Can the democrats win the election?

Which election are we talking about? Which democrats? What state?

Details matter.

If you mean win back the House in 2014, probably not. They need to actually be willing to put up a sustained fight for a number of swing seats, which they’re unlikely to want to do.

Democrats can’t think ahead either. They let the Republikans gerrymander the country heavily in 2010 without even trying to stop it. Now the numbers are seriously stacked against them.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/28/politics/state-of-the-union-sales-pitch/index.html
Assuming history is a teacher…

@bolwerk
The Democrats could have been doing the gerrymandering if they had been smart enough to elect more governors in a census year.

@josie: Yep. And I don’t recall one of them saying as much. They’re idiots.

Frankly, I think they could if they played it right. Instead of focusing on the infighting with Reps, focus on ‘we said we’d get healthcare and we did’, ‘we’re pulling troops back home’ like we said we would, etc… We all know a few thing’s didn’t work as planned but in the big scheme of things, I definately think they could do it by pulling liberal Reps like me over.

And they should get @rarebear to run the campaign. As I said before, I’ve never met a manipulative genius that still made me like him, and that’s what they need…lol

I think that people are disgusted enough with both parties that it’s a toss-up, just like every other election.

@KNOWITALL Swing voters are always the key. There are enough on both sides that won’t consider anything other than a straight party ticket that elections boil down to swaying people like you and I.

In the short term, things do not look good for the Democrats. The general agreement among forecasters is that the Democrats have no chance of getting control of the House and will be lucky to hold on to the Senate.

There is a grassroots movement that I hope will continue to gather momentum. There was Occupy Wall Street and then some rumblings in Wisconsin. Currently, the Moral Mondays weekly protest rallies in North Carolina, which have spilled over into Georgia, show some promise, being better organized than previous movements.

@LostInParadise How does making red states redder change things? Whether a candidate wins 54% to 46% or gets a landslide, the outcome is the same.

Do you see that movement taking off in California? OWS hit everywhere but I don’t see Moral Mondays going much outside the Bible Belt.

(failed edit; try again…)

That name alone will cause issues, especially considering where it’s starting. And if it isn’t what it sounds like (my phone’s browser is acting up, so I can’t follow the link) then it’s a double fail as far as marketing goes.

@jerv , It is about time that progressives talk about morality. Why should we allow conservatives to get away with their holier than thou attitude? And morality is not just for theists. The recent commemoration of Martin Luther King should serve as a reminder that a movement with religious underpinnings can spread to the general population.

@LostInParadise There are some for whom mixing morality and politics has been ruined to the point of visceral hatred by conservatives, so it still might be a hard sell in some markets. Then again, it’s always possible that me and the people I know are just more cynical than average Americans.

@LostInParadise I think that’s a great idea. Even here on fluther, we’ve all seen many theists arrive and start to question morality of non-theists.

If half the country think you worship the devil, do horrible things for fun, or love abortions (as opposed to the FREEDOM to have one) then that half of the country will not only be misinformed and only hear propaganda, but will be bitterly opposed to any and all your ideals.

Yupper. Thanks to the Tea Party, the Republicans, as a political party, are dead.

@kritiper That’s what happens when you team up with crazy.

With all the free PR they get from an uncritical mass media? The GOP isn’t dead at all. People like Chris Christie, who is every bit a fucknut, gets spun as sensible, bipartisan, and moderate despite his thin-skinned delusional frothing and ineptitude. The bridge scandal cost him some of his luster, but if he doesn’t get it back someone else will replace him.

@bolwerk – As far as elections are concerned they are.

@bolwerk When Christie is seen as more moderate and less inept than many Republicans, isn’t that a warning sign?

@kritiper: barring an almost unprecedented groundswell of anti-Republikan sentiment, they’re probably going to hold the House this year. They may even take the Senate, given the electoral math this year. I don’t know what to say about 2016 yet, but I sorta suspect they at least have a shot depending who they pick.

I don’t like that, but that’s the way it is. I wouldn’t call them “dead.”

@jerv: a warning sign and the truth. But it still comes with no perspective, as people like Bob Dole or George H.W. Bush were probably considerably more capable of evaluating, er, erhm, reality. I used to say Rob Ford was Kanada’s Chris Christie. Now I realize Christie is New Jersey’s Rob Ford.

Seriously: the last high-profile Republican who a sane person could meaningfully call moderate with a straight face was probably Lincoln Chafee.

@bolwerk – People are smart and getting smarter. They can see what’s going on and what the Tea Party wants and it doesn’t jive. And the basic POV the standard Republicans have doesn’t really jive in the new enlightened world we have. With the Republicans so split, they can’t win no matter what the math says. Best of luck on your candidates and the betting pools you enter..

@kritiper: I seriously doubt people are that much smarter in 2014 than they were in 2010, when they swept the mentally ill people in. And it couldn’t have been that hard to remember how much catatrophic damage the Republikans did between 2001 and 2009.

Instead of being punished for their attempts to blockade the Democrats from actually fixing the mess from the Bush era, the electorate rewarded them by giving the House and most state legislatures back, allowing them to continue causing damage. It even allowed them to gerrymander the House so much that their power is almost unassailable.

The Republikans will not win the popular vote this year, but it doesn’t matter. I would like nothing more than to be wrong, but they will probably win the seats because Democratic votes are so concentrated in fewer districts.

@kritiper I would strongly disagree that people are getting smarter. The only real correlation I’ve noticed is that those intelligent enough to use proper English, do basic math, and think for themselves instead of blindly following the herd without even minimal fact-checking tend to lean more to the left.

@bolwerk ~Now, we all know that everything bad that ever happened during W’s tenure was because of Democrats, and President Obama’s father was one of the pilots in the 9/11 attacks.

@jerv Yes, and I must admit that I didn’t exactly mean that they were getting smarter by leaps and bounds. By trial and error, they are getting smarter, if not at warp speed.
@bolwerk You’d be amazed at how much smarter they are! And how much faster they are getting that way. Not real fast, but fast enough. They are beginning to fully understand that you can’t have your cake and eat it, too, so they might as well not try since they can’t win by doing so. Trial and error gets ‘em every time!
If there were to be any Republican winners, and if there were to be any real winners of anything politicians can do, it would require a new political party of Moderates composed of the 66% of Republicans who are actually Moderates, as well as 50% of Democrats who are actually Moderates. Then the far right Tea Party Republicans and the far left Democrats could be effectively ignored. And everyone would benefit from this Moderate union. If people got real smart real fast, there would already be a party of Moderates.