America is in an acute on chronic status electionius. There are national elections every two years and Presidential elections every four. The mid term 2014 elections have been front page news for 6 months and at least three cable channels have been going full blast non stop on the significance of them. There is a consensus that these elections are pivotal in relation to which direction that this country’s social and economic policy is going to take. In addition which wing of the GOP is going to gain the upper hand in the struggle for the soul of the GOP? Or has the Tea Party already won as it has moved the Republicans so far to the right that they are unrecognizable as the establishment?
Literally hundreds of millions have already been spent on an election in the past 6 months and that is still 6 months away for offices that were up for election just a year before this all started. One would think that you could get some respite with Presidential elections being every 4 years but in case you haven’t noticed there are Political Action Committees out there already active for Hillary and a string of Republican hopefuls that are strutting around trying to sound Presidential.
The problem is that no-one other than the political parties, the media and political junkies are much interested. The country as a whole are bored, disillusioned and even disgusted with the politicians and politics. It is not just election fatigue it is downright frustration with the whole process which is believed to be hypocritical and corrupt. As the comedian, the late George Carlin once bemoaned, “They blame me for the Government we got because I didn’t vote when it is the idiots that voted that gave it to us not me, I didn't vote!”
DEMOCRATS SHOULD BE WINNING
On the face of it the Democrats should be winning the 2104 contest hands down but that is not the case. (Blog: Why the GOP in 2014? - Its The Plutocrats, Obamacare and Voter Suppression Stupid!). In addition to voter suppression there is voter apathy all-round. Both of these factors impact the Dems more than the GOP. There are only a small proportion of the electorate that will be voting in this election for the reasons mentioned above. At the best of times it is only 40% that vote in midterm elections. If the same proportion of Dems and GOP were to vote in the midterms as in Presidential elections, the Senate would be safe and the House would be in play. But that is not the case.
It is only the base that bother to pitch up and the Republican base is more reliable than the Democratic base.
EQUAL PAY FOR WOMEN, EXPANDING MEDICAID AND RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE AS ISSUES.
Let us just take three of the hot button issues at the moment - raising the minimum wage, expanding Medicaid under Obamacare and equal pay for women. Opinion polls show that there is a seventy - five percent favorable positive rating for all of these issues. To the Democratic Party’s bliss and joy the Republicans in Congress are against these measures. A plurality of women, and young employed women in particular, are in the Democratic column. The Democrats similarly have more of the poor among their numbers. However, the former group are not as likely to make it to the polls in November and it is being made harder for the latter to vote at all. But the Democrats hope by focussing on these issues they will persuade their base to come out. But if the predictable 40% of the electorate vote and 25% of the electorate are against women’s rights, expanding Medicaid and increasing the minimum wage, guess who wins?
So the Republicans hammer their opposition to these three topics harder and harder because they want to motivate mainly the elderly and arch conservatives to go to the polls. In short the GOP are banking on a low turn out as their base is more solid than the Dems. The GOP are also content to make their main platform attacking Obamacare as Obama is even less popular among their base than the minimum wage, expanding Medicaid and equal pay for women.
DEMOCRATIC HOPES - SOMETHING CAN BE FINER IN NORTH CAROLINA
North Carolina is considered the most likely seat that the GOP can win back from the Democrats. In a Primary, that unheard of millions of dollars were spent, the establishment candidate beat both the social and political tea party candidates. This Primary was seen as a crucial bellwether test for the future direction of the GOP and engendered an unprecedented amount of coverage for a race of this nature in addition to the treasure poured into it.
On the face of it the Republicans have elected their “best” candidate to run, one that might be more acceptable to the middle of the road voters. But Thom Tillis is way right and has extreme views on all the issues. So from a Democratic point of view the narrative would have been the same regardless of which candidate had come through to the November election.
Far more germane for the Democrats was the percentage of the North Carolina electorate that voted in this Primary. One might have thought at least the full Republican base, 25% of the electorate, might have pitched in and even more in so a key an election. More money was spent on this Primary then on most Senate elections so every true blooded Republican has to have been aware of its centrality to the Republican future. But the voting number was only 16%. In Jay H. Ell’s opinion that is significant in what was considered such an “important” Primary. Maybe the Party ultra faithful are not so faithful….
THE DEMOCRATIC RESPONSE TO THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM OF THEIR IMPENDING DEFEAT
Now if Jay H. Ell knows it is all about the base so do the Dems. They are conducting a far more hands on campaign than the GOP. The e mails fly around to the massive base collected by the Obama campaigns. On the internet they are way ahead of the game.The aim is to make the Obama base the Party base. The whole theme in these e mails is to create a David and Goliath struggle of big money versus the little people. E- mails have a host of objectives including, asking for money contributions, inviting a lucky person to meet Barak, Michelle or whoever or cajoling all to sign petitions in favor of the minimum wage for example. They are authored by party operatives, key senators and even Michelle and Barack himself.
The e -mails come in sets. For example they might and do say, “Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers have put millions in the North Carolina Senate race”. The narrative will continue, “In order to counter this onslaught we need $300,000 within 2 days. Can you chip in $3 or more”. On some occasions the contribution may be matched. Some fact like, “The North Carolina race is considered the closest in the Country as researched by Nate Silver”, is also part of the pitch.
Invariably the target will be reached usually after a progress e - mail exhorting participation as the deadline nears. The final e - mail will be celebratory and often contains the effect the outcome will supposedly have on leading lights of the Republican Party such as Boehner. Particularly impressive are the numbers they get to sign up on as protests or support for a particular policy.
The themes of David and Goliath are played over again and again - $300,000 at $3 a time versus millions from a few fat cats.
Then the national theme, being lead by Harry Reid, is hammered home, “We cannot let the Koch Brothers and Karl Rove buy the Senate”. A message that according to several polls is resonating with the electorate in general. Stan Greenberg’s Democracy Corporation and Public Action Fund researched 86 competitive House Districts to assess the attitudes of the voters to big money. In both GOP and Dem Districts there was an over 70% opposition to it. Schumer the Democratic Senate powerhouse has mooted an amendment to the Constitution, “Government by the People Act” to limit private donations to $150 to be matched x 6 by public funds. This could add yet another popular plank to the Dem platform to help persuade voters to “come out”.
Then there have been the court challenges to the States' voter suppression legislation several of which have been successful. It is doubtful that these will get to the Supreme Court before November so that also may be helpful in assisting the Democratic base to vote.
KEEP A KNOCKING TO GET THEM IN
The Democrats thus far have not spent much money on media advertising either holding their resources back or they are using them for knocking on doors and organizing. The latter, they believe, is by far the most effective way to get out the base. While it might be strategic to cry poverty the Democrats have plenty of big donors too although they do not have such open check books or are as ostentatious as the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson and Karl Rove. Jay H. Ell does not believe that only money will be the deciding factor in these elections. There are after all issues. There has to be a ceiling on those who don’t want women to have equal pay, who want full time workers to be paid poverty wages and who don’t want hundreds of thousands to be without health care, for example.
Writing in the New Republic, Sasha Issenberg details the Democratic dilemma and their response. The Democratic money has gone into a grassroots project called the “Bannock Street Project” which hopes to reshape their electorate in the midterms. The project was named by Democratic Colorado Senator, Michael Bennet, who conducted an on the ground campaign to win the Senate seat and the Governorship for the Democrats in Colorado.
To get the “unreliable” Democratic voters to pitch up, 4,000 paid workers are co ordinating with Democratic campaigns. Their responsibility is to recruit and manage volunteers. The Dems unprecedented bet has been utilized to build an infrastructure to support volunteer mobilization. This they have done rather than spend money on the "tried and trusted" TV media blitz that UCLA’s Lynn Vavrek has demonstrated does not have that much long term effect. This approach could account for the lower ratings of the Dems to date as their message has been given little exposure.
Issenberg’s essay lays out the number of unreliable Democratic voters that each State has to bring to the polls to ensure victory. For example West Virginia needs about 53,000. This in turn will need 124,000 paid hours to effect at a cost of $2,5 million. All 12 at risk States would require nearly a $150 million. The highest turnover being in Georgia where 664,000 Democratic unreliables need to be persuaded to go to the polls at a cost of $31 million to ensure victory.
Ms. Issenberg writes that there are over 13 million voters who haven’t voted in a Federal election since 2008. Of those three and a half million are estimated to be Republican and nearly seven million Democrat. So there is a big pool out there for the Democrats to fish in.
These days a $150 million is still money to everyone but the Kochs, and there are many other costs associated with running an election but Democrats are banking that this strategy gives them a better chance than only smear smear smear and then put it in ads. The Republicans for their part have added another major string to their bow in the form of Benghazi. They all set to revisit Hillary’s and Obama’s “failure” and feed their base more fodder.
EARLY SIGNS OF DEM SUCCESS.
Fox News in its daily newsletter acknowledges that Obamacare has been a much greater success than forecasters anticipated. Also they accept that their earlier criticism that most of the enrollees had not paid their premiums is false. Their comments on Obamacare are under the heading, “Can Democrats Organize to Retain the Senate”. Fox continues that two major organizations were enrollees for Obamacare, Planned Parenthood and Service Employees International Union. Fox wryly maintains that these two organizations will know where to find these voters. They also note that some States handed out voter registrations packets with Obama enrollments and end noting that the enrollees could help the Dems retain the Senate.
This is the first acknowledgement by Fox that Obamacare is a positive for the DP. More and more Democratic candidates are now running on Obamacare attacking their adversaries for voting against it and or depriving their constituents of its benefits. A recent poll in three Senate races that the Republicans had counted on winning back, Arkansas, Georgia and Kentucky are all neck and neck.
It looks as the Republican formula for this election as going to have to change its success formula from “Plutocrats, Obamacare and Voter Suppression” to “Plutocrats, Benghazi and Voter Suppression”. (Blog: Why the GOP in 2014? - It’s the Plutocrats, Obamacare and Voter Suppression - Stupid!). Benghazi is a twofer - both an attack on Hillary and Obama. (Blog: Obama and the Lynch Mob). Karl Rove added to the debate by inferring that Hillary was brain damaged. All this to power up the GOP base as to the sane this is insane.
So for the DP it will be the issues, their "David and Goliath" struggle and knocking on doors. For the Republicans it will be big money, smear, support generally unpopular policies as that in the past has immobilized their base.
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