Link to tweet

Link to tweet

noʻu ka hauʻoli, Cha!

.. I had no idea!

That's why I'm so grateful for the African American Voting Block.. especially the Women who vote the highest numbers for the Democratic party.

Aloha

Just a bigger share than we got in 2016. Gianforte did 14 points worse than Trump in Montana. If that same swong occurs in evwry.other Congressional district, the doxrats will take back the house by a huge margin.

Just increase voter turnout. In my mind, this is the largest pool of voters and probably the easiest to activate as opposed to trying to win over voters that you wouldn't pee on if they were on fire. I'm referring to Trump voters, of course. Peeing on them if on fire would not only put out the fire, being peed on would just make them happy.

Dems win big with under 30 yr old voters, regardless of race.
We need to give up on my demographic, older white men, and just wait for them to die while increasing the voting percentage of younger voters.

Had under 30 voters turned at the same percentage as over 60 white voters the last election would have been a Dem landslide.

Let them die. I think they'd respect that seeing as how it's in a major plank in the GOPee platform. As for 30 and under, again, it's about the turnout and where we will get the most bang for our buck for years to come.

I'm 66 years old, white, middle class, retired and female.

By all the generalizations I should be a Trump supporter - except the generalizations are wrong most of the time.

We Democrats can't play to the generalizations made in the era of over-polling. Polls are not helping us, if all they do is lead us to incorrect assumptions about people based on their race, age, economic standing.

The majority victory is earned one vote at a time, and it's also lost that way. We must continue outreaching to every single voter or potential voter who's having doubts or ready to turn. It's not easy when the people you interact with are only watching Fox News and nothing else. The seeds of doubt have to come from somewhere, it has to come from us during times when they're not watching the idiot box.

The only poll that matters is how many voters can *I convince* that it's in their interest to vote Democratic?

how is that fox seems to influence white voters and not POC?

there are other issues, but there is a reason a democrat does not win with whites that is directly linked to race.

Money influences everyone.. especially campaign money - that needs to change..

Haven't looked at Fox demographics - but I am sure they are majority white & older.. not a secret

Yes there are other issues.. but, Obama won 2 elections convincingly... so there is that - Democrats hav alowed Repubs to shame them into this anti-Liberal centrist position and elections are reflecting it..

thanks to that, states have made it very hard for blacks to vote.

I don't see how the one denies the other... hence, possibly the "or" qualifier was used far too quickly and without much though put into it, and should rather be replaced with the "and" conjunction.

a lot of factors - but one can not deny that $$$$$$$ has and continues to be a BIG problem..

And some want the Democrats to be pure...and not take money which would guarantee a loss. That being said, I think Quist was a bad candidate for the state...a moderate Democrat beat the GOP asshat last year. A moderate candidate not endorsed by any party leaders...ignored by the DCCC (except for money) might have won...no matter what, the spread does indicate trouble for the GOP in 2018. Let's all send money to Ossoff who has a real chance.

As long as Citizens United is the rule (And I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon), Dems have to fight money with money the best they can. Hell, voter-suppression's STILL a horrible problem, and we know that the GOP--with "sympathies" from THIS White House--will be on double-doses of steroids to suppress, voter-purge, voter-crosscheck and who know what ELSE to stop Dems from voting in 2018 and 2020. Ignorance/racism on the voters end is bad enough, not to mention what we know will BE ruskie interference AGAIN because this pro-putin White House is in bed with the ruskies.

HOW Dems counter all of that AND voter-suppression we KNOW is coming with little to NO help

Trump will take away food-stamps and Medicaid from "those others", not from "us".

About 10? I guess we're screwed unless we find a way to import some black voters from places like CA & IL.

1 congressman and 3 ev's aren't going to swing things.

But in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania, it is a different story. Which is why the r's have put so much effort into minority voter suppression.

and find more black voters to enroll.

I was always curious how much DNC money goes to registering voters and getting them IDs. THat would better than money spent on ads.

Based on anything that happens in Montana.

Hillary? Kerry? Gore?

was it the majority?

Which is still a huge problem as every election has a geographic component

Yes we are doing better than 2016 in these special elections, but how much is Trump Effect and how much is the lack of an established incumbent?

And that coalition will vary from state to state depending on the demographics of each state. Increasingly, in more and more places, whites constitute a minority of a wining Democratic coalition. That however doesn't make white support any less critical, in many instances, for Democrats winning. And in virtually every case, when a Democrat loses, a Republican wins.

I absolutely agree with you on this: "overall if we can focus our efforts on making it possible for POC to vote, to be in communities of color articulating the importance of voting, we would not only win, we would do the moral thing." It is also the moral thing, politics aside, to fight for continued medical benefits for white West Virginia coal miners with black lung disease. And if we stand with them on that crucial front, we might as well ask them for their votes as well, knowing full well that for now at least we will not win most of them. In the case of a West Virginia, I say we should do the right thing, and ask for voter support in return, but not put a lot of resources into it. The tipping point is too far beyond our reach.

Montana, however, may be different. Montana has become a little more competitive for us. Democrats in general face brighter prospects in most most western and mountain states than they do in most southern states. As long as we have a Federal system that equates the power of a state like Montana with the power of a State like California in the U.S. Senate - and to a somewhat lesser extent in the Electoral College where each state starts out getting 2 votes regardless of their actual population - we need to factor in the individual demographics of each specific state into our calculations if we want someone like Chuck Schumer setting the Congressional agenda rather than Mitch McConnell.

Everywhere in the nation at least a portion of white voters are progressive and committed to social justice - we agree about that. And another portion are racist to a significant degree, and barring individual instances of near miraculous conversions, beyond our ability to find common ground with. Then there are a lot of people who harbor destructive prejudices, that are running constantly in their psyches like some background computer program, but who can hit manual override when they consciously focus in on an individual flesh and blood human being, or a vivid close to home experience of some horrific injustice. Martin Luther King Jr. was masterful at finding a way to break through to those people even though most of his organizing energy was directed toward the African American community. Even he never reached most of even them, but sometimes he reached enough of them to make a critical difference in achieving specific victories.

We must NEVER pander, directly or indirectly, to white racism. Nor can we be unrealistic about how many more white votes we can win beyond our reliable white base. Yes, we have to be clear eyed about this, but a clear eyed vision must also recognize when our ability to pick off an additional small sliver of the white vote, without compromising on our core values, may well represent the difference between victory and defeat. We already know that winning the majority of the popular vote in this country does not automatically translate into winning power. We need to retake the Presidency, but we also need 60 seats in the U.S. Senate before we can do more things like the Obama Administration accomplished before losing a veto proof majority. And in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, it's not a matter of having to win over new white voters to regain the margin of victory. If we can win back half of the white voters who we lost who previously voted for a black president prior to 2016, those states again move beyond the reach of Republicans.

It it a waste of good resources to target all white Trump voters. It can be a good use of resources however to micro target small slivers of his previous white support. That is very doable with the type of voter data bases that now exist.

we pander to racism and sexism 'We must NEVER pander, directly or indirectly, to white racism.'

EVERY. FUCKING. TIME.

That would both be immoral and a big political mistake.

you are sporting.

Likewise he is not always right. But he has a life long record of fighting battles for and supporting positions consistent with "identity politics". That is a matter of decades long well documented public record.

That is all that I will say regarding Sanders on your OP, because I respect the importance of the subject you are addressing, and I have no interest in diverting this discussion toward one about him personally.

but you are both 100% correct and yet 100% wrong.

As much as I would like to think that how we vote decides elections, it does so ONLY if we can get a high enough percentage of white folks to join us.

That, however, has nothing to do with whether your suggestion is the correct one. You could not be more correct. As a party, we should be firmly committed to a goal that every single person of color of voting age be registered to vote, be given the opportunity to vote, and actually vote. It is our moral obligation to do every single thing we can to reverse the ultimate disenfranchisement.

I cannot thank you enough for putting this in terms of it being not just politically advantageous but also morally required.

The thornier question, and, quite frankly, the one that divides our party (not to mention this website), is "Which of the white folks do we think we can get to come along with us to get it close enough for our votes to be the deciding factor?"

Your post answers this question with "Well it sure as heck isn't the white working class.&quot not a real quote, obviously)

What you miss is that, if Hillary Clinton would have pulled the same percentage of white voters as Rob Quist, pulled yesterday, this country would now be the leader of the free world instead of its laughing stock because Hillary Clinton would be our president. As a matter of fact, if Hillary Clinton had pulled the same percentage of white voters across the entire economic demographic spectrum as she pulled from working class voters in states like Michigan (where she actually won among the working class demographic), we would also now be the leader of the free world instead of its laughing stock.

What I am going to say next may not apply to you in the least and I apologize if it does not, but I have a suspicion that many of the folks who ignore this fact do so because they have an ulterior motive in casting working class voters as unreachable. That motive is that they either oppose policies which are favorable to the working class, or (and I suspect this may be more often the case) because such policies could (admittedly) alienate white upper middle class voters and they believe those voters (perhaps because they are a large and likely to vote bloc that is spread throughout the country and not concentrated in particular cities and/or regions) are the key to electoral victory. The voters in THAT bloc, however, are the ones who abandoned Obama in 2012 (after they found out he was black and that the ACA was helping middle and lower class people more than it was helping them) and stabbed Hillary Clinton in the back in 2016. To bring them back to the Democratic Party fold in sufficient numbers to make create what you correctly see as a winning coalition, however, would require us to move to the right and moving to the right is abandoning people of color, the poor, and the oppressed.

I cannot deny that moving to the right worked in 1992 and kept the White House in our hands in 1996. Welfare reform, the Ominibus Crime Bill, the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, Don't Ask Don't Tell, and other concessions to upper middle class sensibilities kept enough upper middle class white voters in the fold to help us win two elections after we had suffered a string of humiliating defeats with liberal candidates. I can see the argument that such policies were not too great a price to pay for controlling the White House.

However, after Obama . . . after the honesty he brought when he told white people to their face that race and privilege were determinative factors in social "success" . . . after he called out the racism in the criminal justice system . . . after he passed a health care bill which, yes, helped poor people and the working poor more than the upper middle class people we targeted in 1992 and 1996 . . . after his Justice Department led the fight for marriage equality . . . after he stood for people of ALL faiths, including Islam . . . after every thing he accomplished . . .

I, as a black man, as a liberal, as an American, will not move back to the "center." I will stand with working people. I will stand with people of color. I will stand with LGBTQ. I will stand with all the oppressed because in this "glorious" capitalist system there are way more of us than there are of them.

Because defeat is not an option, because defeat endangers millions of lives, we must find ways to win, which do not undermine both our values and our goals. Coalition politics is incredibly complex, but that is the means by which our fight is waged and, hopefully, victory is achieved. I applaud you for facing down that complexity - with a moral compass firmly in hand. This is exactly the type of discussion we need to be having.

It's a discussion we won't see here.

As you can tell from the silence, except from you.

Thanks for your post

We can work harder and harder to get out the vote of POCs and non-voters but the repugs work just as hard to stop Dems from voting.

WE HAVE TO STOP IGNORING THAT AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

That's the only way they win. They cheat.

We have to combat it. Out-registering voters alone will not beat it.

That's the real shocker here.

and ignore gerrymandered districts and voter roll purging the GOP will do pretty much what they want to. That is where we should be putting our energy. We have good candidates going up against a crooked easily manipulated system. We'd better get busy now.

Whites that live in cities are much more liberal than rural whites and much more likely to vote Dem.
I do acknowledge that there is sadly a big racism problem with too many white folks.

i said a majority.

in which the Democratic victor got a majority of the white vote.

Your generalizations are just that. Generalizations.

I have never heard a Democrat say this . .

". . white people will not save the Dems no matter how
much some on the left seems to think they will . ."

Who on the Left says this?

Or are you saying that people secretly think it?

facts, not so much.

Activating voters of any demographic helps Democrats in the long run, but the party would do well to take heed of what you say. There's a lot of sneering at "identity politics" -- until election day.

people have a very strange take on that.

Forgetting, of course, that we all do better when we all do better.

They know better, but want to be ignorant assholes. I agree they're unlikely to be convinced to come over to the light side. People who choose ignorance and ugliness will always be able to justify it in their own minds and therefore choose not to listen to reason. They're the lowest common denominator of humanity and they are dragging us all down right now.

And the only way to get POC to vote is to tackle voter suppression and appeal to issues we care about. GOP policies and open racism from deplorables should be a hell of a motivator.

Our party needs to challenge unjust laws that purge voter rolls of people with similar names as felons, or requiring new IDs with no assistance to get these IDs, and lots of other nonsense deliberately designed to stop POC from voting.

Changing demographics are on our side.

Part of the rust belt issue is that many of our people have moved to sun belt states for jobs and that has shifted the map a bit.

Montana is a small rural red state and doesn't signify much for the rest of the country. It would have been awesome to win, but it is saying something that the GOP had to spend a lot to defend their home turf. They are worried.

I think they got spoiled after eight calm years with Obama and forgot how bad things were.

every eights prepare for them to waste their vote on a third party candidate, because they truly do not understand how dumb they are when they say both parties are the same.

And while I wonder if it's people trolling for division I have to say I met actual adults who think things work that way too. Magic wands abound. And they hate BO and HRC for not just waving them. It floors me.

A majority of voters had already voted with the repub attacked the reporter. He had a lot of votes in the bag. I am white and have been a Dem my whole life. Nothing will change that.

People who separate people into color groups are racists. There are NO races, just people.

http://www.americananthro.org/ConnectWithAAA/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=2583

That's nationwide. Hillary managed 37%, if I remember correctly.

Her messaging in the debates was inept. I sensed it at the time and posted it here. Trump may have wobbled through those debates but he took every simplistic opportunity to spotlight Ohio and blame job loss on NAFTA. Those white working class voters were lapping that up, in Ohio and everywhere else, siphoning away small but critical percentage.

Hillary would be president today if she had any clue regarding the simmering unease of those middle class white working types. Somehow the Clintons missed it. Bill said he was surprised at the 2014 midterm results. That was astonishing ignorance. I know plenty of those SAM (Simplistic Angry Male) types based on living in Las Vegas for 25 years and frequenting sportsbooks throughout. That demographic is flooded with white transplants from the South and Midwest. They've always been antagonistic, distrusting and mocking of Democratic politics but it soared in intensity and hatred during Obama's terms and particularly the second one. It was unmistakable. The 2014 midterm was essentially a warmup. I'm not sure if the Affordable Care Act pushed them over the edge. Something happened.

If Hillary early in the first debate had merely sensed the danger and taken the initiative, she would have cut off Trump's fearful path and been able to overcome Comey as well. All she had to do was emphasize that one of her great concerns was job loss and economic conditions in the great manufacturing states, that previously hard working men and women could graduate high school and get a job in the mills, etc. and forge a great life for themselves and their children. Now, through no fault of their own, that opportunity is diminished and we're working on every solution. Trump will blame everything on NAFTA and other trade deals. It's not NAFTA. It's technology. The steamship had its heyday. So did the railroads...

Something like that. It's off the top of my head. Not perfect. But far superior to anything Hillary offered. It's what Joe Biden was talking about recently when he said Hillary lacked a message to middle America. Keep in mind we're talking about holding a vital 2-3% of key demographics, not attempting a magic act like winning South Carolina, Alaska or Utah.

All three of those states were actually proposed toward Hillary at one point or another. Still makes me shake. Trump was peddling his crap to people willing to swallow whole while we were in delusion regarding a landslide. I saw posts here asserting double digit margin. Apparently rural whites weren't going to participate.

State by state is another matter. Montana today is like the nation itself in Reagan's era, with basically 90% whites comprising the electorate. We have virtually no margin for error in that setting. It has to be an ideal candidate and less than perfect from the other side. People don't like the word moderate around here. Fine. Just make sure you understand that if you nominate a perceived liberal in a state like Montana it's like a golfer who attempts a 400 yard carry over water. Splash or crash. No difference.

that we should compete everywhere, all 50 states. This election was a lot closer than I anticipated. We have to keep trying.

We will lose again if we are just the party of minorities.

unfortunately! It's really a sad state of affairs in America these days.

It is historically repub.

clearly, it could not.

it should also be noted that Quist had some negatives that may have weighed into the minds of many voters. Until recently he was behind in paying his property taxes and other debts. When someone has difficulties in handling their personal finances, it is a factor that voters consider as to whether they should trust that person as a public official.

Quist also turned down an offer from Tom Perez and the DNC to tour Montana while he was campaigning. I doubt it would have changed the results of the election, but if someone is going to run as a Democrat then it means that they should be prepared to be associated with other Democrats. The voters may have looked at his refusal and determined that Quist may not be able to accomplish anything in Congress when he turned down the offer of support.

If you cut out WWC voters, the resentment towards "coastal liburls" will continue to fester and deepen the rift that gave us Trump in the first place.

as a complete abandonment of white people.

We shouldn't throw a whole state under the bus when there are some great Democratic counties and municipalities within them.

But as for the red counties and towns in Montana, they can go f*** themselves!

A-fucking-men.

How about we look to run candidates that are well suited for the electorate in their state? Too simpleminded for your more complex view?

And I totally agree with you. Democrats are never going to appeal to a Trump chump voter, ever. As Trump and his party slowly destroy them they will blame liberals as he grinds his heel into their faces!

Too many decades of Hate radio conspiracy theories and Fox and friends fake news have brainwashed those lost souls.

I do belong to a lost generation. They lost their hearts and their souls to right wing republicanism, love of money, greed and racial hate.

Write them off forever.

The Democratic party should now concentrate on the folks who stayed home on election day because they swallowed the propaganda that both party's are the same. Now they know the truth.

All the young folks and PoC can save America from the fascists that are dying off by the hundreds everyday if their energy can be harnessed and brought together at the ballot box.

But we need to demand single payer/medicare for all. Protections against big banks and wall street and stopping the insane costs of medicines/Big Pharma. Fight for legal recreational and medicinal MJ nationwide and the hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs that will come with it.

A living wage for all. A clean and protected environment. The rich paying their fair share FINALLY! And a stop to the endless wars that enrich the MIC with the blood of poor folks kids.

IOW give them a REAL stark choice. The republican/Trump hellscape or a sane policy that treats every citizen as valuable part of society.

could not vote, and we had no plan for that.

And that is what must happen.

If not I wouldn't give two shits for where this country is going to go after. A dystopian hellscape for all but the rich that will kill its own and soon attack the rest of the liberal democracies world wide.

We either get political power back in 2018 and immediately start impeachment proceedings against the beast in the white house or this country is dead.

To throw out the anti-American republicans and stop them from destroying this country.

Yes, the "non-white" population is growing faster than the "white" population. But it's going to take a while for "whites" to be not a majority in many parts of the USA. Is there a racial problem? Yes. However... the Democrats cannot afford to become a Party of the Non-White and the Republicans a Party of the White.

Democrats need to have a 50 State Strategy, and a No Vote Left Behind Strategy. This works something like Obama's energy policy - i.e. all of the above. It means combating voter suppression, increasing voter registration, increasing voter turn out. In all communities.

that we don't have presidency, senate, house, most governorships, state legislatures.

secondly, we can argue about strategy, and no one is saying that a minority of whites will not vote for the democrat, they will. I am saying it is time for us to focus attention on votes that we could easily get, if we tried.

A lot of White people voted for Obama.
A lot of White people voted for Hillary Clinton . . .even many of us who were for Bernie.
Never count on any one group to save the Democrats.

Democrats have done a very bad job of winning people over. You know, a lot of people of color are not enthusiastic about the Democrats, they just know Republicans don't want them at all. There are quite a few LGBTQ people who feel the same: The Dems win with them only because the Republicans treat them like non-humans.

Lots of White people voted for the guy who painted himself as an outsider non-politician who was going to blow politics up. They were scammed out of their undershorts, mind you, but that is what they voted for. They are sick of politics. They fell for the whole "drain the swamp" thing.

Democrats need to pound on a basic message that will resonate with ALL working people: Patriotism means ALL of us work together to make sure ALL of us have five basic things: 1. Health care 2. A job with a living wage 3. Educational opportunities 4. Affordable housing and 5. Personal freedom Corporate greed has taken these things from working people. It is time for us to get those things back.

Why are Democrats not taking that basic message and just pounding it into the ground? Trump IS corporate . . .and he is taking from working people after promising he would be for them. Pound on that for the next four years. Over and over and over.

have not voted for a DEM since LBJ signed civil rights legislation.

It was ALWAYS a long shot. His hitting the reporter came much too late to make a difference in any case. Not that it would have necessarily.

But there are simply not enough people of color, as a percentage of voters, to make it feasible to ignore whites altogether. And people, once elected, work for ALL of their constituents, whether they think they do or not.

Basically we need less of this divisive bullshit.