Tom Sullivan, Hullabaloo: Elections have unintended consequences
The problem with Rich’s analysis is the “election to come” part. Elections involve math. At the end of Election Day we count votes. Not empathy, not good intentions, not programs, not policies, and not hurt feelings. Whether Democrats can win back control of Congress and state legislatures is about numbers.
Another problem — and this is hardly Rich’s alone — is that “Trump voters” always seems to imply red states, or to at least to conflate red states with Trump voters. And after reading Rich’s take on Trump voters, the knee-jerk response is to say to hell with them. But there are more than Republican voters in those red states. Those states each get two U.S. senators and a number of representatives; they each have governors and legislatures, many dominated by Republicans just as crazy as Trump. Abandoning them is not a progressive option.
Democratic activists should not hold their breaths waiting for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), and the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) to come to Jesus and become more than “old boys” reelection funds. And the jury is out on whether a Democratic National Committee that snapped up Hillary for America veterans who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory will, as promised, restore Howard Dean’s 50 state plan in more than name only, or adopt a time horizon that looks beyond the next election. Their focus on (what they consider) sure bets is why state organizations have withered since Obama pulled the plug on “50 state.” But liberal, grassroots activists cannot ignore red states unless they have started ignoring math the way Trump voters ignore climate science. Nationally and locally the numbers don’t add up for winning back Congress and writing off red states. (Ask Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina what it means leaving state legislatures in Republican hands.) Liberals cannot have both a winning 50 state plan and a policy, as Rich’s piece implies, of giving 60 percent of states the middle finger.
If you don’t show up to play, you forfeit. Too many Republican sinecures in red states go uncontested because dispirited Democrats there have neither the training, the funding, nor the infrastructure to contest them. When Dean sent organizers into such places in 2005, some had not heard from the national party in years. By 2006, Democrats were chalking up big wins. Conditions are ripe for them to do so again.
What I think the fixation on taking down Trump with accusations of Russian involvement is hampering.
It would be a shame to squander all that fresh activism and youthful enthusiasm on misdirected anger. But perhaps that’s what Rich meant by suggesting Democrats weaponize it. “Instead of studying how to talk to ‘real people,'” he wrote, “might they start talking like real people?” Absolutely. So long as they do it not from TV studios but on the stump in districts and in races they need to win to regain majorities in state houses and in Congress. As The King suggested, “A little less conversation, a little more action.”
And even at the local level there are establishment Democrats trying to put this new energy back in the box. Another three months of this shortsightedness will kill it, which might be their intent. Gotta protect those lobbying sources of money, you know, the ones that at the state level play both sides of the street.
