According to Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan at Politico, the Republicans are going to campaign against two things: Obama and ObamaCare. According to Eric Cantor, they might talk about energy and education, too, but it’s basically going to be about the president and his health care plan.
The article suggests that polling supports this strategy, but it has no positive component and has no populist appeal. They aren’t even talking about the debt or the deficit, which is what supposedly animated the Tea Party. The answer to this is to first play strong defense by defending the health care law and the president, even in places like North Carolina. And then play offense: Sell a populist message, try to make Obamacare work better and raise lots of cash.
Although “work better” would be great, “sell better” is the key. And that means attacking Republicans for not supporting the bill and elements of the bill, regardless of how it polls.
The Democrats can’t afford to be nervous.
you are on the money. The Democrats have to get a fucking spine.
Kay Hagan is a huge problem. We need a progressive populist candidate that will engage Tom Tillis.
And Democrats need to move forward not fight a rearguard action on Obamacare.
Again:
Minimum wage raise to $15/hour.
Increase Social Security benefits by 20%.
End health care co-pays and deductibles completely.
Strengthen work hour and overtime laws, and penalties for wage theft.
But I’m not seeing that happen; so I’m very pessimistic about Congress and state legislatures this year because the people managing the Democratic brand are totally clueless (or wanting to lose).
Rhetorically defending Obamacare when people are having bad experiences in dealing with insurance companies is exactly the wrong tack to take. This is a situation in which it is dramatically clear when you are lying.
Time for the Beltway Democrats to get real.
Called Kay Hagan’s office to see if she had dropped her support of the Menendez bill.
The phone answers with voicemail immediately.
I pressed 2 and got a busy signal. It is clear that she does not want constituents to have input to her decisions.
Time for her to retire in time to find a stronger and more forceful candidate.
She voted for Obamacare. Running away from President Obama’s visit to NC just killed her re-election chances. Some people don’t like to be dissed even if they are present with no electoral alternatives. What a turnout killer.
Does no one in DC do politics anymore?
She voted for Obamacare. Running away from President Obama’s visit to NC just killed her re-election chances. Some people don’t like to be dissed even if they are present with no electoral alternatives. What a turnout killer.
Has the NC Democratic Party cleaned up its act? If not, that’s one of the things Moral Mondays should have been about. But you’re right. Running away from Obama will not help Hagan. Hagan is both corrupt and stupid and yet the DSCC will spend a ton of money on her behalf.
To the extent that the Democrats lost power and thus grifts in Raleigh, the corruption has been broken up for now. It is all in GOP hands.
The remaining Democrats tend to be from strongly progressive areas. But even among those certain interests (such as real estate developers) have to strong a hold on them.
Moral Mondays has its first event in the Honor King on Jones Street march coming up this weekend. Hoping for strong turnout. Breaking into five-digit attendance on that could signal growth of momentum after the lull in activity.
But if Hagan is depending on Moral Monday to put her over the top, she’s depending on a whole bunch of forgiveness, understanding, and a sense of nowhere else to go. And those are hard to make up in GOTV.
“I pressed 2 and got a busy signal. It is clear that she does not want constituents to have input to her decisions.”
Or, it means that her staff is busy fielding many calls from her Statewide constituents. Of course, if you were to call five dozen times and continued to get busy signals, that would provide more evidence for your view.
How about this? I live in California, and my Senator Feinstein’s offices usually don’t offer the option to leave voice mails. Now THAT’s clear evidence of not wanting constituent’s input. That, and the fact that Dianne has actually told reporters on numerous occasions that she knows more than her constituents, and that’s why she will not change many of her positions which California voters find unpopular.
I don’t work for her. She works for me. I doubt that folks who send five-figure checks to her even have to go through staff. And they certainly get more of a hearing than an entry on a spreadsheet.
I am amazed how tolerant we have become to poor response in this country. And how deferential we have become to politicians.
The same goes for callcenters and robocalls. We have become much too tolerant of one-way communication.
I do persist and did finally get through.
Main message was that she cannot run away from Obamacare so she might as well get up on stage with Obama. Blue Dogs who ran from Obama lost.
Glad it happened. Good message ya got there. And…
“I doubt that folks who send five-figure checks to her even have to go through staff.”
Let us dispense with any doubt. Those “folks” probably have the Congressmember’s cel number, or at least the COS.
Dick Black is a piece of work.
Truly a Dick. Is he living in 1930?
And the Virginia GOP’s outreach to women continues.
I wonder how “repeal laws preventing spousal rapes” polls? Probably as high as Congress’s approval ratings. Or gonorrhea.
At this point, if you’re a Democrat, and the thought of Koch ad buys is making you soil yourself, my suggestion would be to get the hell out of politics and maybe start selling flowers or something.
The problem, I think, is this:
There was a time when intelligent, well-informed, and utterly accurate political commentators said, ‘There just aren’t the votes’ for single payer/Medicare For All/or even the public option. They were right. To me, that was basically an unanswerable assertion.
And now intelligent, well-informed, and utterly accurate political commentators can say, ‘There just isn’t the spine’ for a spirited defense of Obamacare, or populism, or whatever. And they’re right, too. And it strikes me as just as unanswerable.
There are progressives who demand incredibly unlikely action early in the process, and progressives who demand incredibly unlikely action later in the process.
And reality that depends on delivering those unlikely actions in order to avoid massive social pain and disruption.
Democrats have pissed away unemployment insurance coverage in principle in five years. And food stamps. Those used to be third-rail type positions for conservatives to attack.
I’m afraid that’s not the reality that matters.
To them.
No, it’s completely different. One democrat couldn’t pass single payer, but one lone Democrat can stand up for Obamacare. Temporizing by Hagan can’t stop Landrieu from doing the right thing and vice versa.
Also, Obamacare doesn’t need to work better because it’s already working well. 10 million people have gotten insurance who didn’t before; genuine insurance is now possible for individuals (it was always fake for new chronic conditions before); and health care cost increases are at record lows. Sure, there’s a lot more to improve in the health care system but Obamacare is still a huge step forward.
This Democrat thinks he can win in 2016 as the anti-Obama
A Benjy Sarlin hit job.
But not a great start for Schweitzer.
So much for my momentary interest in Schweitzer. Eff him.
I don’t know what it will take to blast the Republican meme machines, because they’re stuck in the same stupid shit they’ve been using forever. On our Editorial page in today’s paper, there’s an outrageously horrible column by Thomas Sowell (well, of course it is) who trots out every antiObama talking point they’ve got: Obamacare, Benghazi, the IRS, and then touts Chris Christie for being a stand-up guy.
How do you fight this? They never have anything new or valid; they just keep throwing up the same garbage.
Write a letter to the editor. Talk about it with persuadable family, friends and colleagues. And know that “the same garbage” is persuading fewer and fewer people.
They have got to find a way to get the obamacare success stories into the mainstream press. The star tribune has another hit piece today, cherrypicking people who are having initial signup problems.
And someone needs to kick oregon onto Healthcare.gov to eliminate that problem. It’s obvious that state just can’t handle doing its own exchange (or maybe they can lease space in the California one…)
If this had been done in 2010, we would have a different world today. NOTHING SELLS ITSELF!! Obama, wake the fuck up!!
NOTHING SELLS ITSELF.
OT: The trial of the NATO 3 begins next week in a highly controlled courtroom–almost like the Manning court martial.
Visitor must apply 3 days in advance in order to get background checks.
No cellphones. Therefore, no livestreaming, liveblogging or real-time news coverage.
No pencils and paper. Therefore no within-courtroom notetaking by journalists or bloggers.
The prosecution dropped 4 of the 11 charges before trial, leaving the vaguest ones and the ones with the “terrorism” label.
They should ban emptywheel. lol
Don’t think that emptywheel is covering it. Kevin Gosztola of firedoglake intends to cover it, but has serious questions about the rules the judge has imposed.
There is a stink of defeat to them that they had in 2010 as well. I expect them to get routed as they seem to be repeating the same mistakes from 2010 – running away from Obama, running away from their accomplishments and not giving voters a reason to vote.
Add to that some Dems pushing the increased Iran sanctions and you have a recipe for Democrats to stay home in 2014.
The Republicans in the Senate just blocked unemployment insurance for about 1.5 million people. And as I flipped around the channels to listen to the reporting on this, I did not hear a single person use the “F” word, FILIBUSTER. Not a single reporter, even the liberal bull-in-a-china-shop, Ed Schultz, seemed to want to properly characterize the Republican tactic that has become the new normal.
For a party that needs to sell a populist message to keep from handing everything over to the crazies, they need to start by at least getting the truth into the mainstream narrative. As far as Joe Lunchbox knows, it’s just another example of government’s inability to function at all. Translation…..Republicans win the day.
Republicans in the Senate can’t block anything except as the Democrats in the Senate let them.
The Senate Democratic caucus better wake up to that fact before they become the minority caucus.
Gallup:
Government Itself Still Cited as Top U.S. Problem
Look at these issues. If Democrats can start moving public sentiment toward Democrats with these issues, they are beyond pathetic. They deserve to die as a party.
11 Dimensional Chess in action, the funny thing is that the gloating always turns to nervous laughter. That is because a political party has more important interest than the people, their ambition always will blind them.
But it was a nice headfake, wasn’t it? Now we watch the opposition funding spike out of control and everything gets lost in the dissonance. Notice, we can’t shut up about Christie, thinking “this is the TICKET!”
The democratic party never intended to have a power to the people moment, this was just more of the pipedream that Washington sells. Now, let’s see what crazies get elected this time.
But it can never be said enough: Gloating in politics for democrats turns to nervous laughter always. The republicans can wait it out, they are sitting on more money than scrooge mcduck’s money bin, what are we sitting on other than a stack of promises we will never ever be able to keep in this political landscape? Nothing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU4SD2mgC6g
As far as I’m concerned, it falls onto all of us. The Koch money discussed in that last link is a real advantage for the Repubs. We have to use our own strengths against that. We all have time, money and or mind to contribute.
Our strengths are our integrity and our personal networks of influence. And varying amounts of time and money (often in inverse proportion to each other).
The personal networks are key to undermining the influence of the Koch media barrage that’s coming.
The problem is the realities the people are facing and the realities of the candidates who are running. A candidate that shows little sign of standing up for ordinary people is a tough one to build support for, no matter how bad the Republican is.
There is no money amount we can possibly match that GOP has in store for these races. This is karma for all the constiuents who were tossed aside w/ their issues.
Republicans DID get what they wanted, they got Democrats to move further right w/ progressive pundits yelling “Moderate is the ticket!” And here we are, in moderatesville but still the DNC are out of control radicals, welcome to the game plan that there is no winning.
Giving a crap & staring at the spectacle are two different things, we aren’t even prepared for the training match let alone the actual fight.