The December 23, 2016 Thread

Filed in National by on December 23, 2016

The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds 48% of Americans said a family member shared with them a false story that they believed to be true; 32% said they avoided talking politics with family because they supported a different candidate; 31% said they got into a heated argument with family or friends for supporting a different candidate; 22% reported being harassed for their political beliefs; and 17% said they blocked or unfriended someone on Facebook or another social-media platform because of the presidential election.

While President Obama will leave office with high favorability and job approval ratings, a new USA Today/Suffolk poll finds 59% of voters expect that President-elect Donald Trump will dismantle Obama’s legacy, and many don’t seem to mind.

Key finding: Obama’s job approval rate was 54%, and yet 45% of those polled said that reversing his accomplishments would be a good thing, while 43% would disapprove.

Said pollster David Paleologos: “A majority of voters said that history will assess Barack Obama as a great or good president. And yet, there appears to be a disconnect, as so many voters are unconcerned that the job he did could be undone.”

Rick Klein: “Twice in the last week, access to Donald Trump’s children has literally been put up for sale. Both times, those sales were canceled, or at least scaled back, following public scrutiny. But the process that allowed those offerings to go forward at all – an auction for coffee with Ivanka, and a hunting trip with the two eldest Trump sons for big inauguration donors – suggests something in the territory of chaos and/or indifference inside the president-elect’s inaugural planning.”

“These are the sorts of arrangements that should set off bright red flags – particularly after a campaign where the Clintons were accused of all manner of pay-for-play arrangements. The Trump operation has done virtually nothing to specify its safeguards, even while new arrangements testing any planned boundaries pop up. One good way to ensure that individuals and companies don’t try to buy access and influence? Don’t offer it to them.”

David Horsey: “Back in 1980, there was disappointment among Democrats when Ronald Reagan won. In 2000, after the long Florida recount and the intrusion of the Supreme Court into the decision, there were plenty of upset people who thought Al Gore, not George W. Bush, deserved to be president. But the losing voters in those elections were not despondent. They were not breaking out in tears weeks later. They were not waking up each morning with feelings of dread about what was to come.”

“This time it is different and, in my experience, unique. This is not simply a case of Hillary Clinton supporters being bad losers. For most of those who feel traumatized by what happened on Nov. 8, this is not about the candidate who won the popular vote, yet lost the election. It is about the candidate who was picked as president by the electoral college on Monday. People are mourning because the fate of their country will now be in the hands of an intellectually disinterested, reckless, mendacious narcissist.”

“The White House is encouraging researchers to copy government data on Obamacare out of concern that President-elect Donald Trump might hit the delete key … Several dozen independent researchers are racing to download key health care data and documents before Jan. 20. They say they began the effort on their own, and then got a boost from Jeanne Lambrew, the White House’s top health reform official, who also sounded alarms,” Politico reports.

“But Republican policy wonks dismissed researchers’ concerns as paranoia.”

Washington Examiner: “Trump’s lieutenants are comparing the new group, still under development, to Organizing For Action, the political nonprofit formed by President Obama to harness the grassroots energy that propelled his campaigns and promote his legislative agenda.”

“Democrats blame OFA for steering resources and activism that is the lifeblood of any party organization away from the Democratic National Committee, leaving it atrophied and ineffective as it prepares for an uncertain, post-Obama future.”

“Republicans fret that Trump’s 501(c)4 could similarly undercut the Republican National Committee. The fear is that it would weaken the RNC financially and organizationally, damaging the party down ballot even as it possibly boosts the president-elect’s 2020 re-election bid, as OFA did for Obama in 2012.”

“Incoming Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer cleaned house last week in the Senate Democrats’ internal video department, firing nearly all its employees amid plans to revamp the unit with a new digital operation aimed at creating viral social media content,” Politico reports.

“Historically, the media center has been used by senators to craft videos for their constituents in their home states. But with the Democratic National Committee in some turmoil until a new chairman is selected and the party losing the White House, the 48-member Democratic minority views itself as the party’s chief messaging arm next year, according to a Democratic leadership aide.”

Stanley B. Greenberg and Anna Greenberg’s New York Times op-ed “Was Barack Obama Bad for Democrats?” takes a nuanced look at the President’s political legacy“: “President Obama will be remembered as a thoughtful and dignified president who led a scrupulously honest administration that achieved major changes…People argue over whether his impatience with politicians and Republican intransigence denied him bigger accomplishments, but that argument is beside the point: He rescued an economy in crisis and passed the recovery program, pulled America back from its military overreach, passed the Affordable Care Act and committed the nation to addressing climate change. To be truly transformative in the way he wanted, however, his success had to translate into electoral gains for those who shared his vision and wanted to reform government. On that count, Mr. Obama failed…His legacy regrettably includes the more than 1,000 Democrats who lost their elections during his two terms. Republicans now have total control in half of America’s states.”

Aropos of all of the discussion about whether or not Democrats should marshall resources to win back the white working-class, think on these stats from Guy Molyneux’s post, “Mapping the White Working Class: A deep dive into the beliefs and sentiments of the moderates among them” at The American Prospect: “Boosting white non-college moderates’ support for Clinton by just 5 percent or 6 percent would have delivered her the presidency. Democrats can lose the votes of every one of the 36 percent who are uneasy with America’s increasing diversity, and still make the progress required to win elections.”

From The Nation, here’s “Here’s an Organizing Strategy to Revive the Democratic Party That Doesn’t Depend on White Voters: Many Democrats assume it’s impossible to get more people of color to vote. That’s just not true” By Steve Phillips. “Clinton lost Michigan by 11,000 votes. Of those black folks in Michigan who did vote, 92 percent of them voted for Clinton, but 300,000 African Americans who were eligible to vote didn’t vote; 153,000 black voters in Michigan who came out for Obama in 2008 stayed home in 2016. Clinton lost Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes, and 400,000 African Americans who were eligible to vote didn’t cast ballots. In Arizona, the margin was 91,000 votes, and 600,000 Latinos who were eligible to vote were not mobilized to the polls…Lisa Garcia Bedolla, who literally wrote the book on Latino politics, has called for an affordable, effective, and sophisticated voter-engagement infrastructure she calls the Civic Web. The model is to use direct voter contact and long-term relationship building driven by neighborhood-based teams who work year-round in their communities with a universe of 100 people per team leader. The civic-web model would cost about $3 million to move 100,000 voters. By those metrics, margins in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona could more than have been closed at a fraction of the cost of what was spent on television ads…In 2017, progressives can lay the foundation for the expansion of civic engagement of those voters who have shown the greatest propensity for supporting Democrats (74 percent of people of color supported Clinton; 80.5 percent for Obama). The way to do this is by targeting local races in strategic states whose demographics are trending in a progressive direction.”

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  1. Jason330 says:

    Civic Web sounds just at like what CSH was advocating for.