LAT: Campaign Battlefield May Grow (net activists want to storm GOP turf)

[DeepModem Mom]

Campaign Battlefield May Grow
Liberals activists want Democrats to storm congressional races, even on GOP's turf.

By Ronald Brownstein, Times Staff Writer


....An array of liberal Internet activists is urging Democrats to vastly expand the 2006 congressional battlefield by recruiting and funding challengers in dozens of districts that have been virtually conceded to the GOP, like the one represented by (Pa. Republican Rep. Joe Pitts).

Those calls are drawing new energy from Democrat Paul Hackett's narrow defeat this month in a special election in an Ohio district where Republicans usually romp. Hackett's showing "proved that you could build the party if you pay attention to every race," said Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of the popular liberal website the Daily Kos.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has responded to the pressure from liberal activists by saying he intends next year to fund Democratic challengers for 50 Republican-held seats, about double the number the campaign committee backed in 2004.

But the committee, and many leading Democratic strategists, say that funding a wider circle of challengers in heavily Republican areas would divert money better spent on districts more closely balanced between the parties....

***

The dispute, complete with incendiary attacks on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from some liberal websites, marks the latest disagreement between the Democratic political hierarchy and a left-leaning Internet activist base demanding a more aggressive strategy to regain power....


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-dems10aug10,0,2682678.story?coll=la-home-nation

[Beacho]

1. This is how it is done

Give them NOTHING! Make them fight for every inch and at least let the people in those dstricts that we're out there.

Worry them in every district to dilute their efforts, maybe they'll make a misstep and lose a few they didn't expect.

[henslee]

2. Yup, this is how its done, son.

[Ian David]

4. This is kind of what is meant by "Virtual Attrition"

We are forcing the enemy to dilute their resources in defending on more fronts than they would like. This lessens their over-all effectiveness.

We are now able to pick the time and place of each battle. We can now choose the ground upon which we fight.

Since the 2000 election, the enemy has revealed to us their tactics and the "shapes of their formations."

The Democratic Party is now prepared to attack like water where the GOP is hard and unmoving.

This can not be a "conventional" election.

We need new strategies.

We need to be un-orthodox where the enemy is orthodox.

I think the key may be to make the GOP spend money where we spend volunteer manpower.

This September, start hitting the High Schools and recruit... recruit... recruit! Even those who aren't old enough to vote can still stuff envelopes, make phone calls, canvass, paint signs, hold banners...

[AndyTiedye]

9. But We Also Divert Our Own. The Republicans Have Unlimited Money

I agree we should fight them everywhere we can, but we should not put
a lot of money into the hopeless races. The Republicans have unlimited
money for their races because they can loot the Treasury at will.
They can rig elections at will in many states. They get nearly unlimited
free advertising on every network.

We must concentrate our efforts in those parts of the country where
grass-roots campaigns are possible, and they still have free elections,
even if those races may look less promising.

In states like Georgia, it may not even be worth running candidates at
all until or unless we can get rid of the Diebold Republican Electing
(DRE) machinez.
In those places, we should put ALL of our efforts into fighting election fraud.

[Ian David]

10. Dirty trick: Spoiler candidates campaigning under a false flag

The general idea is to register someone as a third-party candidate on an outrageously conservative platform for the purpose of acting as a spoiler to split the reich-wing vote.

Remember: Alan Keyes carried 30% of Illinois. As Jon Stewart put it, "30% of people in Illinois wear tinfoil hats and diapers." If an Alan-Keyes imposter ran against a reich-wing Rethugnican and got even 5% of the vote...


1) Register someone as an independent candidate.

2) Campaign on the most fundamentalist, anti-gay platform you can imagine. Wake-up in the morning and say to yourself:

"Today, I am going to pretend to be Alan Keyes."

3) Reach-out to fundamentalists, evangelicals, and other un-enlightenment types.

4) Your platforms are going to be "protecting" marriage, denying civil unions, keeping gays out of the military, making sure that private companies are not allowed to extend domestic partnership rights, gay people can't file domestic abuse cases against their partners, banning gay-straight alliance groups and tolerance training from public schools, forbidding gay pride events, etc.


<snip>

6) You are going to run as the most godwhacked fundamentalist theocratic fundie that district has ever seen. This will split the GOP's vote, giving the Democrat a better chance.

7) You are going to liberally quote Fred Phelps and Alan Keyes, and perhaps even invite them on your campaign trail.

8) On the off chance that you're elected... well, politicians never keep their promises anyway, do they?

Remember: The goal is to split the bigot-fundie vote between the Rethugnican and yourself.

See my prior posts:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=221&topic_id=5006#5097

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=221&topic_id=12809

[AndyTiedye]

11. But What if the WhackJob Wins?

That is a real risk these days.
Look at some of the Republicans in Congress.

[ozymandius]

3. Word: You are not safe!

No Republican who hopped onto this loony Bush bandwagon is safe. Every one needs to realize they are marked to be turned out of office.

[warrens]

5. It's a matter of bodies

The Rethugs are very organized and have a lot of feet on the ground. They're not used to seeing opposition in a lot of districts and if we can flood the box (like we plan to do with at least two rethug seats here in Illinois) we can really put a hurt on them. They have to defend the war, DeLay, Halliburton, etc. etc., and a lot of Republican voters are just going to stay home this time around. So if we can motivate Dems and independents to make a statement about Bush, DeLay etc., we can easily grab a bunch of even safe GOP seats.

[progressive_realist]

6. These articles always have a quote from a "longtime strategist."

From the article:

Mark Gersh, a longtime strategist for Democrats, said the liberal websites and blogs were right that the party needed to expand the battlefield for House seats.

"But to expand it into districts where have no chance of winning is absolutely crazy," he said.

<snip>

Diverting money to long-shot contests is "what the Republicans would want to see," Gersh said. "This kind of craziness would exactly play into Republican hands."

*******

With no particular disrespect toward Mr. Gersh, how long are we supposed to subscribe to a strategy that has been losing for a decade? Established Democratic "strategists" just don't have much credibility these days. . .

The election in 2006 has the potential to be very different from previous midterm elections. The Republicans are much more vulnerable. Now is the time for us to think big, not to jockey for a small handful of seats. If the Republicans are forced to defend every seat, the odds of them making catastrophic mistakes increases dramatically. By comparison, Democrats don't have much left to lose and don't need to worry about campaigning so...um...conservatively.

[bemildred]

7. What a moron.

Like only advertising cars in areas where they already sell well.
What a loser.

[DeepModem Mom]

8. Shameless self-kick for this acknowledgment of growing net power! nt