We’ll never know exactly how much money Dave Reichert raised from First Lady Laura Bush’s $500 per plate Medina fundraiser — because quite frankly, Reichert and his accountants don’t want us to know — but the Darcy Burner campaign is quite a bit more transparent. We set out to generate a modest 250 new donations in response to this second Bush funder, and proceeded to blow past our target: 432 donations for a total of $21,879, over just three days. Once again, amazing.
Republicans have typically outspent Democrats for years, because they simply have more rich people on their side, and have long been the party that ideologically favored the wealthy. But the growing strength of the netroots is beginning to even the playing field, leveraging the resources of the many to balance the money of the few. The First Lady may have raised more money for Reichert on Wednesday than we did for Burner, but we generated more than three times their turnout, proving once again that there are more of us than there are of them.
Meanwhile, over on the right wing blogs, they generally don’t even bother trying to raise money for their candidates. I’m guessing, it’s because they can’t.
So thank you all for your generous support. And if you didn’t contribute this time around, well, it’s never too late:
Let me tell you a story about how little money matters and what having people behind you counts for, Goldy.
As you know, Gregoire won the 2004 election by 129 votes (adjusted to 133 by Judge Bridges). As you also know, she was behind after the first counting of ballots on Election Night. At that point, the state Democratic Party organized an effort to contact absentee voters who were eligible to vote but were in jeopardy of not having their votes counted because they either forgot to sign their ballots or their signatures did not match the voter registration on file (this is perfectly innocent; handwriting changes over time, and especially among elderly voters who may have developed shaky hands). So the Democrats sent volunteers out to the homes of these voters to get them to sign signature cards, which were turned in to county election departments to validate their ballots. In the end, the Democrats collected over 1,000 signatures and about 700 of them were validated. It was these 700 votes that gave Gregoire her victory margin.
This was perfectly legal, and the Republicans could have done it, too. But the Democrats had an advantage the GOP didn’t: People. It required a massive effort; this project was extremely labor-intensive. But it took the Democrats only 24 hours to mobilize over 7,000 volunteers statewide.
The Republicans? They don’t have volunteers. During the recounts that followed, their observers were employees of companies sent by their Republican bosses to do what the GOP handlers at the recount site told them to do. Mostly, they goofed off — they read books and newspapers, knitted, chatted, and didn’t observe much of anything except the lunch money. They considered this assignment a paid break from their regular work.
Republicans don’t have unions they can call. Nor do they have legions of loyal supporters willing to do the gritty manual labor of a political campaign. Most of their supporters are people who consider themselves too important, too busy, or too far up society’s totem pole to go doorbelling.
The Republicans were so sluggish they didn’t even put out a call for volunteers on their web site until two weeks after the signature gathering started. I worked the phone banks and also went to voters’ homes, and none of the Republicans I spoke with said they had been contacted by GOP workers. The Republicans didn’t have a field operation because they had no pool of volunteers they could turn to for manpower when they needed it. Like I said above, the Democrats put over 7,000 signature collectors into the field within 24 hours.
Eventually, the Republicans did collect a few signatures, but their lawyers decided not to turn them in. They were arguing in court the ballots validated by the Democrats’ signature drive shouldn’t count, and thought if they turned in their own signatures it would undercut their argument. It was a bad call; they lost in court, and Rossi lost about 200 votes that way.
Republicans may have all the money in the world, or at least a lot of it, but they don’t have people behind them. They start out at a disadvantage in votes because the majority of voters won’t support them if they understand the issues. There disadvantage in being able to mobilize manpower at crucial moments is even more serious. It cost them the 2004 governor’s election, and as you know there are plenty of other elections that Democrats have won because of their ability to put large numbers of people into the field to do the essential footwork of political campaigns. Republicans understand who this disadvantages them, but they can’t do anything about it, because they will never have a pool of people they can draw on to do that kind of work. The demographics of their party and the kind of people they attract are against them in that respect.
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In case you’re wondering, I don’t proofread my comments before posting them.
Vote Dave Reichert.
Darcy Burner just does not have it. The eye’s are open but theres nobody home.
The eye’s are open but theres nobody home.
Sorry, you’re talking about Sheriff Hairspray.
Go Darcy!
That is great news and thank you Goldy for running this site stumping for Democrats.
In other news a senior whitehouse aide has admitted to plagiarism and stepped down. There’s been at least a story a day for the last week in my morning paper about some Republican lying, cheating or stealing. I’m sick of the dishonesty.
http://www.reuters.com/article.....6320080301
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A White House aide resigned on Friday after an Indiana newspaper reported that he plagiarized in more than half of the columns he had published since 2000.
An investigation so far by the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel found 20 of 38 unsolicited guest columns from Tim Goeglein published between 2000 and 2008 had parts that were copied, without attribution, according to the paper.
Nice analysis, Roger.
Republicans used to have a fairly decent “get the old folks out to the polls” system, but with mail balloting it doesn’t work anymore.
Their one advantage in “footwork organizing” is the ability to call on conservative suburban evangelical churches to do the organizing for them, using their existing organization & volunteer base. But a lot of the time it is, literally, “preaching to the choir”.
There were of course a lot of factors that led to the closeness of the race, and ultimately Gregoire’s victory, but Roger is right, the diverging strategies of the two parties post election day was decisive. The Republicans focused on getting ballots tossed out, the Democrats focused on counting as many legitimately cast ballots counted as possible.
That said, had the Gregoire campaign run some negative ads in the final week of the campaign, educating voters as to where Rossi really stands on the issues, she would have won by more than 50,000 votes.
Just think… in all likelihood this is the last weekend we’ll EVER have to hear from The Smartest Woman In The World.
The final repudiation of her, and the politics of hate.
You are the most hateful old sow here, and you can make a statement like that?
Man love them there producers! Mark can produce more bullshit in 2 lines than even Puddy can in a whole 9 pages of average posts.
Where were Timmie and his legion of paid signature gatherers when they were really needed?
@11 I predict HRC will pick up the torch from an aging Ted Kenney and become the “conscience of the Senate” after the old liberal keels over from 1 drink too many, and that you are only beginning to hear from her.
P.S., every woman in the world is smarter than you, if not more honest … pay your gambling debt, welsher!!
No, the official “conscience of the senate” is former Klansman Robert “Sheets” Byrd.
But I agree… she can take Kennedy’s place representing the kook fringe of the moonbat party.
Not sure if she’s a murderer like Ted The Swimmer, but she certainly has her fingerprints on enough odd coincidence deaths that she can fill his shoes admirably.
where is the suggestion that The Darcy could have prevented the Tanker deal with Northrop/EADS ? You know…Reichert wasn’t able to prevent it. So Darcy to the rescue.
Oh, wait…isn’t Norm Dicks one of the most powerful Dems in the congress relating to military issues ? What did the 4th powerful Dem (Patty M) do ? What happened to congressman Larsen (D) …isn’t Everett in his district ?
As usual, someone like Robert Byrd is painted as still racist decades after he repudiated the Klan, but Trent “If only you’d elected Strom Thurmond, we wouldn’t be havin the ‘problems’ we have today” Lott is GOP second-in-command in the Senate.
and leave it to MTR to be a true believer in the Clinton Body Count. Um, NOT the smartest man in the world.
http://www.snopes.com/politics.....ycount.asp
IF YOUR SO TRANSPARENT HOW MUCH DID YOU GIVE GOLDY.JUST ASKIN
ROGER WABBIT @1 YAWN
BOY THE DEMOCRATICS REALLY CAME THRU WITH THAT BIG TANKER CONTRACT HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.OH I FORGOT IT WAS BUSHS FAULT.HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. HEY OBAMA YOU SHOULD OF TALKED WITH THE AIRFORCE ISNT BOEING IN IL COMPANY NOW.SO MUCH FOR YOUR BULLSHIT ILL TALK TO ANYONE.HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
21 pu
Wow, you’re good. I am sure the Democrats everywhere will just give up trying to be elected at all if this is what you’re dishing out to them. Poor saps, they won’t know what hit ’em.
#17 Daddy Love says:
“we talk about race too much”
“those problems are largely behind us”
“we can all profit from our mistakes”
“we talked so much about it we created an illusion.”
“there are white niggers”
“I’ve seen a lot of white niggers in my time”
“I’d just as soon to quit talking about it so much”
Who said that, david duke or robert byrd?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FIBJt-c2o0
“…..more rich people on their side?”
Quantify it. Seriously.
That is a pretty broad stroke and I’d like to see it backed up. Is that nationally or locally? Is that individuals, groups, pacs, unions?
Let’s see some numbers. I would love to be able to argue to my hardcore right or left wing friends but they are smarter than “because they simply have more rich people on their side.”
#7 YLB says:
The eye’s are open but theres nobody home.
Sorry, you’re talking about Sheriff Hairspray.
You would have followed “Jim” Jones to the Peoples Temple.
@23: Marvin – as usual you have no point.
I listened to the interview and he sure didn’t sound like Tren Lott and his effusive praise of Strom thurmond and the “good ol’ days” and how we have had all these problems if ol Strom had been elected.
Sorry Marvin – spin it however you want – but the facts are the racists are in the republican party – from David Duke, Strom Thurmond and on down. Maybe 50 years ago it was the democrats – but now it is the republicans that harbor, aid and abet the racists.
And Willian F. Buckley – certainly bright, certainly biased, snide, sneerng – but look at who this great intellectual supported:
Nixon (crook and liar)
Bush (incompetent)
Reagan (Iran-contra and senile)
Bush (the worst president ever)
Guess all that supposed intellect didn’t help much. I just remember Buckley often trying to intellectually justify the unjustifiable – and interesting intellectual exercise – but not particularly brilliant. If he is the best the conservatives have got – bring it on.
He was a talking head that often got lost in his own arguments – not particulary effective.
I must say ditzy Darcy does get the drive-thru line moving quickly, although she did do one thing wrong; I wanted curly fries, not regular.
Congrats to the Dimwit left.
You have done it now .. ended real democracy. First there was Move On (aren’t they the ones with the TV commercial abut a medicine that does nothing?).
How long till we have a candidate who is virtual?
The real message though is that Obiwan and Leah are pioneers in movement that Dobson and his following will control all future elections because they can raise more dollars then the tobacco and soft drinks combined!
@27
And you would be an expert on this, from your vantage point flipping burghers.
Ooops… that would be “burgers”. The former might apply for Mark1, but I doubt if he speaks German.
Then again, he does sound like the typical Nazi wingnut.
7000 mobilized democrats in 24 hours. More like Logan
and company “finding” more votes for the skank eleven
times. How many “mobilized losers” would come out of the woodwork if Rossis team “found” 10000 more ballots over eleven times. Never would we hear the end of it.
Keep screeching, honey. The sound of wounded wingnuts is very musical to most of us..
Continue to work hard at producing your fairy tales, too. They’re less satisfying but quite entertaining.
@29:
Was that you sweeping the foyer I saw?
Darcy is STILL running against Bush! Ha ha ha ha ha. maybe in 30 years she will finally win!
@17,
DADDY LOVE SAID:
Earth to IDIOT “Daddy Love”. Put down the bong and drop the syringe. TRENT LOTT is NO LONGER A SENATOR you drug addled STD infested freak!
Yet another lie from the nut roots blogosphere.
And what of Democrat Robert KKK Byrd?
The Klansman filibustered the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act — supported by a majority of those “mean-spirited” Republicans — for more than 14 hours. He also opposed the nominations of the Supreme Court’s two black justices, liberal Thurgood Marshall and conservative Clarence Thomas. In fact, the ex-Klansman had the gall to accuse Justice Thomas of “injecting racism” into the Senate hearings. Author Graham Smith recently discovered another letter Sen. Byrd wrote after he quit the KKK, this time attacking desegregation of the armed forces.
The Klansman vowed never to fight “with a Negro by my side. Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.”
#7 Clueless Idiot: He was expressing your truth too.