Another National Progressive Group Backs Stacey Abrams
DailyKos announced their endorsement of gubernatorial hopeful Stacey Abrams.
In a press release from the Abrams campaign, DailyKos’ founder, Markos Moulitsas said:
“We’ve supported many candidates this cycle, but the community excitement around this endorsement is off the charts. We are going to be aggressive in this race. Georgia is in the midst of dramatic demographic transformation, and Abrams reflects its future.”
This matters because Abrams will seemingly have the pocketbooks of every national progressive movement locked down. Specifically: access to the $4.2 million raised by DailyKos this year alone.
Abrams also secured endorsements from NARAL, EMILY’s List and Democracy for America among other groups. Oh, and the entire congressional delegation except for Sanford Bishop. And Joseph Lowery.
Stacey Evans, the other candidate in the race, has Gov. Roy Barnes as her biggest endorsement.
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While I know this is an Abrams “rah rah post” and a daft slight towards Evans, I just don’t think she’s capable of winning statewide. Getting money from the DailyKos or Emily’s List isn’t going to get you 50.1% in Georgia…nor would it in North Carolina or Virginia; two states I consider closer to where Georgia is leaning towards in the next few cycles.
Ralph Northam and Roy Cooper seem like the types of candidates that could win in Georgia. When it comes down to which Stacey more politically aligns with those two, it’s Evans.
And not to nitpick endorsements and the INCREDIBLE weight they possess, but it does seem a bit telling that more members of the same legislative body from in which the two candidates most recently served are backing Evans, and not their former leader Abrams.
“While I know this is an Abrams “rah rah post” and a daft slight towards Evans”
Interesting….
“Abrams also secured endorsements from NARAL, EMILY’s List and Democracy for America among other groups. Oh, and the entire congressional delegation except for Sanford Bishop. And Joseph Lowery.
Stacey Evans, the other candidate in the race, has Gov. Roy Barnes as her biggest endorsement.”
Benign….
Disregard my snark….I’m on the downhill slide of this hump day and just workin’ for the weekend.
Lawd.
Daily kos, emily’s List, naral. Really???
Anybody else getting the idea the dems don’t really even want to be competitive in Georgia? May as well just save their time and money and concede the election.
I’m quick to say that I don’t think Georgia is necessarily going to flip soon due to demographics however…. since 08 the POTUS margins of victory have been four, seven and five percent. So, yes, Georgia is in reach for liberal candidates and going “waaah liberals in Georgia” won’t be sufficient for victory.
The gap between 48% and 50.1% is huge and could take years to breach, especially if the most populous areas of the state remain in good economic shape. That is why you can’t dismissively say “waaah liberals in Georgia won’t be sufficient for victory.” That presumes that there is this huge group of people desperate for Democratic leadership. Beyond the Democrat base, there isn’t. The massive number of social and fiscal conservatives isn’t going anywhere. And the independents are just that, with no strong feelings one way or another.
A lot of people talk about how demographic changes caused Illinois and California to flip, but those same changes did not cause Arizona and Texas to. 10 years ago the talk was about how North Carolina had flipped, but now they have reverted back to the red column. Saying that Virginia flipped is a stretch. Virginia was at best a purple state that flipped back and forth between Republicans and Dems as far back as the 1980s (i.e. when Doug Wilder and Chuck Robb won statewide office) and the recent GOP losing streak there can be attributed to a combination of terrible GOP candidates and fantastic Democrat ones … including some moderate liberals of the sort that have tended to not win the nominations for high profile races in Georgia for years (note: if you think that Jon Ossoff was a moderate because of his purposefully vague rhetoric on wanting to end wasteful spending – which could very well mean law enforcement and military spending for all we know – then yeah you are one of the reasons why the Dems have had no real shot in Georgia for years).
And it is mighty revealing that this segment of Dems is putting all their eggs in the “demographic change” basket. It shows that they have no intention of trying to broaden the tent, and instead are fully content to just marginalize and exclude a vast swath of the electorate from their dialogue and policy. By contrast the Evans/Barnes people want to get back to having a Democrat Party that is actually willing and capable of representing the entire state instead of a coalition of identity politics interest groups.
Honestly, it isn’t a messaging issue. It is an issues issue. A huge swath of Georgia is socially conservative or at least socially moderate. And the “tax cuts for the rich” thing doesn’t work when much of the electorate feels that the tax revenue is being used to fund programs that they oppose morally and/or doesn’t benefit them personally.
The two step has to end. You want candidates to adhere to party orthodoxy on various issues because those issues matter to you, but then you want to claim that those same issues shouldn’t matter to those who disagree with you. “I will only vote for candidates who support gun control because that issue is important to me, but voters who oppose gun control should vote for candidates based on their positions on Medicare expansion and smaller class sizes because what those voters really need to be concerned about is healthcare and public education, not guns.” That is trying to have your cake and eat it too and it never works because it requires the other side to make all the sacrifices.
And the Trump thing … Trump’s populism was a reaction against the massive failures of the George W. Bush presidency that the national party still won’t acknowledge, preferring to shift as much of the blame to Obama as possible and just sweep the rest under the rug (or even pretend that failures were actually successes “if viewed in the proper context”). Ron and Rand Paul gained a following by being willing to actually address the Bush nonsense, but they weren’t reality TV stars. As the Bush era fades into memory – Bush has the most invisible post presidential profile imaginable, rivaled only by Nixon I suppose – the need for GOP populism will fade over time. As for the Democrats, since there is no longer a Clinton DLC establishment to be insurgents against – whether Obama’s successful one or Sanders’ failed one … and it is amazing how everyone has forgotten how populist Obama’s first campaign was, especially in the early stages – the pitch and the politics will become less populist and instead will be simply moving further to the left to where the EU and Canada have been for decades on economic issues. And on social issues, it will just be a deeper and faster descent into identity politics. Modern leftist identity politics are a lot of things, but populist isn’t one of them. Quite the opposite actually … it is as elitist and purposefully, proudly exclusionary as the old Wall Street country club Republicanism of the 60s and 70s.
Well, in all honesty if we are ever going to get a control over wasteful spending, deficit spending and the national debt then the DOD’s budget is going to have to be addressed. Homeland Security’s budget is nowhere near as problematic.
Cutting defense spending is fine with me, notwithstanding the reality that defense spending has been the main driver of our tech R&D for like 70 years … Silicon Valley, the tech economy and yes the green economy would not exist without it. (That is what gets me about the alternative energy people … if they were to stop talking about global warming and instead try to shift it to defense and national security, alternative energy would have had all the R&D resources that they needed and then some years ago.)
But that wasn’t the point. The point is that Georgia has tried to run garden variety left-liberal progressives masquerading as moderates for the past several years, instead of legitimate Zell Miller and Tom Murphy type moderates. (Note: the steep decline in Democrats in the Georgia legislature began when Murphy stepped down, and then when the GOP got control of the legislature and redistricting it was all over.) Ossoff kept his one note “cutting government waste” campaign because there wasn’t a single issue that he disagreed with the national Democratic Party platform on. Republicans have to buck the national party on major issues to get elected in the northeast and far west. Why the idea that Democrats have to do the same in order to get elected in the southeast and midwest is so offensive is strange.
Nice to have Evergreen here. I was afraid, however, that he was gonna say something negative about The Global Warming Hoax. I just wanted to warn him that the fury of the Georgia Pol Greenies would fall on him full force. He’s safe. For now.