My Super Important Diary
Thu Sep 21, 2006 at 06:55:12 PM PDT
Lend me your ears...er, eyes. Witness the simplicity and brilliance of what I am about to say regarding the upcoming midterm elections. Please read with unbridled enthusiam all you really need to know about the only winning strategy that we Democrats need to employ to coast seamlessly to rapturous victory.
Victory with a capital V, Victory with a lowercase ictory... Truly, our guaranteed historical win can be achieved by following the simplest formula ever imagined by upright bipeds. The simplicity is so mindblowing it will shatter your skull. How do we do it, you ask? Tell me, Ablington, before I vomit from the suspense! you demand.
Here's what we MUST do, friends. THIS is the simple plan:
LARGE AMOUNTS OF DEMOCRATS MUST VOTE
What!!? But Ablington, you say, that's stupid! File under 'duh'! Yes minions, perhaps it is filed under duh, but I think its time to dust off the Duh File and have a good look. In my humble opinion (which is accurate like a computer), our GOTV is the single most important factor we need to concern ourselves with heading into November. Forget Rove, forget Iran, forget gas prices, forget all the D.C. quibbling and quabbling, forget the media, forget Diebold, etc. Forget all the worrisome crud we sling around, all the manufactured (and real) panic. For a month, anyway. Fine tune your brain machine to focus like a laser on all the ways YOU can improve GOTV.
You can feel it, I can feel it. It surrounds us like a smelly duvet. The citizenry is ripe for change. The citizenry, for the most part, dislikes BushCo. The citizenry can tangibly feel the ways in which our beloved country is becoming a stranger to us. Even in the short two years since the general election our situations have gone from bad to worse overseas and abroad. Its patently obvious...really, it is, even to the wingnuttia (although they would be loathe to admit it). I could list the gazillion ways that things have deteriorated, from Iraq to Katrina to mortgages, healthcare, pensions and gas prices, but we are already well aware of these issues. So are the ordinary, non bloggy folk (as opposed to us extraordinary bloggy ones).
With a record turnout for Democrats and Independants we will have a brand new Senate and House. Without a record GOTV, we probably won't. Its as simple as that.
Lets look at some numberlike figures, shaaaaaaaaall we? I swiped this from Larry Sabato:
...and more from Larry
In most recent elections, presidential and midterm, the voters have been divided fairly evenly between Democrats and Republicans, based on the national exit polls and other reliable pre- and post-election surveys. In the most recent presidential election, for example, the electorate in November 2004 consisted of 37 percent Democrats, 37 percent Republicans, and 26 percent Independents. Reasonably similar, close divisions were recorded in 1996, 1998 and 2000.
But there is one great exception in the last five national elections: the midterm election of 2002. In the wake of September 11, President Bush was riding high in the polls, and he was able to use the national security issue to the Republicans' advantage. GOP voters were energized, Democrats were demoralized, and as a result, the 2002 national electorate had a strongly Republican tilt: 40 percent were Republicans, only 31 percent Democrats, and 23 percent Independents. Not surprisingly, Republicans fared unusually well in 2002, recapturing the Senate and adding six U.S. House seats.
So what will the composition of the November 2006 electorate be? If the election were held today, Democrats might well have the turnout edge. President Bush is struggling, and a series of issues from Iraq to high gasoline prices to the failed Hurricane Katrina response have sent GOP stock tumbling. Can the Republicans recover in the six months before the election?
After having been outdone in the ground war in 2000--a fact that nearly cost Bush the Presidency--the GOP significantly outclassed the Democrats in 2002 and, to a lesser extent, 2004. Will it be a three-peat? Or a throwback to 2000, when the Democrats won the popular vote for President and picked up four Senate and two House seats? To the turnout victor belong the spoils of '06.
Lets make it a throwback to end all throwbacks!!!
Several weeks ago Markos had an intriguing front page post that piqued my attention more than usual. In it, he described how he was working on liberal alternatives to those traditional Republican GOTV strongholds, mega-churches, because "somebody has to do it". He is correct in his drive to improve our GOTV and organization where it counts, in our homes and neighborhoods, and not just on the computer or TV screens. I love the herding catsness of the Democratic party up until Voting Day, when it turns on my like a cat in a bathtub. This is the one day out of the year that I can honestly say I wish we were more like Republicans, with the church buses driving voters right up the polling place. The lack of a military cohesiveness and lockstep discipline is what alternately makes us great and perpetually a day late/dollar short.
Markos hasnt yet followed up on his broad plan to create the great neighborhood liberal church (or whatever he had cookin'), and I await any and all follow up anxiously. This theme of grassroots cohesive GOTV is what I think about when I'm in the shower or in the car, or otherwise needing to occupy my mind. When progressives are busing their folks to the polling places fresh from the weekly town megameeting, our country will never lose its way again. We NEED this kind of involvement like tomatoes need sunshine.
How can progressives do it? How can we get into the flesh and blood minds of folks who are assailed by corporate GOP doctrine when they turn on the TV, or go to their megachurch, or listen to their new Focus on the Family book on tape, or attend their Elks club or NRA meetings? How do we infiltrate this?
How can we maximize our GOTV this year and every year? Ideas, please. Im sick of waiting for the party leaders to figure this one out. Like the environment and global warming, GOTV is an issue we need to take into our own hands NOW as citizens instead of waiting for our party leaders to make improvements.
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