Helen had it absolutely right in 2007: Obama raised expectations very high, and is crashing hard since those expectations have not yet been fulfilled. Sniping from the sidelines is really only the above-water part of the iceberg; the deeper and very real problem is that below the water line is a huge mass of voters who have returned to their position of alienation from the political process as a result of Obama's failures.
While we can and must debate the specific nature and reasons for those failures, as far as I can tell, it comes down to the economy. Most Americans do not feel any more secure or hopeful today than they did when they went to the polls in November 2008. In fact, the uneasy stability many Americans feel - at least those who were lucky enough to keep their jobs - is now in question as a double-dip recession and massive state and federal budget austerity looms.
I've seen this play out on the ground here on California's Central Coast. When Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger nominated Republican State Senator Abel Maldonado to become Lieutenant Governor (and he was confirmed by the state legislature in April), it opened up a seat here on the Central Coast. The two leading candidates were progressive Democrat John Laird, who used to represent Monterey and Santa Cruz in the State Assembly, and Sam Blakeslee, a Republican Assemblymember from San Luis Obispo. I did some work for the Laird campaign running its online operations during the two rounds of the special election held this summer.
The 15th State Senate district has a majority Democratic registration and Obama won it with a 20-point margin in November 2008. Nevertheless, on August 17, the Republican, Blakeslee, won the seat by a 4-point margin.
What happened? Arnold Schwarzenegger and Meg Whitman (the Republican candidate for governor, who is much further to the right than Arnold) both played major roles in depressing Democratic turnout. Arnold picked a summer special election date to fill the seat, which usually means lower Democratic turnout. Whitman, who is quietly building a significant field operation across California, used the race to test-drive that operation as well as to beat back Democratic efforts to win a 2/3 majority in the State Senate.
They were aided by widespread alienation, frustration, and anger among Democratic voters. Volunteers that were calling regular Democratic voters encountered hostility among these voters, who didn't want to hear about the special election but wanted to complain or vent about other issues, mostly having to do with Congress or Obama. It was very difficult to get them to focus on this race, even when we reminded them that Laird had served them well as a popular Assemblymember from 2002 to 2008.
These are the types of voters that Democrats need to win in November - and these are the types of voters who have already reached their verdict on the first two years of the Obama administration. They're unhappy, and with good reason. The disappointment is palpable and legitimate. And folks have a hard time hiding from those authentic feelings, and so some choose to share them, while others just check out.
I see that Drew Westen put this better than I just did, but hopefully my comments have been edifying. And the world will live as one
To say that the American people are angry is an understatement. The political brain of Americans today reflects a volatile mixture of fear and fury, and when you mix those together, you get an explosion. The only question at this point is how to mitigate the damage when the bomb detonates in November.The bad news is that it's too late for Democrats to do what would have been both good policy and good politics (and what the House actually did do), namely to pass a major jobs bill when it was clear that the private sector couldn't keep Americans employed. The "Obama Doctrine" should have been that Americans who want to work and have the ability to contribute to our productivity as a nation should have the right to work, and that if the private sector can't meet the demand for jobs, we have plenty of roads and bridges to fix, new energy sources to develop and manufacture, and schools to build and renovate so our kids and workers returning for training can compete in the 21st century global economy. From having spent much of the last four years testing messages on a range of issues, from immigration to taxes and deficits, I can say with some certainty that nothing John Boehner or Eric Cantor could say could come within 30 points of generating the enthusiasm -- particularly among swing voters -- of a message that began, "We don't have a shortage of work ethic in this country, we have a shortage of work." That message resonates across the political spectrum. And it isn't even the strongest message we've tested in the last weeks or months that beats back the toughest deficit-cutting language the other side can muster. (Emphasis added)
Pete Peterson, Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein would take severe umbrage were Obama to take such a tone. Unfortunately for Obama, they have already taken umbrage at MUCH less aggressive comments from the WH, so he is well on his way to alienating everyone. The best hope is that he will become Secretary-General of the UN, President of the World Bank or Managing Director the IMF in or shortly after 2012. Given the footprint of the USA, that might be a mercy to all and a salve to Obama's ego.
The great mass of people are desperate for a hopeful alternative and are rejecting the standard diet of bad choices that establishment politics has on offer. A third party campaign that started in Dec. 2010 with such a platform and a stated intent to caucus with the Democrats, but on their own terms, could become an irresistible force by the summer of 2012. Meanwhile, it could make the whole edifice and brand of Mainstream Economics toxic in the public sphere.
As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
What would be the biggest, most obvious obstacles? -Money -A mind-boggling media assault labeling the whole thing political terrorism, with a generous helping of "They'll kill what remains of our economy" thrown in. - the very real risk of another Robert Kennedy event.
That said, I'd work for that campaign, as long as the candidate wasn't a bible-waving fundamentalist dingbat or a Beckwit. Note that the slogan is not incompatible with some pretty unsavory candidates. Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.
. . . the deeper and very real problem is that below the water line is a huge mass of voters who have returned to their position of alienation from the political process as a result of Obama's failures.
Why is greatre popular enlightenment on the political process a problem? Voters are pushed again up against the hard truth: it's a pay to play system and those who can't pay are chumps. Only moving forward after first understanding that reality, voters and former voters now need to work out how they're gonna change the political process so it actually becomes reasonably democratic. I don't think anyone actually has any idea how citizens are gonna do that 'within the political process', but I'm just sayin'. . . . fairleft
The GOP has managed to capture and stoke the anger of their base. The Dems are woefully out of touch with their base and haven't.
The current crop of Dem pols have forgotten, if they ever knew, how to do retail (precinct) politics. Until they get over themselves they won't learn.
Obama showed that another way was possible, but as we now know without any doubt, he was never committed to the grassroots-supported model of political campaigns. And in return, the grassroots is starting to desert him. Even OFA (Organizing For America, the remnant of the 2008 Obama For America campaign organization that was absorbed into the DNC after the election) has seen a huge dropoff on the number of volunteers it gets for its activities and a big unsubscribe rate in its emails (they used to have a list of 13 million, but I'd be surprised if they get 1 million people regularly reading what they send out).
And that's because Obama revealed himself to be an acolyte of Reagan and Clinton, someone who believes deeply in the righteousness of the elite and who disdains populist concerns. Hopefully the wreckage of the November 2010 elections can become creative destruction instead of plain old destruction, and fuel some better and smarter progressive activism. And the world will live as one
Wikileaking will not stop the war in Afghanistan; truth telling and punditeering can play only an antiwar support role. They are supposed to support a robust antiwar movement, by a citizenry angry about its young men and women getting killed for no reason, angry about killing Afghanistan civilians for no good reason, angry about wasting half a trillion dollars a year on military imperialism when that money needs to be spent at home, and then expressing that anger massively and in ways that cannot be ignored.
http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2010/8/24/14490/3940 fairleft
Right there is everything that's wrong with the Democratic Party.
When people are alienated, frustrated, and angry they don't give a flying fart about some goddamn election. They want to be valued; they want to be valued as a person, as someone who matters. THEN they want to see action based on their concerns.
Are any of these people being called back by someone who will listen and then can and will actually do something? Of course not. And that means every single one of those people who were called have just been given Real World evidence they don't matter. Their concerns don't matter. They might as well jump off a cliff as expect anybody in the Party to care about them, what they think, or what they are going through. John Laird, no matter what he has done, has now, by association, been appraised by a goodly number of the people who were called as someone who thinks they don't matter, their concerns don't matter, and they might as well jump off a cliff as expect him to care about them.
Laird's staff needs to prep him for those meetings/calls by constructing a Farley File. Cold calling won't do much good and could easily do him a great deal of harm; after all, those people have already "told" him stuff and he needs to address their issues to stop the rot not what he thinks their issues should be.
If that makes any sense.
Truman turned out to be the dweeb.
LOL
An expense accounter, who brings in important clients or partners to a restaurant, loves to be greeted with a detail that shows he is a 'regular' and thus has 'clout'.
I fall for it myself - even when alone. You can't be me, I'm taken
The fact is: you can't remember everything you'd like to remember. A Farley File is everything you'd like to remember about a person, but can't.
It's not the tool, it's the intent of the person using it.
The problem is that in a State Senate district with 900,000 people, it's not easy to make that clear to a mass audience. He was out there at numerous public events and when he was able to talk directly to voters, it made a big difference - turnout was up between the June 22 primary and the August 17 general elections and the places it was up was where Laird was able to get to people one-on-one.
However, the campaign never quite had the funding it needed, and when it did, before June 22, the campaign managers chose to listen to the paid consultant who argued that voters should be scared into voting against Blakeslee because he supports offshore oil drilling. It didn't quite work, and after June 22 we developed some of our own messaging that was more targeted to voter concerns about education and jobs - but we lacked the funding to do a big TV ad buy (which I know isn't the same as directly connecting with voters, but it'd have helped).
I've never thought much of phonebanking, and though it worked well in the fall of 2008, you've identified a big drawback - it doesn't work when voters are feeling alienated, as the act of having volunteers call on your behalf reinforces the alienation (whereas in 2008 it reinforced the notion of a popular movement to elect Obama). I'm not sure what the tactical method of implementing a better method of voter contact would be - that's not to dismiss your point at all, only to say that operationalizing it is easier said than done.
This is one reason why Democrats, especially progressives, struggle. California's State Senate seats have more population than a Congressional seat (900K for State Senate, 800K for Congress). This seat in particular is about 250 miles long and spread out over five large counties, making direct voter contact extremely difficult.
In this race that was exacerbated by the fact that the Republican candidate had about a 3-1 funding advantage, with large corporations spending a lot of money on negative TV ads casting Laird as a tax-raising zealot, and with Meg Whitman behind the scenes spending a lot of money to organize a field campaign that dwarfed what the Democrats had to offer.
Again, none of those points are intended as excuses, but instead as laying out the known obstacles. If a progressive movement is going to succeed, it'll have to figure out how to overcome those obstacles. So far that hasn't been done. And the world will live as one
Meta-Carrot: building a grassroots/retail political organization has two benefits for Your Guy:
You can't make it clear to a mass audience during a campaign. You can't make it clear to a mass audience, in a mass, period. Remember, a "mass" is made-up of individuals and the whole point of precinct politics is to build The Mass Bottom/Up. The payoff for the work is the campaign when you can use Top/Down effectively.
The Top/Down payoff when 10,000 people show up at a Laird speech that the local media has to cover. That media is not only good publicity it's publicity you don't have to pay for. And it's media - if the speech writers know their job - that has the sound bites that persuade people to get out and vote for him if the staff has done their homework using the information they've collected from the Bottom/Up operation.
However, the campaign never quite had the funding it needed, and when it did, before June 22, the campaign managers chose to listen to the paid consultant who argued that voters should be scared into voting against Blakeslee because he supports offshore oil drilling.
Paid consultants have two inter-related major drawbacks:
1. They don't know the district in their guts the way a local op does (should)
Thus:
2. They want a lot of money to tell you how to run a generic campaign they know how to run instead of the local campaign you should be running
In your After Action Assessment -- you did do one of those, right? -- you need to carefully look at what the consultant(s) cost in total versus what you bought with that money and then ask yourself if it was worth it. In short, did the advice and actions based on that advice matter a hill of beans. It may have. I don't know. Also ask if there were other, cheaper, ways to Get the Same Result. May be, may be not, I don't know. But if you haven't gone through this you don't know, either. (that's the generic "you" :-)
You did have a Thank You Party for the volunteers with Laird doing a one-on-one, however brief, I hope. If not. Do It. Spend the couple of hundred bucks for hot dogs and beer. Have someone talking down notes to be put in each of their Farley File entry -- you have one, right?
The volunteers who cared enough to come in and make those bloody calls comprise the initial 'hack' at your precinct and other low level operators. This group needs to be qualified, sieving out the wheat, and then 'brought in,' in some manner into the organization and the Meet-and-Greet at the Thank You is the first step of that process.
Second, the call sheets are a Gold Mine of information and data about his district. It's a laborious PITA to go through and wring it all out but it's well worth it.
That's fucked-up but that's the hand you're dealt. That's also why Your Guy has to start campaigning for the next election now when the time pressure is weaker than during the campaign season.
Despite the CW: people aren't stupid. They know government costs money; they - quite rightfully - object to paying for it while the Big People don't. Now you know the attack. They will use next time. It worked this time, after all. In those call sheets you've got some district specifics to use. Maybe. Won't know until you look at 'em.
From here it looks like the GOP max'ed their vote and Dems didn't bother to turn up. Mostly impossible to get people all twitterpatted about voting for a generic Democrat; it's very possible to get them excited about John Laird. Local issues trump national issues IF there is an organization capable of effectively using 'em.
Again, none of those points are intended as excuses, but instead as laying out the known obstacles. If a progressive movement is going to succeed, it'll have to figure out how to overcome those obstacles. So far that hasn't been done.
Progressive movement hasn't been willing to do the slow slogging grunt work and raise the cash required. They want to show-up 3 months before the election and have everything go their way. Doesn't work like that. Bernie Sanders was elected to the House and then as a Senator in a formerly solid GOP state because he spent 30 years on the "rubber chicken circuit" going around talking and listening to people. People knew Bernie so when it came down to it the GOP attacks couldn't get traction. "He may be an independent Socialist ... but he's our independent Socialist!"
Speaking of that, Your Guy could learn a lot from Sanders by studying How He Do'ed It, the guy himself, or both.
There are lots of ways to go about getting a better candidate. In many places it is possible for a progressive to be a successful candidate as a Democrat, and that should be pursued, probably as the first option at this time. In many places there are third parties who qualify for state or federal funding under current rules, if these have not been totally thrown out. A solid third party candidate can put significant pressure on a major party candidate and this can be used in lots of ways. But just having built a progressive infrastructure would be a big step forward. Next time that infrastructure could be instrumental in getting a progressive as the major party candidate. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
Realistically, there's thousands of people out there who know, more better than I, what needs to be done and how to do it. Before Obama wrecked it Dean's 50 State Strategy was the framework for a national implementation.
The knowledge is out there and has been for a long time. In 1946, for example, Heinlein - yup THAT Heinlein - wrote a book Take Back Your Government based on his experience in EPIC laying it all out -- as I recall, haven't read it in donkey's years.
All I'm doing is throwing pop bottles out of the left center field bleachers at the on-field players, like Montereyan, whom I'm sure already knows it.
Realistically, there's thousands of people out there who know, more better than I, what needs to be done and how to do it.
Like these folks.
It pains me to think of where we might be now had the knowledge of the '30s-era activists, or even the '60s and '70s-era folks, been the dominant skillset among the political class. But it isn't, the '90s saw a huge shift toward corporate neoliberalism, and so we have to reclaim that knowledge from the past and relearn those skills ourselves.
I count myself among the latter group - the influx of activists. Until 2008 I was just a blogger. At that time I saw an opportunity to do more than just write, but to actually try and implement change on the ground. I've been lucky enough to find full-time employment at doing so, but everything we do is still too deeply rooted in the '90s model I just described, and not rooted enough in the successful models you've been articulating here.
As progressives start looking around for solutions after the coming disaster on November 2, what you've laid out here ought to be a central part of the discussion. And the world will live as one
What about hooking up with the Santa Cruz people: Gary Patton, Michael Rotkin, and Katherine Beiers?
Maybe we should take this discussion offline? My email's right next to my username. And the world will live as one
I wasn't at the center of the campaign, but have been on very good terms with the candidate since well before this race, and I'm going to send this along to him. I know he will find it very interesting.
Overall I think one reason this sort of thing is not usually done in California - though it should be - is that over the last 10 years in particular, seats have become extremely safe for one party or the other. Laird won the 2002 Democratic primary in the Assembly district and cruised to victory that November, and was easily re-elected in 2004 and 2006. This is the usual way of things for races in California, and combined with the large size of districts as well as the '90s philosophy of "you don't do retail politics" leads most candidates for state legislature or Congress to turn to consultants and TV ads. But in a race where neither party had the obvious advantage, the Republicans exposed the hollowness of this "strategy" that CA Dems have embraced for way too long now.
I'm not a fan of most consultants, and after the first round on June 22, they weren't part of the campaign any more and the vote totals increased for the August 17 general election. Laird might be in a mood to embrace this more sensible long-term kind of thinking, as you have laid out here, especially in its ability to build a longer-lived progressive movement. He was part of similar efforts that were launched and had lasting success in Santa Cruz in the 1980s, but it wasn't tended to after about the mid-90s, as I understand it.
In any case, this whole discussion has been extremely valuable and enlightening. I think you've hit on a central failure of progressive organizing, at a time when we need to sketch out what newer and better tactics would look like. And the world will live as one
They were aided by widespread alienation, frustration, and anger among Democratic voters.
Perhaps they felt like this:
