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11/03/2015 10:59 pm  #1


Looking for your theories.....

In 2008, when President Obama took office, there were 23 Republican Governors.

With Kentucky's Governor's mansion going to the GOP tonight, there will be 33 GOP governors beginning in 2016.

We tend to think of the Republican party as disconnected to the average voter, out of the mainstream, and in general, run by a bunch of clowns.

Yet, outside of the White House, the country by and large seems to be governed by Republicans. 

They run the U.S. House by a huge margin, the U.S. Senate, 33 out of 50 governorships, 35 of 49 State Senate chambers, and 33 of 49 State Houses.

So I'm interested in hearing your theories. What are the Republicans doing right to win all of these elections. And perhaps more importantly, what are the Dems doing wrong?


I think you're going to see a lot of different United States of America over the next three, four, or eight years. - President Donald J. Trump
 

11/04/2015 6:25 am  #2


Re: Looking for your theories.....

Perhaps we truly are a center right country?
The big question for me is why the Republicans do not dominate the White house as well.
Here in Massachusetts, a liberal state that has a history of electing republican governors, republicans succeed by stressing experience, fiscal responsibility, and competence. They really stay away from the culture war issues, or even lean to what you might consider the democratic "side".

Im my opinion, if the republicans on the national stage stopped the god, guns, gays, and anti-science crap, there would be no stopping them.


We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists. 
 

11/04/2015 7:57 am  #3


Re: Looking for your theories.....

Could gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics play a role?  I say that because in the last election, in total, more people voted 'democrat', but congress doesn't reflect that.

 

11/04/2015 8:00 am  #4


Re: Looking for your theories.....

As more and more people discover that the "Affordable Care Act" is neither affordable or caring, pocketbook issues will emerge as the driving force for the 2016 election.


Life is an Orthros.
 

11/04/2015 8:48 am  #5


Re: Looking for your theories.....

As more and more people discover that the "Affordable Care Act" is neither affordable or caring, pocketbook issues will emerge as the driving force for the 2016 election.

....and that's because the program is still run as a for-profit business by private corporations.

 

11/04/2015 9:26 am  #6


Re: Looking for your theories.....

Here in PA, Democrats are asleep.  Ths was the first electtion that I actually got a few calls from the Dems.  My husband is a Republican and is bombarded with phone calls every election.  Me...none.

Another thing that does not help is PA voters seem to be so poorly educated and dumbed down.  I don't mean for that to be an insult, just stating a fact.  I have people in my family who are practically illiterate,.  And they are all Republicans.  They are constantly voting against their own best interests, going in an automatically pulling the Republican lever.  This is great for the Republicans but bad for the country.  PA is so backward as it is and is being left behind  more and more every day.  It's looking like a state that is rigid, inflexible and set in their archaic ways.   I'd love to see them take the D and R off of the ballot and have people actually have to research who they want in power, but that won't happen.

As for the "disatrous" ACA, as they right wingers call it.....all I'm seeing is people who like it.  My Republican brother went on it kicking and screaming.  He tells me later, he really likes it and is glad he's on it.  Just saying........

 

11/04/2015 9:32 am  #7


Re: Looking for your theories.....

Just Fred wrote:

Could gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics play a role?  I say that because in the last election, in total, more people voted 'democrat', but congress doesn't reflect that.

At the House of Representatives level, I absolutely believe gerrymandering plays a huge role and both sides play the game. I'm not convinced that voter suppression is a huge factor. At least I haven't seen any data that supports it.

In terms of more votes going to democrats in congressional elections, for sure that it is because urban areas from Philly, to New York City, to Miami, to Dallas, to San Francisco, the voter base is 75-80% Democrats. 

So why does it seem like the Democratic Party gets zero traction outside of the big cities? Doesn't a national party need to be able to compete in the rural areas as well?

At the state level, the trend is clear. People are voting republican. And I can't figure out why. What are republicans not doing at that federal level that is working at a state and local level?
 


I think you're going to see a lot of different United States of America over the next three, four, or eight years. - President Donald J. Trump
     Thread Starter
 

11/04/2015 9:18 pm  #8


Re: Looking for your theories.....

Here's a theory from the Atlantic's Molly Ball. I am in agreement with the last two paragraphs of the column.

In Tuesday’s elections, voters rejected recreational marijuana, transgender rights, and illegal-immigrant sanctuaries; they reacted equivocally to gun-control arguments; and they handed a surprise victory to a Republican gubernatorial candidate who emphasized his opposition to gay marriage.

Democrats have become increasingly assertive in taking liberal social positions in recent years, believing that they enjoy majority support and even seeking to turn abortion and gay rights into electoral wedges against Republicans. But Tuesday’s results—and the broader trend of recent elections that have been generally disastrous for Democrats not named Barack Obama—call that view into question. Indeed, they suggest that the left has misread the electorate’s enthusiasm for social change, inviting a backlash from mainstream voters invested in the status quo.

Consider these results:

Ohio voters rejected a ballot initiative to legalize recreational marijuana by a 30-point margin.

Voters in Houston—a strongly Democratic city—rejected by a 20-point margin a nondiscrimination ordinance that opponents said would lead to “men in women’s bathrooms.”

The San Francisco sheriff who had defended the city’s sanctuary policy after a sensational murder by an illegal immigrant was voted out.

Two Republican state senate candidates in Virginia were targeted by Everytown for Gun Safety, former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s gun-control group. One won and one lost, leaving the chamber in GOP hands.

Matt Bevin, the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Kentucky, pulled out a resounding victory that defied the polls after emphasizing social issues and championing Kim Davis, the county clerk who went to jail rather than issue same-sex marriage licenses. Bevin told the Washington Post on the eve of the vote that he’d initially planned to stress economic issues, but found that “this is what moves people.”

There were particular factors in all of these races: The San Francisco sheriff was scandal-ridden, for example, and the Ohio initiative’s unique provisions divided pro-pot activists. But taken together these results ought to inspire caution among liberals who believe their cultural views are widely shared and a recipe for electoral victory.

Democrats have increasingly seized the offensive on social issues in recent years, using opposition to abortion rights and gay marriage to paint Republican candidates as extreme and backward. In some cases, this has been successful: Red-state GOP Senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock lost after making incendiary comments about abortion and rape in 2012, a year when Obama successfully leaned into cultural issues to galvanize the Democratic base. “The Republican Party from 1968 up to 2008 lived by the wedge, and now they are politically dying by the wedge,” Democratic consultant Chris Lehane told the New York Times last year, a view echoed by worried Republicans urging their party to get with the times.

But the Democrats’ culture-war strategy has been less successful when Obama is not on the ballot. Two campaigns that made abortion rights their centerpiece in 2014, Wendy Davis’s Texas gubernatorial bid and Mark Udall’s Senate reelection campaign in Colorado, fell far short. In most of the country, particularly between the coasts, it’s far from clear that regular voters are willing to come to the polls for social change. Gay marriage won four carefully selected blue-state ballot campaigns in 2012 before the Supreme Court took the issue to the finish line this year. Recreational marijuana has likewise been approved only in three blue states plus Alaska. Gun-control campaigners have repeatedly failed to outflank the N.R.A. in down-ballot elections that turned on the issue. Republicans in state offices have liberalized gun laws and restricted abortion, generating little apparent voter backlash.

An upcoming gubernatorial election in Louisiana is turning into a referendum on another hot button issue—crime—with Republican David Vitter charging that his opponent, John Bel Edwards, wants to release “dangerous thugs, drug dealers, back into our neighborhoods.” The strategy, which has been criticized for its racial overtones, may or may not work for Vitter, who is dealing with scandals of his own. Yet many liberals angrily reject the suggestion that the push to reduce incarceration could lead to a political backlash based on anecdotal reports of sensational crimes.

To be sure, Tuesday was an off-off-year election with dismally low voter turnout, waged in just a handful of locales. But liberals who cite this as an explanation often fail to take the next step and ask why the most consistent voters are consistently hostile to their views, or why liberal social positions don’t mobilize infrequent voters. Low turnout alone can’t explain the extent of Democratic failures in non-presidential elections in the Obama era, which have decimated the party in state legislatures, governorships, and the House and Senate. Had the 2012 electorate shown up in 2014, Democrats still would have lost most races, according to Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political scientist, who told me the turnout effect “was worth slightly more than 1 percentage point to Republican candidates in 2014”—enough to make a difference in a few close races, but not much across the board.

Liberals love to point out the fractiousness of the GOP, whose dramatic fissures have racked the House of Representatives and tormented party leaders. But as Matt Yglesias recently pointed out, Republican divisions are actually signs of an ideologically flexible big-tent party, while Democrats are in lockstep around an agenda whose popularity they too often fail to question. Democrats want to believe Americans are on board with their vision of social change—but they might win more elections if they meet voters where they really are.


I think you're going to see a lot of different United States of America over the next three, four, or eight years. - President Donald J. Trump
     Thread Starter
 

11/04/2015 9:46 pm  #9


Re: Looking for your theories.....

Newton's third law of motion applies to politics.

The equal and opposite reaction usually occurs over decades.


Life is an Orthros.
 

11/04/2015 10:27 pm  #10


Re: Looking for your theories.....

What I hear from people is that they no longer care because too many politicians are crooked, leave offices as multimillionaires even though they never accomplished anything while in office; some voters have just given up on the "systems" because politicians are all in the pockets of the rich; there's too much money from outside sources influencing politicians and on and on and on.  Voters are disheartened by the entire system and no longer care because nothing ever changes and they wait until the next skewering by the politicians.

 

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