Tom Sullivan, Hullabaloo: Elections have unintended consequences
The problem with Rich’s analysis is the “election to come” part. Elections involve math. At the end of Election Day we count votes. Not empathy, not good intentions, not programs, not policies, and not hurt feelings. Whether Democrats can win back control of Congress and state legislatures is about numbers.
Another problem — and this is hardly Rich’s alone — is that “Trump voters” always seems to imply red states, or to at least to conflate red states with Trump voters. And after reading Rich’s take on Trump voters, the knee-jerk response is to say to hell with them. But there are more than Republican voters in those red states. Those states each get two U.S. senators and a number of representatives; they each have governors and legislatures, many dominated by Republicans just as crazy as Trump. Abandoning them is not a progressive option.
Democratic activists should not hold their breaths waiting for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), and the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) to come to Jesus and become more than “old boys” reelection funds. And the jury is out on whether a Democratic National Committee that snapped up Hillary for America veterans who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory will, as promised, restore Howard Dean’s 50 state plan in more than name only, or adopt a time horizon that looks beyond the next election. Their focus on (what they consider) sure bets is why state organizations have withered since Obama pulled the plug on “50 state.” But liberal, grassroots activists cannot ignore red states unless they have started ignoring math the way Trump voters ignore climate science. Nationally and locally the numbers don’t add up for winning back Congress and writing off red states. (Ask Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina what it means leaving state legislatures in Republican hands.) Liberals cannot have both a winning 50 state plan and a policy, as Rich’s piece implies, of giving 60 percent of states the middle finger.
If you don’t show up to play, you forfeit. Too many Republican sinecures in red states go uncontested because dispirited Democrats there have neither the training, the funding, nor the infrastructure to contest them. When Dean sent organizers into such places in 2005, some had not heard from the national party in years. By 2006, Democrats were chalking up big wins. Conditions are ripe for them to do so again.
What I think the fixation on taking down Trump with accusations of Russian involvement is hampering.
It would be a shame to squander all that fresh activism and youthful enthusiasm on misdirected anger. But perhaps that’s what Rich meant by suggesting Democrats weaponize it. “Instead of studying how to talk to ‘real people,'” he wrote, “might they start talking like real people?” Absolutely. So long as they do it not from TV studios but on the stump in districts and in races they need to win to regain majorities in state houses and in Congress. As The King suggested, “A little less conversation, a little more action.”
And even at the local level there are establishment Democrats trying to put this new energy back in the box. Another three months of this shortsightedness will kill it, which might be their intent. Gotta protect those lobbying sources of money, you know, the ones that at the state level play both sides of the street.
Sullivan left out a critical component. Why and how the 50-state strategy had worked in 2006 and 2008. It’s not unreasonable to project that by 2018 the electorate will have soured on Trump as much as it had soured on GWB by 2006 and that only got worse for GWB after that. However, there’s is a significant difference. By 2006 Congress had been almost exclusively under the control of the GOP for a decade; so, they could be tagged tagged with having created the mess. And not having been in power for all that time, it was an easy sell for Democrats to say, give the alternative a chance. When all the goo-goo fluff was stripped away, they only made one promise, raise the minimum wage. Which they did deliver on. That increase is now a decade old; so it’s time to milk that one again.
But why did that Democratic controlled Congress fall apart so quickly? Due to the short time frame to implement the 50 state strategy, the left wing of the party accepted the need for expediency which meant recruiting the available bodies on the limited bench. And which just happened to be, for the most part, fully on board with Clinton Democrats. IOW — more but not better Democrats. Once in office and seen, voters slowly began to recognize why they had rejected them for that dozen years. And they got their best look at these DINO candidates from the top to the bottom of their ballots in 2014 and 2016. Offer the same in 2018 and 2020 and voters will choose the real Republicans again.
Another day in the USA:
Everest Metro officer, three others dead in shooting spree
The suspect is in custody. USians won’t lose their cookies over these four deaths, like the five in London today, because it wasn’t perpetrated by a “radical Muslim terrorist.”
yes, indeed, a radical Muslim with a knife in London is far more scary n’ dangerous than (another) gun-nut in WI armed with Freedom-Giving Firearms!
Also, too, one death v. four. Clearly the radical Islamist was the greater danger!
Care to bet on whether Der Trumper make a single reference to the WI gun spree?
Excluding the killer, there were four deaths in each rampage. However, there were many injuries and many of them were serious in London. So, there is a difference beyond the identity of the killer.
Thanks, I did not have this updated info when I made my comment, which I now regret and for which I apologize. If I could remove it, I would.
Suggested alternate interpretation: the foreignness factor plays a role. And a lot of Americans have visited London and feel a kinship for the British. It truly isn’t necessary always to invoke the most cynical interpretation. Now, I could well be wrong, but so might also be the cynical interpretation.
USA Today – Donald Trump Jr. called a ‘disgrace’ for slamming London mayor.
Short and too the point – Wes Steeting MP:
Congress to Vote on Killing Broadband Privacy Rules Tomorrow
But do we hear anything from Democrats? No! All we hear is TRUMP!!! RUSSIA!!!
I wonder if this isn’t an excuse to hand everything over to the Corporations and at the same time keep the sheeple voting (D)?
“See! see! You assholes! You rejected Hillary and I’m going to keep rubbing your nose in it until you re-elect him or Pence in 2020” Great strategy, if you are only interested in getting envelopes from Wall Street and Big Business.
This is from October but is important not to miss to fully appreciate how we got to where we are: How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul
Footnote: The Congressional seat that Wright Patman held is now occupied by Louis Goehmert.
RFK was right, but only RFK could have pulled something like that together in 1968. Even that was going to be a difficult proposition. At least the Southern Strategy (urban ethnic strategy) would have been contested from the beginning in forceful, not “happy warrior” terms.
Exactly what is it that you think “needed to be pulled off” in 1968? Workers hadn’t forgotten and were still FDR Democrats. Even George — freaking — Wallace.
The New Deal wasn’t based on perpetual war. (The Pentagon was supposed to have been decommissioned at the end of WWII.) While LBJ was the right president to get the Civil Rights Act and Medicare/Medicaid/etc. through Congress, he lacked what FDR had in selling it.
The whole point of Stoller’s article is that new/younger Democrats crushed the Patman/Brandeis/Perkins/etc. lenses and refilled the prescription with Chicago school/Freidman lenses. Without recognizing that Nixon wore the same lenses when he was in the WH. How dumb is that? Couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time?
Matt Stoller today:
The point is, political control is about the questions you allow to be asked, not the answers. Ask the wrong questions for 30 years and…
What Obama did to the Democratic mind was to shrink politics to such a narrow set of questions that an AIDS level epidemic is shrugged off.
They see the legitimacy of asking “Did the ACA expand health insurance?” But not “Did foreclosure policy matter?”
What needed to be pulled off in 1968?
A unity ticket that involved Appalachian and urban ethnic union-member and working whites, African Americans, and Hispanics in a determination to end the war in Vietnam and reset US-Soviet and US-China relations in order to reduce poverty and stabilize the effects of economic cycles.
The loss of the urban ethnics (with their own Southern Strategy playing to white flight from cities) counted more in the short term than appeal to Southern whites. The 1970s were a brief time in which most Southern whites were willing to see effective desegregation and integration up to a point. That point differed with different people.
It is an open question as to whether RFK could have countered the political appeal of Nixon’s Southern Strategy. But he was the best equipped through experience to do it as of 1968 IMO.
There were other young folks who gained office in that period. Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich, Tom Hayden…a lot of hope for change. Miller and Tsongas and had no experience of the Brandeis/Patman/Perkins tradition in their lives that they could point to. So many missed opportunities.
Long, but well worth reading!