Today's WaPo has a piece about the Democratic Party's effort to get the same youth and minority back to the polls, where they helped put Barack Obama into office. In such a polarize political environment as we presently have in the US, there's some doubt as to whether this can be accomplished. A portion of the progressive base has been left disillusioned by the current administration's policies, which tend to be more pragmatic, centrist, or even seemingly pandering to the opposition at times.
Few like the idea of voting for the lesser of two evils but I wonder if refusing to do so will result in wins by some of the more vocal tea party conservatives in districts where voter disappointment and apathy has taken hold. Hopefully, people will get out there and vote, rather than holding their candidates to a standard that might turn the ticket over because the Dem wasn't quite progressive enough. Likewise, Dem candidates need to remember the values they ran on. The way to encourage the base to get out there in November is to actually make an attempt to implement the progressive policies their electorate asked for.
As political gambles go, it's a big and risky one: $50 million to test the proposition that the Democratic Party's outreach to new voters that helped make Barack Obama president can work in an election where his name is not on the ballot.
The standard rule of midterm elections is that only the most reliable voters show up at the polls, so both parties have traditionally focused on the unglamorous and conventional work that turns out their bases. But this year, the Democrats are doubling down on registering and motivating newer voters -- especially the 15 million heavily minority and young, who made it to the polls for the first time in the last presidential election.
"It's a great experiment to see whether we can bring out voters whose only previous vote was in 2008," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Read the rest at www.washingtonpost.com