|
Nintendo Kid posted:Uh what the gently caress are you on about? Oh no he might say something mildly left of center, that's just like saying "I LOVE RAPE"? Grayson is horrible. Let's not forget that he and his consultants thought a good campaign strategy was calling their opponent "Taliban Dan." I'm sure Patrick Murphy will end up being the Dem candidate, even though he's not so great. Alex Sink, despite the losses, would be a much stronger candidate in my opinion.
|
#
¿
Mar 13, 2015 20:07
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 06:53 |
|
|
Willa Rogers posted:She was against medical marijuana before she was for it, out-and-out trying to sell her support to a rich Dem donor. It looks like DWS won't run, but in Florida there is the pretty serious problem that it's fundamentally electorally balanced against Democrats. The state legislature is badly gerrymandered and Democratic voters are extremely clustered in just a few counties (even by Democratic standards), which means the electoral configuration is as about as optimal as possible for Republicans. Statewide offices are also elected on midterms. As a result of this, the Republicans have a decisive advantage. The bench is bare in Florida because there are almost no opportunities for Democrats to take the lower offices needed to build up enough of a reputation and donor base to run statewide. Maybe the Democrats can allocate more money on down ballot races, sure, but it's not like you can just "offer up new candidates" like there is some magic pile of people in Florida just iching to run for US Senate. There aren't quality candidates being suppressed by the party royalty, because high quality candidates just don't exist in Florida in the way we'd like them to.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2015 04:37
|
|
|
Cliff Racer posted:I have to disagree. Sure Republicans will have an easier time finding people in Florida but there's plenty of places for Democrats to grab from too. There's lots of mid to large sized cities to pick mayors out of, a decent amount of Democratic congressional districts (way less than the Republicans, sure, but also way more than many states in their entirety have,) a booming business community with at least some Democrats in it and occasional state-wide officers. The fact that Democrats can find better candidates in places like Alaska and Montana than in Florida is laughable to me- its more down to the state parties being run well/poorly. The difference is that the barrier to run in Alaska and Montana is hilariously lower than Florida. The amount of money needed to compete in those states is very low. Florida, on the other hand, is the largest purple state in the country and requires a huge organization. Mayoral races are OK stepping stones but not nearly as good as something that might give you the opportunity to have a statewide profile, plus in Florida they are small compared to the population of the entire state - unlike states like Connecticut and Alaska where mayors can go on to become competitive statewide because their cities are either very wealthy and expensive to run in, or because nearly half the state's population lives there. The best stepping stone is going to be to win those down ballot statewide races, and unfortunately the Democrats have not controlled a statewide office in Florida since Alex Sink, with the sole exception being Bill Nelson. I don't think the Florida state party is particularly well run, but I also don't think it's that poor either. Candidate recruitment is obviously a top priority of a state party but it's tough to convince potential high quality candidates to run for offices they can't win, or in the case of the wealthy convince them to spend a lot of their own money. And state parties have to tread carefully when recruiting for marquee races like US Senate or Governor.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2015 05:12
|
|
|
Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Rubio vs. TBD 2016! It's going to be a Patrick Murphy vs. Grayson primary. Senate leadership is pushing for Murphy and Grayson just does whatever because he's mentally ill. edit: and rubio almost certainly is not running for re-election
|
|
#
¿
Mar 17, 2015 20:05
|
|
|
AreWeDrunkYet posted:Aren't there people who specialize in this sort of compliance stuff for politicians? It seems like all of the stuff that did in Schock was almost insignificant as far as dollar amounts go, and if he just filed the right paperwork or structured things properly it wouldn't have been an issue. They have a ton of staff who are supposed to compliance stuff, and the rules are not really very complicated. It's possible his staff didn't realize he was defrauding the government for tens of thousands of dollars by falsely claiming mileage reimbursement he was not owed, but for the rest part of it's definitely a mix of incompetence and desperately trying to clean up the mess he left behind wherever he went. That's probably why they wanted to hide the office decoration - they knew it broke the rules and they had yet to deal with it.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2015 18:47
|
|
|
Gyges posted:Did Rubio win the super secret presidential election and we don't know about it yet? There's very few scenarios where Rubio doesn't run for President and Senator. And almost all of them involve him not running for President. He already said he's not going to run for president and Senate at the same time. There's a Republican primary brewing. Jeff Atwater, the state CFO, has his staff out there talking up a recent poll showing up running ahead of DWS and Patrick Murphy. Concerned Citizen has issued a correction as of 18:52 on Mar 18, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2015 18:49
|
|
|
computer parts posted:Rand Paul's trying to argue that it's not. Depends on the state. Kentucky does not allow you to be on the ballot twice. Other states might be OK with it.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2015 19:37
|
|
|
Joementum posted:Tammy Duckworth has started fundraising for an Illinois Senate bid against Mark Kirk (and Joe Walsh She's by far the most exciting Senate candidate this year. I think Mark Kirk should be very afraid.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2015 03:00
|
|
).
|
Joementum posted:I don't know. I think Senator Harris is going to be pretty great. She's a good candidate, but she won't face serious opposition. But Tammy Duckworth is only 47 and a double amputee veteran of the Iraq War. And she's a very talented politician. Harris will be a good Senator, but Duckworth is a potential superstar. In a decade or so, she could be a VP or potentially even a formidable candidate for President herself.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2015 03:28
|
|
|
Riptor posted:Going by Cruz rules here then I guess Except she's sane, competent, has an incredible biography, great political skills, and she can raise a lot of money - even though she's only been a House candidate! She's a fantastic candidate, and given enough time to develop her resume she will be a force in the Democratic party. She's absolutely a rising star.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2015 08:02
|
|
|
Gygaxian posted:I'm going to go against the trend on this thread and predict that Reid's seat will stay Democratic, for four reasons. I would give Dems the advantage, but in 2012 Obama won the state by nearly 7 points and we still ended up with Sen. Heller. It's going to be tough for sure.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2015 22:41
|
|
|
BI NOW GAY LATER posted:He's only loosely a Democrat. He'll sail to re-election in 2018. As far as red state Dems go, he's actually pretty great. He votes with us on procedural issues and on most bills. Unlike, say, certain other Democrats who have long since passed on to the great lobbyist firm in the sky (K Street). But I wouldn't say he'll sail to re-election in 2018. Manchin is popular now, but 2018 is a long ways away and even popular politicians can be swallowed up in unfavorable climates.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 19, 2015 18:44
|
|
|
Cliff Racer posted:Probably about the same, assuming he hasn't been doing any scandalous poo poo that hasn't broken yet. The real key is that PA political insiders hate Sestak and he doesn't particularly like them in return. As to candidate quality, ehh, Sestak wasn't bad last time around and lost mostly because of the 2010 wave. Rematches might not look the best but candidates have come out and won them before. Sestak is awful. Just awful. His consultants are awful. He can't win a race to save his life. Shapiro would make a far better candidate. I think PA political insiders hate him for a reason - he and his team run elections like it's 1992 and have absolutely no idea what they are doing. He would spoil an otherwise winnable race. That's beyond the whole Arlen Specter issue.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 19, 2015 18:46
|
|
|
Grayson has been melting down the past few days. "Are you some kind of making GBS threads robot?! You go around making GBS threads on people?!" -Alan Grayson, 2016 http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/alan-grayson-erupts-as-senate-bid-looms-117925.html This entire Politico story is worth reading. The man is not entirely sound of mind.
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2015 02:41
|
|
|
Ravenfood posted:I eagerly await Kirk's supporters calling her a coward who doesn't support her country. quote:He said political advisers for McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, "day after day had to take him and almost throw him against a wall and hit him against the head and say, 'Senator, you have to let people know you served!'" Her previous opponent, who was not a veteran. She crushed him, of course.
|
|
#
¿
May 15, 2015 04:17
|
|
|
I feel like Walker was far more lucky than good in 2010 and 2014. He just happened to get to be part of two massive wave elections in a row. The recall wasn't timed for November for reasons we'll all never totally understand. Given the electorate in 2010 and 2014, where gubernatorial candidates in far bluer states failed, I don't see how shifting to the left would have done any better. What good is going out and promising to undo the union busting laws when 35-40% of your union voters are voting for Scott Walker anyway? And the electorate ended up being conservative enough that running a farther to the left candidate probably would have gotten the same or worse result.
|
|
#
¿
May 18, 2015 00:06
|
|
|
LeftistMuslimObama posted:Because if leftist turnout is bad, as it is in off years, trying to appeal to the people who were already going to turn out (for your opponent) is really stupid. There is no "middle" to appeal to in Wisconsin. The Dems can either energize the left or die. It's that simple. But why do you assume that the people who failed to turn out were leftists? It's just as likely they were Dem-leaners that mainly vote in presidentials. In that sense, there's no advantage to going left. They won't vote anyway. The only way you get to 50+1 is to go for persuadable voters. Keep in mind, though, that given the electoral environment in the Wisconsin midterm there was pretty much no candidate in existence, including ol' Russ Feingold, that could have won that election. Lest we forget, Our Lord and Savior Russ lost in 2010 along with Tom Barrett. But did Russ run it closer? Sure. Russ lost by 5 points, and Tom Barrett lost by 5.8. Not really significant. Like, the theory of petulant leftists who'd rather have Scott Walker destroy Wisconsin than elect a centrist strikes me as untrue. There aren't THAT many accelerationists! I also completely disagree that there is "no middle" in Wisconsin. I won't define "middle" ideologically because most voters aren't necessarily coherent ideologically and many just have a grab bag of positions from both the left and right. Instead, I'll look at voters who are "UFGs" (up for grabs). Now, this is a state where Obama won Paul Ryan's Congressional district in 2012, and then on the same ballot his constituency voted to re-elect him. If we compare 2012 presidential to 2010's senate election, we can see a fairly clear picture: turnout increased in raw votes by 29.2%, yet the % of dem votes increased by 37.1%. The likelihood, then, is that you have a pile of voters who voted in both elections and switched parties between 2010 and 2012. And some of those may have switched, again, between 2012 and 2014. This isn't a super robust analysis, though, and you couldn't really do one without a poll. There are fairly good ways to figure out the size of the pool of UFG voters through message test polls and modeling, and I would think Burke would have run to the left if her polling showed that as a more robust winning strategy than trying to win over UFG voters. Concerned Citizen has issued a correction as of 08:26 on May 18, 2015 |
|
#
¿
May 18, 2015 08:01
|
|
|
LeftistMuslimObama posted:Because go look at the election maps? Turnout was at the average or higher in the rural areas and in Waukesha. Turnout was below average or lower in Dane and Milwaukee. It has been this way for each of the non-presidential cycles since Walker took office. That's not my point. The point of dispute here is not that Democrats are not turning out. That is obvious. The question is which Democrats are not turning out. You are suggesting that it's leftists, who are disappointed with the candidate, feeling unmotivated to turn out. But there is an alternate thesis, which I posit is actually more likely - that they are apathetic Dem-leaners who may not be in any particular direction, ideologically speaking. They probably don't really care who the Democrat is, they just don't feel motivated to vote due to the overall political climate. In that sense, the candidate doesn't matter in terms of those people getting out. They're not going to vote a whole lot no matter what you do. In fact, you'll note that so-called "bad candidate" Mary Burke performed only 0.7% worse in her election than "good candidate" Russ Feingold, despite 2014 being a much worse year for Democrats than 2010. Moreover, I mention that clearly UFG voters exist and can make a winning margin in Wisconsin because it's true. Let's say every 2010 voter ended up voting in 2012 as well - not true, obviously, but close enough for our purposes. In order for turnout alone to have made up the difference, Obama would have had to win something like 70% of new 2012 voters if no one vote switched. Now, I'm sure he did win presidential only voters by a decent margin, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it wasn't by 40 points. quote:This is the fallacy that the Dems keep running on. That Obama winning red areas of the state means anything for state-level elections. It doesn't. People in Ryan's district like him. I used to live in it. They think he's a genius who would solve our problems if the Dems would just get out of his way. People in those parts of the state like Walker, and those who don't don't show up to vote. Some of this is apathy, some of this is bad Dem candidates. When you see Paul Ryan or Glen Grothman winning your district year after year, it's hard to feel like your vote matters. And the Democrats make it worse by running candidates who try to meet these assholes in the middle. In Waukesha, they nearly always run a candidate who is pro-life, pro tort reform, pro tax cuts, etc. Even though that doesn't win them poo poo in Waukesha. Even in a race they're guaranteed to lose, they're not willing to have their candidates say anything remotely left-sounding. When I say "UFG" I only mean voters, not districts. There are UFG voters everywhere - Madison, Green Bay, Muskego, Milwaukee, wherever. I'm not being pedantic, because it's an important distinction when we're talking about statewide candidates. This analysis completely ignores party affiliation, which is actually not so helpful everywhere - not just Wisconsin. To explain more fully what I mean, let me talk about how campaigns determine the electoral landscape. A caveat to keep in mind - everyone who works in politics knows this approach is not at all perfect, but it's the best we currently have and it works fairly consistently. First, a candidate declares. A quality candidate is usually considered one who isn't ideologically fringe, can raise oodles of money, and is extremely disciplined on message. Pretty much every establishment candidate is going to fit those three traits. The actual issues aren't really that important (Jon Stewart forgive me), because you're going to use polling to craft your actual message regardless of actual ideological beliefs. So, I'm a statewide candidate. I got a ton of money. My next step is to hire a few national consultants to help me craft my message. They spend a bunch of time in a room throwing pencils at ceilings and brainstorming potential campaign ideas or issues, using a bit of creativity and drawing on a robust understanding of the electorate. (These consultants are generally multi-decade veterans of campaigns) Once they come up with a dozen or so ideas, they throw them into message testing polls. These polls essentially call people up and ask them "If you heard that Mary Burke favored increasing education spending, would you be more or less likely to vote for her?" They also ask about potential vulnerabilities: i.e. "If you heard Mary Burke was in favor of late term abortions..." Once that is done, they narrow down to the top few issues and try to craft a campaign/message around it. This portion trips up a lot of campaigns, which is why we had something like Udall in CO running dozens of ads on women's issues without really crafting an overall narrative about why he should be elected. Once they narrow it down, they poll again - but this time, they don't do a traditional poll. They contract a data consultant (like Clarity or BlueLabs, on the Dem side) to contact thousands of people and ask them that smaller set of narrow questions, along with things like enthusiasm/intent to vote. This allows them to combine the survey data with consumer and voter file data to create a few important electoral models - first, who is going to turn out (these models are usually very accurate. I had one election where the model pinned the number of people who would vote in a statewide primary within a few hundred votes!*), who is going to support you (every person is given a % likelihood, so if I contact 100 people with a score of 70, 70 of them will be supporters and the rest are undecided or opponents), and persuadable voters. These are done using look-a-like models that have been used in marketing for decades. If you were a voter who said that a particular issue would change your mind, or if you changed your candidate preference by the end of a message testing poll, the model might look for people who are similar to you to try and find more persuadable voters. (A persuadable voter is anyone who might change their vote over the course of an election) This is provably effective (models are validated after construction), but it's not 100% - measuring what people think is much harder than measuring what people will do. (i.e. "will you vote" is easy - I already know your voting history. "Will you vote for me" is harder, because I only have your self-reported opinion to go on) Now, if you know how many people are going to vote and how many people support you already, you can roughly work out the size of your base which is basically how many people will vote for you even if your campaign consisted of a single yard sign on your own lawn. I also have a decent idea of how many persuadable voters there are. Now my goal is to figure out how to bridge the gap between my base and the 50% + 1 vote needed to win the election. This is the point, I hope, where I can make my disagreement clear. Through polling and modeling, I can tell what my best path to victory is - if I'm 100 votes away from winning, I can either find a strategy to bring 100 more people to the polls via GOTV, or I can take 50 of those likely persuadable voters and try to shift them into my column. If I want to win persuadables, I need to run my campaign on issues that they care about. If they like Walker's union busting, I'm not going to win them over by talking about restoring the unions. Now, I don't know what Burke and Barrett's polls said, but I can probably tell you how they interpreted it - they likely only saw a path to victory by trying to win over those persuadable voters. Ultimately, it's about pragmatism. The most inspiring candidate in the world doesn't mean a drat if they aren't talking to the right voters about the right issues. quote:When you look at the polls on the actual issues and candidates, it's clear that a large number of people line up on the side of leftist issues. And yet they didn't show up to vote? Why is that? Well, go see how many Democratic candidates on the state level you can find who are actually talking about any of these things. There's very few, and none of them are running in winnable places against dudes like Paul Ryan, because the Wisconsin Democratic party continues to operate under the belief that there is a middle ground to be staked out here. There's just not. They need to turn out the voters who are saying that they are on the left of these issues, and that's not going to happen if they never actually start talking about them. Here's the problem with issue polls: there is a very well known phenomenon where they shift wildly based on partisanship. If I ask you about raising the minimum wage, you might say you're in favor. If I tell you that Mitt Romney is against raising the minimum wage because it will destroy jobs, and you like Mitt Romney, there is a very high chance you will suddenly become anti-minimum wage. Voters, in general, have stronger partisan beliefs than they have ideological beliefs. They might not feel well-versed on the issues, but they trust their party or particular candidates. This effect is greater the more polarized a state is. quote:It should be very telling to you that Mary Burke eventually settled for a seat on the Madison school board. What a great candidate, I'm sure she'll get so much great work done for Democratic issues in this state by piddling around on the school board of the most "liberal" city in Wisconsin. (I put liberal in quotes because holy poo poo are we lovely when it comes to racial issues, gender equality, or basically anything else that upper middle class white people don't care about). I don't really think it's that telling of anything. She lost. Maybe she's largely out of politics altogether, I don't really know. It's not like there's much public service for her to be doing between now and 2018. *Incidentally, I heard that Burke's data vendor had nationwide issues with their voter turnout model. It overestimated the number of voters that were going to turn out, which would make it seem more likely that she would win. That might have influenced the campaign strategy. I only heard about this, though. Concerned Citizen has issued a correction as of 22:58 on May 18, 2015 |
|
#
¿
May 18, 2015 22:51
|
|
|
LeftistMuslimObama posted:How does your thesis account for the unwillingness of those polled to declare a party affiliation? That would seem to run counter to partisan positions being stronger than issue positions in Wisconsin. Party affiliation is irrelevant. Most independents are "secret partisans." For example, right-wing tea partiers that don't want to call themselves Republicans but actually vote Republican more often than registered Republicans. Modern modeling techniques can tease out these people's true affiliations. Just because a person isn't willing to openly identify with a party doesn't mean they don't have strong partisan leanings.
|
|
#
¿
May 19, 2015 00:06
|
|
|
gently caress You And Diebold posted:The lean Republican/Democrat partisan bump, ah how cynical you make me when someone says they are independent and vote "on the issues" Yeah, trying to persuade those voters is great. "That's great that you spend so much time studying the issues! What issues are most important to you?" "Oh.. umm, you know. Stuff."
|
|
#
¿
May 19, 2015 00:30
|
|
|
quote:The bizarre marriage annulment proceedings between Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) and his wife Lolita Grayson took yet another turn toward the outrageous during a court hearing on Monday.
|
|
#
¿
May 19, 2015 20:09
|
|
|
The X-man cometh posted:She needed a gerrymandered district in a presidential election year to win. Kirk can use Rauner's playbook and hit her on her ties to Blagojevich and Madigan. The district is only D+8, and anyway she won by 10+ points in both 2012 and 2014. The argument that she is too close to Blagojevich is extremely weak - if they want to hit her for serving on Veterans' Affairs, good luck! As far as Rauner goes - he needed a GOP landslide against an incompetent and unpopular incumbent in a mid-term to win. That won't apply as well as Duckworth.
|
|
#
¿
May 20, 2015 03:47
|
|
|
This is Sestak:quote:Rather than aggressively raising money this quarter, for instance, Sestak has spent his time walking the 422 miles across the width of the state in what he called an effort to “earn trust” of voters and “walk in their shoes.” He has the political instincts of a dead horse.
|
|
#
¿
May 25, 2015 06:25
|
|
|
Cliff Racer posted:I think it was a pretty good idea, honestly. Its like Rick Santorum visiting every county, yeah some of them have almost no population but its an idea that plays well later in the campaign when people start to read up on candidates. Note, also, that he got an early start on the race- his whole walk will be done before some of the late-breaking candidates even announce. In that sense its essentially an extra. Santorum *had* to visit all 99 counties. His voters lived there. And random rear end rural caucus-goers are disproportionately powerful in Iowa's formula. The IA caucus has hilariously low turnout - the people who attend these events are the same people who caucus. A walk across the state is a dumb because 1. why are you walking and 2. no one gives a gently caress. The number of fucks given were so low that the press didn't even bother following him during his walk. Meanwhile, Toomey is awash in infinite cash and Sestak raised all of $300k while sitting 13 points behind in polling. He's just a terrible, terrible candidate and his top advisors are idiots. I saw them trying to hire senior staff for $24,000 a year - including technical positions that normally pay thrice that, even on lovely political campaign salaries. He's like a parody of a candidate.
|
|
#
¿
May 25, 2015 16:36
|
|
|
The Nastier Nate posted:The DSCC is really wracking their brains trying to find ANYONE that isn't Sestak. Josh Shapiro repeatedly turned them down, (probably so he can run to replace Kane), and now Pawlowski has his own problems with the FBI. As far as McGuinty, I don't think anyone was going to make any headway in the dem primary race for governor. Schwartz came in a distant 2nd, and she couldn't even win Philadelphia or Montgomery, her 2 home counties. I'd say it as Lean Democratic if it wasn't Sestak running, since it's a presidential year. But Sestak is unpopular and frankly a pretty terrible candidate (not to mention a notoriously abusive employer).
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2015 20:20
|
|
|
Cliff Racer posted:I'm basing this all on the assumption that he's rehired his Specter beating 2010 team though. Sestak's 2010 team was made up of 1. people who will never work for him again and 2. people whose last name is Sestak. Many of his 2010 staff quit during the general election due to him paying poverty wages and forcing unreasonably long hours (even compared to most Dem campaigns that are already quite terrible). Honestly, it's not just the primary that Dems were pissed about in 2010. That was part of it, but it's also that be purposefully antagonizes the party at every opportunity and is uncooperative for basically no reason other than his own stupid ego. He endorsed primary challengers against incumbent Dems, including Allyson Schwartz. He refuses to coordinate spending or organizing efforts with other candidates. He's just a terrible person in general. He didn't beat Arlen because of his campaign. He beat him because Arlen was a Republican. Sestak was woefully unprepared for a general election campaign, and that's why the seat was lost. Concerned Citizen has issued a correction as of 19:58 on Jul 23, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2015 19:52
|
|
|
Feather posted:The simplest answer is one Democratic partisans hate: the Democratic party leadership is by turns incompetent and complicit. Then when poo poo like "light blue states elect deep red people to office" they blame actual progressives for not turning out. I don't think it has anything to do with "actual progressives" not turning out - it's mainly that Braley just ran a lovely loving campaign and people genuinely liked Joni Ernst. Some people tend to think that there's some sort of cache of shy progressives that will only vote if the right candidate comes along, but otherwise will abstain in a very principled fashion. This is essentially never the case - in fact, in Iowa it more a case of Democrats turning out at elevated midterm levels and Republicans turning out at Presidential levels. Iowa 2014 had the highest midterm turnout in decades.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2015 22:31
|
|
|
Feather posted:Of course it doesn't. It's just that progressives are a useful whipping boy for the incompetent/complicit insiders. The hardcore liberals and partisans have the highest turnout every time. It's the casual voters who don't, and usually because they aren't motivated by the lovely Republican-light candidate. Braley wasn't a Republican-lite candidate, though. He was just an unlikable prick. Casual voters don't really know or care a whole lot about ideology.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2015 22:54
|
|
|
Feather posted:Casual voters don't know or care a whole lot about details. They do care about appearances, as you suggest was the cause of Braley's loss, but part of that is the ability to distinguish oneself ideologically. Not saying it applies in that specific instance (I didn't follow the race), of course. It's not like there isn't a massive amount of daylight between the GOP and the Dems in 2014. Sure, some Republicans like Gardner did a great job of running toward the center in CO, but anyone with even cursory knowledge can tell the difference between Braley, a mainstream House Democrat with a progressive record, and Joni Ernst, one of the most conservative Republicans ever elected to statewide office in IA. It has everything to do with massive GOP turnout and little to do with drop-off voters upset that the Democrat isn't progressive enough or whatever.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2015 13:06
|
|
|
Feather posted:It's not just incompetence, though, it's complicity. Florida is a prime example of both incompetence and complicity. And certain democrats who have some influence but aren't elected (e.g. Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos) help with the latter significantly (e.g., in Markos' case, by effectively endorsing Republicans like Crist and Murphy in Florida). It's true it's not every state and local party, though, but generalizations aren't universally true of course. I'm not really sure why you call it "complicity." In FL, they want to win. They spend a lot of time and effort on it. The problem is that they have a lot of issues recruiting quality candidates, mostly because Florida Democrats essentially never win statwide races. The GOP does not. Blaming people for "endorsing Crist and Murphy" is dumb because Nan Rich and Grayson, the only alternatives, were/are loving horrible and would be a trainwreck for the party. I didn't like Chain Gang Charlie and I don't like Murphy, but I do like running competitive races and not just giving seats away to Republicans.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2015 13:11
|
|
|
Feather posted:Democrats endorsing republicans for office is complicity. In Florida, the "need" to do so because the bench is so wretched is incompetence. So it's both, in that case. I was a precinct captain in Orange County in Florida some few years ago. The depth of the incompetence and corruption of the official party organs, from the state down, was eye-opening for me. OFA didn't help any--they withheld voter information, scuttled attempts at cooperative organization to help democrats get elected, and generally helped the power-wielders stomp out any internal attempts at changing the direction of the DEC to anything marginally more, well, democratic, or enlisting a deeper, more qualified bench. Precinct captains who showed even the slightest bit of interest in doing anything beyond whipping votes were marginalized, and there was almost no support for even becoming a Captain (I filled a spot that had been vacant for multiple election cycles, and there were so many more it wasn't funny). At some point that kind of malfeasance is no longer attributable to incompetence. It's not like that everywhere, thank the gods, but Florida was an especially good example of just how bad it is. Wanting to win isn't an indicator that complicity doesn't apply. In fact, in the case of Florida, it's a supporting piece of evidence. I wasn't a fan of Charlie Crist (who is vastly more conservative than Murphy, or at least until his magical transformation into a true blue progressive) but it was basically him or handing the GOP an easy win. Crist would have won if the national climate hadn't been so wretched - he certainly drew it closer than he had any right to do, considering we lost gov races in states like Mass and Maryland. Maybe the Florida Dems can do a better job at recruiting candidates, but I would point out that it's not exactly an easy job to convince someone to run for US Senate or Governor in a state like Florida, and there is not really much of a bench of Democratic elected officials that are well-qualified to run. As far as being a precinct captain - DEC's (along with most local Dem organizations) are, for the most part, rotten vestigial organizations of a type of politics that are long past. They were very popular back when you'd use them to direct payola to folks who had their cache of people (or claimed to have a cache of people) they'd turn out once the bag full of money came to their doorstep. Precinct captains are no longer really necessary or desirable positions and they are largely going to be phased out as the influx of money into politics has allowed us to replace them with professional turnout organizations using methods statistically proven to increase turnout. I was actually employed by OFA-FL, funnily enough. Of course they were going to withhold voter information - the OFA voterfile was worth many millions of dollars and was both proprietary and full of confidential information. It was enhanced with information they paid a lot of money to get, and they aren't going to simply hand it out to a guy because he's a precinct captain. And such a thing is largely unnecessary, because a duplicate GOTV effort does not serve any purpose, and if you run GOTV on the wrong targets because you aren't familiar with how to create a GOTV universe then you will actually cause a net loss of votes. OFA was the coordinated effort. I can say that when I was employed, I literally could not give a single loving poo poo about the local DEC because they were largely useless (not malicious). I have seen local Dem party corruption, but it's almost entirely in the northeast where they have control over ballot placement.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2015 18:02
|
|
|
^^You mean Ted Strickland. Brown is already Senator. There's only been one poll of IL this year but it had Duckworth up nearly 20 points over Kirk. There's a credible argument for Lean D, but definitely more data is needed there. Concerned Citizen has issued a correction as of 19:20 on Jul 26, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2015 19:18
|
|
|
DivineCoffeeBinge posted:I can't speak for Maryland, but I don't think you can blame Baker's win in MA to the national climate; it had a lot more to do with the fact that Martha Coakley ran a terrible, terrible campaign. It's definitely part of the formula. She lost by less than 2 points, so I'd say in a better climate she would have won. I also think it was more on Baker running a great campaign than Coakley's campaign being terrible, although it wasn't so great either. It would help if MA didn't have such late primaries, which makes it tough for Democrats to shift gears for a general election campaign quickly enough to be effective.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2015 19:56
|
|
|
DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Honestly, a better climate probably would have helped her - she lost by only 40k votes! - so I'll give you that, but I can't say that the climate was to blame for her loss. With about two weeks to go before the primary vote it was pretty clear to all and sundry that she was getting the Democratic nomination (disclaimer: I voted for Don Berwick, personally, because I believe that gently caress yes single-payer healthcare is a good idea), and Baker's nomination was even more taken for granted; Coakley wasn't talking about Berwick and Grossman, she was talking about Baker, and vice versa, so even the primary timing wasn't the smoking gun. I don't disagree with you. She could have done better, with the caveat that it's very rare to hear someone say "yeah s/he lost but they ran such a good campaign!" But there are some serious issues, especially when it comes to building GOTV operations. Scaling an operation designed for a 500k vote primary to a 2 million vote general in two months is really, really difficult. Actually, it's basically impossible to do it well. A lot of fundraising work can't be done until the votes are counted, and it takes time to unite the party after a primary even if it wasn't particularly close. Baker was also able to spend pretty much the entire primary period raising money, while Coakley was desperately trying to build relationships with her former opponent's donors while precious weeks ticked away I don't think it was so much that Coakley wasn't trying to win - it's not like she wasn't raising money or doing events. It's just that the late primary, plus a lackluster campaign (although I think it was largely on par with MA Dem campaigns, which typically suck), combined with the a fundraising disadvantage and a very unfavorable climate led to her loss. Concerned Citizen has issued a correction as of 21:26 on Jul 26, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2015 21:22
|
|
|
Cliff Racer posted:I don't know, I hear this a quite a bit, just not from candidates who end up losing in states where their party has massive advantages. Like Fung, the Republican who almost won in Rhode Island last cycle? He ran a great campaign. That one Republican who came decently close to winning a house seat in Mass last cycle? Ran a great campaign. Barrow in Georgia ran a great campaign. The independent in Kansas who almost won? Ran a great campaign. Ed Gillespie ran a great campaign. The Democratic AG candidate in Nevada ran a great campaign compared to the total poo poo show that was had on his opponents side. Still lost though. A lot of those losing candidates who ran great campaigns will be able to come back, especially if they were only running for representative, and win election in their next race. Well, Fung didn't run a good campaign at all. He just profited from the disaster that was the very nasty RI primary plus disaffected Democrats voting for a third party. His campaign was basically recycled attacks from the Dem primary against Raimondo, and he got one of the lowest vote shares for a Republican in RI history. The GOP in MA suffered double digit losses in both competitive Congressional districts, but the 2012 one that was close was a moderate Republican running against a widely hated and corrupt Congressman. Gillespie literally stopped running ads in the last two weeks of the election because he ran out of money. But my point is that you can't conflate election results with the quality of the campaign. If the climate had been better for Democrats, no one would be talking about Gillespie's campaign and no one would have complained about the effort Coakley put in. The vast majority of an election result, in most cases, is totally outside the control of a campaign. Between demographics and overall climate, the campaigns are left to try and nudge results across the line of 50+1. For example, a lot of pundits criticized Democratic turnout operations because Democratic turnout was low overall. But randomized studies showed the GOTVs worked as intended - it just can't counteract the larger forces at play. Concerned Citizen has issued a correction as of 21:58 on Jul 26, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2015 21:53
|
|
|
Grayson is a guy who somehow thinks it's ok to call your opponent "taliban dan"
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2015 13:39
|
|
|
MrWillsauce posted:I think I'm going to have to vote for Alan Grayson for the Florida Senate seat. It's a shame that he's apparently crazy, but he's a progressive I agree with rather than a pushover Democrat or a Republican. If a better option surfaces, I'll take it, but decent candidates are few and far between in the strange wild land of Florida. This drives me crazy. Murphy isn't a great candidate, but I'm not worried about Democrats who are secretly Republican. I'm worried about Republicans who are openly Republican. They're the ones who threaten to carpet bomb the budget and letting them keep control of the US Senate with a newly-elected (possibly Republican) President would be an utter disaster that we will feel for a decade or more. It's not just about who has 50 (or 51) votes - it's about who controls the Majority Leader chair and can prevent legislation from coming to the floor. Grayson is a tax dodging millionaire who keeps his hedge fund money in the Caymans. He can't win the US Senate. I'd love to have a good progressive option in Florida, but there isn't one. People like Murphy are the legislators you get pissed about once every six months because they make an annoying vote on an important/high profile issue, but that's a world better than a reliably right wing vote. Concerned Citizen has issued a correction as of 16:05 on Aug 7, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2015 16:01
|
|
|
Feather posted:You should be, because they and their Republican allies are why we are in this mess. Well and the people who vote for them. How often does it actually come down to the votes of moderate Democrats? The ACA was definitely watered down by moderate Democrats worried about electoral wipeout, but for the most part I don't spend my day thinking "boy, Joe Manchin is just ruining the Democratic Party!" Are we supposed to seriously believe that Joe Manchin being a Senator is worse than a far-right tea party Republican? Yes, it'd be nice if we had some true blue progressive in Florida, but we don't have that choice. It's Murphy, a mediocre moderate Democrat who will definitely piss us off sometimes, versus a Republican. Grayson can't win. He just can't. And even if he could, people would find a lot of things to hate about him anyway because he masks his more moderate views with aggressive rhetoric. For example, he's to the right of even Chuck Schumer on Israel. quote:Are you arguing that bad votes on important issues are okay as long as votes on issues of lesser importance are within acceptable parameters? I'm arguing that I'd rather have a few bad votes than a lot of bad votes. It's pretty simple. And controlling the Majority Leader spot means those bad votes are far less likely to happen in the first place, because the floor will have vastly less right-wing legislation to vote on. This poo poo isn't a joke. People's livelihoods are at stake based on who wins these seats. Failing to win back the Senate will have real consequences. Concerned Citizen has issued a correction as of 18:30 on Aug 7, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Aug 7, 2015 18:25
|
|
|
Mr Hootington posted:So I got to hear the one of the guys going up again Grassely tonight. They D's going up against him are the following: rob hogg is the only good candidate. tom fiegen is hilariously sexist. both he and krause ran against roxanne conlin in 2010 primary, and i very much remember fiegen implying in a debate that she was cheating on her husband and sleeping with a lobbyist. then when he gave a speech saying that joni ernst only won because senate elections are now "beauty contests." supposedly he wasn't nearly as bad as a state senator, but became bitter against women after his wife left him. and frankly, i feel that iowa has always desperately needed a Senator Hogg
|
|
#
¿
Aug 15, 2015 15:48
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 06:53 |
|
|
Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:Just as long as they can keep Ernst away from him. 
|
|
#
¿
Aug 15, 2015 16:43
|
|