Thursday Open Thread

5 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

1. Who is Roger Smith and has he made other trenchant comments on the weird Republican candidates?

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   1. The quote was from Robert Smith, singer for The Cure, who knows a thing or two about eyeliner!

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2. Actors and dancers know the benefit of adding a little anger line at the side of the eyes. 

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3. The only men strong enough to stand up to Putin wear orange makeup and eyeliner. As Walter Masterson would say, " got it !"

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4. Democrats Have a Clear Road Map to Victory, but Will They Use It? Rachel Bitecofer

   Rachel Bitecofer says that 95% of Party members are locked-in to their own Party, and that the most effective wedge issue for the Democrats is the abortion one. She notes that all Demcrats in 2022 who outperformed leaned heavily into fighting against the Dobbs decision, while Dems who played defense under-performed. Mid-terms are always difficult for the Party in power, thus the success of candidates like Gretchen Whitmer was remarkable, and came because she tied Republicans to Abortion bans.

   Blunting a midterm effect is hard.

   In fact, its so hard that when I set out in the winter of 2021 to teach Democrats how they might do it, I assumed it was an impossible task we’d ultimately fail at.

   And we well might have, if not for Dobbs.

   The day the Dobbs memo leaked I knew that Democrats now had a powerful wedge issue they could use in the midterms to potentially disrupt one of the most reliable patterns in American politics, the midterm effect.

   Believe it or not though, it was not easy to convince top tier campaigns that wedging Roe/Dobbs was the only path to victory in 2022. That rather than doing what their traditional strategists were privately and publicly telling them to do (play defense on crime and inflation), Democrats who wanted to actually win needed to go hard on offense on abortion.

   At the end of the day those old school consultants had far more access to top tier campaigns than an outsider like me. As such, some of the most important races of that cycle, especially the 4 marquee senate races and the House races in both NY and CA played defense and predictably lost.

   Meanwhile individual campaigns like Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s in Michigan wedged Dobbs and cruised to a victory that was not even in question by September. Against a midterm effect, no less!

   Wedging freedom (abortion) also delivered big wins in Arizona with Katie Hobbes’ close win against extremist Kari Lake and with Adrian Fontes, who used a “Protect Democracy” frame to build a massive bipartisan coalition to outperform even Mark Kelly in some precincts in his race for Secretary of State.

    

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