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National Democrats
Carter Wrenn posted on December 11, 2012 13:53
Gary’s progressive but he’s also old-fashioned so a year ago when he said, ‘You know, you ought to use Twitter’– he surprised me.
‘I expect,’ I said, ‘Twitter’s too young for my blood.’
‘Use it like an old-fashioned clipping service,’ he said.
Back in the old days, in the dark ages before Facebook and Google News, if you ran a campaign and needed to know what the newspapers were saying about a candidate you had to subscribe to a clipping service and say, Send me every newspaper article that mentions Jesse Helms – then every morning a manila envelope stuffed full of clippings that were two or three days old would arrive in the mail.
Now you can use Twitter like an old-fashioned clipping service. And it’s free. For instance, you can ‘follow’ Under the Dome or Rob Christensen or Joe Klein or David Brooks and a link to whatever they write appears on Twitter.
Last Sunday I read the News & Observer the old-fashioned way, sitting in bed, then meandered over to the office and turned on the computer and up popped a headline in Google News from the Los Angeles Times: Mitt Romney Pollster: Why we thought we would win.
The reporter, interviewing Romney pollster Neil Newhouse, sailed right past the philosophical and got down to brass tacks.
Why, he asked, did Romney’s polls show him winning Colorado and New Hampshire? Why did Romney’s polls show him in a dead-heat in Iowa? Why did Romney feel sure he would win Florida and Virginia?
Mr. Newhouse gave a pretty valid answer. He simply said, I’m not sure.
So much for brass tacks. Maybe the answer is philosophical.
In my world of older white Republican males hardly a soul could imagine Barack Obama winning the election. Men – and women – were certain Obama would lose. Republican pollsters and consultants had their own point of view: Anti-Obama voters, they said, were more intense and more likely to vote than pro-Obama voters. Plus, they’d add, undecided voters always vote against the incumbent. Once, sitting in a meeting, I said, That might not be so on Election Day if undecided voters dislike Romney as much as they dislike Obama – but only one person in the room thought that made any sense at all.
Now, a lot of times, the truth is ambiguous. But a lot of times not seeing the truth has nothing to do with ambiguity – it has to do with eyesight. Republicans didn’t lose because of demographics or Hispanics or Obama’s ground game. It was simpler. We lost, say, Florida and Virginia because we listened to one another and saw an election unfolding before our eyes that bore no resemblance to the election that was unfolding in Richmond and Miami.
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Carter Wrenn posted on December 07, 2012 12:26
Up in Washington, right after Obama won reelection, House Speaker John Boehner held a press conference to announce he’d seen the light and was ready to compromise and accept more tax revenues (which translated from political speak into plain English means higher taxes).
Next the House Republicans set off in hot pursuit of Hispanic votes, passing a bill that, as Arizona Republican Jeff Flake put it, “staples a green card” to the diploma of immigrants who graduate from colleges in the United States with degrees in Math or Science.
House Republicans also proposed allowing immigrants who are working here to bring their spouses and children to the United States without having to endure the wait for additional visas or green cards – then, as a fig leaf, to cover their flanks with less open-minded Republicans they proposed to end the Diversity Visa Lottery Program – a long-standing program that grants visas to immigrants from Africa and Asia.
None of this troubled the Democrats in Congress.
They simply said, That’s not a big deal. We’ll do all that – plus we’ll pass the ‘Dream Act’ and keep the “Diversity Visa Lottery Program.”
Republicans placed a bid to buy Hispanic votes.
The Democrats said, We’ll see you and raise you.
And the bad news is – in this poker game – the sky’s the limit.
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Carter Wrenn posted on December 06, 2012 17:09
It was like watching the rerun of a bad old black and white movie: Obama won reelection then, the next day, at a press conference in Washington John Boehner stood up and announced he was ready to compromise and accept new taxes – but only on one condition. Obama had to accept big spending cuts.
Then Obama departed Washington to give a speech at a toy factory in Pennsylvania and, the same day, his Treasury Secretary traipsed over to Capitol Hill and plopped a counter-proposal on the table in front of Boehner: The President wanted a $1.6 trillion dollar tax increase, more spending, eliminating debt ceiling votes, and proposed kicking the can down the road on spending cuts by deferring the sequestration for a year.
Boehner grimaced and said, We’re getting nowhere.
And Obama fired a broadside at Boehner, saying Boehner was against a tax cut for middle class families because he (Obama) wouldn’t give one to millionaires too.
A couple of days passed and Boehner came back with his own proposal: A ‘compromise’ that also included a big tax increase – which started a conflagration among conservatives. By sundown Boehner was catching it from Obama on one side and Jim DeMint to Rand Paul on the other.
So with the ‘fiscal cliff’ days away here’s where our political leaders in Washington stand:
The Democrats won’t cut spending because they’re afraid their supporters will go berserk.
The Republicans are for raising taxes and their supporters are going berserk.
So there’s only one way to escape the briar patch: More debt.
It’s like déjà vu all over again.
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Gary Pearce posted on December 05, 2012 11:26
It’s shameful that Republicans believe their political future rests on voter suppression. But Democrats can turn this chicken shit into chicken salad.
First they tell voters: “Republicans are doing all they can to make sure only angry old white men can vote. If you’re young, old, a minority or anyone who doesn’t look like them, they want to keep you from voting. How do you like that?”
Second, use it as an organizing tool. Keep the Obama field and volunteer armies angry, energized and working. Get a voter ID for everybody who needs one. And make sure they vote in 2014.
For Republicans, this is like immigration. There is short-term gain in suppressing Democratic voters, just as there is short-term gain in demonizing immigrants. But the 2012 presidential election shows there is also a long-term price to pay.
Democrats have to make them pay.
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Carter Wrenn posted on December 03, 2012 11:31
There’s a lot of talk up in Washington these days about compromise: President Obama’s ready to compromise and John Boehner’s ready to compromise but, so far, amid all the cooing no one’s laid a deal on the table so it’s hard to tell if Congressmen and Senators are going to say, Gosh, that compromise is swell – or – There’s no way on earth I’ll vote for that.
There’s also a fair amount political rhetoric camouflaging exactly what the politicians are compromising about.
Way back in 1990, when Harvey Gantt was running against Jesse Helms, at a press conference a reporter quizzed Gantt’s campaign chairman Mel Watt (who’s now a Congressman) about Jesse blasting Gantt for supporting tax increases when he was Mayor of Charlotte. Watt shot back, Harvey didn’t support any tax increases, those were revenue increases.
There’re a lot of Republicans (like Speaker Boehner and Senator Graham) who’re now saying they’re open to revenue increases – but then they turn around and add there’s no way on earth they’ll support raising tax rates. That’s a political fig-leaf of sorts – but not much of one. In the end, whether it’s a revenue increase or a rate increase taxes go up.
There may, perhaps, be a new spirit of compromise afoot in Washington – but the old spirit of who-doo is alive and well too.
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Gary Pearce posted on November 30, 2012 10:38
The 2012 election and its aftermath show how sharply – and bitterly – divided we are in America.
Elections are no longer choices between candidates or debates about issues. They are holy wars between Red and Blue America.
Ferrel Guillory at the UNC School of Journalism recommended an excellent book about this split: The Big Sort by Bill Bishop, who once worked at MDC here and now lives in Austin, Texas.
Bishop says we are choosing to live near, associate with and identify with people who share our political, religious and social values. This leads to red and blue states, red and blue neighborhoods, red suburbs and blue cities, red news and blue news, etc., etc. That separation in turns fosters not only a lack of understanding, but outright hostility toward people who are different.
He writes: “The lesson for politics and culture is pretty clear: It doesn’t seem to matter whether you’re a frat boy, a French high school student, a petty criminal or a federal appeals court judge: Mixed company moderates; like-minded company polarizes. Heterogeneous communities restrain group excesses; homogenous communities march toward the extremes.”
I commend the book to anyone concerned about how we became so divided and where we’re headed.
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Carter Wrenn posted on November 20, 2012 09:23
The waitress nodded to a slender fortyish brunette at the next table and said, ‘This is Gwyn, she’s a Republican’ – then Gwyn leaned across the gap between our two tables and said, ‘Just look at those Democrats, they didn’t win anyone’s hearts or minds this election – all they did was change who voted. If this had been 1980 – if we’d had the same electorate we had them – Romney would have won even bigger than Reagan. Ted Kennedy started us down the road to being a third-world nation with his Immigration Bill in 1965 and now 57% of the immigrants are getting welfare and that’s why Obama won. That’s demographics. Demographics are destiny.’
I nodded politely and thought, You’ve been listening to the howl.
The howl is the voice of Republican radio personalities, TV personalities, book writers and columnists – in fact, Gwyn, saying ‘Demographics are destiny,’ was echoing one of Ann Coulter’s recent columns.
In a way it’s odd: The same pundits who told Gwyn that Romney was sure to win are now howling (and telling her) why Romney lost but she’s never stopped to wonder if they might be wrong a second time. She just joined the howl. In fact, it doesn’t look like Romney lost for one reason – it looks like it took half a dozen reasons floating through the ether and landing at just the right moment in just the right place for Obama to defeat Romney. About the only explanation I haven’t heard from the pundits is, ‘We Republicans screwed up and lost an election we should have won.’ With one exception. Dick Morris. To his unending credit Dick went on television the day after the election and said bluntly, ‘I was dead-wrong.’
Today the howl may be the most powerful force in Republican politics – it sells millions of books every year and draws millions of viewers to cable TV shows every night. But it doesn’t enlighten. Instead it’s left Gwyn ranting about Ted Kennedy stealing the election by introducing a bill forty-seven years ago.
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Gary Pearce posted on November 19, 2012 08:33
This election showed how closely – and bitterly – divided Americans are. Suppose we go through another 2000 cliff-hanger one day?
Increasingly, we don’t just hold different views and opinions from our opponents. We hold them in contempt. We call them ignorant, bigoted, fascistic, communistic, unpatriotic and un-America. We question a winner’s very legitimacy.
Democrats do their share of the demonizing, but there is something about President Obama – and the coalition that elected him – that brings out a particularly dark and disturbing reaction. Some nuts talk of revolution and secession.
As Rob Christensen noted in his column Sunday, we’ve “sorted” ourselves into two parties that are “more partisan and more attuned to their most ideological wings.”
We’ve also sorted ourselves out geographically – in the neighborhoods and even the states where we live.
The result is a presidential election that is decided in a handful of swing states, while the majority of states are reliably and overwhelmingly red or blue.
This only increases the chances of a Bush-Gore replay: it all coming down to a handful of contested votes in one state. And at a time where, despite all our technology, our election machinery grows creaky, slow and increasingly open to challenge.
What if that had happened this time? What if it had all come down to Florida again?
What a field day the conspiracists, secessionists and extremists would have!
You’d like to think Americans would resist those calls to paranoia, overreaction and even violence. Would we?
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Gary Pearce posted on November 16, 2012 09:38
The decision about Obamacare highlights the tension that will mark North Carolina’s politics the next four years.
The tension stems from an election that saw the nation go in one direction (largely Democratic) and North Carolina in another (almost all Republican).
When political partisans win an election, they tend to believe that an era of enlightenment has dawned in which their ideas, their ideology and their party will always reign supreme.
That usually lasts until the next election.
It’s happening this time. Nationally, Democrats proclaim that demography is destiny and they are destined to rule as the Grand Old Party of Angry Old White Men declines into irrelevance. In North Carolina, Republicans proclaim that the state is headed in the same direction as South Carolina, Georgia, etc.
As Lee Corso would say: Not so fast.
This election was close nationally. And North Carolina is about the most closely divided state in the nation. It was Romney’s closest win – and Obama’s closest loss – in the country. The divide isn’t going away.
This presents a challenge to Governor-elect McCrory. So it was interesting that his response to Governor Perdue’s insurance-exchange decision was more muted than Senator Berger’s.
Berger runs a 70-30 Senate. McCrory will govern a 50-50 state. Republicans’ money and maps may protect their legislative majority for a while. But McCrory has to face the voters in four years.
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Carter Wrenn posted on November 13, 2012 17:46
The day after the election House Republican Leader John Boehner faced a tough question: Would he compromise with Obama or not? It was a Hobson’s Choice. Either way he was walking into a political minefield.
In the end Speaker Boehner threw what looked like a compromise on the table – in effect, saying to Obama, Okay, here it is: We’ll go along with raising revenues (meaning taxes) but you have to go along with tax reform and spending cuts – then the Speaker explained what he had in mind was like the 1986 tax reform compromise between Reagan and Tip O’Neal (that raised taxes).
In a way that did sound like a wind change – as if Boehner was saying to Obama, We Republicans can’t go along with outright repeal of the Bush tax cuts – which is what you want – but if we can dress tax increases up a bit and call it loophole closing then there’s an agreement to be had providing you offer us a big spending cut in return.
Of course, we can’t be sure that’s what Speaker Boehner had in mind at all. After all, this is politics and things are not always what they seem – it could be the cloud floating down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capital to the White House isn’t a compromise at all – it’s a political two-step, with John Boehner trying to put Obama in a corner so Obama’s the one to say, No deal.
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