Archive for the ‘Democratic Party’ Tag
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,
Editor, The Amazing Democrats.
Follow us on twitter: @DemocratAmazing
“No matter what side you’re on or not on, your opinion and vote does really matter”. – Be involved and be heard.
Democrats and “Hillary’s People” need to seriously wake up to the most dangerous man for America on the planet and could even have a chance of being our next President of the United States. Donald Trump is not only America’s number one clown around the world, he is also a very dangerous man. The Amazing Democrats have remained silent these past few weeks as we are very disappointed with the direction of the Hillary Clinton campaign. We mentioned time and time it needs a massive shake up campaign staff wise and still (even with the new television commercials for Hillary Clinton’s campaign this week), we see the same old, same old boring save approach messages.
This has never worked against the GOP and we certainly wouldn’t have had a hope in hell re-electing Obama against Romney in 2012 if we had taken that approach. We took our gloves off and played in the dirt with the GOP and we did what we set out to do, we won. The fact the Clintons are friendly with Trump (or Jeb Bush for that matter) makes no odds. Trump threw the first punch when recently (in the South) he brought up Bill’s sex life. So Hillary time to get serious. Shake up your campaign staff from top to bottom and don’t be such a stick in the mud by not hiring some of Obama old campaigners as remember we won for Obama in 2012. There were no rules and there simply aren’t when you are up against the GOP, they don’t play fair and Trump certainly won’t. You and your campaign are giving Trump too much of a head start and you will regret this big time should he be nominated as the GOP candidate. Didn’t you make that same mistake with an unknown Senator called Obama in 2008?
The secret with Trump’s weakness is his business deals in the past. Dig and dig hard. In the 1980’s in New York, who did he do business with then? Follow the money. Follow his treatment of people who got in his way. For example take the poor people of Scotland and what he did to the locals there who were just trying to make a living. Trump is not just a man about greed and stupidity, he is a very dangerous man for America and the world. Wake up Ms. Clinton please and start the fight today and shake up your campaign staff and campaign. Don’t repeat the mistakes of your 2008 campaign – Editor, The Amazing Democrats.
By Nick Bryant (BBC News)
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?
BY GALE HOLLANd and SOUMYA KARLAMANGLA (LA TIMES)
The homeless population jumped 12% in the last two years in both the city and county of Los Angeles, driven by soaring rents, low wages and stubbornly high unemployment, according to a report released Monday.
In one of the most striking findings, the number of tents, makeshift encampments and vehicles occupied by homeless people soared 85%, to 9,535, according to biennial figures from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
“It’s everywhere now; the encampments are in residential neighborhoods, they’re outside of schools,” said L.A. City Councilman Mike Bonin, who represents Venice.
“It’s jarring. … It shows we’ve got a hell of a lot of work ahead.
The rise was fueled by gentrification downtown and in Venice, where cheap hotel rooms, motels and single-room apartments — once the last refuge of the poor — are being eliminated.
Growing tensions in these rapidly changing neighborhoods were heightened by the fatal police shootings of two unarmed homeless men in just over two months. The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating the March 1 death of Charly Keunang on skid row and the killing last week in Venice of Brendon K. Glenn.
Mark Ryavec, president of the Venice Stakeholders Assn., called on Bonin, Mayor Eric Garcetti and other elected officials to “accept that fixing this situation is their responsibility, not just the LAPD’s.”
Countywide, more than 44,000 homeless people were tallied in January, up from more than 39,000 in 2013, the report said. Well over half — nearly 26,000 — were in the city of Los Angeles.
In another closely watched category, homelessness among veterans dropped 6% countywide, to about 4,400, but the report did not break out a comparable number for the city.
Garcetti and federal officials have pledged to house every homeless veteran by the end of the year, and in January the mayor said he was more than halfway to his goal.
Homeless advocates blamed public officials for the disappointing results.
“The city and county have done such a terribly poor job of creating affordable housing, basically they’ve ignored the issue,” said Steve Clare, executive director of the Venice Community Housing.
“We need shovels in the ground,” said skid row activist General Jeff Page.
Homeless authority commission members called for more state and local money, and said neighborhoods throughout the county must accept housing for homeless residents.
“There need to be enormous new dedicated resources,” said Peter Lynn, the authority’s executive director.
The rise comes at a time of renewed local focus on the problem.
After decades of squabbling and inaction, the city and county resolved old differences over homeless service tactics and began pursuing nationally recognized solutions. Those include rapidly re-housing newly homeless people and creating so-called permanent supportive housing, with mental health and addiction counseling, for the chronically homeless.
After a scathing report from City Administrative Officer Miguel A. Santana that the city spends $100 million a year on homelessness, City Council members formed a new committee in April to develop a fresh approach to ending it.
But the campaign has so far proved no match for the region’s high cost of housing and lack of new money for low-income housing or rent subsidies for the destitute, the report suggested. Despite the economic recovery after the Great Recession, the county’s unemployment rate of 7.5% still tops the national rate of 5.6%, the report said.
The tally is based on a street count conducted by 5,500 volunteers over three days in January, shelter censuses and demographic extrapolation and analysis. The number is required to receive federal funding to tackle homelessness, and is used to estimate program needs and assign resources.
Los Angeles has the nation’s largest concentration of homeless veterans. The Obama administration this year roughly doubled funding to the county, offering $105 million in homeless grants and services, according to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, but the increase came largely after the January count.
Advocates say that in some cases, veterans and longtime homeless people are shoving aside those newly homeless because of the affordable housing crisis.
“What’s happened is existing resources have been re-targeted to the chronically homeless, but the pot hasn’t been significantly expanded,” Clare said.
The city’s affordable housing fund, which in 2008 totaled $108 million, plunged to $26 million in 2014.
In his proposed budget, Garcetti called for $5 million in general fund money and $5 million in yet-to-be negotiated taxes on Airbnb short-term rentals to replenish the coffers. As part of his back-to-basics agenda, the mayor proposed spending $31 million annually on sidewalk and other improvements beginning in the next budget year.
The region has wrestled for decades with how to create housing for homeless people. Under a “containment policy,” the city concentrated services and shelters, most of which are run by religious groups, on skid row.
Unlike in New York, there is no legal right to shelter, and securing the money and political backing to build supportive housing throughout the county has been a struggle.
Christine Margiotta, vice president of community impact at United Way of Greater Los Angeles, said “it’s critical we don’t lose sight of that and become disheartened. We just need to redouble our efforts … and have a strong eye toward prevention in the future.”
Alice Callaghan, a longtime advocate for the homeless on skid row, criticized city leaders for failing to stem the loss of housing.
“All we get from City Hall is breezy poetry — ‘I will house everybody by next year.’ That’s absurd. There’s no housing to put people in,” Callaghan said. “It’s very depressing. I don’t think people understand how bad it is.”
by Colby Itkowitz (The Washington Post)
Donald Trump, the billionaire reality television star, may be the last person to need one, but a Florida man has a super PAC at the ready if Trump decides to run for president.
Robert Kiger filed Citizens for Restoring USA last week. It’s a pretty generic name, but the e-mail address on the form gave away his allegiance: rkiger@equestriansfortrump.com
We reached Kiger, a West Palm businessman, owner of Elegante Polo, retailer of designer polo ensembles, Monday evening.
He called Trump a “friend,” but later qualified that Trump would likely have no idea who he was. (He was right.) But he’s a big supporter of Trump’s presidential ambitions.
“Listen, I think we need a game changer because business as usual is just broken, and I even think: I love Jeb Bush, but I’m not sure those guys are going to change much, any of them,” Kiger told the Loop. “I think we need a business leader, we need to run the country like a business.”
We called Trump, who had just spent the weekend angling for headlines in New Hampshire. He didn’t know about the super PAC (or Kiger) but he certainly reveled in the news.
“I’m greatly honored by it. We’re having tremendous support,” he told us. And in his estimation, if he gets in, the nomination is basically his for the taking.
But we’ve been here before, haven’t we? Didn’t Trump tease his fans in 2012 with lots of bloviating and promises of unearthing President Obama’s long-form birth certificate only to back “establishment” choice Mitt Romney?
Just how seriously should we take him?
“Totally serious,” he said. “I want to make the country great again. Mitt Romney let us down. I love what I’m doing, my business is phenomenal, but more important to me than my business, is the country and somebody has to save the country, which is [declining] really bad and really fast.”
This time around Trump does have an exploratory committee set up with the Federal Election Commission. And now, like a real candidate, he has a random guy with a super PAC.
With whatever unlimited funds Kiger raises, he said he’d eventually support whoever the Republican nominee is – but if Trump squeezes into the uncomfortably crowded primary Kiger will be there to help … finance him?
The Amazing Democrats 