Elections

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Thoughts on the 2014 Midterms

Despite the media spin, this result was not a surprise;  all predictions had the Republicans winning the Senate.

This is not to say there were not surprises. Some races that everyone thought were safe were clearly not — a few Democrats scraped by with much smaller margins than the polls indicated — Proving again that the polls are not always right.

Presidents always lose seats in the midterms, and especially during their second term.  The only time that has not happened was under Bill Clinton when the GOP showed how crazy they were with their impeachment efforts.  The Republicans were smarter this time — they’ve saved the ridiculous impeachment crap for after the election.

For some reason, voters in Pennsylvania had enough of their Republican governor, whose fiscal policies drove our state into a ditch, and voted him out by a huge margin.  They then re-elected all the Republican House and Senate members who enabled him to do all that damage.  Go figure.old

Elderly voters (who are much more likely to be conservative, Republican, and Fox-Viewing) came out to vote in record numbers, comprising 37% of the vote.  Voters under 30 (and much more likely to be liberal and Democratic)?  Just 12%.   We only have ourselves to blame.  They vote, we don’t, and they win.

The Republican effort to disenfranchise voters, combined with an unprecedented effort to gerrymander districts to give them a huge advantage, seems to be working well for them.

The Republicans constantly argued that we needed to elect them to fix the economy — ignoring the fact that the economy is doing much better under Obama than it has under any President in the last 40 years  (including Reagan).  States that have Republican governors are almost uniformly the ones with the worst economies.  Somehow, the fact that Republicans won by lying about the economy doesn’t seem to bother them in the slightest.

Ironically, all the ballot initiatives that won were liberal initiatives supported by Democrats — higher minimum wage, marijuana legalization, women’s reproductive rights …  Poll after poll shows that people support Democratic issues.  Democrats just have been unable to take advantage of this.

Lost among all the election news: a court in Kansas struck down their anti-marriage statute, pushing Kansas into the 21st Century.

Now the Democrats will filibuster everything, and we’re once more left with a Congress that will do nothing.  But, as I argued a few days ago, this will only last for two years.

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Don’t Waste Your Vote

Everyone will be bugging you to vote today, and of course you should — your vote is valuable. That’s why the politicians spend so much money trying to buy it.

But it’s also important to vote wisely. Don’t waste it.

Back in 1980 when I was a young college student, full of dreams, I worked for the John Anderson for President campaign. elephant donkey
Never heard of him, have you? He ran as an independent against Carter and Reagan. Many liberals were really upset with Carter and so we drifted toward Anderson who, at one point early in the campaign, was polling about even with his two opponents. The campaign paid me to travel to Atlanta and some other places to help collect signatures to get him on the ballot, and I staffed the local Anderson office in Richmond, Virginia and helped to run fundraisers and get-out-the-vote rallies.

And then Reagan got elected. Which was the start of the downfall of America. It’s why we are in the terrible shape we are in now.

After that, I vowed never to waste my vote again. It may seem cynical to some of my more idealistic friends, but I consider it pragmatism.

Look, the system is broken, yes. But you know that, with a few exceptions, one of the major parties will win. If it’s down to the wire and the Democrat and the Republican are very close, don’t go wasting your vote on the Green party guy who is better than either of the other two. You’re going to end up with one of those two evils at the top, so choose the lesser of the two.

They’re not “all the same”. There is a vast difference between the Democratic party and the Republican party. Yes, the Democrats may not be where we want them to be ideologically, but helping to elect a Republican by voting for a third party won’t change that. We need to work within the party to make sure they discuss the issues we think are important, and we need to vote in every primary to make sure we get good candidates who share our goals.

There will be elections all over the country where a third party candidate drains votes from one of the leading candidates, causing the election of someone a majority of the electorate really doesn’t want at all. Sometimes this third party candidate will hurt the Republicans, and sometimes it will hurt the Democrats.

Think before you vote. “Sending a message” is fine, but if your message causes the election of a candidate you disagree with 100% of the time (as opposed to the one you disagree with only 50% of the time), you’re doing more harm than good.

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Democrats Can’t Lose What They Never Had

by Guest Blogger Adam J Nicolai

If you’re a Democrat like I am, the polling for tomorrow’s election doesn’t look good.  And if you’re a grass roots contributor to the Democratic party like I am, the emails you’re receiving want very badly to scare you.  Subject lines like “CRUSHING FAILURE” and “All hope is lost” aren’t meant to make you feel better, after all. democrats-spot-a-backbone

Maybe we should be scared.  The prospect of the Republicans getting control of the Senate and trying their best to hinder or eliminate climate change policies is frightening.  And as a father to a little girl, I should be terrified of the possibility of Mitch McConnell getting to pursue his agenda of female body control.

But the notion of Democrats losing control of the Senate doesn’t scare me.  What scares me is the fact that they haven’t controlled it in years.

Despite having Democrats in charge of the Senate, there was no action on gun control after Sandy Hook.  There have been no successful efforts to correct the atrocious and increasingly jury-rigged voting system.  And there’s been no legislative action on one of the greatest and most immediate risks to U.S. national security we face today: climate change.

Sure, a lot of that has to do with the fact that even if something does pass the Senate, it just dies in the Republican-controlled House.  I recognize that, and I don’t blame the Democrats for not being able to pass anything through the House.

But I do blame them for losing the House in the first place.  I do blame them for losing Democratic votes by not standing up for what they believe in and defending their achievements.  And I do blame them—oh boy, do I ever blame them—for letting Republicans set the message.

I challenge you to name one major policy discussion in this country that Democrats have set the tone on.  Just one.

Healthcare?  Obviously not.  Even before Republicans tricked Democrats into passing the Republicans’ own healthcare plan, they were setting the message on it with such shocking catchphrases as “Death Panels” and “Socialist Medicine.”  And after the ACA was passed, Republicans renamed it “Obamacare.”  They did this so effectively that even the President has publicly condoned the title, a surrender in the messaging war more critical than any single election’s result.

Climate Change?  Not only have the Republicans won the messaging war on this one, Democrats let them name the war.

Birth control?  Gun control?  Democrats are making progress here, but it’s an uphill fight—and in the meantime, the entire Progressive agenda has been rebranded under the twin bugaboos “Socialism” and “Sharia Law”—which is doubly infuriating because both of these terms are completely inaccurate.

What does any of this have to do with the stalemate in Congress, you ask?  Everything.

You have to give credit where credit is due: the Republican messaging machine excels at political Judo.  When Republicans control they message, they control what voters hear.  They control the context for everything the candidates say.  With this control, they can steal their opponents’ strengths and turn them into weaknesses—and that is what they have been doing with impunity since nearly the turn of the century.

The biggest, saddest, and most stomach-turning example of this is, of course, the Affordable Care Act.

The boasting from Democrats about their success with the ACA should be deafening.  Was it a perfect implementation?  No.  Is it a perfect plan?  No.  But by and large the implementation has been successful, where governors have allowed it, and some of the Act’s baseline provisions—elimination of pre-existing conditions, keeping children on their parents’ policies until age 26, and tax credits for small businesses—are wildly popular.

But when Republicans set the message, they can force their opponents to call it “Obamacare.”  Just hearing the word “Obama” will rile up anyone with even an ounce of racism in them, and don’t think for a second that his name was associated with this law by accident.  Democrats are losing from the moment they say the word “Obamacare.”  From there, it only gets worse.  Since the only thing anyone ever hears about the ACA is that it raises taxes, raises premiums, and kills Grandma, any Democrat has a mountain of lies to fight through before they can even attempt to claim the credit they’re due, and most of them don’t even try.  They run from it instead, making themselves look exactly as guilty as their Republican opponent wanted them to look.  Mission achieved: Democrats did something awesome, and are being blamed instead of praised for it.  Strength turned into weakness.  And in five or ten years, when Obamacare is working well for everyone, watch the term suddenly become “State Exchanges” and the Republican messaging machine glibly claim credit for successful state implementation.

It doesn’t bother me that they do this.  It’s brilliant political strategy, and it works.  Fair play is fair play, and for whatever reason, Republicans are incredibly good at it.

What bothers me is that even today, ten years after they lost their first election on messaging, the Democratic party still doesn’t get it.  They still let Republicans set the tone.  They still don’t try to beat the Republicans in the messaging race—indeed, they don’t even seem to know there is a race. And when they fall behind, they dodge and scrape and whimper and look bewildered.

This is why they won’t win tomorrow.

This is why their agenda has been frozen since 2010.

This is why Obama’s presidency has been such a crushing disappointment.

And until something changes, until the Democratic party realizes that they need a Frank Luntz of their own, they will continue to lose—whether they have a majority in Congress or not.

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Adam J Nicolai is a Kindle Suspense bestseller, a father of two, an atheist, and a lifelong nerd.  He’s a decent novel writer, but sucks at biographies.  You can find more of his writing on adamjnicolai.com.

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A two-year majority for Republicans

Unless something amazing happens, the Republicans will control the Senate in 2015.   The odds are all in their favor this year:  It’s the midterm election of a President in his second term, which has always meant losses for the party in power (whether Democrat or Republican) except once, with Clinton.  Plus the randomness of the Senate elections favors Republicans this year.

Senator Mitch McConnell

Senator Mitch McConnell

You see, the Senate is elected in a staggering fashion.

They serve six years and every two years, a third of them are up for re-election.  This was done by design to prevent the entire body from being changed in an election, and it’s a very good idea, too.

Most of the seats that are up for re-election this year are seats held by Democrats.  That’s just the way the odds went.  And given that it is an election year where the party in power traditionally loses seats, that just doubles the problem.

(Now, a quick disclaimer:  There are about four races where the polls show the difference between the candidates within the margin of error, meaning it is still possible, although unlikely, that the Democrats will hold the Senate if enough of these races go their way.)

However, in 2016, the opposite occurs.  More Republican seats are up for re-election.  Lots more. And many of these seats are held by first-time Senators who rode in on the tea party wave of 2010 (such as Pennsylvania’s own Senator Pat Toomey, who barely made it into office).  It will be a Presidential election year, and that’s when Democrats come out to vote (especially if, for instance, there is the possibility of electing the first female President).  And Democrats are highly favored in national elections.  (We Democrats, after all, outnumber the Republicans.  The problem is that they vote in big numbers and we don’t.)

So I expect we will have a new record set for the least amount accomplished by Congress ever for the next two years, followed by the election of a Democratic President and Senate.

So Mitch McConnell better enjoy his position while it lasts, because it won’t last long.

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What the upcoming election won’t mean

The election will not be an affirmation of conservative politics, no matter what happens.

The party that holds the presidency always loses congressional seats in the midterms.  In the last 50 years, there have been only two examples where that did not happen:  In 1998 (when Republican attacks on Clinton backfired) and 2002 (when Bush was still riding high after the 911 attacks).  So it will be an absolute surprise if that does not happen on November 4th.

But we know that if the Republicans gain control of the Senate (which is likely but not guaranteed), it won’t be because of some great mood in the country to embrace right-wing politics.

How can I say this with such confidence?  By looking at the governor’s races.   Tea-Party-agenda-GOP

Four years ago, when the GOP reacted strongly to Obama’s election by voting in great numbers and sweeping Republicans into power, some very conservative Tea Party candidates became governor.  “Hooray!” they exclaimed.  “Now we can put our policies into play and prove that our ideas will save the economy!”

They did what they said they would — they cut taxes on businesses and the wealthy, cut funding to education, and trimmed government down to next to nothing.

These states are now in the worst financial condition they have ever been in.  The Tea Party experiments all failed, to a one.  And the voters are mad.  These governors are all losing their re-election bids.

Here in Pennsylvania, Governor Corbett is over 15 points behind in the polls.  This is in a state where a governor has never lost re-election.  His policies pushed Pennsylvania back from one of the fastest-growing job creating states in the nation to dead last.  Our debt rating has been lowered many times.

Governor Brownback in Kansas similarly destroyed his state.  Maine is floundering.  Wisconsin is in bad shape.  Even Florida is struggling.

All of these states elected Tea Party governors and all of these governors are fighting to be re-elected.  That is hardly an endorsement of their policies.

This is not a nation-wide trend.  Other states are doing great.  California, which was in terrible state when Schwarzenegger left it, elected a bunch of Democrats who put into play policies which have given the huge state a budget surplus for the first time in many years.  New York is doing just fine.  If you look at which states are doing best economically, you’ll see mostly Democratic-run ones at the top (you have to get to #9 to find one run by Republicans) — and this is despite the fact that there are more Republican governors than Democratic ones.

And even if you ignore the economy, these guys fought tooth and nail against women’s health issues, gay marriage, and giving their poorest health care.

The fact is, as I’ve pointed out before, angry people vote more, and no one is ever angrier than a Fox-news-fed Republican.  If Republicans and Democrats voted in equal percentages, we’d always win because there are more of us than there are them.  But we don’t.  We Democrats tend to stay home on election day and then wonder how such idiots could get into office (when it’s really our own fault).

So don’t let the pundits tell you on November 5th that the GOP wins is a sign of voters loving their policies.  The facts state otherwise.

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Democratic Scare Tactics Needed

“Obamacare will destroy our economy, take away our freedoms, and bring about Death Panels!” “Gays want to destroy your marriage and turn your kids into homosexuals!” “Al Qaeda is coming to kill us all!”

Republicans know that the way to win elections is through fear. Fear makes people react immediately, in a reflective way, without taking the time to analyze the situation. People who are afraid vote more than those who are not. This is a fact.   FEAR

With the help of their propaganda arm (a/k/a Fox News), they are continuing with this stragety — the problem is that the previous scare tactics aren’t working. Obamacare is doing just fine; gay marriage hasn’t hurt anyone; Al Qaeda is no longer a serious threat …

So they’ve come up with some new ones this year. “Ebola will spread and murder your family!” “Isis is coming to kill us all!” “Immigrant children coming over our border are infected with ebola and are actually terrorists, too!” (That last one always gets me. It’s really quite creative.)

The problem is with we Democrats. You see, we tend to try to appeal to the head instead of the heart (or maybe, as Colbert puts it, the “gut”). And that’s one of the reasons we don’t do as well at election time even though we outnumber the Republicans — our voters aren’t scared enough, and so they stay at home.

So I suggest a few Democratic scare tactics.

“A crazed conservative white guy with easy access to guns is going to kill you!”  (This is, of course, extremely more likely in America than your chance of being killed by a Muslim terrorist.)

“Bad guys want to control your personal life and tell you who you can marry!”  (Also true.)

“Big Brother police forces want to turn America into a police state!”  (A bit of an exaggeration but hey, not necessarily a lie.)

“Invasive and unnecessary medical procedures will cause you great pain for no legitimate purpose!”  (Yep, the GOP favors anything to discourage abortions no matter how needless.)

So help me out here.  Surely we can think of our own scare tactics.

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Republicans win Senate, vote to abolish medicare, reverse recent gains

You’ll see lots of headlines like that in November. The Republicans will be taking over the Senate and if you thought this was a do-nothing Congress before, just wait until they’re in charge. They’ll pass bills outlawing abortion, abolishing medicare and Obamacare, allowing for discrimination against gays and women, and otherwise work to reverse many gains we have made in the past ten years.

No, I’m not exaggerating. These are all things they’ve either said they’d do or they’ve tried to do over the past six years but have been unable to because they weren’t in the majority. vote-button

They can be stopped, you know. We Democrats outnumber them. Many of these races are very very close and winnable.

But we have to vote. We have to actually do the absolute minimum a democracy requests of you. And Democrats are terrible at that.

We vote in big numbers in presidential years and we win lots of House and Senate seats. Then in the off years we sit on our butts and watch while every gain we made is rolled back. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Whining and bitching about how things are when you have the ability to change them does not convince anyone. You want change? Do something about it.

Today is Register to Vote Day. So use the right. Register. Then vote.

Seriously, what do you have to do today that is more important?

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Why I can no longer vote for Republicans

I’ve voted for Republicans in the past, mostly in local elections. I’ve voted for Republican judges and Republican Clerks of Court and so on, partially because I knew the people personally and partially because in elections like that, ideology doesn’t really matter. elephant-donkey

But I just can’t do that any more.

There used to be liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. Democrats had George Wallace and Republicans had Nelson Rockefeller. I voted for Republican William Weld when I lived in Massachusetts over the more conservative Democrat. But you don’t find that any more. The parties have become distanced by ideology, and that’s one of the reasons we cannot get anything done in Congress.

But mostly, the problem is this: I’m not sure how I could support someone who supports a party that stands for the following:

      • Discrimination against gays and lesbians
      • Eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency
      • Open carrying of firearms and reduction of any gun control laws
      • Lowering the minimum wage
      • Opposition to equal pay for women
      • Tax breaks for billionaires
      • Reproductive decisions made by government and employers
      • Deporting of refugee children
      • Denying of climate change and science
      • Creationism taught in school
      • Health care only for those who can afford it
      • Elimination of unions

If I vote for a Republican Dog Catcher, am I thus supporting someone who believes in discrimination? That thinks my wife is a lesser person who can’t make her own decisions? Who has no sympathy for refugee children running from war and death? Also, why should I help that party at all? Every lower office run by a Republican helps the party raise money for the bigger offices.

And it’s sad that I have to think that way; I prefer reasonable people in both parties who can work things out. (And yes, there are crazy radicals on the left, too, but they don’t run the party — they are on the outskirts, like how the Republicans used to treat their crazies.)

Many of my reasonable conservative friends no longer call themselves Republicans because they cannot agree with the far-right agenda the party now promotes. They still won’t vote for a Democrat, but they also find it tremendously difficult to support the Republicans.

The solution is for reasonable conservatives to take back the party and stand up to these people. And that’s the problem — many Republicans are scared to death of these crazies, and instead of calling them out, they pretend to agree just so they can win elections. That may help them in the primaries, but all that does ultimately is send more potential voters away in the general election.

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Why won’t they vote for us?

“Fellow Republicans.  As you know, in the past we could always count on the Latino vote.  As the party that is pro-family and against abortion and gay marriage, we appealed to their Catholic sensibilities.  LatinoVote

However, lately, we have seen that the Latino vote —  like the women’s vote — has been moving away from us in huge numbers to the point where it is costing us elections.  We must do something to appeal to these people if we ever want to win the White House again!  Why they are leaving us is a complete mystery.

Anyway, on to other matters.  We need to discuss the infiltration of our society by those terrible illegal immigrants, bringing their kids and crime and drugs into America.  Plus how we need to make English the official language.  Also, we have here a document proclaiming our support for the Hobby Lobby decision and to reiterate how corporations — which are clearly people — should be able to use their religious beliefs when deciding whether their female employees get contraception.”

 

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The good political news about the Hobby Lobby case

A majority of Americans (58%), when polled a month or so ago, were in favor of the requirement that private health coverage must cover all forms of birth control.

I daresay that when polls are completed about the Hobby Lobby case that a majority of Americans will disagree with it.

So why is this good news? Because anger makes people vote.

One of the reasons conservatives have won a bunch of elections lately is because the right knows this.  They get their voters angry so that they get to the voting booths.  They have an entire TV network dedicated to making its viewers angry.

And liberals and Democrats just aren’t angry enough.   

As I’ve pointed out many times, the majority of Americans agree with Democrats on almost every important issue. A majority of Americans support Obamacare. anger (This is especially true if you call it “the Affordable Care Act.”) A majority thinks gay marriage, abortion and marijuana should be legal. A majority supports more gun control. A majority wants to raise taxes on the wealthy and do not believe that “corporations are people.” A majority want to raise the minimum wage and do something about campaign finance reform.   And a majority support amending the Constitution to overturn the Citizen’s United case. These issues are not leftist dreams. They are mainstream. They are moderate.

So if a majority of Americans agree with Democrats and disagree with the Republicans why don’t we Democrats win more?

Because we aren’t angry enough.  Because we don’t get out and vote.

However, that has been changing lately, and the polls are showing this.  Latinos, who are generally more conservative (thanks to their religious background) are abandoning the Republicans in huge numbers because of their anti-immigration policies.   Women are now massively supporting Democrats.  And young people are rejecting Republicans by huge margins.

But — here’s the key — so far, they haven’t been angry enough to vote.

So the good news is that this will help.

Stay angry, my friends.