If some of you go to the link (below), you might get mad at me…but this part needs a reading (emphasis mostly mine) – The “Set up”:
…You know what suburban voters do? They show up and vote. Year in, year out, presidential years, midterms, off-year elections, special elections, non-November local elections. They must rank among the most easily overlooked, underrated, and underappreciated voters, those allegedly wishy-washy, milquetoast, not-fond-of-Trump, minivan-driving moderate suburban soccer moms and white-collar dads. They’re not exciting. They’re rarely looking for anything revolutionary. They’re not looking to “burn it all down”; they’re the ones who built the things that would get burned down.
You know why it makes sense for a political party to target its messaging and appeal to this voter demographic? Because you don’t have to do much to get them to the polls. They do it out of habit and civic duty. As John Bragg put it last night: “They always vote, just like they always file their taxes, pay their bills, mow their lawns, send their kids to college. The question is, which party appeals to those people in 2020?”
As for those blue-collar Trump voters . . . Republican grassroots turnout was down last night. Republicans will be arguing about why it was down for a long time.
I have to admit, I did watch Fox part of the night last night – Bill Hemmer seems to be a Yoda Master of the interactive Fox Political WhiteBoard. In county after county, he pointed out how similar the percentages were between the races and between the candidates compared back in time. What DID catch my attention is that, time after time, he pointed out that Republican turnout was lower, by a few percentage points, a hundred votes here, a couple hundred votes there…..you get the picture.
You can argue that David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are less than thrilling candidates; they are not, as I like to say, whirling dervishes of raw political charisma. But recall that back in November, Perdue beat Ossoff by more than 88,000 votes; he just fell three-tenths of a percentage point short of that 50 percent threshold.
David Perdue is the same guy he was in November. His opponent is the same. The state’s demographics didn’t change. So, what changed?
What made this runoff election particularly unusual is that the president of the United States, the state party chairman, most of the state’s GOP congressional delegation, and other GOP figures spent the past two months arguing that Georgia’s recent presidential-election results were fraudulent and that mass-scale vote fraud and hacking of voting machines changed Trump votes to Biden votes.
Shockingly, that consistent messaging did not increase the enthusiasm among Republican voters to cast ballots again. If only someone had warned them!
It is unlikely that many Georgia voters were deeply familiar with Lin Wood or Sidney Powell before the November election. But by December 2, the pair’s profile as unofficial Trump-allied lawyers had given them the stature to draw a huge crowd to a press-conference-turned-rally, where Wood urged Georgia Republicans to not vote for Perdue and Loeffler.
“Don’t you give it to them,” Wood said. “Why would you go back and vote in another rigged election for God’s sake? Fix it! You gotta fix it!” The event turned into an anti-get-out-the-vote rally. It was a keep-the-vote-home rally.
Wood punctuated that rally by declaring, “Do not be fooled twice. This is Georgia. We ain’t dumb.” More recently, Wood has asserted that Vice President Mike Pence is part of a conspiracy against the president, has committed treason, and should be executed by a firing squad.
And the money quote of this Notable Quote:
If two lawyers can just show up, grab a microphone, and convince diehard Trump fans to not vote . . . and outweigh the voice of the president, urging them to vote . . . then diehard Trump fans are not a reliable base of support for the Republican Party.
And the part at which you all get mad at me for bringing up:
They are simply too flaky, erratic, illogical, and gullible for any party to rely upon. As laid out yesterday, a big chunk of Trump’s legacy was at stake in the Georgia runoffs. The stakes couldn’t be higher. But some Republicans heeded Lin Wood’s advice and chose to stay home.
The “stolen election” crowd will say, “See, this is why you need to cater to us, Republicans!” And Republicans will wonder . . . why? Why should we adapt to appeal to a demographic that won’t show up to vote if two lawyers come along with a conspiracy theory involving Venezuelans, the CIA, and Bigfoot?
-Jim Gerhaghty (The Trump Era Ends in Disaster in Georgia)
And there is more of that latter part at the NR post. I met Jim Gerhaghty years ago – nice chap and we had a few good discussions and his head is on straight. Yes, this is part of National Review which went Never-Trumper a while ago – I get it. But if you get over the figurative “punch in the nose”, especially the parts about Trump, there is a bit of truth in there on which some reflection time is needed. After all, I’ve heard a lot of sturm und drag from Wood and Powell for a while now – lots promised but no positive outcomes. People just stayed home. And for as much as people put a lot of hope into those two, the fireworks were a dud.
I’ll have another post in a while to speak about this in a different context.
