There’s plenty of talk nationally about a looming blue wave … or “blue tsunami” as one operative recently put it.
That’s a reference to the upcoming 2018 midterm elections, in which the Democratic party appears poised to make considerable gains in the U.S. congress. Just this week, a special election in Pennsylvania saw a congressional district that U.S. president Donald Trump won by 20 points in 2016 (the eighteenth district) fall to a Democrat.
At least that’s what appears to have happened anyway … the vote is extremely tight and the outcome of the election could be contested.
Also, Pennsylvania’s districts (including the eighteenth) are so badly gerrymandered the state’s supreme court recently threw them out and issued new electoral boundaries.
Oh, and the Democrat who won the seat basically campaigned against his party’s establishment …
But still, Democrats – to the extent they are different than “Republicans” in Washington, D.C. – are poised to pick up ground in 2018. Especially if the GOP tax cuts enacted last December don’t create sustained economic growth (and the jury is still very much out on that subject).
In “Republican-controlled” South Carolina, there’s little danger of Democrats taking over much of anything.
The state’s perpetual minority party hasn’t won a statewide election in a dozen years, and the GOP is within three seats of having a supermajority in the S.C. House of Representatives. In fact Democrats are so desperate they’ve been reduced to making robocalls in an effort to recruit candidates.
Still, Democrats are working it …
In Richland County, S.C., the state’s second-most populous county, the local Democratic party has gained considerable influence (and done so by any means necessary).
Now there’s an aggressive grassroots push being made to organize this #Resistance …
According to several of our sources, activists are canvassing neighborhoods under the name “Richland Democrats Rising” in anticipation of the upcoming elections – urging voters to attend open house events to “find out how (they) can get involved.”
“Be a part of the blue wave,” one of the flyers associated with one of these open houses noted.
Take a look …
(Click to view)
(Via: Provided)
So … who is “Richland Democrats Rising?”
“We are a group of democrats who work to elect democrats,” the organization’s website states. “We do so by supporting and mobilizing individual voting precincts and neighborhoods to perform elections work. We are an independent organization, but we partner with the Richland County Democratic Party. Our work focuses on Richland County, South Carolina.”
According to our sources, this group’s canvassers have been targeting suburban, mostly white neighborhoods – hitting the doors of households they believe to be persuadable to their way of thinking.
Here’s a look at one of the operatives in the field …
(Click to view)
(Via: Provided)
“She rang our doorbell, left when I didn’t answer, and walked out in the street looking at her papers,” one of our sources said. “She went to just a few neighbors’ houses ringing their doorbells. It appeared that she was working off some kind of list or database they got somewhere.”
Hmmm …
The Richland County outreach effort comes at a tumultuous time for the local party. Earlier this month, Richland County Democrats held a contentious meeting which critics contend was “in violation of the RCDP bylaws per Section 6 Article 3, which requires all executive committee members to be notified via first class mail 10 days prior to an executive committee meeting.”
According to local Democratic activist Chris Sullivan, several members of the party’s executive committee “were not notified about the meeting and some executive committee members were even informed they were no longer on the executive committee.”
Sullivan attempted to bring this alleged violation of party bylaws to the attention of its leaders, but was ignored.
As we’ve noted previously, Democrats have been at each other’s throats in the Palmetto State in recent weeks – a schism that has “Republicans” giddy.
Even better for the GOP, the schism appears to be driving Democratic candidates further to the left – taking them away from where the votes are (or where they have historically been) in the Palmetto State.
Frankly, we don’t see how this ends well for the party …
In a decade-and-a-half since taking the reins of state government, “Republicans” have put the Democrats’ decades-long addiction to big government on steroids … and yet the only answer from the minority party is that the GOP isn’t taxing, borrowing and spending enough?
That’s a loser message if we’ve ever heard one …
“Republicans” in South Carolina have given Democrats a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reinvent themselves … but Democrats aren’t taking it.
In fact they are moving in the opposite direction …
Also remember this: “Republicans” created their majority in South Carolina thanks to numerous party-switchers – including two men who now occupy the most powerful legislative offices in the State Senate (Hugh Leatherman and Luke Rankin).
“Did either of these politicians change their ideological inclinations?” we asked last month. “Hell no … they just switched out their party label when it became electorally convenient for them to do so.”
Stay tuned … it’s clear Democrats are ramping up their outreach efforts in the hopes of riding what they believe to be a “wave” election. However it’s also clear the minority party remains deeply divided between its uber-liberal base and the moderate voters it must win over if it hopes to break the GOP’s ironclad hold on power.
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