Burnt Orange Report

I got an idea...how about Democrats fielding viable candidates with ideas that work instead of trying to "strategize" wins through minority pandering? Republicans are cutting into minority votes because they don't pay lip service to minorities, they treat them like what they are...individual voters. If Democrats did this and actually did all the wonderful things they always promise, I'd quit the GOP and become a Donkey for life!

Grizlie,

Waar in het Nederlands kommt U vandaan, of heeft U en internet wortenboek gebruikt? Het ziet als op U geen Nederlands praten kaan en heeft en internet wortenboek gebruikt.

Of niet, waat denkt U over de dood van Theo Van Gogh? Het zaal en groote probleem met de immigranten. Waat zullen wij zien in de Nederlandse politiek over dit?

"If Democrats can win 40%+ of the White vote, demographics should make it easy to win assuming we turn out our base, and maintain our advantage among Hispanics."

Therein reside your problems . . . the Democratic advantage among Hispanics is shrinking, and, in "Red States" the Democratic share of white voters is usually between 25-33%. You need a new basis for coalition that relies on messaage, instead of racial math.

So, what's with the Netherlands postings? Must have gotten lost
on the internets..

Keith and Adam:I disagree with the reasoning, but not the suggestion; pandering isn't good any time. But adjustments to the message IN LIGHT OF
THE DEMOGRAPHICS at hand are the way to go.

Go Sheriff Valdez!

Thanks for the number crunching.

Still sounds like your trying to game politics with nuance, instead of making forceful plays. The problem with Democrats is they play minimax-regret politics, trying to make a play that, at worse, will minimize the maximum loss due to backlash, while Republicans play maximax games, to maximize the maximum likelihood of success.

As to the first post, it must be the Swedish Chef or some other muppet that got lost between here and Grudge-Match.com.

I agree with Adam that the Republicans field viable candidates. It's the "ideas that work" part that has me in stitches.

Get real: the GOP isn't interested in actually governing effectively, just in winning elections. The problem is that no matter how terrible they are at the former (unless Texas schools and health care really are the envy of the nation), they're damn good at the latter, to which they rightly deserve credit.

I'm willing to put down $50 of soon to be worthless US dollars that the Republicans are so brilliant that they could triple the federal deficit, invade Iran and Syria, start a real Cold War with the EU, and bring back double-digit unemployment...and still find a way to get re-elected in 2008. Ya gotta tip your hat to that kind of power!

A few clarifications...

In terms of strategic vote targetting to win Dallas County, this is a good strategy:

"If Democrats can win 40%+ of the White vote, demographics should make it easy to win assuming we turn out our base, and maintain our advantage among Hispanics."

That was the point of the post... it's a strategy that would also work nationally, but White voters in Dallas County are probably more Democratic than your average White voter (urban White voters are more Democratic than suburban and rural White voters).

Of course there are strategy concerns, and when I speak of "demographic inevitability" of places like Dallas County, I'm saying that even if we do nothing to improve our chances of winning over the next few cycles, we'll probably win anyway. Am I suggesting that we do nothing? Of course not.

Democrats in Dallas county and elsewhere obviously need to do a lot of work. We need to recruit quality candidates who will work hard and raise money. We need to develop a message that appeals to voters of all races, and get that message out. And then we need to be able to develop good targetting and vote goals. My comments in my post were addressing that issue.

Wait? You're doing this for your winter break? Yikes.

It is telling that the R's didn't run ANY candidates against incumbent D's in state House races in Dallas County, while the D's ran against 6 R incumbents. 2 of the D's came within a couple of points of winning, outrunning the DPI's of their districts by about 5 points (and, not incidentally, both the presidential and sheriff candidates in their districts). Granted, "coming close" is not the same as "winning", but the numbers show the vulnerability of Court 4 and JP 4 in 2006 (each of them ran 46 to 48% DPI in 2004). If we can continue to pull 50% in the countywides on average, and manage a Court 4 win, we'll control county government from 2007 forward.

What happened to Grizzlie's original post in Dutch? I responded in Dutch (ah! the joys of being a polyglot).

Based on the random word in Grizzlie's post in English, I think he used something like the translator on dictionary.com to "automatically" translate something from English to Dutch. If the program does not recognize a word, the translator just leaves it in English. Plus the translation is too literal and just seems artificial, often the case on such software. Hoe versrijkiljk!

I deleted them....