5/ Democratic party of Florida is a gigantic trainwreck without the ability to get out of its own way, to mount a serious campaign operations, or to win statewide races by and large.— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) March 21, 2019
But this sounds a lot like Texas:
6/ Current #:— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) March 21, 2019
R: 4.7
D: 4.9
NPA: 3.6
The NPA FL voter in the last 20 years is *broadly* a Shy Tory R voter. Call it 55-60ish%. @steveschale or @mcimaps may disagree, but we can parse it later.
7/ So if @andrewgillum is serious, and registers and IDs and *activates* even 500,000 it's a game changer up and down the ticket.— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) March 21, 2019
Hillary Clinton's people talked about doing something similar, but it was a complete Potemkin village.
Those numbers in tweet 6 apply to Florida, but the description of the average Florida voter sounds like the average Texas voter, IMHO. And the reason Beto almost defeated Ted Cruz (when it should have been Cruz in a walk) is that Beto did the "boring and hard" "gut work of politics." His visit to every county in Texas wasn't a stunt, it was campaigning. Most statewide candidates in Texas stick to the most populous counties and use TV to reach the country dwellers and visit a few select places, but depend heavily on the "usual suspects" to turn out and vote for the party in power, the way Texas has always done. Beto upended that, and it worked. A number of Democrats statewide rode Beto's coat-tails into office, not because people voted a straight ticket thanks to the name at the top, but because he generate real interest in both voting, and registering to vote, and having someone to care about voting.8/ It would be of much greater consequence than a quixotic presidential bid.— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) March 21, 2019
If roughly half the Democratic field did the same they would alter the shape of American politics, but doing the gut work of politics is boring and hard.
Go back to tweet 4, above: that, too, describes the Democratic party in Texas. Beto threw all that out, too. He inspired such a slate of Democratic candidates in Harris County (Houston IS Harris County, basically) that a beloved and long-term GOP top county official was voted out of office in a shocking run, and an entire slate of Democratic female judges was voted in, this in the wake (and probably as a response) to an over-the-top effort to demonize Democrats and their judicial candidates. Republicans who did survive, especially at the state level, had the fear of God put into them; and many Dems who lost are thinking seriously of trying again. There was a time when no serious opposition was mounted to GOP candidates in most races because: why bother? They see an opportunity to "alter the shape of [Texas] politics," and they are going for it.
Which is why I'd still rather see Beto run against Cornyn, but word is Joaquin Castro is thinking of running against Cornyn in 2020, which means Beto has inspired serious competition in Texas politics. I agree with Wilson: to change American politics, you don't need to change the electoral college (not gonna happen easily; anybody remember how long it took to get the ERA before legislatures, and what finally happened to it?) or expand the Supreme Court (I'm all for that, too; but again, that alone is not gonna usher in the Age of Aquarius); you need to to the "gut work of politics." Beto did it, and changed the politics of Texas. If we don't keep that work going, if we can't do that work in all 50 states, we will just be whingers on the intertoobs, crying about why nobody else thinks just like us.
No comments:
Post a Comment