt it. Will we, however, be continuing to hear YOU whine?
Probably. That’s going to be fun.
ian
@SFAW: You want people you don’t like locked up, regardless if it works on reducing their behavior. Got it.
Captain C
@eddie blake: I work near the confluence of Boro Park, Kensington, and Midwood. Tuesday afternoon while I was getting my lunch there was a speakermobile driving around blasting out a loop of exhortations in Yiddish to vote for Zeldin and whatever GOP assclown was running for AG. I understood “Genicht is genicht!” so I assume that the grievance was some combination of vax and someone else getting rights and respect.
O. Felix Culpa
@ian:
Consider adjusting your snarkometer.
Eolirin
@Baud: Yeah, the only way we get there is if a couple of Justices pull Scalias and we get control of the Court back and they undo the rulings on the VRA.
The law hasn’t changed, just the court’s position on it, and if we’d had a majority on the court a lot of the election shenanigans would have already been overturned. I think I recall there being some challenges that got close to making gerrymanders unconstitutional while Kennedy was still on the court.
We always seem to be just short of the numbers we need.
SFAW
@Miss Bianca:
Jeez. Baud with “almost,” you with “fun” — maybe my speech-processing center(s) are failing?
[Yes, I know how you meant it, just as I hope you know how I meant mine.]
randy khan
For what it’s worth, when we were in the Finger Lakes region a few weeks ago, I don’t really remember seeing a huge number of Zeldin signs.
I saw a clip a few days before the election (maybe here, actually) of Hochul being asked about the Republican polls showing a close race for Governor and laughing them off as being biased and inaccurate. I wonder if her team figured that they were so far ahead they didn’t need to do much campaigning or GOTV. If so, that was a bad decision for the state party.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: This is true. But I also think 30 year and life sentences are far too common. Twenty years for most murder convictions is probably more than enough. Yes, there are and should be exceptions for egregious cases. And so on down the line.
Alce_e_ardillo
I think part of the atrophy is due to Andrew Cuomo’s approach to governing. Like any authoritarian, he was allergic to having any power centers other than his own, and happily knee-capped progressives and other politicians who tried to work out of the box. He openly wanted to rule with the 3 men in a room style that was New York State for decades, and was pissed when the R’s lost control of the Senate., because that meant he would have to deal with the caucus as a whole, rather than the Majority leader.
I am not up on the ins and outs of NYC borough politics so I’ll leave that to someone else to describe.
jefft452
@Eolirin: “And the dems that are in these districts are usually not super lefty progressives”
Never said they had to be
Do you know why Bratt beat Cantor? Because nobody could point to anything Cantor did for the district – Cantors fault
Do you know why Spanburger beat Bratt? Bratt coasted on ideology and did nothing to make himself popular in the district – Bratts fault
If Spanburger doesn’t have as big of a base in the district then she needs it is her fault, not AOCs, not the rank and file sending donations to Beto instead of her, it is hers and hers alone
Fair Economist
@The Moar You Know: I didn’t write down my findings, but IIRC I could only find one forced birther among the CA judicial candidates. It’s hard to find info, given that our courts work well it’s hard to blame people voting yes.
OFC judges shouldn’t be subject to elections for exactly that reason. Recalls only IMO, and under stricter standards than the nutso CA recalls.
NoraLenderbee
@Eolirin: @eddie blake:
My brother has lived in Rockland County for 30 years. The ultra-Orthodox have taken over the board of education and are cutting the guts out of the public schools. Their own children go to private schools, and they don’t want to pay taxes to educate the poor browns and blacks. It’s disgusting. And it’s not the Judaism I learned growing up.
(another red-sea pedestrian–love that phrase)
Baud
@Eolirin:
We were really close in 2016. But at least we’re not in the TPP!
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Baud: I mean the TPP had some problems but wasn’t it an improvement overall?
Baud
@jefft452:
That’s fine as long as it works both ways. Progressives can’t complain about any one else either. I suspect no one wants to take that deal.
Fair Economist
@Omnes Omnibus: The problem with sentences in this country is not that they are too mild but that police are so awful at solving cases and so the criminals never do any time at all. Research shows surety of punishment matters far more than severity.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: And Snowden is free to tweet from Russia. Ah the time when those two issues consumed our progressive betters on this blog and elsewhere.
Eolirin
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, I think incarceration is not terribly effective and we probably shouldn’t be using it as the primary consequence to lawbreaking, especially when white collar law breaking is more frequently fines that mostly act as a tax on bad behavior and we really need to rethink the whole thing.
But people are way too caught up on the ideas of punishment and retribution to be all that concerned with effectiveness, let alone rehabilitation. Psychopaths aside, most people need help not more trauma.
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
Here in CA one has to do a fair amount of digging to find out who is who in judicial races. I tried to do that and really didn’t find much. Judges are a relatively protected class here (and most other states as well) There is info but it is not right out in the open, one has to dig to find it, other than some political segments do tell you who to vote for. I had the same issue when I lived in OH for a decade. Also It’s been almost 2 decades since I lived in OH and politics has gotten far worse since then. So I agree that selecting judges in important, I just find it always difficult to find answers to any selection process for judges, other than one is particularly shitty and should never have gotten the chance to prove how shitty they are.
It should be a better process, that’s for sure.
Martin
I think the story of this election is going to be the shift from boomers to zoomers setting the political baseline. I haven’t seen any credit given to the climate bill and the college debt relief for why Dems may have done alright, but I think they’ll turn out to have been important factors. How young people think about and address inflation is *very* different from how old people do. For old people it’s more dominated by fixed incomes and cost of living increases, for young people it’s about affordability and debt. How you address inflation for each group is different, and more has been done to help young people than old people. (This is probably a contributing factor to why things in FL are going that way.)
Democrats need to increase their investments in these two generations (zoomers and millennials – basically 40 and under) because their share of the electorate will become dominant in the next couple of cycles. That’s also the key to holding latinos who are a very young demographic.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Eolirin: Psychopaths need help too.
Fair Economist
@Qrop Non Sequitur: The original TPP was horrible. Out of control copyright madness and crippling limits on local environmental actions. The current version, rewritten without US corp influence, is OK.
Eolirin
@Alce_e_ardillo: If I was not functionally disabled by multiple chronic conditions this is something I’d very much want to be working on fixing. Sigh.
Omnes Omnibus
@Qrop Non Sequitur: Eh, Baud can fend for himself.
taumaturgo
One could draw a direct line of Mr Jacob’s sleazy tactic of blaming the left for his political malpractice to the highest echelons of the party leaders in Washington. Until party activist begin to hold accountable and claim change at the top, nothing will fundamentally change to correct the current downward party course. Texas gone, Florida gone, Ohio gone, NY, AZ and NV hanging by a tread.
Eolirin
@Qrop Non Sequitur: It’s not clear you can help them and they’re dangerous to the people around them in a different way than non psychopaths, but yeah, as much as they can be, sure.
UncleEbeneezer
@Ruckus: I follow Peter Dreier a professor at Occidental and he always has a list of yes/no on the judges but no in-depth explanation. In this election he had suggestions for the main ones (the ones with listed opponents), but nothing on that whole last page of judges that are already appointed where the only issue is whether to re-elect them or not. I looked at a couple progressive voter guides and none of them really addressed that latter dozen or so judges.
Omnes Omnibus
@taumaturgo: Hey, you’re back. Oh well.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh, knock that shit off. Baud is a sociopath, not a psychopath.
I think.
ETA: “Think” in the sense of “that’s what the voices in my head are telling me.”
Eolirin
@taumaturgo: Try harder
Nicole
@NoraLenderbee:
Huh. It just occurred to me that might be why one of the rules for running for school board here in NYC is that you are a parent or guardian of a student attending public school. I never thought about “why.”
Martin
@Kay: NY is very age segregated. The entirety of the youth population is in NYC, and the city held. The seat we lost on Long Island? Pretty fucking old. Crime is a message that works against old people. Young people? They live in the places that are supposedly crime-invested hellholes and they know that they’re fine.
Would be helpful if the mayor of NYC didn’t lean into the trope that the city is a crime infested hellhole, when it has ⅔ the violent crime rate of that other hellhole – Des Moines Iowa.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Eolirin: Still better to connect them with a resource, whether compulsory or not, equipped to deal with them rather than a prison.
MisterForkbeard
@Omnes Omnibus: @Eolirin: If Taumaturgo wants to blame establishment Democrats for a historically great midterm result, I think we should bow to his wisdom and accept that.
Oh, and we can NY for doing a bad job, and Hochul for running a bad campaign.
Geminid
@jefft452: That’s five minutes at one post-election meeting out of 750 days in Congress. So while you are pounding sand, you can stuff that “50%” crap in the rat hole too..
And you won’t hear Spanberger whine because she does not whine. Unlike what you are doing.
I would add that ever since an acrimonious blow-up in July, 2019 House Democrats have been very good at keeping disagreements “in the family.” so to speak. I’m sure they speak frankly in Caucus meetings, as they should. But public backbiting and finger pointing has been minimal.
On the other hand, some of their supporters and most of the media are ready to magnify disagreements whenever possible. They are all about backbiting and finger pointing, especially projecting it onto what they like to think is “the other side.”
Some of these are bad faith actors who like to toss out crabapples of discord in hopes that Democrats will fight over them. Elected House members know better than to fall for this tactic, but not all Democrats do.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@taumaturgo: Texas was never there. Ohio and Florida have been trending the way they have for a long time.
We’re growing in strength in PA, MI, KS, and OK. They don’t count?
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: Always amazes me that the uber-left can look at right-wing political hellscapes and draw the same conclusion that the German Communists came to: that the *real* problem was the squishie center-left Democratic equivalents, not the Nazis, and “Nach
Hitler, DeSantis, uns!”JKC
@Irishweaver:
I work in Albany and live in Saratoga county. GOP lawn signs were more common than dandelions.
Albany is pretty thoroughly blue. Hochul should have done better here. I think the spike in gun crime in Albany helped the criticism of bail reform stick. The Bills stadium funding and the Digital Gadgets COVID testing fiasco did not help IMHO.
But good grief: Matt Castelli ran as a center right Democrat in. NY-21 and couldn’t make things close against Elise Stefanik.
Martin
Update on ballot counting in California.
My county yesterday had 292,000 ballots to process. Today it has 404,000. We are hurtling – hurtling I say! – toward the end. Yesterday they processed 18,000 ballots and received 112,000 new ones.
Things should pick up today as yesterday was resting the staff and equipment change over.
AWOL
To confirm, the Hochul campaign didn’t even hang up campaign signs in Northern Manhattan until the panic set in eight days before the election. The other Democratic candidates barely canvassed after their primaries.
My area is full of new citizens, voting places are always changed due to construction, and there was no ground game. I voted in a nanosecond and walked out thinking Zeldin would be in power to tear down our Thin Blue Wall.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Yeah. This was a pain. I started with the LA Times recommendations. The LA County Democratic Party had recommendations, but no explanation for it’s decisions. The Democratic Socialist Party endorsed 3 or 4 Deputy DAs who they considered to be very progressive.
The Bar Association ranked the candidates as well qualified, qualified or not qualified.
One of the candidates was ranked as not qualified. I knocked this person off my list even though they had been endorsed by at least one of my sources.
A friend sent me links to some other references. I probably spent more time on the judges than I spent on the ballot initiatives.
UncleEbeneezer
@Martin: Agreed. It looks like the young voters really came out and helped on this election. We need to invest in making sure they stay on our side as loyal Dems rather than drifting right-ward as they get older, though my understanding is that the Conventional Wisdom on people turning more Conservative as they age still hasn’t really been proven or disproven and various studies reach differing conclusions. But either way I think we need to be constantly bringing in young voters. How we do that, I have no idea but I’m encouraged by groups like Voters Of Tomorrow that are getting young people engaged and primed to vote Dem and don’t use framings that make the Dem Party/Leadership into villains or encourage an attitude of Take-Your-Ball-And-Go-Home (not vote) if you don’t immediately get your way.
Eolirin
@jefft452: Okay, so it’s sounding more like you have a personal issue with Spanberger and felt like bringing it up for some reason. Not really interested.
She’s winning her races. That’s enough.
jefft452
@Geminid:
“But public backbiting and finger pointing has been minimal. “
“So what does party chair Jay Jacobs do when it loses? Blames the woke left:”
PARTY CHAIR
Sure, its me that’s sowing discord
schrodingers_cat
@Miss Bianca: Reminds me of the time when their savior from Vt was angling for a Joe Rogan endorsement. What’s a little white supremacy and patriarchy as along as they get M4All and other freebies.
Brachiator
@Martin:
Of course, county officials have until December 8 to certify the election. The California secretary of state will certify state results on December 15.
Martin
Some pro tips for NY Dems:
Every other problem will resolve itself after you do those.
Baud
@jefft452:
I mean, most people here think Jacobs was wrong. So if you want to emulate Jacobs and also be wrong, I guess you that’s your right. But people here will push back just as we would against Jacobs if he were here in the comments.
gwangung
@jefft452: We’ll hear more whining from the likes of you.
Eyeroller
@jefft452: Geminid was talking about the Congressional Democrats. He mentioned that there has been backbiting among other Democrats.
Geminid has also pointed out several times that Spanberger has a new district that was less solidly D than her old one. Geminid lives in Greene County, which is extremely R and it was shifted into her district.
Martin
@Brachiator: I know. We continue to receive ballots until 11/15. But if you want to know why so many CA races haven’t been decided, yesterday across the state probably ballpark of a million new ballots were received. Even the races that are currently R+15 aren’t certain.
Kent
For another data point. Here in the WA-3rd I emailed the Marie Gluesenkamp Perez congressional campaign and asked for a yard sign. Someone got back to me within the hour asking how many I wanted and they were delivered to my front door that same afternoon. They said a donation was welcome but not required to get a yard sign.
Eolirin
@Qrop Non Sequitur: I agree, but we currently don’t have anything equipped to deal with most of the issues that land people in prison, and it’s less clear what that even looks like for psychopaths than for not-psychopaths.
Let me tell you how inadequate mental health services are, not just in terms of scale, but in terms of diagnostic methodology, treatment modality, and even just generally what they focus on as being problems. And it’s unclear to me, having interacted with these systems and the people in them for a couple of decades, if they can make much of a difference for people who don’t have shelter or food security or an adequate system of natural supports. And broader social services are even worse. Which makes those limitations even more acute. It’s all a mess.
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
Agree & not only that, but there is no evidence that harsh sentences, mandatory minimums, or the death penalty reduce crimes.
Mike E
@Geminid: We got hammered with the GOP soft on crime ads here in NC, and nearly all the down ballot races were won by repubs including every judicial seat. It’s the classic “ooga booga” ad blast, but the Dem response was tepid at best. We are now purple in our 7-7 US House delegation but flaming red pretty much everywhere else. The Dem party needs a generational-scale rebuild in North Carolina and that’s no small task.
Brachiator
@UncleEbeneezer:
In California large numbers of people register as Independent even though they tend to vote for Democrats. I don’t see this changing, at least not in California and some other states. I realize that there are places where you pick your football team and your political party early on and are then st for life. But elsewhere people want to be convinced that a party best represents their values.
If ranked choice voting becomes more popular, this might also lead to new parties. It might be possible to vote for a third party candidate but have a Democrat win over a Republican.
Geminid
@ian: As someone pointed out, if incarceration stopped crime this country would have the least crime in the “Western” world.
Charlottesville and Albemarle County, both elected “reform” Commonweath Attorneys a couple years ago. (these two Virginia localities together have around 130,000 residents).
I haven’t paid very much attention to their practices, but I hear these described some and they seem sound. I expect they’ll both be reelected. I think they still sentence virtually everyone convicted of serious violent crimes to prison, and I think those crimes are what people here really care about.
trollhattan
@Ruckus: Voted no on the sole Pete Wilson appointment, because 1. Pete Wilson and B. dude’s gotta be old as hell.
As an explainer to non-Californians, we have yes/no votes on seated judges only. IDK how the reelection period is set among the various courts.
Eolirin
@Martin: We’re working on it. We at least have early voting now. We made a pass at no excuse absentee ballots via a ballot measure but it failed really hard.
But we’re not as blue of state as CA either. And we have a ton of work we need to do on organization.
Another Scott
@Qrop Non Sequitur: There were long threads here about the TPP at the time (from 2009 on). Some of us were for it, some of us were vehemently opposed.
Cheers,
Scott.
localcomment
@jonas: For a long stretch of the fall, the only issue in TV ads from Conole and Hochul was abortion, over and over again. It was not until late in the game that Conole started to push back against Williams (let’s go Brandon) and the NRCC / dark money commercials on crime and the economy. Similarly Hochul was abortion, abortion, abortion, until very late in the game. I can’t understand why there was not more effort to attach Zeldin to Trump and Williams to Trump. We now will have a Trumpist extremist representing NY22 (John Katko’s old district – one of the few R’s that voted to impeach) which is at least a D3+. The NY Democrats really need a swift kick upstate as they threw away several competitive districts (Ithaca area – NY19- for example to an R that doesn’t even live in the district) and we are now deep, deep red for the next few years at least. I agree that Conole didn’t seem to have much ground game.
jefft452
@Baud: I’d be happy to take that deal
Geminid
@jefft452: I was talking about House Democrats, not the New York party chair, and that’s pretty damn obvious.
If you read my comment #18 you’ll see I think that Jacobs is as full of baloney as you are.
Martin
@Eolirin: Fucking Idaho has no excuse absentee voting. It’s not a liberal thing. It’s just basic competency.
Repatriated
@James E Powell:
@Martin:
The Torrance, CA (Los Angeles suburb) Dems had a FB post listing the “Best” judges promoted by a right-wing advocacy group (that is, worst ones), with an admonition to vote against them. Didn’t see much else online about judicial races from other Dem and Dem-aligned groups.
I mean, it’s a great shortcut (find out who the GOP backs, and vote the opposite), but for legal reasons — partisan endorsements in nominally non-partisan contests — it might be better to keep that to “independent” organizations or just describe that shortcut and leave it to the voters.
Brachiator
@Martin:
I haven’t checked but I am curious to know how many people voted in person and how many mailed their ballot. I also figure that the rain Monday and Tuesday led more people to mail their ballot.
I see that the city of Los Angeles and a few other places have very tight elections. In Pasadena the vote for rent control is tight. Most of the ballot propositions are winning or losing by large margins. I don’t expect much change. I will typically check in early December to see if there are any significant changes.
I think the Secretary of State site highlights contests that are too close to call. I like that California makes it easy to verify voting outcomes.
Matt McIrvin
@James E Powell: If I recall correctly, the research says that the main element in deterring crime is for there to be a high probability of getting caught.
Would-be criminals are not doing a calculation of the statistical expectation value of punishment–you can’t replace making it twice as likely to get caught by making the punishment twice as harsh. If the punishment is incredibly harsh but most people don’t get caught, the deterrent effect will still be low.
One of the many problems with today’s police is that they’re not actually that good at catching criminals. They seem to be concentrating on other things. But we’ve made sentences very harsh as a substitute, and it’s not a good substitute.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
@Eolirin:
I used to know someone who has been in jail for 50 yrs. I haven’t seen her for over 55 yrs but still I used to know her. She has been denied release by every CA governor for I think the last 20 yrs. But here’s a problem. How does she live if released? No income for basically her lifetime. No social security. If she gets out now how does she live?
I think that we do often set penalties too strict here in the US. If you are likely to spend the majority of your life in prison, what do you do when/if you get out? How do you exist? Crime? What have you got to lose, if say you are 55 yrs old, zero savings, zero SS, not likely salable skills, haven’t seen the outside world in 30 yrs, how do you exist? Yes we need penalties for crime, but how is removing all possibility of living doing anything for the future? I have no answer but I also don’t see us looking for answers either.
Scout211
per CNN, Frisch is now ahead of Boebert by 386, 50.1% to 49.9%.
And they called CT 5 for Democrat Jahana Hayes.
Alce_e_ardillo
As far as the party going forward, three of the top Dems in the state are now upstaters, Hochul should be the nominal head of the party, Delgado as Lt Governor, and Kirsten Gillibrand. They should use there clout to sweep some of the dead wood out of the party apparatus. Upstate NY is not a afterthought. There is no reason to cede Rochester and Buffalo to the Republicans, and while the north country and southern tier are likely to stay red for a long time, we can cut into their margins if we campaign smart.
eddie blake
@Captain C: yeah, i’m in kensington. zeldin signs were all over the joint. an election denying fascist who promised to pardon mango unchained gets the chasids out in droves.
truly, we’re in the upside-down place.
Baud
@Scout211: Nice.
Brachiator
@Omnes Omnibus:
A while back I watched a video about one country, maybe Denmark, that did not have long sentences for any crime. Initially some sentences seemed to mild. But in thinking about it I also came round to the idea that the majority of sentences are too harsh.
It is… interesting… to read about folks who just want to lock some people up and throw away the key and don’t care if prisons are overcrowded and dangerous.
zhena gogolia
@Scout211: Great news! I’ve been sweating Jahana.
Eolirin
@localcomment: Molinaro is a good candidate though, both with a lot of recognition and a very postive reputation in the area. NY-19 is a winnable district, since he only won it by 2, but that would have been a tough race regardless. We’ve gotten too used to being able to win without needing to try, under the old maps, and these new maps are more competitive.
I think we’ll adjust, I certainly hope so at least. So I think we’ll get NY-17 and 19 in a future cycle. Pat Ryan did end up pulling out a win here in NY-18, so that’s something.
Geminid
@Martin: I’m curious: what do you think about the CA 41st CD race? I may not have the number right, but it’s the one in the Palm Springs area where Rollins is taking on veteran Republican Rep Ken Calvert.
The New York Time had an article about this race a couple months ago, and it seemed like it might be significant as to demographic and political trends in that part of Southern California.
JoyceH
@Eyeroller: I also live in a ruby red county that got shifted into Spanberger’s district. Plenty of houses here still have their Trump 2020 signs. Some got new ones. Big ol’ Let’s Go Brandon sign flying from a pickup.
Despite the odds, the county’s scrappy little Democratic committee worked their hearts out for Spanberger. We achieved parity in yard signs. They hosted events, had info booths, knocked on doors. Spanberger marched in our Fall Festival parade!
Her opponent was an insurrectionist-praising forced birther. I thought the abortion thing would move the needle at least a little bit. But when I looked at the vote totals, I saw that the county did what it always does, in the 30 years I’ve been living here – they shuffled off to the polls like zombie robots, and voted two to one for the Republican.
SIGH!
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Alce_e_ardillo: All these close races in blue states are making me really happy I voted for my incumbent D even though I never liked the guy.
Groucho48
I’ve seen clips of Hochul giving stump speeches and she’s just not a good public speaker and I’m pretty sure she knows this. But the Buffalo air waves were full of Hochul ads and of quick soundbites of her saying things like…I’ll protect your right to choose”. Never saw anything from Schumer until the week before the vote when he did his usual fly-ins for ribbon cutting ceremonies. I think part of the problem Hochul has is that Cuomo didn’t like her and did his best to keep her out of sight and powerless and much of the state Dem organization is still his and would be happy to have him back and shares his contempt for her.
randy khan
@jefft452:
Spanberger seems to me to be using the progressives to position herself in her district as a sensible Democrat. So far it’s worked in a pretty tough district.
Immanentize
Mistermix or Jonas,
Given the Texas, Wisconsin, etc. Examples; is there any possibility the NY legislature could re-apportion NY again, but use a lighter (but not pro-GOP) hand?
Eolirin
@Martin: I did not mean that in respect to your 1. point. I meant it in respect to electoral outcomes.
We’re going to send more Rs to the House than CA as a percentage of our delegation if our maps are fair, even if we fix our organization problems.
I am more frustrated than you are by our voting stuff, believe me.
Geminid
@JoyceH: I will be interested in seeing how Spanberger does going forward, in the red counties like ours that have been added to the 7th. I expect her margins will improve and she’ll end up holding that seat for the next 20 years.
Part of this will be due to demographic change. And part will be due to Spanberger being a really smart, hardworking politician.
I also believe that, for similar reasons, if Elaine Luria can win the 2nd CD back in 2024-and I think she will- Luria will hold that seat for twenty more years. Like Spanberger, Luria just entered her mid forties.
Fun Spanberger fact: when she flipped the 7th in 2018, Spanberger became the first Democrat to represent the 7th since the party realignment of the 1970s.
Matt McIrvin
@JoyceH:
I see the same stuff in my weakly but consistently blue Massachusetts district. But the Trumpy people here are LOUD and far more insistent on their political identity than anyone else.
Served
It’s obviously not 1:1, but post-Cuomo Dems in NY remind me of IL Dems in post-Blago Illinois.
Hopefully they can right their ship quicker than Dems did here, because one term under an R gov did major (irreparable in some cases) damage to the state’s finances and institutions.
Scout211
@Scout211: Either I read the CO race wrong or the reporting was wrong or there is an update, but the current count is the reverse of what I had posted. With 96% reporting, Boebert is ahead by 386.
Sorry about that.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
CA-41 is where I live, where donated sans hope, and where I texted a bit. I am generally leery of “if only we had more money” claims in R+3 districts, but Rollins had some good ads against a guy who is a fat & happy incumbent.
If Calvert goes down, I’m going to drink some of the good stuff.
Qrop Non Sequitur
Ooh! Chocolate milk?
Geminid
@Groucho48: I wonder if senior New York Dems were complacent. I thought Terry McAuliffe’s overconfidence might have cost him the Virginia Governor’s race. My Democrat friends agree.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Geminid: Paging Martha Coakley.
zhena gogolia
@Scout211: oh shit
Geminid
@randy khan: Spanberger’s not even doing this while campaigning. She made remarks at a Democratic Caucus meeting after the 2020 election. They got reported, and soreheads have been griping about it ever since.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
I voted no on 2. Have no real knowledge if they were all that bad or if the ones I did vote for were all that good. I found a couple of lists and they seemed to be more knowledgeable than me, a not very high bar.
I think it’s a good idea that judges get accepted/rejected but I’d like a better method of figuring out if they are crap. Or not.
Geminid
@Qrop Non Sequitur: You’ll have to page her. You’re certalnly not gonna find Coakley at the Winter Classic!
Kay
@Martin:
Criminal justice reform breaks my heart a little because we were making progress. There was bipartisan support in Ohio because everyone around the system knows it’s broken and ruining lives and also insanely expensive. It is really true that one could send a repeat offender drug addict to an excellent rehab with what it costs to keep the addict in prison.
Every single judge in my practice (geographical) area is a Republican. We have drug courts (and the evidence is mixed on drug courts). They KNOW imprisoning people isn’t working. They are desperate and will try new things because they are not bad people and The WORK sucks. It makes people who work in the criminal justice despair. They didn’t get into it to ruin lives and spent decades doing fruitless, pointless work.
Eolirin
@Geminid: They absolutely were.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Geminid: Nowhere constituent-facing, in fact.
Martin
@Brachiator: So, we don’t have that statewide yet, but in Orange County (as a fairly purple county) we had 340,000 early mail ballots, 320,000 same day machine votes, and now 404,000 late mail ballots. Not sure how many more late.
So here mail ballots are more than 2:1 against in-person. So, as a baseline, Katie Porter won +13 in early mail, lost -12 in same day machine, and remains to be seen in late mail. If late mail matches early mail, she’ll win by double digits. In the past late mail was always pretty blue, but I don’t have a sense if it’s *as* blue as early mail.
My other question was how much late mail there would be (‘late’ meaning received on Election Day or later). And it’s a lot. Most of it had been drop box and vote center, but USPS is starting to really catch up. I mean, if late mail has the same partisan split as early mail (not expecting that, but we’ll see) then Porter could win by 15, maybe more. She’s currently up by 1.
So there’s a lot of potential for movement still everywhere in the state. Probably less in red districts, but to your point – the folks in the sierras that got 3′ of snow on Election Day – I bet they shifted hard to mail ballots this year, and probably late enough that they’re mostly late mail.
One reason why Dems should prefer this difference in partisan voting methods – vote by mail preference by Dems means more time getting people to the polls on Election Day by Dems. This is why NY should fix their goddamn shit.
Captain C
@eddie blake:
One who hired Stephen Miller and called the Charlottesville torch nazis good people. Right down the memory hole.
Martin
@Kay: We are still making progress. WAY too much has been made of the recall of the SF DA. There’s no evidence that is part of a trend just because Fox News wants it to be. Criminal justice reform is still making progress.
The thing you gotta understand – SF liberals are fucking weird. I can’t stand them most of the time. There’s no city in the US more hostile to affordable housing than SF. They protest mass transit. I mean, thank god they vote Dem, but Donald Trump would have a more progressive housing policy for the city than these people. It blows my mind how actively hostile they are in practice to the people they say they care about the most.
lowtechcyclist
@Mike in NC:
Hope they manage to slice and dice each other so thoroughly that neither of them has a political future.
Geminid
@Captain C: Pepperidge Farm remembers.
And so does Satmar Grand Rebbe Aron Teitlebaum (see comment #24).
lowtechcyclist
@jefft452: Oh lordy. One pie coming up.
Turgidson
It would appear she does, given that she’s won three times.
frosty
Sounds like she could have used the campaign strategy of one of her neighbors to the south:
Every County. Every Vote.
Eolirin
@Martin: We’ve only had legislative control with a non-antagonistic Govenor for like a year, and only legislative control at all for two cycles. We’ll get there. CA didn’t get to where it was overnight either.
Turgidson
@Martin:
You’re right, but it is *starting* to get better in SF. NIMBY elected officials are getting more pushback and it’s turning into a political liability. Too slowly, but there is some movement.
On transit I think a lot of it is frustration with Muni generally sucks (fact check: true) and the Central Subway taking a jillion years and zillion dollars to get built, with Powell/Union Square area being torn up for years as a result.
I’m in the east bay now so don’t follow local SF politics as closely, but this is where things seem to be.
trollhattan
@Kay: The prison industrial complex is powerful. California Republicans and police unions are continually hammering on “tens of thousands of felons being released from prison into our communities” and it has an effect, over the long haul.
Case in point: we have a city councilwoman who ran for state senate against a fellow Democrat, for a newly opened seat. Her ads rained down on us starting last summer and by last week, she was literally accusing her opponent of “releasing 20,000 felons” while describing herself as “moderate” and him as “Liberal.” Needless to say she’s been endorsed by cops and prison guards, who send some direct mail under their names.
Made me nauseated by the end and last I checked, she’s ahead in the count.
Kay
@Martin:
Thanks. I followed the SF race and I too think it was over-analyzed as meaningful.
I think panics peter out and moderate eventually so hopefully we’ll get back to sensible criminal justice reforms and reducing sentences for non violent crimes so they aren’t insane as compared to the rest of the world. We also need to stop keeping people on probation so long. This has become a racket. Courts are funding operations by fining people who are on probation. They’re on paper for YEARS so of course they eventually violate. It’s a scam. Savvy criminals refuse probation and negotiate only “straight time” because they know it’s a sucker move and they’ll be on paper forever – just keeping the big, blind law machine running.
JoyceH
@Geminid:
Honestly? I think too many white people in NoVA fell for Youngkin’s pose of Genial Moderate In A Fleece Vest. So many Republicans were adopting the new fashion of imitating Trump’s abrasiveness that it probably seemed refreshing. I hope they all learned an important lesson – do NOT believe a Republican who poses as a moderate to get your vote. Don’t do it. Not until the GOP as a whole shows some genuine contrition and does what they can to fix the damage they’ve done – and even then, not for at least twenty years.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
I probably spent more time on the judges than I spent on the ballot initiatives.
Same here. And it’s been pretty much the same since I started voting. Which was a while ago. I wonder if the only people that might actually know about judges are lawyers that have gone before them. I mean sure we can look at their records but to do that reasonably we have to know the cases/perps they had in front of them. And now we are back to square one.
Steeplejack
As we’re twiddling our thumbs waiting on election results, here’s a pretty good thread (from September) about the prospect of a small GQP majority in the House.
trollhattan
@Ruckus: With Superior Court judges I can quiz some PD friends, who have probably appeared before all in our district.
Courts of Appeal is a lot tougher nut to crack.
genre g
I’m a world-class lurker…read everything, contribute when WaterGirl suggests, oohs at pets, aahs at quilts. But it’s taken this issue of CA judges to get me to actually comment.
For years along with the various guides put out by the Democratic Party, the newspapers, etc. I’ve also consulted the well researched super conservative electionforum.org run by a guy named Craig. It started as mainly judges though he’s expanded over the years to include nearly everything on the ballot in California and Tennessee!?
in Craig’s own words: “Election Forum is a powerful tool for transforming communities for Biblical change”
then later without shame or self-awareness:
“Judicial activists overturn voter-passed initiatives and laws passed by the state legislature because they personally have a different belief system, twist the law to rationalize their decisions, and impose their own moral codes, political beliefs, and secular values in an effort to reshape our society and promote social engineering. Strict constructionists impartially arrive at a fair judgment based on law. Judicial activists are usually more liberal; strict constructionists are usually more conservative”.
It’s incredibly reliable; basically whatever he’s for I’m against
Captain C
@Steeplejack: Makes me wonder about two things:
Geminid
@JoyceH: There were a lot of factors that countributed to Mcaullife’s loss. Put simply, there was a 12 point swing between his vote percentage and Biden’s 10 point win the year before. One could say any one of several consequential factors made the difference in McAuliffe’s 2 point loss.
I think campaign quality was one. Youngkin and his team knew they had a narrow path to victory, and they ran an efficient, energetic and focused campaign to get there.
McAulliffe and his team did not, I thought. I think this was in part because they underrated Youngkin and did not understand until too late how tough he would be to beat.
Eyeroller
@JoyceH: McAuliffe just wasn’t a great candidate IMHO, even though I voted for him in the primary (unfortunately, I feared a Black woman was a non-starter, and I’m not sure about a white woman yet for this state). He tends to come across as kind of a sleazy pol. Also I think that overall, Democrats are just now learning that a campaign isn’t an earnest policy-debating tournament, it’s about marketing. Some people sneered that they brought in a former marketing executive from Pepsi but I thought “About time.” Glenny’s warm fuzzy fleece vest was brilliant branding.
Steeplejack
@JoyceH:
I thought you lived in King George County. That’s not in the 7th, is it?
LiminalOwl
@Ruckus: Excellent comment. (And my parents were slightly acquainted with… another member of that group, I think.).
Tangent, sort of: A long-ago classmate was snarky on an alumni discussion list about living on public assistance who had cell phones. I noted that I had helped one such to get his phone, which meant that he could get a bed in a shelter when he got out of jail, and could apply for jobs because they could call him back. And he stayed out of jailfor longer than usual because he could talk to his kids daily, and they were his main incentive to stay clean.
To his credit, my very conservative classmate said that this had changed his opinion.
nancy
@Omnes Omnibus:
I heard Harry Bronson, Dem state assembly rep talk about the bail reform and how judges have the option to choose bail based on the individual case.
Tough on crime = destroying families in many cases.
Ruckus
@Martin:
“It blows my mind how actively hostile they are in practice to the people they say they care about the most.”
They likely do care that they are hungry or homeless, they just don’t want to have them living in their front yards or camping on their streets. They pay A LOT to live in SF and they don’t want it sullied. But they don’t think the poor should starve or live exposed on a nice rainy winterish day. IOW they are liberal, just selfish liberals. Conservatives just want them to live anywhere else, starve or be tased or shot. They only want them arrested as a last resort because the money to pay for their incarceration comes out of their taxes.
Our country does not do well in any way supporting people who don’t fit in, be they hungry, sick or poor, be it one, two or all three. Which it often is, because money talks and no money doesn’t make a sound.
Bill Arnold
@Steeplejack:
Oh yeah. Fun times for Loki either way, though Loki prefers a small Democratic party House majority.
A tiny-majority House (either R or (less so) D) has 220+ SPOFs (single points of failure, though combinations are required if the majority is larger, to shift balance). More if you count the “minority” party members. Constantly on the cusp of tipping(/being tipped) into breakdown.
Alce_e_ardillo
@Ruckus: I can’t tell you how many people including politicians subscribe to the notion that we are being ” too nice” to drug addicts, and people with nonviolent crimes, and that just ” a little more brutality” will set them straight.
Ruckus
@LiminalOwl:
I had a business neighbor who gave her a ride once when she was hitchhiking. I met him 30 yrs ago. As big and populated as LA county is, it really isn’t all that many square miles. It has a population larger than 40 states, stuffed into 4753 sq miles, 9.83 million people. It was less populated 30 or 50 yrs ago of course but it was still a lot of people.
Ruckus
@Alce_e_ardillo:
Yep.
People never consider that they will ever be in criminal court, on either side. And yet I’ve served on a criminal court jury, been called for a first degree murder case to which the guy copped, just before we were seated, and twice sat in jury rooms waiting to be called.
Sure some people really deserve punishment, but my question is always does that punishment really make a lot of difference? Some will never change, some will see the errors of their ways, some are doing what they can because we effectively throw away their lives if they don’t fit in reasonably. The results are uneven, are sometimes very unfair, and because we keep so many in jail for long periods of time they end up unable to recover and the cycle repeats and repeats and….. I’m not saying the rest of us are responsible for their shitty lives and actions. But I am saying that other countries that don’t demonize and over incarcerate have smaller crime rates. We’ve talked about it before but our country and it’s structure can lead to an unbalance of money, all the while creating a demand to make a sometimes unreasonable amount to survive. It is expensive to live in many parts of this country and the very wealthy can and do have often extreme amounts, while people starve, have crappy or zero healthcare, and zero way to get out of that hole. There will always be a criminal class but many are in that who are there because there are few or no options open to them. Think education. Do you now need a college education to really fit in? Pretty much. How does a person with a normal/average level of intelligence go to college, live, earn enough to pay off even basic college and what kind of job can they get without that or even more? Not everyone can go but we leave out a lot of people who could make a reasonable living with the rest of us paying. I had a customer in my bike shop, a doctor with 2 kids. His son wanted to become a doctor, and therefore had to attend 8 yrs of advanced learning, with all of his education up to the last 4 yrs of med school at a very good school. Let’s say he was capable, that last 4 years still cost at least $250 thousand and to get accepted he had to go to a damn good college, likely at a minimum $100-150K. Could you pay that for your kid? Most can’t come close, which means loans that may never be paid because of the interest. My sister died at 66 still owing.
We can do better but a lot of our concept of country is those that can survive and prosper and everyone else suffers a bit to a lot. We have, as a country decided that it’s the wealthy that can get wealthier and prosper, and everyone else can suck it. We do this with taxes, we do it with education, we do it with pretty much every aspect of our country. SFB could spend his way out of the draft, out of serving at all, out of responsibility, and the rest of us pay for that in so many ways.
AnonPhenom
@Kay: careful Kay you’ll get blamed for the crap turnout in NYC!
https://mobile.twitter.com/SalAlbaneseNYC/status/1588885746902921216
As Chris Hayes says, NY Dem Pols are more intrested in fighting their Left than their Right, …and any *stick* they find (or imagine) in their hands will suffice.
Geminid
@AnonPhenom: Did Chris Hayes name names? I’ve only seen two so far, Albanese the former NYC Council member and Jacobs the party chair. What about all the current office holders? There are plenty of them. Are they saying this also?
Saying that some New York Dem Pol are blaming the left might be more accurate. But I guess that would defeat the purpose of this beef, which is to stir up shit.