One perspective on “WHY the Great Fail?”
In light of recent comments provided on this blog by our illustrious captain of the Starship Enterprise (Second Generation)
Comments from Conservapedia on the Fort Hood shooting:
“Hours before the Fort Hood massacre, “Democratic liberals” who lead the House Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to weaken the USA Patriot Act as a tool for combating terrorism.”
How is there a link? How exactly would monitoring someone’s phones have prevented something like this?
“Liberal headlines downplay the facts about the Fort Hood massacre, but details are emerging through quotes by fellow soldiers.”
“Tragic Shooting At Fort Hood kills 13?. How many facts do you want in a newspaper headline?
And of course, the fact he is MUSLIM is so critical to this investigation!
I would like to share with you this guest post provided by an RT reader talking about the Republican’s best weapon: FEAR. And why we fail:
How do Republicans get their voters to out perform Democrats on election day?
Negative message out performs the positive. The GOP tells their voters that their world (small as it is) will change drastically if they do not get out and vote (FEAR). This is a major reality check:
- Higher taxes
- Gay marriage
- No jobs
- Tree huggers take over the world
- Black people have power
- Migrant workers actually get paid a decent wage for picking the rich people’s fruit
- Wind towers in my back yard
Vote, vote, vote! Do not let the Liberals ruin your little place in Paradise.
Democrats, on the other hand, use a message that focuses more on a vision, rather than reality. The Democratic voter is told to vote so we can make the world a better place-clean water and air, good paying jobs, clean energy, equal rights for all. To dream of a better world.
If voters can’t embrace this vision, this is where we stumble. Barack Obama promised change for the future, but his team did a great job of inspiring voters about the negative consequences of not getting out to vote (George Bush)
Maybe Joe Morelle has to take that smile off of his face and start talking to his Monroe County Democrats about the apathy that has crippled this party.
In jest, we titled a post, Scarey Liberals want to eat your brains, but in reality, the other side believes it.
Related posts:
You forget one thing on this list for Greece. The devil is lurking to take away you prayer and destroy the us as Christian nation.
Things are worse than you portray. Fear is often a powerful weapon for potential authoritarians when a county in decline. Look at Wiemar Germany. If you want to see the roots of fear you have to see it as partially rooted in economic decline. and the loss of control that comes with that decline. Liberals are the current scapegoat. it could be immigrants or almost anything
Another snippet from the Conservapedia article on Nidal Malik Hasan:
“He also got trained for using guns.”
Unless they mean something else, when you join the army aren’t you expected to be trained in firearms, whether you are a psychiatrist or a general?
The Jewish Internet Defense Force has added this incident to their list of “lone acts of Islamic terror”, essentially listing every Muslim who said negative things about America in the last twenty years (including that EgyptAir flight that we don’t know the exact reasons).
I’m a lifelong Democrat, but I’m disgusted with our local party. I don’t think it was the Republicans that cost us the races - in fact, they did everything they could to provide us with a basis to campaign against them, talking points, and every reason to win.
While I generally agree that Republican scare tactics have been effective over time, I think that isn’t what happened here. In fact, it was the Democratic party that tried to use scare tactics in a local judicial race. Vote for DeMarco and you were voting for (horrors!) a defense attorney and defendants’ rights. This was wrong on so many levels.
First, defendants’ rights are Constitutional rights - and I thought that’s what Democrats stood for. And ain’t nothing wrong with defense attorneys - they stand up for the folks against whom all of the power of the state is directed - sometimes quite unfairly and wrongly. And when they do that, they stand up for the protection of the Constitutional rights for us all.
But the message of fear didn’t work. So if it’s fear that wins races, why didn’t McCarthy win?
And I didn’t see the nasty literature (though I wasn’t in a district with a Leg race this time) from the Republicans this time, or hear that nasty/silky woman’s voice speaking about the horrors of opposing candidates this time. In fact, I didn’t see much television or radio advertising at all. Which brings me to one of the reasons I think we did lose.
What is our message? Is it a message that was effectively conveyed? Where was the advertising?
There was a lot to talk about this time, but I didn’t see the Democrats doing a whole lot of educating and promoting of an agenda. And I think the blame has to go to Morelle, despite his deepest desire to somehow point at the state or others for his failure.
Yes - the local press sucks. But the Democrats never did a whole lot to make the problems obvious to the public. (Why is it there’s no real analysis of Navitech? Who runs it - what does the office look like, what is its history of successful enterprises?) The Democrats never did the research, framed the message or learned the art of sound bites. They don’t do the work that the volunteer writers at this blog do. They never created an effective strategy.
Which brings me to another reason we fail here. Morelle will shrug his shoulders, shake his head, look puzzled and move on. He will never try to consider what went wrong here and whether he had a role in it. And he won’t start building a party which will include those outside his closest circle of sycophants. So in the coming years we’ll be in the same place, with or without county exec candidates, without a party organized in an effective manner, without a coherent message, without strategy, without the things we should have been doing all along.
But I’m not convinced that the Democrats would be a whole lot different running this county. Don’t like patronage? Think it’s a Republican thing? Take a look at what the Mayor is doing right now finding a longtime Dem a job.
People will start blaming everyone now because we lost but they will do it without taking a good look in the mirror. What could I have done differently. How could I have effected change. How could I have gotten more people to vote. People dont care about what you think they care about or what they should care about. They dont even care about the future. The democrats are living day to day, paycheck to paycheck and the republicans are telling people that if you elect a democrat your taxes will go up. At the end of the day it comes down to how will this person affect me!
They dont really want open government, they dont want real change, they dont even care about what one town has over another. They dont care about the scandals and police corruption. They care about their taxes. The republicans played the message that voting for a democrat will make your town and county like Albany and this country and they got voters out.
In Irondequoit the message was clear, the conservatives won! The people want lower taxes. The person who got the most votes didnt even campaign. He didnt speak at all! But he got the conservative endorsement and people are afraid that “what is happening in Albany will happen in my town.” Because people arent engaged, because they dont know what local government really has control over (how little) they dont realize that it doesnt really matter who is in power, unless real statewide change happens (ie policies and unfunded mandates) you have very little control of your taxes.
Know that Morelle worked incessantly to convince D & C that Navitech was an extremely newsworthy issue — even when some legislators were skittish. The only press conference on Navitech was organized by Dems in front of Navitech’s “corporate” headquarters. But you can only give the press the clue, you can’t make follow the story.
Patronage is a scourge of all parties; in Monroe County, you have years and years of patronage and nepotism combined. For example:
Larry Staub, former MC Communications Director, is Parks Director. His wife, Dawn Staub, is the County’s Purchasing Manager. She receives bids and proposals on county contracts. Did anyone ever wonder if Larry and Dawn talk about the bids and proposals that come in? If favored contractors/consultants maybe get “guidance” on how to craft a winning bid? Maybe this doesn’t happen — but shouldn’t there be a firewall between departments that put out bids and RFPs (Parks) and the department that receives them (Purchasing)?
So did you ever read, hear or see this kind of issue from the press? Dem legislative candidates had extremely aggressive mail campaigns — on taxes, the deficit, ROBUTRAD, Navitech, and the county’s bond rating. But the message has to resonate and won’t if campaign literature is the voters’ only encounter with the issues.
The press has been covering Robutrad and other scandals. That is one of several things that contribute to my conclusion that it’s the local Democratic party’s lack of strategy that is causing problems. (As well as the way the party operates here, its selective support of candidates and races over the years, and its ineffective use of media.) People are aware of the problems with Robutrad, MCC, etc. but either don’t see them as pervasive Republican problems, or don’t feel they’re important enough. And it’s not the job of the press to persuade them of that. That’s our job.
“The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, owned by Gannett Co., posted Sunday circulation of 183,348, a 6.5 percent drop from 196,141 a year ago. Monday through Friday sales fell 11.8 percent to 124,987 from 141,812. The D&C’s Saturday sales were off 9.4 percent to 145,065 from 160,162.” October 27, 2009
A robust civic culture supports multiple ways citizens learn about vital issues in a community. The D & C’s coverage of Robutrad and Navitech was anemic. Reporting, but little thorough investigation. Gannett has decided that “Living” and “Her Rochester” and live blogging of high school soccer games will boost circulation more than investigative reporting on potentially controversial and unpleasant issues. It’s a smiley face paper.
If messages are going to stick, they have to be repeated and encountered in dozens of different ways. DId you see legislative candidates debate on TV or hear them on the radio? When did the D & C devote say a week of reporting to the Issues that will drive the local election? When did WXXI? Or WHAM? Or YNN? (YNN is not RNN because Time Warner is now treating western NY as one region.) The suburban weekly press has all but folded.
Trying to do electoral politics without organizations that inform and inspire the electorate is like trying to climb Mt. Everest without a Sherpa guide.
The fact of the matter is that Democrats lost countywide elections because the only issued suburban voters really care about are taxes!
The city is a mess and it’s run by Democrats - give Dems control of the county again and the disease will spread beyond city limits
AArcher -
If you build it they will come. If the candidates wanted a debate, the media would have covered. And that’s a great idea - why aren’t our Democratic candidates pressing for debates?
And maybe, as “classicalliberal” says, it is about the voters. But I’m not buying that. The voters do care about taxes - because that’s been the effective Republican message. But folks care about a variety of things when they’re not labeled as belonging to one party or another. Everyone wants good schools, safe streets, and reduction of poverty. The parties traditionally disagree on how to get there. And our Democratic party has not made the case locally about how they would effectuate the changes that people believe in. We often joke about how coordinating Democratic efforts is like “herding cats”. But that joke’s not funny any more.
And Classicalliberal - with all the scandals such as the corruption in Greece, Robutrad, and the MCC issue, and the county budget deficits under Republicans, with its string of one time fixes, are you saying the towns aren’t diseased?
Yes actually I am saying that the disease of the city is not currently the same as the problems you cite in the Towns…
Let’s be honest here as well, voters don’t care about the tax rate because Republicans have successfully used it as a tool to win…they care because they pay too much in taxes and watch their hard earned money go to waste.
The city has a high crime rate, a crumbling and insufficient school system, an overwhelming amount of slum landlords, and increasing rates of poverty, violence and drug use. Don’t even try and compare corruption in GPD, bad budgeting by the GOP at the county level - and the MCC debacle to that. When Democrats begin to realize that those two sets of issues (City -vs- Town problems) are not on par then and only then will they begin to win seats outside of the City.
In the Sunday D & C another problem is noted . The republicans get to do redistricting.thus according to the article meaning they can insure their majority for years to come. And they call it democracy.
Eqaully troubling is the bland way the dems speak in this article. Who couldknow shrug your shoulders and go on. OF course the reporter doesn’t seem to interview anyone who is willing to criticize leadership. Even the Greece Democrats are portrayed as”mellow” I’m not sure that is accurate.
Thanks for dumping us dem leaders.
This was not only a local Democratic issue. Local Democrats got spanked all over the state — look to Erie County for another example.
This was a bad year for Democrats because of a combination of two trends:
1) Right-wing anger: (2x the usual number of votes on the Conservative line as typical in many races!!) — These were some angry people sending a message. And this was not an insignificant number of votes… it was more than 10% in some races. I’m a novice election watcher, and I can see the message. Conservatives and Republicans got up and voted to send their message… They don’t like Public Health Care, Bailouts, Obama, Albany Disfunction, high NY taxes… you name it, it was all there. They were out to prove that Conservatives & Republicans are not “a rump party of disaffected Southern whites” (courtesy Philbrick at MustardStreet). They got out the vote. Probably without GOTV calls. Glenn Beck, Rush, and Sarah Palin made the calls for this group.
2) Democratic voter apathy. Dem turnout was awful. Many run-of-the-mill Dems look don’t look at County leg or local races as important… They don’t care about NaviTech. Some probably wish they could go to the Classy Cat on the company’s time. They are also turned off by Albany, disappointed by Obama for doing too much, too little, or just not walking on water. Younger democrats that helped carry Obama also didn’t come out… Jon Stewart just doesn’t dedicate that much time to Robutrad and the MCC Presidency to make these voters informed and engaged. Maybe we need to send more campaign lit to Jon Stewart.
Long comment, but here’s my point:
Local Democrats across the state ran their campaigns assuming that the dynamic was the same as 2007 & 2008 — when the democratic “brand” was rising and just being on the Dem line meant you had a chance. Well, in 2009, that was a bad strategy, but nobody knew it until 10:30 PM on Nov 3rd, which is just a tiny bit too late. County Legislator and former party chair Ted O’Brien said in Sunday’s D&C “I didn’t expect it, I thought the Democratic brand was pretty strong.” Clearly we were still basking in the glories of 2008 and not paying attention to 2009.
Somebody at the State and/or County level should have seen these trends. I don’t think it’s the job of the Penfield or Gates Dem Cmte to do polling… this has to come from higher up. We had a lot of money to spend this year on local campaigns — perhaps more than ever. Prior knowledge of these trends would have made a big difference in how that money was spent.
There’s the saying “all politics is local”. I beg to differ. National and State issues and trends sunk Democratic candidates far and wide in 2009.