I confess that I am going through the stages of grief right now about the Democratic Party’s condition in the South, but I also know that you have to get through the whole process…denial…anger…bargaining…depression…acceptance…before you can make good decisions about what to do.
Michael Tomasky is clearly stuck on anger. That is why his advice is not sound.
I’m stuck on depression. Therefore, my advice is also not sound.
my feelings exactly.
Well, Boo, I don’t think you should be depressed;you should be angry, mostly with a national party that tolerated anti-Obam and Anti-ACA messaging. Here’s the post I just made at BJ about the same Tomasky piece:
There is so much bad news out there now, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed. The tragic loss of black men and boys by police shootings, the miserable election results, and the horrible weather events happening all around the world.
And what about that asshole who threatened to reveal the name of the rape victim, “jackie”? He should be strung up by his balls, but he clearly hasn’t got any.
But I’m keeping myself together. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the friendliness and kindness of others during this holiday season, and I’m going to do my best not to give in to the hate.
So Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone. Bring kind does matter.
I want to add one.
CHANGE!!!
Acceptance is what you…and most other well-meaning leftinesses…have done every time the leftiness heroes that you helped to elect have promptly turned right around and PermaGoved your fondest hopes and dreams.
Clinton = Bush = Obama = ???
Another Clinton/Bush?
Another ludicrous series of intra and inter-party debates where no line but some version of the PermaGov line is tolerated?
Another DemRat/RatPub election with candidates who are both owned by the same slavemasters?
You want to make a make good decision about what to do?
Call this farce out in public.
Fight the nomination of PermaGov satraps.
If they are nominated, work in opposition to them.
Any and all of them, from either wing of the UniParty.
If by some miracle someone with new and promising ideas breaks through the cone of silence imposed by the media, encourage that person be it Elizabeth Warren, Rand Paul, Johnny Crackcorn or I Don’t Care. Just fight, fer chrissake!!!
I was once naive enough to think that Bill Clinton would be a new voice.
My bad.
I knew about Butch II, but I also knew about Gore and Kerry. One last time…I had a whiff of hope for Obama at first, but it was extinguished pretty damned fast.
Now?
As the Israelis say…”Never again!!!”
Never again.
Not for me, anyway.
Can some good come out of all of this?
Yes.
You…the individual you who is reading this, the mass of “yous” who have endured 50+ years of U.S. corporate PermaGov rule (I date its real beginning to the JFK coup, myself)…you can:
Please.
Opposition is the only answer.
Not surrender, apathy, depression or acceptance.
Opposition.
Please.
Let us pray.
AG
that the young whites are different, look at the 2008 exit poll in GA for example (they didn’t do exit polls for most southern states in 2012)
White Vote:
White 18-29: McCain 79, Obama 20
versus
White 65 and older:
McCain 78, Obama 22
There is no evidence that young white southerners are different in their politics than the older brethren.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#val=GAP00p1
The apples don’t fall too far from the tree…
There is no evidence that demographics are set in concrete. Look at Michigan and Wisconsin. Or even Minnesota. We are looking at a failed party establishment in the South. Just look at the ridiculous stunt that Patsy Keever in North Carolina pulled; either sabotage or totally braindead. Mailings don’t get out the vote, volunteers do. And over 8 years the Democratic establishment squandered hours of volunteer enthusiasm. And they still got volunteers this year but had a supporting strategy around them that sucked and that (Cuomo is the poster child) announce a sell-out before the election.
When I support 50 state strategy this is what I mean.
Nunn’s campaign in Georgia had a sustained GOTV effort in this smaller city and she won here. We were effective;there just needed to be more of us spread through-out the state and for months ahead of time, to focus on voter registration efforts first, then GOTV efforts. We do have to work hard to get our supporters to the polls. It will be interesting to see what happens in 2016. In the meantime the state party should be focusing on Registration and finding viable candidates. If you don’t field the latter, you can never win.
Interestingly, I just received an email from the state democratic party offering tickets to a Bill Maher appearance in this city on February 7. I’m sorta gobsmacked that Maher would even have enough of a market here (he’s not to everyone’s taste, ya know) to provide enough buyers to make his appearance financially viable.
“…and finding viable candidates”
Too often viable means ‘Republican-Lite’.
It’s GA they’re not going to be big city liberals, we need Democrats to win even if they are a little more conservative than we are here
That’s true, but we have to say “no” to climate deniers, anti-abortion, and bigots of all stripes. In rural GA you are not going to win on a platform of gay marriage, black reparations, and free abortions. But you can back non-discrimination (leave marriage to the courts, it’s already on a roll, just do0n’t go for constitutional bans), don’t back those ant-abortion measures like hospital privileges. You don’t have to back open borders but supporting the DREAM Act is something to rally around. IOW, don’t push the social agenda, but just don’t oppose it either. Emphasize the economics, de-emphasize social issues. Don’t be in the pockets of big agribusiness or big coal. In coal and oil company push safety, health, and union concerns.
No running away from the ACA. No war for oil votes.
As long as the vote with the Dems on caucus matters (i.e. leadership) and with us on major bills then I don’t really care what their positions are, if we’re not in the majority it doesn’t matter what we believe.
If we’re talking 2014 election results, it is negligent to fail to mention that only ~37% of the electorate showed up.
Bigots show up and vote because part and parcel of bigotry is crafting a law or electing politicians who will treat you much better than “others”.
So yes, 18-29 year old whites voted for Republicans in GA.
But again, lets not be negligent.
52% of 37% of white 18-29 year olds who actually voted, voted R.
Here is how it works.
Democrats try their best to sound like Republican-lite in Republican states. They lose.
They can either join the Republican party or they can run as Democrats and attempt to get 60% of 48% of the non-voting public to vote D. Which would, of course, have resulted in a D win.
It would be one thing if the Dems abandoned Dixie and the Repubs abandoned an equivalent part of the country, but they don’t really give up anywhere. Hell, they control plenty of “blue” states and have veto points in many others.
If there is going to be some way to win some seats/races in the New Confederacy, it will require some new message, obviously, but what in hell has any chance of working? Repub-lite and “Obama Who?” was a catastrophe, but will class messaging work any better? Mixed in amongst the Obama Who? messages was plenty of wage inequality talk it seemed to me. We still got slaughtered—even in the non-deep South. If class and economic inequality aren’t the answer, then it’s hard to see what could be. What do Southern progressives see as the antidote to “Guns, Coal, Freedum!!” to quote the repulsive Addison Mitchell of KY-nect?
Of course, Dems got slaughtered everywhere, so I’m not sure that focusing one’s disappointment on the South makes a whole lot of sense. But trying to fine tune a Dixie “variation” of a (non-existent) message sure isn’t the answer. Dems are flailing and flopping everywhere, basically. Their brand is ruined. No congressional leaders, a beyond lame duck prez that no one is listening to anymore. A corrupt corporate media in the pocket of the Repubs. In short, a pretty bad spot. I suppose there is always another massive economic collapse, although that probably has as much chance of producing Fuhrer Cruz as anything….
At a certain point the national paralysis and regional animosity pass a tipping point and our system fails completely—see the 1850s. Lincoln’s election was just the icing on the (already-baked) cake. Who can tell when that point arrives, assuming it hasn’t already? As in 1930s Germany, a Plan B is probably in order for each thinking citizen….no point in sugar coating it.
oh my jesus fucking christ. I am SO SICK of the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Does shit suck now? Absolutely. 2014 was a horrible election year for dems: off-year election, and the states in play were very favorable to republicans.
2016, from everything I have read, is a lot more favorable. So pull up the big-girl pants, as Elizabeth Warren says. The brand isn’t ruined, the dems are not flailing and flopping everywhere (a lot of places, sure).
But jeez louise. Some perspective PLEASE.
The appalling nature of the Repubs’ behavior and their massive reward for it (both in state and federal elections) makes neat rationalizations about the “Bad map! and “Midterm!” too pat and comforting for me. We’ve had midterm elections since the dawn of the republic, now however they apparently fully explain every Dem massacre.
I had thought I was advocating a through work-over of the message and an attempt to repair the brand, but apparently not. Thinking that nothing in particular is wrong with how Dems are viewed nationwide is whistling in the graveyard.
I agree. The election of a Romney clone Republican (sans Mormonism) as Governor in Illinois is a canary in the coal mine event.
No it’s not, Quinn was a bad campaigner and people blamed him for the mess that he was trying to clean up
Let’s not go crazy over a fluke election
Strange that such a 2014 IL fluke election also happened in MA and MD. And in CO and IO senate races. Then there were all the conservative Democrats that attempted to unseat rightwing Republicans in purplish states that also lost their fluke elections.
I don’t know what happened in MA or MD, but what happened in IL was what I stated above
This is what happened in Massachusetts: http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/12/8/14148/1822#64
I don’t see brendan’s comment as a rationalization so much as “What the hell else are you going to do?” We do still have elections, however corrupted they may be, and there’s another one in two years. Like it or not, that’s our best hope.
it wasn’t rationalizing at all. it was looking at the bigger picture.
I will also not discount the shitty democrats mentioned above. By the end of the Grimes campaign, which was hers to lose from all the polls, I was just dismayed. She ran a classic DLC “run from the democrats” campaign, and as a result she lost. Mary Landrieu? Snake. no one likes her. Warner? He did the same bullshit, “move to the center” pabulum. Fuck him. Coakley? yeah, run the person that lost last time. I’m sure she’ll do great. NOT.
And then that fucking clown Steve Israel, with his awful messaging. Every day I got spammed by that fuckhead, and all of them were the same: “Give us money, we’re gonna lose!” “We’re facing a disaster!” “HOLY SHIT WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!1!”
Not inspiring.
And all that said, we have a much better playing field in 2016.
It would be one thing if the Dems abandoned Dixie and the Repubs abandoned an equivalent part of the country, but they don’t really give up anywhere. Hell, they control plenty of “blue” states and have veto points in many others.
And the Pukes might as well control a state like NY given Cuomo’s antics. But that also shows what part of the problem is. Why should people come out to vote for you? Are Democrats promising a $15/hr minimum wage to be enacted, and go in effect, immediately upon taking office? Are they promising free college education? And of course the DNC needs to clean up a ton of state parties. All over the map. Part of the reason we can’t win the south is that the state parties there are dysfunctional. Did you know who the Democratic candidate for Governor was in Alabama this year? Parker Griffith. Yeah, the same idiot that has switched back and forth between Democrat and Republican like 3 times in the past 5 years.
Republicans and Charlie Pierce both know that the real governmentin’ gets done at the state level.
Unfortunately, most Democrats, who don’t outright hate the Federal Government, seem to only come out in decent numbers for the only truly national election.
Democrats should be attempting to “take back” local, city and state governments. But most of the time the only office that gets a substantial amount of Democrats out in force is the Presidency.
Shortsightedness is a major problem.
Tomasky has tunnel-vision. He can’t see the mess in Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. He can’t see the stunning losses in Maryland and Massachusetts. He cant’s see the Cuomo betrayal of the Democratic Party in New York.
I have a suggestion for Democrats. Run only progressives in the South but with an infrastructure-building and institution-building reform strategy. And fund them with a strategy for winning over time. For example, rebuild the municipal and state legislative bench, picking up what Congressional Districts are possible. Provide a stark contrast and a practical (as in detailed) program. And there is a win of control have a practical plan in place to change the reality of that place that conservatives cannot respond quickly. Cover all of the geography and strike at the strength that the media claims is the Republicans. (My pick for that is economic policy, and I would kill all the corrupt economic development bribery programs instituted in the 1950s and paying out more for less ever since.)
We’ve had a quarter of a century of DLC tactics trying to rebuilding the Democratic presence in the South. Give progessives a quarter century to try their philosophy, strategy, and tactics.
When is the last time a democrat not named Howard dean built part infrastructure. Data driven campaigns are vital but not to the exclusion of all else. Its just a mutated form of silicon valley techno utopianism.
Infrastructure is not the fancy software that the Obama campaign effectively used and which I now have strategic problems with.
Infrastructure is (1) County Democratic Organization offices on a permanent basis to unify candidate activities; (2) field organizers who are paid to take voter lists and do community organizing to rebuild local Democratic organizations (and considering the current situation maybe on new lines); (3) organizers to figure out a unified GOTV strategy for that locality built on best practices and providing the support services so that voters have no excuses;(4) a state network of intercommunication and regular networking events that rebuild a common set of state policy platforms and a common understanding of the voter base. In North Carolina, the 50 state initiative activities included some of these in a non-uniform way because the state party leadership was driving it to their preferred candidates.
Your first statement is exactly on target. But it neglects the fact that Dean had to do that because the DC-consultant-driven campaigns were sacrificing infrastructure in the name of diverting more funds to their candidates’ media war.
It is a grassroots-driven political campaign infrastructure, not a minimalized marketing professional infastructure. The infrastructure itself provides a medium for voters to be listened to by the candidate (if the candidate is a progressive with open ears and the guts to be diplomatically honest instead of bureaucratically evasive).
And it is a continuing constituent services infrastructure that connects localities to the offices of Democratic politicians who can advocate for them. That is a bench-building function for broadening already elected officials’ name recognition.
I understand the big data techno-campaigns like the Obama campaign that are intrusive in identifying from above the potential voters who might support that candidate based on correlations among all sorts of strange data. Given the NSA’s use of big data and Patsy Keever’s shaming letter to NC Democrats raising the specter of “we know how you voted”, I think a future replication of the Obama data strategy is now political poison. The illusion provided by topdown micromarketing is in some part why there has been the sense of failure of the Obama administration to deliver various parts of the 2008 platform.
Oligarchies market; democracies don’t.
Did he really build it though, infrastructure doesn’t disappear over night. He talked a good game I don’t know if he really ever delivered on his “50 State Strategy”
Then the 2006 and 2008 election results were just flukes.
Did they happen because of this supposed “50 State Strategy” or because the Republicans were so awful that for a shining moment in 2006 they voted them out. In 2008, we’ve seen the demographics of the expanded electorate helping us to victory.
It takes a little longer than two years to build that kind of infrastructure. All Dean could do at the time was run candidates. He never had the chance to build infrastructure. He was dismissed in 2009 and they scrapped his plans.
so you’re saying he wasn’t the superhero everyone here seems to think
What candidates did he get to run that wouldn’t have run on their own?
The 50 State Strategy was good rhetoric but I’ve never seen any proof that it resulted in any action.
Superhero? He was one guy whose head wasn’t in his ass. He was working trying to build state parties up. Outsiders had to fight the party for him to run the DNC. He had to fight Rahm Emmanual and the jerkoff consultants while running the DNC. I won’t call him a superhero, he was politically smarter than >90% of the elected Dems out there. He had the damn sense to not throw in the towel to the GOP.
I have seen no proof of that, like I said it’s all rhetoric and myth
I hope you don’t mind what I did. š If you check your Twitter mentions, you’ll see what I mean. And Third Way really is no different from the DLC. I know you know that but I’m sure they don’t think so.
Third Way is different; they are essentially a Republican front group for dismantling Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the rest of the New Deal.
How are they different from the DLC? What did DLC want? They repealed Glass-Stegall. They did “welfare reform.”
The DLC at least pretended to be Democrats. That’s how they are different; the mask is gone. The New Democrats are the ones wearing the mask now.
And ditch all the anti-white talk as well.
What anti-white talk?
All the talk about how Democrats don’t need white votes and demographics will hand them the country on a silver platter. It may be true in the long run (or maybe not, lots of Hispanics are Republican) but abandoning the votes of white blue collar workers (yes, and white collar workers, too) and white farmers just prolongs the silver platter day.
I agree that the Democrats shouldn’t abandon anybody, but I don’t really see what they can do to appeal to working class whites, specifically, beyond what they should be doing anyway: Fighting for economic justice for all.
But to the extent that working class whites are alienated from the Democrats due to things like immigration reform, what are the options? Abandon the Latinos instead? (Yeah, I know not all Latinos favor immigration reform, but it’s pretty lopsided.) That would just be another way to be Republicans Lite.
I’m not talking about programs. I’m talking about speech. Calling all whites racists won’t get you votes. Blaming the nation’s troubles on whites in speeches won’t get you votes.
among southern Democrats there is denial that their problem is unique. In Wisconsin Democrats narrowly missed taking down an incumbent, and the Democrats last lost Wisconsin and Michigan in ’88, and Ohio in ’04 in National Elections.
The losses in Maryland and Mass were hardly “stunning”. And no one thiks either are play in 2016.
I have no idea how a “progressive” wins anywhere outside of African American districts in the deep south.
It is just not realistic. In Charlotte in ’12 I had a number of great conversations at a meeting of local elected officials. I talked to a number from Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. All would have liked to have run for state house or senate, but none were planning to. They couldn’t see how they could win. The districts were gerrymandered, and even if you ran you would be at an enormous financial disadvantage. This last part is what everyone misses about Citizen’s United – over time it is going to kill the Democratic bench.
All of this talk about infrastructure is just that: talk. I seriously considered running in 2012. But there was no way I could raise the money, and even if I could have the cultural issues would have killed me in my district. I would have run on education and infrastructure – but my opponent would have changed the subject – and I would have lost.
Because in the south the cultural issues are VERY connected to identity. And that identity trumps class.
But even after all that you just weren’t going to win the white vote. Gay rights in Georgia, for example, is opposed 62-35. You won’t win with a national democratic agenda in Georgia or elsewhere across the south for the foreseeable future.
Thinking a Warren like candidate is going to win a deep southern state or even be competitive is pure fantasy.
Interesting points. An Elizabeth Warren candidate might not win here, but, by golly an economically populist message like that of Jason Carter’s just might. Agree about the killing effects of Citizens United on the Democratic party. Just maybe the only way to counter that is with a true and people powered grass roots effort. We don’t have to win the white vote, we just have to garner a larger share of it.
Demographic change may not do the GOP in any time soon, but it will make our ability to win Southern States more possible and sooner.
IOW — keep running conservative Democrats who will only lose by small margins?
That is a self-defeating analysis from the get-go. Which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy whose primary action is “let’s not try anything different”. Yes, talk about infrastructure is just talk because it was cut off at the knees in 2009 and never developed from the DNC.
The difficulty with talking with local elected officials at a Democratic convention is that they are as much a part of the problem as they were in 1968 and 1972. The amount of corruption in local politics in the South in both parties is astounding, and that kills them when it shows up in opposition research, which is an A-plus guarantee in the post-Citizens-United environment which the Koch Brothers and American Crossroads are now gunning for large numbers of state and local offices with relatively cheap investments in outside tearing down of Democratic candidates.
May I correct you. “In the South the cultural issues are very much connected to white privileged identity”. Preserving that privilege is very much about economic class and wanting to have all of the economic and political forms of past discrimination re-legitimized. Identity is marker and mechanism of class control. These “local elected officials” are very much the co-dependent spouses of the abusing Republicans in their area and as yet have not gotten beyond their cowardice to try to change the political conversation.
I’m not talking about a national Democratic agenda. I’m talking about a Southern progressive agenda that takes over the Southern states in a revived Democratic Party. An agenda that picks up the progress that Jimmy Carter made in Georgia, Bob Graham made in Florida, Bob McNair and John West made in South Carolina, Luther Hodges, Terry Sanford, and Jim Hunt made in North Carolina in the 1970s–to name three examples–and move forward out of the culture war bullshit. And doing that by putting the political institutions and processes back in the hands of the people instead of the lobbyists and the political consultants. Of building an infrastructure that has voters resistant to media manipulation and marketing and phony candidates. And gives them the power to hold politicians accountable for real and not phony things.
A Warren candidacy as an abstraction is red herring. It would depend very much what Warren did in campaigning in the South and how much contact she had with voters in the South and the style with which she approached voters in the South. The same for Bernie Sanders. But my sense right now is that both have been Senatized to the point that neither can speak straight about what is going on in DC without going into platitudes or being vague. And that is one of the killers in the rhetoric that Democrats have been using. Not being blunt about the problems and why the problems persist.
Agree.
I like what you write.
btw, might I mention again high school physics teacher Amanda Curtis?
I agree we need to lose the DLC mentality. But it should be everywhere, not only the south. We need a coherent economic program that we know we can deliver. If it becomes to large, it will lose. Pick a few things like infrastructure leading to jobs and better pay or free health care. And deliver.
Being angry or depressed doesn’t mean that someone’s advice isn’t sound. Being wrong means their advice isn’t sound.
In fact, there are a lot of people with excellent advice for the Democratic Party who could understandably and justifiably be angry and/or depressed. Their excellent advice to the Dem Party is continually ignored because it isn’t accompanied by a big check and/or Very Serious Person credentials.
not depressed. don’t be depressed. but, don’t run away from the most popular person your party has seen in a generation and his accomplishments.
This is not just an ongoing turf war with Republicans for gerrymandering and control of state legislatures, this is the thin edge of the wedge for a genuine constitutional crisis. We are soon going to descend into Calhounian national discussions on the “tyranny of the majority,” nullification and the 10th Amendment:
Wait for it. Republicans are prepared to burn the country down to save it; just ask them.
That is exactly where we are and the national Democratic establishment neither gets it or cares one whit. And the state establishments in many states are wiped out. Then look at what Democrats have in the major cities–mayor who cannot control their cops. Mayors who are gentrifying and evicting people who were their base.
The Democratic Party should run candidates in every single race [in the South]; they should run on a proud message, undiluted, and where they lose they should be proud to lose.
But it’s not North/South, it’s urban/rural. If and insofar as there is a problem in Alabama, there is also a problem in (for example) Ohio and Michigan and it is precisely the same problem.
The irreconcilability that the right has invested $BB in is not between black and white, or North and South, or rich and poor, or religious and secular, or educated and uneducated. It is between urban and rural. There is no other divide.
It is difficult to keep focus on this, because all political discourse today is allegorical and nothing is about what it says it is about; but the only divide is urban/rural.
Everything you need to know is on the 2000 map at the county level — not the state level. There are no blue states; there are only blue counties.
Can’t agree that it is the only divide because there are many divides in the city and suburban landscape. But I agree that it is an important divide that is often ignored. If it could be overcome, gerrymandering would be largely ineffective.
Yes. This. What beyond God, guns, and gays is driving the rural resentment of the cities? They are losing their children and grandchildren to cities; they are being told that college is the only way that their children and grandchildren can succeed. And they hear about how colleges and cities corrupt the rural youth sent there. And their local tax base (and property taxes support education) are too strapped to do a competitive job of getting their kids ahead. And if minorities are the first to be laid off, with all the inner city manufacturing jobs gone, rural manufacturing plants are now the first to close. And in large areas of the East and South, it is not easy to scale up agriculture to compete as agribusiness. Or occupational safety regulations and environmental concerns about all sorts of agricultural chemical work against that scaling up.
Probably a host of other varieties of 1%-99% abuse that they can see the effects of but cannot connect to the cause or the policies that might help prosperity in their area.
opiate problems affecting youth everywhere creating a kind of lost generation and disconnect between the two generations
This is MUCH harder than it sounds. I live in WI and hold elective office. I have been recruited on numerous occasions to run for state legislature or senate and have refused. Not because I don’t think it’s important, but because it’s expensive, it takes enormous amounts of time, I have close to zero chance of winning in my gerrymandered districts, running a hopeless campaign is extraordinarily demoralizing, and because I have another career that I love which is how I pay my bills and which requires my time and energy to flourish. Not being independently wealthy or particularly foolish, I look at the cost benefit analysis of the required time, money, and opportunity cost, and there is no way to make it make sense. This is the case for probably the vast majority of good candidates in bad districts. Getting someone sane, competent, and not independently wealthy to devote something between 3 months and 2 years to a project which has a close to zero chance of success is an amazingly hard sell.
Not looking as if there’s any reason for optimism in the near term.
On the plus side, it’s a steep hill for the GOP to win 60 senate seats in 2016. On the down side, they aren’t likely to lose any seats and will have gobs of money to throw at the few DEM senators that may not have easy races: Bennet, Mikulski, Reid, and Murray.
Mikulski and Murray have done good work but have been in office far too long. They should have been grooming a successor in their states.
As for Reid, ?????, what can I say? Good/bad, but I think on balance bad. Bennet’s bio reads like Republican-lite.
Republicans have some demons of their own:
Imagine that; calling out the Republican majority leader for “screwing over the American people.” And he wasn’t turned instantly to stone. Unthinkable a few short years ago; unimaginable.
It is almost a matter of which party breaks first; I’m betting on them.
This somewhat cryptic observation from Politico’s editorial desk:
Those aren’t Democratic primaries they’re speculating about; and this ain’t your parents’ Republican party. Citizens United is a two-edged sword some GOP insiders may come to regret. And whose water are Allen and Vogel carrying here?
And whose water are Allen and Vogel carrying here?
The Koch Brothers? After all, Allen’s dad was once the VP(I think) of the Birchers.
Seems a bit strange that the KochBros would want their stealth political power exposed. Unless it’s more hype than real and the report is intended to strike fear in the heart of DC GOP.
And Allen and Vogel are not above free money or clickish controversy; the Village deserves those two. The Right seems perfectly willing to follow their ratf*cking instincts in internecine primary contests; so there’s that.
I still guess that among Obama’s legacies the demise of the Republican party as we know it might figure largely.
“On the plus side, it’s a steep hill for the GOP to win 60 senate seats in 2016. On the down side, they aren’t likely to lose any seats and will have gobs of money to throw at the few DEM senators that may not have easy races: Bennet, Mikulski, Reid, and Murray.”
This seems to me to be excessively pessimistic. In 2016 the R’s will be defending their 2010 midterm gains with a presidential electorate. All 10 of the D senators running that year will be from states that Obama won in 2012, while the R’s will have to defend 23 senate seats, including 7 in states that Obama won in 2012. A gain of 7 seats for the D’s, and regaining the majority would therefore be very much within the realm of possibility. A Republican gain of 6 more seats in a presidential year is highly unlikely.
Can you identify five GOP senate seats that can possibly be flipped in 2016? NH (Ayotte) and PA (Toomey) would seem to the best targets, but who can get the job done? Is the IL DEM Party strong enough to field a winning candidate against Kirk? Is Johnson (WI) more vulnerable than the odious Scott Walker? How do Iowa Democrats that lost to a crazy lady in 2014 defeat Grassley? The other two GOP octogenarian senators are in AL and AZ.
I don’t know about the politics of the other states, but in my own Wisconsin Russ Feingold would stand a very good chance of exacting some revenge against Johnson. In all these cases, the presidential electorate is going to make a big difference.
Is Feingold looking to run again? If not, who else in WI can beat Johnson?
Forget the South.
How the hell did they lose in Kansas?
How did they lose governors in Maryland and Massachusetts. (We know how they lost Illinois.)
In Massachusetts, Charlie Baker is tall, good-looking, telegenic, and comes across as thoughtful, well-versed in policy issues, and genial. He’s also broadminded on social issues and overall a moderate Republican in the old Rockefeller mold. You won’t hear any Tea Party rhetoric from this guy because that’s not how he rolls.
Baker’s been in the public eye for a long time, as head of a major health care provider with a high reputation and as the losing candidate against the highly popular Deval Patrick for the governorship in the last election. He reminds a lot of people of Bill Weld, a previous popular moderate Republican governor.
Massachusetts in fact makes somewhat of a habit of electing Republican governors to counterbalance the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature. The other statewide offices went, as they usually do, to Democrats.
Oh, and Baker was running against Martha Coakley.
So, all in all, Baker’s election as governor in Massachusetts has very little to say about the state of politics in the country as a whole.
The Koch Brothers are reinventing the Obama big data campaign as a permanent political marketing operation that has the potential of narrowcasting to special localities on issues and races. Hi-tech data-intensive highly-targeted saturation meassaging astroturfing.
The apostles of “liberty” creating 1984. Love the Big Brothers.
Inside the Koch Brothers data mining
And once they control the FCC and the NSA….