The Venerable Celia Cohen Declares Delaware Officially a Blue State
If John Carney and Chris Coons read Celia’s blog, they are now free to dispense with the bullshitty bi-partisanship/Delaware way gibber-jabber and start sounding more like the BLUE state Democrats who elected them.
Election by election, the Democrats get stronger and the Republicans fall farther behind in Delaware’s voter registration rolls. It does not look like 2014 will be any different. (snip)
The Republicans are decidedly underdogs.
With a little more than a year to go before the next election, the state registration figures are showing better than 123,000 more Democratic than Republican voters, up from a Democratic advantage of about 118,000 voters in 2012, when the Democrats swept all five statewide offices on the ballot.
The remaining Republicans are foaming at the mouth crazies who can be safely ignored by our congressional delegation.
It’s funny how Republicans blame their electoral losses on unions, which aren’t particularly strong in Delaware anyway since the collapse of manufacturing. Republicans have had little success in breaking the unions, except in the area of charter schools where Democrats have taken up the Republican cause.
Puck –
Unions aren’t strong in DE because they don’t do anything in the campaign sphere. The Building Trades have a meeting with Dem bigwigs every month to complain about lack of support, but when it comes time to knock doors and make calls, their fervor dissipates. Even if they don’t have the membership anymore to sway elections just from internal organizing, they certainly have the capacity to fill volunteer shifts.
What Delaware campaigns are you thinking that don’t have unions as a key part of the campaign sphere? Up here in Wilmington for certain there is union money and union members working for specific candidates — not just for local candidates, either.
Southern NCC too. My experiences don’t match PainsMe’s.
Unions are there Cass, but their impact is not what it used to be. A union endorsement doesn’t mean as much as it used to. John Carney was heavily supported by the unions in 08 vs Markell. So was Vince Lofink, Speaker Spence, that Democrat that ran against Ramone back in 08… The guy that ran against Earl Jaques a few years back, Tony Deluca, I could go on and on. The money is even falling off according to the campaign finance reports. At least in DE.
I agree with Puck… Times have changed
Times may have changed, but on election days in Wilmington I see a pretty big number of union people out and working and getting paid for it. That’s not chump change.
There’s a lot more in a campaign than the first Tuesday in November.
And I do know that. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that unions are a significant contributor to the ground game (which for turnout elections is important) and a significant supporter in terms of contributions. They can be turned out for phone banking, lit drops — all kinds of activities that need lots of bodies fast.
The original point of the thread above the pull quote on how to move the delegation further to the left is in some ways answered by the phrase after the pull quote: “….foaming at the mouth crazies who can be safely ignored by our congressional delegation.”
It takes some discipline as a progressive community to make sure we don’t come across that way to our own elected officials.
… writes the guy with the name Nuttingham.
N–ham,
It’s easy for us to ignore your name and heed the advice.
What else can you expect from a group of lefties who favor political analysis from a little guy who fancies himself as a Latino sleepwalker?
True enough. It’s not always easy to grapple with El Som’s fictional persona.
“It takes some discipline as a progressive community to make sure we don’t come across that way to our own elected officials.”
And yet the Overton window is never moved by the centrists. So there is a needle to thread to be sure. The left has been correct time and time again and that should factor into not being viewed as crazies – but it doubt it.
And on many key Democratic issues, majorities of Americans typically favor Democratic policies. Democrats need to get alot better about their own “principled messaging” and stop playing by the Calvinball rules of the GOP.
It’s not about progressives having to moderate on positions to be more effective. It’s about removing obstacles to having those positions be understood as common sense and correct.