I worked on the Obama campaign so I am well familiar with a practice I like to call the Cirque de Défaite or Circus Of Defeat. It's a practice that was repeatedly launched against our campaign via the opposition and Media to depress voter turnout and push a certain meme. Massachusetts , has found themselves in the same position. But they should not be discouraged. Turnout trumps POLLS. I've said it all throughout the Primaries , Caucuses and General Election.
I remember close races and the must win or else it means bla bla bla memes that the Media naysayers pushed all day everyday leading up to various election days. I also remember the victories and the tuning in to Morning Joe that next morning just so I would be able to relish in watching him eat crow with all that egg on his face. I remember being told constantly by Chuck Todd and Nora O'Donnell that my state was just not the type of state that would favor a candidate like Barack Obama despite all my efforts and hopes.
And get this, the polling was actually in our favor and still , nope. They professed to know my state more than me and talking head after talking head dashed and slashed all the demographics up and concluded that Wisconsin was a Clinton state. They spliced and diced all the Polls and told me that it just wasn't going to happen because there were not enough College Kids in Madison and Blacks in Milwaukee to pull him through.
All the analysts told me that my state , Wisconsin , had people in it that would feel more comfortable voting for Hillary and for Mc Cain in the Fall. They told me that because my state was overwhelming White and overwhelmingly rural and overwhelmingly working class that the demographics just did not favor Barack Obama. And despite them being smart because they are on TV donwenchaknow, I just didn't listen to them.
Perhalps, I am stubborn . Perhaps, I had just watched Barack Obama win the Iowa caucus earlier , a state overwhelmingly similar to the rural parts of Wisconsin , and perhaps I just had a little more faith in my state. And it wasn't just the Media. When I was at the opening of the Green Bay office volunteering, I was chatting it up with fellow volunteers and an Obama Campaign Staffer (real handsome BTW) who was nearby , watched me explain why I thought Obama had the state.
I said something to the effect of "Look, even though I don't usually subscribe to the practice of determining elections based on demographics alone, I gotta say, if I did, Wisconsin is still Obama's. You got Madison and Milwaukee and almost everything else is Iowa. Our only challenge is voter turnout. " It was a simple observation, based on my limited five year residence here, but one I think it was rejected by the campaign because the next day, I read a story about the opening of the Obama Campaign office in Green Bay that quoted a source that worked with the national campaign warning, "Obama's supporters to be careful as not to get overly confident".
So there will always be doubters and defeatist , maybe even within your own campaign. It happens all the time. It's happening now in Massachusetts as we see this election is now over and the voting underway, you have doubters and naysayers and blamers and defeatists. Cirque de Défaite. And yes, while it is a fact that she ran a poor campaign, that's no reason to give up hope and no reason to give this election over to a nasty, hairy little boy who's vowed to vote against everything the majority of his would be constituents believe in. And it's also, no reason to give Senate Democrats back their old excuse for not doing anything again.
Whaaa, we no have teh sixtay . We no have teh votes. We wanna work but we can't haz teh sixtayyyyyyyy voooootes
We didn't let the Media define Wisconsin and Massachusetts shouldn't let the Media define them. They have the votes. They just need to show up.