I’ll write something later, but if anyone wants to vent about yesterday’s elections, please go ahead in the comments. I’m not ready to deal with any of this yet. Too much like 2009. I’m having flashbacks.
The Mahablog
Politics. Society. Group Therapy.
Why 2009? Having flashbacks of Obama winning and then letting the rePukes and the corporately owned democrats kill the best parts of his agenda and then getting slaughtered in the next election cycle? Tired of democrats betraying the working classes to favor the wealthy and corporate interests? McAuliffe was a crappy candidate who represents (we hope) the last gasps of the Clinton democratic party.
The DNC…
– able to fly to the closest corporate fund raiser
– able to leap small anthills
– able to pull defeat from the jaws of victory
– able to blame every segment of the party other than themselves
Maja is having flashbacks; I am having anger issues. Our country and our planet are going down the drain and the democratic party is unable and/or unwilling to save them.
McAuliffe's loss was to be expected. He's seen as an insider, a neo-liberal. His kind doesn't inspire the Democratic leaning voters much less real Progressives. Many other Democratic candidates fared better in other cities and states. The real problem is if the Democratic party as a whole can see the whys of their wins and losses and learn from it. Because as of now, when one Progressive type loses a race (while a dozen win) the establishment makes statements that Progressive politics can't win and the media promotes that. The party as a whole need to do better promoting as the one party who actually wants to govern.
I think the results are clear and needed. Polls are so stupidly written and run they are worse than no data at all. Who has the time to respond? Who wants to answer badly engineered surveys and such if they even know how poorly the results will be interpreted. We have a past president who won't even accept the data of what so far is evidenced as a fair and impartially run election. Now we have a bevy of people misinterpreting election results which are just a bit better survey at one point in time. Who really knows of what. At least the people willing to vote will spend a bit more time and effort to have a chance of making their time worth while expressing their point of view, and have by voting, rather than by completing a survey, and have a slim shot of getting real power. When they do still the spin doctors get busy misinterpreting their vote also just like the survey folks.
When Democrats learn to read the data and do an unbiased and weighted analysis of data, they will be competitive if not unbeatable. Until then? They/we/us/me/neutral pronoun will lose way more political races than they could. Why? Because in the world of politic perception is reality if you know how to create a con or an illusion. That is how we ended up where we are today. We can't control the messaging and we think Biden won. No Trump lost and rightfully so. The same way that Brownback lost in Kansas. By making way too much of a mess. Today in this country most people are more motivated by what they hate than what they like. That is why Biden got more votes and legitimate votes. Yes he was way better on the COVID than Bleach Douche but what has Biden and the Democrats done for me this week? The Republicans know they can win with just a few well funded political points in time. Meanwhile the Democrats are still spending big bucks on badly engineered surveys. They would save big money and have better results in just reading this blog?
What SadOldVet said.
So in a few years, we'll have an autocrat running a Theocratic Fascist system – as our home, this Earth, heats up to levels that won't be able to sustain human beings.
Glad I don't have long to live.
My heart goes out to younger generations, who'll feel the brunt of the coming climate disasters.
Oh, and fuck (mental) Munchkin, sENEMA, and other corporate whores in our government – fuck 'em with rusty garden tools.
One plus for Democrats (and us) – via Rachel.Maddow:
Typically, almost like it's mandated, the year after the presidential election, the president's party loses in VA, and in NJ.
Murphy won in NJ, so that breaks that schneid! Murphy is the 1st Democrat to win reelection in NJ in ages.
So, cheer-up!
All's NOT lost!!
Yet…
Yeah, I know: Thin gruel.
But thin gruel's better than no gruel.
Left and right media is spinning this like a huge mandate on Biden and all is lost. In a state with a population of 8.5 million, Democrats lost by 70K votes. A bunch of that is baked into the party chemistry. Many Democrats only turn out to vote every four years. Many Republicans turn out to vote in EVERY election.
Yes, I'm disappointed but I do NOT see a huge shift in the approval/disapproval of what Democrats (and Biden) are trying to do. Yep, if we'd passed BBB last month, it might have made the difference.
There's a lot of cards to be played in the next few hands. Will we get the documents that show Trump orchestrated an attempt to thwart the process of installing Biden with a riot? If it IS proven, and if the DOJ looks at filing charges, will the Trumpsters "go for their guns"? They are saying it out loud.
New thought – inspired by, "Please, don't throw me in that briar patch!" What if Democrats introduce a Constitutional Amendment to allow states to vote to secede? Suppose a majority in the popular vote from that state and a 2/3 approval by the states and you get to be your own country. If Texas left, so would two GOP Senators. The electoral college would be a gimme forever. The House would shift blue by a LOT.
Yeah, we'd have to work out allowing Democratic citizens a grace period and possibly financial aid to move to the upper-47, which would further erode GOP majorities if they relocate to purple states. If I lived in TX I'd vote for secession and I'd move out right after.
will the Trumpsters "go for their guns"?
They're going to anyway – it's like dry tinder waiting for a spark. The spark is going to come, who knows what event will set it off.
I think you're going to hear more and more about various schemes to divide the country – "a Constitutional Amendment to allow states to vote to secede" – as you put it, among them. What I'm waiting for, is a critical mass of the country to realize that this is the best way forward, that the USA really is over. Otherwise bloodshed. Currently, only a handful on the left and more on the right are thinking this way. The groundswell is building.
Congratulations on your book!
"no reason to get excited", the thief, he kindly spoke"
The media reported that Biden won Virginia by "10 points” (one touchdown, a two point conversion and a safety?, one touchdown and a field goal?), whatever that means, the results being Biden won by over 451,000 votes out of over 4.3 million votes cast. (DOES THE MEDIA MEAN 10 PERCENTAGE POINTS? DOES IT TAKE TOO LONG TO SAY PERCENTAGE?) McAuliffe lost by 79 thousand out of 3.2 million votes cast at last report. I'll let the media assign how many scores that means.
1.1million fewer votes, to me, means 25% of the voting population could not get inspired to vote in 2021. It may also mean that clintonism is dead in the democratic party and time to move on from triangulation to progressivism. That means get out the vote and inspire the voters. C'mon DNC, you can do it.
Reading all the comments, it is hard to find a common thread or much agreement. Well as Will Rogers said, I belong to no organized political party…I'm a Democrat.
When checking on that quote, I ran into this:
Credit Sheldon Drobny ten years ago. No progress in this direction it seems.
I think there is something more basic than trying to get better polling. It has to do with campaigning with a voter-centric orientation.
I heard David Jolly's comments today and I think it is spot on. I can't do it justice, but he talked about how the folks that are steeped in politics in the Democratic Party are very focused on details of issues, solutions that poll well, good governance. Most voters don't relate to that stuff very well; it all sounds like inside the beltway gobbledegook. He said, very succinctly, campaigning is not like governing. You have to go to the voters where they are, even if their not well informed or misunderstand the way things can affect them. You have to talk to them and find out what they want. And not judge it as stupid or ignorant. They're going to vote based on what they think of the world. A lot of commentators have said the D's never show up in a lot of places. They want to get their "policy message" out through MSM, run a lot of ads, etc.
But you have to find out what the voters think in a particular area (state or region) and pitch that you hear their concerns and want to provide solutions. And it has to be done in their framing, otherwise they won't vote for you.
To D's this seems like what R's do: lie to the voters, but you don't really have to lie if you listen and you can find something in your values that places you on the same side. (I'm not talking about Q people or insurrectionists or white supremacists. We don't want their votes and they aren't ever going to vote for D's)
I'm a solid progressive, but I don't think the D's need to stop bashing the so-called far left wing of the party or stop giving the centrists a say. It's a big country and there's no single viewpoint on that will fix things.
I DO think that "centrist"/DLC Democrats "need to stop bashing" their left wing, but I agree that we/they should give "the centrists a say".
Your point about Democrats communication technique is spot on, and the VA race seems like a great example. McAuliffe ran a vanilla campaign on national issues, because that's what the DLC consultants prescribe. To get DLC backing (= MONEY) in a Primary campaign, candidates generally have to sign on to hire DLC consultants (pollsters, strategists, etc), who are then parachuted into the State from DC (and eat up a lot of the money "donated" by DLC). They are smart people, but often ignorant – or worse, disdainful – of local conditions & issues.