Please Stop the divisive posts.

[karynnj]

132. Hate stampedes people to the polls

In 2004, Bush/Cheney used various referendums on gay unions or rights that caused evangelical voters, who had never voted in their lives, to register and vote. They used the evangelical churches and media to lie that under a President Kerry, their churches would be required to perform gay marriages. The Kerry campaign outperformed all the goals they had set for themselves in getting votes in most precincts. I think they got more than 9 million more votes than Gore had.

BUT ... Bush got nearly 10 million more than he had in 2000 -- largely attributed to evangelicals.

In 2016, they did not need something like gay rights to generate hate. They had ginned up hate against the Clintons for decades. I suspect that in many places, the problem was that the normal turnout model did not pick up the intensity of hate and anger on the right. We, on the other hand, were complacent -- HRC was going to win, Trump was unacceptable.

(Note that the Democrats in 2006 completely blew out the midterm. The motivation was anger at Bush for both Iraq which had devolved into a civil war and the ineptness of the response to Katrina. We won seats that no one thought we had a chance at. Even the very optimistic Biden - on Sunday shows did not even suggest that we could get 51 Senators. His upper limit was we could get to 49. )