|
The ground game is everything in American electoral politics now. Let's stretch that out for people who aren't neck deep in it. You could call advertising the air game, as it were. TV ads, radio ads. But who watches TV anymore? The elderly. That's why every ad for the national evening news is for medication for the elderly. It's reaching the point that daytime gameshow reruns had hit back when. And there's the social media game, but let's be real about that - are we changing hearts and minds on Facebook or Twitter? It's good if you have interest and you're looking to deepen your entrenchment in a specific direction, but it's certainly not a marketplace of ideas. It's a localized steroid for whatever is already in your mind. The ground game? Actually showing up at people's doors, or their phones via calls or text? That's everything now. There is no substitute for seeing another human being and exchanging ideas the way we historically have. Finding out what people actually give a gently caress about - and make no mistake, the average American really DOES care about all the things we holler about, maybe more or less than you do, but certainly multiple things at a time. If you don't go out and make the case for your ideal, for your candidate, or for your power base, you're going to loving lose, barring overwhelming forces of nature. Ted Cruz did a bare minimum of ground work, but also had the fact that Republicanism in Texas is on par with high school football, but also the fact that the levers of power are geared for a Straight Ticket button, the most vile button in electoral politics. Without that button, I'm willing to throw out there that Beto takes Texas. Kobach didn't have a ground game, didn't fundraise, didn't do anything except measure the god damned drapes. He got the result that hubris brings. gently caress him. gently caress anyone who thinks they don't have to convince Americans to vote for you, and that goes for President to Governor to County Board of Supervisors to Yorba Linda Water District to supporter group treasurer. Show up and be present in people's lives, and they will show up for you. And then, and only then, will you change the world.
|
#
¿
Nov 11, 2018 19:48
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 03:46 |
|
|
Zwabu posted:Hey Fancy, As I tell everyone who gets into direct campaigning: Welcome To Democracy!™  So, the caveat here is that I'm a straight white male. Annoyingly large amounts of people are going to talk to me about certain issues differently than they'd talk to my teammates, who go all over the gender/race/sexuality spectrum. But they talk to me regardless. There's two types of undecided people in the world - people who care but don't know, and people who don't care at all. The second type of person is a really tough out, and I tend to leave them be more often as not. When it's a young person who doesn't care, and references South Park as they so often do, I make it fairly clear to them what could be at stake. 2016, for instance. I'm out in the sticks and the guy says it doesn't matter who's president. I point out that if we're talking about apocalyptic scenarios, I would have less to worry about. Say the bomb drops on DC, right? I live in DC. I'm a shadow on the wall. I have time to say "welp;" and that's me atomized. He's living out in the sticks, though. He gets the radiation cloud. He gets to live to death. If that sounds attractive to him, yeah, put on the movies and sit it out. (The fact that that got a registration card filled out still blows my mind a bit.) But if you're a true undecided in this climate, you're quite a breed. And they might not know how to turn What They Want into How They Vote. I tend to go with a simple question: "If you were given a chance to change this country in one way, just one way, and it would automatically be implemented that day, that hour, what would you change?" The answers I've gotten are endlessly fascinating. Education based answers, tax based answers, melt all the guns, give a gun to every American, trains to everywhere, cars to everywhere, so on and so on. Most people don't have transformative dreams for their lives, surprisingly; most folks want to go to a job, get a decent day's pay, keep the roof intact and the mouths fed, have a little left over to go out and enjoy themselves. Danica Roem here in VA ran on that - growing up, she was stuck in traffic on one of the major highways every day. Now she's an adult and still stuck in that same traffic. If you're stumping for state/local candidates, it always comes back to travel, I've noticed. And since you're usually canvassing all over creation, you can talk about the roads you took to get to that person. The traffic, the tolls, the disrepair, whatever you notice. Give people a reason to vent. They'll inevitably vent about whatever the news and the feeds have in our heads - I swear to you, I have enough relevant experience to take a job as a therapist after this year - and they'll talk about it. And I can't stress this enough: allow yourself the possibility that they'll surprise you. I had an NRA backer out in the woods last year, and he talked about how he always voted local GOP because they hunted and he hunted. But I'd knocked on his door the day after the Vegas massacre. And you could tell the world had changed him. "Look, you don't need what that guy had to kill a deer. You need an automatic rifle to hunt, you need to go back to the range." He pledged to vote for a Latina immigrant, the GOP's challenger in that district. People become undecided when they get a crossroads moment. And you may not be there for the epiphany, but you may catch them just before and just after. If you're looking to convince someone to chase that feeling and change their world with it, it has to be personal. Like I said earlier, it comes back to travel. It also comes back to that job security. If there's no work to be had, find that sweet spot in your area. In Virginia, it's bringing tech work into the area, but it's fixing roads too! And if you've got an outdoorsy type, you can nerd out like I do and talk about the Civilian Conservation Corps. Old New Deal program that built and maintained all our national parks, and it taught a generation how to camp and live with nature. You say that to the right person, and their eyes light up, because they remember their camping days, or they're thinking of their kids playing RDR2 instead of going outside. They can get brought into the movement on feelings. And once the feeling is accessed, that elusive loving hope, they're gonna want to know more. They'll want to feel it more. And that's how undecided becomes leaning. A good conversation is one that makes them think about something, or look something up after you've left. If you leave even the slightest impression, they'll remember what side you were with. One last anecdote: so when I stump, I stump as a member of the labor movement. I went to a house this year and the lady who answered yelled to her tea-sipping friend, "Nah, it's just a Democrat! He thinks we're Democrats, but we're Republicans!" And I got into my feelings a bit on that. "Ma'am, I'm a labor man. I stump for working people. We talk to every candidate, and we see who holds true to working-class values. That means we've endorsed Republicans. We've endorsed Republicans in living memory. We've endorsed Republicans this decade, in fact. Am I stumping for all Democrats here? Yes I am. And that's because the Republicans who have office here have gone after people's retirement funds and pensions. They've gone after health care for the needy. They've blocked Medicaid expanding in your town. If they hadn't done that, I'd probably be unloading trucks at a stadium instead." I don't know if I got through to her, but she offered me a bottle of water to make peace. So that's not nothing. Anyway, if you wanna get into deeper dives, it might be worth having a direct-action deep-dive thread, for people like us who knock on doors. It might be a bit of a stretch for the direct-action threads here or in C-SPAM. But I hope that was helpful! e: what on earth are we playing tug of war with my av AGAIN Lightning Knight posted:The State/Local thread here in D&D would be a great place to discuss how to get involved for the first time in things like that. And it shall be done. Thanks LK! Your Boy Fancy fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Nov 12, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Nov 12, 2018 16:59
|
|
|
evilweasel posted:I suspect that's going to start going away. Israel for a long time has benefited by being an area of bipartisan agreement (or more accurately, that support for Israel wasn't a partisan issue where Republicans were on one side and Democrats were on the other; there was substantially more dispute within the Democratic party/coalition regarding support for Israel). I think that was always going to start getting more polarized, but Netenyahu basically took a sledgehammer to that by explicitly and openly becoming a Republican partisan. That killed off a lot of the support for Israel within the Democratic party, but the full consequences of that haven't yet rippled all the way through the Democratic party system. It's going to though, and I think in a decade or so Israel's going to look back on it as one of their biggest geopolitical mistakes once that fully takes effect. Schumer's trouble with this is that New York Jewish coalitions have been a major part of his power base for a long, long time. I don't think he's going to change regarding BDS, and it's gonna take retirement for him to be unseated. I don't think anyone is going to argue that Chuck Schumer is the greatest impediment to his party's evolution and flourishing at this juncture. Nobody wants to follow a weak leader, and he's the weakest leader I've experienced.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 12, 2018 17:04
|
|
|
The literal plot of Night of the Living Dead. And people thought it was on the nose back then. https://twitter.com/DogSolutions/status/1032693308945047552
|
|
#
¿
Nov 12, 2018 18:05
|
|
|
I'm starting to think Florida in and of itself is the only argument you need to make to get the VRA reinstituted and bolstered, if there's a political will for it. Write it in such a way that both sides see the merits of everyone registered, then you get out there and do your thing. That's not what the current entrenched power wants. But the alternative is a bit more grim.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 12, 2018 19:53
|
|
|
They said this about Rosenstein though. They’re not gone until they’re gone.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2018 04:47
|
|
|
Mahoning posted:https://twitter.com/MSyallpolitics/status/1062032791427313665 Can we get a link to donate to Espy? And do we have anyone who’s doing ground work in MS?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2018 22:22
|
|
|
Condiv posted:will the dems ever actually stand up for their constituents instead of immediately folding to megacorps? I have questions about this bit in particular: quote:Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, said he doesn't expect the broader business community to support lawmakers' push to raise business taxes. He accused businesses of burning him "very badly" when they stalled Democrats' attempt to pass a gross receipts tax in 2017 by insisting public pension savings were a prerequisite. Clicked through the relevant link: quote:SALEM -- Democratic leaders conceded on Thursday that they've given up on making major changes to Oregon's business tax system until at least 2019. I could use some Oregoon input here. The way both these things read, there's an easy fix to both pensions and taxation, and now that the Senate president got hosed over, he's into his feelings and just trying to get ANY tax reform done, pensions be damned. And gently caress that. Pensions are promises.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2018 23:00
|
|
|
This was everything I feared from an Amazon entry into NoVA. Renaming entire towns, doing just enough infrastructure to help themselves and no one else, giveaways on par with selling off the HOV lanes, oh and the side effect of making everyone who even thought about living near the city head off into Manassas, where hope goes to die.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2018 01:09
|
|
|
haveblue posted:If my boss handed me a free gun I would say "wow, is this loaded?", point it at the wall, and pull the trigger. All possible outcomes would lead to the end of the free gun program. I mean, it would also put you in jail for reckless endangerment, but do you
|
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2018 16:38
|
|
|
enraged_camel posted:yeah lol, if this doesn't say "they see the writing on the wall" i dont know what does There’s a history of this IIRC. All the media outlets have solidarity in the access game, at least going back to Bush.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 14, 2018 18:20
|
|
|
This story hosed me up. Here's a long-ish read from both sides - a guy in Maine who thinks he's helping stem fake news by creating tons of it as satire and watching as Russians co-opt it, and a woman in Nevada who mindlessly signal boosts the satire as reality. Brings everything into stark relief regarding our current status as the information empire slowly consumes us all, and why I'm so grateful for places like this that actually discuss the merits. Incidentally, if you haven't deleted your Facebook account or at least made yourself functionally anonymous on it, do it. You can't kill the beast. You can only starve it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...m=.8bec1eb99041
|
|
#
¿
Nov 18, 2018 20:12
|
|
|
Shimrra Jamaane posted:I hate the racist boomer lady in that article so bad. I hope she falls down in that trailer of hers and no one is around to help. Someone cut off her LifeAlert. I'm not even sure she's what you should be directing your ire at, IMO. quote:It was barely dawn in Pahrump, Nev., when Shirley Chapian, 76, logged onto Facebook for her morning computer game of Criminal Case. She believed in starting each day with a problem-solving challenge, a quick mental exercise to keep her brain sharp more than a decade into retirement. For a while it had been the daily crossword puzzle, but then the local newspaper stopped delivering and a friend introduced her to the viral Facebook game with 65 million players. She spent an hour as a 1930s detective, interrogating witnesses and trying to parse their lies from the truth until finally she solved case No. 48 and clicked over to her Facebook news feed. The lady just wanted something else that wasn't a crossword puzzle, to keep her brain sharp, and the machine sucked her down the rabbit hole and turned her into the opposite of her goal. That tells you everything you need to know about modern Facebook. VitalSigns posted:Yeah I knew about that and I can't really blame poor kids for making money in the only way available to them. This guy infuriates me. His private network of 100 people to poo poo on people who take the bait and then report the racist posts? Who are you saving? What have you accomplished? Now they've got confirmation that there ARE traps waiting for people Just Like Them, and the only safe place to go is deeper inside. And he thinks he's the loving good guy. He's not even the Black Mirror guy with the shard of glass against his neck. He's not even THAT brave. He's just another rear end in a top hat profiting off the end of civilization. The best place to be, the only place to be, is outside, around friends, building a better world. Even if that better world is just meeting new friends at the local wrestling show or a god damned craft fair. Even if it's fixing tail lights and organizing rent strikes. The only way out of this awful world is to throw our phones into the sea and being around people. Agh.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 18, 2018 21:42
|
|
|
Otherkinsey Scale posted:But the decorum! Is it really right to single out the president's daughter, just because she happened to break the law? Everyone on earth: YES. Media: Bu— Everyone on earth: YES.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 20, 2018 15:53
|
|
|
paperwind posted:So how often is it that the entire country is told to avoid eating something regardless of where it came from? This is about an extreme a food safety warning as I think I've ever seen. I’m literally eating a Caesar salad while reading this thread, and now I’m tremendously sad.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 20, 2018 21:44
|
|
|
JasonV posted:Somewhere there's a Russian Troll telling his friends, "I convinced a bunch of wanna-be Nazi's to become full on terrorists and call themselves al-Qaeda. Seriously." I thought Al Qaeda translated to The List.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2018 23:52
|
|
|
Captain Invictus posted:A reminder, from uspol This one is a killer. If you’ve never been to Annapolis, it’s a fairly quiet town all in all. Naval Academy kids, old money, the state government. Not much happens. You hang out and drink mostly, or you eat at Chick & Ruth’s at some silly hour and watch the world walk by. Their newspaper is a quiet small town newspaper that doesn’t shake the world. It talks about community crap and a handful of state government wonk stuff. That some dude could be incensed to massacre a news staff of THIS paper is everything you need to know about our modern age. We’re going mad and killing people for no reason, because people who get hosed with every day come to believe they have to, that it’s their moral duty. Because the climate gives them cover, almost. And the President makes it worse, because all he can think about is himself. And because we move on, because everyone moves on, because nearly everyone has forgotten about that shooting, it’s back to silence except for the people who survived. I don’t know how this world changes short of the end of the human race.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 7, 2018 20:32
|
|
|
The opioid crisis, meanwhile, has been raging on for awhile in places within shouting distance of my house. Sometimes they make it to the clinic. Sometimes they get clean in the same basements I haunt. Sometimes they soldier on, because they've been around long enough to know calling for an ambulance is how you end up in jail. This article hosed me up. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/local/opioid-epidemic-and-its-effect-on-african-americans/?utm_term=.625abdaea34a Read all of this if you're not fully aware of what's going on in the forgotten parts of cities. I'd copy-and-paste, but it wouldn't do it justice. Read it in print this afternoon and it's haunting me.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2018 01:41
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 03:46 |
|
|
Discendo Vox posted:I am not certain that George Will is a real person and not either a writing team or a moderately advanced AI. He’s real. You wanna understand George Will? He’s a HUGE baseball nut. Knows baseball inside and out. Filter everything about him through baseball. Things are done a certain way. Even if a rule change would make the game better, he’s against it, because he measures policy, people, and all facets of the universe through the rules that were put in play. It’s not about whether the game could be improved; it’s about measuring every human being through the exact same metric. Because if they’re not in that metric, it’s not baseball. Does that make sense?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 24, 2019 19:48
|
|