Rev. William Barber’s Moral Monday movement is one of the factors attributed to removing Pat McCrory from the governorship of North Carolina. He tells how resistance works.
Rev. William Barber, The Nation: North Carolina: A Case Study for Resistance in the Trump Era
North Carolina’s economy working again. Celebrated as a moderate mayor in Charlotte, our state’s largest city, McCrory was glad to sit and listen to our concerns. “I’ll meet with you once a month if you will promise not to criticize this administration in public,” McCrory told me. Politics, he believed, was the art of negotiating deals in private. But we had already learned what every American must understand in the coming Trump years: Democracy depends on everyday people standing together in public, refusing to be divided by those who refuse to serve the common good.
McCrory came into office in 2012 through a backroom deal designed to fracture our moral coalition. Confident that black religious voters could be split off from marriage-equality advocates, Republicans put Amendment One on the 2012 primary ballot to define marriage in the state constitution as a union between one man and one woman. McCrory’s coalition of voters was baited by fear of gay marriage, much as Trump held out fear of immigrants, Muslims, and protesters in this year’s campaign.
Defining the moral position is part of the struggle.
Along with much of the rest of the country, North Carolina fell victim this year to the extremism we’ve not yet experienced in Donald Trump. But we could not be deceived by the extremism we have endured under Pat McCrory. Though we know too well that America faces some tough days ahead, this moral victory should give all Americans reason to hope that we can revive the heart of our democracy and move forward together to a more perfect union.
In February 2014, 80,000 North Carolinians rallied in support of Rev. Barber’s positions in Raleigh. Subsequent rallies in cities throughout the state occurred before the 2014 election; it was not enough in part because the Democratic candidates stood apart from the movement.
Roy Cooper refused to defend HB-2 (Hate Bill 2) in court; in that decision, he implicitly adopted Rev. Barber’s position. He won election by 10,000 votes in a narrowly-decided election.
Tom Sullivan (Hullabaloo) has this little tidbit worth considering:
That’s just 270,000 votes short. So as a target in the next election, Democrats should aim for at least 2.7 million votes, a 600,000 vote stretch over 100 counties. The incumbent is Thom Tillis, for now a backbencher. But by 2020 in a Trump administration?
Exit polls?
You have NC polling data?
No. I looked but nothing I could find.
Here, in all their glory, are the exit polls for 2014 and 2016.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1y0QQ5KiJ23wbNUh0Z91w5BNVvv7ejOX7Tl6zBlMyEDo/edit#gid=1333490
51
HB 2 was opposed 65-29, and Cooper won opponents 64-33 and lost supporters 26-73
33% think whites are favored, 25% think minorities are 33% say no group is.
Cooper carried those who think whites are favored 83-16, lost those who think minorities are 14-86 and split those who think no one group is 45-50
2018 will be tough for Cooper: he had a 27 point margin among those under 30, and that group declined from 19% of the electorate in 2016 to 12% in 2014.
Educating younger voters to show up at elections outside the Presidential election years has been one hell of an uphill battle. I do what I can as an individual, but that only goes so far. There are also structural difficulties that have to be dealt with. Many states make it difficult for young adults attending college. Young adults tend to be more itinerant than those of us who have endured many more trips around the sun, and are often unaware of what individual states require in order to update registration.
There are so many state and local elections that actually carry a great deal of direct impact on our lives that really cannot and should not be overlooked. Hoping whoever ends up as DNC chair is really up to the task of some ground-up rebuilding of the local party offices especially and commits to some form of a 50 state strategy. It has to be boots on the ground now in order to stave off the worst.
Another area heard from: the Rust Belt.
…” In the months ahead, we will get to look at individual voter files to get a better sense of who these voters were (or weren’t). Were they the so-called “missing white voters” who, unenthusiastic about their GOP standard bearers, sat out in 2008 and 2012, but came out in 2016 for Trump? Or were these the traditionally active voters who supported Democrats in the past – even as recently as 2012 – but switched to Trump this year?…”
Cook’s: How Trump Broke the Blue Wall
We say very real swings in the Midwest among the young and those making less than 30K.
Was that because people switched from Obama to Trump, or because Obama votes didn’t vote and new ones did.
We don’t really know.
How does this line up with things you’ve heard/witnessed?
If at all accurate, just wow.
Source: http://andrewgelman.com/2016/12/09/5-things-learned-2016-election/
I wrote about that here before the election.
There was far less enthusiasm among the volunteer activists than in ’12.
I Disagree in one respect – everyone knows canvassing is far better than phone calls. This is an accepted idea in GOTV and has been for 10 years now.
He is wrong about the Obama model as well. Basically all canvass work sorts voters into Definitely, Leaning, Undecided, Against.
I know no one who believes you contact that ID as against you, and that include all GOP registrants. Some believe that contacting them makes them more likely to vote.
People are very skeptical about persuasion as well. It takes a very good canvasser, and someone open to talking about politics with a stranger. It was done, but it is always the lowest priority.
I think there is a view that persuasion via social media from friends is very effective. So one reason to find volunteers is to have them use their own social network to persuade others. This is probably the future of the ground game – though I have not seen data about it.
For the most part the persuasion is about getting people who lean your way to vote.
Tarheel, do you know this fellow?
Thomas Mills is an erstwhile political consultant and former Congressional candidate who runs the blog PoliticsNC.com
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/how-the-democratic-party-lost-its-way-214514
No, I don’t. But he clearly outlines how North Carolina lost its way and its bench in 18 years. And now has the GOP attacking with legal controversy some of the strongholds.
Steny Hoyer has been a corrupt disaster for the Democratic Party.
A little insider baseball gossip on the DCCC…
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/12/can-a-dccc-ever-heal-itself-if-it-remains-in-critical-denial.
html
And a sad conclusion…” This morning I was speaking with a recent candidate who told me he thinks he’s better off with the DCCC not getting involved in his race in any way. “All they can do,” she told me, “is diminish my chances of winning. They don’t seem able to bring anything worthwhile to the table… They’re from a bygone era. It’s pretty sad… As you pointed out in your blog, the best people who won this year, like Pramila and Nanette Barragan, Carol up in New Hampshire, Jamie Raskin all won without any involvement with the DCCC.””