Maybe If There Were Better Candidates, People Would Vote-- We Like To Be Hopeful & Inspired

Politics Attracts A LOT Of Garbage... And Crooks

After the 2022 elections, the Center for Politics reported that voter turnout ranged from a low of barely 90,000 in NY-15 (corrupt Democrat Ritchie Torres) to a high of nearly 390,000 in MI-01 (garden variety Republican Jack Bergman)— a difference of nearly 300,000 votes! Nationally, the average turnout in 2022 was about 250,000 voters per district. In California, there were half a dozen blue or swing districts that Republicans won that year, all but one of them with turnout significantly lower than the national average:

CA-13— 133,556 (PVI is D+4)

• John Duarte (R)- 67,060 (50.21%)

• Adam Gray (D)- 66,496 (49.79%)

CA-22— 102,856 (PVI is D+5)

• David Valadao (R)- 52,994 (51.5%)

• Rudy Salas (D)- 49,862 (48.5%)

CA-27— 196,516 (PVI is D+4)

• Mike Garcia (R)- 104,624 (53.2%)

• Christie Smith (D)- 91,892 (46.8%)

CA-40— 284,311 (PVI is R+2)

• Young Kim (R)- 161,589 (56.8%)

• Asif Mahmood (D)- 122,722 (43.2%)

CA-41— 236,638 (PVI is R+3)

• Ken Calvert (R)- 123,869 (52.3%)

• Will Rollins (D)- 112,769 (47.7%)

CA-45— 217,426 (PVI is D+2)

• Michelle Steel (R)- 113,960 (52.4%)

• Jay Chen (D)- 103,466 (47.6%)

In CA-22, turnout was less than half the national average. Maybe the California Democratic Party should do a better job at registering voters and at getting them to turn out (and at recruiting good, non-careerist candidates). At least that’s what I’ve always thought. A new poll of unlikely voters released yesterday by USA Today has given me reason to pause (though not change my mind). These are eligible voters who say they are deeply skeptical of politics and government and say they probably won’t vote next year. The news is that if they did, they could push Trump over the top.

Registered voters who say they aren't likely to go to the polls back Trump over Biden by nearly 20 percentage points, 32%-13%, with 27% supporting a third-party or other candidate. Citizens who are eligible to vote but haven't registered also favor Trump by close to 2-1, 28%-15%; 27% prefer another candidate.

If they participated in the election, Trump's advantage among them is so wide that they could shift the political landscape to his advantage. His standing among unlikely voters is much stronger than in surveys of registered or likely voters, which generally show a presidential race that is effectively tied. The latest realclearpolitics.com average of national polls gives Biden a 1-point edge.

David Paleologos noted that “Unlikely voters represent a massive block of potential voters in the U.S., with estimates ranging from roughly 90 to 100 million citizens. That’s more potential voters than Joe Biden received in the 2020 presidential election, when he set the record for the most votes received by any presidential candidate in the history of our country… One-third named social media (Facebook, X, Instagram or TikTok) as their primary source of political news and information, twice as many as in 2018. Conversely, TV news networks has dropped from 52% to 36% during that same time.”

He wrote that “Here’s the irony of ironies: when the unlikely voters were asked why they were registered but not voting next year, about 13% used the words ‘election is rigged/corruption/unfair/don’t like the voting process/mail-in ballots.’ These have been Trump’s words for the past five years, and the very people who could help elect him have totally soured on elections and voting.”

Let’s go back to those 6 California districts with Republican incumbents. In 2020, turnout was much higher… and Biden won 5 of the 6, losing just CA-41 with 48.6% to Trump’s 49.7%.

• CA-13— Biden by 10.9 points

• CA-22— Biden by 12.9 points

• CA-27— Biden by 12.4 points

• CA-40— Biden by 1.9 points

• CA-41— Trump by 1.1 points

• CA-45— Biden by 6.2 points

In the 3 bluest districts the party ran wretched candidates— corrupt, insipid, GOP-lite corporate conservatives— Adam Gray, Rudy Salas and Christie Smith. I can think of one good thing to think about one of them: Christie Smith isn’t running again this cycle. Unfortunately for the Democrats’ chance to take back the House, Gray and Salas are. The Democrats are going to need a really big wave to drag those two crooked into office. And then what do we get? A friend of mine was arguing with me last night about how sure she is that voting for the lesser of two evils was the right way to go. You want to help put this piece of stinking shit into Congress?

How about this one? Electing Democrats like this is what makes people decide they can’t trust or support the Democratic Party anymore. People like Adam Gray and Rudy Salas destroy the brand. Don't just look at their "F" scores for their work in the state legislature. Please read the description as well.

What I think the Democrats need to turn out a huge base of support are populist candidates like Bernie and AOC, who are neither careerists nor corporatists. I saw yesterday how Pence said populism will put the GOP in its grave, although he was talking about the kind of neo-fascist populism espoused by candidates like Trump, Marjorie Traitor Greene, Ramaswarmy, Kari Lake and the other MAGAts, who take their ideas about populism from Hitler and Orban.

Jonathan Swan reported that Pence “devoted an entire speech on Wednesday to what he called a ‘fundamental’ and ‘unbridgeable’ divide within the Republican Party— the split between Reaganite conservatives like himself and propagators of populism like Trump and his imitators… [He’s] been warning about the dangers of populism for nearly a year. But his speech on Wednesday went further than he has gone before, casting Trump’s populism as a ‘road to ruin… Should the new populism of the right seize and guide our party, the Republican Party as we have long known it will cease to exist,’ Pence said at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. ‘And the fate of American freedom would be in doubt.’ In his plea to Republicans to abandon populism and embrace conservatism, Pence said that ‘we have come to a Republican time for choosing.’ The line echoed his hero Ronald Reagan’s 1964 televised address, ‘A Time for Choosing,’ in which the former Hollywood actor framed that year’s presidential election as a choice between individual freedom and governmental oppression… Pence defined Republican populism as a trading away of time-honored principles for raw political power. He said populists trafficked in ‘personal grievances and performative outrage.’ And he said they would ‘abandon American leadership on the world stage,’ erode constitutional norms, jettison fiscal responsibility and wield the power of the government to punish their enemies.”