I was part of the Michelle Nunn GOTV operation in Savannah. Though I asked if it was part of the Bannock Street Project, the people running it shrugged and said they didn’t know. Here’s what it looked like, though. I started off doing volunteer canvassing, which didn’t seem very well organized or urgent. Then, about a week before election day, a new team showed up from Atlanta to run a very intensive and well-organized canvassing operation that paid $10/hr. They had a list of 12,000 lean-dem midterm-falloff voters we needed to door-knock, and at the end of it one of the leaders told me we hit that goal and were making a second sweep to try to catch those who weren’t home the first time through. My experience with this was so encouraging, I actually thought we were going to win. And in Chatham County, we did. I’m not sure about relevant percentages, but turnout seemed to be up from 2010, and Nunn won handily, just not by enough votes to help carry the rest of the state. As it appeared on the check I received, the outfit running this effort called itself the “Base Builder Group.”
As for John Barrow, I have always loathed that blue dog. He was only ever consequential as a warm body with a D after his name when a House majority was at stake. Other than that, good riddance to him.
One sure fire way to get the younger generation interested in politics is to bring back the draft. The real possibility of having your ass shot off tends to make one give a shit.
The real reason we had problems last election is the American voter is the same idiot who elected Ronald Reagan.
You can fool some of the people, etc, but you can convince everybody that orange is the new pink once in a while. And that’s good enough for the GOP to celebrate.
Then the people wise up. . . for a short time.
No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
Even myself, I forgot that recently. I had actually managed to have a little bit of hope.
I won’t say never again, because I’m only human.
Yes,Ed Kilgore,that may be the case, but that is precisely why the dems fucked up. Instead of counteracting the lies being told by the republicans and pounding it into the heads of the american stupid class that they are in fact better off than they were 6 years ago by enumerating the facts, maybe we wouldn’t have suffered as bad as we did.
Why didn’t the dem party ask those stupid ass senators who decided for retire in a mid terms, to hold their seat and retire afterwards and let the governor appt one in his place or have an election. Those senators who retired should have been convinced not to.
Maybe they should have their lazy asses sent into the military- they might learn a thing or do about getting off their lazy complaining and whining asses
I disagree. Charlie Crist was a good candidate. Remember, he was a very well=liked popular Governor and Florida did well under Crist. He didn’t have the funds to fight off the disgusting campaign of the ghoul who spent 25 million of his own money in attack ads
It is time to start working on winning back the people who consistently vote in the midterms: senior citizens, especially white senior citizens. To write off that group as hopelessly Republican and in thrall of Fox News is a huge mistake.
Starting point would be to remind these voters that the two government programs that they rely on – Social Security and Medicare – were created by Democrats against the strong wishes of Republicans, and continue to be supported enthusiastically by Democrats and less so by Republicans.
Next – we got to find a way to be heard over the din of the Fox News propaganda playing everywhere. Twitter and the Daily Show are not the answer.
While I generally agree with you, I think a lot more of Ms. Warren than you seem to. Bomb thrower? No, she’s not. But she is something that I don’t see much of - a liberal who’s not afraid to fight. Frankly, I think that’s exactly the right approach - and damn she is smart!
People respond to that. If we had a cadre of Senators like her (I’m looking at YOU Senator Franken) this election might have gone differently.
And good article Mr. Kilgore! It’s so refreshing to read some analysis with some actual thought behind it.
As a resident of NC, I predicted a couple years ago (during the Obamacare debate) that Kay Hagan didn’t have a prayer at a second Senate term.
She of course pulled your standard “I’m in a battleground state, so I need to pretend to be a Republican to WIN BIG!” crap… she practically snarled at her progressive base (which is actually pretty large in Raleigh and Charlotte) while she did all she could to obstruct a public option. So yea, as predicted the other night conservatives preferred the even more conservative candidate, and the progressives stayed home.
I’m not saying that the younger folks don’t have a reason to be discouraged, they most certainly do. But voting leads to incremental change, not wholesale change overnight.
I get the sense that what the non-voters are looking for; if that’s true they are certain to be disappointed.
It’s a long-term project. Americans don’t seem to be capable of looking very far ahead anymore. I blame Wall Street for that.
In 1953, Lyndon Johnson, when he became Senate Minority Leader after the Democrats had again been crushed, reinvented the leadership job, doing what had to be done to get Democratic voters back voting. he was a young man then too— not even 50— but he took a job that entailed nothing but scheduling things and became the strongest leader of the Senate in the 20th Century, if not of all time. Democrats need leaders like that now too. Johnson made friends out of many enemies. The way he did it might not work now, but the fresh thinking he epitomized is sorely needed now. Reid is not the guy who can do it, but I do not see any Elizabeth Warren types chomping at the bit, or able, to do it either.
The Seinfeld election yielded a Seinfeld Congress. Turnout was the lowest in 72 years. Turnout was off over 20% from the previous low for mid term elections since 1982.
My question is “what happened to the 50 state strategy” but whatever the answer, the message is clear. The President needs to turn the Congress About Nothing into a Congress that reveals the clear differences between Democrats and Republicans.
