The 51% Mandate
Some feel blue, others see red, as many in the press embrace the notion of a "resounding" victory for President Bush this week. No wonder he says he is eager to spend all this "capital."

By Greg Mitchell

(November 05, 2004) -- I have to admit that I am a little confused by all this talk of "man date" by Republican leaders in the days since the election. I thought they were opposed to same-sex fooling around.

You might forgive my confusion, however. I heard and read that word so often on Thursday my head is still spinning.

As Doyle McManus and Janet Hook of the Los Angeles Times put it, Bush aides "repeatedly" made the point that their man had won by such a wide margin he should be given full rein to institute new policies (or perhaps enact new wars). Did McManus and Hook consider this a bit overblown? No, they repeated the talking point, declaring that "Bush can claim a solid mandate of 51% of the vote."

A Wall Street Journal editorial called the mandate "decisive." To the New York Sun it was an "extraordinary mandate." Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post said the "endorsement" was "resounding." Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard capitalized the word, saying that Bush's Mandate was greater than the Nixon landslide of 1972 and Reagan's sweep in 1984. Peggy Noonan got so excited that she paraphrased Bush in his victory speech saying, "Honey, I'm not just going to lower your taxes. I am transforming the tax system."

Now, where I come from, 51% is considered a bare majority, not a comfortable margin. If only 51% percent of my family or my editorial staff think I am doing a good job, I might look to moderate my behavior, not repeat or enlarge it. At the minimum, I would not assert that I was overwhelmingly popular.

Yet one reporter or columnist after another obligingly used the term mandate, after Vice President Cheney delivered it from on high on Wednesday. We'd expect that from Peggy Noonan (and more), but not necessarily from the many mainstream reporters who endorsed the idea. Here's David Sanger in today's New York Times: "Mr. Bush no longer has to pretend that he possesses a clear electoral mandate. Because for the first time in his presidency, he can argue that he has the real thing."

Now, it's true that President Bush got more votes than any winning candidate for president in history. He also had more people voting against him than any winning candidate for president in history.

As the Wall Street Journal's Al Hunt observed, it was "the narrowest win for a sitting president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916." And a Gallup poll conducted after the election found that 63 percent of voters would prefer to see Bush pursue policies that "both parties support" compared to only 30 percent who want Bush to "advance the Republican Party's agenda."

I've seen the word "mandate" a hundred times since the election but I have not yet encountered anyone making the following point: With nearly 115 million votes cast, if just 150,000 had gone a different way in Ohio we would not be talking about who is going to replace Colin Powell in the Bush cabinet. We'd be calling for abolishing the electoral college during President-elect Kerry's first term.

Yet President Bush in his press conference on Thursday said he was ready to spend all his "political capital" on bold policies. It seems he now has new media capital to spend as well.

Black Box Voting has taken the position that fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines. We base this on hard evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic voting systems. What we do not know is the specific scope of the fraud. We are working now to compile the proof, based not on soft evidence -- red flags, exit polls -- but core documents obtained by Black Box Voting in the most massive Freedom of Information action in history.

We need: Lawyers to enforce public records laws. Some counties have already notified us that they plan to stonewall by delaying delivery of the records. We need citizen volunteers for a number of specific actions. We need computer security professionals willing to GO PUBLIC with formal opinions on the evidence we provide, whether or not it involves DMCA complications. We need funds to pay for copies of the evidence.

TUESDAY Nov 2 2004: BREAKING NEWS: New information indicates that hackers may have targeted the central computers that are counting our votes.

Media calls: 206-335-7747 (congestion) - 206-778-0524
E-mail

Freedom of Information requests are not free. We need to raise $50,000 as quickly as possible to pay for records and the fees some states charge for them. We launched one major FOIA action last night, and have two more on the way, pell-mell. Now is the time. If you can't donate funds, please donate time. E-mail to join the Cleanup Crew.

Important: Watch this 30-minute film clip

All right.  Everyone, take a breath.  Stop freaking out.  Stop accusing everyone of ignoring the issue; it isn't being ignored.

There are two states in which questions of "fraud" have been raised: Ohio, and Florida.  Close counts are also present in Iowa and New Mexico; quite frankly, however, without OH or FL those results are largely meaningless.  First off, a summary of where we are in Ohio.

Ohio

The Ohio numbers are regarded by many with great suspicion because the GOP launched, in the weeks before the election, an organized effort to intimidate minority voters, fund push-polls and other robocalls, and generally depress turnout in Democratic precincts.  Anecdotal evidence is that it did not work -- turnout was high, and there were very few reports on election day of Republican intimidation at the polls.

Set aside the possibility of fraud, for the moment.  We will return to it.

Currently, the margin of difference between Kerry and Bush is 136,483 votes.

The provisional ballots are being counted now.  "Provisional" ballots are ballots cast by people who the polling officials couldn't find on the voting rolls, or who had some other reason why they were denied the right to vote along with the rest of the populous.  We can expect 90% or more of these votes to be valid, but it takes a long time -- up to ten days -- to correctly validate each and every one to determine that the voter is indeed eligible to vote.

There are 155,337 provisional ballots (from MyDD).  These ballots are going to be counted, whether Kerry asks for it or not.  They are legally (potential) votes, and Ohio is counting them now.

Assume they break 80% for Kerry, which is being very generous -- but we'll know the precise numbers soon, no matter what.  That means Kerry gains an additional 124,269 votes, and Bush gains 31,067 -- so Kerry gains +93,200 votes.

Repeating, these votes will be counted.  We will know the totals soon.  But note that that still isn't enough, best case scenario, to gain a Kerry victory.  Again, the margin of difference is currently 136,483 votes: shrinking that by 93,000 "gained" Kerry votes from provisional ballots means that a recount would have to net Kerry over +43,200 votes in order to actually affect the election.

Ohio primarily uses punchcard voting.  Right now, with a difference of over 130,000 votes between Kerry and Bush, nobody wants to touch a hand-recount of those ballots with a ten-foot pole.  Memories of Florida are still omnipresent, and the national Democrats aren't going to go down that road unless it would credibly make a difference.  When you are down by more than a hundred thousand votes, and you only have 92,000 "spoiled" ballots, there is no possible way that it would make a difference.  However, it is likely that a recount would favor Kerry, because poor/minority areas historically have a greater rate of "spoiled" ballots -- ballots which cannot be read by the machine -- than other areas.

According to MyDD, there are 92,672 ballots in which no vote for president was recorded.  Even assuming that these ballots leaned 70% for Kerry, which is a very, very remote best-case scenario, that's 64,870 for Kerry, and 27,801 for Bush -- gaining +37,000 votes for Kerry, if all the planets lined up precisely right.

If the margin between Bush and Kerry after counting the provisional ballots is greater than 40,000, there simply isn't any credible way those votes will make the difference.  In reality, it is unlikely that Kerry would gain more than 10k-20k votes from it.

If it would potentially make a difference -- that is, if Kerry gained so many provisional ballots as to be within striking range, Ohio law allows for a recount of the ballots.  It is a decidedly better system than in Florida 2000.

Only after the provisional and absentee/military votes have been completely counted, election officials will "certify" the results of the election. The candidate (or his electors, or the voters -- it is unclear, but certainly at minimum, the candidate) may contest the results of the election (e.g. ask for a recount) at any point within five days from the day of the election, or at any point until the official "certification" of the results. Note that this means there is at least an eleven-day window here, and possibly more, depending on how "certification" works in Ohio. Note also that this would be a full "hanging-chad" manual recount -- the standards for what is and isn't a vote in Ohio, chad-wise, are spelled out clearly, and so Bush v. Gore wouldn't enter into it.

Also, Kerry "conceding" doesn't enter into it.  "Conceding" is a political concept, not a legal one.  If Ohio looked like it had some possibility of turning blue, you can bet that Kerry would "un-concede" pretty damn quickly.

Issues of Fraud?

The possibility of fraud has been raised primarily because the results from Ohio are not what people were expecting to see.  Republican turnout was very large, and Democrats seemed to vote for Bush in surprising numbers.  That is indeed curious, and needs to be analyzed.

Note, however, that it may be entirely explainable.  It is entirely probable that Republicans came out in record numbers; it is also not outside the realm of logic that many Midwestern Democrats, swayed by the We Hate Gays initiative on the Ohio ballot or by "values" or "terrorism" or other factors, really did vote for Bush in surprising numbers.  It is possible.  Keep in mind that rural Democrats and urban Democrats are, in some ways, not exactly the same species -- we tend to forget that, sometimes.

Again, to repeat:  Unusual numbers in individual counties in Florida and Ohio are potentially explainable by demographic and other factors; they do not, in and of themselves, constitute "proof" of fraud.  (If there are egregious mistakes in some precincts, please post or link to them below, in comments.)

But it is also possible to explain the discrepancies from fraud or error.  Intentional fraud, or unintentional error, would in this case consist of misreporting of the numbers from each precinct.  Note that few of these Ohio precincts use anything other than the punch-card systems; fraud would be present in the central machines that sum the votes, not from in-precinct shenanigans.  Nationwide, these machines are manufactured by Diebold and other vendors; longtime readers will remember Diebold as the heavily-Republican-leaning company (Diebold executives are heavy Bush contributers) whose chief officer announced in a Republican fund-raising letter that the company was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

Bad fucking move, Walden.  Really, really bad.

Let's explain what these "central vote-counting" machines are.  Basically, it's a machine running Microsoft Windows with a Microsoft Access database attached.  (Note to the computer-savvy among you: Yes, I shit you not.  MS Access.  Jeez.)  The database keeps track of the votes in each precinct, county, etc., much like an Excel spreadsheet.  The software is deemed secret and proprietary; previous lawsuits to examine the code that tabulates the votes have been denied.

Sizable mistakes have been found before in Diebold-run elections.  More notably, the machines are easily hacked in such a way as to change the vote totals in not-readily-detectable ways.  There is a "second set of books" built in to Diebold machines, which can be accessed remotely if necessary.  Note that there is some evidence that this has actually happened:

MONDAY Nov 1 2004: New information indicates that hackers may be targeting the central computers counting our votes tomorrow. All county elections officials who use modems to transfer votes from polling places to the central vote-counting server should disconnect the modems now.

 There is no down side to removing the modems. Simply drive the vote cartridges from each polling place in to the central vote-counting location by car, instead of transmitting by modem. "Turning off" the modems may not be sufficient. Disconnect the central vote counting server from all modems, INCLUDING PHONE LINES, not just Internet.

 In a very large county, this will add at most one hour to the vote-counting time, while offering significant protection from outside intrusion.

 It appears that such an attack may already have taken place, in a primary election 6 weeks ago in King County, Washington -- a large jurisdiction with over one million registered voters. Documents, including internal audit logs for the central vote-counting computer, along with modem "trouble slips" consistent with hacker activity, show that the system may have been hacked on Sept. 14, 2004. Three hours is now missing from the vote-counting computer's "audit log," an automatically generated record, similar to the black box in an airplane, which registers certain kinds of events.

Voting "solutions" by other companies have similar reported problems; look at blackboxvoting.org for horror stories about known miscounted election results in actual elections across the country. These machines, both touchscreen and optical-scan, are already proven [PDF] to be prone to errors:

In the 2002 general election, a computer miscount overturned the House District 11 result in Wayne County, North Carolina. Incorrect programming caused machines to skip several thousand partyline votes, both Republican and Democratic. Fixing the error turned up 5,500 more votes and reversed the election for state representative.

...

Voting machines failed to tally "yes" votes on the 2002 school bond issue in Gretna, Nebraska. This error gave the false impression that the measure had failed miserably, but it actually passed by a 2 to 1 margin. Responsibility for the errors was attributed to ES&S, the Omaha company that had provided the ballots and the machines.

...

An Orange County, California, election computer made a 100 percent error during the April 1998 school bond referendum. The Registrar of Voters Office initially announced that the bond issue had lost by a wide margin; in fact, it was supported by a majority of the ballots cast. The error was attributed to a programmer's reversing the "yes" and "no" answers in the software used to count the votes.

...

Software programming errors, sorry. Oh, and reverse that election, we announced the wrong winner. In the 2002 Clay County, Kansas, commissioner primary, voting machines said Jerry Mayo ran a close race but lost, garnering 48 percent of the vote, but a hand recount revealed Mayo had won by a landslide, receiving 76 percent of the vote.

...

In the November 2002 general election in Scurry County, Texas, poll workers got suspicious about a landslide victory for two Republican commissioner candidates. Told that a "bad chip" was to blame, they had a new computer chip flown in and also counted the votes by hand -- and found out that Democrats actually had won by wide margins, overturning the election.

...

In 1986 the wrong candidate was declared the winner in Georgia. Incumbent Democrat Donn Peevy was running for state senator in District 48. The machines said he lost the election. After an investigation revealed that a Republican elections official had kept uncounted ballots in the trunk of his car, officials also admitted that a computerized voting program had miscounted. Peevy insisted on a recount. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "When the count finished around 1 a.m., they [the elections board] walked into a room and shut the door," recalls Peevy. "When they came out, they said, `Mr. Peevy, you won.' That was it. They never apologized. They never explained."

...

A software programming error gave the election to the wrong candidate in November 1999 in Onondaga County, New York. Bob Faulkner, a political newcomer, went to bed on election night confident he had helped complete a Republican sweep of three open council seats. But after Onondaga County Board of Elections staffers rechecked the totals, Faulkner had lost to Democratic incumbent Elaine Lytel. Just a few hours later, election officials discovered that a software programming error had given too many absentee ballot votes to Lytel. Faulkner took the lead.

...

In a 1998 Salt Lake City election, 1,413 votes never showed up in the total. A programming error caused a batch of ballots not to count, though they had been run through the machine like all the others. When the 1,413 missing votes were counted, they reversed the election.

So the question of whether the machines in Ohio are working properly is hardly a "tinfoil-hat" concern.  It is a legitimate question.  Note, however, that as of yet evidence of miscounts or tampering is speculative; the only available evidence is statistical analysis of the counties which points to "unusual" results in certain precincts and counties.

Florida, perhaps, is the bigger question.  Voting there is almost entirely electronic now, through a combination of touchscreen and optical-scan systems.  And, to be quite honest, the vote totals there are far more suspicious than in Ohio.  While both states are exhibiting results that are reasonable, they are also exhibiting, in some counties, results that are highly unusual, though not outside the realms of possibility, compared to past elections.

Bottom Line

So the question becomes, are the curious numbers in Ohio (and Florida) due to the way the electorate voted, or due to the way those votes were summed up in the central office?  It is entirely possible that errors might exist which do not affect the outcome of the election, but which are still serious enough to require a serious review.

This is why I, for one believe it is our national interests to have a manual recount of some of the Ohio counties with the most unusual results.  But this is not a Kerry issue; this is a democracy issue.  Can these machines be trusted?  Recounts in selected counties would resolve this: it needs to be done.

Bev Harris and other activists are filing Freedom of Information Act requests and taking other steps to start analyzing the data.  What we can do is put weight behind their efforts, without looking like tinfoil-hat loonies.  We have to understand, the possibility that a miscount, even if discovered, will be great enough to change the outcome of the election is remote.  These FOIA requests and other investigations are happening so that these machines can be validated, not because any of the parties have any actual evidence of willful fraud.

Please put additional information, action requests, and links to good related diaries in comments below, as well as any questions that you think someone here might be able to answer.

Update [2004-11-5 2:57:13 by Hunter]:

From this diary, we find at least one county with a very egregious vote counting error.

Franklin County, OH: Gahanna 1-B Precinct
638 TOTAL BALLOTS CAST

US Senator:
Fingerhut (D) - 167 votes
Voinovich (R) - 300 votes

US President:
Kerry (D) - 260 votes
Bush (R) - 4,258 votes

You don't have to be the Ohio Secretary of State to figure out the problem there. Let's see if he does.

So we do have some concrete evidence of actual machine malfunction or egregious human error. Four thousand votes is not enough to swing the election. But it proves that the vote totals in Ohio are currently not accurate. The question is, how inaccurate are they.

Keep in mind, from above, the kind of errors these machines are capable of:

In the 2002 Clay County, Kansas, commissioner primary, voting machines said Jerry Mayo ran a close race but lost, garnering 48 percent of the vote, but a hand recount revealed Mayo had won by a landslide, receiving 76 percent of the vote.

I'm not a tinfoil hat person. But if the election authorities cannot explain the vote discrepency cited above -- and give a damn good reason why they expect that error to be unique, among all precincts and counties -- it's time for at least a partial recount.

Not for Kerry, but for the good of the country. Democrats, Republicans, all of us -- we need to know whether these machines actually worked.

by Chris Bowers

Are you angry at me for not writing more about vote counting, fraud, spoilage and voter disenfranchisement? Well, rest assured that I am writing articles on that subject, and it will be discussed over the next couple of days. In the meantime, I want to write about something else that Democrats are not contesting, something that angers me to no end.

In the 2004 election, Democrats contested 398 House seats, even though there are 435 House seats. One of the ones Democrats did not contest, VT-AL, is held by Bernie Sanders and can be forgiven. The other thirty-six absolutely cannot be forgiven: Here they are:

AL-6; AZ-3; AZ-6; CA-22; CA-41; FL-4; FL-7; FL-9; FL-21; FL-24; FL-25; GA-1; GA-6; GA-7; GA-10; KS-1; KY-5; LA-04; MS-01; MS-03; NY-25!!!!!!; OK-03; OK-04; PA-05; PA-10; PA-19; SC-01; SC-03; TN-07; TX-03; TX-10; TX-13; TX-14; VA-01; VA-06; VA-07

Most, but not all, of these districts have horrible demographics for Democrats. I freely admit that had Democrats run in these districts, they all would probably have lost, and many, if not most, would probably have failed to come within 20%. However, even knowing this, I have had enough of the argument that even spending time to find a sacrificial lamb to run in these districts is a waste of Democratic Party resources. The fact is that for around $360,000, one-quarter the cost of a competitive congressional district, we could have found a candidate for each of these districts and raised $10,000 for that candidate's campaign. That $360,000 would have been the best $360,000 the Democratic Party would have spent at any level this entire election cycle. Combined throughout these districts, it probably would have resulted in another 1-2 million votes for Democrats for Congress. And that is just this election cycle and just in those congressional elections.

Abandoning a district has repercussions in other elections. On the Presidential level, Arizona (maybe), Florida, Pennsylvania, and Virginia are battleground states, but Democrats failed to give Kerry any down ticket help in 14 of the 72 congressional districts in those states: nearly one out of every five. Even a half-hearted campaign by a Democrat in each of those districts would surely have helped Kerry to the tune of at least a few hundred, and probably a few thousand, votes per district. The same could be said for competitive Senate races in Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and South Carolina where Democrats abandoned nineteen congressional districts. Our chances to retake the Senate and the Presidency were dented because of our failure to compete everywhere in the House. The same can be said for elections concerning Governors, state legislatures, county executives, and basically any election you can name. By abandoning these districts, we abandoned our chances to squeeze crucial votes out of them for other candidates running for office in the district.

Most clearly, by failing to challenge these districts, we also failed to force existing GOP incumbents to raise money and spend campaign time that went to Republicans in more competitive elections. Two days ago, Kos summed this up perfectly, as he explained how our efforts in two House races that almost went uncontested, both of which we lost, helped us significantly in other races:

Richard Morrison
Morrison started out as a fringe candidate with no money when he was adopted by the Daily Kos community. He raised $60K, which he then turned into a real campaign, one that actually threatened DeLay.

DeLay garnered only 55 percent of the vote, his lowest total ever. He opened up campaign offices in the district and ran television commercials for the first time since his initial House victory. He remained in the district when he could've been out campaigning for other at-risk Republicans. He spent nearly $2 million to defend himself.

We pinned down DeLay in his home district. Mission accomplished.

Stan Matsunaka
Hatemonger Marylin Musgrave was headed to an easy, unchallenged victory, when Stan Matsunaka stepped up to the plate. We raised $44K for him. He lost 52-44.

Musgrave sweat this one. Not only did Musgrave spend $3 million of her own money, but the NRCC also threw in another $2 million to back her up. Matsunaka spent close to $600K and forced Republicans to spend $5 million that could've gone to other races -- all in a district that was almost uncontested.

Mission accomplished.

These were two districts that we nearly abandoned. However, for a small price, we forced the Reactionaries to spend more than $7M defending these two seats. That $7M could have fueled four more NRCC hate-mongering ad buys of the sort that they purchased against Lois Murphy and Ginny Schrader. By contesting those two districts, we prevented that from happening and may have saved four seats elsewhere. Had we contested all 36, who knows how much money we could have drained from GOP coffers.

Abandoning a district also has repercussions for future elections. Failing to challenge your opponent's message in an area is damaging to your message in that area in the future. Failing to provide a choice to those willing to support you--and there are always tens of thousands willing to support you in any congressional district--sends a message that you do not represent or care about those people. Even worse, failing to challenge an incumbent sends a message that you are afraid of your own beliefs and that you are not working to make this country a better Democracy.

Running a candidate in each of these districts would also have helped to identify Democratic activists in each of these districts. Identifying, encouraging, and assisting potential Dem activists throughout the entire country would help to strengthen the Party, both now and in future elections cycles. These are the people who can help to bring the Democratic message to every corner of the country.

Further, while most of these candidates would lose, not all of them would. One in particular where I know we could have done some real damage is the NY-25. This is the district where I grew up, and where my parents still live. Basically, the district is Syracuse and its extended suburbs. Although, after redistricting, it does include conservative Webster County, it decidedly lean-Dem both on the Presidential vote and voter registration levels. Yet, we preposterously did not run a candidate in this district. It is the home of Michael Bragman, former deputy leader in the New York State Legislature, and Terry McAuliffe, former Democratic National Committee chairman. Both individuals have very high name recognition in this district and, I imagine, very good favorable ratings. When it comes to the needs of a single congressional district, both would be excellent fundraisers. However, Bragman did not run this time around even after retiring from the Legislature, so I feel his chance has passed. That is why I support Terry McAuliffe for the NY-25 in 2006.

Winning is never the only thing at stake in an election. For 36 candidates and $360,000, we could have done a lot of good. It is even possible that there is another way we could spend $360,000 that would bring us in so many votes, force the GOP to spend much money in defense, identify so many activists, and bring our message to so many more people? I seriously doubt it. I don't want to hear that it would be a waste of resources, because it is so fucking not. Frankly, it would have been the best $360,000 we have ever spent in any election cycle anywhere, considering what it would accomplish dollar for dollar.

We need a candidate on every congressional ballot, period. When it comes to the House, 2004 is now a lost cause. However, starting in 2006, we must never let this happen again. I say we start by recruiting T-Mac for the NY-25, and build an infrastructure that guarantees no congressional district will ever be left behind again.

That being said, there are a couple points I'd like to make at the outset:

• our fight this year was a worthy fight.  For Kerry, for our  candidates, for all our voters (especially the new ones), and for our principles.  
  
• we knew we had a significant "reform" battle within our party brewing regardless of the outcome of this election
  
• this is a time to remake the Democratic Party, not to tear it down.

i.  We lost.

This is a major defeat.  There's no way to paint it otherwise.  Even if Kerry had won an electoral college victory, we would have lost the popular vote by a fair margin and the Senate as well.  As it stands, we are doubly and triply f....d.  The ball game has shifted to working on long term goals while defending from near term disasters.  That's just the truth.

Our party is sitting at the receiving end of the weak point of our Federal system: our support is locked into urban areas and large states:

• aside from the fillibuster and votes that require 2/3rds of the House, we are pretty much out of power in DC despite representing almost half the country.
  
• the GOP has not, since 1994 shown any moderation in how it runs Congress, and won't now.  Their victorious Senate candidates are very conservative.  We are effectively locked out of constructive governance in Washington.
  
• we have a very difficult electoral vote path to regain the Presidency.
  
• we have likely lost the judiciary for a generation, even if we succeed in opposing the worst of the GOP judges.  this is real.

• familes with children voted against us.  You cannot govern without the support of families.  Further, these GOP families will not be easy to win over, and they are a strong presence in all of our Blue states.
  
• Bush's support grew from inside his Red zone, and was very loyal and strong despite his clear problems in governance.  Values trumped pragmatism this year, and this trend is deeply troubling.
  
• The GOP red state margins were much higher than ours.  We are much more vulnerable in national elections.

The fact is, though, that any of our primary candidates would have lost, John Kerry will join Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and Al Gore as failed warriors for our cause.  This is heartbreaking, yet true.  Good men, all of whom would have made fine Presidents, and whose election might have staved off the straits we are in.

Power begets power.  It did not have to be this way...but now that it is...we are more rather than less f...d.  

ii.  the immediate situation: hybrid tactics

I would like to pitch a strategy for this transitional moment for our party that I'll call, for lack of a better term: hybrid tactics.  The principle is this:

We need to recognize that we are, in essence, fighting two wars at the same time.   Both of these wars promise us some prospects for long term success, and yet, both of which are at a critical moment right now.

• the first war is a war of triage.  It is a war of opposition and parrying of the GOP.  We need to stand and fight.  On judgeships, on policy, and on the inevitable GOP attempts to rig the system permanently against us.
  
• the second war is a war of Party building, and winning back the support of families with children and increasing our support with every demographic wherever we can.  It is a war to win back Congress and build state-based Democratic power.

The essence of this hybrid strategy is that we Democrats need to move directly and squarely into guaranteeing that our Party remain strong and relevant to voters wherever we can.  State legislatures and governorships are critically  important in this.  We are "out of power" at the Federal level; the only place we can deliver the goods and offer successful policy alternatives is on the State and municipal level.  

The hallmark of our strategy will have to be, then:  tactical smarts, cooperative flexibility, and an ability to at once stand up for ourselves and all citizens, which we must do, and yet play the game in every locality with a strategic savvy that we have not mustered before.  The first war is critical, the second war is essential; we cannot afford to neglect either.

In essence, we are on the wrong end of a post-New Deal majority.  Further, we are living in a post-Civil Rights, anti-Great Society majority America, and have been for some time, and the sooner we wake up and smell the coffee the better.  

iii.  kitchen table politics

If I have one critique of the campaign John Kerry ran for President it is that he did not take it to the kitchen table.  There was little in his campaign where a voter who might vote for him was given a strong reason to sit down at the kitchen table with their pocket book and calculator and do the math for themselves.  In the absence of this, George Bush ran the table on "values" and "fear".

If we are going to win back the vote of  families in this country, we are going to do it at the kitchen table.  We have to relish this.  This needs to be our fuel.  Local issues.  Bread and butter.  School bonds.  Highway funds.  Health care initiatives.  Municipal elections.  Unless the Democratic Party becomes the party that loves this stuff, we will continue to lose and be frozen out of power.

Right now, in Washington, I can guarantee you that George Bush is looking for ways to take critical components of our coalition to the kitchen table...and they have the legislative muscle to do it.  It you don't think the GOP is planning on sitting down with Latino and Black America, with working families, and making some kitchen table deals, you've got another thing coming.  The stakes are that high.

Since the civil rights era, we've run our campaigns and Party on the fuel of our ideals and moral code.  (I am as much "guilty" of this as anyone.)  But the fact is that, while holding to our principles, principles that are no less potent today than yesterday, we need to run our party on a new fuel.  A hybrid fuel if you will.

And that fuel is derived from a focus on nuts and bolts, on delivering results, on good governance and coalition building.   That fuel comes out of an "I scratch your back you scratch mine" framework that we will only find at the kitchen table.  If we don't get excited about this stuff and do it we will be locked out of legislative majorities for the next generation.  If we don't find a way to translate our ideals into pragmatic political programs that let us win back legislative majorities in this country, our party will be on its way to a wilderness from which it may never return.  That is our task at hand.  

You can be "right" and still so politically wrong.  The penduluum must swing in a new direction.

iv.  national politics and hybrid coalitions

I mentioned that we are in a post-New Deal, post-Civil Rights, post-Great Society majority America.  That much is true.  The new GOP majority is based on two things.

• tax cuts which are directed specifically at disconnecting voters from the sense that their tax dollars fund progams which help all of us.  
  
• a wave of Constitutional Amendments that are directed at denying parts of the population civil rights.

Needless to say, this turns much of the longstanding values that made up the 20th Century Democratic coalition on its head.  It is also, to my mind, against everything the American experiment stands for.  They are wrong on ideals, and wrong on pragmatic policies.  They have gone so far that I suspect that core aspects of the old GOP...namely business people across the nation, who know the value of tolerance, fiscal discipline and social spending...may be open to listening to a Democrat for once.

What to do?  

We need to define our own new majority, and build it step by step.  We need to reach out to fiscally sound, socially moderate independents and Republicans today to this end.  In essence, the "reality based community' is the framework for our new majority.  And our next  successful Presidential candidate will be the one who understands this terrain and assembles that majority.

The GOP has bet the store on conservatism.  It is a big and bold gamble based on core support in the South and the West.  They are vulnerable, however, especially in how they implement policy and in states that don't find a mandate for Christian 'conservatism' appealing.  I suspect that the next Democratic Presidential ticket will target that vulnerability and assemble a new national majority that successfully defends our principles within the framework of a pragmatic and hybrid policy mix that brings people in.

If some of you are smelling a dose of Clintonism here.  You are right.  And I will go the wall on this.  We cannot build a new national majority on the New Deal and the Civil Rights coalition.  It's over, done for, it won't happen.  The GOP is at the kitchen table too and looking to break up our coalition, and they have the muscle to do it. Our new majority must be hybrid, pragmatic, kitchen table based, and must successfully root our ideals in fiscally sound policy and delivering results to the braodest possible coalition of families in this nation, period, end of sentence.

Take my home state.  If we cannot hold California based on "liberal" ideals, we can't make them work anywhere.  As a Californian, let me tell you....if the California Democratic Party does not adopt this "kitchen table" approach to politics and build a new coalition, we will lose this state.  The "Arnold" model is powerful and is making inroads into every segment of our base. The writing is on the wall, just check out the Bush returns from California.  The choice is ours...adapt or lose.  

v.  whither the Left?

That is the question of the moment here.  I think one of the hardest things to do in the face of a tactically rapacious and, at times, malicious Party like the GOP is to stay calm and play the strategic hand.  But that is what we have to do.  We need to practice a politics that is more level-headed than ever before.  In the face of the ideological monster that is the GOP, we need to, paradoxically, be ideologically flexible ourselves.  Is the Left up to it?...I don't know.  That cuts to the core of the matter.

Let me frame it this way.  Across this country today there are folks in all of our cities and communities having discussions and speaking to our despair.  Out of that despair and rage will dawn the realization that while we are "out of power" we are not in the least powerless.  In the hybrid politics I am describing, there is a vital role for us on the left to play...it is up to us to decide for ourselves if that role is one we want take up:

• an emphasis on local and community politics
  
• a targeted drive to get more progressive members of state houses, municipal government and the United States Congress
  
• a goal of building a progressive legislative track record in states we have power in
  
• a commitment to making our ideals real from the inside out...on our block, in our schools and moving outward with flexibility and foresight
  
• a commitment to evolving "how we talk" about politics and present ourselves to our fellow citizens and build these new coalitions
  
• a new savviness and pragmatism in how we pick our  battles

The question to ask ourselves then, in that context, is: Can we live with a Democratic Party whose Presidential candidate is in the Edwards/Obama/Clinton mold and espouses hybrid policies?  What expression of our politics can we find within that framework?  Can we be a vital, informed, creative wing of our party with strong representation in our zones of residence?  After 2004, we know that we cannot make this nation look like us, agree with us or even love us.  Knowing that, will we choose to play a part in building a new, broader coalition that accepts us as full and equal members without necessarily embracing all our goals and yet allows us to trade our numbers, dollars and alliegance for results on our agenda?

Let me be utterly frank and take this "moral values" bullshit head on.  Gay men and women and their families...and all of us who support and defend them...need a successful coalition.  In essence, gay families need every likeminded straight family they can get, and some who aren't so likeminded, and vice versa.  We are in this together.  We don't know what we can achieve in this new political environment for any of our agendas.  But I can tell you this, if we don't come together with all the creativity, unity and tactical prowess we can muster, we all will lose.

vii. free speech, comity and the culture of opposition

I am burned out on hating, mistrusting and disliking my fellow citizens.  I am just being honest with you.  I don't think it works...and I don't think it advances the good of the people I love and with whom I share my community and my life.  

At the same time, I recognize that free speech is important....that if we lose the "f... you" spirit, we lose something that is our best defense against the leadership of a political party that is, in my view, a dastardly bunch who've led our nation on a disastrous policy track, at times, with clear-eyed ill intent.

It is critical, in this moment...to insist on free speech and our right to protest and speak for ourselves.   I am convinced that free speech issues will come to the fore during a second Bush term.  But it is imperative, now more than ever, that we understand that how we communicate with our brothers and sisters in this nation is as important of the content of what we are saying.

To be honest, it is high time for us to break down the myths and lies of the GOP and some of the organized religious zealots who prop them up.  People need to know what's really going on here, and oppositional culture is one of the best weapons of the left.  However, as someone deeply committed to that process, I also acknowledge that "comity" and "respect" for our fellow citizens must accompany our efforts and be incorporated in our appeal. The more connected the speaker is to our organized politics, the more this is true.

There are many ways to say..."f... Bush"...and, believe you me, they all will be deployed in the next four years.  But it is critical for us on the left to understand that our opposition to the political leaders of the GOP must not be allowed to descend into the simple communication of raw "hatred" and "contempt" for their supporters.

There are contexts where that is appropriate.  ie. When there is that rare chance to sit down for two way communication.  Where we can trade the hate and get it out.  But when we are engaging in one way communication.  When we are speaking for our cause.  It is critical that we frame our appeal in the context of citizenship, comity and free speech.

As Eminem, who walked that fine line in his video Mosh stated: We beg to differ.  Yes, we need to speak out for ouselves and our cause.  In the coming months, I am sure we will have to more than once.  But, post-2004, we need to consider the fulness of what that speech communicates, about how it affects the coaltion that we are building to defeat their coalition at the polls.

vii. the GOP and the "how" of our opposition

Week by week, we will see what cracks form.

They are tremendously powerful, and yet, tremendously overextended in the direction of the religious right and their Southern base. They have scandals that are brewing and coalitions that are fraying. They  have enormous policy liabilities.  Our job is to fight those policy liabilities week by week with our eyes on our new prize...building a legislative majority.

We Kossacks have been much more "right" about how the GOP is wrong that we have been about what choices our fellow citizens will make at the ballot box.  We need to use this to our advantage.  If we are clever, determined and learn from our mistakes...we can plot out a position that moves us in the only direction that is important: winning back our govenment.

Legislatures are won back when the majority party's failures are made clear. Our job is to define those failures and win a mandate for change.  That is the task at hand.

Stand and fight, yes, but also to build and educate and make the case for change.  In effect, we here at dKos are sitting at the kitchen table with prospective members of our new coalition.  We need to teach them in terms they can respect and understand; we need to educate them about exactly why the GOP is wrong as a first step in winning a new mandate.

Take, for example, judicial appointments.  We have a vital role to play in educating the nation exactly about who George Bush has already appointed...and who he intends to appoint, and how the process he is following is wrong.  We need to make this clear instead of simply raising hell...we need to reach out and educate instead of simply raising our voice.

Fight, yes.  But seek to understand, and educate and persuade...yes more.

ix. conclusion

Too often those of us in the Democratic Party have been overly concerned about simply being morally "right".  There are many ways to be "right" and this is a personal lesson that I am beginning to learn.  If being "right" to us means simply scoring points against cable news hotheads and AM radio hosts...then we have gone astray.  If it means simply standing in the streets and expressing our consciece, in the absence of a path to building a majority coalition in this country...then we will be "right" and powerless at the federal level.

I am 35 years old.  I have watched every national Democratic politician in my lifetime get dragged down and defeated by the GOP.  

I want to say to you now if you share the dream of someday electing a President Obama, then I would implore you to help build the legislative and organizational framework that will be our surest defense against that happening to him in the political or media sphere.

There is a tide that will turn in this nation. I was wrong about when it would turn, and I am ashamed and saddened to admit that. But this election has taught me that we need more than our idealism as our fuel.  It will not be so, just because we believe it can or should be so.  Even our strongest leaders are vulnerable if we don't build the structures to defend them.  And the most powerful structure in that regard is the legislative majority.

As I walked out onto the streets of Oakland today...I breathed easier..and let my heart open out to everyone I met.  Some of them, even here, voted for George Bush.  I know that because I've seen the stickers in the Safeway parking lot.  Personally, I am letting go of the hate and trying to see the nation with clearer eyes.  With those eyes, I can more easily see the strength of those I agree with and the power we have when we work together.  And the limits of that power and how we need to expand it.

We did amazing things this fall, and yet we failed to achieve our goal.  It's not the first, or the last, failure on our road to sitting below that fully grown oak of justice that remains our goal and ideal.  

There is no shame in burning brightly for those ideals.  Just as there is no shame in failure in our fight for them.  But there is a steep and pragmatic price to pay for that loss, and we all know it now.  That price will be all the greater, however, if we don't learn from these experiences and move forward, together.

If you've read this far, I owe you many thanks for considering what's on my mind this day after election day.  Please take it as one kid's opinion, and let me know what you think.

Atrios: Tax Fairness Act or Ending Redstate Welfare

by JamesK
Thu Nov 4th, 2004 at 17:07:57 PST

"Tax Fairness Act of 2005." This Act would mandate that, within some reasonable margin of error, your state should get as much back from the feds as is sent to them in taxes. It's time to end this kind of geographic welfare!

Eschaton

This idea is similar to the thread we had earlier, End Red State Welfare

I think calling it "Tax Fairness" is nice. Of course the idea of just cutting the federal government to the essentials and letting states pick up the slack is how we can do this.

--------------------
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 10:37 AM
Subject: Basic report from Columbus

I worked for 3 days, including Election Day, on the statewide voter protection hotline run by the Ohio Democratic Party in Columbus, Ohio.

I am writing this because the media is inexplicably whitewashing what happened in Ohio, and Kerry's concession was likewise inexplicable.

Hundreds of thousands of people were disenfranchised in Ohio.  People waited on line for as long as 10 hours.  It appears to have only happened in Democratic-leaning precincts, principally (a) precincts where many African Americans lived, and (b) precincts near colleges.

I spoke to a young man who got on line at 11:30 am and voted at 7 pm.  When he left at 7 pm, the line was about 150 voters longer than when he'd arrived, which meant those people were going to wait even longer.  In fact they waited for as much as 10 hours, and their voting was concluded at about 3 am.  The reason this occurred was that they had 1 voting station per 1000 voters, while the adjacent precinct had 1 voting station per 184.  Both precincts were within the same county, and managed by the same county board of elections.  The difference between them is that the privileged polling place was in a rural, solidly republican, area, while the one with long lines was in the college town of Gambier, OH.

Lines of 4 and 5 hours were the order of the day in many African-American neighborhoods.

Touch screen voting machines in Youngstown OH were registering "George W. Bush" when people pressed "John F. Kerry" ALL DAY LONG. This was reported immediately after the polls opened, and reported over and over again throughout the day, and yet the bogus machines were inexplicably kept in use THROUGHOUT THE DAY.

Countless other frauds occurred, such as postcards advising people of incorrect polling places, registered Democrats not receiving absentee ballots, duly registered young voters being forced to file provisional ballots even though their names and signatures appeared in the voting rolls, longtime active voting registered voters being told they weren't registered, bad faith challenges by Republican "challengers" in Democratic precincts, and on and on and on.

I was very proud of the way so many Ohioans fought so valiantly for their right to vote, and would not be turned away. Many, however, could not spend the entire day and were afraid of losing their jobs, due to the severe economic depression hitting Ohio.

I do not understand why Kerry conceded and did not fight to ensure that all Ohioans would have a chance to vote, and for their vote to be counted.
--------------------

Update [2004-11-4 17:13:36 by kingcritical]:: I’ve found a number of suggestions in the comments that might be useful, so I am making this an action alert. Here are resources and suggestions from the comments; I make no claim that the numbers or e-mail addresses are accurate:

"Call Dean, call Kerry, call all those Republican leaders who endorsed Kerry; call Moveon; start a fund drive; develop a massive ad campaign."

"By law in Ohio, five citizens per county, plus a candidate, can call for a recount in their county. E-mail Dennis White, Chair of Ohio Dems: dennis@ohiodems.org"

Citizens of Ohio. Please Petition for a Recount

"Check out this link and study the table."

"And check out the Diebold diary here."

The number for the DNC in Washington, DC: 202-863-8122.

In Ohio, by law, five citizens per county, only five, have the right to call for a recount.

 Randy Rhodes, on a screed all afternoon on Wednesday, kept arguing that we, the citizens, are now the only check and balance left. To play that out, citizens should fight this election result. Our leaders won't (and as I said, I can understand why), so why can't we?

Why shouldn't we? Its our election, its our democracy.

Email Ohio Dem Chair Dennis White: dennis@ohiodems.org

and ask the Ohio Dems to organize 5 citizens per county to call for a recount. it is their legal right. and their duty to the disenfranchised.