She made herself a spokesman. People on the left cheered. Nobody realed her in and she generated headlines.
So, public perception is that open hostility championed by Maxine belongs to people on the left.
You saw how much of a difference it made when Pelosi openly derided ANTIFA and said to ‘lock them up’. It made a huge difference.
Democrats need to run on something other than ‘We hate Trump!’
Otherwise this ‘blue wave’ democrats are counting on won’t happen.
Democrats need to decide who they want representing them. Otherwise it will just be the next noise generator.
What Waters said will be associated with democrats until a Democrat calls it out.
The reason she is familiar to "everyone else’ is because those people are on the right and all watch Fox News…where they drone on incessantly about her and that retired grandmother in NY…what’s her name…oh yeah, Hillary.
I think that there is a very strong desire on the Right to always find some “What-about” person or thing that is equally as disturbing, egomanical and derisive as Trump.
Nice try…but Maxine Waters ain’t it.
This is not a “defense” of her or what she said; I wish she had been more forcefully condemned (like an official censure or something?)….but to put her somehow on the same level as the “leader” of the Free World/the President of the United States; and to somehow put the impact of her hateful and divisive comments on the same level as the ones Trump spew’s out on almost a daily basis, is an extremely weak attempt at moral equivalency.
It’s doubtful that Water’s hateful diatribe fired up anyone (other than the Right) beyond the 5 minutes or so someone gave her a mike.
Can the same be said for Trump’s tweets and rallys?
The answer would be “no” to anyone being honest and truthful…
I didn’t see anyone cheering myself, but then again it’s just Ohio
Imo, they absolutely do not need to have anyone step up until closer to election day. Giving Trump time to lie to the public through a series of questionable tweets just doesn’t make sense to me
They don’t need one particular person, nor even a particular message, to be successful in the midterms. Blue state dems will (and should) look completely different from red state dems. 2020 is another matter.
Obviously not @Tyler23, but I think he means congressional races, being local affairs, should have campaign messages tailored to the attitudes of their individual electorates, so a nationally cohesive (or even coherent) message is unnecessary (and would in fact be counterproductive). Whereas in 2020, the POTUS campaign, being nationwide, must find themes that appeal everywhere, ie, that transcend differences among congressional-district electorates.
Granting your premise here, FOX is nothing to sneeze at. Average 2 plus million viewers on average. All the biggest prime time blocks belong to them.
It’s too big to be dismissive. FOX talks to about .7% of the population on average.
What hasn’t worked yet? Anyone and everyone that runs against ‘Trump the politician’ is going to be doing something for the first time. There isn’t any precedent for it.
I was talking about counting on Trump to torpedo himself and to hitch a ride on that. There seems to be a soft of ‘learned helplessness’ on the larger demographic of the U.S. I don’t think the rantings of Trump wiggle the needle anymore, not by much anyway. The narrative has been established and it’s going to be this way until Trump is done.
Whether or not you like him is not the point. The people that do like him have dug in and will not budge. If they haven’t been affronted yet, I don think it’s possible to affront them. And you cannot dismiss his base because it’s not a small number of people.
Here’s why ‘I hate Trump!’ is not going to win anybody anything. Anybody who runs a anti-Trump platform without any kind of real appeal to their constituents aren’t going to make it. People are not as outraged as the ‘outrage machine’ would want them to be.
So you need a plan for the seldom discussed but most important factor, the issues.
Whats a bit nicer about mid-term elections is they don’t appeal to the mouth breathing masses who don’t know there is an election coming. It’s decided by people who pay attention more than presidential elections.
I don’t think that’s what the Dems are doing atall. Keeping a national candidate from stepping forward ATM just means they’re immune to years of Trump lies.
In the small sample size that is my family in WV, I have not seen this to be the case.
I don’t think we know that yet. It’s never been tried before.
Agreed, but it’s not all that hard to appeal to constituents. HRC pulled millions more votes than Trump and she was easily the worst Dem candidate in my lifetime. Trump CLEARLY isn’t bulletproof given how he couldn’t even pull close to a majority
I look to the 2012 election. That was the Republicans repetoire, ‘We’re not Obama!’. Romney got slaughtered. It wasn’t even funny. He even held his own during debates, but having the personality of cardboard and not running anything but an anti-Obama rhetoric was unfruitful.
It’s an emotional appeal and emotions are fleeting.
Not only did Romney receive more overall votes than Trump, but he received a higher % of cast votes. On top of that, Trump essentially won the election on the back of his ‘Im not HRC’ campaign.
I guess I don’t see where you think being ‘anti this guy’ doesn’t work. It won Trump an election and pulled more votes for Romney than Trump came close to lol
Actually, that’s not true. I believe he did better with non-white voters, too.
I’m with @pat on this one. Dems need to run on another platform(not democratic socialism,) especially if the economy and unemployment is where it’s at now.
While I firmly believe that Trump is benefiting from “right place/right time” as far as the economy is concerned…the reality is that employment and the overall economy have improved.
“Anybody but Trump” is a loser before it even gets started…and you can believe that Trump will have his guns locked and loaded for ANYBODY the DEMS run in 2020.
Thanks for that article. It was really interesting.
I don’t think it’s there socialistic tendencies that repulse people as much as the newly infused identity politics. That’s a dangerous train to have jumped on. One you cannot jump off as goes with anything with race.
People recognize bold face racism when they see it no matter who the target demographic is. So when you trumpet things like ‘Whites are racist by default and cannot help it.’ I.E. “White Privilege”, you piss people off. Especially to those who are quite convinced they are not racists, but by very definition of their race, they are, according to the identity scam being perpetrated on the left. And this is a left wing phenomenon so unpopular, even left wingers are hating on it.
The left has cracked in two. You have the classic liberals, like Bill Mahar or Sam Harris railing hysterically at the left for embracing identity politics. Then you have the Glen Greenwald’s and Omer Aziz’s of the Earth doubling down hard on identity politics. Then the two sides are going after each other, hard. So hard, that they each end up accusing each other of being in the company of NAZI’s (or Trump).
It’s fun for me to watch, but it’s not good for left wing politics.
The tactic I think the Republicans should adopt during these mid-terms is to shine a brighter light on these wars the left is having with itself and be the calmer, more reasoned alternative. Then stretch out and then tip your hand on policy. They can simply say “Democrats are so busy trying to kill each other that they have no time for you. We have time for you, come on in…”
Then just repeat the same shit you said in 2016 on policy. Point to the economy, drop the mic and walk-off.