since day 1. what we should really be choosing is someone who has the coattails to wash the swamp clean.

one of the things i like about bloomie is all the money he put into 18.

that is my #1 issue- who has the coattails? who will help us take the senate, too?

But we as voters must do more than just vote. We too must engage in outreach.

she has jan schakowsky on her team. dont know what they are doing in iowa, but i can tell you that a lot of people will tell you that there is no obama w/o the lean, mean 9th dist campaign machine. and it's only gotten stronger and more well oiled since then.

some folks here might remember christine cegelis, who forced henry hyde to retire, but lost her second primary by a hair to tammy duckworth. we remain friends, and she is hard core team warren.

imho, she might just be the upset winner in iowa.

And I canvassed for signatures for a Warren delegate.

At this point, our group is engaged in voter outreach by canvassing and phone banking, and we are holding a candidates forum for the 3rd District soon.

jesus what a smelly, oozing open sore on the party that idiot is.

We recently sat in at one of Lipinski's offices. He rarely holds Town Hall meetings. He seems to be afraid of his constituents.

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Better in my view that we all do what we can to energize the apathetic, and educate the ignorant among us.

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I am working for Marie Newman in the Il 3rd District, and for Elizabeth Warren.

but we are able to work for Democrats, and we are.

Good luck in your work, and I look forward to working enthusiastically for the eventual Democratic nominee.

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about people getting involved in voter outreach, and associated things, do you have anything to say about my actual post, or will you ignore it so you can epitomize what I see as failing to see the entire issue here?

If you wish to continue as you have started, I would see no point in engaging further.

I am very active in Texas trying to turn Texas blue. I have been volunteering a ton of time on voter protection efforts starting in 2004 when I was part of the Kerry Edwards voter protection team. I have been training poll watchers, fighting true the vote assholes, running war rooms and working on voter rights issues for a very long time.

In Texas, we had 101 republicans in the Texas house after the 2010 elections compared to 49 Democrats. Right now we are 9 seats away from taking control of the Texas house and having the ability to block GOP control of Texas redistricting in 2021. Texas is projected to pick up 3 congressional seats. I am working on the Eliz Markowitz campaign and was at a fundraiser Thursday night when Joe Biden endorsed Eliz

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The candidate makes a difference and I strongly disagree with the premise on your OP.

I will continue to work in the real world to turn Texas blue but do not expect me to ignore the real world

And in that not too distant past, in that real world,

I would suggest that if you, or others here, dismiss the 47% pool of unmotivated voters, you are missing a huge part of the way to insure continued victories for Democrats.

I unfortunately can’t see Biden going toe to toe with trump, I just don’t see him winning a war of words with the skills trump has in twisting and dramatizing and caricaturizing.

Lest we forget one of the main dynamic drivers for trump.... I think the reason he was trying to go after Biden was not because he feared running against him the most, but because he’d especially love to beat Obama’s VP.

In 2016 a whole lot of Democratic strategists thought we hit the jackpot when Clinton got to run against the weakest Republican candidate of them all; Donald Trump/

Conventional wisdom sometimes has the disadvantage of being... conventional.

And, as a precursor to Trump, we must also remember that Reagan conspired with the Iranians in his election against Carter.

A motivated base is essential.

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From the post:

So what is your response to this?

As to your contention, it is pure speculation.

I live in the real world and I understood the point you were attempting to make but I strongly disagree with the premise of your post. We need to nominate the most electable candidate to help voter turnout.

I and a large number of real democrats have been working hard to turn Texas blue. We got up to 46% of voting age voters and 59% of registered voters in 2016. In 2018, Texas saw a great increase in voter turnout compared to 2014 https://www.texastribune.org/2018/12/07/texas-voter-turnout-sixth-highest-increase-2018-midterms/

In the real world, we are working on increasing voter turnout. I am working on the campaign for Sri Preston Kulkarni who is mobilizing Asian voters with a program that is calling these voters in their native language (in 2018, calls were made in 16 different languages). In the real world, people are working on voter turnout. As noted in other posts, Beto is working on flipping the Texas state house.

I am amused by sanders supporters thinking that sanders has some magical way to increase voter turnout. The NYT dismissed the claim that sanders had the ability to mobilize voters with some sort of voter revolution
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Like the NYT, I have questions about this voter revolution concept. I have asked sanders supporters to explain this concept to me and so far no one seems to know how this voter revolution will work in the real world https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1287&pid=430371


sanders interview with the NYT may have gone better if he had explained how this revolution would work in the real world. I am still curious

Right now, we will continue to do the hard work to increase voter turnout with methods that do not rely on voter revolutions. That means selecting candidates who will help down ballot candidates. If sanders or Warren is the nominee, we can write off Texas as a battleground state. I am focused on candidates who can help down ballot candidates by increasing turnout. If a weak or too far left candidate like sanders or Warren is at the top of the ticket, we can forget about down ballot candidates in Texas

But there are differences of opinion as to how we motivated the unmotivated.

And at this point, any comments about who is electable or unelectable is speculation.

As I have noted in other posts, I have been volunteering for years on voter protection issues. We have been fighting GOP voter suppression efforts for a while. One good example was the Texas voter id law. In 2008, the SCOTUS rejected a facial challenge to the Indiana voter id law. In 2014 a federal district judge found that the Texas voter id law discriminated against minorities. Here is a chart that shows the effect of the Texas voter id law on Democratic turnout

Greg Abbott got more votes in 2014 compared to Rick Perry while Wendy Davis got far fewer votes even though she spent more. Part of the increase in voter turnout in 2018 compared to 2014 was the gutting of the Texas voter id law.

In 2016 the 5th Circuit affirmed this ruling and the Texas voter id law was largely gutted so that any registered voter can vote if they lack one of the approved ids and sign a Reasonable Impediment Declaration and provide one of the alternative ids which includes utility bills or bank statements. For college students, out of state drivers license are an approved id

Chad Dunn (the outside counsel for the Texas Democratic Party) was lead counsel on this lawsuit and Marc Veasey (one of Joe Biden's early endorsers) was the lead plaintiff in this case.

The best way to fight the GOP is to fight the GOP voter suppression. Marc Elias has two or three lawsuits pending against the state of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project has a good lawsuit on wrongful rejection of absentee ballots due to signature mismatches that will include some plaintiffs Juanita Jean sent to the TCRP.

I prefer to work on the ground to fight GOP voter suppression.

I do not believe that sanders has any way to increase voter turnout in the real world and that we need to nominate a candidate who will help down ballot candidates. If sanders or Warren is the nominee, they will kill down ballot candidates in Texas.

Thank you for recognizing the critical need to engage the apathetic.

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