Contributed by Arthur Ahrens of Branchport
I am as surprised and upset as everyone else. And looking deeper, I am become even more upset. On the theory that misery loves company, I offer the following:
Trump has received at least 68 million votes in 2020, or five million more than he did in 2016, meaning that despite his myriad failures, scandals, self dealing, corruption, etc., he received the support of 48% of Americans. Further, the Democrats lost seats in the House and were unable to take control of the Senate.
In a development that seems to have flown under most people’s radar, an abysmal showing by Democrats in state legislative races on Tuesday not only denied them victories in Sun Belt and Rust Belt states that would have positioned them to advance their policy agenda — it also put the party at a disadvantage ahead of the redistricting that will determine the balance of power for the next decade.
Locally, Tom Reed whomped Tracy Mitrano 63.1% to 35.8%. To put this into perspective, Reed in 2012 Reed won with 49.2%, in 2014 with 57.8%, in 2016 with 57.6%, and in 2018 with 54.2%. NY 23 Democrats have actually lost ground over 8 years.
I will leave assigning blame to others. I’m merely pointing out a trend, which would seem to indicate a problem with Democrats’ strategy on a local, state and national level.
Would anyone care to comment?
Best Regards,
Arthur Ahrens
New NY 23rd 
If only we could deploy Stacey Abrams to every state.
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We CAN deploy her successful model.
Democrats raised half a billion dollars for the top dozen Senate races and lost nearly all of them. The model behind modern campaigns is that if a voter sees 25 ads per evening calling some Republican a scoundrel but only 10 ads about his Democratic opponent that call him a low-life, the voter will pull the lever for the Democrat. It doesn’t work. Stacey Abrams tried something else in Georgia: She registered thousands of new voters. The result is that Georgia went blue for the first time since 1992. Maybe she is onto something: It’s the ground game, stupid!
She has now raised $6 million for the two January Senate runoffs. Money people give to the candidates will just air more negative ads, whereas money given to Abrams’ group will result in more voter contact. If she registers a lot of voters between now and Dec. 7 (when registration closes), and the Democrats win due to an influx of new voters, that will send a very powerful signal to all politicians (and maybe to donors) that running more negative ads just doesn’t cut it any more.
Abrams’ model could and SHOULD be used in NY rural districts. I hope they are paying attention.
I’ll be donating to Abrams’ group in Georgia.
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Site for Abrams’ efforts:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/georgiasenate
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