I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.
Nonsense. What I have clearly demonstrated is that her kind of political strategy can win even in a tough state, but if a state is too red (double digits red) it is unlikely to work. Do you have an example of a left wing candidate winning a Senate race in a deeply red state? Like, a single one? (As in, 21st century: not back when the parties were not clearly divided by ideology.)
You’re right. I think the stat I originally read must have said “the first since Eisenhower to get more than 51% of the vote” (which is true: Reagan got 50.7% in 1980), and I misremembered it as more than 50%. Anyway, we agree that Axelrod did something with Obama that no other modern Democratic strategist can claim credit for. And you’re right that it’s “the price of having activists in your coalition”. But we can still struggle to tamp them down a bit. (So far it seems to be working fairly well at least at the Democratic senator level, as Republicans are just begging Democrats to attack on religion and they are being disciplined, keeping it focused on Obamacare/ACA.)
This is similar to people saying it doesn’t matter if you vote, because your single vote is insignificant. But it is significant as part of a collective effort. And I’m joining McCaskill’s side on this, just like individual people join other efforts I might oppose (like attacking ACB in “Handmaid” terms). Heck, you spend your fair share of time on advocacy around American electoral politics even though you can’t vote here! So this just seems to boil down to your being dismissive of the efficacy of activism/advocacy for things you don’t so much support, but you’re all for it if you do support it. That’s not much of a standard.
She literally said “I’ve won some debates that I lost”. It was a perfectly good paraphrase.
This is politics, not civil service or a debating society. So I’m just empirical about these things: if that’s what voters want, we’d better give it to them, even if it’s dumb. Same as the fact that I’m personally an atheist, but if an avowed atheist ran in the Democratic primary, I’d campaign hard against them even if they were perfect in every way, because I know that’s just too hard a sell.
However, if I were to try to come up with a more high-minded rationale, I might say that having those “homespun” attributes helps people feel you are on their side and will represent them, their interests, and their culture in DC.
As the Senate Judiciary Committee considers Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, new Morning Consult/Politico polling shows support for her confirmation remains sturdy.
Forty-eight percent of registered voters in the Oct. 9-11 survey said the Senate should vote to confirm Barrett as a Supreme Court justice, up 2 percentage points from 46 percent in a poll one week ago, though inside the surveys’ 2-point margins of error. Thirty-one percent of voters said the Senate should vote down Barrett’s nomination, unchanged from the previous polling.
FWIW Morning Consult is not a conservative-skewing polling outfit like Rasmussen. I was disappointed to see these polling results (confirmed by other outfits) but they are what they are, so it’s not the best fight to have right now. We need to keep our eyes on the ball.