Get organized???
In most cases itâs the HIGHEST SCORE that wins.
Maybe the better questions is, how do we GERRYMANDER like the cheating Republicanâs did and get away with it. They did it why canât we?
The Republicans are EXPERTS at stealing electionsâŚData bases which conatain voter information cans translate into gerrymander maps by district, might have something to do with it. Skillfully managed by the crooked Republican think tanks have learned this skill very well.
Gerrymandering is VOTER SUPPRESSION.
I hope we can learn frpm the crooked Right. I really want to take control back and then keep it. They cannot be trusted. The American way is NOT their way. Theyâre selective in their process and exclusive to their white-male-base. Theyâve proven to be UNAMERICAN by their exclusive attention span, paying close attention to only their ownâŚpuppets on the strings of Corporate America. Itâs hard to figure out why the Republicans that vote cannot see the damage theyâre doing to themselvesâŚitâs qyite deplorable.
Excellent interview. Basically, the left has become too dependent on the Democratic party, too dependent on pinning their hopes on the next Messiah hopefully showing up every four years that will solve all of our problems, and too dependent on mobilization without organization. Of course, the left should not abandon the Democratic party, but it must have an organizational infrastructure outside of the party if it intends to get anywhere in the next 8 years.
The Republicans got their gerrymander because they were well organized on the state level, while Democrats sat home and watched âDancing with the Starsâ in 2010. Republicans didnât steal elections, Democrats and the left lost them. As long as we throw up our hands and proclaim âRepublicans stole the electionâ instead of not taking responsibility for our losses, weâre doomed to repeat these failures. .
So-called âprogressivesâ who canât win an election for dog catcher keep lecturing everyone about how to conduct the class struggle.
I find myself disagreeing with much of what Ganz says. Hillary got the most votes. She didnât have the right distribution because the FBI corrupted the political environment in which votes were cast by painting her with a false cloud of criminality, and people who largely agreed with her policy agenda but didnât have a personal affinity for her didnât want her to be President even if it meant that Trump became President.
The best way to analyze the swings which determine how elections are decided is through analyzing base human behavior, how people actually behave vs. what they say. At the end of the day, the Berner rejection of Hillary had nothing to do with policy. She campaigned on a Berner agenda. She adopted a Berner platform. She used that agenda to win 3 of 3 debates. It was about personality at the end of the day. They liked Obama but didnât like her, plain and simple, even though it is objectively provable that she was more progressive than Obama. Al Gore 'lost" for the same reason even though he was far more progressive than Bill Clinton.
Left wingers talk about idealism and philosophy, but theyâre motivated by base instincts just like the Republicans. Why is it that the Berner movement was white male dominated? Because it was a way for such folks to establish an alternative power base as the establishment party was comprised of women, minorities, and relatively wealthier/older white Democrats. The Berner movement was as much a white counteraction to Obama as was the Trump movement. Normal people got sandwiched in the middle by this nonsense.
Lesson for '20: get a candidate with a sane agenda, good favorables and is ok with guns as they are, and you have a winner.
She did not get the most electoral votes. As far as what Comey did (or all of the other excuses), what did you expect? There is always some dirty politics being played - itâs part of the game.
HRC lost against one of the worst candidates in the history of this country.
The CORE problem is that weâve allowed the right to make a dirty word out of liberalism. In many cases weâve played right into their hands. We need to wise up, and stop making excuses.
Liberalism was more of a dirty word in '92, '96, '08, and '12 when we won than it was in '16 when we lost. The core problem is that people who largely align with a Democratic agenda donât vote and are more motivated at the end of the day by likability rather than effectiveness. Because Dems are motivated by likability it becomes very easy for the opposition to focus on raising negatives as it has a payoff in terms of turnout. Superior rock star candidates like Obama and Bill Clinton can withstand it. Others cannot.
The Republicans donât have that problem. Evangelicals, for example, voted for Trump not because they liked him, but because he would be their hired gun to get a judge on the Supreme Court.
Iâm with Ganz and evan on this one. We need to get more folks to appreciate/understand that Democratic policies are in their interests and then we donât have to rely on the exceptional candidate like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The Râs won with the Bush I and II and Trump who are not in the same league as Presidents Clinton and Obama but they were close enough to Dukakis/Gore/Kerry/HRC to win. Râs won those elections for the reasons that Ganz lays out - better personal connections in the institutions throughout the country - the churches, the gun clubs, the chambers of commerce, etc.
If you look at Christian churches - Râs have the evangelicals and they have worked hard to split/weaken the traditionally liberal Mainline Protestant denominations (the Institute on Religion and Democracy has been creating trouble under the guise of encouraging orthodoxy for over 30 years - this is an example of the long game in action.) The Dâs have enjoyed tremendous support from black Christians whose churches are traditionally politically active - white people of faith like myself need to learn from the black church. If Dâs who attend Catholic churches can work to make sure that the social justice issues get as much or more attention than abortion, the Dâs will get better numbers. We all need to make the bishops and cardinals own their part in making the Trumpster fire happen and encourage them to make amends by helping to contain the worst of it.
Therin lies the problem with progressives in your statement . We canât sit around and hope that the Progressive messiah will show up every four years and then go back to sleep. We have to be thinking how we are going to take back state houses, the congress and the senate. What happens if a good candidate doesnât materialize in 2020? Look at how much the Republicans were able to accomplish during the 8 years of the Obama presidency. They now own virtually every state house and control every branch of government. They are just one Ruth Bader Ginsberg heartbeat away from permanent control of the Supreme Court. We canât keep doing this wishful thinking that all we need is a perfect presidential candidate and everything will be OK. The Republicans lost two presidential elections in a row and they are now in the catbird seat.
We had better candidates in '92, '96, '08, and '12. Iâm not sure how you can say that liberalism was more demonizes in the 90s. The whole thing started in earnest as a reaction to Clinton, and has built since with the changes in media delivery. They capitalised with Fox News, AM Radio, and now all these BS web sites. The demonization of liberalism been getting worse and worse. Just the other week, I had an older guy in his 60s tell me he was a progressive, and not a liberal. He was clearly a classic liberal, with moderate views. Right before the election, an older woman I work with (a hippy type) told me she couldnât vote for Clinton âbecause she liesâ. This older woman was an outspoken feminist! I think many of you exist in bubbles (and I donât mean that in a demeaning way). People associate liberalism with extreme environmentalism, extreme feminism, and lately with extreme protectionism of the Islamic religion (and only that religion, and not Muslims). You see how this could be a problem?
This critique of Obama is spot on:
Itâs galling to remember how Republicans have come in with a one-vote majority or no majority at all, and they have treated their election as a mandate, and Democrats have come in with a solid majority and they have treated it like something they have to prove they are entitled to. Obamaâs whole approach was to minimize opposition rather than to maximize support. He was in a position to maximize support, but what he did was try to get everyone who was opposed to support. It was a feckless task, and it led to the weirdness of the ACA [Affordable Care Act] and the rest of it.
So glad to see him calling Obama out on this. In 2009 the GOP was fini. Completely out of power. Obama had his foot on their neck. Instead of finishing them off, he treated them as equal bargaining partners. How do you compromise with someone who thinks you are an illegal islamofascistterrorist and an enemy occupying the White House?? You donât. Ganz is absolutely right with his critique. When Obama should have been organizing support around his policies and his administration he opted to compromise with the GOP and breathed life back into them.
Now before I get all the hate comments, please understand Iâm an Obama guy. From Illinois. Worked with him in the state senate and did contractual work for him when he was U.S. senator. My hand is stamped. But I do totally think he mishandled the GOP and legitimized their crazy by trying to always compromise.
I was going to like you remark when I read âThe Republicans got their gerrymander because they were well organized on the state level, while Democrats âŚâ.
But then you concluded with âsat home and watched âDancing with the Starsâ in 2010â.
I gather you are claiming there was unusually low turnout from Democrats in 2010 (this is the Received Wisdom diagnosis of the Great Shellacking that persists among Progressives).
This is flat out false. Turn-out from Democrats (people who self-identify with that label) was quite good.
What happened was that there was a massive right-ward swing in the American electorate - every single Demographic breakdown in the regular Pew survey swung right - and the number of Democrats and democratic leaning independents shrank while the number of right-leaning independents exploded.
It was losing the messaging war in the first 18 months of the Obama Administration that did it.
Ganzâs analysis is dead-on:
[quote]Itâs galling to remember how Republicans have come in with a one-vote majority or no majority at all, and they have treated their election as a mandate, and Democrats have come in with a solid majority and they have treated it like something they have to prove they are entitled to. Obamaâs whole approach was to minimize opposition rather than to maximize support. He was in a position to maximize support, but what he did was try to get everyone who was opposed to support. It was a feckless task, and it led to the weirdness of the ACA [Affordable Care Act] and the rest of it.
Obama also failed to take on the economic problems in the country. Thatâs where everybodyâs head was, but there was this disconnect with where he was and where the American public was in terms of urgent needs that needed government action. He got the stimulus, but it was never marketed, it was never explained, nobody ever understood it. He turned the role of advocate and change agent into something that was quite the opposite. And the organization that was built was just left hanging. And it really had nothing to do. They used it a little bit on the healthcare thing. But to have given it life would have required separating it from the administration.[/quote]
This is the whole story of what happened in 2009 and 2010, and wrote the politics we now have, apparently for decades to come before the lost opportunity is repaired.
Yes, he is absolutely dead on.
Obama had an outsize job ahead of him, a worse problem perhaps than any President in U.S. history after Lincoln (FDR had a Depression and World War to deal with, but he had solid national support and the failure of Hoover took the heat off of him for the economic crisis).
But Obama volunteered for the job and he failed to address it adequately. And Ganz is only addressing the political side of Obamaâs failure.
By not focusing on economics and seeking a big enough stimulus package to actually repair the damage of the crash he denied the nation the quick surge in growth that usually follows recessions and depressions, saving the livelihoods of millions of unemployed Americans, and set America permanently on a lower curve of growth, a trillion dollar plus hit we take every single year and always will.
He would have been an excellent care-taker President during any ordinary historical epoch.
We have to consider him a failed President.
come onâŚyou may think that sounds good but if you deny the reality of voter suppressionâŚvote fraud hacking stealing and throwing away votesâŚ(all proven BTW)âŚthen there is no way to reach you.
oâŚand before you or anyone else says prove itâŚgo spend some time reading the BRAD blog and following the linksâŚafter about 10 years of archive reading you may have a different opinion of how elections are stolen in this country.
should take about 4-5 weeks of 14 hours a day readingâŚ
Oh I donât consider him a failed president at all. Quite the contrary. He failed at using his leverage (bully pulpit) to achieve 21st progressive issues. I think we agree on that much. But he did succeed at cutting unemployment in half, tripling the Dow, cutting the budget deficit by 75%, finding and killing bin Laden, bringing greater social justice than maybe any president since Lincoln. So failed does not at all define his presidency for me. I think he missed great opportunities to be a great president. I also think he failed at ending the GOP as we know it when he had every opportunity to. I can easily agree on failures just not failed.
What happened was that there was a massive right-ward swing in the American electorate - every single Demographic breakdown in the regular Pew survey swung right - and the number of Democrats and democratic leaning independents shrank while the number of right-leaning independents exploded.
It was losing the messaging war in the first 18 months of the Obama Administration that did it.
Yes, absolutely correct in my opinion. For Obama it seemed to be compromise at all costs. He tolerated conspiracy theories about his birth certificate, death panels, sharia law and so on so as not to offend the GOP. It was a horrible mistake.
some excellent points made by Mr. ganz but i suspect they will be over looked by the sycophants.
Obama DID squander his chance to use the office to advocate and expand his support.
donât we remember the shape of the republicans after 2008?
obama took on the PROGRESSIVES in the party and looked to compromise with the very people who are on video record of sayingâŚthey have only one intentionâŚto make sure Obama failed!
wellâŚlook at the democrats today.
we have the same thing playing outâŚmr ganz fails to mention that it was the DNC that incorporated obamas field organization and dissipated it rather then allowing it to grow.
and we see those same people inserting Perez into the DNC chair election because they STILL do not want the progressives to have any power.
no matter the staggering losses we have seen under the Obama Clinton wing which Perez represents.
though he is correct the DNC by itself cant do muchâŚbut if you deny the energy the left brings to the party you will get more of the sameâŚand then you can go about complaining howâŚit was all the fault of âŚfill in the blankâŚrather then the party itself.
?
it was the democratic party itself under obama and clinton who did everything they could to deny progressives a real roll real power in the party and it continues today with their insertion of perez against ellison for the DNC chair.
no one is looking for a messiah.
the issue is how the party undermines the energy of the leftâŚno matter how many elections they lose they wont allow that energy into the party.
Yes. I think thatâs right. The fact that Democrats vote for telegenic or personality driven candidates (even if they happen to be substantive intellectuals) is a sign of fickleness and superficial thinking. People like Clinton, Obama and Justin Trudeau donât show up everyday, but you shouldnât need that as a motivator to get out and vote.