APATHY Is Not What LOST The 2014 Elections

[Segami]

In order to get people out to vote, Democrats need to have candidates worth voting for

Progressives need to get over the 2014 elections. Immediately following the shellacking at the polls, liberals from all over the map were voicing their displeasure with “apathetic non-voters” as the reason Democrats lost. On Election Day, Jon Stewart jokingly said he was too busy to bother voting, an anecdote liberals are attacking him for. These liberals are acting as if the voters had no reason not to vote for the Democrats. The Democratic Party loves blaming its loss on apathetic voters, rather than the Democrats putting up bad candidates. The pissed-off Obama-bot Democrats love to jump out in a screaming horde to denounce progressives who chose not to vote. This mentality is flawed. For one, the Democratic loyalists who are crying about the 2014 elections need to understand that it was not lost to apathy. The election was lost to bad candidates. I’ve warned for months now that the Democrats were never going to win the election in 2014 by repeating the strategies of the past. Rather than cleansing the ranks of the duplicitous Blue Dog Democrats, the party establishment instead decided to “play safe” and counted on the Blue Dogs to hold posts in key Red States. This was a major mistake. The Blue Dogs have always been the Democratic Party’s greatest liability. For one, Blue Dogs are not really progressive. They tend to be more conservative than progressive. If anyone wants to point to the reasons the Democrats have been dithering, point to these Blue Dogs.


When I hear liberals scream about apathy, my reply would be to look at the candidates who lost. They were mainly Blue Dog Democrats that held no real solid positions on progressive issues. Candidates that waffled back and forth to whatever position they could stand on, without even bothering to stick to core issues that progressives cared about. Some of these Blue Dogs were anti-choice, and unreliable on issues when it comes to getting money out of politics. My Senator Mary Landrieu is a huge crony to the Oil Industry in Louisiana. When it came to the issues, these Democrats were all over the place, which drove progressives away from them. People didn’t vote because they are apathetic. They chose not to vote because there were no candidates on their ballot worth voting for. Often times our electoral system boils down to voting for the lesser of two evils. Why do we have to settle for an evil at all? To my pissed off liberal friends, please shut-up about the elections. The party put forward bad candidates, and lost because of its inability to rally progressives to it. It was not apathy, it was bad political strategy. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. You won’t win elections based simply on being able to gravitate to any issue that is convenient at the time. Stick to issues that people care about.



Also, why should we always have to settle for corporate Democrats over real progressives? The illusion that America is a “center-right” nation is behind this type of thinking. We are always told that “Middle America” is overwhelmingly conservative and we therefore never vote for progressives because they might seem “too radical.” In essence we are given a choice to vote for right-wing lite or right-wing heavy. If that is the choice, then why would I vote for any of them? Voting is only important when progressives use their votes in favor of candidates who could make a difference. If we are constantly asked to rubber stamp corporate Democrats, just so the Republicans can’t win, then what use are our votes serving. Are we doing any good by electing Democrats who agree with Republicans most of the time? The attacks I have heard against those who abstained from voting are just ridiculous. Progressives should not be compelled to hold their nose in every election. Can’t we finally see that electing Progressives in name only do not gain progressives any victory?




cont'


http://quietmike.org/2014/11/09/apathy-lose-2014-elections/

[BlindTiresias]

1. As I have been told

America is and will always be right wing. Maybe leftists should organize an effort to leave instead of trying to change a country they can't change.

[bhikkhu]

3. Yet progressive measures win at the ballot box

America isn't right wing - its complicated.

If America was right wing, Obama never wins an election, marijuana is illegal everywhere, gay marriage is prosecutable, the civil rights movement never happened, and so forth.

[BlindTiresias]

4. Care to explain

What is complicated about it, exactly?

[bhikkhu]

7. The same people who support progressive issues can support conservative candidates

And vice versa, of course. Anecdotally, I have several aunts who are wonderful, kind, intelligent, who volunteer to help government-financed charitable work, but who are also professed republicans who would never self-identify as liberal. There are an abundance of people who think like liberals, but who vote like conservatives. The divide is easiest to see on the difference between local and national issues; people who are conservative on national issues nevertheless tend to be liberal on local issues. In my own area, the great majority like to think of themselves as conservatives, but we regularly pass good local legislation on bond measures for schools and civic programs. Local politicians campaign as conservatives, but what people like most about them, and what gets them elected, is that they effectively act like liberals in office.

On an individual basis, people are complicated, and the odds of any person or measure passing are not determined at all by quantifying the self-identified conservatives and liberals who vote.

[BlindTiresias]

10. Hm

That tells me that the right wing is so embedded into our culture that we can't even realize that lots of positions, maybe most, are not right wing at all but we still want them for some reason. Why even keep that baggage around? What is so appealing about right wing ideology, and especially an ideology which people don't even believe in as you indicate.

[bhikkhu]

13. I always figured it was the attraction of wealth, power and tradition

which are somewhat embedded in the RW brand, and generally not available to the people who follow it (or, in the case of "tradition", an ideal trotted out for special occasions and big decisions, but otherwise absent).

[BlindTiresias]

15. Makes sense

But doesn't seem to bode well for the left in this country imo.

[blkmusclmachine]

6. You and the Third Way agree.

[BlindTiresias]

11. Super secret hint:

I'm playing Devil's Advocate and hate the right wing.

[tabasco]

8. Anybody who tells me to leave my country can kiss my ass

I didn't spend 10 years in the infantry to run away just because the criminal rat bastard republicans won a few elections. The pukes will fuck things up - like they always do - and Democrats will be the ones to clean up the goddamn mess. It's a goddamn shame that people don't learn from the past. We're just too stupid as a species.

[BlindTiresias]

9. Just going by what I have been told

If the United States is truly right wing then any leftist cause is hopeless.

[tabasco]

12. Helpful suggestion....

try thinking instead.

[BlindTiresias]

14. Not sure what you mean

I have given it thought, and the left seems thwarted at every turn. Aside from a brief period constituting about 20 years, thirty if we are really generous, when has the left done well here?

[adirondacker]

2. "Stick to issues that people care about."

like how they are going to unfuck the middle class and poor

[Segami]

5. Definitely, the majority of hurting people

would gravitate to a candidate promoting such a position.

[k2qb3]

16. It's not that complicated.

Half the Republicans I know only vote that way on guns. Half the Obama voters I know only voted that way because they believed gun control was a dead issue.

Democrats went all-in on gun control this cycle.

Same thing that happened in '94 and gave us Gingrich and W.

Sacrificed the rest of the agenda for another couple decades, because it will be a long time before anyone believes it's a dead issue again.

The rest of the chatter about why swung a few people here and there, mid-terms are always weak, but electoral losses are what happens when you pose a credible threat to the second amendment in America.

[Orangepeel]

17. Meh. General election candidates don't appear out of nowhere. They all won a primary

if there is no progressive candidate on the ballot in a general election, it is because primary voters didn't put one there. If there is no progressive candidate in a primary election, it's because no progressive ran.

If voters don't like the choices on the ballot, they collectively should have put somebody better on the ballot.

[bhikkhu]

18. Losing elections leads to losing credibility

which' considering the muddled message and side-stepping away from a popular president, was perhaps deserved. It takes some work to get credibility back; hopefully there is someone besides the president working on that.