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2024 Senate Elections

Ghost of LL

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 105066

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Oh I don’t know, maybe the Dems could try actually appealing to rural people and agrarian areas of the country as fellow citizens and equals, with problems worth solving and talking about without first chanting a litany of intersectional woes? Tester does that. So does Manchin. So does Bashear. Others can too.
Republicans aren’t winning working-class people and rural areas by superior force. They are winning by default. 

Yes and no. I also think that the GQP did an amazing job of creating an alternate - mythological, exaggerated, and not entirely accurate, but alternate - identity for rural Americans.
Who were they? Hardworking, family oriented, often working in agriculture, supportive of their community, active in a church. Now, take all of those, and emphasize the WORST aspects/permutations of those things:
Hardworking - everyone else is lazy freeloader welfare queens!
Family oriented - anything other than a traditional family unit is an attack on us!
Agrarian - city slickers are leeches!
Community oriented - outsiders and foreigners are the devil!
Church - aggressive fundagelical is the way to go!
Nevermind that they are often what they hate: dependent on government handouts, broken families, unemployed, socially isolated…
The point being, the GQP 1) told them that’s who they are, and then 2) told them only we can protect you and fight for those things. And they bought it. So they now believe that’s who they are. And that’s who the Dems need to reach now.
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Horn Under a Bad Sign
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This is a brilliant political commercial.          

cactusflinthead
cactusflinthead

This applies here too.  

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Voldemort86

Voldemort86 2259

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1 hour ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Oh I don’t know, maybe the Dems could try actually appealing to rural people and agrarian areas of the country as fellow citizens and equals, with problems worth solving and talking about without first chanting a litany of intersectional woes? Tester does that. So does Manchin. So does Bashear. Others can too.

Republicans aren’t winning working-class people and rural areas by superior force. They are winning by default. 

Easier said than done. The story goes if you live in a rural part of the country and tell the local people you’re running for congress or a seat on the city council, first thing people ask is “which party?”.  If it’s Republican, they give you a pat on the back or high five and say good luck ole boy. If it’s democrat, they frown and talk about how everything you’re running for is going against them in their lives and they probably won’t support you.

people just aren’t open minded enough to look at the candidates and what they’re running for.  It’s all about “the team”. Hell look at the race in Colorado house district 4 with Lauren boobert. 7 of the 10 candidates running on the GOP side have been arrested. Can your average person get a decent job or even a job at bucees with a criminal background?  No……. But one of those 7 deadbeats will win the nomination and the house seat because to the rural folks it’s all about “ owning the libs”.

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Bozo_Casanova

Bozo_Casanova 26437

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55 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:


Yes and no. I also think that the GQP did an amazing job of creating an alternate - mythological, exaggerated, and not entirely accurate, but alternate - identity for rural Americans.
Who were they? Hardworking, family oriented, often working in agriculture, supportive of their community, active in a church. Now, take all of those, and emphasize the WORST aspects/permutations of those things:
Hardworking - everyone else is lazy freeloader welfare queens!
Family oriented - anything other than a traditional family unit is an attack on us!
Agrarian - city slickers are leeches!
Community oriented - outsiders and foreigners are the devil!
Church - aggressive fundagelical is the way to go!
Nevermind that they are often what they hate: dependent on government handouts, broken families, unemployed, socially isolated…
The point being, the GQP 1) told them that’s who they are, and then 2) told them only we can protect you and fight for those things. And they bought it. So they now believe that’s who they are. And that’s who the Dems need to reach now.

Fair enough,  but remember the full on rural revolt against Rick Perry's toll roads in 2006? There's a recipe for getting through to those people, or at least enough to make a difference. It works at every level, from a man talking on TV to me having this exact conversation with the guy who sold me ammo in. It's the way the GOP took control control in Texas in the 1990s and it's what Democrats don't do. They may not flip, but it's often enough for a protest vote in a statewide race.

Here's how it goes:

"You think these people care about you? Main street is turning into gravel, meemaw has to spend the night in Big Spring when she visits the doctor because the clinic closed last year. The High School is falling apart and the principal has to drive 30 miles to work as a stock boy at the Walmart, every kid in town is counting the days until they can catch a bus to Dallas and never come back, and better yet leave Texas completely, and now they want to take our tax dollars to give rich people in Dallas a tax break on private school?
The big blue cities are getting the best of everything, but this town is dying because they take 30 years of support for granted. What the hell do you have to lose?!"

 

@Voldemort86 The only route back for Democrats in the lege and locally is through the county courthouse, because that's just how Texas works, but statewides are absolultely within reach. 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
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gmr548

gmr548 16576

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5 hours ago, Voldemort86 said:

Feels like Tester is the new Joe Manchin in a sense that once the dems lose him, the seat is likely gone forever.  I’m not sure what the solution is long term. How many more terms could we expect from Tester?  Peltola could try running for senate in Alaska?  But I’d probably rather Peltola go the way of Don Young and stay in that seat for the next 40 years.

seems like senate seats are scarcer for dems because the District of Columbia doesn’t have any while the GOP gets senate seats for really small states like Wyoming and north / South Dakota.

Hot take: MT will slowly trend blue and then forcefully flip and never look back ala Colorado.

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Pescado_Rojo

Pescado_Rojo 19413

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2 minutes ago, gmr548 said:

Hot take: MT will slowly trend blue and then forcefully flip and never look back ala Colorado.

It’s a low population state, and wouldn’t take much population wise to make a big difference….And Bozeman and Billings are booming. 

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chainsaw

chainsaw 9857

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1 hour ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

It’s a low population state, and wouldn’t take much population wise to make a big difference….And Bozeman and Billings are booming. 

Soros could probably attract 150k Gen Z and Millennials to Jackson Hole, Laramie, and Cheyenne too

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cactusflinthead

cactusflinthead 27598

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On 2/16/2024 at 11:05 AM, The Original Greaser Bob said:

Fuck.  Looks like I'm going to have to be defending Allred the next few months.

I think the book "Dress for Success" came out a fuck long time ago. Anyway, it basically said minorities should always wear conservative suits.

Allred is the epitome of that playbook. He's a black man that most whites are comfortable with. 

I don't begrudge him sticking to that playbook.  He's not going to get in the dirt, like Gutierrez will.  And that's no fucking fun, but neither is rope-a-dope.

The progressive angry Hispanic or Hispanic wannabee hasn't worked over the last couple of cycles for state wide office.

When Allred beat Pete Sessions, there were plenty of people in our district who thought he was too milktoast, but miltoast still tastes better than horseshit, and I guess that's the longshot play.  Especially when the dems are going to show up to vote against Trump.

Este. Allred is going to do what got him here. Beating Pete Sessions was no small feat. 

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Voldemort86

Voldemort86 2259

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15 hours ago, cactusflinthead said:

Este. Allred is going to do what got him here. Beating Pete Sessions was no small feat. 

Sessions was an idiot. When he lost he said it was basically because of “ the success of the district” and a result of “ how well he did”. No dude….. you lost because your old, creepy, and out of touch.

21 hours ago, gmr548 said:

Hot take: MT will slowly trend blue and then forcefully flip and never look back ala Colorado.

Would be awesome if we could take over one of the Montana, Idaho, or dakotas.  Too many easy votes for the gop.

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Js1

Js1 85276

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2 minutes ago, Voldemort86 said:

Sessions was an idiot. When he lost he said it was basically because of “ the success of the district” and a result of “ how well he did”. No dude….. you lost because your old, creepy, and out of touch.

Would be awesome if we could take over one of the Montana, Idaho, or dakotas.  Too many easy votes for the gop.

We probably aren't touching Idaho or the Dakotas.

Don't sleep on the 10 year blue-ing of Kansas and Alaska. 

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bolverk

bolverk 29655

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This guy has a next-to-no chance of getting elected this year in Nebraska, but I bring him up because this profile raises an interesting issue regarding the resurgence of populism within American politics. Not the right-wing strain that's been an ongoing discussion among a lot of threads, but the left-wing kind that's borne out of the labor movement. I support a lot (most) of their issues, but this flavor of populism is still too isolationist for me. Anyway, it's still a trend on the Left that I don't think gets enough attention.

On the topics:

  • Independent, non-partisan candidate
  • Not sure he wants the endorsement of Dems
  • Pro-union
  • Supports legal weed
  • Supports raising the minimum wage
  • Supports abortion rights
  • Supports gun rights
  • Blames corporations and their greed for inflation
  • Wants stronger border protection followed by finding a way to legalize some currently undocumented workers
  • Won't take stance on Israel/Palestine
  • Doesn't support Trump or Biden, citing age
  • Doesn't have a campaign war chest ($$$ in elections)

It's really interesting how, on the topics, a lot of people agree (even in ruby-red parts of this country), but their conditioning from being there makes them feign distrust (or is it genuine?) of the Democratic Party. I mean, I get it. Parties fucking suck, I wish candidates would just run on the issues. 

I'm inviting @Hook1997 to join in this discussion on populism (left or right), any of the bulleted topics above, or even simply this candidate. He says the Cloak Room can't have a civil discussion, so let's show him that it's possible to discuss issues and, perhaps, come together.

Profile on candidate spoilered for length:

Spoiler

A Union Leader in Nebraska Tries to Leap to the Senate on Labor’s Strength
Dan Osborn led a strike in 2021 against the Kellogg’s plant in Omaha. Now he is challenging Senator Deb Fischer as an independent in deep-red Nebraska.

In 2021, as the first Halloween decorations were coming out in Omaha, Neb., a mechanic named Dan Osborn led 500 of his fellow union members out of the Kellogg’s cereal plant on F Street and onto the picket lines.

The strike, which involved over 1,400 workers across multiple plants, would last for a difficult 77 days, through brutal storms and imported strikebreakers and the threat of summary dismissals, which drew the attention of President Biden. A first contract was soundly rejected by the union, then a second finally ended the walkout, just before Christmas.

Now Mr. Osborn, 48, is trying to do something considerably harder: win a United States Senate seat as an independent in the deep-red state of Nebraska.

Mr. Osborn’s long-shot bid to defeat Deb Fischer, Nebraska’s Republican senior senator, in November, or even come close, will test whether the rising power of an energized union movement can translate to high elective office during an election year when working class voters will likely decide the next president, and the direction of the country.

The rail unions of western Nebraska first approached him last year to mount a bid, and a December survey from a left-leaning group called Change Research put Mr. Osborn up on Ms. Fischer, at 40 percent over her 38 percent. It is a questionable result, as even Mr. Osborn’s supporters concede, but enough to capture imaginations in a one-party state that has long receded from the national political conversation.

With no Democrat in the race, the Nebraska Democratic Party is likely to endorse Mr. Osborn at a meeting on March 2, the party chairwoman, Jane Kleeb, said, though Mr. Osborn said he was not sure he wants that. The state A.F.L.-C.I.O. will back him at a gathering in late March, and national unions are taking a close look.

But can a union leader with no political experience find an agenda that transcends the two political parties and appeals narrowly to blue-collar wallets? And can that leader find the money to put that message out farther west, beyond the urban centers of Omaha and Lincoln?

“I’ve gone up against a major American corporation,” Mr. Osborn said as he cut into a steak Tuesday night. “I stood up for what I thought was right, and I won.”

The Fischer campaign appears to be treating Mr. Osborn as a nuisance, not as a serious threat to her bid for a third term.

“Deb Fischer has actual, strong and deep support all across the state, including 93 bipartisan county chairs and over 1,000 endorsements,” Derek Oden, her campaign manager, said. “She is proud of her longstanding support from members of Nebraska labor unions and is willing to work with any Nebraskan to make life easier for working families across our state.” The campaign cited three firefighters’ unions as well as the carpenters and electricians who backed her six years ago.

Mr. Osborn’s attempt to leap from leader of his local to member of the U.S. Senate has little precedent, almost akin to the five failed presidential bids of the celebrated labor leader Eugene V. Debs early last century.

Union members in other states have made the jump to elective office, like Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, and Brandon Johnson, the mayor of Chicago. The New Jersey A.F.L.-C.I.O. has trained 1,300 members to run for office over the past 27 years, with a success rate of 76 percent.

Those seeking office receive instruction in campaigning, opposition research, election law, campaign finance, public speaking and handling the press, said Charles Wowkanech, the president of the New Jersey A.F.L.-C.I.O. In a heavily unionized, Democratic state, the program identifies and contacts every union member in a given district, and, often, they account for more than enough votes to win.

That is not the situation in lightly unionized Nebraska, where 9.4 percent of workers are represented. But even in New Jersey, where 17.3 percent are, the highest office sought has been the U.S. House of Representatives, where a union electrician who went through the program, Donald Norcross, holds the First Congressional District.

“We modeled the labor candidate program after apprenticeship programs,” Mr. Wowkanech said. “You don’t start as a journeyman earning top rate. You work your way up.”

In 2018, Randy Bryce, who is known as “Iron Stache,” captured liberal imaginations and a lot of money as an iron worker (and the secretary of the Racine County Labor Council) running for the house seat of retiring Speaker Paul D. Ryan in Wisconsin. He lost by more than 12 percentage points.

“There definitely are ways to reach across the aisle, but it’s getting rougher every year, that civil divide,” Mr. Bryce said. “We’ve got to find reasons to talk to each other again, and working people running for office is a start.”

Soft-spoken and earnest, Mr. Osborn is not exactly Norma Rae, the brash protagonist of the 1979 film that dramatized the plight of workers and the struggle to organize in the South. Kellogg’s management fired him a year ago, accusing him of watching Netflix while on the job, a charge he and his friends called trumped up. He is now an apprentice with the steamfitters’ union, still working on heating and air conditioning systems as he gets his campaign in gear. He’s also a father of three children between the ages of 16 and 21. His wife is the general manager of a bar and grill in Omaha.

“He’s not pounding his fist on the table,” said Danny Begley, an Omaha City Council member and vice president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1483. “He’s measured. He’s calculated.”

Mr. Osborn, who said he was a Democrat until 2016, wants to run on a narrow platform with what he hopes is extremely broad appeal: legalize marijuana (at least for medical use), raise the minimum wage nationally, secure abortion rights, protect gun rights and expand laws to facilitate union organizing. He condemns the inflation of the Biden era, but blames corporate greed and price gouging. He speaks of the U.S. border in distinctly Republican ways.

“Without borders you don’t have a country,” he said, though he added that once the border is closed, Congress should explore ways to legalize some undocumented workers already in the U.S.

Early in Israel’s war in Gaza, campaign advisers told him to put out a statement staking a position. He refused, saying that it was not an issue he wants associated with his campaign.

“Dan has to get a message out that transcends political lines and goes to their pocketbooks,” said Josh Josoff, an ally with the International Union of Elevator Constructors. “Don’t let the wedge issues pull you away.”

On the one issue he most certainly will not be able to escape, the presidential campaign, he seemed genuinely befuddled. Nebraska is overwhelmingly behind Donald J. Trump, as is Ms. Fischer. Mr. Osborn is not, a potential campaign killer this November. But he is not backing President Biden either.

“I think they’re both too old; I think they’re both incompetent,” he said, finally settling on a position. “There’s a good chance I won’t vote for president.”

Bob Kerrey — a once-popular Democratic governor and senator in Nebraska who, in 2012, tried and failed at a comeback against Ms. Fischer in her first run for the Senate — is a fan of Mr. Osborn, but is also a skeptic.

“He’s got a hard-core economic agenda, and he has a really unique profile,” Mr. Kerrey said. “You can’t say, ‘Well, what do you know about what we’re going through?’ because he does. He knows that the rules don’t work for working people.”

But Nebraska is stacked against Mr. Osborn. West of Lincoln are some of the largest rail yards in the country, but the freight rail companies, backed by Nebraska Republicans, have manhandled the rail unions, which were the first to ask Mr. Osborn to run after a new contract failed to grant their demand of seven paid sick days a year. Such unions may have limited power to deliver North Platte and points west.

The state’s junior senator and former Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, is the other obstacle to Mr. Osborn’s bid. He comes from a family of financiers worth billions of dollars, and he is more than willing to spend it.

Just ask Crista Eggers, who has been trying to legalize medical marijuana since 2019 to treat her son, Colton, who suffers daily epileptic seizures that his physicians believe are treatable with cannabis. Only three states still prohibit medical marijuana, though polls suggest 70 percent to 80 percent of Nebraskans support it. One of those people opposed is Mr. Ricketts, who declared as governor, “If you legalize marijuana, you’re going to kill your kids.”

In 2020, Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana got 197,000 signatures, in more than enough counties to get a legalization referendum on the ballot. But the Nebraska Supreme Court struck it from consideration on a technicality. Supporters tried again in 2022 but came up short of signatures. Ms. Eggers and her group are now at it again, hoping for some synergy with a ballot drive to protect abortion rights and with Mr. Osborn’s campaign, though the group is prohibited from endorsing him.

A problem for Ms. Eggers, and for Mr. Osborn, is money. Signature drives are costly, and 90 of Nebraska’s 93 counties are rural, adding to the challenge. Mr. Osborn himself has little name recognition statewide, and would require an introduction in the form of television ads and a robust campaign schedule, both expensive endeavors. Union supporters are optimistic that Mr. Osborn’s message resonates against Ms. Fischer, if he has the cash to get it out.

“We just need to push past the Republican and Democrat thing, these teams we’re on,” said Josh Dredla, a friend of Mr. Osborn’s who was on the Kellogg’s picket lines.

Mr. Osborn said at a minimum the campaign needs to raise $2 million. So far, he’s raised just over $200,000.

Ms. Fischer ended 2023 sitting on a war chest of close to $3.3 million.

 

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Serak The Preparer

Serak The Preparer 3431

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On 2/18/2024 at 8:28 AM, bolverk said:

I'm inviting @Hook1997 to join in this discussion on populism (left or right), any of the bulleted topics above, or even simply this candidate. He says the Cloak Room can't have a civil discussion, so let's show him that it's possible to discuss issues and, perhaps, come together.

image.png.cb715c7bee1b5f3ab929271d3dea3182.png

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chainsaw

chainsaw 9857

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2 hours ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

They would need Soros money to afford Jackson Hole

Anywhere desirable to live necessarily needs a large number of working class people to sustain its desirability. Plenty of space there to build working class living spaces.

Also if Soros is smart he would pay stipends to companies who already have remote workers to incentivize allowing those workers to work from Wyoming, and then pay stipends to those workers to live in Wyoming. Something like $5k to the company, $5k to the worker, and a nice perk like a 1-month paid vacation somewhere nice.

According to this, there are over 17 million "digital nomads" who could change their states of residency to Wyoming. Montana, or a Dakota.

https://info.mbopartners.com/rs/mbo/images/2023_Digital_Nomads_Report.pdf

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gmr548

gmr548 16576

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5 minutes ago, StassneyHorn said:

South Dakota residency and being able to vote there is EXTREMELY easy to obtain. A lot of Americans abroad keep a PO Box in South Dakota and aforementioned nomads/RV’ers do the same.

SD license plates all over Mexico too thanks to expats remotely registering vehicles.

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RDCanecutter

RDCanecutter 26381

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Back in the 80s a bunch of the drill sergeants at Ft Knox drove cars with cheap Mississippi plates. I doubt half of them had ever been there. There may have been actual laws against it, but would would happen was, one Drill Sergeant with Mississippi plates would give a court house phone # to another Drill Sergeant, and there'd be a nice lady on the other end willing to write down whatever fictional address he gave, he'd send the check, they'd send the plates to where he was at Ft. Knox.

I don't know which Mississippi county they were getting them from. Maybe all of them. I like to imagine that there were entire ghost villages in the countryside full of made-up mamas and aunties, waiting for their boys to come home for Christmas.

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Dnaguy

Dnaguy 11920

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Posted (edited)
On 2/17/2024 at 12:15 PM, YGIFS said:

'Cause of that goddamn show "Yosemite", amirite?  

I do like Yo Semite.

I get all my best Hebrew jams and drops.

Not as popular due to current tensions but MTV isreal still pumping out the jams 

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YGIFS

YGIFS 19449

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She’s got house leadership or Governor written all over her.  We forget as much coverage as she’s gottten, she’s a relatively fresh face in politics and has decades to serve/advance. She can also move to a more competitive state down the road that needs a rock star female D candidate and most state D party’s wouldn’t have an issue with that. 

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tx 3 putt

tx 3 putt 76870

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28 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

In his defense, it's a lot better to be triple her age when you're in your 60s than when you're in your 30s. 


63 banging a 20 yo and not uber rich and a college drop out is a feat. Also, and all knew this without looking it up …..

 

Rosendale has served as head of his local Catholic parish council.

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