What Hillary Clinton Learned From Virginia's 2013 Campaign

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While the Republican presidential candidate field seems to have learned little from past defeats and continue to pander to a shrinking demographic of aging, homophobic, racist whites, some believe that Hillary Clinton is learning  from recent Democratic successes, most notably, the 2013 campaign in Virginia which saw the GOP slate of right wing candidates lose across the board.  With Virginia deemed a "swing state" one would think that the GOP would similarly be taking heed, but that might mean upsetting the ugly elements of the GOP base.  A piece in Time looks at what Hillary seems to have learned from Virginia.  Here are excerpts:

When Terry McAuliffe stormed the stage at a Virginia Democrats’ rally at George Mason University on Friday, Hillary Clinton followed on with an arm around her decades-long friend and political partner.

“I’ll tell you an honest story. When we’re on vacation, come about 6 o’clock at night, I’m ready for a cold beer,” McAuliffe told the crowd of 1,800 supporters, heaping unscripted love on Clinton as she stood smiling by his side. “I don’t go looking for Bill Clinton. I go looking for Hillary Clinton. Because she’s a lot more fun than Bill Clinton is, and I love him too!”

Clinton and McAuliffe shared more than just a stage and some kind words on Friday: they are now splitting the spoils of his successful 2013 race for governor of Virginia. Now in its third month, Clinton’s campaign for president has adopted key strategic lessons from McAuliffe’s gubernatorial race, including the finer details of a data-driven field organization focused on turning out the Democratic base and unmarried women, leaning into progressive Democratic positions and hiring many of the same staff members that helped McAuliffe win the governor’s mansion. And Democrats say that McAuliffe’s 2013 victory sets the stage for the state to go blue in the 2016 general election, when Hillary Clinton is the likely candidate.

Former McAuliffe aides are quick to say that their energy in 2013 was focused on getting their man to the governor’s house. But since then, the victorious McAuliffe campaign has become a ex post facto lab experiment for Clinton’s current bid for the White House.

A purple state that is trending blue, Virginia bears similarities to the general American electorate: its nonwhite population is growing and its voters are increasingly adopting liberal stances social issues. The swing state offered an ideal test run for the Clinton operation, combining vast rural tracts with midsized cities and expansive suburbs.

Central to McAuliffe’s campaign was his embrace of staunch Democratic positions on gay rights, abortion, gun control and healthcare a hard play for the Democratic base in Virginia that capitalized on the left-shifting electorate in his 2013 race for governor. Clinton has likewise embraced gay marriage, making it a central platform of her campaign messaging this year, just as public support has reached an all-time high. And she has fervently called for action on gun control at a time when a majority of Americans are in favor of universal background checks. Both have also embraced the Affordable Care Act . . . .

Those progressive positions succeeded in energizing the Democratic base without alienating Virginia moderates, also a central organizing tack of Clinton’s campaign.

Both the 2013 and the current presidential campaigns will rely on an army of volunteers, a flurry of commit-to-vote cards, targeted door-to-door canvassing and plenty of money to fund the efforts.

“The hallmarks of what Robby did in Virginia, and what he’s building now, is that the organizing occurred on the ground very early in the campaign,” Garin said. Beyond Mook, a bevy of key McAuliffe alumni have migrated to the Clinton camp.

And some of the key players organizing Hillary’s large ground operations in Iowa are former McAuliffe staffers as well, . . . 

“The campaign in Virginia relied on us not taking the bait on fights on anything in his public record. And you may see that with Clinton campaign.”

McAuliffe’s victory was due in no small part to unmarried women voters, whom he won by a huge margin of 67% to just 25% for Cuccinelli. McAuliffe blasted ads during the campaign framing Cuccinelli as a right-wing zealot on contraception and abortion issues. That demographic is crucial for Clinton, who tops unmarried woman over a generic Republican candidate with 66% of the vote to 29%, according to a recent Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research poll.

 

The GOP's Worst Nightmare: Hillary Clinton Is Building Her Democratic Army

While the GOP continues to be plagued by its clown car - or perhaps bus - of would be 2016 presidential candidates, on the Democrat side of the isle, despite attempts to draft Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton appears unchallenged and is proceeding to build her Democrat army even though she has yet to announce her candidacy.  To many in the delusional far right, the specter of a Hillary candidacy/presidency is a nightmare come true.  About the only thing Hillary doesn't have to taint her with the knuckle draggers of the GOP is that she isn't black. A piece at Politicususa.com looks at Clinton's preparations.  Here are highlights:

Hillary Clinton hasn’t even announced her 2016 run yet but she is already staffed up with huge Democratic talent, some of which is coming to her straight from the Obama White House. Planning to delay campaigning until late summer, the former Secretary of State, Senator, and First Lady has already amassed a Dream Team, pulling from Obama’s team to round out her already solid support.

Anne Gearan and Dan Balz at the Washington Post reported that even though she hasn’t even announced yet, Clinton’s campaign is looking like an incumbent’s reelection campaign:

At this point, without so much as an announcement, she has settled on — at the least — a campaign chairman, a campaign manager, a chief strategist and lead pollster, another pollster, a lead media adviser, a communication director, a deputy communications director, a focus group director and a communications strategist.

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Her effort at this stage looks a lot like an incumbent’s reelection campaign: She will be running largely in support of a sitting president and his agenda, and is busy hiring many of President Obama’s former aides.

While pundits and strategists focus on fears that Clinton could lose her edge by delaying hitting the trail and worry over appearances of inheriting a mantle from President Obama, there is another side to this coin. 

What we have here is a strong would-be candidate, who consistently polls as a favorite politician, who is well known to the American people, whose last name is associated with economic boom times, and who is also carrying her own unique mantle of potentially being the first female President.

That’s a pretty heady mix of positives with a dose of freshness, and it’s coming on the wave of a Republican war on women that is only getting more obvious as even their own female representatives balk at their attempts to deny women liberty.

Clinton is filling in the gaps where her 2008 campaign was stressed. She is utilizing the very talent that brought her down.  It’s brilliant. 

It’s also further evidence of the imagined deal back when President Obama asked her to be his Secretary of State, a job which undeniably beefs up foreign policy cred – a continued weakness on the Republican side. 

The biggest challenge for Clinton is going to be not falling into the trap of Democrats of 2014; that is, not alienating the Obama supporters in necessary efforts to distinguish herself from the President.
Because of the heir apparent appearance of much of her would be candidacy, Clinton will be attacked for being like royalty, for being lazy, for not earning it, and other Rovian digs that attack her strengths. But these attacks will be hard to make stick, given her long career full of earnest hard work for causes she has steadily believed in. Also, the first female president didn’t earn it? LOL. Say it again, Republicans, because that’s almost as much of a winner as the latest GOP mantra that rape is an opportunity. 

[I]t’s her steel spine, loyalty, gritty determination and steady vision for the under privileged that make Clinton so dangerous to Republicans.

Obama Needs to Share His Campaign Data Base

With Virginians likely faced in 2013 with the most extreme and dangerous GOP candidate for governor in the state's history, it will be critical that Democrats turn out the coalition of those threatened by Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli's ignorance and theocracy based agenda, namely all citizens other than Christofascists, angry white men and Tea Party loons.   Gays, blacks, Hispanics, women, non-Christians - i.e., anyone who is not a Kool-Aid drinking white evangelical - is threatened by Kookinelli.  It is critical that these groups targeted by Kookinelli be educated as to just how extreme and dangerous this man is to them.  Hence the need for Barack Obama to share his campaign data base with the Virginia Democrats so that they can defeat Kookinelli and other minions of the Christofascists at Family Foundation.  In 2009 Obama did little or nothing to assist Democrat candidates in Virginia and the result was that perhaps the most extreme slate of GOP candidates in recent memory was swept into office.  This cannot be allowed to happen again, particularly with Kookinelli aiming for the governorship which would allow him to appoint extremists to boards and commissions across Virginia.  A piece in Politico looks at this issue as it applies to Virginia and elsewhere.  Here are highlights:

The hottest property to emerge from Barack Obama’s lopsided victory over Mitt Romney is not the president’s much lauded campaign team. Nor is it the shrewd turnout operation that catapulted him to victory.

It is something far more valuable that’s being guarded as zealously as the Pentagon: Obama’s unprecedented database of an estimated 16 million voters, volunteers and donors, which gave the Democrat an indisputable edge in November.

From the candidates running in 2014 to the state Democratic parties to progressive advocacy groups, there is an intense behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign afoot to pry from Obamaland its groundbreaking voter database. The data is rich with intricate layers of information about individuals’ voting habits, television viewing tastes, propensity to volunteer, car registration, passions, email address, cellphone numbers, and social media contacts. The historical trove enabled Obama to connect with voters on a highly personal level and get them not only to vote but to actively persuade their neighbors to do the same.

Now that Obama has been reelected, other Democrats are falling over themselves to get their hands on these sophisticated indicators for their own campaigns.

Among the prime options being discussed by president’s political hands: setting up an independent, not-for-profit entity, run by Obama aides, to manage and keep the electronic files updated so the contacts could be used to further the president’s agenda. Handing over the names to campaigns is not high on the list right now

Nonetheless, this hasn’t stopped Democrats from beating at the vault’s door.  So excited was Virginia Democratic Party Chairman Brian Moran about the prospect of getting the database for next year’s governor’s race that he announced last week that he already had it. He doesn’t.

So intent are Senate incumbents to get their hands on the voter files that, at a private meeting with Senate leaders and incumbents up for reelection in 2014, Sens. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Tom Harkin of Iowa led the group in imploring Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Democratic Caucus Vice Chairman Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to lead the charge.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) has also prodded the Obama campaign to make the database available to House and Senate candidates to avoid a midterm bloodbath like the party saw in 2010.

Instead, Obamaworld — in an effort similar to the post-2008 campaign period — is attempting to leverage its campaign data to generate support for legislative initiatives.

Messina was emphatic on the point in his first post-election on-camera interview last month.

“The important thing to note is — and I want to be firm about this — you can’t just hand this to the next candidate for president,” he said at a POLITICO Playbook breakfast last month.

“You know, this organization was built for people who supported this president and who were involved. We had over 32,000 neighborhood team leaders who basically volunteered full time, and those people were involved because of the issues and positions the president took, and … you can’t just hand it to the next candidate. They have to have their own relationship with [voters]. … Look, we learned from our shellacking we took in 2010: Too many Democrats thought they could put Barack Obama’s picture on a piece of literature and his supporters would turn out magically for them. It doesn’t work like that.”

Yes, each candidate needs to have their own base.  But the Obama campaign data would expedite the process.   There's much more to the article, which deserves a read.  Personally, I remain very concerned that Obama will ignore Virginia as he did in 2009 and now the stakes are even higher.  And, if he is worried about his legislative agenda, having an insane nutcase like Cuccinelli become governor of Virginia would be extremely detrimental.  I supported Obama for president - the boyfriend and I even housed one of his campaign staffers for two months - but I am worried that he may revert to having his head up his ass as he did in 2009 when it comes to Virginia and the anti-gay forces in this state.

Three Pivotal States in 2012 Presidential Contest

The 2012 presidential election is still more than 5 months away, yet here in Virginia the ads for Obama and Romney are running and transparent ads anti-Obama funded by groups like the American Petroleum Institute (that make me want to yell at the TV for their dishonesty) are piggy backing along as well.  Based on an Los Angeles Times story, it is going to be a long 5 moths from now until November.  It seems that Virginia is one of the "key states" and that the political ad barrage will be relentless.  Here are some story highlights:

The presidential candidates have just placed their opening bets, and three states stand out as keys to the 2012 election: Ohio, Virginia and, perhaps surprisingly, Iowa.

Romney’s first TV ad of the general election campaign, which debuts Friday, will air in four states, including Ohio, Virginia and Iowa. (Notably, it repeats his pledge to “end Obamacare,” the law based on his Massachusetts model). The Romney campaign wouldn’t confirm the scope of the buy but didn’t wave off an attempt to confirm James Hohmann’s report in Politico, which listed that trio of states, plus North Carolina. President Obama included Ohio, Virginia and Iowa in his most recent buy as well.

It is practically impossible for Romney to capture the presidency without carrying Ohio and Virginia. Obama took both in 2008, and if he wins either again, he’s almost surely going to being reelected.
Of greater interest in the Romney buy, however, were the other states he’s hitting.

One is Iowa, an opportunity state for the Republican challenger. In addition to taking four larger states away from Obama (Ohio, Virginia, Florida and North Carolina), he also needs to carry at least one more smaller, Obama ‘08 state. The former governor made a campaign stop this week in Iowa, which went narrowly Republican in the 2004 presidential election, then swung to Obama in 2008.

The final state on Romney’s initial hit list, North Carolina, is the most intriguing of all. For months, Obama aides have been saying that the president is competitive in the Tar Heel State, a claim that even some Democratic strategists have regarded, in private, with skepticism.  .   .   .   .  By putting ads up there (including Spanish-language radio), Romney appears to have validated the Obama camp’s optimism. As mentioned above, it’s a must-win state for Romney, and if Obama carries it again, he’ll be reelected.

For now, at least, that makes Ohio (18 electoral votes), Virginia (13) and Iowa (6) the top-tier battlegrounds in the race for 270 electoral votes. Two other Obama ad targets, Colorado (9) and Pennsylvania (20); and New Hampshire (4), where Romney is campaigning today; and North Carolina (15) rank just behind. Florida (29), the largest and most expensive swing state, will likely join the list, rounding out the eight states where the 2012 presidential election will be decided.

Many Big Donors to Democrats Cut Support

Obama and company seem to keep reaping the rewards of failing to deliver on campaign promises and, in the case of the White House, playing kiss up to the GOP which would as soon run over him with a truck than look at him - and that's when they're not claiming he's a Muslim. The New York Times is reporting that a number of major donors have closed their wallets and check books just as many in the LGBT community. Interestingly enough, a number feel that their money is better spent with groups that will actually push for progressive reforms as opposed to the Democratic Party and the White House which talk a good game but which are missing in action when it comes time to actually do something. The post mortem on November 3, 2010 will be most interesting and, if as some predict, it's a Democratic Party disaster, I truly hope much of the blame is hung around Obama's condescending neck. Obama has forgotten the old rule of remembering the ones who brought him to power and that is largely the progressives who helped turned out the vote of the independents. Here are some story highlights:

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Many wealthy Democratic patrons, who in the past have played major roles financing outside groups to help elect the party’s candidates, are largely sitting out these crucial midterm elections. . . Democratic donors like George Soros, the bête noire of the right, and his fellow billionaire Peter B. Lewis, who each gave more than $20 million to Democratic-oriented groups in the 2004 election, appear to be holding back so far.

“Mr. Soros believes that he can be most effective by funding groups that promote progressive policy outcomes in areas such as health care, the environment and foreign policy,” said an adviser, Michael Vachon. “So he has opted to fund those activities.” The absence of these Democratic megadonors is contributing to a huge disparity in spending between pro-Republican and pro-Democratic groups.

In the last week, Republican-leaning groups outspent their Democratic counterparts on television by more than seven to one on Senate races and nearly four to one on House races across the country, according to data from theCampaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising. The gap shows few signs of abating, even with the midterm election season in full swing.

The donors’ reluctance stems from a variety of factors, including pessimism about the party’s prospects in November, but also President Obama’s strong condemnations of this kind of independent activity

[S]ome more ideological donors are also upset that the Obama administration has not been more aggressive in pushing a liberal agenda. Big donors from Wall Street, including hedge fund executives and investment bankers, are also angry at the administration.

Conservative Bloggers Paid to Support Partisan Candidates

I am obviously doing something seriously wrong. Why you ask? Because I haven't been getting paid - and often paid very well - to write what politcal candidates and parties want me to write. However, while I - and I suspect most of by LGBT Blogger Summit compatriots - do not hold back in our criticism of the Obama administration, Congressional Democrats, and many others, our counterparts on the right are in many instances raking in the cash to say nice things about GOP primary candidates, etc. For example, it seems that the blog Red County received $20,000 from the Meg Whitman campaign in December, 2009, which has sent the site $15,000 a month since then. I guess if one is willing to sell their soul, then conservative blogging can be quite lucrative. The Daily Caller has details on this faux independent citizen journalists. Here are highlights:
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Katie Couric once described bloggers as journalists who gnaw at new information “like piranhas in a pool.” But increasingly, many bloggers are also secretly feeding on cash from political campaigns, in a form of partisan payola that erases the line between journalism and paid endorsement.
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“It’s standard operating procedure” to pay bloggers for favorable coverage, says one Republican campaign operative. A GOP blogger-for-hire estimates that “at least half the bloggers that are out there” on the Republican side “are getting remuneration in some way beyond ad sales.”
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In California, where former eBay executive Meg Whitman beat businessman Steve Poizner in a bitterly fought primary battle in the campaign for governor, it sometimes seemed as if there was a bidding war for bloggers. One pro-Poizner blogger, Aaron Park, was discovered to be a paid consultant to the Poizner campaign while writing for Red County, a conservative blog about California politics. Red County founder Chip Hanlon threw Park off the site upon discovering his affiliation, which had not been disclosed.
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But while Red County’s Hanlon expressed outrage at Park’s pay-for-blogging scheme, questions arose about his own editorial independence when it emerged that Red County itself had been taking money from the Whitman campaign. In December of 2009, Red County received $20,000 from the Meg Whitman campaign, which has sent the site $15,000 a month since then.
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The money is ostensibly for advertising, yet by conventional measures the numbers don’t add up. According to Quantcast, Red County reaches around 125,000 unique viewers per month. Two new media industry experts confirmed that, given such a readership, Whitman’s ad purchase is “ridiculously” expensive, surpassing the going market rate for such ads by 1,000 percent or more.
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Ad purchases at above market rates are a common means by which some campaigns seek to influence bloggers, according to numerous campaign operatives and bloggers. Bloggers, aware of this, have begun to request improbably high rates on their own.
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Lowell Feld, who writes for the liberal political blog Blue Virginia, has received a considerable amount of money from Democratic campaigns, including $21,000 from Lt. Gov. candidate Jon Bowerback in 2009. Feld discloses his consulting work on his blog.
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Dan Riehl, who writes the Riehl World View blog, is one of Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele’s most vocal defenders in the conservative blogosphere. . . . . “Riehl World View” readers might be interested to know that Riehl is not simply a blogger, but also a paid consultant to the RNC.
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If it appears that conservative bloggers are more likely to take campaign money than their liberal counterparts, there may be a reason. According to Dan Riehl, conservatives can’t rely on the infrastructure of foundations and think tanks that supports so many liberal bloggers.
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many of the groups now employing liberal bloggers meet with White House aides for a weekly strategy session on Tuesday afternoons organized by the group Common Purpose. It was here that Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel famously told independent-minded liberals that they were being “fucking retarded” for straying from the party line.

Reflections on Obama's Ground Game in Virginia

Last evening I stopped by Obama headquarters in Norfolk to pick up some signs and badges for working as an attorney in the "Protect the Vote" tomorrow at a majority minority precinct in Norfolk. Having in the past been a GOP precinct captain and city committee member for 8 years, I have been around many campaigns and seen the behind the scenes view at party headquarters. Never, I repeat never have I seen the number of volunteers and the organization I saw last night. It was utterly amazing - the office was packed with organizers and volunteers. As I have said before, a candidate's campaign organization tells you what they will be like in office and Obama's campaign exceeds ANYTHING I have ever seen.

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A piece from Politico that references a GOP student in Charlottesville - probably at UVA - demonstrates the difference here on the ground in Virginia:

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I've been called by the Obama Campaign 20 times in the past week, along with at least one mailer on the door every day and several personal visits. Not a single thing from the McCain campaign.I'm hoping that the law of diminishing returns means that the excess of GOTV'ing is having a net negative effect. ....

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I'm as solid a McCain voter as one can be, but it's wearing to have to keep explaining to enthusiastic volunteers why I could possibly oppose Hope and Change — the repetition certainly creates an aura of inevitability. A single phone call or door knock from a Republican would be enormously encouraging.

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One has to wonder how anyone with intelligence can support McCain/Palin, but the contrast is stark. The difference in local support has also shown in the attendance at campaign rallies in Hampton Roads by the two presidential candidates: In two visits, Obama had more than 30,000 people show up. In contrast, McCain had perhaps 5,000 (and that's being generous). Based on their campaign organizations, a McCain administration would be a disaster whereas Obama's would be smart, organized and able to get the job done.