As political gambles go, it's a big and risky one: $50 million to test the proposition that the Democratic Party's outreach to new voters that helped make Barack Obama president can work in an election where his name is not on the ballot.
The standard rule of midterm elections is that only the most reliable voters show up at the polls, so both parties have traditionally focused on the unglamorous and conventional work that turns out their bases. But this year, the Democrats are doubling down on registering and motivating newer voters -- especially the 15 million heavily minority and young, who made it to the polls for the first time in the last presidential election.
"It's a great experiment to see whether we can bring out voters whose only previous vote was in 2008," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
The party's overall budget for reaching new voters is more than twice as big as the $17 million it spent during the tumultuous 2006 midterm, which returned control of both houses of Congress to the Democrats. {...}
"When that announcement was made, it just wasn't taken very credibly," says Republican National Committee spokesman Doug Heye. "Those voters just aren't going to be there this time."
He's not alone in thinking that.
Some veteran Democratic Party operatives are also skeptical that the $50 million investment will pay off -- except, perhaps, in keeping the grassroots operation alive for Obama's reelection bid two years from now. Some even suggest that the president's team has put his long-term interests ahead of his party's immediate struggle for survival.
"I have zero confidence that they're heading in the right direction here," says one longtime Democratic organizer who didn't want to be quoted by name criticizing his party's major midterm election initiative. Added another: "I think they're going to come in for a very rude awakening. It's going to be brutal."
If that turns out to be the case, the doubters say, Democrats will wake up the morning of Nov. 3 wishing they had spent that $50 million on more traditional methods, like television ads, for reaching their base and persuading independents.
Let's translate this into non-PC terms.
The Democrat hierarchy is admitting here that they have lost the majority of White, senior, middle class and independent voters beyond all redemption. So they are spending their money - lots of it - to try and turn out inexperienced and usually credible college students, Black America ( where Obama still polls decently for reasons I'll allow you to fill in for yourselves) and the pro amnesty constituency.In other words, people who form a disproportionate percentage of non-taxpayers.
That, along with Obama's far left base and Big Labor has become the new Democrat constituency. They've lost almost everything else.
1 comment:
In other words, Odumbo depends on people whose economic existence is classified "unproductive".
What does that tell you about Odumbo?
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