In yesterday’s post about the Democrats’ messaging situation, my number one observation is that Democrats don’t like to campaign all the time. Some commenters had reasons to explain that, and some of them may be valid, but let me offer an experience-based counterpoint.
I started blogging around 2006 when Eric Massa ran for the then NY-29 congressional seat. This was my district at the time, and my blog was focused solely on NY-29 politics. It was mainly in the Southern Tier of New York, but a bit of it was gerrymandered north to the Rochester suburbs. The district went for Bush by 10-11 points in 2000 and 2004, and it went for McCain by 3 points in 2008. As a basically R+6 or tougher district, it was essentially conceded by the Democratic Party. The district had been represented by Amo Houghton, an old-school New York Republican, which is to say someone who was fairly liberal on social programs. After Houghton retired, Republican Randy Kuhl took his place.
Massa, who turned out to be a nutcase, a closet case and a sex pest, was a gifted and determined politician. He was a retired navy officer who had done some business consulting. He traveled the district, meeting with party committees and the few Democratic elected officials, to set the groundwork for his 2006 campaign. He got nothing from the DCCC or really from any of the party — this was the foundation of my view that the “50 state strategy” was all talk and no action. But he persevered. He hired a talented media person and the goal of Massa and his tiny staff was to get stories in every local paper every day. Each morning, like clockwork, a press release landed in my inbox from the campaign. It picked on something Kuhl had done, or imagined a different world with a Democrat in charge, or talked about a visit to a town festival or civic club (like the Lions or Rotary).
The first key point is that Massa didn’t really spend any ad money, by standards of a Congressional campaign. Almost all of his media was “earned media” — stories in the paper. With small town papers drying up, this strategy wouldn’t work today, but the takeaway isn’t the details of the technique, it’s the persistence and desire to spread the Democratic message every day.
A second key point about Massa is that he wasn’t a splitter or a mealy mouthed centrist. He was fully for single-payer health insurance. He was against the Iraq war. He picked issues that addressed the pain felt in the district. A lot of kids went to war from the 29th, and some of them were maimed or died in a war that by 2006 seemed like a waste. And, the district was older, so paying for healthcare was a huge issue.
Massa lost the 2006 election to Kuhl by 3 points, or 6,000 votes, which was a squeaker by standard of a district where the last two races were won by Republicans with solid margins. Immediately after that loss, he started campaigning again. This time, he got a wee bit of support from the party, but he still mostly raised funds on his own and continued his tradition of issuing press releases and traveling all around the district. In 2008, he won by 5,000 votes. Then, he self-destructed, but that’s a story for another time. In the brief period that he represented the district, he did have a lot of town halls and also kept sending out press releases.
I realize this experience is almost 20 years old now, but it left me (and DougJ, who also followed that race closely) with the view that Democrats are losing seats because they don’t campaign long enough or hard enough. I believe then, and I believe now, that paid media is of far lesser quality than earned media. In today’s highly fractured media environment, earned media is probably mostly social media, and that’s a challenge. But even in 2006/2008, it was clear that repeated, dark, negative TV spots were a money sink of questionable return. Massa had hardly any ads in 2006 and almost won. Kuhl had a ton of ads on 2008, compared to Massa’s meager ad budget, and Kuhl lost. Another take-home is that someone who climbs the party ladder like Kuhl is a far weaker candidate that an outsider like Massa. Kuhl was often left flat-footed by Massa’s attacks, because he had been a state legislator for umpteen years and then moved up in the hierarchy when Amo Houghton retired. That is not a recipe for an aggressive, fast-on-his-feet candidate. But, the Democratic party establishment (DCCC) is far more comfortable with someone who’s ascended in the ranks because the DCCC is risk averse. Finally, the lesson of a little money early being far more effective than a lot of money late is borne out by my experience in the 29th. Another $100K in May 2006 could have made the difference for Massa. Late money sent to campaigns mostly goes to more TV, because whatever organization and staffing the campaign has by, say, October, is what they’re going to end the campaign with. Money given at that point doesn’t go to laying the groundwork for organizing and GOTV that I still believe can make the margin of victory.
This is why I will continue to criticize elected Democrats for failing to run 24/7/365 campaigns — because I’ve seen it work and win in an “unwinnable” district.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
And even back then we were debating the efficacy of that. Flash forward to now and it’s even more apparent that flushing money down the TV toilet is simply that, a money flush.
The GOP wurlitzer (in all it’s various Party and non-Party forms) runs as you said 24/7/365. We don’t, thus, we concede a ton come election time.
RevRick
I believe you omitted one important data point here. In October 2008, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, the financial system was in free fall and the Presidential race went from a tossup to Obama eventually winning by over 7%.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@RevRick:
McCain still won the district by 3 points. A generic “D” would have still lost even though the financial meltdown was happening.
E.
@RevRick: Okay but McCain won the same district by 3 points. Massa flipped it from strong R to D. I think this post makes some good points. People do respond to our issues when we get those issues before them.
Suzanne
A couple of thoughts:
1) I am pretty well convinced that most politics is national at this point, and the national party apparatus needs to be constantly in brand-building mode. Individual candidates cannot do this effectively and probably aren’t good at it anyway.
2) I think Dems and Reps get into politics for very different reasons at this point. Asking Dems to be good legislators and good campaigners is looking for a pretty rare bird.
Fake Irishman
Question:
How is what Eric Massa did different than what Claire McCaskill or Heidi Heitkamp did in 2013-2018? Or John Tester and Sherrod Brown in 2019-2024?
Those are probably four of the most gifted, most determined, consistent retail politicians in the Senate. I’ll bet every local paper got multiple press releases a week from them on everything from ag policy to Veterans issues and Manufacturing investment ….and they all lost. (Granted, they all far outperformed baseline numbers)
We’re going to need some more counterfactuals before I buy “Democrats are lazy” hypothesis here.
Perhaps those in some safe districts: AOC caught one napping in the 2018 primary, and Maloney got exposed in 2022.
But that indicates there are some areas for improvement and some politicians who don’t get it, it’s not an indictment as the part as a whole….
Another Scott
Interesting post. Thanks. I appreciate your perspective.
Dunno if campaigning 24/7/365 is the answer. It might work for some newcomers, but even then I wonder. 1) Who has the time and money to do that? Do we only want the independently wealthy running? 2) Lots of us tune out political ads, or worse get annoyed by them (I remember getting very annoyed the first time HRC ran when there was this concerted effort to stampede Democrats into supporting her before she even announced she was running). 3) Other than a handful of cases (Carter in Iowa) , it doesn’t seem that bombarding people with ads and appearances and 24/7 campaigning and the like really works (e.g. Whitman in California).
But, yes, candidates have to find voters where they are and they need to repeat the message 6 times or more to have hopes of it sticking. It’s a tough job, and requires real work and 6 months before an election maybe too late. (OTOH, other countries make it work with snap elections all the time, so there must be a way to get meaningful, impactful, persistent messages work in the USA as well.)
A Democratic House candidate in TN that I sent a donation to is continuing to send me broadcast e-mails. She’s running again for the same seat. I don’t see that her approach has changed yet. (She lost 70% to 26.8%) It’s still very early, of course…
My $0.02. Thanks again.
Best wishes,
Scott.
hrprogressive
Massa prior to his implosion appeared to really believe what he campaigned on, and kept beating that drum until people heard the message.
Today’s Democrats spent 2+ years claiming Donald Trump and the GOP were an imminent threat to this nation, only to **immediately** pivot to “Can’t wait to work with the GOP!” after they lost.
This squares with my theory that the vast majority of elected democrats do not actually care about the issues or their voters, but instead their own wealth and power, and their addiction to bipartisanship.
It is zero wonder then that so many low-info/swing voters feel abandoned by them.
We are a 24/7/365 information society, one which is constantly asking “What have you done for me lately?”
The Fascist Right understands this.
The Moribund Centerish Left does not, and at this point, it seems willfully ignorant.
Baud
@Another Scott:
You don’t have to waste your money, but it’s probably her or nobody. Not many people willing to step up in deep red districts.
Glory b
@Fake Irishman: Yes, I’d like a compare/contrast about that too.
Although it wasn’t THAT long ago, I feel like there’s been a huge sea change in politics, Republicans don’t see us as anything but “the enemy,” worse than foreign adversaries.
They move in lockstep with unwavering support for their candidates. You will NEVER hear them critiquing fellow Republicans, unless they stray from the MAGA blueprint.
For better or worse, lots of black voters find public criticism of the Harris campaign to be VERY discouraging & off-putting.
Fake Irishman
@Fake Irishman:
now if you want to say we need to build state and local party capacity, I think there’s some merit to that. The party has to be greater than the sum of its candidates, even in a candidate-centered system like the US. Steve Schale has had some good discussions about this wrt the Florida Democratic Party (a donor failure — they wanted to fund a bunch of outside groups and neglected investing the Dems, who would have had som internal structural advantages with things like registering voters and other basic blocking and tackling in both stronger and weak geographical areas)
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Fake Irishman:
These candidates all started with huge warchests compared to Massa. Millions vs thousands. So it’s a completely different campaign and approach. But, yes, they lost, and ND, MT and MO are pretty damn red nowadays. More red than NY-29 was.
And, I agree with Suzanne who made the point, essentially, that RW media has nationalized every race. I don’t know if an approach like Massa’s could be as effective in 2024. But I think it’s worth a shot and — this is important — it doesn’t cost that much in the context of what campaigns cost overall.
E.
@Fake Irishman: I keep coming back to the fact the same voters voted in some states to increase the minimum wage, protect women’s reproductive rights, and elect Trump. It seems like a lot of voters are receptive to our messages but are so repelled by the D brand that they either don’t or won’t join us. We tend not to fight back when smeared by an idiot and that has made us look weak. We tend to argue and reason out our policies and it makes us look uncertain and whiny. I don’t know how to repair that brand since I like decisions that are a result of argument and reason and I prefer ignoring idiots.
The local bigshot in the Republican Party, a fellow who has gotten a few very MAGA candidates elected, always slurs the local Ds by calling them women. If they are already women he accuses them of being vaccinated (because that’s a thing). He’ll say, “you sound vaccinated” for example and laugh and laugh. This is a grown man in charge of the locally successful political party. I don’t have any idea how to work with or even against such people. Their very existence is a mystery to me.
Another Scott
@Baud:
Good points. And I’m a big fan of people contesting just about every seat whenever possible. And things don’t change until they do. But we need to be realistic and hard-headed sometimes. One’s message has to click with enough voters to win. And that means that one has to recognize a shellacking and adjust one’s approach if one wants to be a successful politician.
We’ll see what happens.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Layer8Problem
@hrprogressive: Better give up, I guess. Thanks, hrprogressive.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@hrprogressive:
On the two big issues of the campaign — healthcare and the war — Massa had credibility that other candidates might lack. He was a cancer survivor and as a former Navy officer, it was more difficult to call him a coward (which is basically what Republicans were doing to Democrats who opposed the war).
Also, nobody could repeat a message like Massa. I still remember some of his talking points (“I learned about healthcare at the sharp end of a chemotherapy needle” was one.). He had a few talking points and he repeated them ad infinitum.
Starfish (she/her)
@hrprogressive: I think the way Democrats campaigned on how Republicans were the biggest threat was exhausting and demoralizing to voters.
I think that the “can’t wait to work with my colleagues” stuff is more like “can’t wait to see if you can herd cats and pass legislation without us or see if you have to compromise and pass something somewhat sane.”
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
I read pieces years back (that I can’t find now) that on the Congressional level, the national GOP has done exactly that: they’ve changed the dynamic of “all politics is local” to “all politics is national”, and thus, your bog-standard (R) white guy running for a Congressional district doesn’t campaign on stuff important to the everyday lives of his constituents but all the national level crap the GOP thrives on.
And when I say we should be active 24/7/365, that means at a national level by national-level groups or satellites. That way, when a candidate does run, there’s some built-in messaging support and marketing. Modelo didn’t become a “hit” beer over the last 5-7 years w/o nonstop messaging (advertising):
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dontse/2024/11/01/how-modelo-became-the-no-1-beer-brand-in-america/
And yeah, any money we can toss at helping all local-level Dem Party people thrive is better than endless TV money every two years.
Splitting Image
I agree with the general thrust of the post, but I’d like to add that a Democrat and a Republican can work equally hard throughout a political cycle, with the result that the Republican’s attempts to keep in the public eye are rewarded with endless retweets, dozens of appearances on television, puff pieces by columnists at the New York Times and the Washington Post, and multiple invitations to speak at universities chaired by fellow travellers. Meanwhile, the Democrat’s attempts to keep in the public eye are rewarded with tweets pushed down by social media algorithms, dozens of ignored phone calls to news organizations requesting to appear on television, articles about their legislative achievements buried under editorials by David Brooks and Peggy Noonan, and multiple invitations to speak at the local open mike night if they have some funny stories to tell.
You’re not wrong that Democrats would do better across the board with a little more hustle, but the Republican establishment is a vertically-integrated welfare state. The political party is just one wing of an entire organization that uses churches to indoctrinate kids into voting Republican, and uses inherited wealth to get the kids into the most elite colleges where they can network with other Republicans. The “gentleman’s C” that they get from college gives them the credentials they need to enter politics as a Republican, take an executive job at a company that funds Republicans, or join a media organization that promotes Republicans.
This works for them because none of them have any principles at all except that of advancing the party. The Democratic coalition is made up of groups that have real interests and often disagree with each other. Prioritizing one group often means offending another, and it can be difficult to get everyone on board with a party platform. The fault lines on Gaza, for example, were not a problem that could have been solved with a little more hustle.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Suzanne:
New Members of Congress do very little legislating, and their staff does any of the difficult work of understanding legislation and advising the MoC on it. Members of Congress fundraise and fly back to the district every week to attend events and also fundraise. There is IMO very little risk in running good politicians for these seats. The legislating can be outsourced. Political skill cannot.
Starfish (she/her)
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Democrats are doing this too. Stop spending so much of the city council meeting on random nonsense that you can do nothing about.
Melancholy Jaques
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Not necessarily saying you’re wrong, but at the same time, nearly everyone says the Republicans’ TV ad blitz of the last two weeks saying Harris wanted to open the border to allow millions of murders in to get free sex change operations were what swung the election to Trump.
Which is it?
RevRick
@Another Scott: The big difference between countries which can pull off snap elections and ours is that they operate on a parliamentary system. They run as a party, and though there may be variations between proportional representation and first-passed-the-post, it’s more the party message than the individual candidates. In the U.S. the brand often takes a back seat to the strength of the individual candidate. We end up with 468/69 individual contests in nonPresidential years.
I live in Pennsylvania and the ads and flyers are constant and eventually get tuned out completely. Our Representative, Susan Wild, lost re-election and I know she did do town halls and ribbon cuttings, but then we’re Facebook friends so I’m pretty dialed in.
Melancholy Jaques
@Suzanne:
One of our core problems is that we are a coalition of groups that often disagree. This makes it much harder to form the key points that make a national brand. Republicans have racism, religious bigotry, and fear of change. Those things have been the same since Reagan.
On our side, what is our policy on immigration, public education, taxes, etc., that we can truly say defines the Democratic brand?
Glory b
@hrprogressive: BUT note that the more left leaning Dems were the first ones to state their willingness to work with Republicans, namely Sanders & Jayapal.
Suzanne
@RevRick:
Exactly. And this is a totally outdated approach in the current era.
Glory b
@E.: As I have said here before, we don’t have a messaging problem. Our policies are popular & usually successful as ballot measures.
People like them. They just don’t want to vote for the party with the black people in it.*
*Especially when those black people gain a bit of power.
Quinerly
Jared’s dad and convicted felon, Charles Kushner, new ambassador to France
Baud
@Glory b:
You keep saying it and I keep agreeing with you.
NotMax
OT.
Sigh.
Power went out for an hour and a quarter, 6:50 to 8:05 a.m. Amazing the rapid onset of online withdrawal symptoms when one’s internet activity is interrupted.
Baud
Doc Sardonic
@E.: Proper response to the Republican bigwig is “Yes, I am vaccinated, you sound like a fucking weirdo or other pejorative”. Then watch them spit and putter because you punched back.
cain
Interesting stuff.
Dems have always been more about policy, and we know all this. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do here? I don’t think national dems are going to be listening to us. We need to forget about them and focus on our local politicians and build up from there.
Layer8Problem
@Baud: Well, something good’s happening in the world, I suppose.
Baud
@cain:
Biden listened to us, more than any national Dem in recent memory.
Layer8Problem
@Baud: I have it on good authority he was doing it all wrong.
Dorothy A. Winsor
via instagram:
Baud
@Layer8Problem:
He was doing it wrong, when he listened to us.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@cain:
Why wouldn’t they be listening to us?
Glory b
@Quinerly: Convicted of blackmail for setting up his brother in law (I believe) with a prostitute & filming it over a business dispute.
It’s why Jared nixed any role for Chris Christie, he was his Dad’s prosecuting attorney.
As my husband said, another example of rich white guys failing upward & telling us we don’t work hard enough
Someone on television said Trump gets to be lawless, Harris had to be flawless.
Baud
I hope Charles Kuchner can help lower the price of escargot.
RevRick
@hrprogressive: There is a huge difference between Presidential democracies and Parliamentary ones, and it feels like you have the misapprehension that they work equivalently. They don’t.
A frankly progressive and even socialist party can run candidates in elections and win seats, and hence representation in Parliament. Here, except in rare circumstances, that doesn’t fly. There may be historical factors at play, including ideological differences between the United States and Europe. But the biggest factor is race.
We have a fraught history with race that Europe comes nowhere close in comparison. And that colors everything.
When JFK proposed the Civil Rights legislation in the summer of 1963, his support among white working class voters fell by about half. FDR, when he tried to enact progressive legislation, made deals with Southern Democrats which effectively excluded most black people from benefiting. It was the FHA that redlined black neighborhoods.
There’s increasing evidence that support for progressive legislation in Europe was a lot easier to accomplish, because the countries were racially and ethnically homogeneous. And as they become less so, support for those policies is declining.
But back to the structural matters. In Parliamentary democracies, coalitions are built after the election, which may give a progressive/leftist bloc considerable leverage. In our Presidential election, coalitions have to be built before elections, which means that the party message needs to appeal to the broadest segments of the electorate. The GOP is a unified, white peoples party. We Democrats are a coalition of various racial, ethnic and ideological groups, all with their own agenda. And what makes us particularly vulnerable is that winning the Presidency requires winning states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin where urban/rural divides are especially pronounced.
cain
Since this is an open thread, I wanted to point out a show called “Warrior” on netflix. On the surface, it looks like some kind of martial arts action series set in the 1800s. But it is way more than that. It’s a sublime historical lesson about racism, economy/labor, and myriad of other things. It’s relevant because we are seeing a parallel happening right now, but also it seems like history repeating itself endlessly.
In any case, Warrior is about a guy coming off the boat from china and lands in a powder keg in san francisco in the mid 1800s, right after the civil war. A lot of chinese laborers coming in and taking the jobs away from the Irish. The Irish were pissed off and just about all labor was pissed off because of “they’re taking our jerbs!” But the whole thing led me into going down the rabbit hole of the “Chinese Exclusion Act” and blocking Chinese immigration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act
Specifically, though this whole thing tells you what happens if you got rid of the immigrants. It’s not the outcome labor thinks it will be.
The result was:
Essentially, if Trump were to do the same thing – he will create the greatest economic crises this country has ever faced and we will have deserved it. Funny how history repeats itself.
Suzanne
@Melancholy Jaques:
That’s the first problem to solve, then: defining clearly what we stand for and what we don’t.
Baud
@RevRick:
Speculative, but I doubt that a parliamentary system in the US would produce more progressives in Congress than are currently in the Progressive Caucus.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
“Just wait and see” is the new “Just give him a chance” among Trump cultists. One of them told that to my father after he went off on a few of them in public and then I heard a customer tell that same phrase to a cashier at the store.
“Just wait and see” is much more arrogant sounding to my ears. If my candidate had won I would never utter such a thing
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Sounds like a pretty weak response to me.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@cain:
Worse than the Great Depression?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
Well, it’s all in how you say it: body language, tone, etc. The older guy at the store said it with confidence and conviction (also ignorance lol).
A good response I’ve thought of, assuming they’re wearing a red MAGA hat, is to tell them that the blood they will have on their hands will match their hats
prostratedragon
@Quinerly: Senator Thune?
trollhattan
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Will compare-and-contrast CA and NC presidentin’ campaign advertising. CA did not get all that much of either, but primarily tv and lawn signs from what I observed. NC by contrast had a ton of billboard and other signage, more for Harris than for Trump, but teevee was loaded with Trump ads, with those for Harris in a distinct minority. They both traveled there in the week we were visiting.
Did it make a difference? Guessing yes; how else to explain Robinson losing, badly, with Trump winning.
Glory b
@Baud: AND too many people pretend like it’s not happening, there must be ONE WEIRD TRICK that Dems can do to magically make it go away.
Baud
@trollhattan:
Have you seen a photo of Robinson?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@RevRick:
You mean you’re telling me that people who say dumb, and increasingly irrelevant and less true, stuff like the Democrats would be a center-right party in Europe are full of it and the reality is a lot more complex? Say it ain’t so!
Baud
@Glory b:
The lie people want to cling to is that nonwealthy white Republicans would love us if only the party would message correctly.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
My father mentioned to me recently that the internal polling for the Harris campaign never showed her in the lead at any point in the campaign. I couldn’t believe it when he said that
Glory b
@RevRick: Come and sit at my table.
Layer8Problem
@Glory b: It’s easy. Just toss POC and Trans people over the side, then we’d be winning all the seats.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
@Layer8Problem:
@Glory b:
Despite my comment at #54, you guys don’t think Harris and Dems would’ve done better if they’d been more anti-corporatist, no throwing anyone under the buss required? I recall reading from someone here that progressives had tended to outperform
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I have no idea what could have helped. You’re still talking about the margins. Racism is more fundamental. It sets the basic playing field.
Starfish (she/her)
So regarding Joe Rogan:
He had mixed political views.
What i’ve come to realize is that the left shit on the dude for the views they didn’t like, while the right embraced the dude for the views they did like so then he cultivated a rightwing audience.
Baud
@Starfish (she/her):
So you’re saying the left should always look for the good in people?
Glory b
@trollhattan: I hate to keep beating this drum, so with that I’ll be out for a while (working on a garage clean out/give away), but a black man with sexual misbehavior in his background WAS NOT going to win, no matter what party.
Are you kidding me? Black men + sex is a no go in a southern (heck, Northern too) state.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
I recall Martin recently using farmers and trans people as an example. There’s a lot of animosity among farmers towards John Deere for their anti-right-to-repair policies and that Dems should’ve seized on something like that in their campaigning. You have to be seen addressing people’s needs and tangibly affecting their lives positively. Policy fixes like what Dems use take too long to be felt and can be worked around by corporations. When people feel like they’re being screwed, they vote to hurt others, like trans people. If you tangibly help both groups, you will be rewarded. That’s the gist of what he was saying. Also, it’s important to address people’s economic needs and they’re intrinsically connected to their civil rights
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Lots of people have lots of ideas for things to try. I’m not one of them.
BlueGuitarist
@Another Scott:
Victoria Broderick seems a little like Allie Phillips who ran for TN state house this year – I mentioned her here a number of times.
Trump carried TN-04 by 38 percentage points in 2020, probably by more this year, so doesn’t seem like there’s much Victoria Broderick could do that would change the outcome. Folks in the district apparently don’t care that r incumbent desjarlais is yet another example of Republicans only caring about the personal character of politicians if it can be used against a Democrat. Can’t really assess the impact of Victoria’s self description as “your friendly neighborhood liberal.” Wish more middle Tennesseans liked her Pro-reproductive freedom, pro-public education, pro common sense gun reform platform.
I had hopes for Allie Phillips for TN state house 75, but her compelling personal story is no doubt less compelling to many voters in her district, and as others have said, national politics mattered.
The national context could be significantly different in elections in 2025 and 2026.
AM in NC
@Doc Sardonic: Yep. That’s what I was thinking. If that asshole said that to me, I’d respond, “Of course I’m vaccinated. I live in the 21st century and can read. What’s wrong with you that you want medical care from the Dark Ages. I mean, what kind of idiot wants medical care from the Dark Ages when 21st century medicine is available?”
PUNCH. BACK. EVERY TIME. And then laugh at them when they are shocked, and repeat your point. And then laugh some more.
Anyway
@Baud: So just give up, then?
cain
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
All the same ingredients to bring about a great depression. The great depression though was pretty bad. But hey, maybe we are looking to see how worse we can make it.
trollhattan
@Baud: My favorite freeway billboard: giant heads of Robinson and Trump along with text CREEPS!
Oddly, “black Nazi” proved an unsuccessful vote-getter, even in the South.
Favorite TV ad–Rachel Hunt running for Robinson’s Lt Gov seat. Gives a typical pitch then cuts to her, holding a gallon of bleach and saying “first, I’ve got some cleaning up to do.” She won, too.
Geminid
@Fake Irishman: I became quite interested in the career of Kansas Rep. Sharice Davids in 2018. She was one of 40 Democrats who flipped Republican seats that year.
One thing I noticed was that once Davids took office I hardly ever heard mention of her in “national” news sites. But once I looked her up I found Davids had a constant presence in local and state media.
That was because she had a constant presence in her district, appearing at community college and high school events, meeting with veterans and farmers, etc., and most importantly, listening to her constituents.
This is not campaigning in an overt sense, and Davids isn’t delivering the kind of fiery partisan rhetoric some Democrats crave so much, but I think hers is an example worth studying every bit as much as those of deep blue district liberals, probably more so because these are what Nancy Pelosi called our majority-makers.
Speaking generally, I would like see more emphasis on the functional rather than the disfunctional in these discussions; more study of Democrats like Davids, Lauren Underwood, Sean Casten, Chrissy Houlihan, Lucy McBath and other Democrats who flipped seats in 2018 and then held them through good cycles and bad.
I saw at least two similar Democrats elected this year: Derek Tran in CA45 and Janelle Bynum in OR05. I think theirs would be good stories to follow the next two years. Reps. Tran and Bynum might not generate many national news stories or viral videos, but I suspect they will be working their asses off.
gene108
@Another Scott:
Because those countries have very strong political parties versus the USA. They don’t have primaries. The party picks who stands for what seat. People with seniority get picked over others.
People are essential voting for the party platform more so than a candidate.
The U.S. has never been in favor centralized authority.
BlueGuitarist
@Suzanne:
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
Your point about nationalization of politics makes sense, but 1 minor inconsistent observation from PA state House.
PA has the second most state house seats in the US: 203.
D 102, R 101 going into the election. Still the same.
not a single seat changed parties.
Frank Burns, D incumbent in PA House 72, Johnstown, got re-elected in a Biden -29 district. He delivered for the district, but so did Matt Cartwright in PA-08, which was close to evenly divided, but he still lost.
Maybe it has something to do with district magnitude.
in any case, doesn’t help much with flipping R-held seats.
The 2026 US Senate map doesn’t have many opportunities: hoping good candidates are up and running soon.
Geminid
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Senators Baldwin, Rozen, Kaine and Gallego outperformed Harris, and I think Sen-elect Andy Kim did too. I’m certain Senator-elect Elissa Slotkin outperformed Harris because she won in Michigan and Harris lost. I wouldn’t call these Democrats especially “progressive.” At least they didn’t campaign as “progressives.”
So far as I can tell, this notion of “progressives outperforming this year” is based on cherry picking in order to push a particular narrative.
Baud
@Anyway:
I’m still going to vote blue. I’m just not going to try to tackle strategy.
RevRick
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Some economists have run numbers which suggest that between tariffs and deportations there could be a Great Depression sized decline of 8% or so the first year.
WaterGirl
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I bring you Gretchen Whitmer: “Fix the damn roads.”
RevRick
@Glory b: Gladly
WaterGirl
@BlueGuitarist:
Really? Because my contact at Four Directions said the 2026 Senate map looks as good for Dems and 2024 looked for republicans.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
Strongly agree on both these points. All politics may have been local 50 years ago when Tip O’Neill said that, but nowadays there’s not a whole lot of difference between elected Republicans anywhere, and there’s less and less variance among Dems too as time goes along, especially with Manchin’s and Sinema’s retirements being imminent.
So it’s essential that the DNC/DCCC/DSCC/etc. tell people ‘here’s what you get when you elect a Democrat, and there’s what you get when you elect a Republican.’ Day in and day out, across the board.
And it really is asking too much of legislators to be good at legislating and be driving a full-time messaging campaign as well. Maybe some can do it and that’s great, but given that mistermix’ example was of a candidate who was running for Congress but wasn’t yet IN Congress, I’d like to hear about Congresspersons who’ve managed this after being elected.
RevRick
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Okay. I won’t say it, since you insist.
JoeyJoeJoe
@BlueGuitarist: just a bit of trivia: Al Gore used to represent much of this district in the 1970s and 1990s. Lines have changed, and Tennessee only had eight districts in the 70s, but much of the area currently in the 4th used to vote for Gore. Clinton won the district twice, though Gore may have barely lost it.
JoeyJoeJoe
@BlueGuitarist: Johnstown is also traditionally Democratic, which helps. It wasn’t that long ago when Cambria County elected two or three Democrats to the state House
Quinerly
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I read a piece in the last few days that was very good on Harris outperforming Biden. Pretty much what some of us have been saying…Biden would have lost in a landslide. Can’t find it now. It also went through how nothing broke in her favor on election day….(like your father said…she was never ahead in any of her campaign’s internals. But a couple to 3 breaks on election day would have put her over the top). Hindsight is always 20/20…..but it sure looks like if the guy who never was over 40% approval after the Afghanistan withdrawal had decided to not run, Harris would have won. She only had 107 days. I’m still processing what has happened….and still looking back on the last 2 years. I suspect history won’t be as kind to Biden as I thought it would be after July.
Next to my parents deaths, I don’t think I have been so upset over anything else. I guess I have lived a charmed life without any major tragedy. My very strong feelings about this…..the die was cast 2 years ago when Biden thought he should not step aside in 2024. I am at the simmering anger stage. The next 4 years could have been prevented.
RevRick
@WaterGirl: Only Susan Collins in Maine, blue state, and Tom Tillis in North Carolina, purple state, seem plausible. I believe Tillis may be retiring. All the other GOP Senators up for reelection are in various shades of red.
RevRick
@JoeyJoeJoe: When I served a church in western Pennsylvania from 1975 – 1988, the counties surrounding Pittsburgh were blue and so were the Representatives. Now Allegheny is an island of blue in a sea of red.
Baud
@RevRick:
Blue but less socially liberal, I’m guessing.
WaterGirl
@RevRick: When I talk with them next, I’ll have to ask him to say more about the Senate in 2026.
Martin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yeah, and that was just an example.
One thing that is sticking in my head are polls on American’s views on corporations. Pew has been doing these for a while. I think this community has an outdated view of the GOP as the party of big business, pro capitalist, pro corporate, etc. They aren’t any more. Prior to Covid they were twice as likely to view corporations positively and after Covid they are equal to if not less likely to view corporations positive as Democrats. We are the pro-corporate political party, in terms of voters opinions. Let that sink in. Some of this is Trumps populism working, and some is backlash to every corporation skating out of Covid with more money than they entered it and every small business on the rocks if not wiped out. A few things:
My warning to the left is that I don’t think you can win the civil rights fight while losing the economic one, particularly if the result is a continuation of economic players being more powerful than democratic ones. And say what you will here, a tearing down of the regulatory state pretty much puts the nail in the coffin of democracy’s ability to keep capitalism in check.
My criticism of the left is that they have been fighting as though you could rebalance the scales of democracy vs capitalism – the very dynamic the country was built on – by adding democracy to the scale and balance things. And my thesis is that the scale is so imbalanced you can’t succeed in that approach. Maybe before 2000 that was possible but you can only balance it by adding democracy while also taking capitalism off. And if you can’t do that, then this experiment has reached its failure point and new ideas are needed.
And I think in their way, the GOP is trying to do this (I don’t like the ‘they are evil, they must be destroyed’ line of thinking that comes out here – because people keep calling me radical, but I’m not eliminationist) but have a very different prescription. And I think the problem is that underpants gnome campaigning is very effective. The GOP never include step 2, unless it’s ‘and then we deport all the immigrants’, that is ‘punish your enemies’ themed, and democrats always include step 2 and get beat up for choosing the wrong step 2.
My prescription is to have a good step 2, but don’t campaign on it. Be flexible there. Be ambiguous. Focus on 1 and 3. Focus on the problem and focus on the outcome. Corporations are taking money from hard working Americans, we will build a system where corporations can’t take their profits by unfairly raising prices which will leave more money in your pocket. Is step 2 breaking them up, is it taxing them, is it regulating, is it magic? Don’t worry about it. The voters will tell you which on they want and just pick that one.
But I think it has the other effect of wedging the GOP.
Nothing here undermines campaigning on civil rights. In fact, if you want to advance civil rights, getting rid of the ability for a Musk to buy a Twitter and turn it into an anti-trans hate machine is advancing that effort. So is the ability to stop private equity from buying up real estate, jacking up prices, and making people homeless – because it’s always the marginalized people who suffer the most there.
Younger dems might not be thrilled with an anti-corporate message that isn’t also anti-capitalist, but it’s an improvement over what they’re being given. And the GOP isn’t going to go anti-capitalist, so there isn’t much risk there.
Anonymous At Work
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Democrats have goals besides power in electing officials. So, “outsourcing” legislation, the actual work, is always going to be a sore point. It’s not so much a lack of sympathy with your point but that I don’t want my Congress-critter to be the flat-earther, the crazy crank, or the one asking a Singaporean whether he is Chinese multiple time.
Quinerly
@WaterGirl:
I will take some of whatever your contact is smoking. It’s a great map for Senate Repugs. NC will again break our hearts. Maybe a pick up in ME. That seems about it. I would love to be wrong, though.
Martin
@Quinerly: I argue after Dobbs that Dems needed a real primary and that the devout Catholic man was the wrong messenger. But I could never get my head around how the views on the economy had shifted. I saw these focus groups of republicans that showed the kind of economic anger as if you were doing a focus group of socialists, up to the point of them blaming it all on immigrants and misinterpreted the message. I focused too much on the nativism and not enough on the anger. I’m trying to think of what Biden-Harris were willing to do that would have signaled that Democrats were economic reformists, and I don’t think there’s anything. Yeah, maybe with Harris as the nominee for the full 2 years, she’d have squeaked out the couple hundred thousand votes needed, but I don’t think the campaign would have campaigned differently because I don’t think Dems recognize the problem. My thesis above wasn’t really formed until about 2 weeks ago as I was trying to reconcile all of the contradictory information we have. And I think it does reconcile it, at least where the economic bits are concerned.
Martin
@WaterGirl: To bring over an expression: fixing the damn roads is necessary but insufficient. I think in many respects, Democrats weren’t fixing the damn roads, which meant that whatever they were selling after that didn’t matter. You MUST fix the damn roads, but you need to do more as well.
RevRick
@Baud: Maine 1, which is the coastal district, is quite liberal. Maine 2 is Appalachia
Sandia Blanca
@WaterGirl: WG, I recently posted information from Bolts Magazine about a group that played a role in Alaska keeping its ranked-choice voting system. The organization is called Get Out the Native Vote, and they describe themselves as a “non-partisan effort in Alaska to mobilize Alaska Native and American Indian voters.” I wonder if you’ve ever looked into them as a potential BJ funding project?
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
If a candidate could get your email address getting in touch with you likely would be simple. My rep has my email address, AND does not send me crap I don’t actually need to see. I’d bet that is not a universal trait. Now I also bet that some old farts, (like my age group – OLD) likely don’t use email but I actually wonder how many that is in today’s world with email on a cellphone. And I’d bet those could be sent mail, you know, with postage, paper and delivery. Many old-OLD farts haven’t moved into the computer age yet. I live in a seniors complex – have to be over 55 to rent. The oldest person that I know of is 98 yrs old. There are a number here who do not use a computer and I’ve seen a number of cell phones that look like my first one of almost 30 yrs ago. I haven’t had a landline phone for about 20 yrs. And the last 10 yrs of land line was for my business.
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid:
good idea. Pay attention to what is working, follow that..
Quinerly
@Martin:
Very good and thoughtful comment. I mostly agree. Biden was terrible on the messaging re abortion. I truly appreciate that some of us seem to be trying to understand and make sense of what happened. I am doing a better job of talking with strangers at my local tap room than with people I really know in person or obviously here where I have been reading and processing comments over 20 plus years. Pretty much everyone I meet who is knowledgeable and obsesses over politics is putting a lot of the blame on Biden and his ego.
I can’t spend a lot of time on this today. And, I predict that whole silly pie thing to start up. It still cracks me up how some want to be in a bubble and never read anything that doesn’t line up with their narrative.
Glad to see you back commenting. Do you follow Adam’s threads? His last 2-3 have made me incredibly sad. Of course, sad for Ukraine….but also incredibly sad that he doesn’t feel welcomed on any other threads. As a community we are very fortunate to have him. I hope he stays around. This place is beginning to feel like high school….bullies and all.
Martin
@Quinerly: I do read Adam. Even when I wasn’t here posting I was coming by to read them. I’ve been a long advocate that the US needs to figure out how to move faster and every update is just a reinforcement that the window of time when we could have possibly turned this has closed.
Quinerly
@Martin:
I have read his posts on and off since Russia invaded. Only recently have I been reading the comments. I am sad that he doesn’t feel free (my words) to comment on the other posts.
I will be here less and less. Time is a factor. And, for the most part it’s the same old same in the comments.
Take care. Have a nice week.
Bobby Thomson
Like most leftist critiques, yours is long on generalizations and short on specifics. Who, in your opinion, is not spreading the good e doing every word, and what specific three things do you think they should be doing every day that they are not doing?
Vermont Jesus repeats the same bumper sticker slogans constantly but gets nothing accomplished and does nothing to BUILD the party.
UncleEbeneezer
It’s much easier to campaign 24/7/365 when you have no actual interest in governing.
Kathleen
@Geminid: I know this thread has to be dead but I still had to say I agree 100%. If the study could be extended to 2022 I’d love to see Emelia Sykes studied. I saw an interview with her after her win and was so impressed with her focus and willingness to buck “conventional wisdom” regarding her campaign (she wanted to do a back flip in a commercial so people would remember her because she was a state champion gymnast but her advisers told her not to. She did it anyway and it got the results she wanted. “Oh! She’s the one who did the back flip.”
Kathleen
@UncleEbeneezer: “Yup” cubed.
UncleEbeneezer
George Whitesides flipped CA-27. He ran primarily on: 1.) protecting abortion rights, 2.) jobs, 3.) sensible gun laws and 4.) fire insurance (an issue very local to the district)
One-thru-three are pretty much what Kamala and every other Dem ran on. Four is a fairly district-specific one that wouldn’t translate to places that don’t have perpetual wildfire threats.
My guess is that his messaging had far less to do with his win than the excellent GOTV effort. His opponent was also an extremely toxic MAGA asshole, Mike Garcia. And it was still incredibly close.
Betty
It’s clear that Massa’s persistence and focus paid off. Not sure a similar strategy would work for President or even Senator where it is much harder to reach the vast majority of voters. I could be wrong, but I follow Bob Casey on Facebook, and he very regularly posted about his activities throughout the state. Not sure to what extent local media covered these events. Nevertheless, he was done in by an out-of- state multimillionaire whose campaign money drenched the state in fear mongering ads.
Ksmiami
@E.: republicans hurt Americans. There. A branding plan to start. Then start calling them out for all of their bs. Also ffs hire the best branding agencies to start over. Capture the heritage of the Democratic Party on everything from labor rights to freedoms to defeating the Nazis. Fire all the useless dc consultants. And go on every social media network, platform and podcast. Build your audience. Be there when the GOP fucks up. And don’t save the GOP from itself. Let their policies hurt their voters. Be 100 percent against them on everything. Yes, I played Rugby. And team sports. If you want to win, you have to be on offense all the time.
Ksmiami
Further, call the GOP the Measles Party, the panty sniffing party, or party of religious busy bodies with lots of closet cases. More LBJ and Truman, less technocrats. We can implement better policies if we fucking win. And be vicious and unrelenting.
Martin
@Bobby Thomson: So, here’s the clearest example I can think of.
The anti-woke culture war issue on the right really has its roots in Gamergate all the way back in 2014. This is a crusade that has been waging in online spaces day-in-and-day out for 10 years. One of the major players in Gamergate was Steve Bannon and he brought the issue and techniques learned to national politics. And the right raises this issue non-stop, every time a company markets a product to a marginalized group, every time a person of color is hired, and so on and so forth. It is relentless, and you may not see it as political, but there are enough voters who do that it becomes political.
The left have no such campaigns that have a political life of their own which the Democrats lean into and benefit from. What young people on the left (the ones occupying new media spaces, creating new narratives) are completely disconnected from the party and generally at odds with them, as opposed to Trump who (knowingly or otherwise) put the leader of a comparable movement on the right in charge of his campaign and who brought a lot of the mechanisms of how to radicalize young men and tap into their anger into the campaign broadly. And this turned non-voters into voters. No similar effort has been taken on the left to embrace where the Democratic base is. Gen Z is now the largest generational voting block and where the GOP appeals to them, Dems won’t fucking shut up about how they should be ignored because they aren’t reliable enough voters, as if that isn’t a product of the attitude of the party more broadly. There were the trappings of getting it right by the Harris campaign with the early ‘Brat summer’ embrace, but the ‘Beyonce ain’t paying my bills, bitch’ sentiment is what eventually mattered – Democrats aren’t listening to what their biggest potential voting block want. They aren’t connecting the social political movement which is strongly anti-corporate. It is just as relentless as the anti-wokism movement on the right, but Dems won’t touch it – won’t even acknowledge that it exists.
Jacel
@cain: Well, in the early 1930s there was a Republican-driven campaign to push people back to Mexico. That might have had something to do with how great the Great Depression was. Here’s an example:
https://www.history.com/news/great-depression-repatriation-drives-mexico-deportation#
BlueGuitarist
@WaterGirl:
Re 2026 Senate:
Maine is our best opportunity, the only R-held seat in a state Trump didn’t carry 3 times. Alas, Susan Collins won by 9 in 2020.
North Carolina: we won some statewide races this year, but Thom Tillis will be harder to beat than some of the loons on the ballot this year (apologies to actual loons).
I expect 26 will be a better year for us. We had some good candidates who lost this year who have a shot at flipping R-held Senate seats:
Ohio special: Sherrod Brown
Alaska: Mary Peltola
Nebraska: Dan Osborn
Montana: Jon Tester
In the spirit of the op, i hope these folks will be running hard soon. that feels optimistic.
Not optimistic about other states:
IA, KS, SC, TN, TX
AL, AR, ID, KY, LA, MS, SD, WV, WY
We also have to defend seats in states Trump carried 2/3
Georgia: Jon Ossoff
Michigan: Gary Peters
both won by about 2 points.
(some other Ds aren’t safe, but that’s a problem for another time).
i’d be very glad to know that i missed some cause for greater optimism!
BlueGuitarist
@Kathleen:
Emilia Sykes sticks the landing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qDoC75xlBE
Gloria DryGarden
@BlueGuitarist: way dead thread, but what a great ad. Love her gymnastics flip. It’s so visual/ physical/ alllegorical, this lady can do amazing stuff, for us, and Najee it stick. It’s visceral