Reply #95: Mostly a load of crap, but some small truth... [View All]

[TreasonousBastard]

in that we didn't work either hard or smart.

The Congressional campaign I worked on had a very popular long-term moderately liberal Dem who was under attack by a teabagger who just moved here from New Jersey, where he was shown the door in his one attempt at running for office.

Now, NOBODY really gives a shit about national politics around here except the two or three cranks who write to the local paper every week. Nobody talks about war, abortion, the deficit, or Obamacare. We care about dredging the inlet, beach erosion, the county water pipe, uncontrolled growth, noisy helicopters heading to Montauk airport, Plum Island's future, the school budget, and other such matters-- and our current Congressman is up on all that really important stuff. He's a rarity-- a very popular Dem in a Republican district simply because he's effective.

But, he had the closest race of his career simply because the teabaggers were out in force and motivated. They were all over the place, and had "precampaign" signs and literature before we started campaigning, and even before they knew who their candidate was to be. "Dump Bishop and Pelosi! Get their hands out of your wallet!" signs were all over the place by January, with some even before Christmas, and every strip mall and post office had regular visits from the tablers and flier mongers. We were blindsided, and really didn't have the organization to counter it. We won, but by a few hundred votes, not the thousands we were used to.

Tim was targeted because we're a largely Republican district and the teabaggers smelled blood so were working overtime here, unlike us who expected another rout.

Sooo... although I make no pretense to know the details of every race, I would expect "conservadems" to be from largely conservative districts where no liberal would ever have a chance. Seems a lot of them were brought in on Obama's coattails and were summarily thrown out when the rednecks came to their senses and went back to their knuckledragging ways.