Thread by @JeffAndDonkeys

Before I go, let me talk a little bit about campaigning into red states.
I am not a Berniecrat. I'm not sure what they say, because mostly I ignore them.
Please read my words before you decide what I'm saying. 1/X

2. I live in rural NW Missouri. We're a red state. Back before political parties got color coded we were, for most of my life, a Democratic state.

3. We didn't become a Republican State in 1966 after LBJ signed the Civil Rights laws and famously said, "I've lost the South for a generation." We stayed blue for at least 15 or 20 years after that.

4. I'm not going to digress into how we turned red, but I do address that in essays. That's not the point tonight. The point tonight is that debating whether to even campaign in red states has become something of a flash point in my party, the Democratic Party.

5. Missouri was, during the Civil War, a border state. We're more like the South than we are like, say, the Dakotas, Montana, or Idaho.
I'm speaking now about campaigning in my state, the one I know best.

6. I have a gut feeling that there are literally more not-Republicans in Missouri than there are Republicans, but you'd never know it by looking at elections.

7. Our two biggest cities have large black and other non-white populations. Very large. Dotted around out in the sticks there are still a bunch of old hippies who never turned right.

8. Added to those two populations there actually are a modest number of white people, even, yes, old white men without college degrees like me, who vote R because they get fooled about Economics. Jobs. Opportunity.

9. No, not as many as some Bernies might tell you, but some.
So there are probably a few votes that could be changed, but more importantly there are *lots* of non-votes that could be turned into votes.

10. (I hope I didn't imply up there that I vote R - poorly worded tweet. I'm a lifelong D from old Missouri.)

11. Anyway - I don't know why people don't vote. I don't know why anyone does, or does not do, anything. However I suspect that at least one factor is they don't see any point in it.

12. I think negative campaigning is a factor in non-voting. I am concerned enough about that that I wrote an essay about it. nopackagedeals.com/2017/08/14/neg…

13. I do know that I have talked to non voters of various races and ethnicities, and the usual response is, It doesn't do any good. I'm getting screwed either way.

14. Now I can't guarantee that if all our team voted in every Missouri election we'd win, but we'd have a helluva lot better chance than we do now.

15. So what the Democratic Party needs to do in red states, at least those with sizeable non-white populations, is get in there and (read this carefully) GET IN THERE AND CAMPAIGN FIERCELY TO THE WORKING CLASS.

16. I did NOT say, "the White working class.”
Virtually all POC in Missouri are working class. Because historic disadvantage. Because they got poorer educations. Because they still face prejudice in hiring, and they take any job they can.

17. The proper constituency for Democrats is working people, and if we aren't smart enough to go after all working people of all colors who know they are working people, it's our own fault.

18. We need to get into Kansas City. Did you know that most of the white people in Kansas City live in Kansas? Yup. Most of the money burbs are in Johnson County, KS.

19. So we need to campaign *ferociously* in Kansas City. And in St. Louis. You know Ferguson, MO, where all that big hassle has been going on? The news calls it Ferguson, but we just call it St. Louis.

20. I know all about voter suppression. I know all about gerrymandering. I also know that Jason Kander lost his Senate bid last year by less than 8,000 votes. If every not-R in MO had turned out, McCon wouldn't have one fewer vote

21. to cram his #GOPTaxScam and #CorkerKickback through. One measly state. 8,000 votes. I bet we left more than that on the table in Grandview, MO alone.

22. Like I said, I can't speak to the Great Plains or Intermountain West red states, but I'll bet the same reasoning would apply in a lot of the Old South.

23. We need to seriously convince real, existing, not-Republican Americans in every red state that there *is* something in it for them. That if they vote THEIR LIVES WILL GET BETTER.

24. And if we convince them of that, and they elect Democrats, we'd damn well better MAKE their lives better.
Because it's the only way to keep them.

25. Thanks for coming along. I've gotta go practice my guitar, then maybe read some.
--jeff out

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