The Demos Sad Decline Continues
BY BUDDY NEVINS
U. S. Senator Al Franken summed up the Democrat’s decade-long problem in the New York Times Sunday.
He said: “Their bumper sticker . . . it’s one word: ‘No.’ . . . Our bumper sticker has  it’s just way too many words. And it says, ‘Continued on next bumper sticker.’
After November 2, I know what the D in Democrat will stand for: defeat.
Florida Democrats are going to take a shellacking. They could end up more irrelevant than the Florida Republicans were in 1950.
Their only hope is Alex Sink’s gubernatorial campaign. She still has a good shot to win.
The rest of the ticket? Forget about it.
With the exception of Dan Gelber’s bid for attorney general, the Ds didn’t even fight for the Cabinet.
Even Gelber is losing, according to polls. The GOP’s bright young prosecutor Pam Bondi is on the verge of beating Gelber.
Gelber and Bondi
Democrats are also on brink of losing one or several Florida congressional seats. One of the seats in real jeopardy is Ron Klein’s in northeast Broward and Palm Beach Counties.
Klein’s campaign has been lackluster. The candidate’s ground organization has been roundly criticized by many Broward Democrats. There are whole neighborhoods in his district that hasn’t seen any Klein activity.
If Klein finally limps to victory it will be because of fear of his Republican opponent, the wacky Allen West. A win will not be an endorsement of Klein.
No Good Democrat Candidates
Democrats have the same trouble in 2010 that they have struggled with for years no farm team. There are few electable Ds to run for office.
The Republicans have enough viable candidates to fill several ballots.
Take Jeff Atwater of Palm Beach County. What a resume!
GOP Star Atwater
The banker with 25 years experience was first elected to the Florida House in 2000. Then he moved up to the Florida Senate in 2002, becoming the Senate President in 2009. Now it is almost certain he will become Florida’s Chief Financial Office.
His opponent Loranne Ausley? Well, she was a former chief of staff to Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay in the 1990s. She also was a minor-league House member from 2000-2008 representing part of Leon County. She has very, very little professional financial experience.
The Ds dredged Ausley up and threw her at Atwater, where she will end up road kill.
Contrast Ausley with Bondi, who is also new to statewide politics.
The GOP didn’t have one, but three good candidates in the primary for state Attorney General. Bondi, who is riding Tea Party anti-incumbancy sentiment, is the only one who had no previous experience as a candidate.
But she is no Tea Party nutcase. She is a telegenic television commentator with 18 years experience as a prosecutor. If she wins and does an acceptable job, she will be one of the GOPs dazzling new stars who could go on to the U. S. Senate or governor some day.
The Democratic Party is largely down to a few pockets of strength in Southeast Florida and a handful of inner cities in the rest of the state. Much of the constituency the Ds have left is black, Jewish or poor Hispanics. That’s why they are fielding a flawed U. S. Senate candidate like Kendrick Meek, who could win the primary but can’t appeal to more than one in five voters in statewide polls.
The sad decline of the Ds will continue November 2.
Broward Democrats can’t repair the state party. Miami-Dade Democratic can’t repair the party. It has to be done in the piney woods and grassy fields of North and Central Florida on a local level.
Ds have to start finding candidates that can win local races.
A Sink victory would help, but not in the long term unless she makes a major effort to build local party organizations.
What Do Democrats Stand For….In Six Words Or Less?
The party can only grow when it can tell voters what it wants to accomplish.
Take a page from the playbook of former Florida GOP U. S. Senator Connie Mack.
His campaign message was “Less Taxes, Less Government, More Freedom.
He repeated it everywhere. He plastered the slogan on bumper stickers and signs.
Voters knew where Mack stood in just six words.
Ds tend to embrace windy vague campaign messages about “helping” society. I can’t think of one D who can tell me where they stand in six words or less.
Until they can do that, Democrats are destined to be Florida’s minority party.
October 25th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Barbara Stern “Democrat” candidate for House Dist 91, is using the line “let’s get to work” in her campaign commercial. The Democrats cant even come up with their own themes anymore.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Barbra-Stern-for-Florida-State-House-of-Representatives-District-91/108405822534546
October 25th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
The Dems can sum it up in six words, But they know this is no way to get elected, so they have to use deciet as the only option to hide the reality of: Come on Dems, all together now!
Big Government, Higher taxes, Entitlement society
October 25th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Buddy,
a big part of this is cyclical, and totally predictable (i.e. the president’s party losing seats in a midterm election). Part of it is the Dem’s own fault for failing to focus on developing candidates at the local and county levels for 20 years and supporting them for the future. Part of it is bad luck.
Add all that up, and you are probably looking at (1) no Democrats in the Cabinet (unless Sink can pull it of), (2) a loss of 2-4 House seats (Kosmas is gone, Grayson is gone, and that leaves Klein and Boyd, one of whom is probably gone with the REP. swing), and (3) a small Democratic loss in state legislative seats (which is hard, since the GOP controls so many of them).
Kevin.
FROM BUDDY: Can you explain a little more about the Ds having bad luck?
October 25th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
Real Equality, Freedom & Justice for All.
(does the “&” Count as a word?)
FROM BUDDY: Good one.
October 25th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
A former Republican office holder who doesn’t want to be named e-mailed this six words that the Democrats can use:
More Taxes, More Government, Less Freedom
October 25th, 2010 at 2:33 pm
With the GOP in charge the song will be right…”they wont know what they got til its gone”…we’ll be like most of South America where the rich live well… behind barbed wire….their real slogan is “greed is good”…on the other hand the left has already won the culture wars, so this election will be a safety valve of sorts….
October 25th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
GOP = Hate + Fear + Greed – Ethics
October 25th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
“A former Republican office holder who doesn’t want to be named e-mailed this six words that the Democrats can use:
More Taxes, More Government, Less Freedom”
If I had sent you such a facile comment, I wouldn’t have wanted my name attached to it, either.
Of course, maybe it wasn’t sent to you at all.
October 25th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
SUGGESTION #1:
Jobs, Freedom, Peace, Equal Opportunity for All.
SUGGESTION #2:
Protecting Middle Class Americans.
October 25th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
Buddy,
well, bad luck is sort of random, but I can think of one time when their luck was really bad for explainable reasons: 2004! Many Democrats thought that that was a Dem year, and fielded and funded several Democratic candidates in GOP-leaning districts in Florida. Unfortunately for them, that year turned out to be just Republican enough that they lost seven seats in the legislature by very thin margins. If you recall, that election had John Kerry at the top of the ticket, and the Swift Boat stuff and UBL video in the last week of the elections sunk both him and Dems in close races. I would call that bad luck that is explicable.
Kevin
October 25th, 2010 at 5:48 pm
I agree about not having any farm candidates. A perfect example in the Senate District that Gelber just resigned from. Instead of pushing a young leader for the seat, like Richard Steinberg, they ran Gwen Margolis again! I love Gwen and she’s done a lot for our state, but she comes from the old guard of Bob Graham and Lawton Chiles. We need to look to the future instead of holding onto the past.
FROM BUDDY:
I totally agree.
She comes out of the old guard not of Graham as governor, but of Reubin Askew.
Gwen had her shot…again and again and again.
She is 76. She was first elected to the Florida House in 1974. If elected, she will be one of the few, if not the only, legislator who served in the old Capitol.
She was Senate president 20 years ago!!!
Gwen is just taking up space that could foster a new political career.
October 25th, 2010 at 5:58 pm
Broward County was all Republican until the mid to late 1990’s and then the Democrats kind of took over. Ever since then, the Republicans and Democrats have been neck to neck in trying to take over this County. Now it’s finally come to this and it’s so sad. “WHY” can’t we all just get along and vote for the best person to hold office. “WHY” do we have to be in some affliated party in order to get our people in office, it’s just gotten too crazy now. This really sux!!!
FROM BUDDY:
Actually, Broward was very Republican from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. In the mid-1970s, seniors from the northeast moved into Broward in big numbers changing the demographics of the county. The Democrats took over fairly quickly, winning everything from the County Commission and School Board to the Legislative Delegation. By 1982, Broward Republicans were largely irrelevant.
October 25th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Another problem with Democrats in South Florida is that they do not clear out primaries for preferred candidates like Republicans do. Instead, the Democratic establishment (especially in Broward, because of that idiot/grifter Mitch Caesar) lets their best candidates spend most of their money in primaries. Again, 2004 is an excellent example of this. Also, in Broward, the Democratic party does nothing to acknowledge the changing demographics of the county…. simply witness all the D judicial candidates that have to put up with this Jewish names shit (aka McLawrence in 2010).
October 25th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
… and I say this all as someone who is not a registered Democrat! But I do believe that we need a vibrant two-party system to keep both parties’ leaders in check!
I have one rule of Florida politics (which I developed with Dario Moreno), which I tell to my FIU students on the first day when I teach Florida Politics: “There is only one organization in Florida politics that is stupider than the Republican Party of Florida, and that is the Democratic Party of Florida!”
Kevin Hill
FROM BUDDY:
Great quote!!!! And so accurate.
October 25th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Barb can’t make up her own lines because she isn’t sure what to say. Republican to Democrat to stealing Republican tag lines? Will she be attending BREC tonight?I think she needs to get to know herself before she can know the people of district 91.
October 25th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
Buddy:
I accept your challenge here are my six words.
Socially liberal, fiscally conservative, hard working.
Lori
FROM BUDDY: Good one.
October 26th, 2010 at 11:34 am
Ms. Parrish,
Any truth to the rumor you’ll run for Sheriff?
October 26th, 2010 at 8:30 pm
Buddy. This is less Rep and Dem and more to do about the wholesale liquidation of American coffers. Bush was no way a fiscal conservative. He opened the flood gates of American taxpayer pockets and Obama took the bus right over the cliff. People are mad and they are looking to clean house. The majority is the Dems so they will pay the price. Sadly, both parties are misreading the Tea Party for what it really is, a demand for fiscal sanity. It’s time to cut spending, to look hard at reforming social security and medicare. Neither party has the guts to do it. Things are bad when a person runs out of their money. Things are dangerous when we run out of other peoples’ money. We’ve reached that point.
October 26th, 2010 at 9:50 pm
Reagan..yet the tea party backs an insane continuation of the tax cuts for the people who ripped off the financial system this past decade…the next time someone says that brokers, bankers, lawyers, money managers are the ones this country needs creating jobs….i’ll i’ll i’ll….sell my porsche suv and pay my health insurance premium
October 26th, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Watcher. Hold on tight to that class warfare nonsense. You can cling to it when this revolution rolls you over.
October 27th, 2010 at 6:48 am
If the tea pariers were actually serious about reducing the federal debt, they would not be opposing the elimination of the unfunded Bush tax cuts for those whose earnings are in the top two percent.
Even more dangerous to our nation than deficit spending is the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a relatively small percentage of our population. The top 20% of the US wealth distribution controls nearly 85% of total wealth. The top 1% accounts for over a third of the nation’s wealth and nearly two-thirds of its financial assets.
Class warfare indeed.
October 27th, 2010 at 7:18 am
To No Nonsense:
Not me. I like my job.
Lori
October 27th, 2010 at 9:10 am
Reagan..why do you suppose the rich in South American and Africa live behind barbed wire??