I understand that Brian Beutler is exhorting Democrats to get out and vote. I understand the argument he is making. But it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me to blame low-propensity Democrats for whatever problems Hillary Clinton is supposed to be experiencing. I think the problem is that it’s wrong to think about these voters as “Democrats” in the normal sense of that word. People who don’t vote regularly aren’t really party members. They are just people who exist who (sort of) have opinions that they only sporadically express in any meaningful way.
If you took the entire universe of people who were eligible to register to vote and cast a ballot in 2010 and 2014 but neglected to do so, that universe would be skewed very heavily to the left for the simple reason that apathy runs strongest among the young, the transient, and the underclass. The most regular voters are senior citizens, and people who own homes and have assets are more likely to be registered where they live and to make a habit out of voting in off year elections. The demographics of the Democratic base ensure that apathy will run higher with them than with Republicans.
But it’s a little misleading to think about these marginal voters as the base. They’re the people who don’t know who the vice-president is, who couldn’t tell Watergate from Whitewater, who never read political news and don’t know the difference between Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity. Most of them probably don’t even know where they stand on the issues until they realize where their friends stand.
A subset of these folks gets activated during a presidential election, but a lot of them are hardly aware that there’s an election coming up in a week and could not possibly care less about the result. If they spent five minutes thinking about it and you compelled them to vote, most of them would vote for either Clinton or a third party candidate. But they’re not Democrats.
The only difference between a presidential year and a midterm year is that more of them are self-activated in a presidential year and more of them are contacted and persuaded to participate in a presidential year.
If you want more of them to vote in a midterm cycle, you can raise and spend more money on voter contact, but you’ll never get anything near a presidential cycle turnout. To match Republican turnout in midterm elections, you have to eat into their base. It’s that simple. No wants to admit this, but it really is that simple.
This wasn’t always the case, but it’s the case now where the Democrats have huge advantages with low-propensity groups, especially young voters. You can attract young voters, as Obama did, and you can craft policies to excite them, but young people will always be the least politically active age-cohort of the electorate. If you rely on them in midterms, you’re going to lose.
There are obviously other reasons why Democrats struggle to win a majority in the House of Representatives regardless of the cycle, but the makeup of their base is fundamentally unsolvable by messaging or charisma or money. Perhaps the only thing that holds any promise is good old-fashioned grassroots organizing.
The problem isn’t marginal Democrats not voting but reliable Democrats not doing enough work. They don’t want to eat their peas, so they’ll hold their nose and vote and spend the rest of their time being critical and sarcastic on their social media feeds. They’re the only people who can knock the doors, make the phone calls, and organize the underclass, but they’re busy complaining. Do they think that’s attractive? Do they think that they’re helping to get out the vote?
The too-cool-for-school crowd is the face of the progressive left and it’s not much of an invitation for the politically disaffected.
A lot of Clinton’s problems are of her own making, and she should own them, not point fingers at folks who couldn’t really give a shit either way. But if you’re going to blame anyone for there being too little Democratic power in Congress to fight back against crap like what the FBI is pulling, then you’ve got to look at the people who are reliable voters but shitty allies. And if you tell them that their base isn’t ever going to be good enough in midterm elections, they’ll call you a neoliberal sellout and pretend like they’re waiting for a virtuous revolution to get off their asses.
What the problem really amounts to is that people mistake what a political party really is. It’s the people, not the politicians. If you wait around for the perfect politician, if you’ll only work for the candidate of your choice, then your party isn’t going to change and isn’t going to succeed where it has failed before. Don’t wait for some politician to convince people to vote. Go convince them yourself.
And if you haven’t tried to convince them, don’t go running to blame the people who weren’t convinced.
Someone is panicking but it’s not BooMan.
Any reform effort worthwhile was not accomplished by whining and complaining about how awful the leaders were or how awful the situation was, and so on. Those efforts succeeded because people who might not entirely agree on a number of things were willing to back leaders who themselves were hardly saints and were willing to put themselves on the line in the process. That is what it takes. End of story. Sneering your way through life only gets you so far. Really, it gets boring in a hurry. May not realize, but folks eventually just tune you out if that’s going to be your particular pose.
And let’s not fool ourselves. No matter how cool Sanders may have come across in the primaries, had he actually won the nomination and managed to win the Presidency, given the divided Congress he would have inherited, he would have accomplished no more and probably no less than what Clinton will manage to accomplish. The name of the game is the Supreme Court and maintaining the ACA. I don’t see any other candidate capable of handling that.
There will be no glorious revolution. If we experience such in our lifetimes in this country, expect it to be bloody and unpredictable, and expect a lot of very angry people like me who will be wanting the heads of those responsible for starting it in the first place. Get over it. The ones who want to accuse me or anyone like me of being a neoliberal sellout, or engaging in group think, or whatever other inane epithet they can hurl can simply sod the fuck off. End of story. I’m done.
In the meantime, I am doing everything humanly possible to contribute to HRC’s victory, to down ballot races, and doing so while working full time and taking care of a relative who became incapacitated earlier this year. Other than complain, what are the rest of you lot up to? Most I know are doing great deal. The rest? Seriously, stop sneering your way through life. It really sucks.
Well said. I wish I could be doing more, but I’m in a red state and failed back surgery has made it hard(impossible) to do much physically. Like going to a battleground state and working. I suppose I could make calls, but what I’ve done is donate as much as I think I can. I’m retired so I have the time but not the physical ability to do much more. Is anyone doing phone banking from their state into a battleground state?
It is up to leadership to inspire. That is their job. To give a vision of how real change is possible.
Leadership has failed to do that in this cycle and we see the results. Perhaps the truth is that we are in a long war of attrition with the GOP that started in 2010. A war where there no real victories. GOP obstruction has effected Democrats in a more profound way than I appreciated.
Remember Obama’s slogan in ’80: Hope.
A campaign without it is joyless and ineffective.
And yea, I am working too.
Clinton’s campaign is exactly as joyless as someone chooses to see it.
It’s like when the students tell me a book is boring. A book can’t be boring.
“Boring” is a reader response. The boredom resides in the reader’s head, not between the covers of the book.
If I believed that a phone book was no more likely than a gripping movie was to inspire I might agree with you.
But I do not.
You’re right. There is awful music and boring books.
And you can pick good or bad candidates who inspire people or who don’t.
But this is ultimately not about a candidate. It’s about coalitions of people, and the most important people in the coalition are the ones that don’t cast one single vote but cause dozens of votes to be cast.
Their job can be easy, as it certainly was with Obama, or it can be hard, as it is now and was with Al Gore. But the job remains the same regardless of how many hours it takes to get it done.
I can’t find the post, but a few months ago you wrote an article saying, basically, that the party belongs to the party apparatus, and that’s a good and reasonable thing. How does that dovetail with this?
I wouldn’t characterize what I wrote that way because “apparatus” makes it sound like a party is a bloodless machine.
What I’ve consistently said is that a party is made up of people who have every right to select their leaders and to craft their policies. If you are on the left but not part of the party then you’re just a voter (if you’re even that). Your opinion only matters one time, on Election Day. The rest of the time, you’re meaningless.
If you’re a fan in the stands rooting for the left to win this election but doing nothing but second guessing the play calling, the quarterback, and the referees, then you’re useless and you’re expectation that the team should play better is for your own personal gratification and nothing else.
I don’t really care about voters. They’re there to be convinced but not to win or lose elections. That work is done by party members who are actually on and in the field. If you run the right routes and make the proper blocks and the quarterback throws a stupid interception and loses the game, then you can hold your head up high and know that you did your part.
Otherwise, you’re just asking other people to save the country and the world for you. Your single vote will never achieve this, and you’re too smart and informed to believe it doesn’t matter what happens next Tuesday.
You mean expressions of the will of a self-aware people will not self-assemble spontaneously, and sweep all before it, because there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come?
How….novel.
Thing is the work isn’t done by party members. It is done by activists and they are not the same thing.
The people that go door to door are motivated by individual campaigns. You really saw that in the Obama campaigns, which were purposely separate from the party.
There is a skeleton of party people. I am one. But the larger network is made up of activist groups: LGBT, Climate Change, ACLU, etc. They do the actual work.
And they need to be inspired. Because are well to the party candidate’s left. It has always been true that leftists are the backbone of any candidates organization.
What the fuck is an activist?
The work is done by organizers, led primarily by the party but also by affiliated groups (yes) who are made up of Democrats or people working to elect Democrats.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re making a phone call for the SEIU or knocking a door for DFA, you’re all on the same team working for the party.
Whatever it is, it’s clearly better than lowly sods like us….
I’m honored just to share a party with them, and understand completely when they have to leave it, more in sorrow than in anger, to be sure.
Do any actual work yourself?
Now you are just being fucking stupid.
Interest groups politics has been around liberal politics for decades, and if you think the members think of themselves as party people first you are an idiot.
I actually think you damn well know this
The point is they aren’t doing because there is a D next to a candidate;s name. The SIEU people will show up if they think they trust the candidate. Ditto for LGTB, Environmental groups and on down the line.
Which means you have to motivate them to work in a way you don’t for party people.
Again, you know this.
Sorry, I worked for ACORN, for the DFA, have done training sessions with the SEIU and have worked more strictly within the party, and there’s no meaningful difference or cultural separation between the four on the organizing level.
None.
But this is ultimately not about a candidate
Cult of personality is very strong right now.
The fears of terrorism (and Trump) were proved less scary than fear of what Hillary’s backers had in store for us all, especially while prodding Putin with several hot pokers.
That’s who abstained…
The fear that Trump galvanised in his voters was that of losing their last shred of self-respect, (whilst being studiously, casually ignored by the bi-coastal elites for years, leaving them to rot in the boonies in meth and opioids).
This is a serious post – and I agree with much of it. Where I disagree though, is important. This is the start of the conversation, because even if Clinton wins it won’t be in the way anyone wants.
The New Republic is rather clueless.
I have cited data before about the falloff from Presidential to mid-term elections – a trend that goes back to 1828, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/24/voter-turnout-always-drops-off-for-midterm-elections
-but-why/
But always, and reflexively, we turn to liberals and to the young. In 2010 I debunked the argument liberals were to blame – their share of the electorate actually INCREASED from 2006.
There is clear evidence from early voting in North Carolina and Florida we have a problem with African American turnout, and this problem has not one goddam thing to do with Comey.
Always the blame must be on the young and on the left.
There is no doubt, and I have written here before, that the activist activity is down from 2012 and 2008. But this is rather silly. Rather than ascribe this to some form of petulance, which when directed at people who in most cycles DO work strikes me as petty, it might be better to take a step bask and ask do we really know why?
Part of it I submit is a problem with any attempt to win three elections in a row. Part of it has nothing to do with eating their peas, but a sense that even if we DO win, GOP obstruction will mean we can’t do anything.
And it is this last part that I submit is the source of the problem.
It is a lack of hope. Obama spoke to it in ’08 and ’12 convincingly. Does anyone here think Clinton can deliver on the stuff on her web site?
Bernie talked about a political revolution – and it was hokey. But he was right – you have to win a larger victory.
You have to believably convey a larger vision.
And right not that larger vision does not exist.
What we are seeing among both activists and loyal Democrats is cynicism born of experience. We can’t win the larger victory – and so politics has become joyless.
I have held signs in the snow next to a shopping mall. Canvassed in the cold and dark (in Iowa in February). Made phone calls (Yesterday in fact). Went to long meetings on voter rules and spent all day in precincts.
Those of us that actually do these things are odd people. We bear not one fucking bit of blame for this cluster fuck. Most of us get no recognition – maybe we get into a Convention.
And I goddam tired of the fire directed at us.
Who the fuck do these assorted pundits think they are? Shitty allies? Fuck that. I call bullshit.
Are the black people who aren’t turning out shitty allies. I dare you to say that.
NO – lets blame the young and the activists.
You know what – come to me with a believable plan that actually delivers. People like me will be out again.
Or just shut the fuck up and let the people who actually work work.
Where are the ballot initiatives that get marginal voters to the polls in their own initiative? Minimum wage increases? Marijuana? Fracking? Protecting water resources? Are state party orgs so decrepit they can’t do them any more? I know they are having funding problems as direct contributions to candidates is growing from the discontented.
They have to rely on big donors who might have counter interests, no?
Florida does have a marijuana initiative. North Carolina initiatives require legislative approval (you know, the one with the veto-proof Republican majority).
There were quite a few minimum wage initiatives in 2014.
This is already being done about as much as it can.
We don’t really know very well how to effect turnout.
People have reasons for not voting that we tend not to listen to and do not take seriously.
One of those reasons is that, for all the rending of garments, who runs the federal government has very little direct impact on most people’s lives.
I strongly disagree with this. People often ignore the many things the government is doing for them (“keep your government hands out of my medicare”) but without the social insurance, regulatory state, and infrastructure the government provides all but a few of us would be vastly worse off.
I didn’t say that the federal government was unimportant — but rather who ran it had little impact on most people’s lives. The government has a lot of checks in place to prevent overreach. A Trump administration would certainly challenge those checks but it hasn’t happened and people don’t really have any historical context to judge it by.
On the other hand, county and local governments — school boards in particular — have a huge impact on people’s lives and there’s a low level of civic engagement there. A big part of the problem is structural. And the inability to keep people informed/lack of disclosure among candidates.
for the record, insofar as I am blaming the young, it’s only to say that young people are less reliable voters by nature. It’s not some kind of moral failing on their part or on the part of parents or educators. It only matters if one party becomes reliant on big turnout from them to win. That’s what we have now, especially in our demographically sorted House elections, and doubly especially in midterm years.
As for blaming liberals, I am only blaming my peers who are knowledgeable enough to know the stakes, the importance, the distinctions, and yet (many of them) do more to suppress the vote than to get it out.
Is this their nature, too?
If it is, I intend to poke their nature from now until the end of time.
I am tired, frustrated, and angry. That came off in this post and I apologize.
We are venting. Ever done phone banking? People vent there like hell.
And I am working.
I don’t need to feel like people are firing at the VERY people who are working.
I am VERY aware that there is a tremendous amount of anger within the Party. See Kevin Drum’s piece which was really just a let’s blame Bernie Sanders piece.
So how about this? Write one piece in the next 24 hours of with arguments people like me can use on the phone and on the doorstep to convince wayward liberals.
And how about another: good things that can happen if Clinton wins.
Because no one I talk to is positive about ANYTHING.
And you just can’t win that way.
republican brinkmanship has been very effective. it’s depressing.
the way good things can happen is to break through their firewall. it almost happened during the election. i think there’s got to be a way to break down their links to each other. they are tenuous.
but it has to be done without breaking up the democratic coalition. this is going to be a fine needle to thread.
By intent. (Including the intent of depressing turnout, not just psychological affect . . . though certainly that, too. Turnout depressed, they do better.)
FlaDem — having lived there in FL from 2005-2010 and worked the Obama campaign in 2008, I think the wayward liberals (like where I live now) can’t be convinced. However, there is the BIG BASE of the party coalition, Black women, who must be sold to get up and vote, and to drag their husbands and kids by the ear to the polls. It seems that in this election the Black vote is being replaced by the Hispanic vote, rather than supplemented by it.
Obama has been trying to say “my legacy” needs protection. He is cajoling folks to vote as a “parting gift” to him and Michelle. I don’t know if this is working, but it looks shaky.
Some of the supposed Black low-turnout may be that the embrace of the Hispanics may be interpreted as a disavowal of the Black community. Dunno. How much might you assess that in Florida?
It really may be nothing more than Obama is not on the ticket.
from Steve Schale
“The problem isn’t marginal Democrats not voting but reliable Democrats not doing enough work. They don’t want to eat their peas, so they’ll hold their nose and vote and spend the rest of their time being critical and sarcastic on their social media feeds. They’re the only people who can knock the doors, make the phone calls, and organize the underclass, but they’re busy complaining. Do they think that’s attractive? Do they think that they’re helping to get out the vote?”
I see where you’re going here, but there’s something else here. It fundamentally takes a lot more work to get unreliable voters to the polls. That work is grueling and often doesn’t result in any form of payoff. That kind of stuff is self-reinforcing.
Spewing bullshit on social media has very little to do with it; as anyone with connections to RW Facebook, they’re beating the hell out of progressives on that, too.
I’ll just say that young people establish their political preferences early and often do become reliable voters… eventually. My first midterm was 2006 (age 26).
My favorite thing about the “we have to do some of this vague get out the vote shit!” genre of centrist panic is that sincerely changing the Democratic Party platform to, you know, motivate the Youngs and the Poors and the PoC is never on the table. except offer a better product.
It’s always some vague mewling about nagging people and raising more money and more Axelrod-endorsed tech apps. The idea that the Democratic Party should completely ditch post-Carter liberalism and, say, fully embrace labor politics is never discussed. And if it is discussed, there’s always some technocratic whining about how (accurately) Hillary Clinton has the most left platform of any post-Mondale Democrat. As if voter motivation was an amoral exercise in pick-and-mix and not simply another exercise in basic-ass branding.
Maybe 2016, after Trump comes within striking distance of the Presidency despite having no ground game and HRC having a good one, will finally teach the liberal Democrats that all of that bullshit they obsess over with electoral politics — debates, endorsements, door-knocking, advertisements, mailing lists, sick-ass thinkpieces — matters very little in the face of basic-ass voter motivation.
If a man has good corn or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
How very American and yet our Pols still pander to big donors. Bernie and Trump proved you don’t have to do this. I think over the next 10 years someone will come along with a populist message that puts it all together. Until then…
Here is the reality against which this comes. Nate Silver’s 538 aggregate model right now is spewing out a probability number that Clinton will win. If you look at the distribution curve of the medel, you see that the probabilities for each of the possible electoral vote totals are about the same and the most frequent value still is at 360.
Also, there are Trump victory situations with about the same probabilities.
The model is telling us that either the underlying polls are contradictory or that this election does not readily match the pattern of the previous elections that are the historical data in the model.
Colorado at the moment is the back of Clinton’s firewall and North Carolina is the front. Iowa is the front of Trump’s firewall.
I think Nate is worried about the right thing: a systemic polling failure across all of the states.
A 2 point move in either direction and the EC votes look completely different.
And the polls are almost ALWAYS off by 2 points in either direction.
Trump’s odds are in my opinion being underrated.
CO has closed again.
Give Trump Fl, OH, and IA and he gets to 245. That gives Clinton 259.
That means the following are out:
NH
NV
CO
NC
Based on polling I think Clinton wins NH and early voting looks good is NV. That gets Clinton to 269.
So Trump needs one EV from Maine, and NC and CO and you get a tie.
Beware, though, WI poll today at 1:00
Reliably, there is only one way to ensure that the “low propensity” voters will vote. It’s not particularly easy, but I know of loads of people who have done it.
Tammany Hall (NYC), the Rizzo Bros. (Philadelphia), Daley (Chicago), Pendergast (Missouri), Samish (CA), Crump (Memphis), …
These machines had a number of things in common. One of which was that they had boots on the ground in the neighborhoods 24/7 to take care of the people in those neighborhoods in ways that could be seen.
I’m not defending the machines. I am not saying we need to return to machine politics. But there just is no other way to reliably turn out the once a generation voter.
It could be that there is no long term answer to the implied question of the post: How do we get the marginal and non-involved, involved?
Call on them to expropriate the expropriators, and take ownership of the means of production, distribution and finance into their own hands.
The rest is just technique.
Been there, done that. Got a guy killed. Not going again.
well that and the promise of free sex.
From each according to their ability to each according to their need.
$500.00 tax rebate if you vote in the November election.
People are working — lefty and centrist Dems. Calling, knocking, etc. But they are going through the motions. Here the enthusiastic Bernie folks don’t seem to have switched to being engaged for Clinton. Instead, they’re engaged on Stein.
We talk about low info voters. How is that possible in this world of constant bombardment. The lack of interest this election and in mid-terms is, for me, the same as folks not going to the doctor for check-ups. It isn’t what they were taught was important, an integral part of their lives. A habit.
There’s no civics. No idea that what happens in government actually effects their lives. Perhaps engagement in civics is a luxury for folks who can barely eke out a living. But it is also the result of cuts to civic education in school and to making politics so dirty no one wants to look at it. It is this latter I mostly blame the Republicans for — and perhaps the media.
This election has been about stuff you have to turn your head away from. It has been about the character flaws of the candidates, not their strengths or ideas. And anyone doing canvassing or calling knows that the folks on the other end don’t seem to want to think about it any more. They just want it to end.
Is there training for new GOTV volunteers that explains how canvassing and getting people to the polls work and what the election laws should be obeyed?
Are they clear that the first priority is to get the people who have the sentiment to go vote for your candidates to actually get the bodies to the polls and mark the ballot?
Are they clear that trying to convert what Republican ringers they find in their list is a waste of time?
Are they clear that scoping out what special services voters need order to be at the polls is as important as “motivating” them to go to vote?
Bernie folks who are engaged on Stein is to be expected. They are not your problem; getting all of the Clinton voters out is the get-out-the-vote problem. If the Stein folks get out 1% because they are not engaged and you get out 75%-80% of Clinton voters because you understand GOTV, you win your local areas and likely contribute to a state victory. And if you in California, you focus is downticket more than at the top — and on the initiatives. Congressional seats are paricularly of importance in California. And Stein voters have to vote for the downticket candidates that do not have Green candidates.
If you are not in California, the same applies to progressive strongholds with Greens on the ballot.
Swing states are a different matter at the top of the ticket.
Tarheel, you know that I know that you know your shit. Our GOTV here (in my county in NM), reliably blue … voted for Obama 82% … Hillary lost to Sanders by 14 points. We are primarily focused on getting women to the polls and getting them to get their husbands and kids to the polls. We’ve given up on the Bernie hold-outs. No more persuasion. Just GOTV calls and some knocks.
We have a 4-way race here because Johnson is from here. I expect that Clinton will get 60% of the vote instead of 80+, and that all numbers will be way down from 2012 and 2008. The reliables are early voting. No problem. But the others, not so much. EV is medium strong.
Our county usually offsets heavily R counties, and I’m not so confident that’s going to happen this time in the numbers is has previously. I guess we will see.
Besides all this, someone is removing our signs. Highway department? Stein voters? Dunno. But hundreds of signs gone missing. Makes it feel like there is no election going on at all. Makes enthusiasm look meager. (And I know that signs don’t vote, but they do have some impact on the impression of commitment and enthusiasm.)
How much Latino defection are the R’s facing in R counties?
Answers:
I don’t know a single Bernie activist who is working for Stein.
Stein is a rounding error.
mascaraing for some as a great White Whale…..
C’mon a my town!
The perils of being a progressive stronghold (or a least a Democratic stronghold). People feel that their place is in the bag; so they are free to protest. And split tickets. Or not vote at all.
Here in NC, the issue is the shrinking of the early voting places in key cities where there is heavy black (and in some of them, Latino) voting.
One would hope that the Republicans will face consequences for this, but .. like an old Boston-area furniture salesman used to say, “I doubt it”.
What is happening at the moment is that:
In fairness, most of the reliable voters don’t know where they stand on the issues until they listen to what Fox news is saying. Most of us of all ages are affected by what we hear every day except where we have a personal connection with some issue.
At the risk of personalizing this topic way too much, I present to you an example of a mostly apathetic young voter: my son. This will be his first election. He was keen on Sanders back in 2015, said Sanders was talking about issues he cared about. But I haven’t been able to engage him in a political discussion for many months now. He didn’t express disappointment when Clinton won the nomination. He didn’t express anything of a political nature…and yet he was home from college all summer, living once again in a household where political talk is a daily thing between my spouse and me. A few days ago, he e-mailed me wondering about how to vote (he’s got his Oregon mail-in ballot). So yes, he’s going to vote, but out of ignorance, quite frankly. I told him to vote straight Democratic as a default. As for local races (generally nonpartisan) and ballot initiatives, again, I gave recommendations, but I keep wondering: where did I fail to cultivate in my kid a sense of civic engagement?
you didn’t fail. It’s an age thing.
It’s not your fault. Bernie (and Trump) were/are candidates of complaint. This is wrong; that is wrong. They both had big crowds and sound bites, and no policy. But, boy, was it like a rock concert. (I keep thinking of the bird that landed on Bernie’s podium.)
Policy is boring when you have Facebook and Twitter and Cubs/Indians, and the Ducks. And sometimes an exam or a hot new prospect of a girlfriend.
Bill Maher reminded us on Saturday night that people have great capacity for detail. To paraphrase, he talked about listen to sports radio and how folks who called in knew their stuff, could discuss it in great detail. But about politics? They don’t know anything. Can’t name the VP or a Supreme Court Justice.
To me that has been a really true issue in the campaign: serious (policy) vs. frivolous (scandals and tweets).
In addition, and off topic, Trump has really accused Hillary of everything he does. Just one example: We know nothing about his involvements with foreign governments and businesses. The WaPost has tried to point this out and even suggests that if he were to become President, Trump would be seriously conflicted between his business interests and governing. Yet it’s the Clinton Foundation that he has made “the question.” No one engaged in “pay for play” more than Trump (by self-admission), yet it’s Hillary who he calls out for it. Ingenious in a way on his part. Scary as hell.
that’s just nonsense wrt Bernie.
There are many true things you could say about Bernie.
That’s not one of them.
You may not have liked his “policies” (actually, policy proposals, which are all any aspiring office-holder ever has until elected).
You may have thought them unrealistic, misguided, counter-productive, under-detailed, whatever.
What’s not tenable is the assertion that he had none. That’s ridiculous.
Generally, eighteen year olds — particularly those that have been (righty!) protected from financial responsibility by their parents — have other priorities. Like getting laid, for starters. And other stuff, too.
Although it was a while ago, I do remember being 18…
Joel, you ever go to a rip-roaring, all out, balls to the wall protest? I’m talking Chicago, Jackson State, CalBerkley … Trust me, you want it? you’ll get it.
Been at a peaceful occupation of a college admin building at roughly that age. Also was in a situation that devolved into a riot a bit later on. The latter I would not recommend. Felt lucky to get out minimally harmed and not arrested.
Booman Tribune ~ Don’t Blame the Apathetic Left
A party is members, leadership (mostly politicians, but not limited to) and organisational structure. And then you have voters.
If a party is blaiming the voters for voting wrong or not showing up to vote, it is failing, because it is up to the party to give the voters something to vote for. And there we agree.
Similarily, if the leadership is blaming the rank-and-file members for not getting out the voters, the leadership is failing. It is up to the leadership to give the members a structure where particiaption make sense, in terms of things being possible to do, being worthwhile to do, and giving a vision of what can be acheived if we do it together.
The organisational structure can be a hindrance, and here again it is up to party leadership to reform it if it wants members engaged and in the end voters voting. The leadership has not only the power, the money and the time, they also has most to gain. Because while members might enjoy better policies, leadership might enjoy better policies, getting elected and gaining power.
So don’t blame apathetic voters and don’t blame apathetic members. Blame party leadership, it is their job to get the party winning.
If a party is blaming the voters for voting wrong or not showing up to vote, it is failing, because it is up to the party to give the voters something to vote for. And there we agree.
Always this!!!
this is largely bullshit.
the bucks stops where people have knowledge.
it does not go past there.
I don’t think knowledge is sufficient, power is also needed. And when it comes to parties, the party structure decides who has the power, and that tends to be the leadership.
If the leadership fails their role, your active members drops of and does something else. Life is short, and there are vintage cars to repair (just to take an example from this thread).
Your answer is short, so I hope you excuse me if I misinterpret your position, but as far as I can see, you fall into the same trap as the author of the article you critizise, just on another level. Sure, you can take the position that people should optimise in political situations, always vote for the least bad option if they don’t find any good one, and stick with a party even if the party leadership appears to be working at cross-purposes with you as a rank-and-file member. But as far as I can see, people don’t work that way, and claiming that they should work like that is not a way to win elections.
Booman writes:
I think you misjudge the size of this group today. The sensationalistic campaign…touched off by Trump’s rabble-rousing primary showings, subsequent successes on the campaign trail and covered in self-interested amazement by a media hungry for attention…engaged many people who previously would have fit your description to a “T.”
How many?
And how will they vote?
We will find out Tuesday.
Won’t we.
I also disagree with this statement.
A “subset.” Yes. But…how large a subset? Larger than ever before as far as I can tell. And the others? The ones who “could not possibly care less?” I think that is a relatively small number compared to past elections, and I also think that if they do vote they are by no means reflexive DemRat or 3rd party voters. Not this time they’re not. Like the stupid animals they resemble, they will be attracted to the flashiest object.
Who is flashiest?
Please!!!
Trump by a hairdo.
And a tan job.
And a trophy wife.
The WWE vote. (Emphasis mine)
A not inconsiderable potential voting bloc. Alla them little “deplorables” out there. Pissed off like a motherfucker.
Watch.
AG
P.S. I do not blame the “apathetic” left. I blame the pathetic left.
What we are seeing here now is a contest between the deplorables and the intolerables to see who gets to fuck up this country even further.
Scylla and Charybdis?
More like Beavis and Butthead if you ask me.
The current predominant male faces of these two parties in the media? Less than 6 days before the polls open to decide whose finger will be poised above the doomsday button?
Trump and Weiner.
TrumpenWeiner.
Perfect.
One likes to watched; the other likes to be watched.
Perfect.
AG
Count me as “too cool for endless war”. Nothing good is going to come from the next president on domestic policy. America is too polarized for that. There is bipartisan agreement on endless war though and the Democratic Party nominated the worst possible candidate. The party is going backwards.
I’m usually a critic of Democratic party foreign policy and its strange seeing one-issue voters like yourself who seem so disillusioned and dispirited with current foreign policy.
In reality, things are better than they were a decade ago and can get even better with some wiser policy and restraint. Perhaps you have reason to be so pessimistic but it must be jarring that so few share your fatalism.
I am altogether too cool for school. I went canvassing for HRC on acid. The morons that are registered dems but say they will not vote for anyone were approx 30% of the the voters I talked to. They are idiots and no, it’s not my job job to herd their ignorant asses to the polls. I finally got citizenship and the right to vote, after 30 years of agnostic residency. All I wanted was to pull a fucking lever for Big D. Now if you’ll excuse me I am going to work on one of my vintage cars.
As an aside, that statement right there pretty well nails it. Events in the last year have convinced me that it no longer makes sense for me to identify as “left” and in large part that has to do with not wanting to be associated with what most disaffected voters (and just about anyone else looking on) might think of when they think of as “left.” Oddly enough, my values didn’t change, nor did my ideology. I simply could no longer stomach the purity posing from what passes for a “left” – whether within the Democratic Party or not. The so-called left blogosphere has acted pretty much the same way since its inception. How’s that working out? Not well by the looks of things. So, yeah, I’ve already done early voting this year, and I’ll do what I do during the time in between Presidential cycles – actively involve myself in school board and local elections, see if any impact can be made during midterms, and otherwise look for ways to make a difference. Whenever possible I’ll contribute some money and time like this year. If asked where I fit on the political spectrum? I won’t call myself a leftist – just a person who cares: nothing more, nothing less.
To paraphrase St. Ronald (PBUH): You didn’t leave the left; the left left you.
About how it feels.
In the meantime, I watch in disgust and disappointment as what passes for a “left” bickers, “occupies”, tweets silly hashtags, and “checks in” on Facebook to locations they have never visited in alleged “solidarity” while the hard right has been successfully infiltrating law enforcement, the military, the FBI and so forth for years. One set of tactics is very damned effective. The other, well, is a total joke.
One of the key turning points this summer for me:
I was checking in on the Anti-Empire Report, which had been a sort of monthly go-to for me. Its author had been considered a reliable lefty go-to source ever since Bush started his wars early last decade. The author had been sick for a while and was publishing infrequently. So I was surprised to actually see that a new post was up (or new to me anyway). He endorsed Donald Trump. In that moment I lost it. My disillusionment, which I honestly acknowledge had simmered for a while was at full boil. It’s where I am now. As I said, I am just a person who cares. Nothing more nothing less. What’s left of the “left” is dead to me.
A little more about what I am now calling the Pathetic Left:
From Farce to Tragedy: Žižek Endorses Trump
It just keeps getting better.
some hypothetical median voter.
I don’t accept attempts to make it more restrictive (and thereby less accurate), either from folks doing so to try to dismiss me as part of “The Left” (seeing it as a pejorative), or from folks trying dismiss me as not part of the “true left” (the “purists” bugging you, I think?).
“The Left” is simply the left half of the political spectrum. I’d recommend not letting anyone use it either to box you in or box you out.
YMMV, of course, and I get that. Not criticizing your choice, just suggesting an alternative way of looking at it.
But then I’m pretty congenitally pre-disposed against people trying to appropriate perfectly good words to mean something else, with dubious, if not evil, intent.
I get what you are saying and I appreciate it.
Since some things went down earlier this year (existential, mortality salient stuff) I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting. One set of memories that I keep going back to is the last actions I was involved with that were actually legitimately successful. That success happened because a coalition of groups and individuals who probably differed considerably ideologically and in terms of life experience banded together and put those differences aside and got our hands dirty. What resulted was beautiful. Had it been up to the purists in my little cohort, it would have amounted to nothing more than a small handful of us holding hand painted signs yelling abstract slogans at folks and feeling good about ourselves for all of about five seconds. The purists sort of got my dander up even then. With age, I find even less tolerance for ’em.
Right now I have some things I need to work out. That is going to take some time and space. For those who still are willing to do the heavy lifting necessary to actually get things done for the benefit of living, breathing human beings, I am always a willing ally. I’ll help in any way my aging body and lousy schedule will allow. To the purists, I am likely to be nothing more than a very bitter enemy. I’m okay with that, actually.
In the meantime, I appreciate your words. Thoughtful and comforting at the same time.