If you think Hillary was the nominee simply because it was "her turn" then I really don't know what to say because you've bought a narrative entirely divorced from reality.
Oh, don't take me wrong. She was the best candidate of the bunch, no question. Problem is, the bench is empty because "Why bother to get a bench, we have Obama!" turned into "Why bother to put a decent primary field, she's going to win".
And now, the bench is still empty and there's no victory to show it. Whoops.
EDIT: To expand, I believe that when a party puts forward a shit field, is the fault of the party for failing to raise decent candidates that inspire people to vote for them. The GOPe put forward a field that was 100% dog poop, and as punishment, they lost control of the party to Trump. Same principle.
The 'empty bench' narrative is garbage. Trump won. We can pick ANYONE and they can win with the right messaging and support. Honestly, considering our opponents we're probably best picking someone like 5 minutes before the first primary so they have as little time as possible to slander them.
Huh? No. Who we pick matters.
It won't matter who gets picked if they're not backed up with right messaging and support. The party also must be pragmatic enough to adjust to whoever is the nominee too.
Yeah but that's not what was asserted? This doesn't follow from my post.
What was originally stated was we could nominate a theoretical SuperCandidate and that person would lose if the GOP had the right messaging and support. I don't find that a useful way of thinking, since it completely removes any impetus we might have to try and nominate the best candidate possible.
That's the opposite of what I said. The 'they' in my post is our candidate. With the right messaging, we can win with anyone and have no need for a super candidate. Since trump was a terrible candidate, but he had the right messaging for their base.
We can actually copy a lot of trumpian techniques. Like saying that all scandals that your opponents care about don't matter. Embrace them. Have your supporters put them on hats. Laugh at the futility of their rage.
The problem on the Democratic side is that, unlike the right, we do care about legitimate scandals. The only character scandal that bothers the right wing voter is pedophilia; the only additional types that right wing politicians will resign over are sex scandals and criminal charges (when they don't resign, because they're shameless, they often succeed at the ballot box, like Trump). But nobody on the left was, say, willing to stick by Anthony Weiner, even when he would have been willing to shrug his scandal off; likewise the Dems find corruption and hypocrisy unacceptable in their candidates. The problem isn't that Dems were willing to believe Benghazi, we laughed at that, it's just that there's no equivalent attitude on the left of "It's Okay if You're a Democrat." And I don't think there should be--as the party of sanity, this is part of who we are, and as the party of everybody who isn't insane, we shouldn't really have an issue finding clean candidates.
Yes but if you look at Hillary she had many 'scandals' which she spent time responding to. All were pointless nothings, but a lot of them only mattered to Republicans.
Benghazi for example, mattered a lot to Republicans. No Democrat cared. Hillary still spent oxygen on it though.
Hillary's emails are the classic example of this. Bernie started in the right place here, but lost his way a bit. Hillary never really found the right line. What she should have done is said, "Nobody cares about my emails. Lets talk about my plan to help with prescription drug addiction" regardless of the question. It's what Trump would have done.
They were for states where she felt she had a comfortable lead, if anything it shows an attempt to shore up support and that she wasn't ignoring signs that she was in trouble.
Well, obviously the lead wasn't so comfortable because she still lost. With hindsight, the graphs from Michigan and Wisconsin look pretty damning in addition to the anecdotal evidence. The campaign got overconfident and was trying to run up the scoreboard when they should have been energizing and shoring up the base and "firewall"
"Go down, kick ass, and set yourselves up as gods, that's our Prime Directive!"
Despite the interference from Comey, no buy in Michigan, a place that has been consistently losing progressive ground for the past decade, despite attempts to recall the governor and a town having a poisoned water supply for 3 years now? To say nothing of Wisconsin's troubles with similar woes. I'm sorry, but zero ad buy until a November Surprise is a boneheaded, overconfident move. Especially with Pennsylvania's ad buy right there to contrast with.
Matev on
"Go down, kick ass, and set yourselves up as gods, that's our Prime Directive!"
Obama won here by 16 and 10. Snyder's success has more to do with the state Democratic Party being garbage. We easily (13 points) kept the Senate seat the same year he was re-elected.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Obama won here by 16 and 10. Snyder's success has more to do with the state Democratic Party being garbage. We easily (13 points) kept the Senate seat the same year he was re-elected.
if Michigan is like Wisconsin, the state party had little money or help from the national party at all the most recent presidential election, despite repeated attempts to get it
Obama won here by 16 and 10. Snyder's success has more to do with the state Democratic Party being garbage. We easily (13 points) kept the Senate seat the same year he was re-elected.
if Michigan is like Wisconsin, the state party had little money or help from the national party at all the most recent presidential election, despite repeated attempts to get it
it was the walker recall all over again
It's more candidate recruitment as far as I know. We went with the guy who keeps running for losing one Congressional seat in suburban Detroit unless Obama drags his ass to Washington and the Mayor of Lansing, who had literally zero name recognition. We're dumb.
EDIT: And his name was Virg Bernero, which is not the same of a successful politician.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Obama won here by 16 and 10. Snyder's success has more to do with the state Democratic Party being garbage. We easily (13 points) kept the Senate seat the same year he was re-elected.
The main problem seems to be that there's A LOT of state Democratic parties that fit said description. The common factor in a lot of these stories is the Priebus-run machine taking the lunch money out of the State Dems.
Political forces aren't single handedly swayed by "Great Men." Trump didn't arise through his great charisma and rhetoric. A look across all of the developed world shows that. Brexit. Le Pen. Geert Wilders. Duterte. Strache. AfD. Hofer. All were fringe a few years ago and now are still ascending into the de facto mainstream.
And in most of the countries, factions of the left are undercutting or breaking off from the traditional left to left-center parties further weakening opposition to those forces. Labour in the UK is an obvious example and yes Sanders is in Corbyn's mold. But the Dutch Labour party was gutted yesterday, losing 80% of its vote. And the Socialist party in France is cratering like Bush in 08. And while the claims will be its about policy, in the US there was stimulus while in the UK there was austerity. In the Netherlands there was strong social liberalism and tolerance while in France there was a pull back on religious tolerance and an increase in fear after terrorist attacks. Denmark is an effective utopia according to Bernie's rhetoric but the #2 party in Denmark now (in terms of votes/seats in Parliament and they're in a coalition government) is a right wing explicitly ethnic nationalist one.
These right wing nationalist forces are not rising as a counter balance to liberal policies or insufficiently liberal policies. They're part of a greater ideological movement that is self-defining. Its a horrible, hateful, stupid ideology born of fear, ignorance and stupidity but its not defined as "not liberal" or "outsider." Maybe its the internet (and wouldn't that fucking suck if this great tool for communication and free expression backfired like this), maybe its a post-Cold War generation coming to power, maybe the Mayans were slightly off, who knows. But pretending that Trumpism is born out of failures of the Democratic party instead of these greater international forces, seems foolish (and in almost every case 20-20 hindsight)
To indulge in this tangent:
The Dutch Labour party did lose "bigly" because of policy - since 2012 they were in coalition with the centre-right Liberals (PM Mark Rutte's party) and abetted austerity measures that made them an easier target for blame because an ostensibly centre-left party helped oversee the phenomena of some elderly people struggling to afford healthcare in a fairly wealthy country. This outcome was not unlike the extreme losses the UK LibDems suffered in 2015 for their coalition with the Tories. While such a grand coalition was perhaps better than other options (i.e. Dutch Labour may have held back some of the more extreme/nefarious tendencies of the Liberals as Britons have come to learn about what the LibDems managed while tied to the Tories), this was a frankly unsurprising outcome. It also doesn't help that Dutch Labour's most public face for the past several years has been Jeroen Dijsselbloem who, as part of the EU commission, eagerly rejected any notion of debt-relief or stimulus for the country of Greece, which has been suffering an out-and-out depression since 2010 if not earlier.
Meanwhile the Socialist Party of France has become inseparable from the historically unpopular presidency of Francois Hollande; the first incumbent to decide against seeking re-election in French presidential politics. This has been due to a confluence of factors, one of them - shocker - being schizophrenic shifts in policy on the part of Hollande at first promising to be a social democratic antidote to the chauvinism of Sarkozy, to being more economically liberal (in the classical sense) in order to address France's chronically high (relatively compared to similar rich countires') unemployment rate, to presiding over a series of bloody, and tragic, terrorist attacks over the course of a single year. Granted policy isn't the only reason for the Party's unpopularity (I'm not French and thus can't provide more than boilerplate analysis) but Hollande's tenure has proven to be damaging in a way that they likely will be unable to recover from for the foreseeable future. On this front current independent candidate Emmanuel Macron exhibited remarkable foresight in running absent the Socialist Party apparatus despite never having campaigned before.
Moreover Corbyn is assuredly not unlike Sanders in anything other than superficial characteristics - crotchety old man on the activist periphery of electoral politics. The more I've learned about Corbyn, the more alarming it is to know that this guy is in control of what is ostensibly the opposition to the Tories. I get that Sanders is considered damaged goods in this subforum as a result of the 2016, but equating them as one in the same is rhetorically lazy.
To return to the Dutch example: this country uses a proportional representation system, and has relatively lax requirements for parties to enter parliament (unlike what parties have to do to enter congress in the US), so to say that Dutch Labour's decline means less opposition to the far right is farcial - traditionally Dutch Labour voters largely plumped for either the centrist D66, or increasingly centre-left (rather than Left) GreenLeft party, both of which saw their biggest gains ever in the Hague. Mark Rutte will very likely have to wrangle a coalition together with one or both of these parties, and hopefully they tread carefully after having seen what happened to Dutch Labour. Moreover Geert Wilders has been a fixture of Dutch politics since at least 2010 when Rutte first became PM, and while his party gained seats this week, it is lower than their 2010 peak where Wilders' party engaged in confidence and supply with Rutte's then-minority government; the Dutch political culture cannot be as easily slotted into the narrative of rising far-right populism as Marine Le Pen can.
I do believe/somewhat agree however that Western electoral politics is shifting (from what The Economist calls) from Left vs Right to Cosmopolitan/Open vs Reactionary/Closed tendencies which counters the prevailing narrative of the far right ascending due to a lack of insufficiently left politics.
To tie this back to the US Democratic Party, I think the party needs to substantively change their approach to electoral politics (i.e. campaign more aggressively to address the dearth of Democrats at the state and local level to prevent them from becoming a regional opposition party federally), moreso than needing to change ideology (or policy) as that has been slowly-but-surely changing (despite what some accelerationist critics may claim) since the end of Bill Clinton's presidency.
If you think Hillary was the nominee simply because it was "her turn" then I really don't know what to say because you've bought a narrative entirely divorced from reality.
Oh, don't take me wrong. She was the best candidate of the bunch, no question. Problem is, the bench is empty because "Why bother to get a bench, we have Obama!" turned into "Why bother to put a decent primary field, she's going to win".
And now, the bench is still empty and there's no victory to show it. Whoops.
EDIT: To expand, I believe that when a party puts forward a shit field, is the fault of the party for failing to raise decent candidates that inspire people to vote for them. The GOPe put forward a field that was 100% dog poop, and as punishment, they lost control of the party to Trump. Same principle.
The 'empty bench' narrative is garbage. Trump won. We can pick ANYONE and they can win with the right messaging and support. Honestly, considering our opponents we're probably best picking someone like 5 minutes before the first primary so they have as little time as possible to slander them.
Huh? No. Who we pick matters.
It won't matter who gets picked if they're not backed up with right messaging and support. The party also must be pragmatic enough to adjust to whoever is the nominee too.
Yeah but that's not what was asserted? This doesn't follow from my post.
What was originally stated was we could nominate a theoretical SuperCandidate and that person would lose if the GOP had the right messaging and support. I don't find that a useful way of thinking, since it completely removes any impetus we might have to try and nominate the best candidate possible.
That's the opposite of what I said. The 'they' in my post is our candidate. With the right messaging, we can win with anyone and have no need for a super candidate. Since trump was a terrible candidate, but he had the right messaging for their base.
We can actually copy a lot of trumpian techniques. Like saying that all scandals that your opponents care about don't matter. Embrace them. Have your supporters put them on hats. Laugh at the futility of their rage.
The problem on the Democratic side is that, unlike the right, we do care about legitimate scandals. The only character scandal that bothers the right wing voter is pedophilia; the only additional types that right wing politicians will resign over are sex scandals and criminal charges (when they don't resign, because they're shameless, they often succeed at the ballot box, like Trump). But nobody on the left was, say, willing to stick by Anthony Weiner, even when he would have been willing to shrug his scandal off; likewise the Dems find corruption and hypocrisy unacceptable in their candidates. The problem isn't that Dems were willing to believe Benghazi, we laughed at that, it's just that there's no equivalent attitude on the left of "It's Okay if You're a Democrat." And I don't think there should be--as the party of sanity, this is part of who we are, and as the party of everybody who isn't insane, we shouldn't really have an issue finding clean candidates.
Yes but if you look at Hillary she had many 'scandals' which she spent time responding to. All were pointless nothings, but a lot of them only mattered to Republicans.
Benghazi for example, mattered a lot to Republicans. No Democrat cared. Hillary still spent oxygen on it though.
Hillary's emails are the classic example of this. Bernie started in the right place here, but lost his way a bit. Hillary never really found the right line. What she should have done is said, "Nobody cares about my emails. Lets talk about my plan to help with prescription drug addiction" regardless of the question. It's what Trump would have done.
I like this. Dems need to get comfortable saying, "nobody cares about FOX News Conspiracy X."
If you think Hillary was the nominee simply because it was "her turn" then I really don't know what to say because you've bought a narrative entirely divorced from reality.
Oh, don't take me wrong. She was the best candidate of the bunch, no question. Problem is, the bench is empty because "Why bother to get a bench, we have Obama!" turned into "Why bother to put a decent primary field, she's going to win".
And now, the bench is still empty and there's no victory to show it. Whoops.
EDIT: To expand, I believe that when a party puts forward a shit field, is the fault of the party for failing to raise decent candidates that inspire people to vote for them. The GOPe put forward a field that was 100% dog poop, and as punishment, they lost control of the party to Trump. Same principle.
The 'empty bench' narrative is garbage. Trump won. We can pick ANYONE and they can win with the right messaging and support. Honestly, considering our opponents we're probably best picking someone like 5 minutes before the first primary so they have as little time as possible to slander them.
Huh? No. Who we pick matters.
It won't matter who gets picked if they're not backed up with right messaging and support. The party also must be pragmatic enough to adjust to whoever is the nominee too.
Yeah but that's not what was asserted? This doesn't follow from my post.
What was originally stated was we could nominate a theoretical SuperCandidate and that person would lose if the GOP had the right messaging and support. I don't find that a useful way of thinking, since it completely removes any impetus we might have to try and nominate the best candidate possible.
That's the opposite of what I said. The 'they' in my post is our candidate. With the right messaging, we can win with anyone and have no need for a super candidate. Since trump was a terrible candidate, but he had the right messaging for their base.
We can actually copy a lot of trumpian techniques. Like saying that all scandals that your opponents care about don't matter. Embrace them. Have your supporters put them on hats. Laugh at the futility of their rage.
The problem on the Democratic side is that, unlike the right, we do care about legitimate scandals. The only character scandal that bothers the right wing voter is pedophilia; the only additional types that right wing politicians will resign over are sex scandals and criminal charges (when they don't resign, because they're shameless, they often succeed at the ballot box, like Trump). But nobody on the left was, say, willing to stick by Anthony Weiner, even when he would have been willing to shrug his scandal off; likewise the Dems find corruption and hypocrisy unacceptable in their candidates. The problem isn't that Dems were willing to believe Benghazi, we laughed at that, it's just that there's no equivalent attitude on the left of "It's Okay if You're a Democrat." And I don't think there should be--as the party of sanity, this is part of who we are, and as the party of everybody who isn't insane, we shouldn't really have an issue finding clean candidates.
Yes but if you look at Hillary she had many 'scandals' which she spent time responding to. All were pointless nothings, but a lot of them only mattered to Republicans.
Benghazi for example, mattered a lot to Republicans. No Democrat cared. Hillary still spent oxygen on it though.
Hillary's emails are the classic example of this. Bernie started in the right place here, but lost his way a bit. Hillary never really found the right line. What she should have done is said, "Nobody cares about my emails. Lets talk about my plan to help with prescription drug addiction" regardless of the question. It's what Trump would have done.
I like this. Dems need to get comfortable saying, "nobody cares about FOX News Conspiracy X."
And they need to stick HARD to it. You ONLY address scandals that your potential supporters care about (or that everyone cares about). You simply refuse to address anything else. Noone who might vote for Hillary cares about emails, Benghazi, the Clinton Foundation scandal and so on. Bernie's only real error as a candidate was that he did manage to make a few potential democratic voters care about that, but, if Clinton had just refused to even comment on it or discuss it outside of long boring senate hearings wouldn't have mattered.
Familiarize yourself with this phrase Democratic candidates, "I don't care about that, lets talk about this instead" and then simply ignore ALL efforts to steer you back to talking about the thing that can only possibly hurt yourself. If noone on your side cares, then NOBODY cares.
It's especially important because the right has been ramping up fake scandals. Between O'Keefe and the spread of fake news (Pizza gate anyone?) The D's need to get better at dealing with that.
The former especially; a few of his they still did the "staffer invoked resigns to make things go away", which just doesn't work with this shit.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Democrats definitely cared about emails, and if Clinton had dismissed the issue the media would have dogpiled on her forever anyway as fitting their stereotype of the cold, secretive woman who won't even apologize for her fuckups. Multiple times during the campaign people in PA threads would say "The emails issue would go away if she just explained and apologized" and then would be told of the previous dozen times that she had to no avail.
The problem with the emails wasn't emails; the issue was a neutral proxy for free-floating Clinton dislike generated by decades of right win propaganda, media malpractice and general sexism. That's why it wouldn't go away, and no amount of handwaving was going to do it. The most effective way for Clinton to end the story would have been for her to have been born a man.
I guess i don't really believe it's inherently hypocritical to say that we need to get rid of the influence of big donors in politics, but then to currently be accepting donations.
It's an unfortunate reality of the world we live in at the moment. As long as CU is on the books you can't really compete without those kinds of donors.
I'm aware that people are going to want to put as many asterisks on this, but:
Trump did.
But the vision of going from one candidate grabbing the anti-establishment flag to the next is pretty much happening. This time, Trump did. Next, maybe a Dem will. And so on and so on.
Trump is a reaction to Obama, who was also an anti establishment outsider.
I guess i don't really believe it's inherently hypocritical to say that we need to get rid of the influence of big donors in politics, but then to currently be accepting donations.
It's an unfortunate reality of the world we live in at the moment. As long as CU is on the books you can't really compete without those kinds of donors.
To be fair Democrats would still need to rely on big donors regardless, paying the bills for a national organisation and supporting numerous political campaigns isn't cheap. CU simply put this on steroids.
Obama won here by 16 and 10. Snyder's success has more to do with the state Democratic Party being garbage. We easily (13 points) kept the Senate seat the same year he was re-elected.
Or dems are refusing to notice their loss of grip on states they consider safe.
Like the lack of ad buy is, if not causal, at least correlative. The major complaint from a lot of middle America being that they feel the Democrats don't listen to or care about them. I don't care if its a functionally incorrect stance, it's what they feel.
My suggestion: always maintain an ad buy floor in our "safe" states. Maintain the pressure in these states, and do it with ads that aren't just attacking the other guy. Do it with ads that explicitly explain how we are helping them.
Corbyn is like Sanders if Sanders had no charisma and wasn't really sure what he stood for aside from "things the establishment hates."
They have a great many things in common. Have skewed priorities, focus more on their internal opponents rather than the opposition party, have an over enthusiastic sub-group in their base, hire and ally with terrible people, obsessed with purifying their parties, anti-establishment, see any of their allies on the left who don't agree with them as the enemy, spent decades in politics as rebels, believe in old school leftism and control a small sub-section of outsiders from the left.
Corbyn is like Sanders if Sanders had no charisma and wasn't really sure what he stood for aside from "things the establishment hates."
This is unfair imo. Sanders has, like, awareness of politics and seems interested in winning elections.
His awareness is nowhere what it should be and his interest is - limited - when it comes to getting what he wants. Unlike Corbyn he's also not as skilled at manipulating the system to get those wins he needs.
edit: That said the UK system allowed Corbyn to have an easier shot at taking over Labour, I don't think he'd been able to do that in the Democratic primaries.
Corbyn is like Sanders if Sanders had no charisma and wasn't really sure what he stood for aside from "things the establishment hates."
This is unfair imo. Sanders has, like, awareness of politics and seems interested in winning elections.
His awareness is nowhere what it should be and his interest is - limited - when it comes to getting what he wants. Unlike Corbyn he's also not as skilled at manipulating the system to get those wins he needs.
His team was the one offering to do october rallies in the midwest. Hillary's team was the one ignoring everything up until the last week.
Corbyn is like Sanders if Sanders had no charisma and wasn't really sure what he stood for aside from "things the establishment hates."
This is unfair imo. Sanders has, like, awareness of politics and seems interested in winning elections.
His awareness is nowhere what it should be and his interest is - limited - when it comes to getting what he wants. Unlike Corbyn he's also not as skilled at manipulating the system to get those wins he needs.
His team was the one offering to do october rallies in the midwest. Hillary's team was the one ignoring everything up until the last week.
Without getting into whether Sanders would have done better in the general, which is difficult/impossible to determine, it's important to realize it's also irrelevant. To be president you need to be able to win the primary and the general. Sanders couldn't do that. Ended up that Clinton couldn't do that either. They both failed to become president. So can we drop it?
Corbyn is like Sanders if Sanders had no charisma and wasn't really sure what he stood for aside from "things the establishment hates."
This is unfair imo. Sanders has, like, awareness of politics and seems interested in winning elections.
His awareness is nowhere what it should be and his interest is - limited - when it comes to getting what he wants. Unlike Corbyn he's also not as skilled at manipulating the system to get those wins he needs.
His team was the one offering to do october rallies in the midwest. Hillary's team was the one ignoring everything up until the last week.
Context?
As the days and weeks flew by, the Bernie delegation kept underscoring TPP, jobs, union allies, the youth vote, and the environment, and pitched multiple rallies with Sanders in states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan (a state where Sanders unexpectedly beat Clinton in the Democratic primary, and a state that Clinton actively neglected during the general).
“The math that they lost on, is the math we won on,” Konst said. “So we wrote out a plan, and sent it to them, telling them to stop thinking you’re going to get this ‘Obama coalition,’ it’s not going to happen.”
Corbyn is like Sanders if Sanders had no charisma and wasn't really sure what he stood for aside from "things the establishment hates."
This is unfair imo. Sanders has, like, awareness of politics and seems interested in winning elections.
His awareness is nowhere what it should be and his interest is - limited - when it comes to getting what he wants. Unlike Corbyn he's also not as skilled at manipulating the system to get those wins he needs.
His team was the one offering to do october rallies in the midwest. Hillary's team was the one ignoring everything up until the last week.
Context?
As the days and weeks flew by, the Bernie delegation kept underscoring TPP, jobs, union allies, the youth vote, and the environment, and pitched multiple rallies with Sanders in states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan (a state where Sanders unexpectedly beat Clinton in the Democratic primary, and a state that Clinton actively neglected during the general).
“The math that they lost on, is the math we won on,” Konst said. “So we wrote out a plan, and sent it to them, telling them to stop thinking you’re going to get this ‘Obama coalition,’ it’s not going to happen.”
Corbyn is like Sanders if Sanders had no charisma and wasn't really sure what he stood for aside from "things the establishment hates."
This is unfair imo. Sanders has, like, awareness of politics and seems interested in winning elections.
His awareness is nowhere what it should be and his interest is - limited - when it comes to getting what he wants. Unlike Corbyn he's also not as skilled at manipulating the system to get those wins he needs.
edit: That said the UK system allowed Corbyn to have an easier shot at taking over Labour, I don't think he'd been able to do that in the Democratic primaries.
I think you are confusing awareness with the tactics he's using. And Corbyn is terrible at working the system, that's basically his whole problem. He only understands how to be a voice in the wilderness.
There's elements in common but the comparison is vastly overblown.
Corbyn is like Sanders if Sanders had no charisma and wasn't really sure what he stood for aside from "things the establishment hates."
Sanders is so much more charismatic than Corbyn that Corbyn managed to successfully take over his party in two separate leadership votes and Sanders lost by 20%.
They are also both classic leftists who describe themselves as socialists who have run largely/primarily as outsider purists attacking the establishment both in the form of their own party and the economy at large. Both focused largely on attacking prior governments run by their party (the Clinton Administration and the Blair government), both were tepid on Brexit, both claim their parties ran rigged systems to determine leadership. Both vocally supported various Latin American left wing strongmen until it was inconvenient, both have historically been wishy washy on scientific issues like homeopathy and other quackery, both put forth policy proposals that sounds good as long as you don't actually crunch the numbers and dismiss those criticisms.
America is not immune to the currents of thought and ideology that are generating these movements. Two different back benchers, Corbyn and Sanders, self described socialists rising to prominence by railing against the man in the guise of their own liberal parties while far right ethnic nationalism rises to the mainstream isn't just a coincidence. Corbyn's utter failure might make that unflattering to Sanders, but the parallels are obvious.
I think you are confusing awareness with the tactics he's using. And Corbyn is terrible at working the system, that's basically his whole problem. He only understands how to be a voice in the wilderness.
There's elements in common but the comparison is vastly overblown.
Sanders doesn't know how to work the system either. He's been in Congress since 1990 and has never led on a single non-trivial piece of legislation. His supporters tried to paper that over with "Amendment King" nonsense, but if you follow those amendments to completion, they almost never make it to law. The biggest thing he's ever done is getting a few rural hospitals built as part of ACA, which he's subsequently attacked. He's also never shown any interest in getting any one else elected, even in his own state, because his disdain for both parties. There's a reason he had essentially no support among Democratic legislators.
Corbyn is like Sanders if Sanders had no charisma and wasn't really sure what he stood for aside from "things the establishment hates."
This is unfair imo. Sanders has, like, awareness of politics and seems interested in winning elections.
His awareness is nowhere what it should be and his interest is - limited - when it comes to getting what he wants. Unlike Corbyn he's also not as skilled at manipulating the system to get those wins he needs.
edit: That said the UK system allowed Corbyn to have an easier shot at taking over Labour, I don't think he'd been able to do that in the Democratic primaries.
I think you are confusing awareness with the tactics he's using. And Corbyn is terrible at working the system, that's basically his whole problem. He only understands how to be a voice in the wilderness.
There's elements in common but the comparison is vastly overblown.
Bernie is not that much more brighter than Corbyn, and I'd say Corbyn has the edge in working with the system since he was able to game it to his advantage to take over his part while Bernie failed with his. Corbyn's group never had issues navigating their process, Bernie's did.
He's also unable to switch gears by addressing other groups of potential voters RE: his repeated speechmaking over the same subject and his knowledge about subjects like banking and how he's going to implement his goals once he gets in power is severely lacking.
Corbyn is like Sanders if Sanders had no charisma and wasn't really sure what he stood for aside from "things the establishment hates."
This is unfair imo. Sanders has, like, awareness of politics and seems interested in winning elections.
His awareness is nowhere what it should be and his interest is - limited - when it comes to getting what he wants. Unlike Corbyn he's also not as skilled at manipulating the system to get those wins he needs.
His team was the one offering to do october rallies in the midwest. Hillary's team was the one ignoring everything up until the last week.
Context?
As the days and weeks flew by, the Bernie delegation kept underscoring TPP, jobs, union allies, the youth vote, and the environment, and pitched multiple rallies with Sanders in states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan (a state where Sanders unexpectedly beat Clinton in the Democratic primary, and a state that Clinton actively neglected during the general).
“The math that they lost on, is the math we won on,” Konst said. “So we wrote out a plan, and sent it to them, telling them to stop thinking you’re going to get this ‘Obama coalition,’ it’s not going to happen.”
Repeating that BS doesn't make it true and conveniently ignores that while Sanders won by 1% in Michigan, Clinton won by 12+% in PA.
Look at the exit polls. Clinton won in Michigan and Pennsylvania (and WI and OH and essentially every where else except the deep red states) among voters whose top issue was the economy. Obama didn't do that. Trump only won among those who thought the most important issues were immigration and terrorism. This election was about white nationalism, racism and misogyny.
edit
Also, those "multiple rallies" took place in a single day in Michigan, and a single day in PA in the first week in October.
It's true, we really didn't have a chance this election with either candidate
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
It's true, we really didn't have a chance this election with either candidate
"Didn't have a chance" it was a razor thin margin in 3 states, it seems pretty clear in retrospect what went wrong and we can correct those mistakes next time
but that can't happen if we declare that nobody could of won and everything was always hopeless
The major complaint from a lot of middle America being that they feel the Democrats don't listen to or care about them. I don't care if its a functionally incorrect stance, it's what they feel.
Except that they go on to say "The Democrats were too busy talking about bathrooms", which is a tell that what they're actually saying is "We feel that you're spending too much time on all those other groups, and not enough time on us, as should be the case." It's not about them not being listened to, its about them no longer being prioritized.
It's true, we really didn't have a chance this election with either candidate
"Didn't have a chance" it was a razor thin margin in 3 states, it seems pretty clear in retrospect what went wrong and we can correct those mistakes next time
but that can't happen if we declare that nobody could of won and everything was always hopeless
Next time will be different, but pulling off the specific trick of electing a Democrat after a Democrat wasn't in the cards. Excluding re-election and during-term transition, only Republicans have done this in the past century. The next chance we'll get to prove the possibility of a democratic dynasty, for just the executive branch, is 2024 at the earliest.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
The results show that it was really about turnout in those states. The voters the party didn't reach are the ones who were either legally barred from the polls or who weren't enthusiastic about Clinton. The only way to reach the Obama-Trump voters is to let them figure out how badly they screwed themselves and hope they come around on their own, but they weren't the issue, numerically.
It's true, we really didn't have a chance this election with either candidate
"Didn't have a chance" it was a razor thin margin in 3 states, it seems pretty clear in retrospect what went wrong and we can correct those mistakes next time
but that can't happen if we declare that nobody could of won and everything was always hopeless
Next time will be different, but pulling off the specific trick of electing a Democrat after a Democrat wasn't in the cards. Excluding re-election and during-term transition, only Republicans have done this in the past century. The next chance we'll get to prove the possibility of a democratic dynasty, for just the executive branch, is 2024 at the earliest.
they barely won, and in two of the three states we needed Clinton did all but not campaign at all
It's true, we really didn't have a chance this election with either candidate
"Didn't have a chance" it was a razor thin margin in 3 states, it seems pretty clear in retrospect what went wrong and we can correct those mistakes next time
but that can't happen if we declare that nobody could of won and everything was always hopeless
Next time will be different, but pulling off the specific trick of electing a Democrat after a Democrat wasn't in the cards. Excluding re-election and during-term transition, only Republicans have done this in the past century. The next chance we'll get to prove the possibility of a democratic dynasty, for just the executive branch, is 2024 at the earliest.
they barely won, and in two of the three states we needed Clinton did all but not campaign at all
Even so, she was fighting two impressive historical barriers: no woman has ever become the US president, and no democrat has succeeded another democrat since Pat Buchanan in 1856. The fact that this was not nearly as close as the 2000 election shows that Democrats have a way to go before they can reproduce the history breaking combo of 1988, a time when everybody was republican.
Paladin on
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Neither Sanders nor Corbyn understand how to be the leader of an opposition party--Corybn because he's not even facing the goal, Sanders because he's too busy criticising his own team to step up and lead it. Bernie could have seized the moment after the election or even the inauguration, called himself a Democrat and taken the fight to the GOP. Instead he's just out there giving the stump speech and railing at the only party with any hope of defeating Trump. I'm not a huge Bernie fan but I would have respected a move like that and it's pretty depressing that nobody did it.
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Yes but if you look at Hillary she had many 'scandals' which she spent time responding to. All were pointless nothings, but a lot of them only mattered to Republicans.
Benghazi for example, mattered a lot to Republicans. No Democrat cared. Hillary still spent oxygen on it though.
Hillary's emails are the classic example of this. Bernie started in the right place here, but lost his way a bit. Hillary never really found the right line. What she should have done is said, "Nobody cares about my emails. Lets talk about my plan to help with prescription drug addiction" regardless of the question. It's what Trump would have done.
Two of those are obviously last minute ad buys. Not a great look
if Michigan is like Wisconsin, the state party had little money or help from the national party at all the most recent presidential election, despite repeated attempts to get it
it was the walker recall all over again
It's more candidate recruitment as far as I know. We went with the guy who keeps running for losing one Congressional seat in suburban Detroit unless Obama drags his ass to Washington and the Mayor of Lansing, who had literally zero name recognition. We're dumb.
EDIT: And his name was Virg Bernero, which is not the same of a successful politician.
The main problem seems to be that there's A LOT of state Democratic parties that fit said description. The common factor in a lot of these stories is the Priebus-run machine taking the lunch money out of the State Dems.
To indulge in this tangent:
The Dutch Labour party did lose "bigly" because of policy - since 2012 they were in coalition with the centre-right Liberals (PM Mark Rutte's party) and abetted austerity measures that made them an easier target for blame because an ostensibly centre-left party helped oversee the phenomena of some elderly people struggling to afford healthcare in a fairly wealthy country. This outcome was not unlike the extreme losses the UK LibDems suffered in 2015 for their coalition with the Tories. While such a grand coalition was perhaps better than other options (i.e. Dutch Labour may have held back some of the more extreme/nefarious tendencies of the Liberals as Britons have come to learn about what the LibDems managed while tied to the Tories), this was a frankly unsurprising outcome. It also doesn't help that Dutch Labour's most public face for the past several years has been Jeroen Dijsselbloem who, as part of the EU commission, eagerly rejected any notion of debt-relief or stimulus for the country of Greece, which has been suffering an out-and-out depression since 2010 if not earlier.
Meanwhile the Socialist Party of France has become inseparable from the historically unpopular presidency of Francois Hollande; the first incumbent to decide against seeking re-election in French presidential politics. This has been due to a confluence of factors, one of them - shocker - being schizophrenic shifts in policy on the part of Hollande at first promising to be a social democratic antidote to the chauvinism of Sarkozy, to being more economically liberal (in the classical sense) in order to address France's chronically high (relatively compared to similar rich countires') unemployment rate, to presiding over a series of bloody, and tragic, terrorist attacks over the course of a single year. Granted policy isn't the only reason for the Party's unpopularity (I'm not French and thus can't provide more than boilerplate analysis) but Hollande's tenure has proven to be damaging in a way that they likely will be unable to recover from for the foreseeable future. On this front current independent candidate Emmanuel Macron exhibited remarkable foresight in running absent the Socialist Party apparatus despite never having campaigned before.
Moreover Corbyn is assuredly not unlike Sanders in anything other than superficial characteristics - crotchety old man on the activist periphery of electoral politics. The more I've learned about Corbyn, the more alarming it is to know that this guy is in control of what is ostensibly the opposition to the Tories. I get that Sanders is considered damaged goods in this subforum as a result of the 2016, but equating them as one in the same is rhetorically lazy.
To return to the Dutch example: this country uses a proportional representation system, and has relatively lax requirements for parties to enter parliament (unlike what parties have to do to enter congress in the US), so to say that Dutch Labour's decline means less opposition to the far right is farcial - traditionally Dutch Labour voters largely plumped for either the centrist D66, or increasingly centre-left (rather than Left) GreenLeft party, both of which saw their biggest gains ever in the Hague. Mark Rutte will very likely have to wrangle a coalition together with one or both of these parties, and hopefully they tread carefully after having seen what happened to Dutch Labour. Moreover Geert Wilders has been a fixture of Dutch politics since at least 2010 when Rutte first became PM, and while his party gained seats this week, it is lower than their 2010 peak where Wilders' party engaged in confidence and supply with Rutte's then-minority government; the Dutch political culture cannot be as easily slotted into the narrative of rising far-right populism as Marine Le Pen can.
I do believe/somewhat agree however that Western electoral politics is shifting (from what The Economist calls) from Left vs Right to Cosmopolitan/Open vs Reactionary/Closed tendencies which counters the prevailing narrative of the far right ascending due to a lack of insufficiently left politics.
To tie this back to the US Democratic Party, I think the party needs to substantively change their approach to electoral politics (i.e. campaign more aggressively to address the dearth of Democrats at the state and local level to prevent them from becoming a regional opposition party federally), moreso than needing to change ideology (or policy) as that has been slowly-but-surely changing (despite what some accelerationist critics may claim) since the end of Bill Clinton's presidency.
I like this. Dems need to get comfortable saying, "nobody cares about FOX News Conspiracy X."
And they need to stick HARD to it. You ONLY address scandals that your potential supporters care about (or that everyone cares about). You simply refuse to address anything else. Noone who might vote for Hillary cares about emails, Benghazi, the Clinton Foundation scandal and so on. Bernie's only real error as a candidate was that he did manage to make a few potential democratic voters care about that, but, if Clinton had just refused to even comment on it or discuss it outside of long boring senate hearings wouldn't have mattered.
Familiarize yourself with this phrase Democratic candidates, "I don't care about that, lets talk about this instead" and then simply ignore ALL efforts to steer you back to talking about the thing that can only possibly hurt yourself. If noone on your side cares, then NOBODY cares.
The former especially; a few of his they still did the "staffer invoked resigns to make things go away", which just doesn't work with this shit.
The problem with the emails wasn't emails; the issue was a neutral proxy for free-floating Clinton dislike generated by decades of right win propaganda, media malpractice and general sexism. That's why it wouldn't go away, and no amount of handwaving was going to do it. The most effective way for Clinton to end the story would have been for her to have been born a man.
Trump is a reaction to Obama, who was also an anti establishment outsider.
To be fair Democrats would still need to rely on big donors regardless, paying the bills for a national organisation and supporting numerous political campaigns isn't cheap. CU simply put this on steroids.
Or dems are refusing to notice their loss of grip on states they consider safe.
Like the lack of ad buy is, if not causal, at least correlative. The major complaint from a lot of middle America being that they feel the Democrats don't listen to or care about them. I don't care if its a functionally incorrect stance, it's what they feel.
My suggestion: always maintain an ad buy floor in our "safe" states. Maintain the pressure in these states, and do it with ads that aren't just attacking the other guy. Do it with ads that explicitly explain how we are helping them.
They have a great many things in common. Have skewed priorities, focus more on their internal opponents rather than the opposition party, have an over enthusiastic sub-group in their base, hire and ally with terrible people, obsessed with purifying their parties, anti-establishment, see any of their allies on the left who don't agree with them as the enemy, spent decades in politics as rebels, believe in old school leftism and control a small sub-section of outsiders from the left.
This is unfair imo. Sanders has, like, awareness of politics and seems interested in winning elections.
His awareness is nowhere what it should be and his interest is - limited - when it comes to getting what he wants. Unlike Corbyn he's also not as skilled at manipulating the system to get those wins he needs.
edit: That said the UK system allowed Corbyn to have an easier shot at taking over Labour, I don't think he'd been able to do that in the Democratic primaries.
His team was the one offering to do october rallies in the midwest. Hillary's team was the one ignoring everything up until the last week.
Context?
Without getting into whether Sanders would have done better in the general, which is difficult/impossible to determine, it's important to realize it's also irrelevant. To be president you need to be able to win the primary and the general. Sanders couldn't do that. Ended up that Clinton couldn't do that either. They both failed to become president. So can we drop it?
Which is great, but things don't turn out usually in his favor like that.
I think you are confusing awareness with the tactics he's using. And Corbyn is terrible at working the system, that's basically his whole problem. He only understands how to be a voice in the wilderness.
There's elements in common but the comparison is vastly overblown.
They are also both classic leftists who describe themselves as socialists who have run largely/primarily as outsider purists attacking the establishment both in the form of their own party and the economy at large. Both focused largely on attacking prior governments run by their party (the Clinton Administration and the Blair government), both were tepid on Brexit, both claim their parties ran rigged systems to determine leadership. Both vocally supported various Latin American left wing strongmen until it was inconvenient, both have historically been wishy washy on scientific issues like homeopathy and other quackery, both put forth policy proposals that sounds good as long as you don't actually crunch the numbers and dismiss those criticisms.
America is not immune to the currents of thought and ideology that are generating these movements. Two different back benchers, Corbyn and Sanders, self described socialists rising to prominence by railing against the man in the guise of their own liberal parties while far right ethnic nationalism rises to the mainstream isn't just a coincidence. Corbyn's utter failure might make that unflattering to Sanders, but the parallels are obvious.
Sanders doesn't know how to work the system either. He's been in Congress since 1990 and has never led on a single non-trivial piece of legislation. His supporters tried to paper that over with "Amendment King" nonsense, but if you follow those amendments to completion, they almost never make it to law. The biggest thing he's ever done is getting a few rural hospitals built as part of ACA, which he's subsequently attacked. He's also never shown any interest in getting any one else elected, even in his own state, because his disdain for both parties. There's a reason he had essentially no support among Democratic legislators.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Bernie is not that much more brighter than Corbyn, and I'd say Corbyn has the edge in working with the system since he was able to game it to his advantage to take over his part while Bernie failed with his. Corbyn's group never had issues navigating their process, Bernie's did.
He's also unable to switch gears by addressing other groups of potential voters RE: his repeated speechmaking over the same subject and his knowledge about subjects like banking and how he's going to implement his goals once he gets in power is severely lacking.
Repeating that BS doesn't make it true and conveniently ignores that while Sanders won by 1% in Michigan, Clinton won by 12+% in PA.
Look at the exit polls. Clinton won in Michigan and Pennsylvania (and WI and OH and essentially every where else except the deep red states) among voters whose top issue was the economy. Obama didn't do that. Trump only won among those who thought the most important issues were immigration and terrorism. This election was about white nationalism, racism and misogyny.
edit
Also, those "multiple rallies" took place in a single day in Michigan, and a single day in PA in the first week in October.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Nah, we had a chance, but every lever was thrown against us and also the populace is more misogynist than we thought
"Didn't have a chance" it was a razor thin margin in 3 states, it seems pretty clear in retrospect what went wrong and we can correct those mistakes next time
but that can't happen if we declare that nobody could of won and everything was always hopeless
Except that they go on to say "The Democrats were too busy talking about bathrooms", which is a tell that what they're actually saying is "We feel that you're spending too much time on all those other groups, and not enough time on us, as should be the case." It's not about them not being listened to, its about them no longer being prioritized.
Next time will be different, but pulling off the specific trick of electing a Democrat after a Democrat wasn't in the cards. Excluding re-election and during-term transition, only Republicans have done this in the past century. The next chance we'll get to prove the possibility of a democratic dynasty, for just the executive branch, is 2024 at the earliest.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
they barely won, and in two of the three states we needed Clinton did all but not campaign at all
Even so, she was fighting two impressive historical barriers: no woman has ever become the US president, and no democrat has succeeded another democrat since Pat Buchanan in 1856. The fact that this was not nearly as close as the 2000 election shows that Democrats have a way to go before they can reproduce the history breaking combo of 1988, a time when everybody was republican.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.