It isn’t a case of the Democrats now going off soul searching, it case of total revamp from top to bottom after Trump’s win last Tuesday. The Amazing Democrats’ advice very early on to the Clinton Campaign (and some of those comments were posted on our social media platforms as far back as the late summer of 2015) went unheard unlike when we worked for the Obama/Biden campaign in 2012. It is time DNC to fire all your overpaid pollsters (who got it so wrong), consultants and the like. The DNC should of known in their hearts of hearts that after Bernie Sanders won twenty-two states with so little money against Hillary Clinton, their candidate of choice would be in serious trouble if the Republicans got a candidate who could storm the mainstream and social media which Trump did and of course got a bit of luck along the way with that first letter released by the FBI Director that certainly damaged Hillary in early voting and gave a huge boast for Trump with his base. Yes, a lot of questions will be asked as to how the FBI were allowed to influence an election so openly. But this was far from the only reason Hillary lost even if the DNC die hards believe it to be so. The DNC and Democrats have lost their way and have been now for a long time. Their obsession only seems to be with fundraising not the core principles of what the party was founded on, Trump was able to tap into that huge hole in the DNC. It was a party that once cared for the low income, the homeless, our veterans, the poor people of America and not the massive billions of dollars in fundraising which was totally wasted trying to take Trump down. Just think today how many homeless people that billion of dollars plus would do to help house the homeless crisis in our major cities which should have been a top issue for Hillary.
Hillary campaign interviewed myself and members of The Amazing Democrats, for the record we call ourselves The Amazing Democrats as we not die hard Democrats, we wouldn’t have followed Hillary in to the fires of hell if she was wrong and we wouldn’t be silent either even if it meant we were fired from the campaign, that’s the way worked in the Obama/Biden 2012 reelection campaign and we were amazed how we survived not to be fired (nearly maybe once or twice when we really overstepped our mark and criticized some of the President’s polices publicly). The interviewing process went back as far as January 2016 to join her campaign. We were subjected to rounds and rounds of interviews, back ground checks, etc. Months would go by and we heard nothing and then it would start all over again. It was by late August this Editor got interviewed for the sixth time, more back ground checks and then was offered four important positions in four different swing states and one of this offers came directly from the DNC. All this was paid employment and not volunteer work. That last weekend in August for me was were I suffered so much turmoil as I had to give them a decision by the following Monday. It meant dropping everything in my life and getting on a plane to Pennsylvania. What was most troubling in my mind was I could sense there was panic setting in for the Democrats and Hillary’s campaign. I didn’t sleep that weekend. I went back to the old formula that the Obama campaign thought me and even though I didn’t have access to data like we did when worked for Obama, never the less, I ran the data all weekend long. It is a long and laborious process that you can see today that both the pollsters and media don’t do, why? Maybe they just are too lazy to do it, who knows? You have to run every state’s county’s data county by county, you have then figure in the data available from both the candidates’ primary wins or loses, a lot of mathematics but in the end you get a somewhat overview, be it very rough. Also you have to take into account that I had been tracking the swing states every week since both primaries ended last year. Not good for Hillary and her team I could see, in fact the Wednesday before the election I was gloomy, I could predict Trump was going to win Ohio by three percent (he won by five percent so I was only out by two percent) and as you know, no Presidential candidate can take their place in The White House if they don’t win Ohio. With all this, it was the hardiest email I ever sent, declining the positions to work on the Hillary Clinton campaign.
As we move into the Trump Presidency, it’s going to be a very dark lonely path for the Democrats. Yes, there is the mid-terms in 2018, but if the DNC works as it has for the last twenty years, they are a very slow climb back up on Capitol Hill as remember this Presidential election in 2016 had the lowest turn out of voters in years, which helped Trump but destroyed Hillary’s chances of winning, nearly 50% of the electorate didn’t bother to vote and historically mid-term voting has a very low voter turn-out. Also if Trump makes any small success of his first term and as everything Trump touches turns to gold, whether you like his manner and process or not and as it very hard to unseat a sitting President, as we all know, Trump going for a second term, then the DNC and Democrats could be looking at the wildness for next eight years at least, that’s 2024, a very depressing thought I know, but maybe a fact unless the DNC make radically chances and that starts today, not six months before the 2018 mid-terms.
In the 2006 mid-terms under George W. Bush, the Republicans got wiped out in the House and the Senate. All the media said at that time that Republican Party need to reinvent itself and stop been the “party of no”. Did they? Of course not, in fact under Obama as President and because of their hatred of him, they became the “party of no, no, no” on every bill he sent to the House and Senate. Now look where they are ten years later. The power of Washington again with the Democrats hanging onto their coattails and the sad thing is, Trump gets to pick the next Supreme Court justice. If he gets two terms, who knows, with three more justices ready for retirement in the next few years, he might even hit the golden jackpot of nominating four Supreme Court justices, a very scary thought. The Democrats however can’t do as the Republicans did in 2006, which was nothing to change their image and beliefs but the Democrats aren’t so lucky. If the DNC go back to business as usual, it will be a very dark long road for the Democrats back to the shining lights of The White House. It is simply the base. The Republican base and the Democrat base is so so much different and as Trump said decades ago when he was a registered Democrat, pro-choice and donated a lot of money to Bill Clinton’s Presidential campaigns: “If I was to run as President, I would run as a Republican as their voters as so dumb and easy to fool, I would lie and lie to them until I got numbers”. That’s all he had to do for this Presidential campaign and he is the winner today not Hillary Clinton.
Which brings what fundamentally went south very early on in the Hillary Clinton campaign:
1. NEVER EVER underestimate your opponent.
2. If he/she gets down in the dirt, you go down there with them. Hillary taking the high road was her downfall as political correctness (PC) means nothing anymore in the world of social media as we saw with Trump, the King of Twitter and Obama/Biden in 2008 as the King of Facebook. PC has gone way too far in the US and the rest of the world and Trump, no matter what you think, turned PC on it’s head in this presidential election and as he said on 60 Minutes last night, “it was nasty, very nasty but I am the one sitting here today talking to you and not them”. In fact 2020 and 2024 will be so so much nastier. Rumors were that Trump using his own money, paid pockets of supporters all over America to flood the internet with lies about Hillary and Bill Clinton and the secret? They could never be traced back to him or his campaign. Why didn’t the Hillary Clinton campaign do the same with the rumors about Trump’s ties to the Mafia? Why was this never floated all over the internet? PC I guess but he won and Clinton lost. The new trend now with Presidential campaigns as Trump has lowered the bar, is to win 2020 or 2024 the candidates from both parties to win, will have to get down in the mud and get dirty. Sad? Of course but no cares about the loser, they only care about the winner.
3. Dump the negative ads. One billion dollars was such a waste of money by the Clinton campaign and Trump barely spent a faction of that. We kept telling the Obama/Biden campaign and the DNC in 2012, negative ads don’t work anymore and only turn all the voters off. Pity they didn’t listen.
The Amazing Democrats are not all about criticizing without offering the DNC suggestions for the road forward:
1. Fire all your overpaid pollsters, consultants, lobbyists, etc..
2. Allow the progressive members of the party to take over. (I do not mean the loony left), members who understand the issues of the day to day worries of the lower income Americans (who sadly are too many), the homeless crisis in our cities all over America, our veterans living on our streets.
3. Get back to what a community organizer really is. I used get so annoy with new volunteers who joined our team who tried to tell the person forcefully on the other side of the phone why they should vote for Obama or donate to Obama’s campaign and the DNC. A community organizer’s job is to listen and listen well and then send what they hear up the line and hope they are listening otherwise you get a result like Tuesday’s Presidential elections.
4. As the advice to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, get off the negative ads obsession (turns all voters off).
5. And please with every email you sent, stop looking for donations all the time. It makes us feel you don’t care about anything but money and donations which we know to be true.
6. Find the soul of the Democrat Party again of FDR and John F. Kennedy.
7. And finally, listen. Never stop listening to those on the ground as we are the ones who can make the difference from the Democrats winning or losing an election.
Here is to the 2018 mid-terms, see you then and to 2020 Presidential election. Keep the faith and a sense of humor as The Amazing Democrats do and God Bless America,
……..”is a Cabinet mtg this am”. “Can I go?”. Wow, so much dirt in those for you to rant on about. Time to Listen to the Boss Again on Her Emails and Grow Up and Move On.
Not since the era of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S Truman have the Democrats won three presidential victories in a row.
The 2016 election presents the party with a rare opportunity to pull off a historic hat-trick.
America’s political geography gives the Democrats an enormous advantage.
So, too, does the country’s changing demography, because constituencies that favour the Democrats are growing in electoral influence.
Despite the Republicans’ current strength in congressional and gubernatorial politics – presently, the GOP holds the House of Representatives and the Senate, along with 31 governors’ mansions – the party is weak in presidential politics.
It has lost four of the past six presidential elections. In five of those, the Democrats have won the popular vote.
The “blue wall” is especially advantageous.
That is the name given to the 18 states, as well as the District of Columbia, that have voted Democrat in every presidential election since Bill Clinton’s first victory in 1992.
Democratic Blue Wall:
California (55), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), Hawai’i (4), Illinois (20), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), Michigan (16), Minnesota (10), New Jersey (14), New York (29), Oregon (7), Pennsylvania (20), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Washington (12), Washington DC (3), Wisconsin (10).
What makes the blue wall such a towering edifice is the size of its building blocks: some of the country’s most populous states, like California, New York, Illinois, Michigan and New Jersey.
To win the Electoral College, the institution that elects the president on a state-by-state basis, the victorious candidate requires 270 votes.
Strong core support
For the past six elections, the states that make up the blue wall have yielded 242, just 28 short of the target.
The Republicans have a wall of their own: 13 states that have voted for the GOP’s presidential candidate in the past six elections.
But those states amount for only 102 Electoral College votes between them.
To some, then, the “Red wall” looks more like a flimsy picket fence.
Republican Red Wall:
Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Idaho (4), Kansas (6), Mississippi (6), Nebraska (5), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (9), South Dakota (3), Texas (38), Utah (6), Wyoming (3).
The Blue Wall is by no means insurmountable.
Many of these blue states, like New Jersey, Massachusetts and Illinois, have Republican governors, and the GOP has not given up hope of turning them red.
Pennsylvania, with its 20 Electoral College votes, is particularly high on the their target list.
But the wall does grant the Democrats an inbuilt advantage in the Electoral College.
Just consider this statistic. Since 1992, the Republicans have achieved an average of 211 Electoral College votes. The Democrats’ average is 327.
Demographic advantage
Demographics also appear to favour the Democrats: the support they are now receiving from minorities, Millennials (voters under 30) and women.
The Democrats have opened up a huge lead among minority voters, a growing and increasingly important part of the electorate.
At the last presidential election, 71% of Latinos voted for Barack Obama, up from 67% in 2008. Some 73% of Asian-Americans also voted Democrat, along with 93% of African-Americans.
Younger voters, who tend to be more liberal-minded on issues like same-sex marriage and immigration, are also leaning towards the Democrats.
Some two-thirds of Millennials voted for Obama in 2012.
A majority of women have also favoured the Democrats in recent presidential elections. Fifty-five per cent of women voted for Obama in 2012, while the figure for unmarried women was even higher at 67%, partly because the Republican Party has become associated with restrictions on abortion.
Obviously all is not lost for the GOP, not least because the party has demographic advantages of its own.
In 2012, 59% of white voters plumbed for Mitt Romney. Among the so-called silent generation, those born between 1925 and 1945, the Republicans have a lead of 47% to 43%. But America is becoming less white, and that presents problems for the Republicans.
Their prime strategy since the civil rights era of the 1960s, after all, has been to target white voters, regardless of their income levels.
Obama support
Next year, the GOP will be hoping that the so-called “Obama coalition” of minorities, Millennials and women, does not become the “Hillary Coalition,” if, as expected, she wins the Democratic presidential nomination.
Black voters will not turn out in such high numbers for Hillary, they reckon. The GOP also hopes to make inroads into a Latino vote deterred from backing Republicans because of the party’s tough line on immigration.
Party strategists believe there is truth in Ronald Reagan’s famous observation: “Latinos are Republicans. They just don’t know it yet.”
As for the Millennials, a string of recent polls suggest that their support for the Democrats is waning – although a survey conducted in April by the Harvard Institute of Politics suggested that 55% of voters under the age of 30 would prefer the White House to remain in Democratic hands.
There are Democrats who believe that the Hillary coalition could be even more formidable than the Obama coalition.
Campaigning to become America’s first female president, she will hope to attract higher levels of support from white women, more than half of whom voted Republican in 2012.
She might attract more male white voters than Obama.
Yet Democrats run the risk of over-confidence, a mistake made by Republicans following the back-to-back victories of George W Bush.
In those heady days, strategists like Karl Rove spoke assuredly of an emergent permanent Republican majority, only to see Obama score two victories.
More recently, GOP morale has been boosted by the work of the political journalist John Judis, who predicted at the start of the century an “emerging Democratic majority“.
In January, Judis penned a revisionist essay headlined “The Emerging Republican Advantage,” which argued that the Republican triumph at last November’s congressional mid-term elections was “the latest manifestation of a resurgent Republican coalition”.
White vote
The Republicans were even more dominant among white voters, he observed, which was problematic for the Democrats because they still required between 36% and 40% of the white working-class vote to win the presidential election.
But it is always a mistake to equate strength in congressional politics with success in presidential politics.
Often the party with a lock on Capitol Hill has suffered a near lockout at the White House.
Between 1968 and 1992, for instance, the Democrats dominated the House of Representatives.
For that entire era, a Democrat sat in the powerful speaker’s chair.
But during that era, the Democrats won just one presidential election, when Jimmy Carter edged out Gerald Ford in 1976.
The electorate that votes in congressional elections is different in size and make-up to that which turns out in presidential polls.
History suggests it will be hard to win three consecutive victories.
Since the war, the Republicans have only managed it once, when George Herbert Walker Bush followed Ronald Reagan into the White House.
Could Hillary Clinton do what no Democrat has done for more than 65 years?
Today as so many marched in Paris in solidarity, what happened there last week leaves us with so many questions rather than answers. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy said after the attack and the callous murder of the Editor and staff at Charlie Hedbo and two French Policemen who were gunned down while doing their duty as “war on civilization”. No, plain and simple it is a “war on journalists, photographers, writers, cartoonists and bloggers”. As with the beheading last year of British journalist and photographer James Foley and so many more of our media colleagues what happened in Paris last week has drawn the line for all those in journalism, be it working for the main stream media or bloggers, it makes no difference as with technology, if the CIA or FBI can track what and where we write from, so can terrorists who have become that new generation of internet and social media savvy experts that they now are. So no, no one can hide in their rooms on their laptops and re-print the cartoons of the Prophet and expect not to be found, if they really want to find us and try and destroy our Freedom of expression, they will.
You take the poor Pope for instant, how many cartoons are drawn of him weekly and some of them even sexual and degrading. Why aren’t the Catholics up in arms over those cartoons? Or maybe the Pope has a better sense of humor than we give him credit for? The question here is not what will the French Government do to combat terrorism, the question is what will journalists, photographers, writers, cartoonists and bloggers do now that the lines have being refined? This is something that we as journalists and bloggers need to address. No media outlet in either Europe or the US has had to courage to reprint Charlie Hedbo’s cartoons that offended some members of the Muslim faith except for The Hamburg Morgenpost newspaper in German and its offices were targeted last night in an arson attack. Will it be the staff’s lives next that will be threatened or taking at The Hamburg Morgenpost?
I don’t blame the main stream media for not publishing these cartoons in memory of all those that died last Wednesday in the Charlie Hedbo’s offices in Paris as they have families and no journalist, no photographer, no cartoonist or blogger wants to die a martyr because they are just doing their job exposing lies, corruption or simply poking fun at politicians or at religion. Neither do these journalists or bloggers want twenty-four protection, where is the sense in that? What if the journalist under twenty-four protection is researching a story say in the US on FBI corruption? Do you think the journalist’s confidential sources are going to meet and talk with FBI Agents standing over this journalist? All calls made to and from this journalist’s cellphone would be tracked? All areas they worked in, wired? Where does that leave the Freedom of Press?
The hardest reality about Charlie Hedbo and no one dares write about this yet and that is, not only was it hated by some in the Muslim communities but it was also detested by the French establishment and by Israel’s living in France. And yes, it has started, on line all the conspiracy theories are already flying about an “inside job” like we hear some much about 9/11. Yes, the French Government and their intelligent and security agencies will have a lot of questions to answer but if like with the death of Princess Diana in Paris, we will be waiting for direct replies to our direct questions for a long time, which of course will only fuel the conspiracy theories even more. We don’t know the facts and may never do, maybe the French Police recommended to the Editor and staff at Charlie Hebdo to have tighter security and maybe they refused their extra offer of more heavily armed Police Officers around their building?
We may never find out but one thing remains and that is this is “war on journalism” plain and simple. Most politicians in the US, even in opposition with any bit of clout, get twenty-four hour, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year Secret Service protection, but journalists? For those very few outspoken journalists and film makers left like Michael Moore (remember the comments George W. Bush made to as he was walking pass Moore when Bush was President shortly after 9/11) who many within the establishment have nothing but contempt for, you think the Secret Service would offer protection to Michael Moore if he decided to make a documentary (which I am sure he is considering now) on cartoons on the Muslim faith and the Prophet? Would Moore even accept twenty-four security if it was offered?
The big question over the next few weeks will be if France in the light of what happened at the offices of Charlie Hebdo last week be able to balance new security measures without affecting the civil liberties of its citizens? The French unlike us in the US after 9/11 will not take too kindly to their Government restricting their civil liberties. This issue was brought forward today on the BBC covering the march earlier in Paris with an International journalist being interviewed, who made this very point that the French Government mustn’t react and impose new laws that would impede the rights of the citizens of France. Of course the shocking comment of the day award then goes to the BBC’s senior correspondent Lyse Doucet who herself is an American-French citizen that they were now having “a dangerous discussion”. So here it has begun in France and first heard by a senior BBC correspondent as we heard in the US straight after 9/11 that any suggestion of caution on the new laws being rushed in to fight terrorism that might affect civil liberties in France is “a dangerous discussion”. Does the media now work for our Governments or does the Governments work for our media?
It goes back to the politicians and the media always and even though these three suspects that were shot dead by the French Police on Friday had some training in Yemen, they still were what they always were: thugs, scum of the earth and petty criminals who lived in poverty with little future for themselves or any children they might bring into the world. The word “terrorists” that both the politicians and the media call them, actually empowers them as now today even though they might be hated in parts of the West, they are heroes in other parts of world. No network as far as I could find today showed the celebrations of martyrdom in Southern Afghanistan of these three suspected murdering thugs shot dead Friday by the French Police. Even the BBC and its senior correspondence no longer grasp the complexity of what is evolving daily in Europe and the US. Both politicians and the media should carefully chose their terminology very carefully as only one newspaper worldwide as I could see on Saturday called these three suspected murders “thugs”, which is what they were they were, simply petty criminals who were thugs and found a cause to become heroes in certain parts of the world. They got what they wanted, their faces printed all around the world. When you are so deep in the poverty trap with no way out, death is not the end and is something to fear, death brings peace and a final end to all their personal suffering. We journalists or bloggers seemed to miss that.
As a US citizen and also (as I called myself) a European citizen and someone who rates Paris as one of my top favorite cities and someone who had great memories of not far from where Charlie Hebdo’s offices are located and the fact that eight journalists and cartoonists were murdered by those thugs there, it is very personal to me what happened in Paris last week. But as a European citizen I hope the French Government don’t make the mistake we did in the US after 9/11 and remove so many civil rights of their citizens, which the US did and gave George W. Bush and Dick Cheney so much power. Sadly our current President voted to renew the Patriot Act when he was a Senator and has done nothing to reverse some of the Patriot Act. The argument that no attacks have being carried out in the US since the Patriot Act was brought is an insult to President Clinton, who under his administration thawed terrorists attacks against US citizens in the US and he had no Patriot Act to assist him. President Clinton had a very pro-active intelligence team with the likes of Dick Clark on his team and we saw what George W. Bush and Dick Cheney did to him when they got into power.
We can only hope that the French Police do not now single out the law abiding Muslim citizens living in France as three of their colleagues were also gunned down in cold blooded murder last week like the US Police and the FBI did after 9/11 and the British Police did to the law abiding Irish living in England during the IRA bombing campaign in the UK. Everyone certainly understands that they will be angry as time wears on that three of their colleagues died in such a way but it is important that these three suspected murders were pretty criminals who were thugs and scum of the earth for what they did in Paris last week to seventeen people and the ten people who are also critical injured and were more importantly an insult to the Muslim faith and the Prophet.
This is a war on journalists, photographers, writers, cartoonists and bloggers who want to expose what they deem as injustices or hypocrites be it in politics or in religion and there is no communications or journalist college that can prepare us for those professional decisions on what and who we decide to write about and sometimes it simply is impractical in our line of work to accept twenty-four protection from the Government or Police when and wherever our work takes us to expose corruption with them also. It is a fine balancing act and it remains to be seen where the Twenty-first Century will take us as we see in America the few corporations buying up all the media outlets that in return donate millions to Presidential candidates and then fire their more outspoken journalists. Now more than ever, journalists, photographers, writers, cartoonists and bloggers work freelance to try and make a living using social media without the supports you would normally have from a big publication or a newspaper. It makes the world a much more dangerous place now that these “thugs” can come knocking on our doors like they did to the staff at Charlie Hebdo in Paris last week and they may take our bodies but they will never take our work or our spirit.
And finally to quote President John F. Kennedy’s address to the American Newspaper Publishers Association on April 27, 1961: “Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution, not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply give the public what it wants but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion”. – JE SUIS CHARLIE.
The Amazing Democrats 