Election Day is finally here. Here’s one final anecdote from this interminable campaign.
Kevin Deame, a scraggly bearded man in a blue sweatshirt, left the [Manchester, New Hampshire] GOP office with a clipboard and a list of addresses and brochures to canvass for Trump. But he wasn’t using them to evangelize for Trump.
“Jesus, no, are you kidding?” he said when asked whether he supported Trump.
Instead, he was going door to door to persuade the people on the GOP list to vote for his write-in presidential candidacy with the Pirate Party, an international movement centered on Internet privacy.
“From my point of view, Trump voters are a lot of times a protest vote in general,” he said.
That’s funny as hell, but I hope we never have another election like this one. I hated it two years before it started and it just got worse every single day.
Now, get out and vote and then get out the vote. It’s time to put this whole horrid thing to bed on a positive note.
“She’s not going to be the next Obama. She’s going to be the first Hillary.”
John Cole at Balloon Juice said that this morning. It’s my fervent hope that it’s coming true.
The vile stench that is Donald Trump will not just evaporate. He has stunk up politics more than any candidate I can remember. It’s no joke that the Democrats are going to need a lot of emotional bleach to wipe away his stain. Bur we can do it.
I voted early. My family has canvassed. We can do this.
I’m not worried about her being the next Obama. I’m worried about her being the next Bill.
I see. I guess that’s because you’ve been so complimentary to Barack Obama on these pages.
I’m having difficulty parsing your insult. But on the issues that matter to me most – militarism and domestic spying – she gives every promise of beating Obama’s own dismal record.
Kevin Deame (RRRRRRRR-NH)
Nicely played.
Yesterday, it was so hard to reach anyone in the swing states. I don’t know if people have stopped answering the phone or if we’re just dealing with the dregs on the list now. But, man, it’s such a good feeling to keep plugging away.
Sunday, we had a solid day in our offices calling voters in Pennsylvania.
11 hours to the finish on the East Coast.
Thank you, center!
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Keep up the good works!
People with caller ID only talk to callers they know and phone numbers they know.
Parachuted in GOTV and robocalls especially have caused people to try to screen their calls.
The idea of politics as telemarketing has become a turnoff for the same reasons that telemarketing in general has become a turnoff.
Political communication by candidates must break with marketing, become two-way (instead of two-way for rich donors and one-way marketing for everyone else). And they must include real accountability for result that we haven’t seen in politics since Ronald Reagan was elected.
Our current campaign, constitutent service, and policy formation process is screwed so that politicans can select their voters and not the reverse. Voters resent that immensely, no more so than in the way that Obamacare was handled. (And that is on both parties for the way the debate was engineered and handled and the half-assed way that livestreaming committee proceedings without context or honest national reporting became “you don’t want to see sausage being made”. The sausage manufacturers that stretch their meat ingredients with sawdust push that argument and so do the politicians who want to hide their maneuvers to serve their donors and lobbyists and wives’ employers. And that line is favorite one for former Capitol policeman Chris Matthews who loves to watch corrupt politics and hobnob with the corrupters and the corruptees.
Bernie Sanders made a first start at figuring out how to get out of the marketing straitjacket, but he started late and got treated by the guardians of marketing-style campaigns (political consultants and media) the way one would expect someone who saw a threat to their cushy lifestyles to treat an interloper.
Since the Podesta emails and Clinton emails have not been discredited as outright forgeries and their otherwise benign contents have been spun wildly by the GOP, they likely are a pretty accurate insight into how the media-centric campaign apparatus treated an interloper who began to depart from that model. Helpful learning for folks who want to develop an alternative — a task that should have been running in parallel with this campaign but in any event should start now.
One could hope for having productive political conversations about policy before being about candidates with ones personal network again and building a national consensus that way to deal with taking out the money that is corrupting all levels of politics. And reducing the costs of campaigns by shortening their length or more adequately matching the ordeal to the requirements of office.
Election process reform and the breaking down of permanent patronage machines was one of the goals of the Progressive movement of a hundred years ago. We might do well to look at the entire process again and where it runs off the rails.
After all its intent is to have millions of people actually participate in the decisions that affect their lives and have the information and knowledge to make the decision about who can best act as their proxy in the various levels of government.
I think people aren’t answering their phones. Makes me wonder about the polls. All of them.
I never answer a call I do not know. I even tell servicemen and such to leave a message and then I call them back. It got so all I heard was someone wanting money for,something or scammers saying they were,going to sue me or some such nonsense. I don’t know how they got my cell phone but that is similarly infected. I donated to both Sander’s and Hillarys campaigns, but as I saw fit. I never answered a poll either. So who knows how valid they are.
Knocking on doors. Making sure those elderly voters have a way to reach to polls. Wish PA had early voting.
This is actually a very interesting anecdote. There’s an element of nihilism and defiance to this whole thing that’s been noticed but I don’t think has been properly discussed.
Digby got into this a little bit, during the midpoint of the campaign, in the summer — how the Trump supporters weren’t “anti-Democrat” so much as they were anti-government (or, “anti-Washington”). It goes beyond a “plague on both your houses” idea — Mercutio at least had a sophisticated understanding of the way Verona worked — it’s a much more primal, primitive idea.
We saw it with the Bundys: these are people who believe that without any government at all, but with enough guns and canned goods, and the Internet (which will somehow still exist) and “business,” everyone will be just fine and they, personally, will be better off. They can wear Revolutionary War or Civil War costumes and put “Don’t Tread on Me” flags everywhere, and keep supplies in the basement. “Anti-government” isn’t some metaphor or stance; they literally want the government to go away. (And, gee, whose fault is that?)
Yes, nihilism and a variation of anarchy, with libertarianism used as the spice.
I consider all three to be philosophies of children, and Trump and many of his supporters appear as nothing more than spoiled six year olds. His main campaign apparatus is run by the 12 year old bullies that would pick on those younger and smaller.
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Elementary-schoo-aged adult children–exactly the audience of all forms of media in the US.
The audience profile for television and radio, the reader profile for mass-media weblogs and magazines. And why it is that print newspapers are going down the tubes financially.
Also self-reproducing through school board elections and public education financial committees.
TarheelDem, I mostly learn lots from your comments, even though, like this one, they are as likely to depress as to edify, particularly on a day when I want to be optimistic and forward looking.
Having said that, how seriously has the African- American vote in North Carolina been suppressed? How do you feel about Hillary’s chances to take the state? We liberals further South have always looked to your state as a sort of beacon to a progressive future.
It’s really just a form of personal tyranny. Charles Peirce — the philosopher, not the sportswriter — described it well in his “Fixation of Belief” essay some 150 years ago.
I definitely support the pirate party. In fact I checked if they’d put anyone for state office recently because there was a small one in my state. Shame they didn’t break through in Iceland but they’re close.
The 538 podcast regulars offered their choices as the defining moment of the campaign. It was an interesting range of answers, from “the fierce anti-immigration rally speech after the meeting in Mexico” to “hiring Bannon”. I think Claire Malone had the strongest pick with “Trump announcing by demonizing Latinos”. I was surprised that none of them went with the Access Hollywood tape – which, more than any single other event, probably ended whatever chance Trump had.
But for me personally, it was the attack on the Khan family. That seemed to be the “Have you no decency, sir?” moment that people had been waiting a long time for.
With you 100% Boo. The Hillary ad with children watching Trump mimic the handicapped reporter, spout obscenities, etc. I find really wrenching. How did we get so low that campaign rallies are X rated and advertisements have to block words?
Surprised at turnout today – numerous despite the wretchedness of the campaign years/ months
It’s been a long slog on the dirty low road, but tomorrow we start climbing out of the valley. I can see sunlight on the peaks ahead.