Anyone want to provide Nate Silver with an overdetermined answer?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Oh! Me! Me!
They didn’t listen to the DFHs, not once.
I just read Al Giordano’s take on the upcoming elections and I can’t help but agree with him from my own experience watching the race here in Nevada. It seems less likely to me that the Dems are going to lose leadership in either house of congress. But that doesn’t sell papers or get ratings for Morning Joe, etc.
The Republicans are running around crowing like they’ve already won (sans plan) and the Dems are worried, as usual. But really, once people see the extremist nut-job candidates produced by the Republican primaries, more and more independents and sane Republicans will either vote for the Dem or sit this one out. And Dems may need this charge of fear to get off their butts and vote in a mid-term. But it’s the work of OFA that’s going to drag the new voters back to the polls. I’ve been working with them each weekend registering voters and they’ve really got a system to do this and do it well.
Great piece by Al, as always.
Paging Tarheel_Dem.
Yeah, Tarheel Dem has been saying this for months now.
You know what I’d love to see Al address(yes, I read him despite his being a pompous asshole). Why won’t the DC Democrats help out Tarryl Clark, Justin Coussoule or ever get serious about taking on Paul “Privatizing” Ryan. And it’s especially egregious with Ryan because Obama won that district.
I don’t know, I’m not a Democratic insider. I’m not focused on their efforts, because frankly I don’t care.
I’m working to re-elect Rick Boucher and Tom Perriello because Boucher has a lot of seniority–despite being a Blue Dog fuckwit–and Tom has voted for all of Obama’s agenda despite winning in 2008 by a measly 1,000 votes. Boucher is my congressman, and Perriello isn’t far away (Charlottesville).
I may be a hell of a lot more liberal than Perriello, but I’ll be damned if I stand around twiddling my thumbs wondering why the DCCC isn’t out there with me. Fuck them. That’s the biggest problem with the left that I’ve seen. Why is there no independence? I see attempts at it, but ultimately there’s no major push. It’s like we need our hands held.
Don’t you understand human nature? Everyone likes to be stroked. And don’t tell me you don’t, because that’s bullshit. Everyone likes feeling needed, wanted. What do you think is behind the whole “punching hippies” thing(at the root)?
Take the Just Say Now campaign. That’s something that’s not only a positive that progressives are doing, despite interference from Madam Feinstein, but it’s totally independent.
Blue America is another example.
Now, where is the movement for knocking on doors and making phone calls that’s an independent movement? Obama set up his own, and now it’s somewhat of an arm of the Establishment. I don’t think it’s an arm of theirs yet because they’re still skeptical of this model.
The point still stands. Independent movements work best, and they’re what’s needed.
You are right. But it would also be nice to be acknowledged by the leader of your party. But we know a lot of his inner circle hates us.
They’re not our daddy. I don’t give a shit whether they like us. The inner circle never likes anybody that smack of insurgent. It wouldn’t be any different with President Kucinich, President Sanders, or President Nader.
What does matter, and what’s on track to kill the necessary election enthusiasm is when they betray the base on principle, as in the Alan Simpson affair — when the Dem establishment, including Obama, whores itself out defending a total worthless asshole while doing nothing for Dem appointees that the wingnuts don’t like. That’s where you start to wonder if they prefer GOP control of the country.
I quit reading him some time ago because he is a P A and much of what he says became quite predictable, IMHO.
The simple truth. DC Democrats focus on re-electing incumbents. If they have a little money left over, they shove it at the last minute to help someone who has built a strong campaign get it over the line. They expect folks locally to gin up strong challenging campaigns. If you want Ryan to lose, John Heckenlively has to win, and he can’t even put up a decent Facebook page.
If you really want democracy, DC Democrats can’t control it.
Progressives can’t put forth an accurate or honest depiction to explain the precipitous decline in support for the Dems–you have to extricate yourself from the blogosphere and hear from the rest of the country to ascertain the true picture.
Democratic candidates are a stand-in for Obama, and Obama has lost the middle. He has lost the moderates because:
Don’t worry, though–if he goes with the flow, he actually still has a good chance at re-election in 2012. Boo worries about right-wing ideologues clogging up Washington, but the irony is that Obama’s re-election depends on him trying not to behave like a left-wing ideologue for the balance of his term.
This is actually an illuminating answer, though not in the way you intend. The ideas that Obama has governed as a “far leftist,” that he has disavowed the basic tenets of US foreign policy, or that the high unemployment is due to his “anti-businesss” rhetoric are all preposterously counter-factual — but a lot of people believe them anyway. Why that’s the case is a long discussion (Faux et al is only a part of it), but there certainly are independents and 2008 Obama supporters who’ve embraced or at least considered that narrative. Meanwhile, plenty of the progressives who came out in droves two years ago have adopted a counter-narrative that’s almost completely opposite, that the country is in turmoil because Obama has done too little to reverse the policies of Bush.
The fact that entire segments of the country can believe simultaneously in literally alternative, opposite political universes is a big part of the Democrats’ problem. The White House can have facts on its side, but it wouldn’t matter. Its critics on both the left and the right are only interested in cherry-picking (or inventing) whatever buttresses their already preferred narrative, and in each case there’s plenty of chattering heads and “experts” (and occasionally a smattering of truth) to back them up. I don’t know how you break through that.
To the extent that the midterms are a referendum on Obama and “the Democrats,” the Dems are in trouble. To the extent that they’re contests between two individuals, the fact that the Republican nominee is often either repugnant, certifiable, or both is going to help a lot once people start paying attention. Local elections are often determined by local issues, personalities, and histories, and if that holds the Democrats will come out OK in November. But it may not be a normal year – people are hurting and they’re angry, and regardless of their political ideology, they’re looking for someone to hold accountable.
And of course what has split the blogosphere is that a number of us believe had he actually governed in this manner the situation would be better today. Not perfect, maybe not even good, but better.
LFA, how do you explain the fact that Bush lowered taxes to their lowest level since the 20’s, barring the Reagan administration, and yet the economy had
A)the worst job growth since the great depression
B)Median wages declined from 1999
C)the Bush administration had the largest budget deficits on record?
In the absence of an explanation, we are forced to conclude that it has been definitively proven that tax cuts don’t stimulate the economy, don’t create jobs, don’t increase revenues, and in fact hurt everyone but the small percentage of the wealthy that they are intended for. No other conclusion has any basis in fact.
Well, there was one unavoidable cause, the economic meltdown. There was one admirable initiative, apparently, the healthcare bill.
The rest, and a subset of the above, is Obama’s refusal or inability to rev up the country the way he did during the campaign. The Dems seem to think that the gratitude of the public for their genuine achievements will be enough to pull them through. But gratitude doesn’t win elections; as Winston Churchill. What wins elections is powerful images of what the future can bring. Can anyone name a single such image that Obama or the Dems have forcefully presented this year?
We don’t lie often enough, or skillfully enough, and persist in taking seriously all that crap in the Preamble.
No one is interested in that shit anymore.
How did the Democrats get here?
For now, I’m going to stick with the theory that says at least 90% of the Democrats’ problems stem from two factors:
We can drive ourselves crazy arguing about all sorts of other possible factors, but I don’t seem much point in it.
P.S. It’s perhaps worth reminding ourselves that whatever Obama’s political skills are, he’s not “Mr. August”. In 2007, he was falling further behind in Iowa. In 2008, McCain was chipping away at Obama’s image and lead even before the Republican convention bounce. In 2009, we had “death panels” and conservatives adopting old CPUSA tactics for disrupting town hall meetings. And yet Obama won Iowa, crushed McCain and passed health care reform. So, can we wait until after the November elections to begin our postmortems?
I am wondering where the “here” is that the national narrative keeps worrying about. The election is not about opinion; it is about turnout. The issue is that there are a lot of voters from 2008 who don’t have midterm elections on their radar. But who might think that President Obama has done a pretty good job. And there are others who are aggravated by their Democratic House member or Senator, who want to sit on their hands. Those are the only relevant matters.
But…there are more opportunities to take Republican seats and replace them by folks who are not Blue Dogs than there will be in 2012. If the Republicans win big in November, 2012 will be very difficult.
So to answer the question, I’m not sure that polling is helpful when there is real potential change possible in an election, and less so when people have not been made aware of the real implications. It is this election more than 2008 that will determine whether we move in a progressive direction or not. And current polling runs up against the fact that the media has a blackout on possible progressive Democratic winners, like Elaine Marshall, Jack Conway, or now Scott McAdams. The media only likes Republican challengers.
The question about November is whether the unlimited spending that the Citizens United case opened will be able to undercut the on-the-ground get-out-the-vote activities by Democrats, primarily OFA and DFA.
indeed! and not to forget the “Boomberg is unbeatable” narrative is how he won mayor for life of ny city this time. I’m wondering how much that is affecting the Rasmussen mega polling
But opinion drives turnout, and it’s analog, not digital. Obama’s serial fuckups on the communication front will depress the enthusiasm level below the minimum for turnout unless he starts looking like a leader again.
You have to say where it will depress turnout. Which districts and states.
It’s not likely to depress Democratic turnout in North Carolina or Alaska or Pennsylvania or Illinois or Missouri. Maybe in California and Washington, but given the Democratic candidates that is not likely.
Generally when someone says that Obama’s poor communication will depress enthusiasm, I read that as them saying it depresses their enthusiasm. And that is a problem only in some races.
I think there’s a fair chance that Obama’s fuckups and failure to communicate will depress turnout and GOTV work here in IL to dangerous levels unless things change between now an Nov. We have a weak Dem and a very clever GOP chameleon who knows how to play the “moderate” card when it works for him.
I’m certainly not calling IL for Kirk, and Giannoulias is doing some pretty good campaigning. But won’t help him when they ask what he thinks about Alan Simpson, for example.
And yes, you’re correct. My enthusiasm is seriously depressed just now.