Dean was right. Eskow was right. Dance with the ones who brought you to the dance.

[madfloridian]

Alex Sink ran a little better campaign this time than she did in the gubernatorial race. But it was still a cautious race, that was understandable. David Jolly threw caution to the winds and he danced with those who got him elected.

Candidates matter, how they speak matters, taking stands matters. Though Alex did better than before, she could not forget all the attacks coming her way. I can understand that, but it is a losing way to campaign.

Candidates' personalities matter. I detested Jolly on the issues, but oh boy did he defend those issues firmly and consistently. He was not wishy washy. Democrats can take a lesson from that.

Right after the 2010 elections Democrats had absolutely nothing to lose at all by taking the liberal stances on issues that mattered to people and affected their lives.

Instead...all we got was preaching about more "bipartisanship", getting along with the other side, even the use of the words "post partisan."

Howard Dean called it right years ago in his book called You Have the Power.

Failure of pseudo centrism? Blurring distinctions in the name of bipartisanship.

Without the involvement and commitment of people at the ground level, you don't really have a party. You have no pool from which to draw future congresspeople, senators, and presidents. And you have no genuine excitement.

..."He says "the truth is when you trade your values for the hope of winning, you end up losing and having no values--so you keep losing.

We have to reconnect to the base.

..."In recent years the Democrats, in our pursuit of big dollars, have neglected the people we're there to serve. We let our connection to our base atrophy and have forgotten, as they say in politics, who brought us to the dance. In service to a falsely named "centrism," we've sidestepped every major request from labor unions, especially on including worker protections in our free-trade agreements.

The quotes are from You Have the Power, 2004.

He was right. Too much listening to the Third Way and other think tanks.

Richard Eskow wrote this right after the 2010 elections.

A President's Choice: Resist Wall Street's 'Shock Doctrine' or Keep Listening to the Usual Suspects

The Failure of Pseudo-Centrism

We're still suffering from the massive failure of a radical, free-market-run-wild ideology that devastated the economy. The public understood that, so they gave the Democrats an enormous mandate to change economic direction. Yet just twenty months later conservatives scored a huge triumph, leaving Democrats with a choice: Continue to blur the distinction between themselves and their opponents, or lay out a clear agenda for job creation and economic growth.

Of course, that's been the choice all along. But the president and many other senior Democrats chose to take the advice of the "centrist" experts within their party by adopting unpopular Republican positions and getting nothing in return. After last night's rout, what are these experts advising? You guessed it: more of the same so-called "Centrism." That's an odd word to use for policies that most Americans oppose, like cutting Social Security or allowing bankers to enrich themselves by endangering the economy, but theirs is an Alice-in-Wonderland world.

Real centrists would defend Social Security and do more to rein in Wall Street, since those positions are popular across the political spectrum. It's a good thing the president said today that he wants to spend more time with the American people. Bankers and the Deficit Commission aren't "centrists" where most Americans live.

If Democrats want to keep passing bills that include unpopular right-wing ideas, Republicans and their Wall Street patrons will be happy to let them do it and suffer the consequences. They've done it before, most notably when they let Dems take the fall for their unconditional bailout of the big banks. We saw the results yesterday. And yet, incredibly, the usual suspects are still pushing the same failed approach.

We worked hard for Alex Sink's husband, Bill McBride, when he ran against Jeb Bush for governor. We worked with Republicans and independents, just as we did during the Dean Campaign.

McBride never did take stands, even though many of us urged him to do so. During the debate I remember that he could not distinguish himself. Was it the ones who were running his campaign and dictating how it would be done? I don't know. Alex did about the same when she ran for governor.

She should have won this time. Trouble is that David Jolly is a handsome guy, he comes across powerfully during TV interviews in spite of his terrible stances on issues. There is a lot of speculation about why Sink lost yesterday. I believe a lot of it is that candidates matter, their personalities matter, the strength of their beliefs matters.

We have tried cautious, centrist, moderate, bipartisan. We have tried being careful not to take strong stands. We have gone along with right wing policies trying to please.

It hasn't worked very well.

[dembotoz]

1. correct as usual k and r

[jsr]

2. Great post.

Thanks!

[madfloridian]

3. Back in 2007 Digby wrote a masterpiece about "bipartisanship".

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/bipartisan-zombies-by-digby-it-was.html

I guess everyone is going to have to pardon us cynics here on the liberal side of the dial for being just a teensy bit skeptical of this demand for bipartisanship. The last time the country elected a centrist conciliator who wanted to leave behind the "braindead politics of the past", he first got kicked in the teeth by fellow centrists Sam Nunn and David Boren over gays in the military and raising taxes on the rich, and then faced an opposition so vicious that it ended with an illegitimate impeachment and a stolen election. A lot more has happened since then, all of it bad.

That is not to say it will play out the same way again. Things rarely do. But it's depressing that so many Democrats still seem to have this deep conceit that the Republicans are really reasonable people in spite of fifteen long years of being shown otherwise over and over again. And it's infuriating that after everything that's happened, the permanent political establishment is still more freaked out at the prospect of the dirty hippies passing universal health care than radical neocons starting World War III. If only the reasonable people could get together over scotch and waters and talk it all through everything would work as it's supposed to.

It's a lovely idea, isn't it? The only problem is that they keep forgetting to tell the Republicans, who view politics as a blood sport. They aren't interested in compromise and haven't been since old Bob Michel shuffled off to shuffleboard-land. They play for keeps, which it seems to me, is perfectly obvious after all we've seen over the past 15 years or so. They don't let little things like electoral defeats keep them down. They always work it, no matter what, and in the process they twist the Democratic Party into pretzels.

[Fumesucker]

4. I hate to disagree with Digby

It's the Democratic party twisting itself into a gigantic pretzel, blaming Republicans for what Democrats do is enabling the bad behavior on the part of the Democrats.

[madfloridian]

5. I see what you mean.

I agree.

[cui bono]

17. +1

[madfloridian]

6. Markos at Daily Kos has a more blunt assessment than mine.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/12/1284086/-Florida-special-election-We-didn-t-turn-out-we-didn-t-win

Given the GOP's effective 2010 gerrymandering, there aren't a lot of opportunities for Democrats to make gains, and this is a rare Obama district held by a GOPer. I'd be willing to bet that November turnout would make this a tighter race, and 2016 will be a whole other beast. The GOP is holding this district on borrowed time.

But given our anemic base turnout, Democratic candidates need to do a better job motivating them to vote. And in this case, I don't blame our base voters. When Democrats like Alex Sink run on austerity, cutting Social Security and bringing back the Simpson-Bowles Catfood Commission, well, no one is inspired. That has to be part of any effective base-mobilization strategy. Maybe promising to be a dick wins over some independent support (Sink did win the early vote despite the outsized GOP numbers), but that's as relevant as Mitt Romney winning independents by double digits in 2012. Democrats win by getting Democrats to the polls. There are more of us than there are of them. Period.

[TheKentuckian]

42. The party does not believe in the concept of a base election the TeaPubliKlans only believe in base

elections so we have a loose paradigm in place. A pattern for the flow of our politics.

Increasingly our party seems disinclined to accept that there is a base at all.
The old tent is too big for that shit, see. The base is EVERYBODY, see.

I'm dubious that the Presidential cycle strategy is that hot either, the TeaPubliKlans have been super abysmal forever, despite shrub stealing a couple of terms they have been pitching almost straight garbage since Nixon really with the exception of Poppy Bush on gravitas and RayGun on charisma. Dole was credible, yet terrible as a talent and that is it. The latest crop is ridiculous and I think that the "bipartisan" bullshit would have rated a fat F- if the opposition was even mediocre and/or shrub wasn't in the running for worse pResident of all time.

Which to me says we have a part time strategy that is over valued and takes common sense beyond the borders of taking it to the extreme with strong tailwinds making more difference than all the machinations put together.

[madfloridian]

45. Rahm said right out loud that there is NO base at all. None.

http://prospect.org/article/meaning-midterms

But the more compelling story, which continues to unfold even today, comes when Bendavid pulls back from the day-to-day of the campaign to examine what the midterm elections meant for the identity of the Democratic Party. In an election where more moderates and centrists were elected than in any year past, many -- bloggers being the loudest among them -- have wondered whether the party has abandoned its base.

Certainly Emanuel holds no such romantic notions that there even exists such a base of voters loyal to core Democratic values. He is adamant that "we have no base!," a view that clearly guided his strategy for selecting candidates. As Bendavid writes, "he would not support the most loyal Democrats, or those whose populism was purist. His only criterion, he said, was who could win." This kind of single-minded, values-be-damned vision is anathema to some on the party's left. Writing for The Nation after the election, John Nichols complained that "many of the Democrats who prevailed on November 7 did so despite [Emanuel's] efforts, not because of them" and argues that liberal candidates could have won had Emanuel made the decision to support them. Yet as Bendavid points out, "of the 30 candidates who took seats from the Republicans, about 20 had been nurtured, funded, advised, and yelled at by Emanuel for months. Perhaps a half dozen had been supported by grassroots activists with little help from the DCCC."

The relationship that epitomizes the rift between Emanuel and the party base is the congressman's tenuous partnership with Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean. As the book relates, Emanuel spent most of the campaign furious with Dean, whose Fifty State Strategy to build up party infrastructure nationwide he saw as little more than a way to throw money to the wind. In May 2006, Emanuel and Senator Charles Schumer, his counterpart in the Senate, met with Dean to ask for more money for their respective campaigns. Banging his hand on the table, Emanuel chided Dean's grassroots plan, "No disrespect, but some of us are arrogant enough, we come from Chicago, we think we know what it means to knock on a door. You're nowhere Howard. Your field plan is not a field plan. That's fucking bullshit." The two wouldn't speak again until election time.

[Enthusiast]

7. Kicked and recommended a whole bunch.....nt

[yardwork]

8. Very true. I've enjoyed your posts for many years.

[Horse with no Name]

33. She has always been one of my most favorite posters

[madfloridian]

34. .....

Aww..you two flatter me. But thanks. Most of what I post lately disappears quickly.

Don't see many of you around lately. Things move too fast around here.

[Horse with no Name]

36. Awww thanks.

I don't come around much anymore--much of what I say sinks and apparently doesn't interest anyone...so, there really isn't any need to take up bandwidth...LOL

[malthaussen]

59. Ain't flattery if it's true. n/t

[madfloridian]

35. I appreciate that.

Seems like our paths don't cross very often anymore. Things move too fast here.

[yardwork]

63. I mostly lurk these days.

[woo me with science]

9. +1 But the article disconnects the choices from the real reason they are made.

The article is spot-on in talking about results of running Third Wayers versus real liberals, but it pretends that these choices are made because of misguided political strategy, not because the entire political system is flooded by corporate money, and the candidates are already purchased.

We have to talk about the real corruption in the system, the incentives for politicians of selling out, and the real consequences to them if they don't. It's a systemic problem that is much larger than just urging them to make a better decision.

[cui bono]

18. Absolutely correct.

Until we get money out of politics and overhaul the election system we're screwed.

[MisterP]

10. naw, FL just means we have to add *more* "Progressive" drag to the Heritage Foundation's old plans!

[bvar22]

11. Harry Truman said it best:

[font size=3]
"I've seen it happen time after time. When the Democratic candidate allows himself to be put on the defensive and starts apologizing for the New Deal and the Fair Deal, and says he really doesn't believe in them, he is sure to lose. The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don't want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign."
---President Harry Truman

QED:2010[/font]


[font size=3] NO Excuses![/font]


Instead of dithering about how MUCH to cut "entitlements",
the Democrats SHOULD be running on how much to INCREASE them.

[1StrongBlackMan]

19. Agreed ...

not so much with the Truman quote; but rather, this:

Instead of dithering about how MUCH to cut "entitlements",
the Democrats SHOULD be running on how much to INCREASE them.

Running on that while clearly reminding the electorate that their opponents will, if given the chance, cut entitlements.

[bvar22]

21. Makes sense.

Starting In-the-Middle,
and THEN agreeing to meet the Extremists half-way to the gates of Republican HELL
has been a disaster.

[The Wizard]

12. Language counts

Sink should have used the words improve Obamacare. Fixing implies that it's broken.
Those who stand for nothing will fall for anything.
Al Gore made the same mistake in 2000 when he distanced himself from Bill Clinton. He bought the Republican propaganda. Clinton left office with a 67% approval rating.
We have to take a stand against Republican lies and propaganda.

[WillyT]

13. + 1,000,000,000... What You Said !!! - K & R !!!

[madfloridian]

50. Heck, WillyT

Why don't you show a little enthusiasm? lol

Just kidding, love your posts.

[genxlib]

14. Multi time loser

Last edited Wed Mar 12, 2014, 10:23 PM - Edit history (1)

I had a bad feeling when I saw Alex Sink back on a ballot.

I was pissed when she ran a lack luster campaign and left us with Rick Scott.

How do you lose to a Medicare scammer in Florida?!

But the worst was after the election. She sent me a blast email from the campaign mailing list announcing her new endeavor as a partner in a financial services firm.

I responded to the email and ripped into her for having the audacity to use the campaign email list to promote herself while we were stuck with Governor Skeletor. I doubt she ever saw the response but it made me feel better.

I was very disappointed to see her surface again. I was very wary of the Democrats putting our hopes in her and unfortunately was proved correct.

[madfloridian]

32. ......

I share many of your concerns about her. My eyes were opened when her late hubby campaigned. I realized that he did not seem really determined to win. Never really knew why. He had great people working on the campaign, but he got irritated when we became demanding.

Alex was better this time, but Jolly had more appeal....unfortunately.

[mountain grammy]

15. Well said.

[Aerows]

16. Nothing pleases a Republican more than submission

and abandoning the principles of fair trade, fair deals and fair wages is absolutely submission to a Republican.

[madfloridian]

37. Yes.

[zeemike]

20. Kicked and recommended

And there is only two reasons I can think of as to why we keep doing the same thing over and over again with the same results...one is insanity and the other is that it is just Kabuki theater.

[lark]

22. Nice and very accurate.

I haven't seen an OP from you in awhile, but then I'm not here every day. So tired of the "moderate" Dems runnign in FL. They usually don't win, don't do anything to excite anyone.

[madfloridian]

46. I've been posting...

took about a year off, then a few months after hubby died last year....

Things move so fast here it's hard to keep up.

Good to see you.

[lark]

64. So sorry to hear of your loss.

It's sad when you reach a certain age and loved ones start leaving us. Hope you are are hanging in there, I know how life changing that can be.

[RobertEarl]

23. Two things

The district was owned by Bill Young. He owned it for years and years.. 30+.

Young was all about spending money on defense. He had the deepest pockets - ours - for picking, so that the defense industries would not go unemployed. In other words: Big Money.

What's her name was a banker. Still is far as I can tell. Big money and big bankers go hand in hand as they pick our pockets.

And in the state that delivered for Bush, who thinks the Bushes were gonna let Young's seat go to a republican?

[madfloridian]

24. She led the race for a while.

So that's a start. Not a very good campaigner and faced with unfriendly media and ad attacks. Jolly got pretty good coverage.

[RobertEarl]

25. What counted the votes?

A computer, or humans?

Who owns the computers?

Who owns the humans?

Will they let you see the ballots and do an audit? Heh, that one's a joke.

[questionseverything]

27. a spanish company uses soe software to report the results

right wingers own the counting machines

would could go wrong?

technically a person could count the ballots (if they were rich enough)

a. Ballots
Election records are generally open to public inspection. An individual or group is entitled to inspect the ballots and may take notes regarding the number of votes cast. AGO 93-48. See also Rogers v. Hood, 906 So. 2d 1220, 1223 (Fla. 1st DCA 2005), review denied, 919 So. 2d 436 (Fla. 2005) (voted ballots are public records because they have "memorialized the act of voting&quot .
Section 119.07(5), F.S., prohibits any person other than the supervisor of elections or the supervisor's employees from touching the ballots. And see s. 101.572, F.S. (no persons other than the supervisor, supervisor's employees, or the county canvassing board shall handle any official ballot or ballot card). However, this restriction does not prohibit the supervisor from producing copies of optically scanned ballots which were cast in an election in response to a public records request. AGO 04-11. And see AGO 01-37 (supervisor of elections required to segregate overvote and undervote ballots by use of the county's optical scanning equipment pursuant to a public records request even though the overvote and undervote ballots had already been segregated manually, provided that the requestor pays for the costs of the mechanical segregation in accordance with the Public Records Act).

[RobertEarl]

29. What could go wrong

I'm sure Florida would never not do the right thing when it comes to counting votes. They uh, learned their lesson.

And we all know that questioning the count is not something that is allowed. If you question the count it's like asking your Mom if she ever had sex. That would not be nice, so therefore it is not allowed.

[Warpy]

26. He's going to have to do it all over again in eight months

and if he's a typical teabagger, he'll stomp on his tongue repeatedly and publicly. Maybe they'll find a real Democrat to run against him the way one needs to run, but probably not. The Florida Democratic Party is pretty sad, so used to failure they are a little afraid of success.

[madfloridian]

28. That's true.

"so used to failure they are a little afraid of success."

They really are, you know. The Republicans have controlled things here for so long and so completely that the Democrats feel they must be subservient.

[FloriTexan]

30. K&R

[madfloridian]

31. Robert Reich: The Middle is a fiction.

Robert Reich has a frank and open interview with Speigel Online.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: When you served in the White House, President Bill Clinton began on the left but drifted to the middle after the Democrats lost significant ground in the mid-term elections. Do you see that happening again?

Reich: I was there with Bill Clinton when he tried to so called "triangulate" and please the voters in the middle. But the middle is a fiction. The middle is simply where most voters who respond to surveys say they are. What Clinton did and what Obama may be forced to do is to give up leadership; that is, to simply respond to polls. I think it would be a shame if Obama moved from leadership to opinion polls, but his advisors may feel that that's the only way to guarantee him a re-election.

Following the false centrism of the Third Way

[bullwinkle428]

38. Also explains why SHRUBYA beat Kerry. His positions on the issues were

absolutely abominable, but he was totally "cocksure" about why he felt that way! Sadly, the confident moron is always going to have the upper hand over the intellect that hems and haws his/her way through a campaign.

K&R.

[madfloridian]

40. lol "the confident moron"....

Been a lot of them around lately. You are right about Bush. His was so sure that he swaggered, but he left no doubt about where he stood.

[madfloridian]

39. Molly Ivins book "You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You"

I did not know about this book.

http://www.amazon.com/You-Dance-Them-What-Brung/dp/0679754873

Amazon.com Review

In this, her third volume, Molly Ivins (columnist, NPR commentator, and three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize) sheds light on the "great clouds of obsfucation" that stymie attempts to clearly analyze President Clinton's job performance. Ivins stayed a Clinton supporter after most of her fellow liberals bailed--up until 1996, when Clinton signed the welfare "reform" bill. "My expectations of Democratic politicians exceed my expectations of Republicans by only the smallest of margins," Ivins states ruefully, "but real Democrats don't hurt children. Clinton did." Nevertheless, current Clinton bashing defies logic and she provides a levelheaded analysis of the wave of anti-Clinton sentiment by distinguishing between the usual brew of Republican and Democrat animosity and such phenomena as "the well-financed propaganda machine funded largely by Richard Mellon Scaife of Pittsburgh."
The title flushes out the core concern of the collection. One of the oldest sayings in politics, "You got to dance with them what brung you," points to the reality that special-interest money rules today's politics. For Ivins, the centerpiece of corruption is gold, and such inevitable consequences as the tax burden shifting from corporations to individuals; the widening gap between rich and poor. You've Got to Dance with Them What Brung You, inimitably bold and broad, attacks racism, homophobia, terrorism; offers a terse and dismally delightful excoriation of the "ineffable" Newt Gingrich; reports on political farces at both the state and national levels. It's full of incisive gems that offer insight on some of our national extremes (Timothy McVeigh's obsession with the bizarre and racist book, The Turner Diaries, replete with the bomb recipe that blew up the Murrah Federal Building).

Champion of commonsense and compassion; frank and boldly funny, Molly Ivins has been called by the L.A. Times "H.L. Mencken without the cruelty, Will Rogers with an agenda." Those of us who love Molly Ivins read her for her gutsy, lively, liberal values, and those of us who don't ... should. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

[Catherina]

43. Neither did I. I just ordered it. Thanks Mad

"You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You"

[madfloridian]

44. You know what book I still have? Shrub. Long time ago.

Has a smirky picture of Bush on the front.

[Catherina]

49. I had to unload a ton of books with my last move

That was one of them. I wish I still had it. RIP Molly

[Phlem]

41. K&R!

[fleabiscuit]

47. Good op Madfloridian.

I have liked reading your posts and hope to get to know you better. Please continue with more. Apparently liberal Dems are like chichada and nature hits the reset button when the time is right. It does us well to remember the bitter medicine that comes from triangulation and the reality of its genesis starting with the Carter administration. I so miss Molly Ivans. She was always a reminder that the enemy is the one trying to get us killed, no matter what uniform they wear.

k&r

[madfloridian]

48. Your words about Molly Ivins...so true.

"She was always a reminder that the enemy is the one trying to get us killed, no matter what uniform they wear."

Indeed she was. She cut through all the BS, straight to the bare facts.

Appreciate the kind words.

[blackspade]

51. KA-POW!

[Junkdrawer]

52. Calculations say a 6" thick piece of steel is needed at this spot....

or the bridge will fail.

The current plans, approved by management and woe be to those who rock the boat, have a 2" thick piece of steel.

A 4" thick piece of steel won't cut it.

[Baitball Blogger]

53. I hung up on the Big Dog.

I rarely pick up phone calls where I don't recognize the I.D., but I picked one up about two weeks ago and it was a recording from Bill Clinton. I held on for nostalgic reasons, but when he started to say that Alex Sink would work to bring Republicans and Democrats together, I hung up on him.

Those triangulatory, neo-liberal methods altered my life forever, and not in a good way.

[xchrom]

54. du rec.

[adirondacker]

55. Excellent post. 10 Looong years, and some still don't get it. nt

[rurallib]

56. every year at this time there are basketball tournaments aplenty

and in every tournament there will be games where some coach will get a lead and try to hold it by going to a "slow-down" game and away from the aggressive game that put his or her team in the lead. They start playing not to lose.

When they start playing not to lose they sit back on their heels, they get tight, they try to think things out instead of reacting. The whole team gets tight and quits playing like they want to win.

That is just what happens when a candidate doesn't run to win, but runs "not to lose." They make errors because they are tight, they don't say what they really want to say, they don't really go after their opponent the way they should, they couch answers on issues, they fear to actually take a stand.

[madfloridian]

62. Good point. Running a "not to lose" campaign.

Doesn't work.

[seabeckind]

57. Somebody wake up the democratic machine

preferably more than a couple weeks before the election.

The republican propaganda machine goes on 24/7, 365 -- the dems? Empty store front with dangling banner saying "closed for business". I figure somebody will set up a new office and look for a candidate, probably someone who slept in the alley next to the place.

Meanwhile the local newspapers censor comments as directed by the gop.

Everytime I open the paper there's some "expert" from AEI or the Hoover Inst saying what's wrong and what we need to cut to move us forward into the 19th century.

The gop governor's press person is writing opinion pieces under the guise of the "Policy Institute".

And not a disparaging word...none. Or at least not one that lasts thru one news cycle.

I found it interesting that one of the opinionators in the paper is someone who used to be a "spokesperson" for the democratic party. She's married to a gop guy and she runs an advertising firm that printed signs for the dems.

Seems lik a good start for the dems might be to find volunteers, like me who has time and no money, to monitor the regional newspapers and media outlets and offer rebuttals in the name of the democratic party -- ones that cannot be censored by the opposition. Who knows, maybe even get a back-and-forth with the national party.

You know, coordinate -- to win. Or at least try to counter the gerrymandering.

Maybe even come up with a candidate and campaign that isn't a joke.

[sulphurdunn]

58. Don't forget, in a big time e-voting state

like Florida,in a tight race, you never know for sure who's counting the votes.

[ancianita]

60. Hindsight needs forcing into actual future campaign plans. We should have checked Sink's caution

early and often and sent her campaign leaders this message before election day.

Why isn't the national party keeping closer tabs on state campaign managers? Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, that's why.

[PATRICK]

61. And they never change

except for their mysterious ability to get anointed the top of the ticket. IF one of these mouth moderates ever gets elected they do not realize how easy it is to lose the next election. Power entitles them to ignore their weaknesses, changeable or otherwise. Losing doesn't seem to matter.
Not much passion. Even self-respect becomes irrelevant in their humiliation. Who wants leaders like that?

[Damansarajaya]

65. Liberals have "values" too, and we need to proclaim them to the heavens--

peace, justice, and fairness.

[madfloridian]

73. I agree.

We have for too long allowed the right wing to control the message. Alex Sink did as other FL Democrats too often do....she adapted her message to sound too bipartisan.

[Octafish]

66. Give people a reason to vote...

More than just a slogan. Action.

[myrna minx]

67. I thoroughly enjoy your posts, madfloridian.

[madfloridian]

72. .....

Thank you. The board moves so fast I never see you or anyone else around that I know.

[certainot]

68. all the analysis is leaving one thing out. principles, certitude, GOTV, malaise, excitement,

mid term, etc.-all those other things are basically the same for both sides.

i understand sink spent more money on TV too.

she only lost by 2%

the one major advantage jolly had was dozens of radio stations working basically for free for him, for months building on years of lies and myths and distortions.

think of all the other races that will be lost by a few % points in a nov election that could mean 2 more lost years.

how many points is ignoring rw radio worth?

if the left keeps ignoring talk radio that's what's going to happen.

[madfloridian]

69. I disagree with this statement:

"principles, certitude, GOTV, malaise, excitement, mid term, etc.-all those other things are basically the same for both sides."

Our side does not take firm stands on our principles, there is often little excitement when a candidate fails to take firm stands, the malaise mostly affects our side....theirs is dead positive they are right on all issues. Their candidates sound that way even when they are dead wrong.

Even those of us who supported Sink, donated to her....felt little excitement.

Agree completely about right wing radio....it dominates in our area completely. I have even been stunned at the favoritism toward Jolly by stations like BayNews9.

Our candidates do absolutely play a big role.

[certainot]

70. you're right- i worded it wrong- i was trying to say all those other factors are 'factored' -

and recognized by both sides as something to manage and work.

talk radio is routinely not factored. it is not readable (although modern transcription software may allow that to be automated for major state blowhards so the attacks and lies can be searched for and responded to in near real time instead of catching up later. it can be taken to local media to keep it straight so it's harder for them to repeat the talking points.

baynews 9 sounds like a tv station- tv can feel the pressure when the local blowhards generate that outrage and the producers hear about the calls and can be enabled and or intimidated by that outrage- like "i can't believe the meteorologist believes in that global warming hoax!!!!! x 1000

[madfloridian]

71. BayNews9 is the 24hr news station of BrightHouse..

I have been mostly impressed by their ability to present the whole picture. Lately there's one anchor there..Al Reuchel..not sure about spelling. He seems to freely allow the right wing stuff. It has surprised me.

I think we are basically agreeing.