November 20, 2016

My Lightbulb Moment: It's less important to know how we lost; more important to learn how they won.

Not by realizing that we Democrats are right from all kinds of angles, which I call the culture wars; not by being on the right side of history, which we are; not by arguing the popular vote should now take precedence over the electoral college numbers, which we can now pursue.

I realize how they won. It came down to simple math and the software, Crosscheck. Thank you, Botany, for bringing this to DU's attention a few days ago. It simply can't be ignored.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512611017

A software system called Crosscheck, used by Republican governors and their Secretaries of Election, determined the margins of Republican losses across a bunch of red states.

Then, this is how the Crosscheck system helped Trump win.

Of course, those three example states were not the only ones who used the software. Crosscheck noted the GOP presidential election loss numbers in Republican states, then beat those numbers by purging Democratic voter rolls in far greater numbers of minority vote purges between elections.

That strategy, above all others, won the necessary 270 electors. All the rest -- the PR, the crazy rhetoric, media 'normalizing', even Comey, emails and Russian hacks -- was window dressing. The GOP worriedly let the Democrats proceed with their Rube Goldberg-style complifications of all the campaigning, polling and media back and forth.

Because their number crunchers knew that the drama could bring out numbers above the ones they beat through Crosscheck.

That's what Democrats -- who thought that all manner of ground game, ads and polling would bring voters to the polls -- didn't see. Basic numbers that it took to win. Democrats put themselves in a bubble and never clearly saw what the Republican establishment and their governors had really done.

Democrats could have noticed, could have had court fights in those states, but the ACLU, or party lawyers in general, dropped the ball on their opponents' numbers strategy, whether they tried hard or not. One North Carolina case overruled the state's purgings and/or voter ID suppression; I can't remember them all, now.

But. An army of ACLU lawyers and the Democrats could have taken Crosscheck and their states bosses to court, and governors still could have kept mum about Crosscheck and their number goals.

More problematically for Democrats, paperwork that the purgings were based on were only about 50% accurate, anyway, so it would have taken massive man-hours to locate living, purged voters, restore them to polls. Then it might have taken a lot of data entry into state voting systems to be reflected at local precinct levels.

The battles were there. Democrats just couldn't see it, or if they did, they didn't pull a network of legal fight together to make it in time to roll out court decisions, get the rolls straight and get the access to greater numbers of vote machines. Democratic voter turnout failure -- whether it was Bernie Bros, Millennials, whoever else -- made up the rest of the numbers.

So the Republicans won by the slimmest, most elegant of methods. All the drama -- Hillary's evilness, media, bum rushed rallies, signal-to-noise commentary -- was cover. Or at least irrelevant to winning.

We Democrats need to learn from this. Seriously.

My Lightbulb Moment? It's less important to know how we lost. It's more important to learn how they won.

When the important thing is to win -- the party that does what's really necessary wins. And Republicans won the electoral votes.

We’re good at talking about how Democrats lost. It’s mostly because Democrats got more lost in culture wars than in the mechanics of winning. Whether the Kochs who bought it all know it, whether Republican governors know it, and whether this schlub of a president-elect knows it or his coterie of wangstas know it, the important thing is that WE have to know it.

Now we have to regain control of the numbers. The Kochs were “first to market,” therefore dominating the political state markets. So, we have to go in, take those markets away with gubernatorial wins. If Obama hadn’t dropped Howard Dean we’d have had that part handled years ago.

Now, who in the Democratic party is going to do the hard 50-state slog. Who is going to clarify the brand as a winning brand. Bernie's campaign people can help with this and Schumer can certainly get behind it.

Man, Botany woke me the hell up. Thanks, Botany. I love you, man.



Here's the Greg Palast article from back in August.

http://www.gregpalast.com/election-stolen-heres/

And the Rolling Stone's article on the same issue:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-gops-stealth-war-against-voters-w435890

And a good thought from Hillary:

November 16, 2016

Russell Brand Hopes We Recognize We Will Have To Provide An Alternative World

Russell sees that the Trump win was inevitable, given conditions we are not addressing. He tries to see what American voters have in common with much of the rest of the world's disillusioned.

November 16, 2016

Global Trumpism -- How Trump's Rise Reflects Brexit and Other World Events

This long video gets way better as it continues. It gave me more context for understanding our voters' and Trump's poorly spoken economic reasons for liberal losses this election. Get past the intro at the 2-minute mark.

Yes, it's long. But it's long because it's important enough to watch. It's important context to consider for the next four long years.

November 16, 2016

Mother Jones: Why Did Trump Win? A Roundup of the Most Popular Theories

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/11/why-did-trump-win-roundup-most-popular-theories

Kevin Drum offers responses to this topic list of contributing causes, and we probably need to get more data to be sure which of them were key factors in why 49% didn't vote at all. To me the non-voter is the most important problem we have in this country. Researching the non-voter should be a top priority for the Democratic Party. Because I'm still looking at the 49% non-voter population.

James Comey

Whitelash and the white working class

Racism

The fundamentals

The media

Sexism

Lousy turnout from Democrats

Millennials

Voter suppression

The electoral college

While Drum claims it's not best to promote our own pet theories, I'd say that to keep from doing that, we we need to learn from non-voters how these issues do or don't relate to them.

The non-voter 49% below offer info relates to two topics listed above, like voter suppression, ease of poll access. Most of all, they say it's the candidates themselves. We might be shooting the party in the foot by addressing party campaign problems rather than those listed below.

November 16, 2016

70% of the US Did Not Vote Republican -- How Will The Democratic Party Represent Them?

There's no use doing a postmortem without applying the lessons to future plans of this party.

Our plans must be solid, led by competent people.

As part of this going forward thinking, we should discuss the current party platform, potential leadership philosophy, how to better spend party funds and how this party connects with moneyed interests worldwide.

I've been a full donor, voter, campaigner, but am no way in on current party leadership thinking. I was a Bernie, then Hillary supporter, and so I have some ideas about how the party should proceed with its Sisyphean task of enfolding new members nationwide.

One idea is that Democrats have to keep the DLC leadership at bay by bringing Bernie campaign people into leadership positions. The next idea follows from the first: build from state levels on up -- put more money into state gubernatorial and state house elections, win back the House and Senate.

The problem with the last idea is that, even if we could win back both Congressional houses by the mid-term, so much that Obama accomplished would have been undone, so much momentum of anti-scientist, anti-climate and fascist-leaning geopolitical mess would exist, that Democrats would still look impotent, and thereby be unable to keep the party from its downward spiral of public influence.

The "better together" philosophy needs to be a more realistic motto, such that the 70% who didn't vote have a real alternative to the Republican governance model. I hope the party can act in ways that appeal to them.

I've got more to say but am interested in what fellow Democrats here think.

Thanks for hanging in with DU, everyone. We have a lot to offer this party, and I hope we can get it to listen.

November 7, 2016

Jenifer Lewis -- GET YOUR ASS OUT AND VOTE!

Known and beloved everywhere (see her "In these streets" vids) Jenifer Lewis sings the hell out our GOTV message!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenifer_Lewis

November 1, 2016

Donald Trump -- Case 1:16-CV-04642 US District Court Southern District of New York

Donald Trump has a preliminary hearing on December 16, 2016 at 10 am in front of judge Ronnie Abrams at Manhattan Federal Court House. This is the second time he's been charged with rape -- this time against a 13 year-old child. Child Rape...Case 1:16-CV-04642 US District Court Southern District of New York.

This is not a Halloween hoax. http://www.snopes.com/2016/10/11/status-conference-in-trump-lawsuit/


Hillary Clinton has never been charged for ANY. THING. She is a Christian, grandmother, mother, wife, First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State, a leader known and respected by at least half the planet.