Will 2018 be too late?

Politics & Elections
81

Vote suppression can be applied very selectively. Insufficient voting machines, etc. can be applied on a precinct-by-precinct basis; the GOP has already used this tactic to force delays (of several hours in some cases) for voters at specific precincts in Ohio and elsewhere. Some restrictions can be applied on a county-by-county basis. And some suppression can be done on an individual basis — minor problems with ID (e.g. whether a middle name is spelled out or replaced with initial) are, by default, at the discretion of a local official.

Also there are many seemingly non-discriminatory suppression programs which do act against specific ethnic groups. For example, due to the peculiarities of surname distribution, voter harassment/suppression programs like Crosscheck are much more likely to victimize Blacks, Chinese and Hispanics than to victimize WASP’s. The GOP suppression measures have been very cunning — we could wish they would use their intelligence for good instead of evil — and will get even more blatant under the direction of Bannon and his ilk.

And many Dopers ignore that it is not necessary to make it impossible for a likely Democrat to vote. It is enough to make the registration or voting process sufficiently onerous. American elections are often very close, and even a smidgen of suppression or harassment is likely to swing the decision.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

About the claim that voters will reject the in-party if the economy doesn’t recover: Most Trump voters are doing OK financially; complaints about economic conditions are often stirred up by propaganda. For example, some of the biggest anger against illegal immigrants came from states with very few illegals! Trump will seek tax cuts, trickle-down government graft, and pumping up the stock market, creating at least a short-term illusion of prosperity. This needs low interest rates, so I expect to see major attempts by the Trump Administration to put a muzzle on the FRB (Chairman Yellen is almost 71). The resultant inflation will be billed as an unimportant price for making America Great Again.

82

This is what this thread was supposed to be about. Thank you for staying on track with that subject.

83

Septimus wrote: “And many Dopers ignore that it is not necessary to make it impossible for a likely Democrat to vote. It is enough to make the registration or voting process sufficiently onerous. American elections are often very close, and even a smidgen of suppression or harassment is likely to swing the decision.”

Why put an anvil on the scale when a thumb will do?

84

Based on my observations of my fellow Americans, most of them would probably do exactly that.

85

Yes, but there’s a fly in the ointment for the Dems in next year’s midterm, and it’s that the party as a whole, the label, such as it can be called, doesn’t appeal to “average” voters of the sort of swung to Trump in the last election, especially but not exclusively in the “rust belt” states, but everywhere, really.

Whenever I ponder the political landscape, which I know well as a 20th century guy, I have to give myself a wake up call: it ain’t what it used to be. People fed up with Washington in 1946: Had enough? Vote Republican? The GOP wins a Congress. A major recession year in 1958, the Dems win big in House and Senate, at near New Deal levels. Nixon and Watergate: yet another Dem victory. And so on, down the line.

But that was yesterday, and like the Beatles song said “…and yesterday’s gone”. The parties are configured totally differently today, with the South, such as it can be called, once solidly Democratic locally and congressionally, now the heart and soul of red state America. Low to moderate income Americans don’t really have a political party, like they once did, and the unions are a shadow of their former selves.

Cut to the chase: based on the aforementioned (and just for starters), the future of the Democratic party does not, to my eyes, look good. They have no center, whether of the ideological or the W.B. Yeats kind that cannot hold. It’s the same either way. Where are the ward bosses? The county chairmen? Unless I’m wrong (and I hope I am :)), the Dems simply don’t have the “troops” to really. Yes, they’ve got a lot of pissed of Millennials, half of whom will probably be if not Republican conservatives ten years from now, but that’s not enough.

Whenever I read an article of watch the talking heads on the news shows if the issue of Democratic party strength comes up it often as not boils down to,–aha!–a virtual itsunami of Youth, the elderly and soon to be elderly, women and minorities. This, as if you can add all these groups up and,–presto!–you’ve got a humungous victory. But it didn’t happen last November, and while I know that Hillary won the “actual vote”, the Republicans still own the House and Senate and Trump’s electoral college victory was huge. way, Hillary’s winning the popular vote was a pyrrhic victory, and the Dems make too much of it. If they’d done better in the congressional elections I’d say yes, it means something.

So, where are they, and more to the point who are the they who are going to give the Democrats the victory they need in next year’s midterm election? By this I mean not the number of disgruntled voters,–millions of them–but those who are going to lead them to the stunning victories they need in the House and the Senate. The organization isn’t there, and there’s still that power struggle between the True Left of Bernie and the neolibs that Hillary represents. Are these two warring factions even talking to one another? Is either side willing to compromise?

It’s still early now, I know, but unless a Big Idea or a Big Man (or woman) rises and gets people excited I just don’t see where the Democratic victory of 2018 is going to come from. The party has never, at the congressional level, recovered from the loss of the Solid South, Big Labor and big city political operatives. Those once reliable sources of power are gone now, or on life support, so even if there’s a lot of Hate Trump feeling out there this doesn’t necessarily translate into a Democratic bounceback.

86

Bernie did fold. He capitulated so hard to the old fool that it disconcerted his followers, not all of whom followed him to Canossa. The DNC manipulated Hillary so far in as the Only Candidate it was obvious they would never compromise. The most they could do was include some of his program into the manifesto, which Hillary wholly distrusted, since if she believed that stuff she would have included it in the first place.

Fortunately any manifesto is an advertisement and not a contract, and she could have completely ignored the progressive stuff once she had won.
If the Berniete left compromise again they might as well chuck in the towel and go completely over to the forces of darkness themselves.

87

True that Bernie folded, and at the time it looked like the pragmatic thing to do, and in a way it was. One can only guess what would have happened if Bernie and his followers had bolted the Dem part altogether and run on a liberal or, to be somewhat consistent as to history, progressive ticket. Progressives have a way of winning long term (often very long) even as they’ve always lost short term, as with TR and Henry Wallace.

TR’s progressive policies anticipated cousin Franklin’s by twenty years. That’s a long time, admittedly, but the Fair Deal became the New Deal, and many progressively inclined Republicans in Congress became for all intents and purposes FDR supporters when it came time to vote on legislation. The Henry Wallace people, well, that was a different kettle of fish, but LBJ’s Great Society more or less followed through with the Progressive platform.

If Bernie had run, and needless to say, he’d have run way to the left of Hillary and carried some blue states, maybe even beaten Hillary, as TR beat fellow Republican Taft, and came in second after Trump but ahead of HRC, what a moral victory that would have been! :wink: Yet even if he’d been in a dead heat with Hillary, and I think he could have realistically pulled that much off, would have signaled people on the Left that there is hope, have emboldened many young libs to run for political office in 2018.

88

Here you go:

North Carolina, the surgical precision state.