If you read the comments in Ian Lind’s Hawaii Monitor in CB, you can find suggestions from across the political spectrum on how to create an alternative to the Democratic Party’s monopoly in Hawaii.

http://www.civilbeat.com/posts/2012/11/08/17626-hawaii-monitor-deep-blue-hawaii/

One tactic mentioned would be to create a new party, either a new leftist party, like the Greens, or a new rightist party of some sort that does not have the local stigma of the GOP.

That may not work. Panos Prevodorous pointed out that when he went from running in elections as an independent to running as a Republican, it was like going from riding a moped to riding the bus. Big improvement. But, he said, the bus can never catch up to the race car that is the Democratic Party.

One tactic might be to re-brand the Republican Party in Hawaii. You can see this at the national level with the TV commercials featuring young people who one would think were typical Democrats who state at the end of the commercial “… and I’m a Mormon.” We’ll see if those commercials are still around after this election, because my suspicion is that this is a belated attempt to re-brand Mitt Romney into less of a 1950s-style candidate (much like Djou’s family portraits in my mailbox).

One of the comments on the Hawaii Monitor article stated that more locals would vote for particular Republican candidates who rejected a kind of toxic religious cultural conservatism. Perhaps a Republican candidate could embrace the family-oriented cultural conservatism that Djou’s flyer advertised. Also, they would have to abandon the kind of stark free-market economics Djou still espouses.

Is that possible? Perhaps it can be argued that every successful Republican in Hawaii’s history did just that. Lingle is but the most recent example of this. It’s plenty easy to get elected as a Republican in this town if you just present yourself a certain way.

That’s not the issue. The issue is that none of the Republicans do this – including Djou. Whether it is economics or religion, they all have the tinge of the fanatic. And fanatics don’t listen. They don’t listen and they just don’t have a clue.

But the funny thing is that back in the 1960s, it was the leftists who were fanatics and it was Establishment figures who were the cynical pragmatists who cut backroom deals. But at least the corrupt pragmatists listen to actual human beings who have problems. And this image of the fat cats who have no principles but who are savvy and who listen describes the Democratic Party in Hawaii. If you have a big problem, Dan Inouye will at least take the time to listen to you and try to help by negotiating some sort of compromise in the power structure. Ed Case doesn’t listen, he’ll give you a sermon. So in the local mind, Ed Case has become a virtual Republican – or worse, a crazy mainland fanatic like Abercrombie. But Abercrombie could reshape his image, and had the determination and smarts to do so. Case and Djou might not have that.

So it might not be an ideological problem Republicans have. The problem instead might be the persona that a lot of politicians in general in Hawaii might have (even respected local Democratic politicians like Esther Kiaaina), that they are outsiders who live in their own fanatical fantasy world (even though Esther Kiaaina is uniquely knowledgeable).

But so many Republicans in Hawaii do live in a fanatical fantasy world. They deserve not to get elected. The problem is that so many of the mainstream Democrats in Hawaii have become the exact opposite: amoral and incompetent hacks who maintain only the pretense of ideology. That’s what happens to any organization (businesses, religions, etc.) when there is no competition. The Gabbards may scare some people, but they have helped to rejuvenate Hawaii politics a little bit not by imposing some bizarre agenda (which is what they once tried to do), but because they actually do have beliefs and some common sense, and have the flexibility enough to compete successfully.

No. YOU are one of MY favorite posters!

HST (“Harry S. Truman”? No, “having said that…”),

“Ouch.” Compared to Dick Morris, Karl Rove? And coming from you? Ouch, ouch, ouch.

“Undecided” says a lot of things I am not sure I agree with. But the argument that the PRP money kept Ben’s support frozen and caused the Carlisle voters to go to Kirk strikes me as eminently reasonable. I suspect I could dig up some earlier comment of mine, but even prior to the primary, I predicted Ben was going to get the most votes, but probably not enough to win outright. (Nothing insightful about that prediction).

The question then would be where the losing candiate’s votes would go. If Carlisle came in second, I thought Kirk’s votes would split between Ben and Carlisle, probably enough for Ben to win in the general. I figured enough of Kirk’s supporters would, as Democrats, still feel some rapport with Ben over Carlislse.

If, on the other hand, Kirk were to come in second, I expected most of Carlisle’s voters to go to Kirk, based upon their pro-rail orientation. Well, Kirk DID come in second and the Carlisle voters DID tend towards Kirk.

But Kirk is more strongly associated with the Old Guard Democrats and not all of Carlisle’s supporters were Democratic. With Ben cozying up to Republicans, surely some of Carlisle’s supoorters would entertain the prospect of voting for Ben instead of the Uber-Dem, Kirk?

So Ben was smeared by the PRP as if he were a major corrupt force in Hawaii politics. Ironic, of course, for those of us familiar with the networks at work in the Party who have long benefited from the “pay to play” system and who lined up behind Kirk. Heck, the entire Train project was largely motivated by the “pay to play” system of building overly costly project, routing contracts to engineering, architectural and construction firms and getting back campaign contributions as payback. “Transportation policy” and “urban planning” were secondary or tertiary as driving forces.

Voters understood that and that is why they rejected Mufi, first as Governor and then as Congresscritter.

Yes, if you attack someone over and over as crooked, it is going to hurt them among uninformed voters. Kirk, of course, kept his hands clean as if wearing dainty white gloves. But he benefited. It helps that he is more likable than Mufi and more “trustworthy” in most voters eyes.

So far, I don’t think the analysis I have put forth here is different from a lot of other people. Sorry I can’t provide the numbers a Nate Silver does with his polling. But where do you think someone could find “numbers” which could prove or disprove why Ben’s numbers remained unchanged from the primary? To me, one of the funnest challenges is in trying to figure how to test a theory. It gets back to Karl Popper. How would one test to see if a proposition is false? If it is impossible to test for its falseness, how can we say it is true?

Neither you nor I appear to have data which can support alternate explanations for Ben’s failure to rise above his primary proportion. I did not JUST mention the PRP ads. I also mentioned, and I think this is important, Ben’s excessive identification/association with Republicans. I think the PRP attack on Ben as being too close to Republicans was effective. They PUT MONEY on its effectiveness. And I think they were right. A lot of Democrats, not happy with the Train, were uncomfortable with Ben surrounding himself with Tea Party activists. Everytime we drove by a house with Lingle, Djou and Cayetano signs, it grated on us.

When the anti-rail movement began, it was totally dominated by the Cliff Slater, Sam Slom, Eric Ryan, Tom Berg wing of the Republican Party. That was its strength, in a narrow sense and that was its limiting factor. It was only when the Outdoor Cicle, the LWV, the architects and, finally, Ben Cayetano, started speaking out against the Train that regular folks started expressing their reservations openly. It became OK to be a Democrat or a moderate, an NPR listener and oppose the Train.

But the Tea Party voices who learned to still their voices on the anti-train effort became agitated, a=excited and loud-mouthed once again in support of Ben’s campaign. And Ben got engulfed by them. They used Ben’s campaign and gave it a reactionary, anti-Democratic image which was counter-productive.

I LOVE Nate Silver. He kept me sane for the two months leading up to the election. I WISH I were anywhere near as smart as him or had the numbers to construct convincing arguments for you. But I am unaware of a pool of existing data which would make that possible.

warm regards,

K

***

The most spirited exchange occurred near the end of the program, over a secondary issue: an ad campaign against Cayetano focused on his previous campaign’s failure to repay $500,000 in campaign funds that were donated illegally. Although Cayetano did nothing illegal, the pro-rail group Pacific Resource Partnership has financed an ad campaign suggesting he exploited a loophole to get out of repaying the money.

Cayetano, after noting that Caldwell previously said he had donated to the former governor’s campaign, asked his opponent whether he felt the allegations were fair.

“It was mainly all spent before the Campaign Spending Commission found out about it, and Ben is saying that’s OK,” Caldwell said. “Ben, that’s not OK with me.”

***

That’s one vote right there. Only 11,255 to go.