Base and Superstructure

Alienation, autonomy, and ideology

Category: Elections (Page 8 of 19)

These are posts on elections from the blog Base and Superstructure. Topics include international elections, American elections, and local Iowa elections. There’s a particular focus on describing and explaining leftist electoral results.

Persist: Warren’s Campaign Bio

June 7, 2021 /

Persist Warren

Elizabeth Warren published a book called Persist. She said it’s not a campaign bio, but that’s how it goes with politicians. Persist is, of course, a campaign bio. Warren tells her story through chapters on her own roles in life – a mother, teacher, planner, fighter, learner, and woman. As with her campaign itself, Warren organizes the book around a tight theme. Warren builds Persist around a broader policy vision.

In this post, I’ll take a look at Warren’s book, building on some of the points in my own eBook on the Warren campaign.

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Iowa Democratic Party Culver

Iowa Democratic Party: Build a 2030 Coalition!

May 10, 2021 /

Far be it from me to offer advice to the Iowa Democratic Party. Sure, I had to join to caucus a couple times for Bernie Sanders. That hardly makes me a party member.

But let’s take a look at a fact no one – even the biggest IDP booster on Earth – will deny. The Iowa Democratic Party consistently lost almost every key statewide race in the 2010s. Yes, Obama delivered a win at the presidential level in 2012. Yes, they won some Congressional races and a State Auditor election in 2018. But look beyond that and you find one bloodbath after another.

Fred Hubbell was a dud. Theresa Greenfield couldn’t get it done. Terry Branstad crowned Chet Culver King of the Duds. Deidre DeJear didn’t bring home the win. And the less said about Bruce Braley, the better. No Democrat came close to winning a U.S. Senate seat, and Trump trounced both Clinton and Biden. Democrats failed to make gains in the state legislature, and so on.

Why? Blogs like Bleeding Heartland focus relentlessly on the question. Why has the GOP kicked the shit out of the Iowa Democratic Party from one end of the state to the other? And what can the IDP do about it?

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Super Tuesday

Super Tuesday Disaster: One Year Later

March 4, 2021 /

After winning the Nevada caucuses – his third win in a row – it looked like Bernie Sanders was well on his way to securing the 2020 Democratic nomination. He built a winning coalition. He did really well in the early states among voters of color – especially Latinx voters. And he polled really well in the Super Tuesday states.

In short, everything looked great for Bernie.

But it didn’t happen for him, as everyone knows. After a big win in South Carolina, Joe Biden nudged Sanders out of the lead on Super Tuesday and defeated him handily in the later states.

What happened, and what lessons should the electoral left learn?

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Capitalism’s Heart Surgeon (New eBook!)

February 8, 2021 /

capitalism's heart surgeon

Some exciting news: Today I’ve released a new eBook! It’s called Capitalism’s Heart Surgeon: Elizabeth Warren and the Progressive Movement. And so, click the link to purchase on Kindle for a very accessible and affordable 99 cents.

Capitalism’s Heart Surgeon covers the Elizabeth Warren 2020 campaign and what it means for leftists. In short, I think the Warren campaign revealed differences on the left many of us hadn’t previously noticed. As leftists, it’s our job to put together a broad coalition of workers and tenants. The Warren campaign, by contrast, focused on highly educated progressives. And leftists have a complex relationship with that group that we should think about.

Having both the Warren and Sanders campaigns revealed some big differences on the left. We can and should learn from all this. In this eBook, I build on some of my past posts on Warren.

To read: Capitalism’s Heart Surgeon.

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