Democrats In The Wilderness

Robby Mook always struck me as an idiot. Now I know I was right.

 

What book s that from?

 

Just figured it out.

I read the NYT review...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/...s&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0

In fact, the portrait of the Clinton campaign that emerges from these pages is that of a Titanic-like disaster: an epic fail made up of a series of perverse and often avoidable missteps by an out-of-touch candidate and her strife-ridden staff that turned “a winnable race” into “another iceberg-seeking campaign ship.”

It’s the story of a wildly dysfunctional and “spirit-crushing” campaign that embraced a flawed strategy (based on flawed data) and that failed, repeatedly, to correct course. A passive-aggressive campaign that neglected to act on warning flares sent up by Democratic operatives on the ground in crucial swing states, and that ignored the advice of the candidate’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, and other Democratic Party elders, who argued that the campaign needed to work harder to persuade undecided and ambivalent voters (like working-class whites and millennials), instead of focusing so insistently on turning out core supporters.
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and, later, regarding Mook....

As described in “Shattered,” Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook — who centered the Clinton operation on data analytics (information about voters, given to him by number crunchers) as opposed to more old-fashioned methods of polling, knocking on doors and trying to persuade undecideds — made one strategic mistake after another, but was kept on by Clinton, despite her own misgivings.

“Mook had made the near-fatal mistakes of underestimating Sanders and investing almost nothing early in the back end of the primary calendar,” Parnes and Allen write, and the campaign seemed to learn little from Clinton’s early struggles. For instance, her loss in the Michigan primary in March highlighted the problems that would pursue her in the general election — populism was on the rise in the Rust Belt, and she was not connecting with working-class white voters — and yet it resulted in few palpable adjustments. Michigan, the authors add, also pointed up Mook’s failure to put enough organizers on the ground, and revealed that his data was a little too rosy, “meaning the campaign didn’t know Bernie was ahead.”

These problems were not corrected in the race against Trump. Allen and Parnes report that Donna Brazile, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, was worried in early October about the lack of ground forces in major swing states, and that Mook had “declined to use pollsters to track voter preferences in the final three weeks of the campaign,” despite pleas from advisers in crucial states.
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Yeah: ignoring people in the actual places where voters luve and vote. Good call, Data Guy.

 

More broadly this is a lesson Democrats should have learned going back to 2014 and beyond. You can't win when you fear the voters. In those mid terms you had a national pattern of Democratic candidates spending all their energy running from Obama's record. Instead of spending that energy in selling Obama's record. In the end they got wiped out anyways, and oddly enough Obama's approval record outperformed the party poor electoral results. This is what happens when you cower. Take Obamacare for example. When as a Democrat you dodge the issue you're basically creating a vacuum that is filled by the opposition's narrative. In other words you get the likes of Rush Limbaugh dictating the terms of the debate.

One of the things that made Obama a unique campaigner was the way he went boldly behind enemy lines. He felt at home in rural Iowa as much as inner city Chicago. Remember in 2012 that one of the biggest pillars of his campaign was going into Michigan and repeating this mantra : "We saved the auto industry. My opponent wanted to kill the auto industry" This was repeated thousands of times in TV ads, rallies, interviews etc .... Obama was proud of his manufacturing record and he had the data to back it up. Every year since 2009 added more jobs to the manufacturing sector.

To this day I'll never understand why Democrats decided to give up on manufacturing as a lost cause. This was simply not supported by the facts as manufacturing was surging in the Obama economy. If you can't even run on the good things your party is doing, then how do you expect the voters to reward you?

 

I'm not sure I understand.

It seems what Mook is arguing is that if she campaigns in Michigan, then Michigan voters are reminded of how much they hate her. So the best thing she can do is avoid Michigan. If he's right, and I presume he has the data to back it up, then it's plausible that if she had spent more time there, she would have lost Michigan by a wider margin, not won it.

(Of course, at any rate, it would have been better to send Springsteen, Michael Moore, Obama et al than to do nothing at all.)

As a reminder, if just 1 out of every 4 Jill Stein voters weren't complete fücking morons, she would have won the state.

 

so if you're anti-abortion, it means you can't be a Democrat. So says DNC leader Tom Perez.

Maybe the DNC should redo their election. Might be among the dumbest things I've ever heard.

 

In the state of Ohio, I cannot currently register, this very moment, for any political party. I can only declare at a Primary Election. This is a fairly recent innovation almost entirely BECAUSE of the establishment duopoly trying a number of legal means to keep third parties from reaching certain thresholds and/or making it onto ballots.

So no, not every single state. I doubt Ohio is alone.

 

It seems that the conversation was gallivanting rather breezily between the concept of registration and of party affiliation.

If I misread that, then fine, but you seemed to be suggesting that "becoming a Democrat", however it's done, is as easy as just saying so.

I will concede to the sloppy use of "register" in my initial response. It did, however, seem to fit the conversation (though I would never cast aspersions on the fastidiousness of Knave and his diction).

I'm aware of this. But I cannot change my affiliation like you want people to be able to do, and it's largely because of the apparatus already controlled by the establishment parties. I mean, are you really only talking about brand-new voters here? Those already registered don't matter?

Again, if I misread the entire conversation, then whatever. But it was my impression than you wanted those wanting to choose to affiliate with your party to have an easier time of it.

 

But one has no recourse until a subsequent primary. It also has the (totally intended) effect of making it nearly impossible (or actually impossible) to register with one of the other recognized parties, perpetuating your partisan paradise.

 

If I enter "Socialist Workers' Party" in that space, I can guaran-********ing-tee you that my party affiliation will not be that when I check the publicly-searchable rolls post-election.

Other links from the first link I posted covered the BoE official procedure for determining party affiliation, and none of them involve anything other than D or R.

 

That's a poor deflection. You know full well what I meant.

Of for ********'s sake.

Never ********ing mind.

 

You read it however you like. You were going to no matter what.

 

Yes Sir.

 

I'm finally considering a real signature, @Knave. I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

 

Have they won anything since he was out again?

 

I'll play Dumbshit's Advocate.

It sounds like one can only register as a turd party voter on primary day. But these parties tend not to have primaries. So you're asking a person to make a trip to a polling station just to change their party identification. That's silly.