Carper and Coons still stone cold locks – but a little less so
Cassandra at BlueDelaware noticed this survey and showing that Coons and Carper are less popular today that they were yesterday.
The survey company reported 58 percent of Delaware voters approve of Sen. Tom Carper and 52 percent approve of Sen. Chris Coons. Both are Democrats.
Those numbers are down from September of last year, when Sen. Carper ranked as the fourth-most popular senator, with 66 percent of registered voters in the First State expressing support in a Morning Consult poll. Sen. Coons received a 55-percent approval rating at the time.
It isn’t a cratering, and may just reflect general Delawareans generally ennui at being sold out so regularly. Or maybe it shows that Carper and Coons are viewed as old-style accommodationist Dems, when the times call for Democratic fighters?
Without knowing anything about the poll’s methodology, I’ll shoot from the hip with these two observations:
1. Carper ranks above Coons because this is a survey of Delawareans of all political stripes, and he will draw more favorable ratings from those who lean R than Coons would.
2. The relatively lower scores for both may suggest that Delaware is tilting slightly more progressive, and voters are tiring of corporatist Dems.
This is pure speculation … so go ahead and tell me I’m wrong.
I guess if Delaware tilts far enough to the left democrats will manage to get republicans elected. good work!
If these Democrats want to represent AstraZeneca instead of the people, it’s going to cost them votes. Simple as that.
anonymous redux, The Senate is a lifetime sinecure.
On a statewide level, if the choice is between John Carney and a Republican for Governor, Im ready for an authentic Republican to replace the current ersatz version.
jason: that’s fine if the authentic republican actually has better policies than the ersatz one.
alby: wouldn’t the republicans want to represent AstraZeneca even harder?
I’m all for pushing democrats to go after corporations but wouldn’t want to split the democratic vote and end up with republicans, who would be worse.
In Delaware ‘bipartisanship’ means that both D’s and R’s swallow whatever the Chamber feeds them.
If we fail to challenge these DINO’s, it makes no difference which Party controls what. Most of these D’s are in safe districts. Meaning, the question is “What kind of D’s will represent us?” Those who carry the Chamber’s water at the expense of traditional D constituencies should be challenged. No better time than now.
@ar: Yes, a Republican probably would be worse. But if whoever you have isn’t listening, people will vote for change.
It’s not a judgment, it’s a fact — being a corporate sellout is going to cost Democrats votes.
challenging corporatist democrats in primaries makes sense as long as you’re pretty sure a nominated progressive or far-left candidate can beat the republican. would those “safe” districts remain safe if the nature of the democratic candidates changed radically? maybe the answer is to go as far left as you can (short of crazytown) and still win elections.
Poll after poll show that D constituents are to the left of their elected officials on most issues. We’ve seen that Third Way D’s generate next to no enthusiasm.
Yet, the argument remains the same: We must unite to win. And we get Carper, Coons and Carney. And corporate whores like Pete Schwartzkopf cutting deals with the Rethugs. And losers like Clinton and Barney, to name just two.
And progressives and progressive proposals are dismissed by the Third Way incumbents who suck at the corporate tit. Which is why we get massive cuts to education and other key programs while the wealthy keep their tax breaks. If you’re satisfied with that Democratic Party, then keep on keepin’ on. But I think it must change.
never said I was satisfied with the democratic party. but I sure don’t want something worse. those polls are encouraging. just beat the republicans and work from there.
@ar: “Just beat the Republicans.” Uh-huh. Isn’t that the same as, “We’re better than those guys,” y’know, the approach that just got its ass kicked?
If they don’t have to worry about our votes, they have no reason to move to the left. So even if I am going to vote for them, it’s against my interest to tell them that.
maybe Hillary didn’t beat the republican because she was too far left — but not left in the way Bernie was. I don’t think her identity politics appealed to enough voters who might have otherwise voted against trump. (and, of course, the corporate world is happy to let democrats pursue their identity politics as long as they keep sucking up.) I think Bernie’s progressive economics might have done the job, if the “socialistic” talk was de-emphasized (people get weirded out by the word). progressive economic policies are more likely to appeal to voters who could go either way; the economy is what’s on people’s minds. so the kind of progressive candidate might make the difference in getting moderate/undecided voters to the democratic side.
I don’t think Clinton was too far left, but I do agree that she focused on select groups of constituencies and that a large number of people who were more concerned about putting food on the table (aka jobs) were being bombarded about their privilege, safe spaces, Halloween costumes, and other sundry issues that they just got fed up with it all. In short, my opinion is that liberals jumped the shark when it came to focusing on social justice to the detriment of bread and butter issues.
Or let me say it another way, the coal miners who are unable to work at the only thing they know were being shown a world that they had no personal connection to. Free college? Only 17% of high school graduates go to college. It’s not just a question of affordability, it’s parental influence, poverty level, culture, and a host of other reasons.
In summary, many people, who should not have, voted for Trump because of things like cultural symbolism and lack of connection with the Democratic Party platform. They did not see themselves being represented. Now most of that failure is their own ignorance, but what you forget is that ignorant have a right to vote and unfortunately they do.
I wish parties and candidates would spend resources in an attempt to create a less ignorant voter instead of buttons, banners, rallies, and the like. Most people don’t vote because they read a party’s platform. They should, but they don’t because their primary source of information is broadcast messaging in 30 second spurts. Such is our democracy.
cultural symbolism
@ar: That’s the uncharitable way to describe the flaws in Clinton’s approach. The charitable way is to point out that removing structural barriers to equality is a worthy goal, but far too esoteric a goal to sway people worried about putting food on the table.
You can’t sell the benefits of spinach to people who lack meat and potatoes.
hard to be charitable since her campaign approach (not her fault alone) left us with trump. agree that removing barriers to equality is a worthy goal, but that’s going be harder to accomplish with trump in office. yes, it was “too esoteric a goal to sway people worried about putting food on the table.”
Oh, I’m not in favor of a charitable approach. At all. I’m firmly in the Bernie-position camp, though I don’t like it when Clinton campers attack Bernie the man instead of focusing on his positions. I’m not interested in Bernie the man. I’m interested in rooting out the corporate influence from the Democratic Party, and that puts me at odds with a lot of people in the Democratic-leaning camp who think capitalism is working just fine. That view is held almost exclusively by middle- to upper-middle-class citizens who are, in a sense, voting against their economic interests by voting Democratic but are invested in the “meritocracy” that has allowed them entry into the upper-middle class. It’s not an insignificant group, representing as it does the majority of the party’s white voters. They are supplemented by the political class that insists it can’t compete against Republicans without corporate money.
The piece I posted on another thread, by Andrew O’Hehir, is a slanted but accurate analysis of the Democratic Party’s problems, with Exhibit A the economic divide between anti-Wall Street equalizers and pro-corporate status-quo supporters. This is the root of the problem — if you serve the elite, you lose the working class, even though the alternative they’re voting for (it wasn’t just 2016) hurts them.
I disagree with his thesis, though, which is that the Russia concern is being fueled by the corporate wing of the Party to avoid debate about the direction for the future. I’m sure it is, but I resent being told I shouldn’t care about Russia because people I oppose care about Russia. This is the same bullshit I was told by Hillary supporters during the election, that my concerns about her corporate ties “played into the hands” of the GOP.
News flash: You don’t get to tell other people what they should and shouldn’t be concerned about. If that’s your argument, it’s because you have no other valid points in it.
I don’t care about Trump and Russia because Hillary lost the election. I care because Donald Trump has belonged in prison for many years now, based on money laundering and fraud. Had he been investigated and prosecuted when he should have been, he couldn’t have run in the first place. That might mean we’d now have president Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, but we wouldn’t have someone entirely unsuited for the position. My interest in seeing Trump face justice goes back many, many years, and I won’t drop it just because it helps corporate Democrats.
I have this crazy idea that justice shouldn’t include just social justice. Criminals belong in jail, and this is a family of criminals.
@dave
“Free college? Only 17% of high school graduates go to college.”
Not to be pedantic, but where did you get this statistic (or is there some caveat to it that you didn’t mention)? For any given year, about 65-70% of high school graduates enroll in college.
See https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cpa.asp and https://www.bls.gov/news.release/hsgec.nr0.htm.
For all people in the U.S. who are 25 and older, about 32.5% have completed at least a bachelor’s degree and about 59% have completed at least some college.
See https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p20-578.pdf.
Facts. Well done.
Investing in university educations is an investment in our kid, our nation and our future. There are hundreds of billions in spending in things less valuable than college
““Free college? Only 17% of high school graduates go to college.””
I got my sentences jumbled when typing. I’m not sure where I got 17%. What I meant and should have said was that, 21% of West Virginia adults graduated from college. WV ranks 50 out of all the states. (http://www.higheredinfo.org).
And yes mouse, there are a great many things that are less valuable than college, but there are a great many people for whom college is a little more than a fantasy, if it even enters their thoughts. When one’s physiological needs are met, attention can turn self-actualization. Everyone would love free college. But ask the people with no jobs or no food or no medical care, what’s really important at this point in their lives. When one is selling pipedreams, people are more apt to buy the pipedream that touches their lives. That’s what Trump sold them. The Democrats did not.