And neither of us have any data on whether or not a plan to transition in a licensing requirement for current gun owners who do not make any additional purchases would cross a huge line from the solid support seen for all additional purchases to complete must vote against no matter what else is on the table opposition.
You think huge numbers of swingables would spit at that flag if run up a pole in Peoria. In the absence of any data other than what I’ve seem my WAG is that those who would are a strong overlap with those who are in the thirdish who are already Trump no matter what.
But at least you can acknowledge that support of licensing before new purchases would not result in a huge number of votes lost from a D nominee to Trump … that judging by those who support that position it is not only mainstream, it would place center Right.
Gun control/rights is not likely to be the make or break issue this cycle but a D nominee risks more at this point by being to the Right of that center on this than by being a bit to the Left of it. It is not a third rail issue.
What’s interesting about 2016 is that Trump was seriously out-raised by Clinton, and yet it never seemed to matter. One factor that has changed is that people are increasingly getting their news online, so the old strategy of clogging up the airwaves with ad time is no longer a strategy to bank on; it’s more about social media and YouTube ads these days. The funding is probably still important in terms of hiring people who can coordinate the grassroots organizing, phone banking, and going house to house, but communication strategies are more complex.
That’s not that interesting. There’s lots of races where the biggest spender does not equal the winner. From what I recall, in most elections you need a certain amount to be competitive but above that there is a strong drop off in marginal benefit.
What does the primary calendar have to do with anything? The claim is that we should support O’Rourke in the primaries, because he would be strong in the general, because he has a good ground game. It’s his ground game in the general that’s relevant.
Your objection was pretty silly though. He can’t visit every county in America so the fact that he visited every county in Texas doesn’t mean much? He obviously demonstrated great willingness and stamina in his ground game, you’re discounting that because America is bigger than Texas?
I don’t like him as the nominee but you can’t deny he’s probably near top of the pack in the “spirited campaigner” column.
Guys, a ‘ground game’ isn’t about how much of the country a candidate can visit. ‘Ground game’ in politics means their organization and volunteers at the local level. I don’t care how much Beto gets around, that doesn’t say anything at all about the ground game he might have if he was the nominee.
My point is that a nationwide ground game works in an entirely different way from a statewide one. In a statewide ground game, the candidate personally can make a much bigger difference, and get directly involved at a much lower level. A national ground game must necessarily be much more hierarchical. O’Rourke might be better than average at that national sort of ground game, or he might not be: We can’t determine that just from his performance in Texas.
In fact, the Presidential ground game is likely to be largely independent of who the nominee is: The Ohio ground game is going to be run by Ohioans and the Texas ground game is going to be run by Texans and so on. The biggest decision the candidate at the top is likely to have is to how to allocate limited resources between the different states, and that’s something that you can’t demonstrate running for statewide office.
It’s encouraging. Problem being that it might make things even tougher in the Senate, where MT/ID/WY/ND/SD/NE/KS/IA/MO/AR/LA/AK own one-fourth of the seats. Democrats used to be competitive in several of those states.
I can. Look, the issue is that most gun owners think (correctly) that they are one of the “good guys” , not a “bad hombre”. So, any law that would take away the guns they already own- that wouldnt play. Now, making it more difficult for* other people* - some of which are “bad hombres”- to buy a gun- that’s not so bad.
Like I said, there are around 70 million adult registered voter gun owners in this nation- more people than voted for either trump or Hillary. Many of them are quite moderate on gun control. The Dems have lost the 5 Million NRA voters, sure.
But we cant risk those other 65 million.
So yeah, a Dem candidate can very well be left of center on gun control- ban assault weapons, bump stocks, etc- that’s fine. But you cant be in favor of anything that would take the guns away from those other 65 million.
Back to the race itself, I had a thought earlier today, and that thought is that I am increasingly bullish on Elizabeth Warren. She obviously has her vulnerabilities, but I think she might be running the best campaign out of everyone in the race. She’s positioned herself to be more progressive the Joe Biden, more authentic than Kamala Harris, more experienced than Pete Buttigieg, and more practical and realistic than Bernie Sanders. Yes, she gets wonky, but she also radiates passion.
Obviously a long way to go yet. We’re still maybe in the first or second inning of a very long ball game, but she’s off to a good start I’d say.
Problem with making it a State issue is that we have open borders between States. Here in Chicago, we have some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, but it doesn’t mean jack shit, because we literally border Indiana, where anything goes.
My completely unscientific skimming of the hypothetical general election polls reveals a positive trend for Warren in the last month or so. Earlier in the summer, she and Buttigieg were consistently polling as the weakest of the major Democratic candidates against Trump. But recently, Warren seems to have moved into the middle of the pack in that regard (still behind Biden and Sanders, though), while Harris seems to have become the least electable-looking of the major candidates. I applaud this trend.
I’d agree that she is running the best campaign in the race. While Sanders is stagnant to dropping she is fairly consistently rising. She may not have his solid floor but she also does not seem to be constrained by the same ceiling. She is reaching out beyond the “progressive” corner.
Still not so sure that the game is only in the first or second inning. Her success at this point depends on Biden self-destructing … something that is not an impossibility but not something under her control no matter how well she runs her campaign. Her winning either Iowa of NH without that is very improbable, and her going into Super Tuesday without a win in at least one of those is doom for her.
It also has to be noted that she has not had to weather any attacks yet herself. She may avoid them for quite a while as she is refraining from making any too nasty herself … but as some point it will happen and that will be a real test. If she can weather such then she may actually be the right stuff.
I live in Massachusetts, and while I really like Warren, her lack of ability to project personality and charisma really worry me. When a politician has a ton of passion but doesn’t have natural charisma, they really have to stick to what they’re passionate about or they lose appeal. I think a big reason the whole Native American thing hit her so hard is that she isn’t good at appearing composed and relatable when she isn’t talking about something that she’s passionate about. When the GOP tried to pin random crap like this to Obama (like the Bill Ayers connection) he easily made them look foolish and himself look composed and unconcerned.
The main thing that worries me is that September and October in a presidential race are always about the dumbest thing they could be about. If it’s not about the Native American “scandal” it will be about something even more irrelevant, and she’s going to come off looking insincere because if her audience doesn’t want to hear her student debt plan she doesn’t know how to connect with them. She needs to really have good messaging and not let anything get her off her policy talking points.
I don’t think the primary is going to get ugly enough that anyone is going to try to drag her into the mud in the way that Trump would. Also I think Democrats might not be attacking her on policy because they know she will completely outclass them. The charisma factor will still be relevant because she just has so much less name recognition than Biden and Sanders and really needs to make up ground to stick in people’s minds.