Lessons from North Carolina: Prepare for the worst

by | Nov 18, 2016 | Editor's Blog, North Carolina, Politics | 15 comments

When Republicans took over state government in North Carolina in 2012, progressives spent the first few of months of 2013 stunned at the breadth of the GOP changes. The Republican legislature and the compliant Pat McCrory quickly began dismantling Democratic policies and shifting the state hard to the right. They rejected Medicaid expansion, passed sweeping voter suppression laws, limited access to abortions, shifted the tax burden to the poor and middle class, cut funding to public schools and universities, and on and on. Democrats initially seemed too stunned and disorganized to respond. Even some Republicans were shocked at the speed with which the GOP legislature moved.

Then, in the spring, Democrats started fighting back. Moral Monday protests grabbed the attention of the state and national media. Progressives found a way to vent their anger. They also thought they were building a broad-based movement that would capture the imagination of people of all backgrounds and sweep the GOP out of power in midterm elections. They were, of course, wrong.

The biggest error, though, was in the expectations, not necessarily tactics. The protests awoke progressives across the state. Organizations trained campaign workers and built their own third-party programs to compete with those run by the Koch brothers’ and Pope networks. In 2014, Democrats didn’t take back either House of the legislature but they did pick up state House seats and provided a seawall against the GOP wave that hit the rest of the country.

The fight in North Carolina and across the country will much harder and longer than progressives imagined in 2013. Nationally, Democrats and progressives should take note of what has happened here. Prepare for the worst. Paul Ryan and Mike Pence have indicated they’ll push a sweeping legislative agenda similar in scope to what the GOP did in North Carolina.

Make no mistake. Their goal is to dismantle the social safety net built by the Great Society and New Deal. They’ll phase out Medicare and probably limit Social Security benefits. They’ll undo environmental protections and offer massive tax cuts to the rich. They’ll keep their base happy with restrictions on abortions, limits to LGBT rights, and dismantling what few gun restrictions are left. They will ignore the rise of white nationalism and call the press the biased when they’re called out for it.

And they’ll try bait the left. They want to see massive and ongoing protests on the Mall and around the country. Protests may engage activists on the left but they also fuel activists on right. Progressives should target their outrage instead of focusing on general anger at Trump or the GOP. Use protests to galvanize opposition to specific policies or legislation.

In North Carolina, Democrats are learning. They elected a governor and attorney general in 2016 because they turned HB2 into an economic argument instead of a social one. Republican Governor Pat McCrory and AG candidate Buck Newton tried to make the HB2 about protecting women and children but Roy Cooper and Josh Stein kept it about scaring off businesses. Voters, regardless of their position on transgender people and bathrooms, knew it was a flawed bill that harmed the state. Economics trumps social issues when it comes to elections.

After 2016, Democrats should take away two central lessons. First, they need an overarching economic message that defines who they are and what unifies them. Right now, the party appears to be a disparate collection of interest groups that each has its own litmus test. Second, they need to spend far more on organizing and far less on TV advertising. In both 2014 and 2016 the airwaves were saturated but the neighborhoods were not. Democrats need a permanent ground program, not a biennial field operation.

Democrats in North Carolina didn’t get it completely right in 2016, but they were better off than most similar swing states. They should learn from their experience this year and get better in two years. Nationally, Democrats should be looking at North Carolina for lessons on how to be an opposition party for the long haul. They should hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

15 Comments

  1. Kathryn Byer

    Thank you, Jay Ligon!

  2. Chris Telesca

    Yes we need a permanent ground game. Yet – the NCDP is poised to foist on Democrats one of the shortest precinct organization seasons I’ve ever seen. Precincts have an official two-week window from March 1-15 to organize. County Party conventions are scheduled for April 1 or April 8. Under the NCDP Plan of Organization, any precinct that meets and elects officers and delegates up to 14 days before a county convention gets those delegates seated. So in reality, any county that decides to hold a county convention on April 1 can only seat delegates who get elected by March 15. Counties which hold a convention on April 8 have until March 22. Two or three weeks MAX to organize precincts and elect delegates is not enough time after the ass-kicking we took this last general election.

    Contrast that with the scheduled dates of the Congressional District Conventions on May 22 – 6 to 7 weeks after the county conventions. Why on Earth do we need so much time between the county and district conventions? I’ve been a District Secretary and had to gather resolutions from 9 counties and I never needed that much time in between the two conventions.

    It seems to me that conservaDems don’t want to lose control of the county and district officer seats – especially the District Chairs. Not giving enough time for precincts to get organized means that a smaller and less diverse group of Democrats will get to vote at the county and district conventions – keeping in place some of the same fools that have lead us down the road to defeat in the last four election cycles (2010-2016).

    A smaller winder for precinct organization will also result in the election of the same sort of party insiders elected to the SEC in April 2017 – just like the ones elected in April 2015 who are too busy to show up for SEC meetings, or who leave too early and cause the meeting to lose quorum. We still don’t know how many of the SEC members have missed two meetings without sending a proxy since the August 2015 meeting, because the NCDP can’t seem to collate the attendance data onto one spreadsheet to see who has attended, who sent a proxy (and who the proxy was for that SEC member at that meeting) and who didn’t attend. We elect Credentials and Appeals committee members for each District, yet we don’t ever seem to know who attends the meeting and who doesn’t – and even worse are the people who are elected to these bodies who aren’t even supposed to be members in the first place. We have people elected to party offices who are registered to vote in the state, but don’t live here. Yes college students and military people can register to vote in NC even while they attend school or serve elsewhere in the military. But being a party officer isn’t something you can do via absentee ballot. If you can make a serious effort to attend a meeting while you attend school or serve in the military out of district or state, that’s one thing. But when you have no intention of attending the meetings, and will send a proxy to each and every meeting – that’s a good reason not to be re-elected to the SEC.

    If the last 4 LOSING election cycles should have taught us anything, it’s that we need to go back to the 50-state/100-county strategy that involves grassroots partybuilding from the precinct level on up. We do not have any more time to waste using the old Jim Hunt establishment conservaDem playbook and elect officers who some folks claim can raise money and know how to win elections. Because if the last 4 election cycles have shown us – clearly the folks we elected as party officers can’t raise money and win elections using Jim Hunt’s old playbook.

    And let’s give some serious consideration to dropping Hunt from the Sanford-Hunt-Frye Dinner. It grates on me to have to listen to Hunt pontificate knowing he donated $1000 to a Teabagger Republican who turned around and gave the donation to a Republican running for a legislative seat in Hunt’s district against a Democratic candidate that Hunt didn’t like. http://www.bluenc.com/content/who-jim-hunt-raising-money-again

    • Jay Ligon

      Will a smaller, more-divisive Democratic Party will cure everything that has gone wrong in past elections? What the hell is a ConservoDem?

      I have another idea. Call me crazy, but let’s give it a shot. Bring more people into the party, and win some elections. Nuts, right?

      • Chris Telesca

        No. we need a bigger Democratic Party with every precinct organized to get out the vote for all candidates on the ballot.

        A conservaDem is a Bill Clinto DINO-Dem, DLC Dem: Claims to be a Democrat but is always pro-business and going after the big donors. Might claim to be progressive on social issues (about the only difference between them and your average Republican) but supports all the free-trade, Wall Street bankster BS that enabled the 1% (the already rich) to skim off the vast majority of the recovery while the 99% twist in the wind and are told all is well because the stock market is up and there are lots of crappy service jobs paying lower wages with little benefits.

        • Jay Ligon

          Your plan will wipe out a lot of Democrats and guarantee losses in perpetuity. You didn’t take my economics class, but the lifeblood of the American economic engine is business. Government only accounts for a quarter of GNP, and the public sector is itself fueled from taxing businesses and working individuals.

          Most people work for a living in the private sector. Rejecting all private sector employers and highly-paid employees from your party is a catastrophically terrible decision.

          Your party will attract only street people and refugees from Grateful Dead concerts. Liberal economists like Robert Reich and Nobel Prize Winner Joseph Stiglitz do not reject business solutions. They want greater employment opportunities for everyone. They support the notion that the country is richer when everyone has a good job. A healthy middle class makes for a rich nation, but they reject business consolidations, monopolies and trickle-down economics. The idea that money should be funneled to 1% or one tenth of 1% is ridiculous.

          A robust business environment is good for Americans. Adopting an anti-business stance is a loser and will guarantee election losses for your party forever.

          Holding back business extremism, on the other hand, is healthy for the economy and good for the middle class. Rather than reject business solutions, Democrats should highlight the destructive forces unleashed by Republicans who favor monopolies and massive accumulation of wealth by a few businesses and a few individuals.

          The only hope for the nation and our people is a strong Democratic Party capable of enacting sensible regulations, reasonable taxes and creating good jobs for Americans. Republicans take the nation down the same rabbit hole every time. They impoverish the middle and lower class, export work to foreign markets and create obscene tax incentives which hurt everyone but the few. The next Congress will probably lower taxes on the richest Americans, repeal the Estate Tax (insuring that massive wealth will remain in the same hands for hundreds of years) and cut essential programs and services.

          Your idea that Democrats should reject donors is incredibly naive in light of the political world in which we now live. There was too much money in play before the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United. After Citizens United, the political world is an ocean of money. Your vow of poverty is an admirable thing, but you are going to war unarmed. You will lose every battle. Your vow of poverty only works when the other side does the same thing. Otherwise, you are watching your opponents’ ads at dinner time while you are silent and unable to respond.

          Had Clinton won three weeks ago, she would have been able to nominate a Supreme Court Justice next year who could have helped to overturn Citizens United. That reason alone should have brought Democrats together to oppose the election of a racist, fascist, sexual predator. Fighting against Democrats like Clinton may give you a feeling of self-righteousness, but it was fatal to the country, the middle class and the Democratic Party. Because the current vacancy will be filled with some sort of right wing, fascist more conservative than the justice he or she will replace. The Court is now lost for another generation.

          Citizens United will be the law and money will be sloshing around for many years to come. If your party thinks you can compete against Karl Rove, Sheldon Edelson, Koch brothers, Art Pope, NRA, Exxon, General Electric and other massive business organizations by deploying strategic bake sales (even though I love chocolate chip cookies,) you will lose every election going forward as far as the eye can see.

  3. Miles

    Thomas your right about the Democrats and their consultants seem more concerned about the airwaves and the 10 urban counties in NC. When I was growing up the party put an effort in organizing precincts and Candidates had a key in each county. Maybe the future campaigns need a combination of both. TV for the urban counties but grassroots so the rural counties feel like they are a part of the campaign too.

  4. Bob

    Thom is exactly right about one thing. The right wing is salivating at the thought of inaugural protesters. They want crowds of latte liberals screaming “racist, sexist, homoohobic” at them. That will drive Trump voters further into his arms. Trump and the Kochs and Ryan and McConnell will rip up what’s left of the safety net while the rest of the country is distracted by the spectacle. We need to be strategic. For the most part that means giving Trump et al enough rope. Keep the focus on them…intense focus.

  5. Jay Ligon

    The speed with which the radicals on the right executed the grand scheme that altered our political world and changed our economy is explained by preparation. Model legislation prepared by the corporations and the richest Americans were blueprints with dry ink waiting for an opportunity. North Carolina Republicans provided that opportunity. They were particularly receptive to their overtures because our GOP couldn’t say “No” to the money.

    When our laws changed with the NC Republican takeover, there was no period of drafting legislation or arguing about language and syntax. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) handed our legislators the laws they had written long ago, prepared for all state legislatures (just fill in the name of the state.) They handed over the already-written laws – along with some checks. Our parliament of whores delivered. This process was replicated around the country in Wisconsin, Kansas, literally, everywhere the Republicans took control

    Vast amounts of rightwing money went into big and small races, even school board and city council races. We are seeing the fruition of a long-term plan to change our world.

    The architects of the policies so toxic to people and so helpful to the few have been dreaming of this takeover for more than 40 years. The tactics of the corporate interests and the interests of the richest 1,000 Americans have changed, and their dreams have gotten larger, but their core philosophy has remained the same since David Koch ran for vice president in 1980 on the unpopular platform of killing Medicare and Social Security. There is a plan: get rid of every social program that benefits the needy and cut taxes to as near zero as possible. The needy include those who need education, income in old age, medical assistance from state or federal government, protection from discriminatory practices and environmental protections.

    The ideas espoused by the corporations and super-rich have been injected into the mainstream through surrogate “think tanks” like the Cato Institute, Americans for Prosperity, the Hoover Institute and hundreds of other purportedly scholarly organizations. They have, with much early resistance, gotten their economic ideas into the academic mainstream by making large donations to colleges. Few respectable universities were willing to accept the conditions of the endowments until recent decades. Like North Carolina Republicans, there are college trustees who will do pretty much anything to get their hands on the money. James Madison University has accepted massive grants from industrialists in exchange for their agreement to promote economic theories the donors like.

    The rightwing academic and think tank worlds have normalized perverse legal and economic thought to such an extent that they have become mundane. Those ideas are no longer a shock to the nation. The accompanying perversion of our social values greeted us a week ago, and we now witness that agenda in living color – the racism, the sexism, and the religious bigotry. Blacks, Mexicans, Muslims, and women do not deserve support from White America, and the poor are poor because they deserve it.

    Trump was not subtle about it. He didn’t hide his hatred for Mexicans, blacks, Muslims, women or journalists. It was out there in the open. Pence does not back down from the idea of punishing women for having abortions. Steven Bannon has advertised his hatred for Jews, liberals, blacks and others in big bold headlines. The new thing in the world is this freak show now occupies center stage and it defines what it means to be an American. America now has become a place of hate.

    I think the worst of it is the change in social mores. Bragging, lying, cheating your partners, softcore porn, coarse language, bullying, hatred, dishonesty and much worse are the new normal. We live in a “Grab ’em by the Pussy” America.

    Now that Evangelical Christians have endorsed obscenity, hatred, immorality, pornography, verbal and visual filth and dishonesty, who do our children turn to for the lessons Jesus taught us? Evangelicals? I think not.

    • Liz craine

      Thank you, Jay, for your insights.

    • Bob

      Wow Jay. You nailed it.

    • Sylvia

      Wow Jay! Thanks for your insight. I am reading the book “Dark Money” and it verifies what you stated. Thanks to Art Pope and the Koch brother NC is on a fast downward spiral! Our schools and social programs have already suffered as a result. What can we do to stop this madness?

    • Kathryn Byer

      Thank you, Jay Ligon.

  6. Clara Lawrence

    We have looked too long for the Government to fix our problems and it hasn’t work. When the Republicans took office, they forgot about the election. They were elected to protect the people. Our system has become too political. It is all about self promotion. When medicare was or lack of affected thousands, they pat each other on the back and the people suffered devastation. When are elected officials going to understand, they were elected to do what is best for the people. We need another election of people to monitor our candidates and hold them accountable for misappropriation of abuse of authority.

  7. Norma Munn

    Organizing around specifics is always better. People “get it” and especially if it relates to an issue that directly impacts them, their family, or close friends. Dismantling Medicare comes to mind immediately. So does prison reform. Both have passionate activists, and both speak to pocket book issues, and both have local and national impact. Education as a local issue is always going to bring out folks, but frankly is much harder to deal with.

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