General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Keith Ellison: [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)by WE, I meant Democrats. I also meant you and I, because there's not really that much we disagree about and there's no reason for any bad blood between us.
And I did work for Hillary in the fall. I volunteered for three months at the Democratic office in Olympia(I could even get someone to vouch for me if it's that important to you), phoning people, block-walking, putting together handouts, whatever was needed.. I wanted her to win as much as you did. I grieve the result as much as you do. Why do you still refuse to believe that?
I spoke to actual voters all the time. Over and over again, the people I spoke with, in person, on the phone and on line, mentioned trade. They also said they thought Hillary was more likely to get us into war than Trump(I fought like hell to persuade them otherwise, but I didn't have a hell of a lot to work with. People vote on the issues that affect them. Trade affects them. Yes Trump said NAFTA, but he also said TPP and trade deals in general, and he pledged to kill TPP. His doing that is the only non-psychotic thing the man is ever likely to do as president.
Of course we need to speak out against racism and all forms of institutional bigotry, and LOUDLY-but that isn't the only issue and speaking out racism by itself, important as it is, can't ever turn this year's defeat into victory in future victory.
If we assume we only lost because of racism or irrational hatred of Hillary, it's over for us forever. There's no way for us, based on that assumption, to ever increase our support, to ever increase turnout, and to ever win another election. There simply won't ever be any significant increase in the numbers of voters any group in our current demographics, no matter what. We need to turn nonvoters into voters, and that means finding some way of connecting with the poor and the alienated-not racists, not Hillary-haters(Hillary will never run again, so nobody's feelings about her are going to matter anymore), not zealots, but people whose votes we SHOULD be receing yet don't manage to somehow.
As to tv ads...of course they aren't an entire campaign...but they are important-especially if the press aren't covering our candidates' speeches, as often happened with Hillary. Ads are one way to connect with people. Would you at least agree that it was a mistake to focus the vast majority of the Clinton-Kaine ads on calling out Trump as a scumbag?
BTW, I'm part of the Knock Every Door group, which is devoted to turning out voters. Most of the work I did in the fall campaign was about voter turnout. I care about turnout as much as you do and work to cause it as much as you do.
ALL I'm saying is we can't increase turnout WITHOUT actually proposing ideas to help people, which are what policies are.
If policies didn't matter, we wouldn't bother drafting a platform.
It's not possible to increase turnout simply by focusing on the ground game for the SAKE of the ground game OR simply by shouting "we're against bigotry".
There's no non-policy way to connect with people.
I'm just trying to get us elected in 2018 and 2020.
It's impossible to do that by running a "bring back the Obama years" campaign.
Democrats have never regained power after any defeat by promising to return to the past.