I’m no longer really amused by the gamesmanship that allows us to claim moral victory if we lose an election by less than 30 points. In this case, it’s not even remotely true because the problems for Republicans in Kansas are highly specific to that state. Gov. Sam Brownback may be a hard-right Christian politician but his name is a dirty word even among his evangelical base. If the Democrats do well in the special election tonight, it will have a lot more to do with Brownback that anything to do with Trump.
Again, even a win isn’t a win unless it’s followed up by another win in November 2018. I think the American electorate is fed up with people overpromising and underdelivering. The 4th congressional district of Kansas is a solidly Republican seat. The Democrats might rent it for a few months because people are mad at Brownback but more likely the Democrat will get blown out and you’ll hear people claiming it was closer than it should have been and that this means something.
We already know that people hate Brownback and that moderate Republicans are occasionally willing to throw in with Democrats in Kansas to fend off the religious nuts. That’ll happen tonight to one degree or another. But it will have almost no meaning outside of Kansas.
What matters much less than what it means is what Republicans in the House think it means. The more it scares them, and the more they think they need to run towards cover and away from Trump, the better. That’s the only thing that can possibly get us real oversight of what is, less than 100 days in, probably the most corrupt Administration in US history.
I completely agree. If it scares the Republicans into changing their behavior, then it really doesn’t matter what the “real” reasons for a victory would be.
I think you and Booman are both right.
Anything that gets Republicans running anywhere other than to their right is a good thing at this point in time.
That being said, I fully agree with Booman that the hype over what these special elections mean is completely overblown, and I really doubt that even a Dem win in this district will be that something that gets Republicans running a direction other than to the right.
At best a Dem win will make a few of them run to their right a little more shallowly, but still far to the right of anyone to the left of Attila the Hun.
“All politics is local.”
Whatever, you’ve been cynical the entire time since the election finished with your “the resistance has been a failure” piece. And hey, there is a lot to be cynical about, and at the time things looked super bleak — they still do. But other than Gorsuch we have kicked their tails backwards and forwards. And you’re gonna rain on a parade of potentially winning a district that is the 76th most Republican in the country when the national Democrats didn’t do a thing to help Thompson? No.
My last post before this one is about how Trump will be a smoking husk by October.
Whatever, you’ve been cynical the entire time since the election finished with your “the resistance has been a failure” piece.
He has? I’m the cynical one because I see too many people, at least on Twitter, being taken in by con-men and trolls. Like all those liberals RT’ing Louise Mensch.
No. What you see is people tweeting about how everyone is tweeting her when that’s really not happening.
Yup. Literally the only place I’ve seen the name is from the Useful Idiots pretending she’s the source of all Trump/Putin criticism.
I see liberals RT’ing her fairly often because they don’t know her home country treats her as a joke and a clown.
Welp I can probably say that I generally follow the same people you follow, and the only time I see her in my TL is people screenshotting her and wasting bandwidth. It’s a nice distraction for people to keep saying there’s nothing to this Russia stuff, though — coincidentally, they’re the ones screenshotting her.
Early returns are extraordinarily positive, with victory not out of the question. Definitely will not be a complete blowout for the Republicans. That much is already clear.
If we don’t run candidates and hype them how else can Dems be heard over the chaos of the donald. This is politics.
The election is definitely close enough that the DCCC will get savaged if Thompson doesn’t win.
What do you think of the argument, though that someone on Daily Kos made that if the DCCC had spent money on this race, it would have nationalized it (aka make it about Pelosi eat all) and would have worked to our disadvantage? That is, the stealth approach was possibly the better one. anything to that line of thinking?
The DCCC could spend some money and not talk too much. Ultimately, the seat could have been rented for the next year and a half, but we could never hold it, so how much was it worth?
The argument is bullshit? Because the GOP actually ran ads trying to tie Thompson to Pelosi and the DC Democrats. When will people learn that you can’t worry about what the GOP will do re: tying them to Pelosi?
“Throwing in with Democrats to fend off the nuts” is something we need more examples of, when and wherever it can be had.
…individual special elections aren’t very predictive but as a group, they can be. So, I don’t see why Dems shouldn’t be excited about keeping it close in a place they would normally lose by 30. Obviously, as per Enten, we need to wait to see what happens in these other several specials coming up.
Here is the county list.
It’s bullshit that it means nothing. Utter nonsense.
The Democrats are fired up, and the Republicans not so much.
But even with all that, we still have basic problems in rural areas. In the rural counties in this CD Estes actually ran ahead of Pat Roberts.
I am inclined to believe as Booman suggests that this is about Brownback and Kansas and not really about Trump.
This isn’t complete. It’s closer than in 2014, in part because the third parties got more vote in 2014.
But there is no easy revolution in the offing.
Very worrisome numbers there. By far, most counties are in negative territory to Pre-Trump.
And it’s all disguised by increased strength in the urban population center.
Booman these suggest we have learned nothing about winning back rural voters. Clinton was toxic in 2016, but against a more reasonable baseline we LOST ground.
The only reason this was as close as 8 was turnout in the rural counties. I doubt that lasts until 2018.
I do not like this result.
Yeah, it’s not good.
People will look at the overall number and think that it represents progress, but they won’t understand the failure is ultimately the exact same as last November.
These rural counties are now voting 80% Republican, and it’s making one state legislative seat after another completely out of reach, all across the nation.
We’re being defined out of the two-party system and we think we’re going to be okay because we’ll pick up suburban seats. It’s a terrible trade.
So, what do you propose Democrats do about it? What policies are going to win back a large enough number of rural voters?
Doom and gloom is all fine.. what’s the solution? Do Democrats need to sound more like Trump and less like Corey Booker?
Some Republicans had a similar level of angst after losing to Obama twice.
This was a red district. The +5 districts are what I’d target if the Democrats are really solving their turnout disadvantage in off-year elections. Run populists in rural areas and Ossof-types in the well-educated, wealthier GOP districts and let’s see what happens.
Antitrust populism.
Agreed. I think it was Stoller that wrote about this.
Scape-goating works. But make it the cable companies, telcos, health conglomerates, and Wall Street instead of what the other side does. Democrats can afford to lose some of the urban vote.
Scape-goating works. But make it the cable companies, telcos, health conglomerates, and Wall Street instead of what the other side does.
Don’t forget the airlines!!
That’s a great rationale. Now who else would you like to scapegoat?
Hey, you have to admit it’s at least a plan that has a history of working what with a major pillar of Modern Republicanism being scapegoating gays, women, non-whites, immigrants, and Islam since there has been Modern Republicanism.
I’m not sure it’s great but it’s one takeaway from the election. Note how I qualified the statement.
The Democratic Party should be more willing to de-emphasize its sacred cows: abortion, gay rights, and racial equality. These are the triggers for voters in places like Kansas and shame on them for being as unevolved as they are in middle-American, small states as they are, but if we (Democrats) want to win back their votes, I think we need to cede more of the ground won in those fights over the past 100 years for the sake of winning elections to maintain and expand economic gains for the middle and lower classes in general.
I’m as pro-choice as any human being on the planet (more so than anyone I’ve met anyway), but the Democratic Party’s loud/proud pro-choice stance on the issue has lost more than it’s gained for those not directly at risk. At the current rate, for all the blood, sweat, and tears over the past fifty years, it’s never been a winning issue for the Party. So, time to remove the plank from the party platform.
Likewise gay rights. The advances gays have made in this country have had little to do with generic support of the Democratic Party anyway. Most of gay rights progress had to do with the AIDs crisis and resulting visibility and recognition of the existence of gay people in cities. A lot of people that never gave it a thought otherwise were persuaded to care because of the health crisis and the willingness of thousands (and thousands) of individual gay men and women that came out and fought back (at great personal sacrifice).
In re racial equality, it seems to me that the fundamentals of the struggle, going back to the beginning of the country, were codified fifty years ago. Further change, change in places like Kansas (and every other state) may never happen. Or it will only happen as our cultures are further homogenized over decades and centuries of time. I don’t know why; it’s just the way it is. Further legislation will not help, I fear. Insisting that Democrats, that the Democratic Party put its ‘… Lives Matter’ planks at the front edge of its platform is wasteful, counterproductive.
The Democratic Party needs to focus on economic inequality for the rest of my life. Back to fighting the economic equality fights we won once 80 years ago, but have been losing since Reagan. The rest of it is a waste of time now. It would be helpful if there were more Democratic leaders courageous enough to fight the big fights on economic issues, and let the little ones go.
Agree as far as “emphasis” … however human rights for everyone should be part of the Democrats always! Inequality is just not about income, but throughout one’s life in family rearing [all forms], education, level playing field for jobs, healthcare and special needs for kids. With austerity policy, the ones who earn less get hit the hardest. Tell me we are not living in an individualistic society based on pure capitalism as being good for all. The American Dream!
The US should take care not to let religion run politics. Separation of church and state, separation of powers lobbyists in Washington DC ?? George Bush setting war policy in Iraq based on biblical formulas. Reagan following the stars controlled by Nancy. Wow … asking for disasters … ooops … we’re in it knie deep.
Counterpoint: Fuck that.
Sounds as if you’re proposing to be GOP lite. Do you think the reflexive Democrat haters are going to be impressed by seeing the Dems jettison advocacy for civil rights and reproductive rights? You want that to happen so that economics can be the sole focus of politics. Here’s a hint: people’s votes are about more than economics.
People that actually vote reliably, understand and care about pocketbook issues mostly.
Any other theories about voting behavior you’d like to pull out from there?
Well, see my “fuck that” post above for clarification.
It’s certainly not clear from your few lucid posts here that you’re an idiot. But damned if you don’t try to appear to be sometimes. After a year of noticing your mad-troll behaviour here it’s likewise not surprising that no one here knows anything about you. At some point you admit who you are, or it’s impossible to accept you’re anything but a tool. Who you’re a tool for is clear and if you’re what they got, it’s no wonder Hillary lost so badly. Or maybe you did us all a favor. Either way, glad to know you.
Is it really fair to say we’ve “learned nothing” from November when we’re talking about an election five months later? It’s not as though we can snap our fingers and suddenly get a larger percentage of the rural vote. I don’t know anything about the underlying dynamics of this race but this isn’t exactly a tremendous amount of data from which to draw conclusions.
You can learn a lot by watching and listening to the people that get their votes.
In this case Trump got their votes by hating the same people they hate. Obama, liberals, and POC.
.
Well at least your columns kinda have labels this time…
They don’t make any sense as labels, but it’s a start I suppose.
But really, if you’re going to pretend your posts like this are anything other than bullshit, could you please add meaningful labels and defined units?
There is no clue to define what the values in the cells really mean. I believe that the numbers from the 3rd and 5th columns are supposed to be votes, but I have no clue what year those numbers are from. Are they a comparison of 2016 and 2014, 2014 and 2017, or from some other years all together? Or am I wrong and they aren’t numbers of votes at all!?
What are the units of the 2nd and 4th columns? Is that supposed to be a percentage of some kind?
Just because you can’t decipher it doesn’t make it bullshit. It just means that you can’t decipher it.
What it means is that the Republican candidate generally did better than Pat Roberts did in his rather tight reelection bid three years ago, before Trump was a factor.
He did much, much worse in the biggest county, however, which is why he didn’t have the same kind of blow out that Trump or Pompeo enjoyed.
Any presentation of data with no units and/or mis/un-labeled columns is bullshit. Hell, it’s not even data without units and proper labels! It literally means nothing.
No professional, from Plumbers to Doctors to Journalists to Farmers is going to take seriously ‘data’ with no units, let alone meaningless labels. They will rightfully laugh their asses off at you if you try an convince them that your numbers are anything other than bullshit, if it’s not actually data, and data by definition has units and proper labels.
It’d help if he included a link to the source of his data. Otherwise, how can I confirm he didn’t just pull these numbers out of his ass?
Your pessimism about all of these special elections has become ridiculous. You’ve lost the plot, man.
Brownback was a hated governor in November and the GOP won this district by 30 points. So no, it’s not just a local Brownback-related phenomenon. Momentum has shifted nationwide as Democrats have woken up. Look at the ActBlue fundraising numbers, look at all of the volunteers in these special elections no one usually cares about.
Go ahead and shit on this activism all you want. I’m done with this site.