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. 

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“No matter what side you’re on or not on, your opinion and vote does really matter”. – Be involved and be heard. 

by David A. Fahrenthold (The Washington Post)

Yesterday, I wrote a story about an infamous example of a campaign spending money poorly. In 2008, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign in Iowa ran out of good ideas before they ran out of cash, and started to buy things they didn’t really need. Like $95,000 worth of deli sandwiches. And hundreds of new snow shovels, for their Iowa volunteers. Who — because they were Iowans — already had snow shovels.

 “It’s sort of like, ‘Yeah, I’ll take a snow shovel,’ ” Marisue Hartung, one Clinton volunteer, remembered thinking then. “But why?”

But that’s hardly the only time a presidential campaign has blown money on bad ideas. I asked my Post colleagues for other suggestions from the recent past, they came up with a few more:

Howard Dean’s orange hats. In 2004, the Vermont governor bought neon-orange hats for his new volunteers to wear while canvassing voters in Iowa. The idea, apparently, was to show how many volunteers really had. “The Iowa Perfect Storm: Grassroots for Dean,” the hats said. But in practice, the hats seemed to show how many of Dean’s volunteers were out-of-staters who didn’t know much about Iowa. They were aliens, whose hats made them even easier to spot.

Joe Lieberman’s “Joe Mobiles.” In 2004, Lieberman’s campaign wrapped a pair of cars in big pictures of his face anddrove them around New  Hampshire. They contributed to a feeling that Lieberman was running for president mainly so he could finally use a lifetime of stored-up “Joe” puns. The candidate talked about “Joementum” called his breakfastime meet-and-greets “A Cup of Joe” and drove around in a camper called the “Winneba-Joe.” In the end, however, Lieberman’s campaign in New Hampshire went…Joe-where. He came in fifth.

John Kerry’s “Kerry Graham” signs.  Also in 2004 — apparently a great year for terrible campaign ideas — Democratic nominee John F. Kerry was set to announce his vice-presidential running mate. Kerry picked then-Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), but his campaign printed up at least two other sets of campaign paraphernalia, with other nominees’ names on them. On the big day, however, some of the fake-out signs got mixed in with the real ones. So, at Kerry’s big rally, some fans wound up waving signs that said “Kerry Graham.” As in then-Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.). Who hadn’t been chosen. Which has to have been a funny feeling for Graham.

Mitt Romney’s embroidered airplane seat covers. In 2012, Republican nominee Mitt Romney had a campaign plane whose amenities included personalized, embroidered headrest covers for the candidate (his said “The Gov”) and staff. They were made of red faux suede. If a staffer changed seats on the plane, he or she could take the headrest cover with them. It was a small expense, in the scheme of things. But — as Romney and his staff sought to project a common touch — it probably didn’t help.

John Edwards’ $400-plus haircuts. (hat tip to Damenico Montanaro  of NPR). In 2007, the campaign of then-Sen. Edwards spent hundreds — up to $1,250 in one case — for a Beverly Hills stylist to fly out and cut the candidate’s hair. “I try to make the man handsome, strong, more mature and these are the things, as an expert, that’s what we do,” the stylist told the Post back then. It was nice hair. No argument here. But for a man campaigning to fix the gap between the “Two Americas,” it was the wrong message.

 “Butt Man” and “Baloney Man” (hat tip to the Twitter user@TrueDactsStated). No, not that kind of butt. In 1996, Clinton’s campaign made foam-rubber suits that looked like cigarette butts, and had campaign volunteers wear them to harass Republican Bob Dole. The point was to highlight Dole’s closeness to the tobacco industry. In Wisconsin that year, Republicans countered with “Baloney Man,” a lunchmeat-shaped mascot whose message was that Democrats were generally full of baloney. Butt and Baloney actually met once, at a Dole rally in Fox Point, Wisc., producing this incredible quote in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel  (from a local GOP official): “Butt Man is full of baloney. Baloney Man told me Butt Man tried to grab him.”

And….

And snow shovels and deli meats. Don’t forget to read the Post story that started this discussion. It’s about Hillary Clinton, Iowa, love, desperation, failure–and some of the most infamous bad ideas  that a campaign ever paid for.