Nov 06 2008
How To Lose Support And Elections
This was to be a post on how Liberals could turn 2008 into 1992 (or worse, 1928) by proceeding down policy paths sure to get them booted from power in 2 years. But before I get into the checklist of things to watch for over the next two years, I cannot help but note the insanity coming from some on the right. I will bring up only one instance because of how it made me cringe in how much the ranting winger sounded like someone from Kos Kids or Democrat Underground or one of the other liberal cesspools of immature anger.
Yesterday Monica Crowley made it to my ‘won’t be listening to that crap anymore’ list when she noted (paraphrasing here) that 55 million voters rejected the Obama “Dictatorship”. This analogy is repulsive and as self destructive as it comes. Apparently Monica is just a blonde Michael Savage who wants to foment a civil war because she and her kind cannot figure out how to attract voters with better ideas. This is how the far right lost respect and power and left the door open for Obama to step in with a positive (if not false) message.
Obama was elected President by the best country on the planet, the best in all of mankind’s history. Our great nation exercised it’s unique beacon of democracy and Obama was the result. There was no dictatorship established (anymore than Bush and Cheney ran one). I really cannot fathom what kind of idiot yells fire in a theatre like this. If there ever is a fire, or even actual signs of smoke, I’ll be there. But this is just ridiculous. It left me realizing I am not a conservative or with the GOP if that is quality of the debate they bring to the table.
Now, onto the other side of the rabid political spectrum. Here is a list of actions the liberals should not embark on, but I doubt they have the foresight or understanding to heed the warning.
- Don’t raise taxes on small business or let the Bush tax cuts expire – as the stock market showed yesterday (and probably all through the months of September and October) liberal policies really hurt our economy. All those people who bought the “Nirvana is coming” BS from Obama and his cronies are going to want to see well paying jobs and more spending money. Raising taxes on small businesses will slow an already slowed economy. The land mine is reality vs rhetoric. Lofty rhetoric fooled a lot of people, now comes the cold hard economic reality. Either way the libs are screwed here. If they don’t redistribute some serious wealth the voters are going to feel (rightfully) like they were conned. If they do there goes the job creation. Remember, when the neophyte Clinton came on board he had robust economy that took him 8 years to screw up (Bush inherited a recession and immediately enacted tax cuts and a stimulus package). Obama has no such safety net.
- Don’t Go On Witch Hunts – While America is waiting for all the milk and honey promised with this new ‘change’ Democrats will not want to be seen as wasting time on partisan witch hunts. The do nothing Congress will be seen wasting their time going after the GOP while the economic hurt continues. “Change” needs to mean more positive actions for the people, not personal or partisan vendettas.
- Domestic National Security Force – We don’t need a domestic federal security force running around our streets. Hollywood is replete with over the top fascism by government goons, the liberals will not be immune to the comparisons in people’s minds. And too many times individuals use these kinds of ideas for personal payback. Nirvana will look pretty much like a communist state if we get some thugs (even with just night sticks) running rampant for the government. Especially in tandem with the next item.
- Do Not Cut The Military – The face of military in DC is one of politically savvy generals and bureaucrats who are playing the DC political power game. To liberals on Congress they may represent an entrenched opposition, a threat. But the face of the military across the nation is citizen soldier, many times one who has been wounded. To cut the military is symbolically to cut support for soldiers and their efforts. They are suffering economically too. The liberals talk about throwing the poor in the street, the GOP can talk about throwing those who sacrificed into the street. It will look even worse if the defenders of this nation are replaced by national security forces playing Big Brother on our nation’s streets.
- Stay Away From Green House Taxes – The liberals enjoyed the hell out of $4 a gallon gasoline. It is not enough that they will not exploit our energy reserves. As Obama once hinted his plans to battle the mythical man-made, CO2 driven Global Warming is to raise the cost of energy through various schemes which – at the bottom line – are taxes on energy. He will try and run the coal industry into the ground. The Global Warming period for now has stopped and we will be seeing a decade of Global Cooling (even the IPCC/Church of Al Gore says this). Energy will be at a premium and it will be those economically hurting Americans who will feel the most pain of foolish Green House taxes.
I am sure there are many other land mines out there – feel free to add them in the comments. These kinds of previously stated idiotic policies from the liberals have some common factors which make them highly explosive with the public, and therefore potentially very self destructive to Democrats.
First, the GOP and McCain-Palin our on record saying these are bad ideas. They are bad ideas. The problem is that the longer the economic down turn is (and it will be months) the more impatient all those gullible voters will be for their milk and honey to arrive. Heck, these people are so ignorant of how government works they will be getting really frustrated and agitated before spring is over. They expect immediate government handouts. They won’t be getting them. And if they do they will be a couple hundred bucks. The natives will be getting increasingly restless and the Dems will be looking for anything to give them.
So they will try some of these other efforts. Their energy/Green House policies will slow the economy. Their tax policies will slow the economy. Their military cuts will slow the economy. There never has been enough wealth to spread around to make a big difference to people. That is why they need to make their own wealth, because you could bankrupt the entire top 1% and it would not run this nation for a year or two. And then we would be back where we were, without the large corporations which tower over the world economy.
So the items listed above have been warned about by the GOP and will make the current economic situation worse (which is why this could be more like 1928 before the Great Depression). And now, in the minds of too many unsophisticated voters, the Democrats are in charge. There is no Bush to blame, no GOP to blame. If they try that the backlash will be immense. They promised Nirvana and the voters want payment for their vote (that’s how they see this game, payments for votes – right corrupt DC?).
The only way for the Democrats to survive these next two years is to reject liberal policies and follow a more conservative path. Will they do it? I seriously doubt it. I think too many believe the Kool-Aid induced fantasies about redistribution. What worries me is there may be ones who know their policies are about to bring some serious pain.
This scary scenario (which I am just speculating about, not claiming is true) is where the US military is cut and a national defense force is created in its place. And the national defense force is there to make sure no one loses power over these hard times about to come. That’s the worst case scenario. No sign of that happening right now.
But if you want to look for what will drive the direction of this country (not the efforts of those trying to drive it, but how the country will drive itself in reaction) watch the economy. If it struggles the Dems are out. They promised the promised land, those of us who are not so easily duped know they cannot deliver, and they will be struggling to minimize the damage for the next year at least.
Clinton inherited a strong economy he let implode over the dot.com debacle, and a strong national security position less than a year after Bush Senior liberated Kuwait with a Muslim Arab alliance. Within less than a year of leaving office (after having lost both the House and Senate to the GOP in 1994) we were in a recession and were attacked by al-Qaeda on 9/11. As Osama noted it was Clinton’s actions in Somalia and WTC I in 1993 which gave him his vision that America was weak and would cower if attacked.
Obama and the Dems have no such cushions to compensate for their errors. It will not take 8 years to discover how bad liberal policies are in this competitive and dangerous world. We are about to learn a very harsh lesson about reality vs fantasy.
Update: Another word of caution to the conservatives – pick spokespeople and leaders who don’t repulse the middle of America but attract it (and that doesn’t mean giving up principles, it means moderating them back into reality and acceptable steps towards a goal):
First, and probably most important, the ideological composition of the electorate this year was virtually identical to that of 2004. This year, 22% of voters were liberals, 44% were moderates and 34% were conservatives. In 2004, 21% were liberals, 45% were moderates and 34% were conservatives.
In the voting booth, it was moderates who made the difference. They had given John Kerry a 9-point advantage in 2004; in 2008, they gave Obama a 21-point advantage. That change, in and of itself, is worth most of the swing from Kerry’s narrow loss to Obama’s big victory.
Yes, moderating the speed of reform is frustrating, but it has the benefit of at least going in the right direction. Impatience (as we saw with Bush and the backstabbers) is not a virtue – it is a path to defeat and minority status. Next time forget about deporting illegal aliens and accept a step towards sanity that brings the nation along with us.
This is a good post. Unfortunately, I think you are correct that the Democrats will be (like Leisure Suit Larry of early computer games) looking for love in all the wrong places and will overreach.
On two points, I think you’re wrong. You dismiss Monica Crowley, who has always been pretty sensible, for referring to an Obama “dictatorship” but you then mention your own wost case scenario where the “US military is cut and a national defense force is created in its place. And the national defense force is there to make sure no one loses power over these hard times about to come.” That sounds to me a whole lot like Venezuela and a whole lot like a dictatorship aborning. Where you and Crowley disagree, then, is not on what might happen, but on the probability. You are more optimistic than she is. Personally, I see no evidence for any optimism. But, it’s a point on which reasonable conservatives can differ. You talk about the big tent, but you exclude her.
I also think you’re wrong about our having to mere ‘moderate the speed of reform’ — that was the mistake of the “me-too” Republicans of the ’50s and early ’60s.
Your correct, however, that we need to moderate in some ways to avoid turning off the moderates. My own sense is that we have to coalesce on a limited number of conservative principles upon which most conservatives will agree, and leave the issues where we don’t agree to be settled in the states.
For me, that core would be (1) limited government – which encompasses both low taxes and less regulation, and includes an emphasis on the liberty aspects of both, (2) a military and defense policy that is frank in its focus on the protection of our interests in the world, and (3) leaving social issues to the various states to sort out in ways they deem appropriate.
There are many conservatives for who the right to life is most important, and also things like gay marriage, criminal rights, public exercise of religion, etc. Even as a lawyer, I have always been uncomfortable with judicial usurpation of legislative functions. I believe firmly that had abortion and the whole panoply of homosexuality issues (beginning with sodomy laws and ending in the new transgendered rights twaddle) been left as state level issues — decided by legislative action which relies on local consensus — they would never have excited the deep and bitter divisions we see today.
Immigration reform is an area we will have to deal with, because it is by its very nature a national issue. However, it’s also one in which divisions run very deep. Once, I favored fairly open immigration, but I no longer do. We’re importing vast numbers of people who simple have no clue about the fundamental ideas upon which this society was founded, and they’re coming in as ‘have-nots’ who will be a drain on our resources (education and medical care at least) and who bring the culture of corruption and dependence that has made Latin America such a sinkhole. I suppose I would favor more immigration if we insisted on assimilation as once we did, but I don’t think that will happen. Even lefty historian/economist John Kenneth Galbraith warned against multiculturalism in the early ’90s.
Cato,
If the signs show up, then she can throw out the term. Not until then because all it does is repulse the moderates conservatives need. That is why I wrote my speculation as I did – a concern as opposed to a fact.
I wrote the post as a reasonable warning on what not to do in the hopes sanity overtakes the liberals.
Karl Rove talked the other day about how damaging it was to President Bush to have people call him the “selected” President. He said to lead the country the new President needs the support of all the people, and disagree when necessary and do it respectfully. I thought it was good advice.
I wonder why the McCain campaign is allowing his people to trash Sarah Palin. I have written to them and said stop it.
One big ticket item that you left out will be the drive to nationalized health care. This is one of Pelosi’s pet programs, and she will be introducing the plan early in the next session. The dems now probably have enough strength to push at least a modified version of this through the senate, and their is no way that a President Obama vetoes it even if it isn’t his plan.
Don’t forget that the worst thing I’ve seen about Obama is that at his core he seems to be very irresolute about any specific policy positions and thus he always lets the people close to him make those decisions for him.
The big myth of the last election was that republicans were responsible for the economic chaos, when in fact it was the culmination of years of congressionally supported policies. We are now going to give the people responsible for this problem more authority to fix this.
If you honestly think that we can fix what’s wrong by simply running $1 trillion to $2 trillion deficits year after year, then you will not agree with this forecast. But we are already at a $1 trillion deficit this year (to GWB’s great discredit) and this will only go up. There is no choice – every attempted tax increase will depress the economy so much that government receipts actually fall (remember the Laffer curve) and so it is not possible to actually do anything positive with tax increases. Combine this with all of the feel-good programs this Congress will try, and this is what will keep our deficit at the $1 – $2 trillion per year range. Don’t forget that as the baby boomers retire, the SS system soon falls into deficit and the SS surpluses that have been used to keep the ponzi scheme going will disapear. Not to mention that after the big losses of the last 2 months, all private pension systems in this country are woefully underfunded.. The only solution to all of these problems is to keep increasing the deficit spending, ie printing money.
The attempt to simply print vast amounts of money to get past this problem is going to turn this country into a big Argentina. It is guaranteed that this approach is what this Congress is going to try, and it is guaranteed that this approach will fail spectacularly.
It will not work, it can not work, and this is why we are not just heading into a recession, but an honest to god Second Great Depression. And the extremes of this will almost certainly bring about ever more authoritarian measures in response, just as happened during the last depression.
All of the economic gains made since the election of 1980 are about to be lost. And even once a sensible Congress is back in place, it will take at least 25 years for this country to recover.
Not a random guess – after the high of 1929, the stock market did not get back to those levels until 1954. Of course, that’s the optimistic case – the pessimistic view is that we fall into a Weimar style hyperinflation, and end up losing our markets and our current form of government completely.
No, I suppose I’m still an optimist. With a bit of luck and God’s help, we may pull out of this by 2033. Maybe.
Dunno AJ
You banged on and on about how moderation was the coming new thing
except you were totally wrong.
The nation went extreme left. Nothing moderate prevailed.
I think it’s pretty easy to enter quite a closed world of fairly politically
literate bloggers and readers of blogs when the larger majority of
voters don’t access any of our information. Don’t have a clue as they say.
What I think is going to happen over the next two years is that our
country is going to be struck and struck extremely hard.
Errortheory (Alec Rawls) has the best explanation for it – whatever you close
your eyes to and wish away will come and kill you. Simple reason why –
you closed your eyes and allowed the threat to materialize.
The closed world of politically literate bloggers is similar in rules to the
closed leftist world of media – say the bbc. Everyone agrees the same
thing and convinces each other of our fundamental importance and
correctness.
Reality intrudes. Your political assumptions and predictions were
pretty completely wrong. I see not a lot of reason to transmogifry
my ideas in the future to make them more moderate.
We are in WWIII and it has started now. I don’t need to do anything.
The first two years of “Obama”‘s reign will be such a disaster that
anybody else will prevail. I think Petraeus-Palin or Petraeus-Jindall
would do well.
I voted for John McCain in the primary. I don’t know if it
was a wrong vote and there is no way to tell for sure. My guess
is that Bush lost us the election on the day he lied and said
“gee – I guess there really were no WMDs in Iraq” when he
fully knew where they’d been taken to and stored. But McCain was
so hopeless I’m going to give him a new name, borrowed
from the artist formerly known as Prince – Purple Lame.
You may fight a battle and lose, but their is no honor in losing
through appeasement.
left the door open for Obama to step in with a positive (if not false) message
Positive message? Maybe it was just moi, but I heard a lot of doom’n’gloom from him. Or were you referring to his implied freebies?
Considering how BO conducted his campaign with jackboot thuggery — and I don’t use that term lightly — I think Monica C was correct in her use of “dictatorship.” To put it in another context: BO would never hesitate to use that word. In fact, BO is probably feeling mighty fearless ’bout now. And that should concern us all.
…
By the count this morning, Obama only got 400,000 more than Bush did in 2004 – which tells me that the problem was more with McCain moderating than Obama doing anything right. The Republican voters dropped by 8 million, yet strongly conservative ballot initiatives won in CA with strong support from blacks and hispanics. Their vote was not a repudiation of homosexuals, but a slap back at an activist CA Supreme Court legislating from the Bench. It also demonstrates yet another conservative opportunity in a state that went for Obama nearly 2:1. You want a message for the upcoming years? Here’s one for your consideration:
– It’s your money
– They’re your kids
– It’s your property
You can be for immigration reform without wanting to deport or naturalize everyone here illegally. All you have to do it enforce the laws on the books like OK and AZ are doing and the illegals will go home. Interestingly enough, NAFTA is also working to blunt the northern flow of illegals by triggering the creation of an entrepreneurial middle class in Mexico for the first time in history.
Time will tell whether Obama is FDR (like he wants to be) or Jimmy Carter (which I think he will be).
A strong, low tax, pro-growth conservative message will win every single time it’s tried. Combine that with a strong socual conservative message that lives the message on a personal level and does everythign humanly possible to shove all those choices / decisions out of the federal sphere back to the states and local governments where they belong and you will have an unstoppable movement rightward.
If Obama destroys the federal courts with activist appointments a future congress can disestablish and reestablish various circuit courts. If Obama overreaches with the EPA / Endangered Species Act, we will finally have the vehicle and support to fix both of those badly flawed things.
We win when we are conservative in our personal lives, when we don’t shove it others’ faces, and when we are frugal with our and other people’s money. Republicans forgot that. It is up to us to remind them.
Interestingly enough, NAFTA is also working to blunt the northern flow of illegals by triggering the creation of an entrepreneurial middle class in Mexico for the first time in history.
And Obama has made noises about rewriting NAFTA. The Mexican entrepreneurial middle class is going to be one of the many eggs broken to make an omelet for The Dear Leader (PBUH).
yup, Obama was Dr. Doom about the economy every time I heard him speak in full on C-Span after Labor Day.
The good news is that we may have finally left the Bradley effect in the dustbin, as announced in the NYT today.
I do think there was a level of intimidation in the O ground troops that actually kept voter turnout lower. whatever.
The Hispanics got conned, greatly helped by the Tom Tancredo wing of the GOP. Non-Mexican Hispanics are NOT a natural Democratic Party constituency. (I just don’t know about Mexican-Americans, being an East Coast person)
For me, one of McCain’s strengths was his #1 economics advisor, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, whose reputation remains untarnished. His peer-reviewed academic work proved that supply-side economics does NOT work. The Bush tax cuts were made temporary because no one could be sure of surpluses “as far as the eye can see”. Expect most of them to lapse as scheduled in 2009 and 2010, with the possible exeption of the capital gains and dividends, and small business owners who file as individuals. Expect hedge fund and private equity managers’ income to now be taxed as income instead of capital gains. How can Schumer protect these guys anymore?
For years, the ONE issue that every adult I know, no matter what their party registration, agreed on was the evil of deficits.
Promising to make all the Bush tax cuts permanent is what really hurt McCain with Independents from the beginning.
Of course, bad to raise taxes in a recession, but people usually just want to know what to expect so they can plan accordingly.
There is no way Obama’s promised individual tax credit scheme will fly with these deficits.
McCain’s idea to waive taxes on unemployment compensation was a great idea. Find me one person who has ever been in that situation who thinks taxing unemployment compensation is fair.
The Republican Party might re-consider the effectiveness of pre-Reagan Republicans in redefining themselves on taxes, spending, and immigration.
I do think the Navy will be ok because there is no way that Jim Webb would have finally joined in without that promise. I’ve carefully watched how different Dems had to be dragged kicking onto the bandwagon. The Blue Dogs are still a key part of the coalition, and we know Blue Dogs are threatened. The populist wing was always reluctant.
If the Dems push through the Freedom of Choice Act as a priority, watch the fireworks begin. I am very pro-choice, but FOCA is nanny-state federal intrusion at it’s worst. I read about FOCA in The New Yorker, and was surprised no one made it an issue.
Nothing can be more wrong than dismissing the coming Obama Dictatorship. Please note the Soviet flags at Obamessiah victory party. Note also thugs from the New Black Panther Party who were intimidating voters. But fear most of all the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. Soon we will see cities and counties indicted for refusing to provide services in languages other than English, for arresting too many minorities for crimes, white people arrested for hate speech, the ATFE sent on a massive killing spree of gun owners a la Ruby Ridge and Waco, massive voter fraud perpetrated with the support and encouragement of the DOJ, massive entry of Muslim fanatics and little Hamasistans created throughout the U.S.
And the Democrats will go left with a vengence. They will use amnesty to pad the voter roles with 20 million welfare eaters, they will simultaneously destroy the U.S. auto industry and subsidize it, they will destroy the coal industry and put all the miners on welfare, they will increase taxes as their spending skyrockets, new and higher taxes will destroy the economy, causing millions more to go on welfare and need job training, causing more government spending, we will return to stagflation with a vengence. And the Democrats want this, because they can’t stand or survive prosperity.
For Democrats there is no loyal opposition, as they are at heart opposed to democracy, opposed to freedom of speech because anyone who disagrees is racist, homophobe, Christian.
There can be no loyal opposition to those who are opposed to republican form of government. There can only be determined opponents. Just wait until they destroy the First Amendments by ending talk radio, arresting any station owner or broadcaster who violates the new Fairness Doctrine.
Pictures The MSM Didn’t Show From Grant Park
http://www.webloggin.com/pictures-the-msm-didnt-show-from-grant-park/
SlideShow: Away From the Glitter and Glam is the Underbelly of American Liberalism and Left Wing Radicalism
…
AJ
The problem with your post is that these are the things he has said he would do and more. Of course, he can’t do any of them without the help of congress. We can only hope that there are enough moderate democrats there to stop him. But the fact remains that he grew up with communism as mother’s milk. He wants to do these things.
I got totally angry with McCain about the group of 14 but now I see what he did as a good thing. The filibuster is what will probably save us. He was perhaps more far-sighted than most republicans on this issue. Even though we had the majority at then he saw there would be a time in the future when we would not.
I am not so afraid of his creating a dictatorship as I am of the US being attacked again. I fear this is inevitable. This is why I so despise the liberals for their treatment of Bush. He kept them safe for the last 8 years and they still trashed him. I don’t think Obama will be able to do the same. The other heads of state will run rings around him. He is just as arrogant if not more than Kennedy and thinks his rhetoric will make these despots see the light. I have never seen anyone so confident of their omnipotence.
I realize he is the president by hook or by crook but that does not mean I have to have any respect for him or his loud-mouthed wife. I respect the office that’s all. I hate to see these people in the WH but we survived 8 years of the Clintons, I guess we can survive how ever long it takes the electorate to get a clue whether it is 4 or 8 years or never.
“Dictatorship” is “repusive and destructive”? Well, maybe so. But it also happens to be right on the money. Hussein sealed his college and medical records. He finally sealed his birth certificate. He told the MSM what it would be permitted to ask/report on. He intimidated the spineless McCain campaign. He demanded that divorce records of his senate foe in 2004 be unsealed! He threatened to sue his critics in Mo. He had his minions interfer with radio broadcasts of opposing points of view. He threatened networks which ran commercials he didn’t like. He engineered voting fraud all over the nation. And I could go on. So you might find dictatorship repulsive, but don’t say that the term is wrong or misused.
The prospects are not exciting to say the least.
AJ, you left out the Big Mistake.
Do NOT bother firearm owners.
In 1994, this accounted for roughly 50% of the Democrat losses. It’s the sure-fire way to lose elections.
See Senator-elect and former Governor Mark Warner for what happens if you DO leave firearm owners alone.
You don’t win elections by seeking the mushy middle rather than your own base. If McCain had been able to get the entire base on board, then enough of the middle, and even some of the left, would have come on board as well.
Sarah Palin, the more conservative of the two, boosted the McCain ticket substantially but the nattering nabobs won’t ever admit that.
Having said that, let me add that as of Tuesday night, at whatever time Obama crossed over the 270 mark, he became my President.
His slate is clean at this point and, as of this moment, he still has a 100% approval rating with me.
When he begins to do things then I will begin to evaluate him.
I will not sell out my values, my character, or my beliefs. I will not compromise on the US Constitution. Nor will I apologize for those standards.
We’ll see how things go.
I’ve got my eyes wide open.
“Conservative” is not something to join or abandon.
I too am worried, mostly as a mother of a Marine poole about to go to boot camp. But as browngreengold said, he’s my President, but I’ll be watching.
One note as a volunteer who spent 9 hours handing out GOP sample ballots at my local polling place, there were 2 Democrat poll watchers inside, and 2 Democrat lawyers at our little suburban precinct. No one from the GOP was there when I went to vote at 10 am. Therefore, I got the sample ballots and stayed at my post all day. They didn’t do anything wrong that I could see, but having 4 Dem “watchers” sure felt creepy to me.
While some of the items on your list are plausible walk-backs — especially the domestic defense force — but some are pure fantasy.
The idea that the new Congress would even consider for a moment extending the Bush tax cuts is a complete fantasy. It’s optimistic to hope that they’ll leave capital gains taxes untouched.
A commenter above is right to add that you left out health care — a proposal debated endlessly and with much fanfare during the Democratic primary.
Finally, my worst fears are all military and foreign policy related: Will we see a nuclear war in the middle east in the next four years? Will al Qaeda succeed in attacking the U.S. in the next four years? Will Russia be satisfied with reconquering Georgia and the Ukraine, or are the Baltic States in for it as well? What’s going to happen to our staunchest continental European ally: Poland? Will a weak U.S. President inadvertently give China the go ahead to reclaim Taiwan? Are Obama’s protectionist instincts going to ignite a global trade war that will grossly exacerbate our current economic problems?
None of these have to do with passing laws and such, but they will be profoundly important. And I’m pessimistic.
Nonsense. The Democrat surrogates use much harsher language and are ten times more offensive. If this kind of language offends moderates so……why would Obama have gotten more of their votes?