Why the Republicans won the House?

[kentuck]

Poll question: Why the Republicans won the House?

edit #4 : I forgot what it was? :-) Now I remember!

[LiberalEsto]

1. Corporate money

The unprecedented infusion of millions of unaccounted-for dollars of campaign cash from corporations, because of the monstrous Citizens United decision by the corporate-co0ntrolled Supreme Count.

[brooklynite]

7. Disagree

Yes, Corporate money has an influence, but advertising only works if the message resonates with the voters. Absent a clear Democratic message about why the Health Care bill was good or why stimulus spending was necessary, conservative groups could claim irresponsible spending and Government overreach and have it sound reasonable by angry voters.

[LiberalEsto]

21. Please see DU post on hedge fund moguls

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4684003

Also, those with the most bucks can retain the best advertising experts. We were seriously outspent. Big money made it possible for them to target vulnerable Democratic moderates with barrages of ads.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. You'd need a Chinese menu-style poll

to get anywhere near how I analyze it.

[DrDan]

3. "the lack of" a credible effort in getting the message out to the voters

the D's were impotent in getting their message out

[SteppingRazor]

4. I think there's something to be said for depressed voter turnout among Democrats...

as well as a perception among many independents that the parts of the Democratic platform they agreed with were going nowhere. In the NY Times article profiling Alan Grayson a couple days ago, the former congressman seemed to buy that point of view, and he had some good points regarding it.


(snip)

“What did the environmentalists see over the last two years?” he asked. “A proposed monumental increase in subsidies for nuclear power industry and offshore drilling.”

As for gay voters, he said: “What they got to see was a judge order that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ no longer be enforced and a Democratic president appeal that decision. That is what that constituency saw before Nov. 2.” (The law was repealed in the final hours of the 111th Congress.)

(snip)

He is annoyed with Democratic senators for waiting until now to challenge the procedural rules that, he said, allowed a determined group of Republicans to use filibusters to stymie much of the president’s agenda.

And he bemoaned what he said was President Obama’s reversal on a campaign pledge to let the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy expire.


(snip)



Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/us/politics/03grayson.html

[Swede]

5. Same as always.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/mid-term_elections.php

[ecstatic]

6. A combination of things. RW voters felt empowered

by their media; democratic voters were demoralized/discouraged from voting because *our* media was bashing Obama right along with Fox News. More dems stayed home, and it didn't help that some dem incumbents tried to distance themselves from Obama, thus alienating many people who would have otherwise supported them.

[ewagner]

8. True..a combination of reasons

...the most idiotic of which was a large number of Democrats who were so pissed off at the Dems in Congress and Obama for his weak-kneed dealing with the Repubs that they decided to teach him a lesson and vote for Repubs...

teach him a lesson?

at what xxxxxxx cost??????

[onpatrol98]

9. Economy, Economy, Economy...

It's the economy. If we don't see more jobs in the near future, Donald Duck will probably be voted in next.

[robcon]

10. I think it was a "throw the bums out" moment.

Voters, especially independents (non-Dems/non-Repugs), voted to throw out incumbents in most cases.

[nyc 4 Biden]

11. Other: Racist voters were mad about a black president.

And the average Dem voter was not motivated to come out and vote.

[kentuck]

12. I think it is interesting...

the number of votes that the 24/7 propaganda gets.

I think that was a big part of the reason for the Repubs victory. Any night that you turned on the radio, it was anti-Obama and anti-liberal all the time. It had an impact.

The second most votes are going to timidity in the Democrats. I absolutely believe they could have done a better job selling their accomplishments and explaining the situation we faced with the economy. It was a huge mistake to say that unemployment would not go above 8% if we passed the stimulus.

Obviously, there were many reasons, but those are two of the primary ones, in my opinion.

[katnapped]

13. People voted for the REAL Republican

Not the wannabe ones

[struggle4progress]

14. It's the usual story: we didn't do a good job organizing

We've never owned the media, and we've never had lots of money for our side, so we only ever win by people-power

But apparently, organizing is something we just don't do much anymore.

[tabbycat31]

17. that is not the case

Many races did have field organizers on the ground (I was one of them on a coordinated campaign 700 miles away from home) and they were given what resources they had to recruit volunteers to do a grassroots style voter contact similar to 2008. The difference is that people were not as motivated as they were in 2008 to reach out for the first time.

We had our disgruntled left but they also saw what the alternative (which unfortunately won) was and even the most disenfranchised Obama voter would have seen that with our crazy, Civil Rights Act opposing opponent (who shall remain nameless). We had to distance ourselves from Obama big time because he was just NEVER very popular in the state.

We did not win, and in order to win we would have had to win the city I worked in (and the state's other major city) big time in order to make up for the rest of the state. We only won the city I worked in by 4 points.

[struggle4progress]

24. You had to distance yourself from Obama in New Jersey?

Obama won NJ by something like 17 points in 2008

[tabbycat31]

25. I did not work in NJ

The DSCC sent me to Kentucky to work for Jack Conway. I returned to NJ after the election.

[struggle4progress]

29. Ok, we're miscommunicating. First, my apologies for misreading your post:

you did say you moved 700 miles to do your work, and I somehow missed this. Second, it's not my intent to badmouth any of the people who actually go out to work in the trenches: I know it's hard and thankless work, without much rest during the silly season. I think the people here in the field in NC did topnotch work, and I expect that's true all across the rest of the country as well. I'm not attacking you

But our opponents run 24/7, with huge budgets, armies of lobbyists, and an iron grip on the media. This is not a problem that can be solved by everybody getting together for a few months. The context means that there is enormous institutional pressure on the professional political folk between elections and there's enormous propaganda pressure on ordinary folk between elections. This creates a certain amount of public idiocy year round, election year or not, and a political class that has limited options for what it can do. When I say "organizing" I do not only mean the ground game around elections: we need full time serious grassroots issue-oriented organizing to educate the public and to pressure elected officials. I'm not blaming the DSCC or OFA or like entities here: the problem is simply that we will continue to lose until our side has enough people knocking doors and jingling phones for the political outcomes we want, and there will be plenty of discouraged people until we start making that effort and showing people that they can make a difference

[Tippy]

15. Pure and simple truth is, Democrats did not vote.

[kentuck]

16. But why?

??

[Tippy]

33. Kentuck...you know as well as I do, Lazy is part of the reason

But that is not all, here in TN for years we had enough Dems to win, we out numbered republicans, by a good margin. There is a lot of infighting within the Democratic party. It is a given Democrats had a good machine here in TN at one time. That is no longer the case. I still hear "my vote won't count so why vote".

[Orsino]

18. US policy makes voters ever more ignorant...

...by hiding what we need to know behind a veil of televised disinformation, pimped by the same child-fuckers who buy legislation designed to increase their hold on us. In the background, public education and academia in general are dying the slow death of strangulation.

What are a few well-meaning and well-informed voters against that?

[MilesColtrane]

19. Economy

[One_Life_To_Give]

20. Giving healthcare in 4yrs when they needed a Job today

Not responsible for creating a poor economy. But perceived as not being focused enough on fixing it ASAP.IMHO

[pintobean]

28. Bingo!

[GSLevel9]

22. 100% of voters

should have voted "The economy and the unemployment were blamed on the Democrats"

this is the ONLY reason the Dems lost. With a great economy the Pubs wouldn't have gained a shred.

[bigwillq]

32. That's what I voted for.

If it means anything. It's only a DU poll. But I think that's what was the reason. The American people are fickle. They expect everything to be fixed overnight. It doesn't work that way.

[FrancisTreptoe]

23. Just a combo of things.

-Lies and false information were wide spread in the media which caused many unintelligent independent voters to swing towards the right.

-Democrats didn't do a good enough job to spread the truth. They also lacked a spine to counter act the aggressiveness of the right.

-Voter turnout for the left was simply not good enough. Cost us in very close races.

[okieinpain]

26. in oklahoma a gentleman that watches elections said the

voter total was rather small (48%), yet this was suppose to be the year that repugs were all fired up and ready to vote. the people have not spoken, they were to busy watching tv.

[mr clean]

27. Other... I still don't trust Diebold (what ever they are called)

Yes their are a lot of Palin-likes "people" out there.

[Desertrose]

30. Mostly #3 & #7 nt

[bigwillq]

31. Jobs/Economy.

Although I don't see how putting more repukes in office is going to help. We shall see.