In terms of the Presidential and Senate races, all the Citizens United money didn’t seem to have quite as big of an effect as many people thought it would. I believe that’s because:
a) They can flood battleground states with campaign advertising all they want, the people quickly tune it out.
b) It’s tougher to discourage the other side’s voters from showing up to presidential elections than for the midterm elections. I think conservatives tend to have an advantage in the midterms because they’re more unified and they skew older, but that advantage disappears during presidential elections.
c) Rick Perlstein recently penned an interesting essay about how some of the biggest movers and shakers in the conservative movement, the guys who are effective fundraisers and good at whipping up the base into a frenzy over the most ridiculous shit, are essentially grifters and snake oil salesmen (think Glenn Beck hawking gold and Sleep Number beds in between his insane conspiracy theorizing). After reading this, Paul Krugman wondered if maybe we were misunderstanding Karl Rove’s true agenda. I’m sure he would like a more conservative nation, but perhaps his primary interest is less about moving the conservative movement forward, and more about enriching himself from the money he attracts from the cranky, white plutocrats who are the primary drivers of the GOP. So even though the conservative movement is capable of generating lots of campaign contributions from people who are either unhinged or have been driven into a frenzy by the conservative echo chamber, that money is not necessarily going to be spent effectively, either because the grifters are skimming it, or because the wealthy cranks who have such outsized influence within the party are pushing an agenda that’s funamentally unpalatable to most of the electorate.
Antagonizing women and latinos is not a winning strategy.
We need legislation to create uniform standards for voting rights and procedures in this country, and take the authority away from the states. They can’t be trusted with it.
The Beltway pundits and media have uneqivocally demonstrated why the rest of America should ignore them until they whither up and die. Useless hacks all.
It wasn’t until around 2010/2011 that I finally realized that much of the anger and rhetoric directed towards President Obama had its foundation in simple racism. I knew there were racists out there, but I assumed for the most part that while many people had low levels of bigotry, they wouldn’t let that get in the way of principled opposition to a Democratic president. But then the signs at the Tea Party rallies started happening, then the dog whistles, and I just…I couldn’t believe that something as basic as racism could provide the foundation for so much of the obstruction and outrage we saw. I’m not saying racism drove everything and that there weren’t individuals with principled objections, but every time a Tea Party-type was called upon to be reasonable and evaluate Obama’s policies rationally, the fact that he’s black was always in the minus column.
Now in 2012, after possibly the most aggravating election season I’ve ever experienced, with conservative partisans asserting, with seemingly total confidence, that the polls were wrong and that Romney was going to win easily, with such wholesale rejection of any objective measure of the how the campaign was shaping up that I felt in my gut that every single conservative on this messageboard and on the internet had to be trolling… After all of that, to see such an outpouring of grief, and anger, and disappointment from the Right, after losing an election that it was PLAINLY OBVIOUS TO ME they were going to lose, I have to conclude that they genuinely believe the crap they say. People like Victoria Jackson actually believed that if they all just clapped loud enough they would win.
I’m not sure what the lesson is here, other than that the conservative movement is scary and I’m not sure if it can be compromised with.
I always thought it was dumb for the US to have voting laws in the hands of the States; it seems like such a clearly federal matter. Nonetheless I very much doubt it would ever change, as the moment anybody tries to then the other side will claim it’s Big Guvmint trying to steal your rights so it can give people gay paedophile-making pot.
It seems that it very clearly is not. Federalism, remember? That has been fundamental for 200+ years.
Lessons:
Brown is power. Boobs are power. Michelle has both characteristics, and is not to be messed with. The net is the great equalizer. Millions in ad time can be undone by one retweeted “The Emperor has no clothes!”
Exactly. Going online to evaluate the claims they make, or simply tuning them out, is a piece of cake.
That said, the Super PAC money isn’t going away. Right now there’s opportunity for ambitious grifters who can think of better ways of deploying all that money. The Sheldon Adelsons of the world will pay them handsomely.
The number one lesson everyone needs to learn is also been my number one rule in my sales career.
Don’t believe your own hype.
You need to be able to go out and cheerfully sell your new product as the best new thing EVER, then go behind closed doors and have honest discussions about all the problems with your new product and how best to fix and overcome them.
If your closed door sessions consist of your complaining about how, even though your new product is the best thing ever, your customers just don’t GET it so maybe you need smarter customers you are going to have big problems.
Note to self: Do NOT say that it’s a “gift from God” when a raped woman becomes pregnant.
OK, now that we’ve brought ourselves into the 18th century, we can start working our way into the 19th century. Lesson number one: Slavery is not good. Repeat after me: Slavery is not good.
It isn’t that fundamental. From Article I of the Constitution:
The Congress can’t do squat about how governors and state legislators are chosen, but it has every right to step in and regulate elections to the US Congress.
State poll averages are a pretty good guide to who will win the election.
Incumbent presidents are very hard to beat unless the economy is really bad or there is a massive gap in campaigning ability.
The ground game matters and the marriage of data analytics and early voting may have allowed Democrats in particular to get their base to turn out. However Republicans may use their governor edge to reduce early voting in swing states.
The conservative base is a major drag on the election prospects of Republican Senators in particular. They aren’t yet powerful enough to determine the Presidential candidate ; Romney was easily the most sensible choice and he won fairly comfortably in the end despite the base. And in the House the crazies can often win the general election comfortably anyway. But Senate races are right in the sweet spot, the primaries are small enough that the base can influence results but the general election electorate is broad enough that the crazies find it difficult to win. It has happened twice in a row and it will be interesting to watch how the Republican establishment reacts.
The first debate is a major danger area for an incumbent president. The president is rusty at debating compared to the challenger and the latter has a lot more to gain with a good performance. This has happened before but rarely as dramatically as this time. Future presidents will be wary of this and prepare much better so it will be interesting to see what happens in 2020.
That was a fascinating and really well-written article (Perlstein’s piece), but I must regretfully point out that this approach to fund raising is NOT exclusive to the right. Left-wing hucksters long ago glommed onto milking ardent leftists for their money as well. I am a total environmentalist from the word “go”. I have been a nature freak my entire life, a field ecologist for 20 years, and have worked for environmental non-profits, government agencies, and academia.
Once, when I was fresh out of high school in the early 1990’s, I went to work for an environmental NPO who would cart us off to all parts of the state (invariably, rich white neighborhoods), where groups of us would canvass for 10 hour days to raise money for the NPO. We were never told to push any particular environmental causes. This was, I became convinced, purely an effort to generate money for the sake of generating money. I came to find out that over 60% of the money raised went to overhead, and only a small fraction went toward actual environmental issues (which were never specified).
Oh, and we had to raise a certain threshold dollar amount per work day (not even per week. We had to be able to show a minimum amount raised every day before we got back to the office.)
I agree with many of your points, but wanted to highlight one in particular:
This has been a common theme for conservatives since William F. Buckley started the National Review: Many of them truly believe that issues are won or lost exclusively in the media, and that reality to a large extent is created from a common belief; call it a faith-based approach to media.
They believe the US lost the war in Vietnam because Walter Cronkite said we were losing. They believe economic recessions are “mental” and can be cured by boosting public confidence. Minor issues like flag lapel pins and who the president bows to are magnified for them because they over-emphasize the degree to which symbolism affects public opinion and hence reality.
Consider the conservative attitude toward the mainstream media and the rationale for Fox News and the rest of the right-wing echo chamber. IMO Liberals don’t hate Fox as much as they’re frustrated or bemused by the utter bullshit they spew, whereas conservative plainly distrust and express contempt for what they now commonly defined as a “Liberal” media, and what Rush Limbaugh refers to as the “drive-by media”. Note that they’re not talking about specific outlets like MSNBC or NPR, they mean the entire media complex outside of the conservative bubble. This difference in attitude exists because IMO the two sides approach media with different premises: Liberals believe the media should reflect reality, whereas conservatives believe it can shape it.