What You Didn't Do

"Peace has cost you your strength. Victory has defeated you."

Next up, as scheduled, will be a look at the New Jersey legislative races. But I wanted to toss out some facts, and some questions, and some pointed fingers. And the fingers are going to be pointed at you. The last post was about the victories of 2012. Now let's chat about the failures, and why those failures are your fault and mine. This is the last of these sort of "warmup" posts.

In Nevada, Republican Dean Heller defeated Democrat Shelley Berkley by 1.2% in the Senate race. 12,134 votes out of a total of nearly 100,000. Meanwhile, 44,892 voted for neither Heller nor Berkley, and also did not vote for David Lory VanDerBeek of the paleoconservative Independent American Party. Somewhere in those nearly 45,000 votes, might there have been 12,000 for Shelley Berkley? Somewhere in the 1.7+ million Nevadans who didn't vote, might there have been 12,000 Democrats? Almost certainly, to both questions, the answer is yes.

'Bout to run for Senator of this hot dog. Mm-hm.
And I think I just got a campaign endorsement from this here cup of vodka.

Oh, and check this out: about 50,000 more Nevadans voted for President than voted for Senate. And while Romney only got 20,000 more Presidential votes than Heller got Senate votes, Obama got over 70,000 (remember, there were also a bunch of third-party voters in the Senate race, so the math does work) more Presidential votes than Berkley got Senate votes. That's why Obama carried the state but Heller won the Senate seat. 70,000 voters believed in Barack Obama, but didn't care to look further down the ballot; think we could have placed a phone call and asked them to fill out the whole thing?

In Arizona, Republican Jeff Flake defeated Democrat Richard Carmona by 3.9% in the Senate race. 80,799 votes out of a total of over two million. 91,591 voted for non-ballot write-in candidates. 4,422,795 Arizonanas did not vote. I realize this race was not as close, in terms of raw numbers, as some of the other ones, but still. Carmona could have had this.

In California's 10th Congressional district, Republican incumbent Jeff Denham defeated Democratic former astronaut Jose Hernandez by 7%. That worked out to about 14,000 votes in a district which cast nearly 200,000 ballots. I don't know how many people live in the district, but if statewide turnout trends hold true, then something like 600,000 people didn't vote. Now I know the 10th district contains places like Modesto, but let me tell you something: Stanislaus County? Where the aforementioned Modesto is? It went for Obama. In fact, both of the counties in which the 10^th Congressional district is located, Stanislaus and San Joaquin, went blue. San Joaquin went even bluer than Stanislaus.

So why were we all working on Ami Bera's campaign and Phil Ting's campaign? Ting is a lovely guy but he won by 16.8 points. It wasn't really in question. And yeah, Ami needed us, but did he need us as much as Jose did? After all, Ami won and Jose didn't. Why weren't we all campaigning for a Democrat/former fucking astronaut/Hispanic politician running for a seat with a 25% Hispanic constituency and a history of leaning blue in recent Presidential elections, against an undistinguished Republican incumbent with no plum committee assignments? Every Democrat in Northern California, myself included, owes Jose Hernandez an apology, a hug, and a promise that we'll be better bros in 2014.

Oh, you were too busy to help out? Yeah, I get that.
I was pretty busy when I went to fucking space.

In Colorado's 6^th Congressional district, Republican incumbent Mike Coffman beat Democratic challenger Joe Miklosi by 3.6%, 11,148 votes. Almost twice that many people voted for non-ballot write-ins. Gee, I wonder how folks in this district voted farther up the ballot? Oh, what's that? Arapahoe and Adams Counties voted quite decisively for Barack Obama? You don't say! Oh, and how'd they vote for Senate in 2010? For Michael Bennet? The Democratic Senator from Colorado? Splendid! Oh hell, let's bring it all the way on back to 2008. What'd they do in 2008? All together now...they voted for Barack Obama and Democratic Senator Mark Udall.

So what happened here, folks? Simple. All the endorsements and funding in the world can only do so much. Joe Miklosi needed us to work on his behalf. He needed people phone-banking for him, knocking doors for him, lit-dropping for him, talking about him. He needed us and we weren't there. Do you live in Colorado? Do you know a Coloradan? Yes? Then you didn't do enough.

In Nebraska's 2^nd Congressional district, Republican incumbent Lee Terry edged out Democratic challenger John Ewing by 2.4%. Just a shade under 6,000 votes. Now I'm not going to say this should have been easy. To be perfectly honest, that performance has a hell of a lot to do with John Ewing running a darn good campaign and Lee Terry being basically inept. The counties in that district didn't go for Obama. The only county in Nebraska that did, Thurston County, is in the deep red 1^st Congressional District, and it apparently only goes blue because that's where all the American Indians in Nebraska are.

But fine. Let's say that no one could have expected that Terry would be vulnerable, or that Ewing would run so strongly. That's fine, in June. But this race was tight in the closing months of the campaign! It was so tight that folks in Nebraska were talking about how this election might finally be the moment when seven-term Congressman Lee Terry got beaten by a Democrat! Where was the support? Nobody was talking about this race. Why? Because it was in Nebraska?

We should have rounded up those extra 6,000 votes. When there's a seven-term GOP Congressman on the ropes in the heart of God's country, and he's barely leading in the polls, and in case you forgot it's in NEBRASKA, you cannot let that race slip away. This is a seat we should have focused on, and we didn't, because nobody was talking about it.

In Minnesota's 6^th Congressional district...Michele Bachmann. Let me repeat that, Michele Bachmann. You know, Michele Bachmann. As in, Michele Bachmann. We all clear on who the Republican incumbent was here? Michele Bachmann. And this is in, let me check that again...ah, yes, Minnesota. Minnesota, which is represented in the Senate by Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar, a pair of left-wing firebrands. Oh, and it was once represented in the Senate by Paul Wellstone, “the conscience of the Senate,” who pretty much invented progressive post-Reagan Democrats. Minnesota has also voted for Barack Obama twice.

Now yes, it's true that Bachmann's district is redder than the rest of the state. All of its counties voted for Romney this year, and she's tended to do well in her elections. This year, however, she won by 4,208 votes. I think I will never forgive myself for all the time I spent drinking, sleeping, masturbating, eating bad food, having sex, doing laundry, or reading a book that I could have spent phone banking to make sure that Michele fucking Bachmann didn't get re-elected to the House of Representatives!

I'm the guy who ran against her, by the way. I'm not that great, but I'm also not
Michele fucking Bachmann. Jesus. What do I have to do to get a little help around here?

In Illinois, in the 13^th Congressional district, Rodney Davis defeated David Gill basically by a pubic hair. Actually 1,287 votes. 1,287 votes. That's a rounding error. That's .4% of the vote. About 16 times that many people voted for non-ballot write-in candidates. Honestly, I bet at least 2,000 of those were just assholes voting for Mickey Mouse or something. Our guy lost because of the Mickey-Mouse-asshole vote.

Now once again, it is true that this is not a blue district. None of its counties went for Obama this year. But people, why wasn't anybody talking about this race? I'm sure somebody in Illinois was, but let me tell you, I live in gay liberal commie San Francisco, and there's a lot of progressive money here. We're supposed to be hearing about races like this, so we can GIVE YOU OUR GODDAMN MONEY. We have nothing to spend it on here! We donate it to shit like the Sierra Club because we have so much of it that we're embarrassed!

We don't even like the Sierra Club! We just voted down some stupid ballot measure they had about turning a water reservoir into a national park or some shit. Honestly, none of us even knows what it is, because who gives a shit about stuff like that, but we still donate to that fucking organization because we have too much money, so for God's sake start telling us about races like this one so we can do something useful.

Pictured: One of the many things San Franciscans spend our
money on because nobody tells us we could be influencing
close Congressional races in the Midwest.

In Kentucky's 6^th Congressional district, Republican challenger Andy Barr defeated incumbent Democrat Ben Chandler by 3.9%, about 12,000 votes, and come on guys. This was a moderate Democratic wave. We gained seats in both houses of Congress. We gained ground in the state legislatures. Our guy got re-elected to the Presidency. We even won the generic Congressional ballot. How the hell do we lose this seat, especially to the guy who lost this self-same race two years ago?

Coal. We lose it because Chandler supported cap-and-trade, and because Barr came within 650 votes of winning last time anyway. So we knew this was going to be a tough fight. We had to know that. So what happened? We didn't spend enough. Both guys basically spent the same amount, but we had to look at this race as if we were the challengers. We basically were, given the sea change in the district's feelings about Democrats and Obama after cap-and-trade. We should have spent twice as much, and we failed to do that.

In Indiana's 2^nd Congressional district, whose seat was vacated by Joe Donnelly (the Democrat who thankfully defeated Richard Mourdock for the state's open Senate seat), Republican Jackie Walorski defeated Democrat Brendan Mullen by 1.4%. This is, of course, yet another red district that I think we could have won, primarily because, you know, we won it two years ago. When it was impossible for a Democrat to win in a red district.

And then that same Democrat who won it two years ago? He won statewide in the Senate race. We should have had this one nailed down. And that's the thing. We thought we did. Most every pundit listed this as a safe Democratic seat. Don't count your chickens before they hatch, guys. Especially not when your chickens live in Indiana, in a red district, and they're not incumbent chickens.

In Michigan's Fighting First Congressional district, Republican incumbent Dan Benishek held off Democratic challenger Gary McDowell by .7%, or 2,297 votes. Now although this district only includes a couple of blue spots, it's pretty swing, as most of its red counties were pretty close contests. And I think the national progressive movement knew this was going to be a close race, and we tried our damnedest. We just didn't try hard enough.

In Pennsylvania's 12^th Congressional district, Republican Keith Rothfus defeated Democrat Mark Critz by 3.6%, just a smidge under 12,000 votes, in another race everybody knew was going to be close that we couldn't quite pull in. We worked hard, but we didn't do enough. And on and on and on. Two races in New York. Two races in Florida.

Two Senate seats, and we were 93,000 votes away from them. 13 House seats, and we were 117,000 votes away from them. 210,000 minds we needed to change, all told. 122 million people voted. We needed to reach .2% of them. Seems pretty doable, doesn't it? Seems downright easy. We could have delivered these seats. That would have meant a 57-43 Senate majority and a deficit of only 221-214 in the House. The drive for 25? It might actually have been possible, with just a little more money, with just a few more campaign volunteers taking some time to put in the work.

Keep that in mind the next time you allow yourself to think you've done your part.