March 5
Amanda Curtis’s husband left a comment on my site a few days back and it’s quite interesting.
As you know, one of the main questions I always asked during the run-up to the special nominating convention was always, ‘If she couldn’t win in 2014 how’s she gonna win in 2017?’
No one had an answer for that.
A couple days ago, however, Kevin Curtis did have an answer for that.
He said that Amanda’s “entire campaign strategy would have been totally different.”
This would include:
That vision would be something people could rally around and be proud of, unlike the personal attacks we so often see Dems use.
Supposedly Amanda had “an army of over 800 motivated volunteers signed up and ready to go on day one.”
Besides that the DCCC “had pledged their full support” as did the groups Brand New Congress, Young Turks, and a few progressive Bernie groups.
Those groups supposedly contacted Amanda before the convention and pledged their support.
She was looking at contributions of “$5 million in just the first 20 days” with $1 million pledged on day one.
As of yesterday, Rob Quist has raised $3.2 million over a period of 70 days or so.
Amanda Curtis might have had $15 million raised by this point.
I guess we’ll never know.
As you know, one of the main questions I always asked during the run-up to the special nominating convention was always, ‘If she couldn’t win in 2014 how’s she gonna win in 2017?’
No one had an answer for that.
A couple days ago, however, Kevin Curtis did have an answer for that.
He said that Amanda’s “entire campaign strategy would have been totally different.”
This would include:
- Lots of Republican outreach
- Revolutionary use of social media to speak directly to Montanans
- Great ideas for legislation
- The use of Montana-based media firms and production companies
- A clear, positive vision for Montana’s future
That vision would be something people could rally around and be proud of, unlike the personal attacks we so often see Dems use.
Supposedly Amanda had “an army of over 800 motivated volunteers signed up and ready to go on day one.”
Besides that the DCCC “had pledged their full support” as did the groups Brand New Congress, Young Turks, and a few progressive Bernie groups.
Those groups supposedly contacted Amanda before the convention and pledged their support.
She was looking at contributions of “$5 million in just the first 20 days” with $1 million pledged on day one.
As of yesterday, Rob Quist has raised $3.2 million over a period of 70 days or so.
Amanda Curtis might have had $15 million raised by this point.
I guess we’ll never know.
I see that Hillary is launching a new political group supporting the Trump “resistance.”
NBC, or what we might better term as Nonsense & Bull Crap, had the story.
The group is called Onward Together, it wants your email address, a money donation, and to advance “the vision that earned nearly 66 million votes in the last election.”
66 million votes, or 20.5% of the country.
The other 80% of us don’t give a fuck.
Well, that’s not quite true – probably 50% aren’t even paying attention and the other 30% support Trump.
Sure, Trump only had 19.6% of the country vote for him but he won.
That’s what this Hillary group is about – sour grapes.
- They’ll do all they can to delegitimize Trump, peg him to the Russians, and call for an impeachment.
- They’ll shout in the streets about the FBI director, foam at the mouth over abortion rights, and take as much money from Wall Street as they can get.
- They’ll call names, point fingers, and do just about everything aside from talking about the issues that everyone but the 20% of the country that voted for Hillary cares about.
Loud and vocal minority? Yes.
One that’s going to make any kind of substantive changes in your life? No.
James Conner over at Flathead Memo calls Hillary an “angel of political death” and encourages Dems that want to win in ’18 to stay away from her.
And hey…maybe even Howard Dean will be involved with Hillary’s new group.
Ain’t that special?
Thankfully for Hillary the group has been organized as a 501(c)4 non-profit, meaning that it won’t need to disclose its donors, nor will it be hindered by limitations on campaign contributions.
Nope, Hillary’s new Onward Together group isn’t a PAC.
It’s a dark money group.
That’s what national Democrats stand for now.
And my goodness watch out for Hillary and her cronies!
Two losses in a row and she’ll do everything in her power to make sure there’s not a third.
God help us.
As I think about Hillary and the FBI my thoughts can’t help but go to Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin.
What ever happened with those two star-crossed lovers?
Well, back in March it was reported that the two were still together, and living together 80% to 90% of the time.
We also learned at the beginning of May that Abedin would not be charged for sending those classified emails to Weiner.
I haven’t been able to find anything recent on Weiner’s sexting to a teen and what penalties he might have to pay for that.
Back in February it was reported he might have to face hard time, possibly 15 years behind bars.
They might be able to get him just 5 years for child porn, however.
Remember, these are the people that want to ‘help’ Hillary run the country.
Nancy Keenan is blasting national Democrats because they “don’t know Montana.”
She has no problem taking their money, however.
Well…that’s not quite accurate. You’ll remember that in February the MT Dems actually transferred $25,000 of their money to the national Democrats.
Why?
That’s a very, very good question.
Anyways, it seems that ‘important’ Democrats back East are wondering why any money at all is being ‘wasted’ on this Montana special election.
They think Quist’s chances are “razor-thin at best.”
One of the things I simply can’t understand is why Quist wasn’t vetted.
If reporters can dig up old tax and rental unit information, why can’t the highly-paid Helena Dem HQ staffers do that?
- Or was it that they didn’t want to?
- Did they find all of Quist’s baggage and simply sweep it under the rug?
- Or is it just incompetence?
Seems that way. I mean, no vetting took place at all despite Quist running a campaign for the nomination for a full two months before that nomination took place!
- But my God did those same Helena Dems go after Caron Cooper when she had the audacity to run in an open primary for a PSC seat last year.
- They had plenty of time to go after me on their two mouthpiece blogs, either with their anti-semitic smears or talk that I’m anti-gay or anti-woman or whatever else they think might stick that day.
- They sure had time to go after Matt Rosendale, which proved to be a big mistake as it was Rosendale’s staffer that outed Quist campaign manager Tina Olechowski as the primary person behind MT Cowgirl, forcing that site to shut down for 10 days straight now.
But they didn’t have time to vet Quist.
And now we all suffer because of that.
We’ll suffer for 2 years because of it, and that’s only if a Dem comes along in 2018 and does what hasn’t been done in 22 years – win this House seat.
If not we’ll suffer for 4 years, and pin our hopes on 2020.
All because the Montana Democratic Party is run by incompetent people that care more about lining their own pockets than winning political races.
Hell, the Dem staffers in Helena spend more money on eating out than they spend on trying to take back key legislative seats!
Their precious Mansfield-Metcalf dinner cost them $49,000 to put on, and despite raising perhaps $70,000 to $80,000 that night, they have no concrete wins to point to that can justify either the expense or the use of those donations.
Mainly Montana Dems are just pissing in the wind.
And no, still no word about the June convention.
That’s probably because there is none this year.
If you look at page 12 of the Montana Democratic Party rules you’ll find that the state chair needs to call a platform convention “after the primary election and no later than September 15 in even-numbered years.”
So there’ll be no platform convention this year.
There will be a state officers convention, however.
Yep, the state chair needs to call for the “State Officers Convention between July 1 and October 31 of each odd numbered year to elect a Chair, Vice Chair, Treasurer, and Secretary of the State Central Committee and members of the Executive Board.”
Those voting for those people will include “all members of the Montana Democratic State Central Committee and Democratic incumbents of the Montana Legislature.”
So we should have a vote on new leadership sometime this summer.
Sadly, this vote and every other vote that happens will be done by raising one’s hand.
No secret ballots for our Democrats.
Something like that makes it hard to dish out payback and revenge if your vote didn’t go ‘the way it should.’
Remember, those voting are incumbents.
Let’s say one of them votes against Nancy Keenan, but Keenan keeps her position.
Think that Democratic incumbent is gonna get a lot of financial support from the Party next time they run?
I don’t.
Maybe Keenan will even withhold the Voter Access Network, or VAN, from them.
Democrats don’t think they can win if they can’t knock on the doors of the Dems that are already going to vote for ‘em, after all.
So it’ll be interesting to see what happens as we get closer to July.
Since we know that Rob Quist has no chance at winning this race, it’s a good bet people will be angry with Dem leadership, not to mention the 1/5 showing just 6 months ago.
Will that get us the new leadership that the Montana Democratic Party so desperately needs?
I really hope so.
