Frankly Speaking: Mid-Week Grievance ~ Still Talking About How We Could Have, Should Have, Would Have Won (in 2000) if Only This, That or Something Else...

I can not remember when I was not a Democrat activist.  But, I've not always been an official member of the Democratic Party. I went through what I call my "I believe in magic" years as a registered Independent and when I finally registered as a Democrat (following the landslide win of Ronald Reagan) and became "officially" involved in the local and state committee party infrastructure I struggled for a many years with long-time Democrats five to 10 years older than me who were completely stuck in what I call the "If only JFK hadn't been assassinated" years. 

I'm a worker bee and there was no moving forward in as big a way as I thought we needed to as long as the leadership was stuck, so I walked away from Democratic "officialdom" and freelanced my Democratic advocacy (pre-social media! Ugh!!!).

 I am a card carrying Democratic National Committee Democrat today but with the traveling I do I remain, technically speaking, more of a freelance digital Democratic activist than a campaign office one (post-social media! Yeah!!!)

I say all of that because I am sensitive to hearing Democrats who are stuck in the "how we should have won in 2000 ~ but, but, but," years and I am of the mind that we must recognize that if we lose it is more likely that we lose because of lack of voters and not because of a stolen state or, and this is a big one, an accomplice in the form of a Supreme Court.

So, let's just think about this:

Heads up: This is not a scientific study. Not even close. (In fact, if you are a numbers person you might even want to cover your eyes!) It's merely a big picture look at some of the numbers that say something to me, that make the point that we need to be thinking about:

 getting voters to the polls in 2016 and thereafter and not about what might have been.

Al Gore lost to George W. Bush by 5 electoral votes. 

Looking at the numbers, 19M votes were unaccounted for. Just checking one state that went to Bush with 21 electoral votes – Ohio – we can see that Gore lost that state by only 165,019 votes. Is it possible that some of those 19M people who didn't vote live in Ohio? Is it possible they could have pulled a win off for him? For us?

I think so.

We need to remember every single day that in the environment in which we live today, particularly with the addition of GOP led redistricting and GOP led voter suppressing identification laws, we need overwhelming numbers to go to the polls if we are to overcome!

We need to focus!

#

G., aka Partisan Democrat

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