When I said relatively small districts, I was very unclear. I really meant that a house district in general is really small within the political universe.
I don’t live in AOC’s district, but I lived a few blocks from the border at the time she was elected to her first term. Frankly, she got it because she’s talented and Crowley got lazy.
But she had an advantage that’s unique to DEEP blue or red areas. Her seat was secured in the primary. Her district never elects Republicans. There was a name on the Republican ticket opposite her in Nov 2018, but he didn’t even file the papers to fundraise.*
Her first race was in a super-low turnout election, the primary in a mid-term year, and that made it way easier the first time.
*I know that the Republicans ran an actual campaign against her this year, but I don’t think her opponent stood a chance. I think it was more about making her spend money to counter it, money she would’ve otherwise given to other candidates.
"Atwater explained that the “Southern strategy” of the 1970s included, in his view, coded racism, but that there was no racial element in Reagan’s 1980 campaign:
So what you have is two things happening that totally washed away the Southern strategy, the Harry Dent type Southern strategy, and that is, that whole strategy was based, although it was more sophisticated than a Bilbo or a George Wallace, it was nevertheless based on coded racism. The whole thing, busing, we want a Supreme Court judge that won’t have busing, anything you look at can be traced back to the issue [of race], in the old southern strategy. It was not done in a blatantly discriminatory way.
But Reagan did not have to do a southern strategy for two reasons. Number one, race was was not a dominant issue. And number two, the mainstream issues in this campaign had been, quote, southern issues since way back in the sixties. So Reagan goes out and campaigns on the issues of economics and of national defense. The whole campaign was devoid of any kind of racism, any kind of reference. And I’ll tell you another thing you all need to think about, that even surprised me, is the lack of interest, really, the lack of knowledge right now in the South among white voters about the Voting Rights Act.
So the central point that Atwater made in the interview was the exact opposite of the proposition for which liberals have endlessly quoted him."
Nothing easy at all about it. But it wasn’t the general election that was hard. She had to do all her work in the primary. And, while Crowley may have been lazy, he was definitely the Goliath to her David and no simple task to pick him off as a 20-year incumbent with lots of money, backing of his party and the machine in place to get elected.
The fact is most districts are “safe” districts be they red or blue with only a relative few in the purple category. They are very purposely Gerrymandered to be so. The danger for most congress-people is getting primaried. AOC can be picked off the same as she did to Crowley. Same as the Tea Party did repeatedly to not-red-enough congress-people.
Your article, from noted bastion of truth “powerlineblog”, is an excellent refutation of the claim that Reagan, by way of Atwater, used coded racism in his campaigning. Had anybody made that claim in this thread, you would have one HELL of a gotcha.
However, the claim made was that Republicans have historically used coded racism, which is exactly what Atwater was talking about. Describing its ACTUAL use, then saying that Reagan had not had to use it. The entirety of your “rebuttal” is about the 1980 campaign, and exactly what does that have to do with anything, at all, in this thread?
My point was that that famous paragraph is taken out of context, to know what the fuck Atwater was talking about you have to read or listen to the whole thing.
Which actually, no one should do, as Atwater was promised it would never be made public or his name given out.
But journalistic integrity I guess is worth nothing when the widow figures she can make a quick buck.
And altho “powerlineblog” may or may not be a “bastion of truth” they at least quoted more than that one paragraph, which has been quoted endlessly and …every… single… fucking… time out of context.
So, the whole interview is interesting and that one paragraph doesnt give it justice.
I think Biden and the democrats are damn lucky there wasnt another candidate like Ralph Nader and the Greens were in 2000. Ross Perot might have cost Bush re election in 1992. As I understand it Bernie Sanders had some pressure to run as an independent.
Biden won only by a thin margin. If just a few percentage points had gone to a 3rd party candidate in some key areas it might have cost him the election.
Modhat: @HMS_Irruncible & @Whack-a-Mole. Stop fighting each other. Attack the post and the poster. Don’t continue this here. You can take it to the Pit if you want.
Remember: this is not a warning. Just trying to avoid them in fact.
3rd party candidates are always spoilers for one side or another. Your two examples of Perot and Nader show that well.
Indeed, often the opposing party will help fund a third party candidate that will split the other side’s ticket.
There was (as there always is these days) other presidential candidates out there. There was a Libertarian Party and Green Party on the ballot. Some others in some states.
Neither would have changed the outcome had they not been on the ballot. (1.7 million votes for Libertarian which probably would have gone to Trump and 340,000 votes for Green which probably would have gone to Biden).
I dunno…maybe with the really close states those Libertarian votes might have made a difference but I am not seeing any easy to find numbers on that (doubtless those numbers are out there but I don’t feel like digging that hard for them right now).
Seriously? Because people rightly or wrongly make the assumption that ALL Democrats are reading from the same playbook. So even though Nancy Pelosi isn’t advocating to “Defund the Police”, when local city/county/state politicians and affiliated activists are, or aren’t repudiating the message in a similar way or with similar intensity as the other politicians in the party, people read that in the following ways:
Since they’re all not reading from the same playbook, it means that the party either doesn’t have a position, or that their real position is probably in between somewhere. And when the extremes are basically to literally defund the police, or some variant on “Well, we don’t really want to literally defund the police, just move the money away from coercive policing and the militarization of the police into more community building and mental health initiatives”, somewhere in between essentially translates into qualified support.
The Democrats are weak and scattered. If they can’t even get their party together to sing in harmony on such an important issue, how ineffectual are they going to be if elected?
Hell, the very fact that we’re having this argument shows that the party is fractured and essentially a loose coalition of groups with aims counter to the GOP’s, as opposed to a party with a clear, coherent and unified message at all levels.
The Democratic party really needs to take a page from the GOP- they need everyone in the choir singing from the same song in the same hymnal, with one organist, and maybe one soloist, who even at that is improvising and riffing on the same song. You can’t let the aims and goals of the party be some sort of crowdsourced mess composed of Bernie Bros on one end, and disaffected Republicans on the other- that projects weakness, indecisiveness and general wishy-washiness.
I’m sure that Fascists, Communists, and authoritarians of all kinds would heartily agree with you. Everyone should do and say exactly what they are told by the Dear Leader, and not dare think for themselves. The Party will tell you what you think and say.
However, that’s exactly the opposite of everything that Liberals and Progressives stand for.
Not the mention the Reagan campaign was famous for dog whistles. They started it in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a town associated with the Freedom Summer Murders, and talked about “States Rights”.
Have YOU ever heard one? Can any poster here on this MB, point to something and say there was a hidden message there, that only the true believers understood?
We have done this before and surprise, surprise, surprise - no one, not lefty or righty has even heard one- but everyone can point to a ‘hidden message’ they heard in the other sides speech.
So if I give a speech with a hidden message for my faithful, but they cant hear or understand it, but the opposition says they heard it perfectly - something is wrong. Oddly, both the left and the right accuse the other side of using them- but they wont admit that they do- only the other side does.
If there are 'dog whistles" it is odd that only the un-intended audience can detect them.
