I think union endorsements don't mean that much, but when a union puts its money and people behind GOTV operations, it can make a big difference...
That said, I agree that laziness loses elections. It cost JDS the convention nod and will lose him the primary if he keeps it up - Close elections are won with hard work and JDS' operation doesn't seem to work all that hard. Union help with door-to-door campaigning and GOTV could start to alleviate that, but he will need to go all out on the ground to win the primary.
This one will sure be interesting to watch, especially since now the primary is a summer event. I think that the momentum coming from the convention will be enough to put Malloy over the top, but that is only a guess.
There was an interesting editorial in The Day this weekend that I missed... I thought some of you might be interested:
Contradictions At Capitol Governor's top aide testifies she didn't know what she was doing.
The Day - Editorial Published on 5/26/2006
Lisa Moody is the governor's chief of staff. As such, she gets angry anytime an employee does anything that reflects badly on the governor. She should have thought of that when she testified last week to a legislative committee.
The performance of Gov. M. Jodi Rell's top aide before the legislative committee was disingenuous, to put the best face on it. Ms. Moody tried to explain away her role in illegal fund-raising for the governor by state commissioners by saying she wasn't paying attention to a memo she herself sent out and didn't know it was improper to conduct fund-raising at the Capitol on state time.
But Rachel Rubin, a former ethics adviser to the governor, directly contradicted Ms. Moody. Ms. Rubin said she specifically warned Ms. Moody not to hand out invitations to a Rell fund-raiser in the office. But then, after the warning, Ms. Rubin said, Ms. Moody handed out invitations a second time.
These actions resulted in $500 fines paid by commissioners and deputies for soliciting contributions, a violation of state law.
Ms. Moody said Ms. Rubin never told her that distributing invitations was against the law or violated policy. She herself filed a complaint with the state Elections Commission when she realized there was a violation, Ms. Moody said.
But for Ms. Moody to suggest that she didn't read an ethics policy statement that went out to all commissioners and many department heads from her office shows that Ms. Moody has a credibility problem. She violated the governor's own ethics rules and then induced state commissioners to violate state law by handing out the invitations to the fund-raiser.
Ms. Moody's singular loyalty to the governor is what led to this mess. In an effort to raise a lot of money for the first report from the governor's fund-raising committee, Ms. Moody involved state commissioners in an improper role and a violation of state law — fund-raising.
The governor gave her top aide two weeks' off without pay as punishment, but she did not fire Ms. Moody, nor apparently did Ms. Moody offer to resign.
The governor's office seems to think the Democrats' conducted a kangaroo court to embarrass the governor by calling the committee meeting. The truth is, the testimony revealed a contradiction between top gubernatorial advisers regarding what happened that precipitated the illegal solicitations.
The Democrats did the people of Connecticut a favor.
Being as how the election has not happened yet, and we are months before knowing whether national union GOTV resources will be spent in CT districts, and I can't predict the future, lets table this particular discussion - I will update you when it happens (or when I hear that it is in the process of happening).
As for America Votes, rather than being a liberal/progressive/moonbat website with no substance, it is what remains of the Americans Coming Together GOTV effort from 2004. You no doubt noticed that it is funded and staffed by, among others, AFL-CIO, SEIU, and AFSCME. Also that it is gearing up for 2006.
Here is a quote from their "What We Do" page regarding the 2004 election:
In 2004, the America Votes partners trained and mobilized over 40,000 volunteers, made 100 million phone calls, sent 76 million targeted mailings and had over 5 million one-on-one conversations with voters. The result: the largest voter turnout in this nation since the Civil Rights era.
Chris MC - ACT is defunct, but America Votes, which seem to have grown from ACT, is organizing GOTV.
D_R - In the future, when speaking about things that have not taken place yet, I will be clear that I cannot, in fact, predict the future and am, obviously, speculating. Where I got that speculation from was the front page of the site that I cited, where AV talks about their organizing efforts for the 2006 election cycle.
As for the results of ACT in 2004, am I misunderstanding your point, or are you arguing that, since the Democrats had a losing election their GOTV had no effect?
The DeStefano Campaign is in La La Land.They are now in the Underdog position and they will say and do anything they can to try to keep their eroding support from slipping away completely.
They do claim they have the unions behind them Well If the Unions were truly behind them would they have won the convention.
I was a delegate and what DeStefano did to all of us was an example of How a DeStefano governorship will be and I think Connecticut deserves much much better than DeStefano.
I am so mad at DeStefano that I would seriously either support Jodi Rell or the Green Party If DeStefano were to somehow win the Primary.
I dont believe DeStefano can win now Because Litchfield County is not happy with him and that is a good part of the 5th CD He wont win in the 4th thats Malloy's turf the 3rd might be where Destefano does well The 2nd who knows and The 1st CD is split so Destefano and Slifka need to go long to pull this off and I dont think they can.
There are two things wrong with your rational analysis:
1. Neither here nor there, but in 2004 ACT was focused on the presidential election, so, while its not critical to either argument and the two elections are certainly connected, throw out the congressional portion of your analysis.
2. More substantively, your argument would only make sense if GOTV was the only thing that decided elections. One possible variable that you didn't mention: Kerry is uninspiring and his campaign was awful. If you could produce evidence that the GOTV didn't have an ultimate result on the electorate, I am open to it. A strong argument could be made that without the GOTV, Bush might have actually had a mandate, rather than being the President re-elected during a war with the lowest margin of victory in American history.
Of course, all of this is off the topic of the original comment, "grasshopper".
CMC - I don't think they are going to jump into the Democratic primary. I was using them as an example of union GOTV in response to a question. It was seperate from the point I was making regarding the primary which was that the union endorsement of JDS will mean less than union's organizing or donating resources to GOTV.
D_R - I guess my point is that effective and successful are not synonoms. ACT was effective at GOTV without being successful at electing Kerry. The margin of victory is relevant only to the discussion that (I thought)we were having: whether the GOTV was effective. If the margin would have been more, than it was effective, if not, than not. Obviously it was not successful in electing Kerry, but it was a larger GOTV effort than the Dems have had since I could vote.
Hey, no problem. I love actual misunderstandings (that can be quickly resolved), rather than made-up ones (that take eight posts to bicker over).
CMC - Was it you that wanted a copy of the study I did on the NYC legislative PR elections in the 30s and 40s? If so, I lost your address and will be retreiving the files this weekend - send me your email address again if you want a copy!
12 comments:
I think union endorsements don't mean that much, but when a union puts its money and people behind GOTV operations, it can make a big difference...
That said, I agree that laziness loses elections. It cost JDS the convention nod and will lose him the primary if he keeps it up - Close elections are won with hard work and JDS' operation doesn't seem to work all that hard. Union help with door-to-door campaigning and GOTV could start to alleviate that, but he will need to go all out on the ground to win the primary.
This one will sure be interesting to watch, especially since now the primary is a summer event. I think that the momentum coming from the convention will be enough to put Malloy over the top, but that is only a guess.
There was an interesting editorial in The Day this weekend that I missed... I thought some of you might be interested:
Contradictions At Capitol
Governor's top aide testifies she didn't know what she was doing.
The Day - Editorial
Published on 5/26/2006
Lisa Moody is the governor's chief of staff. As such, she gets angry anytime an employee does anything that reflects badly on the governor. She should have thought of that when she testified last week to a legislative committee.
The performance of Gov. M. Jodi Rell's top aide before the legislative committee was disingenuous, to put the best face on it. Ms. Moody tried to explain away her role in illegal fund-raising for the governor by state commissioners by saying she wasn't paying attention to a memo she herself sent out and didn't know it was improper to conduct fund-raising at the Capitol on state time.
But Rachel Rubin, a former ethics adviser to the governor, directly contradicted Ms. Moody. Ms. Rubin said she specifically warned Ms. Moody not to hand out invitations to a Rell fund-raiser in the office. But then, after the warning, Ms. Rubin said, Ms. Moody handed out invitations a second time.
These actions resulted in $500 fines paid by commissioners and deputies for soliciting contributions, a violation of state law.
Ms. Moody said Ms. Rubin never told her that distributing invitations was against the law or violated policy. She herself filed a complaint with the state Elections Commission when she realized there was a violation, Ms. Moody said.
But for Ms. Moody to suggest that she didn't read an ethics policy statement that went out to all commissioners and many department heads from her office shows that Ms. Moody has a credibility problem. She violated the governor's own ethics rules and then induced state commissioners to violate state law by handing out the invitations to the fund-raiser.
Ms. Moody's singular loyalty to the governor is what led to this mess. In an effort to raise a lot of money for the first report from the governor's fund-raising committee, Ms. Moody involved state commissioners in an improper role and a violation of state law — fund-raising.
The governor gave her top aide two weeks' off without pay as punishment, but she did not fire Ms. Moody, nor apparently did Ms. Moody offer to resign.
The governor's office seems to think the Democrats' conducted a kangaroo court to embarrass the governor by calling the committee meeting. The truth is, the testimony revealed a contradiction between top gubernatorial advisers regarding what happened that precipitated the illegal solicitations.
The Democrats did the people of Connecticut a favor.
D_R - I am going to go with the 2004 presidential election. And the next one would be the 2006 congressional elections.
America Votes
Being as how the election has not happened yet, and we are months before knowing whether national union GOTV resources will be spent in CT districts, and I can't predict the future, lets table this particular discussion - I will update you when it happens (or when I hear that it is in the process of happening).
As for America Votes, rather than being a liberal/progressive/moonbat website with no substance, it is what remains of the Americans Coming Together GOTV effort from 2004. You no doubt noticed that it is funded and staffed by, among others, AFL-CIO, SEIU, and AFSCME. Also that it is gearing up for 2006.
Here is a quote from their "What We Do" page regarding the 2004 election:
In 2004, the America Votes partners trained and mobilized over 40,000 volunteers, made 100 million phone calls, sent 76 million targeted mailings and had over 5 million one-on-one conversations with voters. The result: the largest voter turnout in this nation since the Civil Rights era.
Chris MC - ACT is defunct, but America Votes, which seem to have grown from ACT, is organizing GOTV.
D_R - In the future, when speaking about things that have not taken place yet, I will be clear that I cannot, in fact, predict the future and am, obviously, speculating. Where I got that speculation from was the front page of the site that I cited, where AV talks about their organizing efforts for the 2006 election cycle.
As for the results of ACT in 2004, am I misunderstanding your point, or are you arguing that, since the Democrats had a losing election their GOTV had no effect?
The DeStefano Campaign is in La La Land.They are now in the Underdog position and they will say and do anything they can to try to keep their eroding support from slipping away completely.
They do claim they have the unions behind them Well If the Unions were truly behind them would they have won the convention.
I was a delegate and what DeStefano did to all of us was an example of How a DeStefano governorship will be and I think Connecticut deserves much much better than DeStefano.
I am so mad at DeStefano that I would seriously either support Jodi Rell or the Green Party If DeStefano were to somehow win the Primary.
I dont believe DeStefano can win now Because Litchfield County is not happy with him and that is a good part of the 5th CD He wont win in the 4th thats Malloy's turf the 3rd might be where Destefano does well The 2nd who knows and The 1st CD is split so Destefano and Slifka need to go long to pull this off and I dont think they can.
There are two things wrong with your rational analysis:
1. Neither here nor there, but in 2004 ACT was focused on the presidential election, so, while its not critical to either argument and the two elections are certainly connected, throw out the congressional portion of your analysis.
2. More substantively, your argument would only make sense if GOTV was the only thing that decided elections. One possible variable that you didn't mention: Kerry is uninspiring and his campaign was awful. If you could produce evidence that the GOTV didn't have an ultimate result on the electorate, I am open to it. A strong argument could be made that without the GOTV, Bush might have actually had a mandate, rather than being the President re-elected during a war with the lowest margin of victory in American history.
Of course, all of this is off the topic of the original comment, "grasshopper".
CMC - I don't think they are going to jump into the Democratic primary. I was using them as an example of union GOTV in response to a question. It was seperate from the point I was making regarding the primary which was that the union endorsement of JDS will mean less than union's organizing or donating resources to GOTV.
D_R - I guess my point is that effective and successful are not synonoms. ACT was effective at GOTV without being successful at electing Kerry. The margin of victory is relevant only to the discussion that (I thought)we were having: whether the GOTV was effective. If the margin would have been more, than it was effective, if not, than not. Obviously it was not successful in electing Kerry, but it was a larger GOTV effort than the Dems have had since I could vote.
Hey, no problem. I love actual misunderstandings (that can be quickly resolved), rather than made-up ones (that take eight posts to bicker over).
CMC - Was it you that wanted a copy of the study I did on the NYC legislative PR elections in the 30s and 40s? If so, I lost your address and will be retreiving the files this weekend - send me your email address again if you want a copy!
I took a shot? Pot, meet kettle.
The only argument you "won" is the one you had with yourself...
Quite an open thread, huh?
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