I don’t get that comment. Am I misreading you? The Nixon campaign didn’t want to “celebrate” the high turnout at all. They didn’t want a high turnout; they didn’t want a true referendum on the merits of the candidates. They wanted an electorate consisting only of the Right Sort of people. It’s anti-democratic, and verges on racist, and is actually pretty appalling, and although I had no particular respect for the campaign I would not have expected this. Live and learn, I guess.
I’m hoping it’s just an example of pissed-off people who hate to lose, and that in a few days they’ll recognize just how badly tthis comes across.
–As for reduced polling hours upstate, I’ve never understood why they do this for primaries and I don’t approve at all; but when you lose a statewide election by a margin of 2 to 1 and don’t come close to winning the upstate region, to bring it up as any kind of a reason for losing is frankly idiotic.
I didn’t read the full memo, just saw the quotes in the article, so I’d hesitate to read too much into the quoted statements. Looked to me like they were attributing the loss to the high turnout, and trying very hard to claim (however ludicrously) that Cuomo’s spending skewed the Dem primary voter proportions in some artificial and undemocratic way. Which, while a very stupid and confused claim, isn’t an actual condemnation of voter participation
I can’t find the entire memo, but political reporter Reid Wilson included some of it verbatim on Twitter.
Nixon truly shows herself to be awful, the worst type of so-called progressive. A lesson learned from the Sanders campaign: Blame the voters and find a conspiracy.
I’ll quibble a bit, but it’s a distinction without a real difference, so I concede, Bricker, that your statement is more true than my initial reaction, and that Ulf the Unwashed’s interpretation is more fair than mine was.
Reading the fuller quote, it seems a condemnation of the reasoning the campaign supposes those voters followed for voting the way they did, in support of a message pounded into their little voter brains through the “unconscionable influx in spending” from Cuomo’s campaign.
It’s a horribly insulting (to the voters) and counterproductive (to the goals of inclusivity and civic participation) statement of sour grapes. It also fails to acknowledge the basic judgement of competence such anti-Trump voters must have made as they chose which candidate had the most ability to “[stick] it to Trump.”
:dubious: I dunno, she was much less decisively rejected this time than the sitting member of Congress with deeper pockets. In addition, her campaign aims have been very ambitious, considering her lack of legislative background in the state assembly or some such, and AFAICT she’s done better in them than expected.
So maybe it’s not that she can’t win but that she needs to pick a more winnable race.
What, a political candidate wanted more of her voters to show up, and more of the other guy’s voters to stay home?
Well, knock me over with a feather!
Now actually **making it harder **for the ‘wrong’ people to vote - that would be a Big Fucking Deal, if it weren’t already happening in much of the country already. But you knew that.
Nixon, or at least her political team, knew that the only way to win the primary was in a low voter turnout. That’s how most of the primary upsets occur, such as AOC and David Brat.
If the electorate consisted mostly of patrons of vegan restaurants in Brooklyn, Nixon would have won easily. And, that would have not been impossible with New York’s screwy election laws and yet another primary held weirdly on a Thursday because of Rosh Hashanah and September 11. But Cuomo was able to push a larger turnout and thus Nixon’s hopes were crushed.