Which is why I brought up the fundraising aspect. The reality is, there are simply too many House, Senate, state legislators, and governor races for the RNC to cover them all. Its one of the problems with having majorities everywhere…it costs way too much to protect it all in a wave election. The House in general is going to be very vulnerable I believe. And…don’t forget, they will bleed some off fighting primaries, too…the GOP base is much more likely to primary each other than the Dem base.
I’ve been reaching out to folks I still know up there for quite some time now. And we even have some folks here who are making the trek up that way to volunteer.
These guys have not noticed that in the last eight years something was done for the benefit of American people. That can not be said for the smoking hole in the ground left by the 2000 to 2008 administration, nor for Republican administrations in general. Republican voters are willing to take one for the team more often than not, but the reality of writing a check for health insurance with some requirement to provide health care as compared to no guarantee is intruding on their carefully administered lives.
After fourteen years of two wars every American has lost family, friend or fellow worker from a death, injury or suicide. And the war profiteers vacuum up hundreds of billions of tax and national debt Dollars while tossing a few crumbs to ethic challenged politicians. Business as usual; but the usual has become more than background static to people who pay the real price of war. And these are the same people who live with underwater mortgages that they can not escape thanks to Ol’ Dubya. The fact is that the 99 percenters are getting ripped off on paying the expense of keeping the 1 percenters living the high life. And now the blessed Republicans want to take away the only thing Americans have gotten in a long time to make their lives better.
Congress members can ban tar and feathers from town hall meetings, but they can not ban the sentiment that they richly deserve.
I think that many of the people attending this town hall DIDN’T vote for him, yet he still is supposed to represent them.
Politicians are isolating themselves more and more from their constituents and b/c of gerrymandering many of them feel like they don’t need to reach out to people who didn’t vote for them. So, these are sometimes the only way that a constituent can have any chance of having his/her voice on issues heard.
So what if the congressman is uncomfortable for an hour or two? I wonder if he were to actually spend less time talking and more time asking questions and listening to what people say in response, if the tone of the town hall would shift somewhat. And if he would walk away having a more nuanced understanding of how some of the issues affect his constituents rather than how they affect his wealthy donors?
A series of town halls, where there could be an ongoing conversation, would probably be the smartest (and bravest) way of handling communicating w/ constituents.
I know that that is probably not realistic for most of these elected officials.
What ticks me off about this is, yesterday in Prescott Wisconsin, Senator Tammy Baldwin held a town hall on Wednesday (yesterday, at this writing). It was well-advertised, not only on the Indivisible site, but on MSM as well.
Today - not one single article about it. Not one. No mention, other than it had been scheduled. I know it went off and I understand, from folks that were there, that everyone was respectful.
I guess unless there’s something tantamount to an insurrection, it doesn’t lead and it doesn’t warrant a mention.
ETA: I finally got something on this town hall. Amazing how restrained and positive it was:
I am with you on feeling disheartened about the DNC, though that is not new for me.
Watching KS-04 was frustrating and also made me have some hope. He is/was a GREAT candidate but the frustrating part was lack of national party support for him or state Dems who are likely the best people to know how to get him elected.
I remember someone on TPM (a reader) in 2016 mentioning that he/she lives in KS and that their local Dem party received no help at all from the national party…I follow the KS dems on Twitter now to see if this will improve.
I was frustrated w/ the limited list of targeted races that the DNC came up w/ for 2018. Is there another organization that can supplement this?
I volunteered full time for Obama in 2007-08 and the campaign had a website where any of us could organize and post a trip or a voter registration, canvassing or GOTV operation. It really allowed grassroots organizing to happen. My local Brooklyn office was supportive of anything I came up with. I wish that the DNC (or else individually state Dem organizations) would create an updated version of this so that all of the people who are energized can do something.
Same w/ fundraising…I know that the DNC wants to control everything, but they don’t seem able to run a large operation. Why can’t they have a “gofundme” type of fundraising website broken down by state, w/ explanations of what’s going on in each state, w/ fundraising needs (created by the state dem parties) and even volunteer needs…so that small donors and people w/ some free time can actually do something that makes an impact rather than having their money go into a black hole.
The two things that are buoying my spirits right now are the quality of great candidates coming forward and the vast numbers of engaged, smart progressive voters who are turning up to volunteer and march and canvass. I hope that the DNC leadership doesn’t squander this.
I don’t get that statistic. Coffman took over from Tancredo, a right wing nut elected for decades. The district was redrawn, but it still doesn’t seem that competitive. In this last election, we had a strong Democratic candidate against him, and she lost by a mile. She certainly didn’t have the funds he did, and that during a presidential election, and Trump lost badly in the state. I don’t really think this is a left leaning district.
R messaging has always played better in swing districts than D messaging, which explains why so many R represent districts which lean D.
PA 7th (where I lived for 30 years until I recently moved) is an almost perfect example of this. Obama and Hillary both won it 20+, but the R Congressman – a former prosecutor – won election a few terms back easily and has won reelection easily by keeping his head down, not saying anything stupid, and repeating the “lower taxes” mantra over and over again. But he’s a reliable R vote except when doing so would kill his chances and make him look bad.
Incumbents like that are hard to unseat because most suburban voters fall into the “give him a chance” category barring a scandal or obvious extremism. To get R reps like that out in favor of someone who will vote more in line with the district, nationalizing the election only goes so far. You need a person running against them who people prefer to vote for. You need a celebrity or someone with unquestioned star power and positive reputation to overwhelm the steady, reliable, and well-funded incumbent.
(Carnac)You are wrong, erudition-breath…I had not. I was just picking you people off one at a time, and I hadn’t seen you. The world is full of things I haven’t seen. Might take a while, but you’ll see the citation at some point. Thanks.
I get special-election information from dailykos.com. I gave $10 each to the KS, GA & MT candidates through Act Blue, using PayPal. Cheap therapy for me, and better than betting on the horses!
I also gave $5 each to some of the Democratic senators, right after I heard of them giving a good speech or doing something great (i.e. Senator Jeff Merkley’s all-night filibuster).
It will only be a bloodbath if Democrats keep it up. Right now the Democratic base is pushing hard, but the DNC isn’t really doing all that much. They only helped Thompson with some calls at the very end. They wouldn’t even fund a $20,000 mailer. The Georgia candidate has been the beneficiary of an $8,000,000 fundraising effort by DailyKos and other activists. The DNC needs to run to the front of the Democratic base and start leading.
The rap on the last Democratic candidate is she was a capetbagger. Already the Republican is making that argument about the new Democratic candidate. He is a three tour veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan with impressive credentials. He lives in Aurora just a few blocks from the edge of the district. Coffman is confident he can beat him.
However, there are a lot of immigrants (Hispanic and Ethiopian) in this district. I would hope that the Democratic Party could work even harder to register those who will be adversely affected by this administration and then get them to the polls. I know DFA (Democrats for America, originally the Howard Dean organization) did endorse and help Morgan Carroll. They have limited funds so only spend them on candidates with a good chance of winning. She is now head of the state party, so I hope she can bring it in to the 21st century.
The extreme left is people who can read and write and do not want their country run by an amoral, moronic criminal who has never successfully accomplished anything in his life other than being born rich, marrying a serious of models, and mastering the art of BS.
Yes. The concern I have is if he doesn’t get over 50% and it goes to a run off, the GOP won’t be spending money attacking each other…it will all be focused on him.
