I’m beginning to get almost exasperated by having to listen to Democrats caution against impeaching Trump because Mike Pence would be worse. The latest example comes from Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota.
Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) is cautioning his Democratic colleagues that if President Trump is impeached, Vice President Pence would become president and he “would be worse” on domestic issues.
“He’s ideological, I consider him a zealot,” Franken told International Business Times in an interview published Monday. “And I think that in terms of a lot of domestic policy, [Pence] certainly would be worse than Trump.”
What bothers me about this isn’t the substance of the critique about Pence. What bothers me is the colossal amount of denial Democrats seem to be operating with as if they think they’re in a five-foot hole when they’re actually trapped in a bottomless pit.
This is like complaining to your defense attorney that he only helped you beat the murder rap but you’re still going to jail for eight years on lesser charges. And Franken knows this, as he makes clear:
Franken did say he’d feel better about having Pence as commander in chief rather than Trump.
“If you’re talking about how we handle North Korea or something like that, I’d probably be more comfortable with Pence ultimately making those decisions than Trump, because of Trump’s personality and character,” Franken said.
Franken said Trump’s behavior concerns him because it’s “so outside the norm,” adding that he is worried what Trump would do in the event that he was impeached.“I don’t know what he will do if he looks like he’s going to be impeached and he wants to deflect,” Franken continued. “I don’t know what he’s capable of, and that really does concern me.”
Astonishingly, Trump’s volatility and obvious unsuitability for handling foreign policy becomes one more excuse for not impeaching him! Yet, it’s clear that Franken understands that Pence is the lesser evil.
I don’t know what gives the Democrats the right to think they can convince the Republicans not only to remove their president from power, but their vice-president, too. The next thing we’d hear is that Paul Ryan would be the worst of all. And, after him, Orrin Hatch, and on down the line of succession to Ben Carson.
The reason to investigate Trump and hold him accountable is not to magically reverse crippling political defeats. The reason is because he is manifestly unfit for office and there is a Constitution to protect. Leaving him in office because Mike Pence is an ideologue who would pursue horrible policies is like refusing to treat your cancer because you also have diabetes.
The problem with the Trump/Russia investigation isn’t that it’s a distraction from what the Republicans are trying to do. The problem is that it allows for magical thinking that prevents the Democrats from coming to grips with how badly they’ve been mauled and what they need to do to avoid becoming a permanent minority party in the vast majority of this country.
That Pence would replace Trump was baked in the cake when the Democrats got slaughtered in rural areas from sea to shining sea. And, you know, we’ve been here before. After the Democrats cleaned up in the post-Watergate 1974 midterms and won the presidency back in 1976, they thought they had their groove back.
They didn’t.
Right now, the Democrats are looking to bounce back in a similar way based largely on educated and affluent Republicans fleeing the GOP because of Trump’s insanity. That might work just as it worked in the mid-1970s, but it won’t reverse the trajectory we’re on anymore than Watergate stopped the inexorable movement from the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago to the loss of the Senate and the inauguration of Ronald Reagan in 1981.
President Trump is a national security emergency that must be urgently addressed. He’s not some magic elixir that can solve the Democrats’ structural problems and loss of appeal in most of the country.
Martin, you keep talking about how the Democrats got mauled, and how we’re threatened with becoming a permanent minority party. But I don’t think that’s a full and correct read of the situation.
One big difference between 2016 and 1972 is that presently the conservative movement is on the downswing, bigly. Small government, tax cuts, gay-bashing, abortion restrictions, foreign adventurism — these are not things the majority of the country buys into any longer. Hell, that’s the whole reason a swindler like Trump was able to take control of the GOP clown car in the first place. They were not buying what the rest of the GOP was selling.
So I think your analysis is half right: Democrats have not found a formula to appeal to rural America yet. (And perhaps your anti-monopolism would be a good way to do that). But the part you are missing is that the GOP doesn’t really have a formula to appeal to a giant hunk of the country either. When you put both of these together, what you get is, at worst, a stalemate, not a permanent minority Democratic Party. And yes, it would be somewhat challenging for Democrats to win the House and win state legislatures, but until very recently we thought it was virtually impossible for the GOP to win the Presidency too. I think you might be taking the pessimistic side of the equation a tad bit too far.
I believe that much of Martin’s point these days is that the Republicans don’t need to sell things that ‘the majority of the country buys.’
Given the collapse of the Democrats in many districts, they’ve got a lock on power when selling bullshit that a minority of the country buys. They don’t need a giant hunk.
Right. I do understand his argument, and I respect his opinion greatly (which is why I read this blog). But I don’t think it’s the whole story. I think that, because THEIR ideology has run its course, and fewer and fewer people are buying THEIR bullshit too, the best it will do is get them to a draw with us, with either side having momentary advantages. Yeah, they look like they are sitting pretty now, but a whole bunch of them are waking up to the fact that they got conned, or they seeing the misgivings they had already play out in spades. And then many of them will realize that there is nothing left underneath that.
In other words, Martin’s analysis glosses over the fact that Trump won their primary in the first place. That he did so is a symptom of a party in the late syphilitic stages of decay. I do not dispute his point that Democrats have not found anything to appeal to rural voters; that’s the valuable part of his insight, and indeed, we need to address that. But that doesn’t simply mean that they will continue to vote for Republicans, necessarily. Only a wretchedly-run organization falls victim to a hostile takeover like theirs did. You think their customers won’t notice?
Hell of a stalemate when the GOP has had a lock on both houses of congress for the last eight years and has captured the Presidency with a barely sentient, openly sexist, racist buffoon. How much of a balance there is depends on the democrats ability to take advantage of the GOP’s shortcomings. Its really hard to be optimistic after 2016.
Meanwhile the generic Congressional ballot is Dem +6, Dems are enormously overperforming in almost every special election, and they are at least even-money to take back the House in a year and a half. Plus their party’s standard-bearer is deeply mired in scandal after 5 months, with no respite in sight. All the Democrats’ problems, and there are plenty, do not make the Republicans any more than a… have to say it… house of cards themselves. Things looked pretty wretched for the GOP in 2009 too, y’know.
I think its a long shot at best. If Trump isn’t impeached, are Democrats setting up the same problem the GOP did with its base before 2016?
A lot of us won’t like it because we’re outsiders and kind of the hoi polloi of the political discussions. But there hasn’t been much of a disadvantage for the GOP in going full outrage all the time. Turning ourselves into an extremely loyal but stupid base might not be the worst thing. The losers in this scenario are the ones who vote for cooler heads and reward non-partisanship above all. I don’t know how many of those voters – the ones who are turned off by negative campaigning and stay home – are still out there. The reason not to be a flaming partisan is that I’m thinking a large chunck of Democratic voters don’t want it. Not the majority, but enough to make being constantly on the offensive and rabidly negative against the other party a bigger problem for Dems than the GOP. If 10% of our voters won’t vote for it, we’re kind of being held hostage at this point.
I’d bet some of the “won’t serve out his term” respondents think Trump will either die in office (age, physical condition, strains of the job), be forced out by illness (ditto), or quit in frustration when he gets sick of being thwarted from being the god-emperor he thought the job was. Impeachment doesn’t enter into it.
My guess is the “lone gunman” as I’ve said before.
Well put, Booman.
I don’t understand people who don’t want to impeach Trump because “Pence would be worse.” To convict Trump in the Senate, you would need to convince 14 republican senators that he is such a menace to the country that they need to vote against party. If you’re going around saying “Pence would be worse,” then it’s clear that you don’t really believe that Trump is so bad.
You’re in upstate NY, where I grew up for example, going door to door to encourage folks to vote Dem.
You run into a friendly guy, early 50s, white, slightly overweight, in a white short sleeve dress shirt, who is buying a coffee from the cart that comes by the used car dealership where he is a salesman.
What do you say to this person? How do you respond if he tells you that your ideas about fighting monopolies make sense but he switched to the Reps because the Dems don’t support LEO, refuse to protect our borders, and are too PC to call Islamic terrorism what it is?
I try to imagine how you can satisfactorily address this guy’s cultural concerns, and my imagination fails me.
Let’s hear it.
How about good old Woodrow Wilson?
Or Hubert Humphrey:
You haven’t addressed his cultural questions at all. Or is that the point?
I remind you that Humphrey lost in ’68.
I’m quoting from 1912 and 1952, not from 1968.
Stevenson lost in 1952, although I concede that Eisenhower was a special case at that point in time.
As far as the cultural issues go, here are a few thoughts.
… really care about is sticking it to their perceived adversaries, which include nonwhites and social justice warriors. It isn’t opportunity and dignity through any government policy, including competition policy.
If you want to have any chance with these people, you’ll have to go “Sister Souljah” on the nonwhites. Not sure that is possible in today’s Dem party, and I wouldn’t want to do that anyway.
Sometimes, it is tough to face the fact that the people one most wants to help might not deserve it.
I don’t know how many times I’ll have to fucking say it.
The voters I am talking about voted for Obama and made him president. How many times do I have to hear that they’re all so racist that we need to Sister Souljah blacks in order to win back their votes?
Because I do.
Let’s talk about one of them, a friend of mine, about 50. He’s actually more educated than your stereotypical Trump voter, law degree and MBA. But his family is lower middle class/working class Irish from Syracuse area.
He worked his way to Wall St., emerging from his roots to become a bit of a country club Republican by mid 90s.
He doesn’t think much of black people. He admits this. As proof, his sister married a black man despite warnings from the family. He turned out to be a deadbeat. So there you go. Black people are bad.
He became disgusted with the Republicans during the W Presidency, so he voted for Obama in 2008. Became disenchanted that the Dems were getting too liberal. Didn’t vote in 2012.
As soon as Trump started making noises about running, my friend started quoting him constantly. Voting for him with enthusiasm in 2016. Finally, a guy who represents my friend (as he sees it).
You’re winning my friend back with your platform about monopoly power. Good luck with that. Oh, and by the way, he lives in an exurb of Philly now, not far from you, I bet. lol
I can tell a lot stories like this about a lot of people. No, they aren’t KKK level racists, but they don’t like some combination of blacks, Muslims, Jews, or Latins; they hate PC (so do I, FWIW); and they don’t identify with the modern Dem party.
Absent a Republican implosion (always possible), these people ain’t coming back unless you assuage their cultural concerns. How will you ever do that?
Oh Jesus lordy magic Christ!
In rich suburban well-educated Chester County, Pennsylvania, where I live, the 2008 and 2012 elections were basically ties, with Obama winning by a sliver in ’08 and losing by an even smaller sliver in ’12.
Hillary Clinton won by more than 25,000 votes. Those were almost all McCain/Romney Republicans. They left in droves.
On the flip side, in working class Washington County, which is half the size of Chester, 25,000 more folks voted for Trump. That was about 20,000 more than had voted for Romney against the black guy.
Somehow, we’re told that it’s the poorly educated white working class folks who are the racists, but it’s obviously more complicated than that. Your prototypical country club/exurban Republican friend is not a perfect fit for either group. But plenty of people just like him voted for Obama and voted for Clinton. Some, like your friend voted for Obama despite being racist and against Clinton even though she isn’t a racial minority.
Maybe, just maybe, this proves my point that these voters aren’t locked in stone?
Getting back to my point, the Democrats would rather have those 25,000 votes from Washington than from Chester because being at 50-50 in Chester means we can win some races. Being at 30% in Washington means we can’t win anything.
Understand?
Hillary Clinton won by more than 25,000 votes. Those were almost all McCain/Romney Republicans.
And they’ll go back to voting Kasich or Rubio next time. And they’re not going to turn PA-06 blue, sadly.
But you are dancing around confronting the issue that what moves them isn’t economics.
Here’s where I think the problem really lies: You are offering a policy platform that truly does address some issues of importance to rural and exurban communities. Sadly, self-interest narrowly construed is a secondary consideration in voting. People’s individual votes have so little influence on outcomes that they tend to indulge their visceral attitudes in voting, turning politics into a form of fandom, like college football. A wealth of Poly Sci research supports this.
So, to get to these former Obama voters, you have to get them to see the Dem team as more appealing on a visceral level than the Rep team.
For a lot of these WWC/WLMC voters, the salience of identity politics on the left, much of which is outside the control of the Democratic party, makes it super tough to bring them into the Dem fold.
Having said that, Franklin Foer just wrote a magnum opus in the Atlantic with some interesting and perhaps hopeful info on what might work to bring some of these people around, much of which involves pointing out how Trump’s populism is a fraud. Have a look:
https:/www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/whats-wrong-with-the-democrats/528696
Here is Christopher Hayes with another angle on this:
https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/877548330355752960
… I want to talk about another person I know.
Low-level administrator, just retired from the university I work at in north Florida.
White. She was a hippie in the 60s, relatively liberal on many cultural issues (e.g., gays, weed). One of the sweetest people interpersonally you’ll ever meet.
Boy, is she all-in on Trump. She thinks it’s a violation of free speech for the university to ban calling black people the N-word to their face on campus. Hates BLM.
At her retirement dinner late last November, she was low-key ebullient about the election result. I asked her whether she was worried about the Reps cutting Medicare. “They’ll take care of people from my generation,” she said. “We put them in power.”
So, there you go.
Amazon is a big opportunity to go after monopoly power. In addition to tanking Kroger shares over Whole Foods, now they got into Nordstrom and Penney over retailing.
I can’t even imagine a way to lose more votes than going after Amazon.
But monopoly you know. If you want to stop monopoly, here’s your chance.
Numbers 3 and 5 speak to what I’ve been saying for some time: instead of focus on the white working class, democrats need to focus on the working class period, become a true labor party. The Wilson/Humphrey message speaks to that.
Actually, you’re badly misreading this.
Wilson and Humphrey were not talking to the working class. At all.
They were talking to small business owners, shopkeepers, tradesmen, and independent businessmen.
But, in talking to them, they spoke to the aspirations and ambitions of working class folks.
It’s like how working class folks watch Fox News and begin to resent income taxes that they hardly pay. Everyone thinks they’ll be rich one day, or a business owner. Or they want that for their kids. They want to live in a thriving community which has opportunity.
What’s happened is that small businesses have disappeared and entrepreneurialism has collapsed among the young all over small-town America. This is the result of corporate consolidation brought about by a refusal to enforce antitrust and anti-monopoly legislation.
These towns used to be filled with tradesmen and shopkeepers who are the classic petite bourgeoise, and they employed the towns.
What the Dems do is ignore all of this and talk to the working class about the missing factory jobs that aren’t coming back. And then they tell people that they need retraining and education, but that will usually have to be put to use in some other town where there are actual job opportunities.
Then they wonder why folks aren’t thrilled about the idea of sending their kids off to some liberal college town where they’ll be taught to have contempt for their rustic small-town provincial roots.
The Democrats are barking up the wrong tree because they’re not speaking to people’s aspirations and they keep making excuses for why their way of life isn’t coming back while they tell them to adapt.
The Republicans just blame people and point out how elitist and condescending the Democrats are. They say that they can restore things which is more attractive than saying that you can’t. And they win on this cultural stuff because the Dems are all about ameliorating their suffering rather than fixing it.
The progressive Dems idea of fixing this is to promise to soak the rich and give out free college. That is not a political winner with these folks, and that’s not what Wilson and Humphrey were saying.
They were saying that folks can compete if given a fair chance. And they can. We can’t make cheap steel in American anymore and the coal jobs are gone. But there’s no damn reason to tolerate monopolists wiping out the entire entrepreneurial spirit of our country and leaving the rest of us to work for scraps.
That’s the message. Fuck this tolerance for monopoly. We tried it and it failed and left our morgues filled with hopeless dope addicts.
It’s time for a change.
You should think more about the implications of this:
Voter Study Group:
“Voter Study Group“
Broadly speaking, on social issues, almost all social conservatives voted Trump, social liberals voted Clinton overwhelmingly.
On economic issues, almost all Clinton voters and a large fraction of Trump voters are economic liberals. Thus Republican economics are already broadly unpopular.
The problem is the social issues, that is where the Democrats are getting killed. The social issues are the main problem the Democrats need to face.
(I happen to be a lot more optimistic than you, because I see the GOP as sailing into a strong demographic headwind on the social stuff.)
Another study along the same lines:
“Bouie“
“Sides“
Per the Bouie piece, Trump won by lying about his economic policies.
Next time?
As Dubya put it, Fool me once, won’t get fooled again.
Here is the irony of the comment from Humphrey in 1952.
You know what gave labor dignity in 1952: Labor Unions. There were 3 Car companies in 1952.
It was labor unions that gave labor a voice.
Anti-trust had not a goddam thing to do with why Labor’s share of total income was so much higher then than now.
The anti-trust pitch has some merit, but the idea it it does anything significant to restore the balance between labor and capital is frankly silly.
you have such a proletarian point of view that you’re simply blind to the real cause of the destruction of small town America. It’s not the loss of labor jobs. It’s the complete destruction of the bourgeoisie.
This is also why Dems have such trouble recognizing their weakness.
The bourgeoisie need customers.
So? They still need customers.
“64 percent of net new private-sector jobs,”
Not net jobs. They won’t be in business if the community is broke,
Speaking of rural communities, the country used to have many small farmers, not agribusiness dominates and there are fewer jobs and more monoculture. Agribusiness is more efficient which leads to fewer jobs which cascades through the supply chain. More of the work that does exist is done by migrant workers, a category that includes custom cutters who start in the North and gradually move their expensive equipment South with the season so that there is less equipment and fewer jobs in each community for the John Deere dealership and fewer dealerships. This also ripples through the community. Young people move, meaning fewer car dealerships and fewer jobs. Depopulation leaves less work at local stores. The internet economy also strips local stores of customers, for those stores that escape competition from Walmart.
Sure there are still store owners and professionals, but they are by necessity outnumbered by (R) voting “deplorable” peons.
You can’t make up for losing the votes of the working class by gaining the votes of the upper crust.
There were at least five.
Approximate size order:
I think there was a sixth that was later absorbed by Chrysler but my memory fails me. Also, maybe Tucker existed then, but I wouldn’t count them any more than I would count Tesla now. Nor Willys that was probably still in business.
The first four were referred to as “the Big Four”. AMC lasted at least through the 1960’s. I remember the dealership near Harlem & Irving in Chicago.
The first four were referred to as “the Big Four”. AMC lasted at least through the 1960’s.
AMC went defunct in 1988. Remember, Willard’s father was CEO of AMC from 1954-1962.
No, I honestly don’t. I knew AMC was in business in 1969 because I was working at Great Lakes naval base which is near Kenosha WI. I vaguely remember the Pacer and Gremlin, ugliest cars ever built in America.
I also forgot the Packard, although someone a block away owned a Packard Dictator. At the Kane County IL car shows there is always a big Packard section.
How about telling him each one of his “facts” is wrong?
To amplify this point, with which I largely agree:
— Democrats do indeed support LEO. What they don’t support is bad, thuggish, and illegal policing. And there are a good many reform-minded police leaders now who have much that same outlook.
— Democrats do favor protecting our borders — as Obama’s record on deportation and border policing should have demonstrated. What they don’t support is a “deport ’em all” outlook, which would inflict needless cruelty on young people and people who have been here many years and are contributing substantially to the country. (What happens with this policy was illustrated this week in the TIMES in a story about Willard, Ohio — a small farming community whose future is threatened by the absence of immigrants to work the fields on which the town depends.)
— Democrats have no problem fighting terrorism, as Obama’s record makes clear. What they don’t want to do is to stigmatize Muslims as a whole — precisely because any effective antiterrorism effort depends on their cooperation, both in the United States and overseas.
If people want to believe catchy right-wing lies, they will. But if they are really open to understanding the issues involved, the Democrats will come out ahead on practically everything — no surprise, given that Republicans have been “governing from the gut” for decades and have virtually no rationally defensible policy positions.
Well damn them/us then!
I mean, he’s a talented, versatile actor!
Even seems to be on our side, mostly!
(My inimitable, hilarious way of pointing out yet another annoying case of undefined-acronym abuse.)
Until Democrats win the House and Senate or until Republicans decide that Trump is a liability, this is sort of an academic issue.
There is very little that Democrats can say under the circumstances, except to their own constituents, that can really dodge the Scylla and Charybdis of their situation.
And just sitting a praying for the candidates to come forward in Republican districts and states doesn’t get the Congressional Democrats any closer to gaining power.
What good are all those volunteer lists and email lists if they can’t smoke out some potential challengers in hard districts?
In retrospect, 2016 was an existential election for both parties and so far both parties lost. That includes the paradox of power of the Republican caucus in Congress that can’t get anything done because of its own factions.
this.
Nothing Al Franken says about it today makes Trump’s impeachment any more or less likely.
What pisses me off is, you don’t pick and choose who you want in the Oval Office; that’s not what impeachment is about.
If the President is guilty of impeachable offenses you impeach the President, full stop. It’s civic duty. You don’t have the luxury of saying, Well, but I wouldn’t like the results so I won’t do it. It’s just so arrogant and wrong.
In other words, elections have consequences.
Trump is a special case because hes unfit for office and should be removed to avoid a nuclear war, but Republicans beat the Dems. Voters voted knowing Pence could take over. Voters voted knowing what a GOP legislature would try to do. Dems trying to remedy that is Dems sticking their heads in the sand over the fact of a lost elction.
Actually, many voted for what they perceived as the lesser evil, as did many Democrats. There were enthusiastic voters in 2016, in both parties, but I don’t believe a majority of either. Midwest independents were sick of empty promises from Democrats and around half of the eligible voters refused to pick between Scylla and Charybdis.
2016 was a massive electoral failure. And I don’t think that finding a new line to con voters with is going to work.
Two more losses tonight.
I understand the thrust of your commentary/analysis in this area but there is really a simpler way to put it.
Because of gerrymandering and its exacerbation of the anti-Democratic nature of the Senate/Electoral College this combination leads to the fact that Democrats need to win two campaigns – the blue county and the red county campaigns while the Republicans only have to win one – the red county campaign by margins they have.
Additionally, the cultural cohesion in the red counties is pretty strong – white, racist, misogynistic, government skepticism, religious intolerance are the unifying themes (my analysis) that gets enough blue state conservatives for free. These are hard themes to crack with campaign themes that win in the blue counties. The nut is that Republicans can write off blue areas but Democrats can’t write off the red areas.
That’s it. Democrats need to craft a red county TACTICAL strategy to counter their unfair, anti-democratic structural disadvantages without sacrificing their core values.
In a fully democratic parliamentary system the Democrats would be cleaning the Republicans clocks regularly. But we don’t live there.
Personally, I don’t think that’s as difficult a challenge as everyone makes it out to be. Republicans lie to enlist Jay Gould Army volunteers in red states/counties. Democrats have to abandon the mindset that they need to speak ‘truth’ to these people:
Your jobs are gone, your clinging to guns and religion is ridiculous, you’re deplorable.
You don’t have to be a master politician to get that, but apparently you can’t be a Democrat to get it. That’s not the job – to make them feel bad – the job is to get their vote.
So first thing – stop making it your mission to ‘educate’ these people during the election cycle. They vote from emotions/ideology/tribal identity and every time you draw a line between you and them they will vote Republican. Drawing a line is – denigrating coal in coal country – calling them deplorables -mocking guns and religion – serially nominating biracial and female candidates without any sensitivity to the impact they would need to address to win elections down ticket.
I voted for Clinton. I think she was screwed over by the press, Comey, the racists and the misogynists. But I also think you can draw a straight line from ‘baking cookies’ to ‘deplorables’ that drew a line between her and red America that was unnecessary.
This. Particularly the “let’s stop trying to educate” these voters during the cycle.
It gets at the heart of a fundamental shortcoming of Boo’s whole anti-monopoly approach to cutting the Repup margins in red, rurl ‘Murka. That shortcoming is messaging. Boo’s is a policy persuasion, I agree with its merits. But at it’s core, you have to try to ‘educate’ these people during the election cycle.
And Dems always seem to want to appeal to a voter’s logic rather than his or her values. It’s values. So, instead of starting from the logic end and ‘educating’, start from the values end. For example
“Republicans don’t care about you.”
You can use that to dovetail into damn near anything without having to educate the voter. Or use something else but start from there, then move toward the policy prescriptions like anti-monopoly.
What is this “when the Democrats got slaughtered in rural areas from sea to shining sea” nonsense? Hillary lost Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by a combined 82,306 votes (source: The Hill) Trump beat Hillary by only 10, 704 votes in Michigan. That is an incredibly tight race, not a slaughter.
you obviously haven’t read carefully anything I’ve written. Clinton lost traditionally blue states, including supposedly safe ones, and she didn’t lose them because she didn’t get her base out. She didn’t lose them because she failed to outperform Obama in the swing regions.
She lost because she got massacred in the small towns and rural areas. This was true everywhere, but only really relevant in the states you mentioned.
Well, you apparently don’t read what I’ve been writing. I live in Colorado outside a small town in a rural area. Hillary came close to losing Colorado. Why was Bernie campaigning in the college towns, which are not rural, the week before the election? Because young people didn’t care for her. Because her lead was slipping.
She lost my county. Soundly. Why? She never campaigned anywhere except the urban areas in either the caucuses or the general. No presence whatsoever in our county, which Obama lost by a vote in 2008 and won by 18 votes in 2012. He had a field office here and a campaign caravan of notables traveled throughout the rural western half of the state. He also did well among Hispanics statewide, a large and important group in Colorado. She under performed with that important demographic. Did she campaign in any of the heavily Hispanic counties? No.
Why did Bernie win the Wisconsin and Michigan primaries? Because he campaigned throughout both states, including towns and cities in rural areas. Hillary popped in to Flint for several photo ops and went to Detroit. I think that was it. Friends in Michigan who are politically active said the state party was begging for more resources and more appearances outside of Detroit and were strongly rebuffed. Heard the same from friends in Wisconsin.
So, based on my county, you could say she was slaughtered in rural Colorado. But she didn’t even try to win the rural counties, either at the caucus level (Bernie clobbered her in every county) or in the general.
I appreciate what Mr. Longman is trying to do: to create a relevant agenda for Democrats to use in places where they desperately need to improve their performance in order to succeed at any level, and especially at the vital levels below the presidency (on which Democrats have put far too much emphasis, with bad effects both political and governmental).
I’d still like to see some more substantial discussion of Amazon, because I have a sense that if you’re not discussing Amazon, you’re not discussing on-line retail; and if you’re not doing that, you’re not discussing retail at all. In that regard, I’ve seen lately a couple of interesting pieces:
http://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2017/06/yes_there_is_an_antitrust_case_against_amazo
n.html
These pieces are legal, not political; but they point out a possible direction in that area. (How to “sell” an attack on Amazon is another question.)
I still tend to believe that for quite a few Republicans, the best recruiting device the Democrats will have is what the people they’ve supported actually do to them when they gain power. There’s nothing like the school of experience to teach hard lessons. But Democrats need a positive and easily understood program as well. The emphasis on negative partisanship has gone all too far for civic health, and in any case the Clinton campaign was very far over in this direction — with unfortunate results. To the extent that Mr. Longman is trying to address that problem, he deserves support.
I agree. Amazon should be discussed in some detail. Is this the leviathan of monopoly power we want to attack? It has disrupted retail to the point where some major companies, like Penney and Sears are nearing bankruptcy and malls are under increasing threat. And we have seen Borders go under and Barnes and Nobel reduced. Circuit City is also out of business. And recently Amazon went after Whole Foods to the detriment of Kroger and they have announced new inroads in retail that have impacted Nordstroms.
I am neutral on this. Amazon is well liked by many, including me, and attacking them may be just a new way to lose. OTOH I got,a haircut today and the owner started the conversation about Amazon putting malls out of business. It is not clear to me, however, that Amazon fits in violation of anti trust laws. So do we pick and choose?
Franken’s reasoning seems curious since it’s hard to detect much light between Trumper’s (non-ideological? lol) domestic policy and what Dummy Pence’s policy would be. For example, the idea that Pence would have something ideologically worse than our current Crackpot Cabinet seems dubious. I suppose Prez Pence could try, but most of the sitting “domestic” department heads can’t really be made more insane….
Legislatively, the completely incompetent Trump is simply going to sign whatever Ryan’s Reprobates put in front of him—should the incompetent Repub Congress ever pass anything. He’s not going to veto any Repub legislation, ever. Nor would Pence. Perhaps Franken’s unspoken theory is that Pence (as an experienced pol) would not be as woefully incompetent as Trumper and hence able to move the GOoP’s ideological legislation more efficiently than the Great Buffoon, but the Repub bills would all have the same content whether its Trumper or Pence squatting in the WH. Plus there’s a whole lotta Repub incompetence goin’ on!
It’s going to be a heavy enough lift to get 14 senate Repubs to convict, let alone get a majority of Ryan’s Reprobates to bring articles of impeachment. Hand-wringing that it would mean an even more unspeakable Prez Pence pretty much scuttles the whole Dem argument.
And leave aside that it’s becoming clear that the irreversibly incompetent 46% who voted for Trumper aren’t caring too much about the DC intelligence forces’ robust effort(s) to remove Trumper. The 46% don’t care about Trumper’s Treason or his obstruction of justice–which was frankly committed in plain view, with a televised confession to boot! Nor will they be made to care when Trumper massacres his own DOJ to fire Mueller. The incompetent white electorate has “won” fair and square in their minds, and even incontrovertible proof of treason itself will not move them at this point.
That’s what Ryan’s House and the (speculative) 14 Repub senators have to deal with. Add in the corporate media’s excitement over whatever New Glorious War Team Trumper has in store, and quailing about a possible Prez Pence is the last of our worries, haha! And if Franken wants to throw some obstacles in Der Trumper’s foreign policy path, perhaps Dems need to start employing a rhetoric that only Congress gets to declare war….it might brush some cobwebs out of the minds of TrumpAmericans. And come in handy to be ahead of the curve!
What Booman keeps writing about–how people in small towns who voted for Obama flipped to Trump–isn’t fantasy. The data are there.
If you happened to read some of the election post-mortems last fall–alright, these are anecdotal–there were, for example, interviews in the New York Times with folks who had done the Obama-to-Trump flip, and their expressed reasons were commonly along the lines of “well, I’m struggling, I’m certainly no better off than when Obama became president, so what the hell, let’s try the other party’s candidate this time.” Can we please quit condemning people like this as intractable bigots who cannot possibly be induced to flip back to the Democratic Party?
I lived in Boca Raton, FL during the 2004 election.
Kerry had exactly the same problem in rural Florida counties – 75+% voted for born-again Bush II.
Rove invested in locking down the religious bigots and it still pays big dividends.
I personally think that the way back for Democrats in red America is to get a fair hearing in the churches. Haven’t got the slightest clue on how to do that. But I guarantee that any Democrat who breaks that code will be a hero.
I’d like to point out that Karl Rove is an agnostic at best and Ralph Reed is a complete huckster.
So the idea that Republican operatives are more religiously committed is ridiculous.
Democrats just let these people lie endlessly, pander to these constituencies, without any meaningful (to them) counter offers.
Calling these Republican operatives to be lying hypocrites is completely useless. If I’m a red county Republican operative my subconscious is telling me – at least they care enough to lie. When Democrats start talking ‘logic’ and policy all they here is ‘blah blah blah welfare blacks blah blah feminazis blah blah godless city people want gun control’
Anyway, the first thing is to stop leading the conversation with topics that reinforce the ‘blah blah blah effect.’
I’m totally down with implicitly reinforcing their harmless prejudices (not all of them) to get elected.
‘Yes I’ll work hard to get every coal job back to West Virginia, in fact my record is that I will work harder and get better results on jobs, coal or other jobs.’
You just don’t start with, ‘You’re screwed but I’m here to help you because I’m smarter than you and I’m not screwed.’
“You just don’t start with, ‘You’re screwed but I’m here to help you because I’m smarter than you and I’m not screwed.'”
Sounds like a ridiculous caricature, but it’s nearly indistinguishable from comments I hear from some friends who also go on and on about how anyone who would vote GOP is a complete idiot. Well, I sure don’t know anyone who can be persuaded by an argument that begins with, “You’re an idiot and let me explain why.”
You rightly, I think, point out the asymmetry between a party that talks about policy and one that talks about “cultural” issues. But you then say, well, the Democrats need to shut up about policy and lead with something else. What should that be? My own thought on this is something about fairness (which can then lead into policy along the lines of what Booman has talked about). Fairness is a pretty core value in this society. Talk about how GOP policy is radically unfair.
You can decide not to lead with topics that reinforce what you call the blah blah blah effect, but that stuff is going to come up nonetheless, and then what?