In the 2002 presidential election in France, Jacques Chirac ended up in a runoff with Jean-Marie Le Pen, the odious founder of the racist National Front party. Many French voters found themselves in a tough position: not really liking Chirac, but knowing that they couldn't support the loathsome Le Pen.
The French electorate did the right thing, reelecting Chirac by 82%-18%. That much I already knew, but last night I was browsing through some French history and learned that one of Chirac's campaign tactics was to directly acknowledge the extent of conflicted feelings, telling voters that he understood many of them would just be "loaning" him their vote.
I don't really know if this would work in the US, but it was interesting enough that I thought I'd toss it out. If Donald Trump runs in 2024, would Joe Biden win some support by recognizing publicly that he was asking some people to loan him their vote? Would that make it easier for fence-sitters to go ahead and mark their ballots for him?
We won't have Trump to kick around in 2022, but I halfway wonder if this might even be a useful tactic in certain midterm races. Tell moderate Republicans that their party has gone nuts and you're asking for the temporary loan of their vote to send Republican leaders a message.
I suppose there's probably nothing to this. But it was an interesting tidbit that I thought might spark some conversation.
The difference is that France is a civilized country. At least compared to the US.
I like it in theory and maybe if the polls are close, but I fear we're already too polarized. I remember at the end of the Bush Jr days his polling was down to the mid 20s but their propaganda wings is just so effective.
Also they have the ability to manage their media immediately before elections so, just thinking about Comey gives a good idea how helpful (and impossible) that would be here.
The person selected by your party is a nut-job. You know that. I know that. The only way for your party snap out of this nonsense is to elect sane people. That will only happen when these nut jobs lose and lose in land slides. Only then can you reclaim your party and vote against Dems.
....maybe that will sway a couple percent of the vote....
"a couple percent"
Lately, that's all that's needed. I say, go for it. It would be better than Dems having to pander to the "diner layabout" crowd by embracing principles of racism, poors hatred, guns and more guns, kick the gay, burn all the books, and other "moves to the (nonexistent) center" that the talking heads and pundits are so keen on.
I can imagine that working for some people.
Because in cases where a social conservative is actually moved to vote for the other party they are almost always afterward overcome with anxiety, disorientation and guilt to the extent that nothing will help until at the next opportunity they vote for someone who will probably be the biggest wingnut they can find just to achieve a sense of balance.
But, in asking them directly for their vote as a loan, the circumstance is recognized and their interest validated.
The idea used by the Chirac campaign was an advertising gimmick. It was brilliantly conceived and executed. Sadly, the terms "Democratic Party" and "brilliantly conceived and executed advertising" are not generally found in the same paragraph.
As a Trump-averse conservative I am intrigued by the idea. But if a candidate needs my vote to get elected, then maybe they should shift their policies a little bit in my direction. Call it "interest" on the "loan".
Did Chirac do that?
If you are really a conservative, then you are, by definition, Trump-averse. The Democratic Party *is* the conservative party, so their policies are already congenial to you and other actual conservatives.
I'm old enough to remember a Republican party of conservatives (pace Barry Goldwater), but since Reagan became president, the GOP has become the party of right-wing extremists.
Here’s the interest on your loan; Having a democracy (and world) to wake up to in the morning. A country that still believes the people get to elect its leaders, that the rule of law still matters, and science should guide decision making. A world that doesn’t implode just because a wildly corrupt reality-tv conman in debt up to his eyeballs to Russians won over enough hearts and minds of the old confederacy voting block to ascend back into the most powerful position on earth.
+1
++1
+++1
Inerets:
1) keep democaracy.
2) Be able to vote actual conservative in the future.
3) Politicians at least try to pretend they don't always lie.
4) Honesty, generousity, compassion, cooperation, equality
(and more) are regarded as positive attributes.
In all seriousness what would you like the Democrats to change? Should they give up on voting rights? Should they give up on doing the bare minimum on climate change? Should they give up on equality under the law for LGBTQ people? Abortion rights? If you want them to lower taxes, what should they cut to make the numbers work out?
There's a fair amount of evidence that this happened in the UK in 2019 as well. Both parties were led by joke figures at the time (one of them still is), but we had been trapped in the ongoing hell that was Brexit* and one party promised that they would just get it over with. So a lot of voters 'lent' their vote, which resulted in a landslide.
However, even allowing for Covid, it's really not working out well at all, and whilst some of those voters will not change their minds now**, it looks as though a lot of those votes will likely be returning.
*the difficulty with Brexit being that you don't just flick a switch on something like that; it was always going to take years to even get to the point we were at then, and, much as the government would wish otherwise, it's only War and Pestilence that have stopped it from being the lead story every day since then.
** the racists have probably permanently moved to one party now. And the downside of a binary, largely two-party system is that the party is forced to take note of them. I see that the US Republicans have got exactly the same problem.
There's a reason that Republicans keep pushing the idea ofvthe Flight 96 election and voter fraud by Democrats: it is only by convincing their voters that every election is an existential one that they can stop cross-party voting.
French voters could loan Chirac a vote because they knew there would be another election, with other politicians. The entire GOP is devoted to pretending that will never happen if a Democrat wins...despite the fact that Dems win, and elections continue on schedule.
I think it's pretty likely that neither of those people will be nominated in 2024, Biden because of age and Trump because of Putin.
Another Demento Joe truther, I see.
Which reminds me: was listening to Oregon Public Radio on the AM drive to work this morning & heard El Pepe Maximo's news conference. Dude was more lucid than the entire GQP Congressional caucus, combined.
But, in the words of #OurRevolution, that must mean Ol Rapey Joe must have gotten a double dose of his B12 shot.
I’m not at all familiar with the French system of government but I take it they don’t have any body analogous to our Supreme Court. Trump explicitly stated that Republicans who didn’t like him couldn’t vote against him due to the Supreme Court. I haven’t seen any Republican who says they hate Trump criticize his Supreme Court appointments. They are, however, criticizing Biden’s nominee who is extremely well qualified, based on the racist notion that she is an unqualified affirmative action nominee. Thus, I think there are few Republicans who will vote for a Democrat no matter how moderate they are and no matter how much the may dislike Trump. I think that field has been harvested with Biden and there are no further Republicans who can be persuaded.
Look at your post immediately preceding this one for your answer.
Bennett/Canon Republican Primary Utah 1992. Bennett asked Democrats to crossover and vote for him in primary to prevent Canon from winning. They did.
I think the biggest distinction here is that Chirac's message was as a moderate rightist appealing to votes from his left as the less-right of the alternatives. That's very similar to the Bennett/Canon primary, and it might even have some purchase this year in a Utah general with McMullin playing the Chirac to Lee's Le Pen. But that seems fundamentally different from Biden asking moderate Rs to vote for him-- Biden's asking for someone center-right to vote for the left, which is completely backward from the 2002 French situation.
This touches on something I've been harping on, that the Democrats can't seem to bring themselves to do: run in the midterms based on the issue of which party controls Congress, and what that means for the future. Voters have this stupid idea that if the party "in power" is not getting things done, you should vote for the other party. This is, of course, stupid because it means the party in the minority only has to obstruct everything to win. And with a president and Congress of opposing parties, you are GUARANTEED that nothing will get done.
So why don't Democrats make this an issue? Instead of their usual whiny, defensive midterm tactic, where they "distance" themselves from their president (who can't "get things done") and run with hyper-local messaging, try to get the message across that it's not only about whether you "like" your local Democratic House member, but also about which party has the majority. Every single Republican elected to Congress is one seat closer to two years of guaranteed gridlock. Do you want gridlock? Then by all means put them in charge.
And another twist on this is that the best way to keep trump out of the White House in 2024 is to keep Democrats in the majority in 2022 -- you know, so the president you elected in 2020 can actually get things done that you like!