2010 Elections Hinge on Reinvigoration of Democratic Base

[Joanne98]

Mon Nov 30, 2009 at 12:40:04 PM PST
Last week, upon the release of the weekly Daily Kos Tracking Poll, I noted a new feature of the survey, which painted a fairly distressing picture of the 2010 electorate:

a bigger indicator of peril comes from a new survey question added the DK tracking poll for the first time this week. The poll now includes a rather simple indicator of baseline voter enthusiasm for the year 2010. The question offered to respondents is a simple question about their intentions for 2010:

QUESTION: In the 2010 Congressional elections will you definitely vote, probably vote, not likely vote, or definitely will not vote?

The results were, to put it mildly, shocking:

Voter Intensity: Definitely + Probably Voting/Not Likely + Not Voting

Republican Voters: 81/14
Independent Voters: 65/23
DEMOCRATIC VOTERS: 56/40



Two in five Democratic voters either consider themselves unlikely to vote at this point in time, or have already made the firm decision to remove themselves from the 2010 electorate pool. Indeed, Democrats were three times more likely to say that they will "definitely not vote" in 2010 than are Republicans.

If one pries open the hood on those numbers and digs a little bit deeper, the demographic details of who will comprise the likely 2010 electorate are even more distressing. Demographically, here are the top three groups in support of electing Democrats to the Congress in 2010:

2010 Generic Ballot Support, By Demographic Groups

Black Voters: Democrats +64
Voters Age 18-29: Democrats +49
Voters in the Northeastern US: Democrats +46



Now look at their proclivity for voting, according to their responses to the voting likelihood question in our survey:

Voter Intensity: Definitely + Probably Voting/Not Likely + Not Voting

Black Voters: 34/54
Voters Age 18-29: 41/49
Voters in the Northeastern US: 49/43



Contrast that with the three leading demographic groups planning to vote for GOP candidates in 2010 (note that while the GOP led by ten among white voters, I excluded them from this trio because of their large proportion of the population):

2010 Generic Ballot Support, By Demographic Groups

Voters in the Southern US: Republicans +30
Voters Age 30-44: Republicans +21
Voters Age 60+: Republicans +6



Now, take a look at their likelihood of voting in the 2010 midterm election cycle:

Voter Intensity: Definitely + Probably Voting/Not Likely + Not Voting

Voters in the Southern US: 66/28
Voters Age 30-44: 65/31
Voters Age 60+: 69/26

Their base is energized, while our base has, at best, languishing enthusiasm. Unless something fundamentally alters the calculus, that is a recipe for a wave election in 2010.

Midterms are, more often than not, base driven. In the successful (for Democrats) 2006 Midterm election, exit poll data showed an unnaturally small 12-point gap between liberals and conservatives (32-20). In the 1994 tsunami election during the Clinton era, that gap was twenty points (38-18).

In Virginia earlier this month, the gap between Conservatives and Liberals was twenty two points (40-18). One year ago, when the state gave its thirteen electoral votes to Barack Obama, the gap between Conservatives and Liberals was twelve points (33-21).

Democrats eager to avoid a repeat of 1994 might do well to look at the difference in base intensity right now, and do something to redress that enormous gap. There is little to no chance that the GOP base will grow deflated in the next eleven months--they very clearly have something to fight for (or more accurately, to fight against). The same cannot, as yet, be said for the Democrats. And there is enormous peril in that fact for the Democratic majority.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/11/30/809213/-2010-Elections-Hinge-on-Reinvigoration-of-Democratic-Base

Like I've been saying we need red meat! The GOP throws red meat to it's conservative base everyday and all we get is salads!

If the Democrats can't throw any red meat due to "weak and scared" then they need to hire people who will! Our base is starving to death!

[Peace Patriot]

1. ES&S will decide who is the next president and who sits in congress, and until

we fix that, nothing else matters very much. It is no surprise at all that the Democratic grass roots feels disillusioned and despairing, with many deciding they won't vote at all--considering what is happening in Congress and at the White House.

We voted for a Democratic Congress in 2006 to end the Iraq War. What did they do? They re-funded it and endorsed Bush-Cheney's 'surge'--meaning BILLIONS and BILLIONS more of our tax dollars went to war profiteers and thieves!

We voted for Obama as the only candidate left standing who had opposed the Iraq War--it was a largely anti-war vote--and because he seemed to represent an insurgency against the hijacking of our party by corporate interests.

Well, I won't go into all the ways that the voters were fooled, accepted the airy nonsense of "hope" in lieu of substance and/or have been betrayed. It's pretty obvious.

It is not possible to elect a president or congress who attends to the interests of the people of this country. Our "options" are rule by global corporate predators and war profiteers, or rule by global corporate predators and war profiters. Our "choice" is war, or war. Our choice is banksters robbing us blind, or banksters robbing us blind. And the differences are mostly illusory--a sort of feeling we get that we are a tiny bit better off, sort of, maybe, with the Democrats. At least they try, on health care--although it's health care written by the insurance monsters. That's something, right? At least they're not outright privatizing Social Security. At least they're not nuking Iran and inviting armageddon.

On the latter, that might appear to be a big difference. But I think that the threat of armageddon sobered the military brass and that some sort of counter-coup consortium (maybe led by Daddy Bush) got Rumsfeld out, and de-fanged Cheney, probably because China and Russia threatened to come into it, on Iran's side (and Rumsfeld and Cheney were going to do it anyway). Whatever happened, nuking Iran went away circa late 2006, at which time the Pentagon started looking for a new source of oil for their war machine, and for global corporate predator "free trade for the rich," and I think has lighted upon Venezuela (and possibly Ecuador). They are putting the war assets in place, as we speak--SEVEN new US military bases in Colombia, NO LIMIT on the number of US troops and 'contractors' who can be sent there and who will have complete diplomatic immunity, and US military use of all civilian airports and other facilities in Colombia (all this in addition to the $6 BILLION the U.S. is already larding on Colombia in military aid); two new US military bases in Panama; the reconstitution of the US 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, and securing of the US military base and port facilities in Honduras through the recent rightwing military coup. These war assets surround Venezuela's major oil region, adjacent to Colombia and the Caribbean.

And this is all occurring under the administration of Barack Obama. Whether it will be his war or not, we shall see. There are already US troops and 'contractors' (Blackwater) in Colombia, which could manufacture a "Gulf of Tonkin"-type incident on the Colombia/Venezuela border, tomorrow; Congress would instantly approve this new Colombia/US military agreement, no questions asked--and that would be that. We would be looking at Vietnam II.

Obama, on the other hand, may simply be letting this Bushwhack-designed plan be put in place, in his passive way. Maybe he opposes it, but he can't stop it. (Chavez has said that Obama "is the prisoner of the Pentagon"--and I have to say that it looks like that to me as well.) In any case, I think the odds are that he is going to be 'Diebolded' out of office 2012, if he's still popular, and the next "war president" brought in for the next oil war.

ES&S has the capability--the EASY capability--to do just this. They just bought out Diebold (aka Premier) and now have a monopoly over U.S. voting systems. ES&S is worse than Diebold, believe me. Their rightwing connections run to multi-billionaires who believe in the death penalty for homosexuals. Totally rancid, totally scary voting machine corp that manufactures its touchscreen voting machines in sweatshops in the Philippines. These and virtually all voting machines in the U.S. are run on 'TRADE SECRET' programming code--that we, the people, have no right to review--with NO audit/recount controls in half the states in the U.S. (no paper trail at all, no way to verify the count), and a miserable 1% audit in even the best states. (At least 10% is needed to detect fraud in electronic voting systems.)

Easy. as. pie.

The disgust and disaffection of so many voters in the Democratic Party's "base" is just icing on the cake. It means that ES&S will have to work less hard to pack a devil's list of Pukes/'Blue Dogs" into Congress for the next war, and to install someone even worse than Bush in the White House. The corpo-fascist media has been testing the waters on Cheney and Palin. You think they cannot be installed? You are wrong. But these forces in control of our government like to maintain some illusions. It is the least troublesome way to control the American people. So they want to see what they can shove down our throats without too much thrashing.

If you are a grass root--or represent grass roots interests in the Democratic Party--I suggest that you think long term and work long term on TRANSPARENT vote counting. It is the only way we can get out of this mess without a bloody revolution. We MUST restore transparent vote counting--and get malevolent corporations like ES&S out of our voting system.

Here is what I believe about Obama and the last election. I think he won--on the abiding hopes and dreams of the American people, for a peaceful world, and a good and just country. But his win could have been prevented (and was probably shaved) and he knew this. He had to pass a vetting by the global corporate predators and war profiteers who rule over us, and he had to make certain deals, NOT to be "Diebolded.' I think a deal with Clinton and the DLC was one (no serious financial or health care reform--the rich have to get richer). And a deal with the Pentagon on their oil needs and the war plan was another. (They can't have Iran's oil; they need another source.)

You know, Obama was only days into his administration--during his very inauguration week--when he had already started badmouthing Hugo Chavez. It was very odd. It was a time for celebrations and happy talk. Yet, there he was, on a major corpo-fascist Spanish news network, throwing barbed darts across the waters, at this one leader--a democratically elected and very popular president who had already been unmercifully and unfairly demonized by the Bushwhacks and the corpo-fascist media here and there. I wrote it off to bad advisors, at the time. Blooper, I thought. And he got more diplomatic by the spring (when he met Chavez). But, while that meeting was occurring, the Pentagon was SECRETLY negotiating this deal for SEVEN new military bases in Colombia--kept a secret from the Colombian people, from the Colombian legislature, from all the other leaders of Latin America (who are furious about it), as well as from the American people.

Why would they 'Diebold' him (and/or 'swift-boat' him) out of office, if he is so compliant? I think Obama has a conscience, and may balk when it comes to an oil war in South America. They may do it because they're not sure of him. (JFK prototype--goes along with the MIC, to a certain point, then balks at the horror of more war, and starts conceiving notions of world peace, and acting on them.) Or, they have other plans that he would give them trouble about--bringing down the "big boot" here (martial law); more utterly out-of-control bankster and war profiteer looting; need to seize back control of the Justice Dept., the regulatory system, etc. There are a lot of possible motives to put Sarah Palin--or someone equally diabolical--in the White House.

I am deeply afraid that I am right. And I hate being a Cassandra. But I think the only way out of this--out of continued war, and continued corporate rule--is long hard work on our democratic institutions, such as Latin Americans have done over the last several decades--beginning with transparent vote counting, so that we can put people into office who don't have to make compromising deals and who actually represent our interests.