Discussion: The 'Boring' Election Issue That Could Help Dems Score Beer-Track Voters

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Discussion for article #237058

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I’ll vote for anyone - anyone - who is willing to go with publicly financed elections. Anyone who proposes “reform” is full of it.

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The catch-22 is how do Democrats mount a viable offensive against the campaign finance status quo without participating in it themselves? And if they participate in it, how do they convince voters of their intent to reform?

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I do think a key part of asking for people’s votes is to not give them an archetypal name. Especially not a dismissively sneering name like “beer-track voters.”

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Some archetype names can work–remember Sarah Palin reaching out to “Soccer Moms?” And, from a strategic perspective, creating different messaging for different archetypes is effective. That said, a candidate would probably want to rename this group if s/he wanted their votes. The phrase ‘beer-track’ came from a pollster.

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Beer track? Who comes up with these dumb terms. I love beer, good beer, even microbrews, I don’t care for wine, it gives me a headache. Trying to organize political groups around this is idiotic.

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Yep. That’s how Mark Penn seized the 2008 Democratic nomination for Hillary.

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I devoutly hope that campaign finance becomes a major issue next year. What’s often forgotten, because it’s so obvious, is that campaigns are the bedrock of democracy. And as we know, campaign finance is a huge factor in how our elections play out.

However, Hillary Clinton is hardly the person who is best placed to make the argument for serious campaign-finance reform, given her husband’s record, and hers. She could speak out about making campaign contributions public–on that she would have some credibility. But in terms of reining in the best-government-money-can-buy system we have now, her credibility would be, shall we say, limited.

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You can poll as many voters as you like, but the reality is that until our elected representatives are held to task for this, nothing will change. In other words, stop voting Republican AND stop voting for anyone who does not want to change this corrupt system. Easier said than done, I know, as politicians will say anything to get elected. Vote for them once, if their true colors come out, vote for their opponent the next time! We do have solutions to this problem, but we need to get off our asses and actually vote for someone you believe will do some good in office.

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In my opinion, it is the single best thing we could do as a country. Nearly every political issue we face can be traced back to the enormous influence and money that flows into campaigns.

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LOL!

I should have written “…can be effective, except if Mark Penn’s involved.”

He did do well for the Clintons in 1996 (him) and 2000 (her), but 2008 was pretty bad.

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As long as voters believe Hillary Clinton is raking in Wall Street bucks (she is, isn’t she?), the Dems have no issue here. Can she overcome that hurdle?

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The catch-22 is how do Democrats mount a viable offensive against the campaign finance status quo without participating in it themselves? And if they participate in it, how do they convince voters of their intent to reform?

Bernie Sanders is the answer. Reading this, it almost seems tailor made to what his campaign is about…and why he is drawing FAR larger crowds than anyone on either side. People know he is the real deal.

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I don’t think that campaign finance reform will be a deciding factor in 2016. Why because republicans and democrats both want their nominee to win. We will ignore how they get their money as long as they get it.

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Indeed. What’s in a name? A lot that can kill you if you’re not careful.

What we don’t need is to patronize those blue collar voters.

Maybe Bernie Sanders will have an appeal.

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I’m friends with a lot of white working class guys, and I doubt this is going to get them to vote D. They’re already not very enamored of Republicans, but a lot of them see Democrats as the party that used to be in their corner, but now are “for the blacks.” No amount of campaign finance reform talk is going to change that. It’s also unlikely that one election cycle talking about “reform” is going to undo decades of talk radio indoctrination.

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What about an older white guy with a Brooklyn accent that is about as pro American worker as you can get?

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Alas, those guys became “Reagan Democrats”.
I was living in NJ when Wallace ran and collected the NJ’s EV vote.

The refrain was, "Them [n-word] is gettin’ too damn much for nuttin’ ".
They voted for Wallace as a protest. Others voted for Saint Ronnie who ran a racist campaign if ever there was one.

Ah yes, ah reemamhbahr eet well.

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“Soccer mom” has positive referents; “beer-track” does not.

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I’d like to see public finance but not exclusively public finance, skin in the game with a cap of 200.00 per candidate from any one person and very strict campaign finance laws for groups and complete transparency. Sadly it would take a different Supreme Court, until then elected politicians who spend 70% of their time fund-raising won’t have the time for reform. Why it’s not a priority for them I don’t know – if I spent 70% of my time scrubbing my own toilet or calling Ralph on the porcelain phone, finding a different way to do things would be a priority.
Unfortunately Democrats have little choice but to play on the field as it exists, not as they’d like it to be, but they can get some mileage by running on how they’d like it to be. They can start by introducing bills, now, to reform campaign finance, then when they have to run post-Citizen’s United and the GOP makes hay on their “hypocrisy” explain that Mama didn’t raise no fools and wave those pending and tabled bills at the cameras. Explain in no uncertain terms that Republicans are holding reform back and blocking those bills. Dare the GOP to address reform as well.
That’s about as much mileage as can be gotten beyond explaining that wealthy out-of-state people want to buy their local school board. Campaign finance reform will never be the deciding issue but can be one of a set of deciding issues for the current “displaced Democrat” base of the GOP. That base doesn’t consist of “Reagan Democrats” (who were middle-aged in 1980) but of declining numbers of their children who share their prejudice.
Like a lot of white Obama voters I was clueless that racism was and is as virulent as it turned out to be. I thought it was dead but it was only sleeping. Thing is it sleeps more and more these days, it’s getting old, even though it was quite active after retirement. Most of the emergent generation of white voters won’t care a whit about race. No guarantee it happens soon, because we also face the sad human fact that people are more likely to look for scapegoats than reasons for their problems. Larger than the problem of being perceived as just being for “those people” (race is a dying issue, too slow to see but it is) is being perceived as being “against success” for a crowd being told the American Dream is still possible (it is, barely) by the same right wing people who are killing it behind their backs.