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"You say you want a Blue Tsunami"
Last edited Thu Apr 5, 2018, 12:32 PM - Edit history (1)
At least 99.9% of DU members know we need one. Congress must be wrested away from Republicans for there to be actual oversight of all the crimes Trump has committed with real accountability assigned to them, including but not limited to Impeachment and removal from office.
Republicans need to suffer humiliating unprecedented defeats in districts that they had come to believe God gave them dominion over. Trumpism must be crushed as the throwback to racist xenophobic No Nothingism of the 19th century that it literally is. Republicans need to learn that they will never rule in this country with just a third of the public behind them, no matter how fanatical that third may be. Right now less than bat shit crazy Republican politicians are more afraid of losing a Republican primary to Trump's core supporters than they are of being exposed as fully complicit in an attack on America during a general election campaign. They all now must pay for this betrayal.
But how does that work exactly? How do we get that Blue Tsunami? It happens if we make the 2018 midterms a defining moment for America, an ultimate whose side are you on referendum for the country. But there's an unsettling aspect to binary groupings. Whether you end up picking Group A over Group B, or vice versa, you end up in electoral bed with lots of folks who you don't always see eye to eye with. Sometimes that's called a United Front. They tend to emerge if times become dire enough. And the effort that forms one is far more sweeping in scope than just "energizing the base". It involves changing the entire political landscape. We need a whole lot more than loyal Democrats voting party line to pull this off folks.
Sometimes I think we don't know how to do the basic math. There aren't enough registered Democrats in America to save America from authoritarian no nothingism. There aren't enough solid blue states in America to reliably prevent Republicans from controlling the U.S. Senate under a constitution that gives Idaho as many Senate seats as California. For all practical purposes Democratic Party primaries have become the only safe place for adults of good will to hash out reasonable differences between them. Our political system is weighed to reward one of two major political parties with governmental control. One of those parties, the Republicans, has totally jumped the rails, so sane Americans must fight out our differences before the General Election ever comes around. Then we must avoid exasperating any wounds that might have opened up among us during that earlier competitive phase if we expect to win come next November. And then we need to expand on that base.
If Democratic Underground is indicative of anything, we have done a piss poor job of healing before building. Any talk I read here of the utmost importance of unqualified support for Democrats is frankly laughable if it prominently features an asterisk noting only registered Democrats need apply. A Blue Tsunami is not made up of registered Democrats alone. A Democratic Majority in the U.S. Senate, should we be lucky enough to attain one next fall, will not be made up of registered Democratic party members alone. Most of the Democrats who we do elect will not be elected with Democratic votes alone, let alone former Clinton supporter votes alone.
Yes we can and should solidify our base to help create a Blue Tsunami. That involves giving every means of logistical support possible to Democratic Party core voters, starting with but not limited to People of Color, particularly Women of Color but all women too. We need to support them running for office, and we need to go on the offensive against each and every means of targeted minority voter suppression tactics that Republicans use to disenfranchise minorities. Thank god for the ongoing work of those like Eric Hodder. But another definition of base voters commonly refers to those who participate in political party primaries. Hillary Clinton won 16,914,722 of those Democratic voters in 2016. while Bernie Sanders won 13,206,428 of them. If our priority now is indeed the Blue Tsunami needed by America, we need all of our core voters energized and engaged and pursuing this fight together, rather than continuing to be at odds with each other.
Creating a Blue Tsunami also means changing the attitudes of those who were all too likely not to bother to vote in the past. Younger voters come to mind, and I am very enthusiastic and optimistic about that demographic moving forward. They have taken the lead in movements as diverse as "Me Too", "Black Lives Matter" and "March for Our Lives". Anything that can be done to help them must be done now.
And finally it means flipping as many votes that went to Trump in 2016 to Democratic as possible. Just to state the obvious, this doesn't involve wasting any time on Trump's core supporters even though most of Trump's 2016 votes were likely from his rabid core who can only be appealed to through overt racist xenophobic and sexist dog whistles. I agree; Fuck 'em. The rest of his voters, a smaller subset than his core, are a mixed bag many of whom harbor some prejudices and other less than desirable traits. Yes I still want their votes in 2018, in a way like FDR wanted Stalin's troops in 1943. We are in a war for the survival of our Democracy now. The difference between a Blue Wave in November and a Blue Tsunami involves flipping a lot of Districts Democratic that ordinarily we would be out of our minds to fantasize wining.
We can retake the House if we pick up 30 seats. That's not good enough to totally crush Trumpism. We need to pick up 60. I have a hunch that if we do swing as many solid red seats to blue as a Blue Tsunami entails that I will be less than thrilled with some of the Democrats who we will thereby put in office. We can sort that out later, though primaries in some cases if need be, but Trump and the Republican Party that stands behind him must be crushed now.
I have no doubt that Colin Lamb won his seat in Congress using an all of the above vote getting strategy. The district went to Trump by 20 points and Lamb won by less than a thousand votes total. We need to take districts like that now in order to drive a stake through the heart of the current Republican Party. It is a fallacy to say that we can't use an "all of the above" strategy in 2008, just because in different places it makes sense to target our resources appropriately, which will vary. In Nebraska we probably have to target ways to peel off some Trump voters, in areas like Austin Texas we may need to prioritize millennials. In Georgia we have to do massive voter registration drives in African American communities. These efforts of course are not mutually exclusive, they can go on everywhere simultaneously. My point is simply that where the relative motherland of new Democratic votes can be harvested will vary some from district to district, and we need to be surgical in our thinking. And we need to stay focused on our mutual adversary, not on differences that exist within our larger Democratic Coalition.
November 2018 is when we can finally politically destroy Donald Trump and all who stand behind him. We have no choice but to get the job done.
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