That's not a standard you impose on other posts or posters around here, so I don't know why I have to match up to an academic paper standard, while other guys get to fall by the wayside. This is exactly an example of the problem I'm talking about.
Trump's messaging won him the votes he needed in WI. If he moves closer to Ron Johnson to win more votes in WI, that seems like a logical progression, no?
However, you're constantly moving back into the presidential race territory, rather than thinking about why Feingold lost. "B-But Feingold got only 1000 less than Hillary!" But his vote count margin was -98,766 compared to Hillary's -27,257, which means he lost worse than she did both in percentage margin and in vote count. Kander in Missouri did demonstrably much better than Hillary in his state, which means the fortunes of the state candidate are not so easily tied to the fortunes of the top of the ticket.
The nature of being a losing candidate is that the losing candidate is not what the political climate and electorate wants. Therefore, Feingold is not the model of the future rust belt candidate. You can have economic populism; it's just not what will win elections, not in the rust belt.
Two things:
1) Agreed that on a state level, we can't run Feingolds everywhere. We need to run Kander types in red states and Warren or Harris types in blue states.
2) I think we can agree that in this election, most of the people who could have voted but didn't were:
- Millenials
- Minorities
- Progressives and Liberals who have similar mindsets as Millenials and Minorities.
Now what that means is that while on a state level you run a 50 state strategy, on a national level you run whatever will get the above 3 categories voting the way they did in 2008. You tailor your message to appeal to these categories with:
1) having the nominee run criminal justice reform as a major part of their platform with a big subcategory being reform in how we tackle drug addiction. And no, Hillary was the wrong candidate to push for this considering her misguided support of harsh crime laws in the 90s. Criminal Justice Reform will energize minorities into voting in 2008 numbers again.
2) having the nominee flank all the anti trade rhetoric with a message about how we will get those jobs back by training people for jobs so well that people from every country will want our skilled workers. This will appeal to both rust belt workers (after they become disappointed in Trump) and millenials sick of their college degrees not helping them get real jobs.
3) having a platform of pushing social equality HARD. I mean in ways that make millenials and minorities think "yes this candidate understands how important equality is". A major part of this platform will be pushing for VRA and CRA of the 21st century.
4) having taking on scammers and financial predators as a major part of the platform. Basically, turning the "lock her up" sentiment on its head by saying "Have you been fucked over by a major industry? Well I promise to have an administration that focuses on you getting the financial justice you need and deserve."
Saying we should not run a woman nominee is like saying we shouldn't nominate a kenyan muslim. Charisma and being scandal free overrides everything.
Exactly. Someone like Kamala Harris or Catherine Masto have a short enough history to appear as clean as Obama. And whereas the GOP knew to start targeting Hillary as early as December 2012, they won't be able to attack Harris or Masto unless they have ridiculously good foresight.
Kennedy has expressed some support for doing something about gerrymandering, and he's not retiring that soon.
That's because SCOTUS already has a long history of striking down the most blatant of gerrymandering. But don't expect Kennedy to go on board with anything that goes beyond "Hey [insert state here], your districting is unacceptable. Try again." He's not going to be on board forcing nonpartisan commissions on districting.
