When I went to sleep on Election Night 2008, it looked like Al Franken had lost in Minnesota and Jeff Merkley had lost in Oregon, and Mark Begich had lost in Alaska. I was psyched about Obama winning, but I knew we were screwed if he had fallen short of getting 60 senators. As it turned out, the Democrats won all three races, but that didn’t become clear until all the votes were counted (and in Minnesota, recounted and recounted). I point this out for two reasons. First, we may not know who won some senate races for days, weeks, or perhaps even months after Election Day. Second, on the night of November 6th, we will be very relieved to know for certain that Mitt Romney is not going to be our president, but we are going to have to deal with the harsh reality that the Republicans will still have way too much power. There is no way we can get back to a 60 vote supermajority in the Senate and it is looking unlikely that we will retake control of the House. So, I have two pieces of advice. If you are in a position to help someone who is running for Congress, please do so. And, be prepared to support filibuster reform.
Finally, get ready to deal with the reality of a president who is newly elected but who has to make a deal with John Boehner on the fiscal situation. Even if we elect progressives like Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin and Mazie Hirono to the Senate, if the Dems have a good night we will also be electing Angus King and Joe Donnelly and Tim Kaine and Heidi Heitkamp and Richard Carmona and maybe even Bob Kerrey. And if you look at the senators up for reelection in 2014 you will quickly realize that job number one for keeping control of the Senate will be to find candidates who can compete in places like Tennessee and South Carolina and Texas, while holding on to seats in Alaska and Montana and South Dakota and Arkansas and Louisiana.
Progressives need to understand the political landscape so that they don’t enter a second Obama term with the same unrealistic expectations with which they entered the first.
I disagree. I think the 2014 slate looks pretty sweet. Very low upside (almost 0% chance to improve on 2008 and flip seats our way), but negligible downside.
CO and NM have the Udalls, Baucus has been around since forever, Landrieu is inexplicably a rock, Mark Warner’s fine. We’re pretty set in the swing states.
AK and NC are the only glaring trouble spots. Maybe AR. MA could be a problem if Scott Brown is sniffing around (if Kerry becomes SoS). Not even a stroke could take Tim Johnson out.
The senate’s turned into the Democrats’ new strength. The teabaggers fucked up the primary system. And they have far too many candidates talking about rape all the damn time. You can’t blow six years of power on that kind of crazy.
Kay Hagan will not get my vote in 2014 under any circumstances. The North Carolina Democratic Party seems to be in total disarray and incapable of putting up the strong principled leadership that they used to. I don’t see any emerging Jim Hunts or Terry Sanfords or even Sam Ervins. So if Hagan chooses not to run for re-election, I don’t know who could run for that seat.
The Democratic leadership’s biggest problem is that they have not even tried to frame new ideas but are still operating defensely and trying to squeeze the Republicans out the far side of the Overton window.
And that hurts any effort to expand the map. What is the alternative they offer in South Carolina or Tennessee or Arkansas?
I’m surprised to see you going puritanical on us when you freely admit there is no alternative to Hagan.
I don’t appreciate being blown off by staff when I was advocating for a public option. I am a constituent, not someone to message as being wrong. It’s puritanical only in a process sort of way. Here constituent services for folks advocating for legislation sucked.
The alternative to Hagan needs to be someone (maybe Brad Miller is up to it) who can successfully primary her to gain name statewide name recognition and get Democrats here excited again. Most folks I know are convinced that she cannot win.
You can try to primary her. But if you fail, I wouldn’t let being blown off about the public option keep from voting for her.
I wanted to primary Bob Casey this year, but it turned out that we had bigger fish to fry. I’ll vote for Casey even though I detest his positions on reproductive choice, stem cell research, and a few other things.
It wasn’t positions that irritated me, it was the attitude of the staff that I worked for her and she didn’t have to work for me. That they could just drop their canned message and not engage in dialog about what I saw going on. And that was after several times of dealing with the harried intern with the opinion spreadsheet on different aspects of the healthcare bill.
The Tea Partiers go after their own in the primaries and then get behind whichever Republican wins. If we’re smart, we’ll do the same. Yes, it sucks that her staff weren’t nice to you. And Democratic control of the Senate is important so it’s well worth sucking it up. Really important stuff is at stake. Far more important than anyone’s ruffled feathers.
Here is a prediction. Pryor and Landrieu cannot win and they will be last Democratic senators from their respective states for two or more generations. Tim Johnson will not be reelected, assuming he even runs. Mark Begich will have a shot, but not much of one. And Max Baucus could very well retire. And, as you said, we have almost no chance of picking up even a single seat unless we can figure out how to compete in Idaho and Wyoming and Texas and Tennessee and South Carolina in a black Democratic president’s second midterm election.
It’s a snap. Just nominate people to the left, far to the left, of Hagan or Begich or Baucus or Johnson.
Do that and the silent
pluralitymajority of the unregistered, and the registered non-voters, the people who stay on the sidelines because no one really progressive ever gets nominated, because no one liberal enough, ever makes it onto the ballot will leap off the sidelines, and into the game, in numbers that will change the composition of the Senate Democratic caucus forever.I sense sarcasm.
And it’s warranted.
But only to a degree. In many states, we actually are more successful with more unapologetically liberal candidates. Tom Harkin in Iowa and Sherrod Brown of Ohio have an easier time winning reelection because they speak to people about things they care about and not about compromising and balancing the budget.
Jon Tester won in Montana in part because he said he wanted to repeal the Patriot Act rather than running for cover from the terrorism question.
I have long argued that the only way for Democrats to win statewide in the south is to abandon this Blue Dog corporate-funded wishy-washiness and become economic populists.
That doesn’t mean that they can become fire-breathing progressives on social issues. But if you want to win over enough white voters in Tennessee to be a senator, you better go after the Republicans for being in bed with people who are out to rip off the little guy. And if want to win in the Mountain West, you better be for limiting government surveillance and campaign finance reform.
The obstacle in both places is not message but cash. The Blue Dogs figured out that they could get the cash to run. Unfortunately, in most instances the people will take the real conservative over the fake one.
Jon Tester is the brand of Rocky Mountain Democrat that might have a chance even in deeply red Idaho and Wyoming. Basically the Republican factions that dominate those states are deeply corrupt, deeply in the pockets of the large corporations, and constantly screwing the little guy over. A Democrat who emphasizes the libertarian aspects of our party, can create an aura of competence, and plays down the social wedge issues has a shot – and practical conservation plays very well against the really scummy mining and logging industry (have to come across as TR, not Sierra Club).
This works if the deeply-red nature of the state is due primarily to being rural, as in Montana, Idaho, the Dakotas, or Wyoming. If the redness is helped along by racism (as in Oklahoma and the core south) or excessive religion (Utah, again much of the south, here in Colorado Springs) then there really isn’t any hope.
However, there is another possibility – probably won’t work at the Senate level, but maybe so. In my neck of the woods the Democrats have given up running people since in even the most favorable of conditions – sterling candidates with solid business and Air Force credentials against the scummiest candidate the GOP could field – still loses 60-40. But this doesn’t mean all is lost. Quietly the Democrats give support to the libertarians. Not sure if this actually will work, but Lamborn is a surprisingly unpopular GOP Rep, there is no Democrat, and the Libertarian has picked up all kinds of local endorsements. Even if the Libertarian wins and caucuses with the GOP he’d be like their own Blue Dog … often bucking the caucus on various issues.
I disagree about the South. Authentic populist progressive positions can win with enough name recognition and a strategy for defusing the race and religion issues.
The key issues are organizational more than positioning the messaging. There must be sufficient committed party presence to create the volunteer base for canvassing from a cross-section of demographics. It seems that that amounts to 4000 for every 10 million of population of workers who work pretty steadily over the long term to build the party and provide the base resources for running candidates. So NC would need 4000, SC 1500, and so on. But they have to be local, have reasonable personal networks, and stick to the job for years. That’s a tough organizing task but doable if staff field resources are there. Because, there is not a county in the country without Democratic voters of all kinds. You can find progressive whites in rural Mississippi and Blue Dogs in Berkeley CA. Having a long enough organizing presence to sort these out and create a local organization that can be self-sustaining is what building a party is about.
And the interesting thing is that the visibility of progressive Democrats gets a lot of hunkered down progressives to feel comfortable in “coming out” in their communities. The whole Red State-Blue State nonsense was to permit the dominant party to isolate the minority party voters. That’s what Barack Obama took a bead on in his keynote in 2004. That’s what expands the map—breaking that meme. Which is why the loss of the 50-state strategy is such a missed opportunity.
OT: It would be interesting to know who was the last Presidential candidate to visit all 50 states during a Presidential campaign.
I strongly respect your viewpoint on southern politics. Thanks.
Oh, the last 50 state candidate was probably Dole. He made a promise at the convention to campaign in all 50 states – apparently made it impromptu – which infuriated his campaign people. He actually lived up to it but they claimed it distracted from their focus. Not that it would have mattered that year.
‘…economic populists.”
People don’t vote economic self-interest. You can improve things on the margins a bit, running that way , but the most likely outcome is to run up the score in places where social democracy already has a cultural foothold.
Look at the reddest states — they’re the poorest states, although there are blue pockets — the res, the Black belt, the Rio Grande valley.
Those areas haven’t seen economic populists in 80 years.
You write:
Man…if you do’t understand the depth and breadth of the fix, “unrealistic” falls far short of the mark.
He’s in bed with everybody!!!
A realistic, “caring” whore?
Could be….
Since when ia a whore with a heart of gold a good president?
Please.
AG
I wouldn’t call him a whore. Unrealistic, sheltered, never had to go without so he doesn’t understand. Unconcerned with working people and the elderley without fat investment accounts. Yes, that I would say. But not “whore”. Romney was the whore this election. Obama, like Bush, just doesn’t understand.
Obama was sheltered and never had to go without?
Are you serious?
Like most Republicans, he has an Obama inside his head that has little to do with the real thing. His Head-Obama grew up privileged and without adversity, like most biracial children with absentee fathers of the time. In his young adulthood, Head-Obama whiled away the hours in a top hat and tails, polishing his monocle, sipping Chablis, and laughing at the small troubles of the “help.”
It’s one or the other, Booman. He either has no idea how corrupt the system has become or he has decided to cooperate in the corruption. The third possible dimension? That the decision to cooperate was made in the hope that it would make things gradually better.
I’ll grant him that third choice, possibly. He’s certainly not stupid enough to fall for the Pollyanna approach.
We shall see.
If he wins and has enough position to do something…control af the House or not…and continues on his pro-PermaGov path, then he is part of the problem. If he at least appears to try? The benefit of the doubt continues. My doubt, anyway.
We shall see.
Soon enough.
Let us pray.
AG
Did he ever fight for his life in a Chicago alley? Did he ever go hungry and cold in an unheated basement apartment? Did he wear hand me down clothes with holes in them? He knows NOTHING of how we lived, black and white both. And neither do you and Killjoy with his oh so cutesy comments about Top Hats. If he did understand and is still willing to flush old people down the drain, then AG is right.
I prefer to think that he doesn’t understand. That like Papa Bush and Mitt Romney, if you need money you just borrow from your family. He should have publicly burned the Simpson-Bowles report instead of praising it.
Bold assumption, considering you know nothing about me, where I’ve lived, or what I’ve seen. Jumping to conclusions that make you feel better about yourself seems to be your strong suit, so stick with that.
Bold assumption, considering you know nothing about me, where I’ve lived, or what I’ve seen. Jumping to conclusions that make you feel better about yourself seems to be your strong suit, so stick with that.
Voice…I have a suspicion that he touched that life quite deeply for several years when he was a student at Columbia. 1981-1983 were some rough times in New York City. I was there and I saw what was up.
I share a similar upbringing w/Obama. Yes, he was “safe” to some degree as a child, although being visibly non-white he wasn’t as safe as I was. He had what he needed and he didn’t have to fight in back alleys or shiver in the cold. He had enough to eat and he went to middle class schools…just like me some years earlier. And, like me he initially went to a “safe” college. But then he spent two years on the edge of the rough side of New York. He was about 19 or 20, going to Columbia and living off campus in Harlem. I lived in a similar situation at the same age, in Boston. It only took a few weeks in the ghetto…I lived in Roxbury because it was cheap, I was broke and many of the jazz musicians w/whom I was playing and studying lived in that area…for all of my ideas about America to change radically. I stayed for two years and by the time I was through almost nothing remained of the boy who had arrived there. All of my protections got washed away in the flood of that reality. Obama is a brilliant man and I am sure that he went through a similar metamorphosis. If you have the eyes to see what is happening in rough neighborhoods you can never go home to that old safety again.
He does “understand.” He has reacted differently than did I, but I believe that the understanding is the same. He’s a compromiser, and I’m about as uncompromising as I can be and still survive. His compromises have led him to high position, and he’s dancing with what brought him there. Is he “correct?” I think not. Not long-term. He has compromised with evil in the hopes of making things better.
The I Ching has some interesting things to say about a compromising approach to that sort of problem.
“…a compromise with evil is not possible; evil must under all circumstances be openly discredited.”
Hmmmm…
He has taken a bad route to try to get to a better place, but his understanding of the problems is not weak.
That’s my take on it, anyway.
He knows what’s wrong; he just doesn’t know the right way to fix it.
And…who does?
Not me. I just keep experimenting with truth. Dunno any other way that promises better results.
But he’s trying, at the very least. Trying to get something done.
His way.
So it goes.
Later…
AG
Normally I don’t disagree with you completely, but I also never agree with you completely. But this time, I agree completely. Pretty accurate if you ask me. There was an article during the 2008 election that described Obama’s time in college at Columbia, it wasn’t exactly what most future presidents’ college experiences were like, at all. In fact, I’m pretty sure his building frequently didn’t have hot water or heat. I saw pics of his apartment, it was a fleabag dump.
I read similar articles. His life at that time and mine were fairly closely intertwined, although we didn’t know each other. We were walking the same streets, living similar lifestyles. Probably eating in some of the same restaurants, listening to the same radio stations. He seems to have pretty good taste in jazz music, and I imagine that he might have heard me playing in some of the NYC jazz clubs. NYC at that time was a multi-tiered social system, and there was really only one tier that was truly integrated. Puerto Ricans mostly hung in Puerto Rican neighborhoods, black people in black neighborhoods, white people in white neighborhoods, etc. There was physical integration…buses, subways, restaurants, some schools, the workforce in the lower-paying job sectors…but not much cultural or social integration. The exception? Students and those others who crossed their inherited cultural barriers in search of the new. Sounds Like Obama to me. I had already crossed over. In a city of 8+ million people, I would guess that there were well less a hundred thousand who really lived outside of their original culture. That’s a fairly strong set of odds. I was one of them and I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that he was another. If he knew about good, cheap food in the Upper Wast Side/Columbia/Harlem area then he ate in one or another of 3 or 4 wonderful Cuban Chinese restaurants along upper Broadway.
Betcha.
Later…
AG
A College Student? That’s the adversity that Obama suffered? Oh my, the humanity! That’s an adversity that millions of blue collar kids would like to suffer.
To compromise is to surrender and to surrender is to die. Only by fighting and never surrendering is survival possible. That’s what my young life taught me.
I dunno, Voice.
There are college student lives and then there are other college student lives. Living in a semi-flophouse on the border between those who have and those who don’t is an entirely different experience than living at PhI Sigma Phuckyou with a bunch of aspiring one-percenters or in a co-ed dorm in which the highest aspiration of most of its inhabitants is to audition for some college porn site.
Please.
He made his compromises and now he lives and dies by them. As do we all because…so far, anyway…he has won. Even not compromising is a compromise. Bet on it.
The second weeK I was in Roxbury the building in which I lived began to smell really bad. Several days later they found a whore dead of a heroin overdose in her apartment a couple of floors above us…her cute little chihuahua doggie had been living on her remains. That kind of wake-up call is not easily forgotten.
Bet on that as well.
Not exactly “College Life 1010,” if y’know what I mean.
Betcha Obama knows.
Betcha.
Later…
AG
As long as that doesn’t mean rolling over on Social Security and Medicare as part of an elusive “Grand Bargain”.
Or is this the signal to prepare us for a disastrous lame duck session?
It is.
STFU yourself
I’m sorry if you misunderstood me as trying to be offensive – my point wasn’t directed at you, it was rather that Booman’s point could be construed (misunderstood?) as saying to the rubes – work hard to get Dems elected, and then don’t expect them to do much in return.
Of course we have to be “realistic” about what can be achieved, but Dems let the Repugs walk all over them in Obama’s first term by trying to be responsible and “Bipartisan” – and we need to make sure that doesn’t happen again. I would suggest a more abrasive negotiating strategy and a willingness to face down the Repugs on the fiscal cliff, for example.
There will be a grand bargain. It will include revenues. It may not be done in the lame duck, however, as the Dems will be looking at a better Congress in 2013.
Bingo. Obama may be better than Romney but he seems to genuinely believe SS is in trouble.
Don’t worry. “Once bitten, twice shy.”
Elections aren’t ends in themselves, the purpose is to elect people to get important things done. If the first think you do after the 2012 election is to start worrying about the 2014 cycle, you’ve lost the psychological battle already. How about just doing the right things and letting the cards fall where they will?
The President has to play hardball on the Fiscal cliff and let the Repugs take the fall if no bargain is agreed. At least that will cut defense spending to more manageable levels and bring in some tax revenue and build up a war chest for later.
After a while the public outcry for tax cuts and more productive spending will force a bargain negotiated off a higher taxation and lower defense spending base. The President really hasn’t helped himself by not asking the American people for a “congress he can work with” rather than the “do nothing cngress” we already have.
But if he starts sending out signals to Boehner that it’s same as you were and non-business as usual after the election, then his re-election will have been in vain.
It’s getting exciting!!!
Sorry…based on voter enthusiasm, voter ID, historical percentage of undecideds that break against an incumbent (I know, I know…Nate Silver says it’s a myth, but he only uses a two election sample, both “wave” election…a thirty year study analyzing 184 polls indicates 80 percent of undecideds break for the challenger…another study says 72 percent…my “model” assumes 66.666666667…
Romney wins!!! Most likely 50.5 to 48.5…or thereabouts…
Romney wins close elections in Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa…loses PA by a hair…
I publish my official prediction on Tuesday morning…
After November 6th, I’ll only post if Obama wins…with one exception…I need to dance on Nate Silver’s grave!!!
How about this?
If you are right, you can donate $1,000 to the Red Cross.
If I am right, you can donate $2,000 to the Red Cross.
There Booman. You see the kind of person that Obama prefers to Liberals.
WTF?
“Glitch” wipes out 1,000 early votes in black FL neighborhood
At least this time they know they are being watched.
So did the UN monitor show up or did the fascists successfully threaten scare them off?
Per the linked article, NBC’s The Grio contacted the election supervisor for comment.
2014 has been much on my mind for weeks – the senate and house. I hope we can win the house by then but to do so is going to require GOTV in an off year. The time to get at it hard starts in one week.
Odd numbered years are most state legislatures, not to mention the congressional midterm elections. Besides pressuring Susan Collins for the next two years, increasing Democratic turnout for non-Presidential election years should be a focus for the next three years. Kudos to those who are already working on this issue.
Next year is Virginia and New Jersey Statewide offices and legislature. 2014 is mid-terms, which include state legislatures and statewide offices in 36 states:
Term-limited Republicans
Arizona
Nebraska
Term-limited Democrats
Arkansas
Maryland
Massachusetts
Republican incumbent for re-election
Alabama
Alaska
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Iowa
Kansas
Maine
Michigan
Nevada
New Mexico
Ohio
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
South Dakota
Wisconsin
Democratic re-elections
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Hawaii
Illinois
Minnesota
New York
Oregon
Independent re-election
Rhode Island
plus:
New Hampshire
Vermont