I responded to diaries by subtropolis and FischFry, both of whom have valid points. I take serious issue with FischFry trying to tell the community what it can and can’t talk about. But I do think FischFry has legitimate points about what we need to be focused on.
I do disagree with FischFry somewhat on the outside money issue. I will discuss that in more detail below.
First, in the diary by subtropolis, I commented that I thought there wasn’t enough evidence for public discussion yet. What I meant really is that there isn’t enough evidence to draw any conclusions without examining the ES and S software. I also knew that someone at dKos would come along and throw a fit about even discussing it. That’s what happened after similar discussion in 2004, something that made me feel unwelcome here for a while.
I came back in time to play a role in the Fighting Dems fundraising in 2006, which helped contribute to a good year for the Democratic Party. I worked closely with a candidate that spent an inordinate amount of time on the phone and was thrilled to be able to raise money online using dKos and other sites to get the message out. Fundraising is a huge issue to get recognition from the DCCC and the Democratic Party.
My candidate lost a close race in 2006 but won 2 years later. Without the outside money, he would probably have lost again.
Outside money is not really the issue. There are two important caveats to that. First, there is a limit to how much ad-time you can buy. So money needs to be spent elsewhere, like in GOTV and local campaigning. This leads to the second caveat. All the outside money in the world will not help you if you are out of touch with your district.
I’ve read countless articles and interviews about that in Florida and TX this year. And in the last couple of days, I have read the same about ME and KY.
I think the Dem powers that be should be held to account for not promoting that local campaigning more. That seems to be the main reason my candidate won in 2008.
This year Dems were reluctant to do local campaigning. That hurt them a lot in TX and FL. Being out of touch with the people, despite what polls said, seems to have been a big deal in KY and ME too.
Back to the polls being off, I think the best explanation is a combination of a tRump effect and less campaigning. Polls were also off in places in 2016, but not so much in 2018. If Republicans were using some secret software algorithm to flip votes, 2018 polls would have been off more too. I don’t see them allowing Dems the 2018 blue wave if they had a secret algorithm to use.
I implore this community to keep discussing these issues. Have enough discussion that something more than mere finger pointing comes out of it.
