The Left’s plan to retake state legislatures through targeted character assassination.

(H/T: Instapundit) There are several amusing things about this article from the Washington Examiner on the topic of what the Left hopes to do towards state legislatures in the upcoming election cycle:

“We’re working with David Brock and Media Matters and American Bridge who have trackers that we can send out to monitor the debate on some bills that you all might be running,” Nick Rathod, executive director of SiX [a liberal group trying to get state legislatures back], said. “I think in many legislatures my understanding is that a lot of legislatures stream their floor debates but don’t necessarily transcribe it or capture it in any kind of way. And so we want to start capturing them on that. I think we know, someone’s going to say something about black people. Someone’s going to say something about women. Someone is going to say something.”

In no particular order:

  • First and foremost, congratulations to anyone reading this who works on the state level: the above paragraph represents an admission by the Left that state legislatures actually do matter, after all. Admittedly, there’s something to be said for keeping said Leftists fat, dumb, and as happy as they can manage – but it’s still satisfying to watch your enemy concede that their worldview is flawed, and requires adjustment.
  • I suppose that the people at SiX (I’m not exactly sure whether the acronym is supposed to mean anything) could have also been talking about how to calibrate a positive progressive message to better appeal to voters*.  Being a partisan Republican hack, I officially kind of doubt it – and I’m justified in that, honestly. If you’re planning ‘gotcha’ as your primary (oh, I slay me) strategy, well, there are only so many hours in the day to do anything else.
  • …Media trackers.  Yeah, that’s new.  Spoiler warning: it is not actually new.  Don’t get me wrong; media tracking can work.  But it doesn’t work in a vacuum. If you’re in a favorable-to-you media environment, you can use to take down a Bob Etheridge.  If you’re in an unfavorable-to-you media environment, you can apparently film somebody threatening to maim a reporter and still win re-election**. That doesn’t make media tracking useless, but it does define its basic limits.
  • I should also like to note that I am grateful for the Left’s apparent desire to make sure that all Republican legislators are strong, like bear! Nothing like a little applied Darwinism now to grow the strong candidates for federal office that we’ll need later.
  • Lastly, American Bridge and Media Matters for America are not so much the people that you go to to solve your image problem as they are the people that you ruthlessly purge from your larger network on your way to solving the problem.  Organizations take on a certain psychic… odor to them, after a time: and those two groups currently stink of failure and malice. The former may be more important in this context, but the latter shouldn’t be all that welcome to Democrats, either.

None of this should imply that Republican state lawmakers need not worry about saying stupid things, of course.  Don’t say stupid things – whether public or private, because a) it’s ethically wrong to say stupid things in private and b) there actually is no more ‘private’ anymore. I’m just merely amazed that SiX and its ilk are apparently dedicated not towards elevating their own side’s legislators to a higher plane.  Instead, they’re planning to try to bring our legislators down to their legislators’ level.  While I appreciate this fumbling attempt to honor the concept of ‘leveling the playing field’… this isn’t really what we mean when we use the phrase, sorry.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*The odds of them addressing their basic problem – which is to say, people don’t like most of the things that progressives actually like – are effectively nil.

**I still haven’t been able to process that one. That’s what SiX needs to worry about, frankly: the dysfunctional state of their own state parties. Not that they’ll listen to me, thank the Maker.

9 thoughts on “The Left’s plan to retake state legislatures through targeted character assassination.”

  1. So let me get this straight — The “Black Lives Matter” protesters deliberately scheduled their demonstration for the same time and place as a traditional event of long standing; the demonstrators demanded silence even though the traditional event is called “Primal Scream” … and the protesters are upset and aggrieved because the traditional event interfered with their precious demonstration? Poor babies!

    1. Really, it’s brilliant in it’s way. You are guaranteed Press and an audience. None of that sad little “6 protesters and 30 press people” moments that are so embarrassing when vile people like Moe get ahold of them. And if you don’t get upset and aggrieved, you aren’t going to be covered by the Press either. This was a perfect storm of narcissistic preening……

      1. Whoops! For some reason I posted this in the wrong thread. Apologies!
         
        (“I’m sorry if anyone was offended …” ☺ )

  2. “And so we want to start capturing them on that. ”
    .
    What, he’s trying to do the job that ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/NYTimes/WaPo are already doing?

    1. He’s a Leftist. He believes the Press favors the Right, and thinks that “covering the stories the Press refuses to cover!” is going to find so many useful scandals….. ;). Warms my heart, when the Left trips over their own lies……

      1. Wasn’t it Lenin who said “The greatest fool of all is the revolutionary who believes his own propaganda”?

        1. These idiots believe that “1984” is an instruction manual for Utopia. So, yeah, whoever said that (Lenin sounds right, but could have been Stalin…. ) pretty much nailed it.

  3. So I’m sure they’ll confront that Democrat State Delegate representing Henrico County, VA who just pled guilty to having improper relations with a 17 year old office worker, and is quite possibly the father of her as of now unborn child?

    I’m somewhat optimistic about this, while its true that some of our legislators are dumb, the Donks usually run dbags against them ( the only real explanation of how Grimm won re-election)
    They had a shot of beating a state senator in Indiana this last election ( represents the most republican part of the state) turnout was very low, which benefitted the Democrats in this case, and he’d for a few months prior played into the right-wing caricature the Left made of him ( similar to Bachmann in that regard)
    Instead Ds blew it by running a LGBT activist ( a unaccomplished 30 year old to be exact) who suggested while running that Christian Business owners shouldn’t be entitled police or Fire Department services unless they get in the kitchen and bake that cake.

    Needless to say this man did not win, even though he really had a solid opportunity to do so ( he’d have had one term and then lost re-election)

    I’m alright with us having more scrutiny because either the Dems will continue to run bad candidates, or our guys will become better. Either way we’ll win for the most part. The extra scrutiny on State Legislatures will also shine the light on some truly awful Dem lawmakers who really have no business guarding the public’s trust.

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