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So I was looking through the @nytimes election map and had some thoughts. I live in a West Omaha neighborhood that went 54-44 for Trump, 1300 total votes. Prior to the election, there were more Biden signs than Trump...there were maybe 5 Trump signs in the whole neighborhood..
This is a great neighborhood, people are nice, good mix of original homeowners from the mid 90's and newer homeowners with kids (like me), would assume a high rate of college degrees. So why is this a +10 Trump? Yes, it's moved towards Biden, but still +10.....
My guess would be that this is still a "legacy" Republican area. So what is a "legacy" Republican? I would say there are 2 things that almost all of those people would say:
1) "I've always voted Republican"
2) "I don't follow politics"
1) "I've always voted Republican"
2) "I don't follow politics"
So how do you reach these people as Democrats? I think we've seen in NE-02 with Eastman/Bacon contests over the last couple years is that they are unmoved by policy. Eastman had policy goals and things she wanted to get done. Don likes to show you pictures of his meetings.
So if the "default" GOP voter isn't driven by policy for elected positions, how do you reach them? I hate to say it because I think it's not a great debate, you have to focus less on promoting Democrat policy and more on getting people to understand....
that the GOP of 2021 isn't the GOP of their youth or their parents youth. With everything that the GOP has done over the last few months, Democrats have a great opportunity in 2022 to highlight how the GOP has changed, and what they do/don't stand for.
That doesn't mean you have to go super negative, but highlighting the lack of policy goals, the lack of legislative action when they have power, the ways in which they obstruct the process...take the ideological debate out of it.
Anyway, I thought it was interesting to highlight that when people 74 million people voted for Trump!....that's not really true. 74 million people voted for the R candidate on the presidential ticket. The question that we have to answer prior to 2022....
....or 2024 is how many of those actually for Trump and not just the R? How many of those R voters don't really understand what they're voting for? The next great movement in politics has to be how you reach and talk to this group of people....and places like....
.....West Omaha is probably a great place to start to try and figure out how you do it.
@janekleeb
@janekleeb
