g, but I find that the only reason they didn't vote for her was because she failed to visit (which yeah she should have) is not exactly a shining example of that region being super loyal Democrats begin with. It have been a firewall for Obama* and maybe Biden and Bernie, but for establishment candidates it was a region who'd severe ties from the Democrats with the slightest excuse. That type of instability can't be healed for a centrist within a few months during an election IMO.
That's not why she lost- the region has been devastated by job loss and for better or for worse Trump was the "jobs" candidate this election. He was the one that hammered companies for sending jobs overseas and he was the one that promised they'd come back. Hillary offered to teach the laid-off factory workers how to code. Voting to screw over the rich assholes who laid you off isn't "instability", and if you want to win there in 2020 you have to appeal to that same populist chord.
Those jobs aren't coming back they went to robots
again and again you just keep coming back to "lie to middle America better" as a political platform
It worked a treat for Trump.
Hard Truth: These people cannot be counted on to make rational decisions. Simply presenting solutions to problems is not enough to win them over. Hell sometimes that actually turns them off. Current theory is that she lost firewall stats just because she didn't physically show up there. That's ridiculous to me, an intellectual, but it matters to them. Disclaimer: IT IS NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE RURAL. I AM NOT LOOKING DOWN ON RURAL/MIDWESTERN VOTERS AS LESSER PEOPLE. There are many causes for this, such as a shitty media and worthless educational system, that are factors beyond their control. Not gonna go into the weeds about that right now, though. My point is that to win this demographic, you gotta be prepared to lie to them. That's not a bad thing.
Now, exactly where and how hard you should go after this demographic is a different debate. In 4 years it may be worthwhile to butter up the "firewall states", maybe not. We'll see.
You can't appeal to them because their economic interests are grounded in racism. What can you promise them that the GOP can't also promise them, except with an extra spicy layer of white identity politics?
You want an example, look right above you in the thread:
But CM doesn't believe that. Several people, including myself, have said so and he refuses to accept it. So when he advocates it, it's not a lie - he honestly believes (IMO) that's an achievable goal and something that we should be promising people - and then making it happen.
It is an achievable goal. Claiming that the jobs all went to robots is b.s.; haven't you seen all the thousands of corporate announcements about moving plants and call centers overseas? Throwing up your hands and going "welp let's teach 55-year old factory workers how to code" both condones the greed of corporations and forces more people to compete for the shrinking number of middle-class jobs we have left. Automation's a different story, and there's a national debate we need to have about corporate profits vs jobs, but to claim that every factory worker's job was filled by a robot is nonsense.
Carrier sure as hell isn't using robots down in Mexico.
I think Hillary's jobs plan was unrealistic and far too establishment friendly. "Let them code" was asinine when they're outsourcing coders, and both Bernie and Trump reeled in the votes by going after the corporations instead of the workers.
edit- if you want to win the next election you need to harp on this thread and steal Trump's thunder away from him. If you don't learn any lessons from the defeat of the best-qualified candidate in modern times to a reality TV businessman and keep on with the identity politics and hoping that minorities outbreed white people, well, you're going to lose again. They're people too and they worry about economic issues as much as anyone else and a sizable chunk of them voted Trump. If your message still is "let them code" in four years while everyone's scraping by with McJobs and crap-ass part time work you'll lose, plain and simple.
This is the issues you are dealing with. A fundamental belief in white identity politics immune to facts. It's about "immigrants taking our jobs" and it's the Democrats fault for just trying to help non-whites too much.
Easy. You promise them anything they want to hear. Lie through your teeth, appeal to their basest instincts, and it doesn't matter how unrealistic or contradictory or physically impossible your promises are. If they want you to put rocket boosters on the moon and fire it at their brown next-door neighbour without hitting their house, you promise you have the best rockets with the biggest boost like seriously it's yuge.
Once you're in power you can actually work on implementing policies that will benefit the USA against their will. But until you get in power you shut the fuck up about policy. People don't vote for policy, the media don't report on policy, pundits don't analyze policy, and debates don't ask questions on policy. No one cares about policy, and Clinton's policy-rich failure against Trump's policy vacuum has made abundantly clear. So start pandering to their base instincts already.
You didn't actually read what I said. You can't promise them what they want to hear. Because what they want to hear is "Fuck non-white people". And the Democrats can't do that without both betraying one of the core purposes of the party at this point and without losing all the support that makes them viable. You can't say that is your policy, nor can you implement it.
And as already demonstrated, you can't just improve their lives because that won't win you elections. They want to be pandered too. And what they want most of all with that pandering is confirmation of white identity politics.
I read you loud and clear. What I said is, Democrats need to betray their core purpose and appease these people by promising to fuck non-white-people over harder and better than Republicans. Then they can turn around to non-white-people and promise to elevate them higher than they've ever been. This election has already demonstrated that most people live in media bubbles and are conditioned to believe news they want to believe, so you actually can promise to different groups to fuck the other over without them noticing, and the few people who do notice won't believe the contradicting statement anyway.
Once you're in power you can actually implement responsible policies. But you can't campaign on them, because you will lose to the guy without responsible policies who's promising to fuck other people over.
And core purposes don't win elections.
This is a great way to have nobody vote for you. Because telling the most loyal of your base to go fuck themselves destroys your base, and chasing after the people who want to fuck them over won't work because they won't buy it.
And honestly, this cynicism is getting old. Again, stop pretending that this was a trouncing - the margin was on a knife's edge.
I never said you tell "the most loyal of your base to go fuck themselves". You never tell them that. You tell them whatever the fuck you need to get them energized. And it's not sound sensible policy. Clinton's base heard about policy for over a year, and they were not energized.
You want to talk about the base? Fine. Less black people voted this year than in 2008 and 2012, and a greater proportion that voted went to R. Think about that. The Dems offered a set of sound reasonable policies that would benefit them, and the Pubs offered an overtly-racist, KKK-endorsed, old white man who accused them of killing each other and promised to bring back stop-and-frisk. And support for the GOP increased compared to the past two elections. Policy isn't what's driving people to the polls. Feelings are, and people don't even care if you're lying to their faces or honestly promising to hurt them if you make them feel good about it, and they won't support the best plan to help themselves if they don't feel good about it.
You want to argue it was a knife's edge difference? It shouldn't have been. You are betting on a blatantly losing strategy, and your best comebacks so far are "well we didn't lose by much" and "at least we were true to our core principles."
Democrats need to betray their core purpose and appease these people by promising to fuck non-white-people over harder and better than Republicans. Then they can turn around to non-white-people and promise to elevate them higher than they've ever been.
The rest of that post explains how you do that. It's quite different from what I'm alleged to have said.
No, it doesn't. It doesn't change the fact that your strategy is to throw the core Democratic base under the bus. Do you think black voters won't notice when you are on TV in Ohio saying "white power"?
No, it doesn't. It doesn't change the fact that your strategy is to throw the core Democratic base under the bus. Do you think black voters won't notice when you are on TV in Ohio saying "white power"?
I think they will know something is up when Obama announces a birther investigation on himself.
We lost, people didn't care enough. Tens of millions of BernieBros, Greens, Republicans, and non-voters fucked us.
I love how the Clinton camp continues to pretend that people who voted Bernie in the primaries didn't vote for Hillary.
Or that this kind of 'blame the voters' post-election analysis makes any sense. It's like blaming the customer because you didn't make a sale. Who does that help? Sure, the people who switched from Bernie to Trump or stayed home are morons who probably never understood what Bernie was all about in the first place. Still want their votes.
It depends on why you're analyzing. Are you trying to figure out what actually happened or tell yourself a story that will make you feel like you have the necessary agency even if you don't?
Politics seems to be the only arena where the latter is considered anything but insanely irresponsible. Its also another example of the phenomenon where people try to play pundit when discussing political news, which is hyper focused on process and sees the voters as passive subjects of the machinations of political marketing rather than the ones who actually decide these things.
Factually, the voters chose Trump in sufficient numbers in sufficient states to elect him. That isn't disputable.
Third party Presidential voting was sufficient to swing three tipping point states that switched from Obama to Trump, and the demographics of third party voting in those states closely matched that of the most vocal and visible Sanders primary voters
While a substantial majority of Sanders voters almost certainly voted for Clinton, the difference between 62% (as actual polling that directly asked suggested) and something like 90% would be sufficient to swing the outcome. Stein's increase of 1+ million (3x previous high) votes didn't spontaneously appear.
The voters decide who wins elections, and that this has to be explicitly stated is part of the problem. I blame 3rd party/Sanders defectors less than Trump voters because negligence isn't as bad as malice, but that doesn't absolve anyone of responsibility. Obama didn't force voters to vote for him, voters chose him. For all the contempt the "Great Man" view of history generally (mostly correctly) receives now a days, we have a very "Great Campaign Manager" view of electoral politics.
Its like if you were talking to someone about a potential romantic partner who went out with someone else and you scoffed at the idea that maybe that person just liked the other person more. Advice that all that you needed to do was "play the game" better is red pill, borderline sociopath goosery designed to build a false narrative in which you are the hero and everyone else is to be acted upon by you. The same general concept applies to electoral politics. Sometimes the person goes to the abusive partner that will actively harm them but that doesn't mean they didn't have agency or that all that it would have gone differently if you sent red roses instead of white, it means some people make shitty decisions.
The voters chose Clinton, but by the Electoral College Trump won. Republicans also won the House vote absolutely and by seats. And they won most Senate seats. If this could all be pinned on Clinton's campaign tactics, she would have underperformed other Democrats. If she wasn't liberal or progressive enough she would have under performed other liberals or progessives. There are almost no Trump districts with Dem Reps for a reason.
Instead she over performed those groups and lost a few Obama states. Why? Increased turnout among hate mongers unenthused by Republicans not explicitly beating a white nationalist drum especially in the rural Midwest, lower turnout among African Americans compared to Obama (likely impacted by, but not entirely attributable to, voter suppression) and greater third party defection from left leaning, especially young and especially rural, whites. The latter group is the one most directly related to Sanders primary supporters and its impact wasn't trivial.
And maybe those voters would never have voted for Clinton no matter what, but that's a situation that didn't exist in 08 when she won rural whites substantially or throughout her tenure at State where she held broad, almost universal support among Dems/liberals or when she was a meme among young internet culture with the Madam Secretary thing, so I don't think its very supported.
BTW, nobody is saying that you have to be more racist than the Pubs (you won't win that fight). What people are saying, is that instead of getting on the automatization/post-scarcity long explanation that nobody seems to care about, just say "yes, we are going to bring the jobs back".
And as people have been telling you (see the post above yours for an example) this isn't just about jobs. Hence why "economic anxiety" tracks on race rather than socioeconomic status.
MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
The problem with having your politicians lie to get into power and hoping that they'll do the right thing, is that you then can't notice the ones that wont.
g, but I find that the only reason they didn't vote for her was because she failed to visit (which yeah she should have) is not exactly a shining example of that region being super loyal Democrats begin with. It have been a firewall for Obama* and maybe Biden and Bernie, but for establishment candidates it was a region who'd severe ties from the Democrats with the slightest excuse. That type of instability can't be healed for a centrist within a few months during an election IMO.
That's not why she lost- the region has been devastated by job loss and for better or for worse Trump was the "jobs" candidate this election. He was the one that hammered companies for sending jobs overseas and he was the one that promised they'd come back. Hillary offered to teach the laid-off factory workers how to code. Voting to screw over the rich assholes who laid you off isn't "instability", and if you want to win there in 2020 you have to appeal to that same populist chord.
Those jobs aren't coming back they went to robots
again and again you just keep coming back to "lie to middle America better" as a political platform
It worked a treat for Trump.
Hard Truth: These people cannot be counted on to make rational decisions. Simply presenting solutions to problems is not enough to win them over. Hell sometimes that actually turns them off. Current theory is that she lost firewall stats just because she didn't physically show up there. That's ridiculous to me, an intellectual, but it matters to them. Disclaimer: IT IS NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE RURAL. I AM NOT LOOKING DOWN ON RURAL/MIDWESTERN VOTERS AS LESSER PEOPLE. There are many causes for this, such as a shitty media and worthless educational system, that are factors beyond their control. Not gonna go into the weeds about that right now, though. My point is that to win this demographic, you gotta be prepared to lie to them. That's not a bad thing.
Now, exactly where and how hard you should go after this demographic is a different debate. In 4 years it may be worthwhile to butter up the "firewall states", maybe not. We'll see.
You can't appeal to them because their economic interests are grounded in racism. What can you promise them that the GOP can't also promise them, except with an extra spicy layer of white identity politics?
You want an example, look right above you in the thread:
But CM doesn't believe that. Several people, including myself, have said so and he refuses to accept it. So when he advocates it, it's not a lie - he honestly believes (IMO) that's an achievable goal and something that we should be promising people - and then making it happen.
It is an achievable goal. Claiming that the jobs all went to robots is b.s.; haven't you seen all the thousands of corporate announcements about moving plants and call centers overseas? Throwing up your hands and going "welp let's teach 55-year old factory workers how to code" both condones the greed of corporations and forces more people to compete for the shrinking number of middle-class jobs we have left. Automation's a different story, and there's a national debate we need to have about corporate profits vs jobs, but to claim that every factory worker's job was filled by a robot is nonsense.
Carrier sure as hell isn't using robots down in Mexico.
I think Hillary's jobs plan was unrealistic and far too establishment friendly. "Let them code" was asinine when they're outsourcing coders, and both Bernie and Trump reeled in the votes by going after the corporations instead of the workers.
edit- if you want to win the next election you need to harp on this thread and steal Trump's thunder away from him. If you don't learn any lessons from the defeat of the best-qualified candidate in modern times to a reality TV businessman and keep on with the identity politics and hoping that minorities outbreed white people, well, you're going to lose again. They're people too and they worry about economic issues as much as anyone else and a sizable chunk of them voted Trump. If your message still is "let them code" in four years while everyone's scraping by with McJobs and crap-ass part time work you'll lose, plain and simple.
This is the issues you are dealing with. A fundamental belief in white identity politics immune to facts. It's about "immigrants taking our jobs" and it's the Democrats fault for just trying to help non-whites too much.
Easy. You promise them anything they want to hear. Lie through your teeth, appeal to their basest instincts, and it doesn't matter how unrealistic or contradictory or physically impossible your promises are. If they want you to put rocket boosters on the moon and fire it at their brown next-door neighbour without hitting their house, you promise you have the best rockets with the biggest boost like seriously it's yuge.
Once you're in power you can actually work on implementing policies that will benefit the USA against their will. But until you get in power you shut the fuck up about policy. People don't vote for policy, the media don't report on policy, pundits don't analyze policy, and debates don't ask questions on policy. No one cares about policy, and Clinton's policy-rich failure against Trump's policy vacuum has made abundantly clear. So start pandering to their base instincts already.
You didn't actually read what I said. You can't promise them what they want to hear. Because what they want to hear is "Fuck non-white people". And the Democrats can't do that without both betraying one of the core purposes of the party at this point and without losing all the support that makes them viable. You can't say that is your policy, nor can you implement it.
And as already demonstrated, you can't just improve their lives because that won't win you elections. They want to be pandered too. And what they want most of all with that pandering is confirmation of white identity politics.
I read you loud and clear. What I said is, Democrats need to betray their core purpose and appease these people by promising to fuck non-white-people over harder and better than Republicans. Then they can turn around to non-white-people and promise to elevate them higher than they've ever been. This election has already demonstrated that most people live in media bubbles and are conditioned to believe news they want to believe, so you actually can promise to different groups to fuck the other over without them noticing, and the few people who do notice won't believe the contradicting statement anyway.
Once you're in power you can actually implement responsible policies. But you can't campaign on them, because you will lose to the guy without responsible policies who's promising to fuck other people over.
And core purposes don't win elections.
This is a great way to have nobody vote for you. Because telling the most loyal of your base to go fuck themselves destroys your base, and chasing after the people who want to fuck them over won't work because they won't buy it.
And honestly, this cynicism is getting old. Again, stop pretending that this was a trouncing - the margin was on a knife's edge.
I never said you tell "the most loyal of your base to go fuck themselves". You never tell them that. You tell them whatever the fuck you need to get them energized. And it's not sound sensible policy. Clinton's base heard about policy for over a year, and they were not energized.
You want to talk about the base? Fine. Less black people voted this year than in 2008 and 2012, and a greater proportion that voted went to R. Think about that. The Dems offered a set of sound reasonable policies that would benefit them, and the Pubs offered an overtly-racist, KKK-endorsed, old white man who accused them of killing each other and promised to bring back stop-and-frisk. And support for the GOP increased compared to the past two elections. Policy isn't what's driving people to the polls. Feelings are, and people don't even care if you're lying to their faces or honestly promising to hurt them if you make them feel good about it, and they won't support the best plan to help themselves if they don't feel good about it.
You want to argue it was a knife's edge difference? It shouldn't have been. You are betting on a blatantly losing strategy, and your best comebacks so far are "well we didn't lose by much" and "at least we were true to our core principles."
Democrats need to betray their core purpose and appease these people by promising to fuck non-white-people over harder and better than Republicans. Then they can turn around to non-white-people and promise to elevate them higher than they've ever been.
The rest of that post explains how you do that. It's quite different from what I'm alleged to have said.
No, it doesn't. It doesn't change the fact that your strategy is to throw the core Democratic base under the bus. Do you think black voters won't notice when you are on TV in Ohio saying "white power"?
I don't agree with him, but if you read what he wrote, he is in fact claiming exactly that. That the media bubbles are so thick, people so ignorant and willing to believe their candidate didn't really mean what he said, etc etc, that you can talk out of both sides of your mouth and it will work.
g, but I find that the only reason they didn't vote for her was because she failed to visit (which yeah she should have) is not exactly a shining example of that region being super loyal Democrats begin with. It have been a firewall for Obama* and maybe Biden and Bernie, but for establishment candidates it was a region who'd severe ties from the Democrats with the slightest excuse. That type of instability can't be healed for a centrist within a few months during an election IMO.
That's not why she lost- the region has been devastated by job loss and for better or for worse Trump was the "jobs" candidate this election. He was the one that hammered companies for sending jobs overseas and he was the one that promised they'd come back. Hillary offered to teach the laid-off factory workers how to code. Voting to screw over the rich assholes who laid you off isn't "instability", and if you want to win there in 2020 you have to appeal to that same populist chord.
Those jobs aren't coming back they went to robots
again and again you just keep coming back to "lie to middle America better" as a political platform
It worked a treat for Trump.
Hard Truth: These people cannot be counted on to make rational decisions. Simply presenting solutions to problems is not enough to win them over. Hell sometimes that actually turns them off. Current theory is that she lost firewall stats just because she didn't physically show up there. That's ridiculous to me, an intellectual, but it matters to them. Disclaimer: IT IS NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE RURAL. I AM NOT LOOKING DOWN ON RURAL/MIDWESTERN VOTERS AS LESSER PEOPLE. There are many causes for this, such as a shitty media and worthless educational system, that are factors beyond their control. Not gonna go into the weeds about that right now, though. My point is that to win this demographic, you gotta be prepared to lie to them. That's not a bad thing.
Now, exactly where and how hard you should go after this demographic is a different debate. In 4 years it may be worthwhile to butter up the "firewall states", maybe not. We'll see.
You can't appeal to them because their economic interests are grounded in racism. What can you promise them that the GOP can't also promise them, except with an extra spicy layer of white identity politics?
You want an example, look right above you in the thread:
But CM doesn't believe that. Several people, including myself, have said so and he refuses to accept it. So when he advocates it, it's not a lie - he honestly believes (IMO) that's an achievable goal and something that we should be promising people - and then making it happen.
It is an achievable goal. Claiming that the jobs all went to robots is b.s.; haven't you seen all the thousands of corporate announcements about moving plants and call centers overseas? Throwing up your hands and going "welp let's teach 55-year old factory workers how to code" both condones the greed of corporations and forces more people to compete for the shrinking number of middle-class jobs we have left. Automation's a different story, and there's a national debate we need to have about corporate profits vs jobs, but to claim that every factory worker's job was filled by a robot is nonsense.
Carrier sure as hell isn't using robots down in Mexico.
I think Hillary's jobs plan was unrealistic and far too establishment friendly. "Let them code" was asinine when they're outsourcing coders, and both Bernie and Trump reeled in the votes by going after the corporations instead of the workers.
edit- if you want to win the next election you need to harp on this thread and steal Trump's thunder away from him. If you don't learn any lessons from the defeat of the best-qualified candidate in modern times to a reality TV businessman and keep on with the identity politics and hoping that minorities outbreed white people, well, you're going to lose again. They're people too and they worry about economic issues as much as anyone else and a sizable chunk of them voted Trump. If your message still is "let them code" in four years while everyone's scraping by with McJobs and crap-ass part time work you'll lose, plain and simple.
This is the issues you are dealing with. A fundamental belief in white identity politics immune to facts. It's about "immigrants taking our jobs" and it's the Democrats fault for just trying to help non-whites too much.
Easy. You promise them anything they want to hear. Lie through your teeth, appeal to their basest instincts, and it doesn't matter how unrealistic or contradictory or physically impossible your promises are. If they want you to put rocket boosters on the moon and fire it at their brown next-door neighbour without hitting their house, you promise you have the best rockets with the biggest boost like seriously it's yuge.
Once you're in power you can actually work on implementing policies that will benefit the USA against their will. But until you get in power you shut the fuck up about policy. People don't vote for policy, the media don't report on policy, pundits don't analyze policy, and debates don't ask questions on policy. No one cares about policy, and Clinton's policy-rich failure against Trump's policy vacuum has made abundantly clear. So start pandering to their base instincts already.
You didn't actually read what I said. You can't promise them what they want to hear. Because what they want to hear is "Fuck non-white people". And the Democrats can't do that without both betraying one of the core purposes of the party at this point and without losing all the support that makes them viable. You can't say that is your policy, nor can you implement it.
And as already demonstrated, you can't just improve their lives because that won't win you elections. They want to be pandered too. And what they want most of all with that pandering is confirmation of white identity politics.
I read you loud and clear. What I said is, Democrats need to betray their core purpose and appease these people by promising to fuck non-white-people over harder and better than Republicans. Then they can turn around to non-white-people and promise to elevate them higher than they've ever been. This election has already demonstrated that most people live in media bubbles and are conditioned to believe news they want to believe, so you actually can promise to different groups to fuck the other over without them noticing, and the few people who do notice won't believe the contradicting statement anyway.
Once you're in power you can actually implement responsible policies. But you can't campaign on them, because you will lose to the guy without responsible policies who's promising to fuck other people over.
And core purposes don't win elections.
This is a great way to have nobody vote for you. Because telling the most loyal of your base to go fuck themselves destroys your base, and chasing after the people who want to fuck them over won't work because they won't buy it.
And honestly, this cynicism is getting old. Again, stop pretending that this was a trouncing - the margin was on a knife's edge.
I never said you tell "the most loyal of your base to go fuck themselves". You never tell them that. You tell them whatever the fuck you need to get them energized. And it's not sound sensible policy. Clinton's base heard about policy for over a year, and they were not energized.
You want to talk about the base? Fine. Less black people voted this year than in 2008 and 2012, and a greater proportion that voted went to R. Think about that. The Dems offered a set of sound reasonable policies that would benefit them, and the Pubs offered an overtly-racist, KKK-endorsed, old white man who accused them of killing each other and promised to bring back stop-and-frisk. And support for the GOP increased compared to the past two elections. Policy isn't what's driving people to the polls. Feelings are, and people don't even care if you're lying to their faces or honestly promising to hurt them if you make them feel good about it, and they won't support the best plan to help themselves if they don't feel good about it.
You want to argue it was a knife's edge difference? It shouldn't have been. You are betting on a blatantly losing strategy, and your best comebacks so far are "well we didn't lose by much" and "at least we were true to our core principles."
Democrats need to betray their core purpose and appease these people by promising to fuck non-white-people over harder and better than Republicans. Then they can turn around to non-white-people and promise to elevate them higher than they've ever been.
The rest of that post explains how you do that. It's quite different from what I'm alleged to have said.
No, it doesn't. It doesn't change the fact that your strategy is to throw the core Democratic base under the bus. Do you think black voters won't notice when you are on TV in Ohio saying "white power"?
Yes, that is exactly what I think. And conversely, white voters won't notice when you're on TV in Chicago speaking in a BLM rally.
Because people live in news filter bubbles and will only read about you from news sources that agree with and reinforce their perception of you. White people won't hear about what you're saying to black people and vice-versa. And the few that do will believe it's news bias, or slander, or just you lying to the other side for votes (because really deep down you're on their side, and the other sides are chumps you need to play nice with to take advantage until election day).
Basically, exactly what we just saw happen in 2016.
Biden believes that the biggest domestic mistake of the Obama White House was that it served middle-class voters better than it listened to them. It was a lesson he got from his father. “People don’t expect government to solve all their problems,” Joe Biden Sr. told his son in the 1960s and ’70s. “But they do expect them to understand their problems.” More specifically, Biden agrees with critics who say the White House waited too long in the first term before pivoting to a jobs bill, then sold it poorly. Dozens of other Obama policies on health, education and the economy that helped the middle class were never placed in a compelling narrative. Later, Biden told me, Obama’s staff missed a chance to refocus on the middle class in ways that could have helped Democrats in the 2014 and 2016 elections.
Despite Biden’s best efforts, the problem of downwardly mobile white men—Trump’s base— never moved front and center in the West Wing. Biden was known to lose his temper with White House staffers—from junior aides to high-ranking officials—who saw the middle class as an abstraction. “He was not afraid to say, ‘That’s bullshit—you’re talking about people here,’” Klain remembered. But others, as Reed put it, found it “disconcerting to watch the West Wing turn to the vice president to interpret the middle class for them as if he were the only one to know any members of it.” Obama the former professor sided with highly credentialed economic advisers like Lawrence Summers more than Biden would have liked. “There was a default to pedigree,” Biden told me.
Biden likes to say that “when they call me ‘Middle Class Joe,’ they don’t mean it as a compliment.” He’s still ticked off at Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, for lobbying him on an internet piracy bill with the argument: “You understand we’re the economic engine of America. We will deluge the White House.” Biden offered respect for Google’s “value-added” but told me he felt like throwing Schmidt out of his office. He pointed out that, all together, the tech sector employed fewer workers than GM shed in a single year during the Great Recession.
In the fall of 2014, the president and his senior staff held a week’s worth of meetings in the Roosevelt Room to figure out what to do in the final two years of Obama’s presidency. “I said, ‘You gotta start talking to these people,’” Biden recalled, referring to working-class voters he thought deserved a break and would help the White House politically if they felt someone had their backs.
A big debate ensued that was reminiscent of one Biden had for years with Ted Kennedy—should money be targeted on the poor or the middle class? Even though Republicans were blocking them at every turn, Biden thought both interests could be served and he wanted a middle-class tax cut. Obama’s political advisers, Biden remembered, were sure it would fail, which would weaken the president politically. Biden said his argument was, “Let’s get caught trying.”
They didn’t even try. The consequences of these policy decisions would be felt in the 2016 election when the noncollege educated white voters Biden argued needed more attention voted for Trump, who won by 20 points in several Ohio and Pennsylvania counties carried by Obama in 2012.
Got a hunch that putting Techno-Libertarian Princes front and center will not make Dems popular.
g, but I find that the only reason they didn't vote for her was because she failed to visit (which yeah she should have) is not exactly a shining example of that region being super loyal Democrats begin with. It have been a firewall for Obama* and maybe Biden and Bernie, but for establishment candidates it was a region who'd severe ties from the Democrats with the slightest excuse. That type of instability can't be healed for a centrist within a few months during an election IMO.
That's not why she lost- the region has been devastated by job loss and for better or for worse Trump was the "jobs" candidate this election. He was the one that hammered companies for sending jobs overseas and he was the one that promised they'd come back. Hillary offered to teach the laid-off factory workers how to code. Voting to screw over the rich assholes who laid you off isn't "instability", and if you want to win there in 2020 you have to appeal to that same populist chord.
Those jobs aren't coming back they went to robots
again and again you just keep coming back to "lie to middle America better" as a political platform
It worked a treat for Trump.
Hard Truth: These people cannot be counted on to make rational decisions. Simply presenting solutions to problems is not enough to win them over. Hell sometimes that actually turns them off. Current theory is that she lost firewall stats just because she didn't physically show up there. That's ridiculous to me, an intellectual, but it matters to them. Disclaimer: IT IS NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE RURAL. I AM NOT LOOKING DOWN ON RURAL/MIDWESTERN VOTERS AS LESSER PEOPLE. There are many causes for this, such as a shitty media and worthless educational system, that are factors beyond their control. Not gonna go into the weeds about that right now, though. My point is that to win this demographic, you gotta be prepared to lie to them. That's not a bad thing.
Now, exactly where and how hard you should go after this demographic is a different debate. In 4 years it may be worthwhile to butter up the "firewall states", maybe not. We'll see.
You can't appeal to them because their economic interests are grounded in racism. What can you promise them that the GOP can't also promise them, except with an extra spicy layer of white identity politics?
You want an example, look right above you in the thread:
But CM doesn't believe that. Several people, including myself, have said so and he refuses to accept it. So when he advocates it, it's not a lie - he honestly believes (IMO) that's an achievable goal and something that we should be promising people - and then making it happen.
It is an achievable goal. Claiming that the jobs all went to robots is b.s.; haven't you seen all the thousands of corporate announcements about moving plants and call centers overseas? Throwing up your hands and going "welp let's teach 55-year old factory workers how to code" both condones the greed of corporations and forces more people to compete for the shrinking number of middle-class jobs we have left. Automation's a different story, and there's a national debate we need to have about corporate profits vs jobs, but to claim that every factory worker's job was filled by a robot is nonsense.
Carrier sure as hell isn't using robots down in Mexico.
I think Hillary's jobs plan was unrealistic and far too establishment friendly. "Let them code" was asinine when they're outsourcing coders, and both Bernie and Trump reeled in the votes by going after the corporations instead of the workers.
edit- if you want to win the next election you need to harp on this thread and steal Trump's thunder away from him. If you don't learn any lessons from the defeat of the best-qualified candidate in modern times to a reality TV businessman and keep on with the identity politics and hoping that minorities outbreed white people, well, you're going to lose again. They're people too and they worry about economic issues as much as anyone else and a sizable chunk of them voted Trump. If your message still is "let them code" in four years while everyone's scraping by with McJobs and crap-ass part time work you'll lose, plain and simple.
This is the issues you are dealing with. A fundamental belief in white identity politics immune to facts. It's about "immigrants taking our jobs" and it's the Democrats fault for just trying to help non-whites too much.
Easy. You promise them anything they want to hear. Lie through your teeth, appeal to their basest instincts, and it doesn't matter how unrealistic or contradictory or physically impossible your promises are. If they want you to put rocket boosters on the moon and fire it at their brown next-door neighbour without hitting their house, you promise you have the best rockets with the biggest boost like seriously it's yuge.
Once you're in power you can actually work on implementing policies that will benefit the USA against their will. But until you get in power you shut the fuck up about policy. People don't vote for policy, the media don't report on policy, pundits don't analyze policy, and debates don't ask questions on policy. No one cares about policy, and Clinton's policy-rich failure against Trump's policy vacuum has made abundantly clear. So start pandering to their base instincts already.
You didn't actually read what I said. You can't promise them what they want to hear. Because what they want to hear is "Fuck non-white people". And the Democrats can't do that without both betraying one of the core purposes of the party at this point and without losing all the support that makes them viable. You can't say that is your policy, nor can you implement it.
And as already demonstrated, you can't just improve their lives because that won't win you elections. They want to be pandered too. And what they want most of all with that pandering is confirmation of white identity politics.
I read you loud and clear. What I said is, Democrats need to betray their core purpose and appease these people by promising to fuck non-white-people over harder and better than Republicans. Then they can turn around to non-white-people and promise to elevate them higher than they've ever been. This election has already demonstrated that most people live in media bubbles and are conditioned to believe news they want to believe, so you actually can promise to different groups to fuck the other over without them noticing, and the few people who do notice won't believe the contradicting statement anyway.
Once you're in power you can actually implement responsible policies. But you can't campaign on them, because you will lose to the guy without responsible policies who's promising to fuck other people over.
And core purposes don't win elections.
This is a great way to have nobody vote for you. Because telling the most loyal of your base to go fuck themselves destroys your base, and chasing after the people who want to fuck them over won't work because they won't buy it.
And honestly, this cynicism is getting old. Again, stop pretending that this was a trouncing - the margin was on a knife's edge.
I never said you tell "the most loyal of your base to go fuck themselves". You never tell them that. You tell them whatever the fuck you need to get them energized. And it's not sound sensible policy. Clinton's base heard about policy for over a year, and they were not energized.
You want to talk about the base? Fine. Less black people voted this year than in 2008 and 2012, and a greater proportion that voted went to R. Think about that. The Dems offered a set of sound reasonable policies that would benefit them, and the Pubs offered an overtly-racist, KKK-endorsed, old white man who accused them of killing each other and promised to bring back stop-and-frisk. And support for the GOP increased compared to the past two elections. Policy isn't what's driving people to the polls. Feelings are, and people don't even care if you're lying to their faces or honestly promising to hurt them if you make them feel good about it, and they won't support the best plan to help themselves if they don't feel good about it.
You want to argue it was a knife's edge difference? It shouldn't have been. You are betting on a blatantly losing strategy, and your best comebacks so far are "well we didn't lose by much" and "at least we were true to our core principles."
Democrats need to betray their core purpose and appease these people by promising to fuck non-white-people over harder and better than Republicans. Then they can turn around to non-white-people and promise to elevate them higher than they've ever been.
The rest of that post explains how you do that. It's quite different from what I'm alleged to have said.
No, it doesn't. It doesn't change the fact that your strategy is to throw the core Democratic base under the bus. Do you think black voters won't notice when you are on TV in Ohio saying "white power"?
Yes, that is exactly what I think. And conversely, white voters won't notice when you're on TV in Chicago speaking in a BLM rally.
Because people live in news filter bubbles and will only read about you from news sources that agree with and reinforce their perception of you. White people won't hear about what you're saying to black people and vice-versa. And the few that do will believe it's news bias, or slander, or just you lying to the other side for votes (because really deep down you're on their side, and the other sides are chumps you need to play nice with to take advantage until election day).
Basically, exactly what we just saw happen in 2016.
The problem is, black people cannot afford to not pay attention, and they are pretty well organized. Particularly via the black church. They would notice you selling them out, yes.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
g, but I find that the only reason they didn't vote for her was because she failed to visit (which yeah she should have) is not exactly a shining example of that region being super loyal Democrats begin with. It have been a firewall for Obama* and maybe Biden and Bernie, but for establishment candidates it was a region who'd severe ties from the Democrats with the slightest excuse. That type of instability can't be healed for a centrist within a few months during an election IMO.
That's not why she lost- the region has been devastated by job loss and for better or for worse Trump was the "jobs" candidate this election. He was the one that hammered companies for sending jobs overseas and he was the one that promised they'd come back. Hillary offered to teach the laid-off factory workers how to code. Voting to screw over the rich assholes who laid you off isn't "instability", and if you want to win there in 2020 you have to appeal to that same populist chord.
Those jobs aren't coming back they went to robots
again and again you just keep coming back to "lie to middle America better" as a political platform
It worked a treat for Trump.
Hard Truth: These people cannot be counted on to make rational decisions. Simply presenting solutions to problems is not enough to win them over. Hell sometimes that actually turns them off. Current theory is that she lost firewall stats just because she didn't physically show up there. That's ridiculous to me, an intellectual, but it matters to them. Disclaimer: IT IS NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE RURAL. I AM NOT LOOKING DOWN ON RURAL/MIDWESTERN VOTERS AS LESSER PEOPLE. There are many causes for this, such as a shitty media and worthless educational system, that are factors beyond their control. Not gonna go into the weeds about that right now, though. My point is that to win this demographic, you gotta be prepared to lie to them. That's not a bad thing.
Now, exactly where and how hard you should go after this demographic is a different debate. In 4 years it may be worthwhile to butter up the "firewall states", maybe not. We'll see.
You can't appeal to them because their economic interests are grounded in racism. What can you promise them that the GOP can't also promise them, except with an extra spicy layer of white identity politics?
You want an example, look right above you in the thread:
But CM doesn't believe that. Several people, including myself, have said so and he refuses to accept it. So when he advocates it, it's not a lie - he honestly believes (IMO) that's an achievable goal and something that we should be promising people - and then making it happen.
It is an achievable goal. Claiming that the jobs all went to robots is b.s.; haven't you seen all the thousands of corporate announcements about moving plants and call centers overseas? Throwing up your hands and going "welp let's teach 55-year old factory workers how to code" both condones the greed of corporations and forces more people to compete for the shrinking number of middle-class jobs we have left. Automation's a different story, and there's a national debate we need to have about corporate profits vs jobs, but to claim that every factory worker's job was filled by a robot is nonsense.
Carrier sure as hell isn't using robots down in Mexico.
I think Hillary's jobs plan was unrealistic and far too establishment friendly. "Let them code" was asinine when they're outsourcing coders, and both Bernie and Trump reeled in the votes by going after the corporations instead of the workers.
edit- if you want to win the next election you need to harp on this thread and steal Trump's thunder away from him. If you don't learn any lessons from the defeat of the best-qualified candidate in modern times to a reality TV businessman and keep on with the identity politics and hoping that minorities outbreed white people, well, you're going to lose again. They're people too and they worry about economic issues as much as anyone else and a sizable chunk of them voted Trump. If your message still is "let them code" in four years while everyone's scraping by with McJobs and crap-ass part time work you'll lose, plain and simple.
This is the issues you are dealing with. A fundamental belief in white identity politics immune to facts. It's about "immigrants taking our jobs" and it's the Democrats fault for just trying to help non-whites too much.
Easy. You promise them anything they want to hear. Lie through your teeth, appeal to their basest instincts, and it doesn't matter how unrealistic or contradictory or physically impossible your promises are. If they want you to put rocket boosters on the moon and fire it at their brown next-door neighbour without hitting their house, you promise you have the best rockets with the biggest boost like seriously it's yuge.
Once you're in power you can actually work on implementing policies that will benefit the USA against their will. But until you get in power you shut the fuck up about policy. People don't vote for policy, the media don't report on policy, pundits don't analyze policy, and debates don't ask questions on policy. No one cares about policy, and Clinton's policy-rich failure against Trump's policy vacuum has made abundantly clear. So start pandering to their base instincts already.
You didn't actually read what I said. You can't promise them what they want to hear. Because what they want to hear is "Fuck non-white people". And the Democrats can't do that without both betraying one of the core purposes of the party at this point and without losing all the support that makes them viable. You can't say that is your policy, nor can you implement it.
And as already demonstrated, you can't just improve their lives because that won't win you elections. They want to be pandered too. And what they want most of all with that pandering is confirmation of white identity politics.
I read you loud and clear. What I said is, Democrats need to betray their core purpose and appease these people by promising to fuck non-white-people over harder and better than Republicans. Then they can turn around to non-white-people and promise to elevate them higher than they've ever been. This election has already demonstrated that most people live in media bubbles and are conditioned to believe news they want to believe, so you actually can promise to different groups to fuck the other over without them noticing, and the few people who do notice won't believe the contradicting statement anyway.
Once you're in power you can actually implement responsible policies. But you can't campaign on them, because you will lose to the guy without responsible policies who's promising to fuck other people over.
And core purposes don't win elections.
This is a great way to have nobody vote for you. Because telling the most loyal of your base to go fuck themselves destroys your base, and chasing after the people who want to fuck them over won't work because they won't buy it.
And honestly, this cynicism is getting old. Again, stop pretending that this was a trouncing - the margin was on a knife's edge.
I never said you tell "the most loyal of your base to go fuck themselves". You never tell them that. You tell them whatever the fuck you need to get them energized. And it's not sound sensible policy. Clinton's base heard about policy for over a year, and they were not energized.
You want to talk about the base? Fine. Less black people voted this year than in 2008 and 2012, and a greater proportion that voted went to R. Think about that. The Dems offered a set of sound reasonable policies that would benefit them, and the Pubs offered an overtly-racist, KKK-endorsed, old white man who accused them of killing each other and promised to bring back stop-and-frisk. And support for the GOP increased compared to the past two elections. Policy isn't what's driving people to the polls. Feelings are, and people don't even care if you're lying to their faces or honestly promising to hurt them if you make them feel good about it, and they won't support the best plan to help themselves if they don't feel good about it.
You want to argue it was a knife's edge difference? It shouldn't have been. You are betting on a blatantly losing strategy, and your best comebacks so far are "well we didn't lose by much" and "at least we were true to our core principles."
Democrats need to betray their core purpose and appease these people by promising to fuck non-white-people over harder and better than Republicans. Then they can turn around to non-white-people and promise to elevate them higher than they've ever been.
The rest of that post explains how you do that. It's quite different from what I'm alleged to have said.
No, it doesn't. It doesn't change the fact that your strategy is to throw the core Democratic base under the bus. Do you think black voters won't notice when you are on TV in Ohio saying "white power"?
Yes, that is exactly what I think. And conversely, white voters won't notice when you're on TV in Chicago speaking in a BLM rally.
Because people live in news filter bubbles and will only read about you from news sources that agree with and reinforce their perception of you. White people won't hear about what you're saying to black people and vice-versa. And the few that do will believe it's news bias, or slander, or just you lying to the other side for votes (because really deep down you're on their side, and the other sides are chumps you need to play nice with to take advantage until election day).
Basically, exactly what we just saw happen in 2016.
Except that's not what we saw happen. You might be surprised to hear this, but minorities tend to not have media bubbles. This is in large part because, unlike whites, they tend to understand as a community that they don't have the luxury of ignoring the outer world.
g, but I find that the only reason they didn't vote for her was because she failed to visit (which yeah she should have) is not exactly a shining example of that region being super loyal Democrats begin with. It have been a firewall for Obama* and maybe Biden and Bernie, but for establishment candidates it was a region who'd severe ties from the Democrats with the slightest excuse. That type of instability can't be healed for a centrist within a few months during an election IMO.
That's not why she lost- the region has been devastated by job loss and for better or for worse Trump was the "jobs" candidate this election. He was the one that hammered companies for sending jobs overseas and he was the one that promised they'd come back. Hillary offered to teach the laid-off factory workers how to code. Voting to screw over the rich assholes who laid you off isn't "instability", and if you want to win there in 2020 you have to appeal to that same populist chord.
Those jobs aren't coming back they went to robots
again and again you just keep coming back to "lie to middle America better" as a political platform
It worked a treat for Trump.
Hard Truth: These people cannot be counted on to make rational decisions. Simply presenting solutions to problems is not enough to win them over. Hell sometimes that actually turns them off. Current theory is that she lost firewall stats just because she didn't physically show up there. That's ridiculous to me, an intellectual, but it matters to them. Disclaimer: IT IS NOT BECAUSE THEY ARE RURAL. I AM NOT LOOKING DOWN ON RURAL/MIDWESTERN VOTERS AS LESSER PEOPLE. There are many causes for this, such as a shitty media and worthless educational system, that are factors beyond their control. Not gonna go into the weeds about that right now, though. My point is that to win this demographic, you gotta be prepared to lie to them. That's not a bad thing.
Now, exactly where and how hard you should go after this demographic is a different debate. In 4 years it may be worthwhile to butter up the "firewall states", maybe not. We'll see.
You can't appeal to them because their economic interests are grounded in racism. What can you promise them that the GOP can't also promise them, except with an extra spicy layer of white identity politics?
You want an example, look right above you in the thread:
But CM doesn't believe that. Several people, including myself, have said so and he refuses to accept it. So when he advocates it, it's not a lie - he honestly believes (IMO) that's an achievable goal and something that we should be promising people - and then making it happen.
It is an achievable goal. Claiming that the jobs all went to robots is b.s.; haven't you seen all the thousands of corporate announcements about moving plants and call centers overseas? Throwing up your hands and going "welp let's teach 55-year old factory workers how to code" both condones the greed of corporations and forces more people to compete for the shrinking number of middle-class jobs we have left. Automation's a different story, and there's a national debate we need to have about corporate profits vs jobs, but to claim that every factory worker's job was filled by a robot is nonsense.
Carrier sure as hell isn't using robots down in Mexico.
I think Hillary's jobs plan was unrealistic and far too establishment friendly. "Let them code" was asinine when they're outsourcing coders, and both Bernie and Trump reeled in the votes by going after the corporations instead of the workers.
edit- if you want to win the next election you need to harp on this thread and steal Trump's thunder away from him. If you don't learn any lessons from the defeat of the best-qualified candidate in modern times to a reality TV businessman and keep on with the identity politics and hoping that minorities outbreed white people, well, you're going to lose again. They're people too and they worry about economic issues as much as anyone else and a sizable chunk of them voted Trump. If your message still is "let them code" in four years while everyone's scraping by with McJobs and crap-ass part time work you'll lose, plain and simple.
This is the issues you are dealing with. A fundamental belief in white identity politics immune to facts. It's about "immigrants taking our jobs" and it's the Democrats fault for just trying to help non-whites too much.
Easy. You promise them anything they want to hear. Lie through your teeth, appeal to their basest instincts, and it doesn't matter how unrealistic or contradictory or physically impossible your promises are. If they want you to put rocket boosters on the moon and fire it at their brown next-door neighbour without hitting their house, you promise you have the best rockets with the biggest boost like seriously it's yuge.
Once you're in power you can actually work on implementing policies that will benefit the USA against their will. But until you get in power you shut the fuck up about policy. People don't vote for policy, the media don't report on policy, pundits don't analyze policy, and debates don't ask questions on policy. No one cares about policy, and Clinton's policy-rich failure against Trump's policy vacuum has made abundantly clear. So start pandering to their base instincts already.
You didn't actually read what I said. You can't promise them what they want to hear. Because what they want to hear is "Fuck non-white people". And the Democrats can't do that without both betraying one of the core purposes of the party at this point and without losing all the support that makes them viable. You can't say that is your policy, nor can you implement it.
And as already demonstrated, you can't just improve their lives because that won't win you elections. They want to be pandered too. And what they want most of all with that pandering is confirmation of white identity politics.
I read you loud and clear. What I said is, Democrats need to betray their core purpose and appease these people by promising to fuck non-white-people over harder and better than Republicans. Then they can turn around to non-white-people and promise to elevate them higher than they've ever been. This election has already demonstrated that most people live in media bubbles and are conditioned to believe news they want to believe, so you actually can promise to different groups to fuck the other over without them noticing, and the few people who do notice won't believe the contradicting statement anyway.
Once you're in power you can actually implement responsible policies. But you can't campaign on them, because you will lose to the guy without responsible policies who's promising to fuck other people over.
And core purposes don't win elections.
This is a great way to have nobody vote for you. Because telling the most loyal of your base to go fuck themselves destroys your base, and chasing after the people who want to fuck them over won't work because they won't buy it.
And honestly, this cynicism is getting old. Again, stop pretending that this was a trouncing - the margin was on a knife's edge.
I never said you tell "the most loyal of your base to go fuck themselves". You never tell them that. You tell them whatever the fuck you need to get them energized. And it's not sound sensible policy. Clinton's base heard about policy for over a year, and they were not energized.
You want to talk about the base? Fine. Less black people voted this year than in 2008 and 2012, and a greater proportion that voted went to R. Think about that. The Dems offered a set of sound reasonable policies that would benefit them, and the Pubs offered an overtly-racist, KKK-endorsed, old white man who accused them of killing each other and promised to bring back stop-and-frisk. And support for the GOP increased compared to the past two elections. Policy isn't what's driving people to the polls. Feelings are, and people don't even care if you're lying to their faces or honestly promising to hurt them if you make them feel good about it, and they won't support the best plan to help themselves if they don't feel good about it.
You want to argue it was a knife's edge difference? It shouldn't have been. You are betting on a blatantly losing strategy, and your best comebacks so far are "well we didn't lose by much" and "at least we were true to our core principles."
Democrats need to betray their core purpose and appease these people by promising to fuck non-white-people over harder and better than Republicans. Then they can turn around to non-white-people and promise to elevate them higher than they've ever been.
The rest of that post explains how you do that. It's quite different from what I'm alleged to have said.
No, it doesn't. It doesn't change the fact that your strategy is to throw the core Democratic base under the bus. Do you think black voters won't notice when you are on TV in Ohio saying "white power"?
Yes, that is exactly what I think. And conversely, white voters won't notice when you're on TV in Chicago speaking in a BLM rally.
Because people live in news filter bubbles and will only read about you from news sources that agree with and reinforce their perception of you. White people won't hear about what you're saying to black people and vice-versa. And the few that do will believe it's news bias, or slander, or just you lying to the other side for votes (because really deep down you're on their side, and the other sides are chumps you need to play nice with to take advantage until election day).
Basically, exactly what we just saw happen in 2016.
You are fucking kidding yourself then. This is not what we saw happen this election. Everyone saw Trump being a horrible racist and sexist. It's just a lot of people were OK with that.
If you go around pushing the gospel of white power, black voters will notice.
The voters decide who wins elections, and that this has to be explicitly stated is part of the problem. I blame 3rd party/Sanders defectors less than Trump voters because negligence isn't as bad as malice, but that doesn't absolve anyone of responsibility. Obama didn't force voters to vote for him, voters chose him. For all the contempt the "Great Man" view of history generally (mostly correctly) receives now a days, we have a very "Great Campaign Manager" view of electoral politics.
The problem is that politicians don't get to choose the voters.* As that's the case, and the measure of a successful presidential run is to get the most votes in enough states, blaming the electorate does nothing--it's equivalent to complaining about the weather. This isn't to overstate the influence of a campaign or candidate, but to recognize what's controllable and what isn't. Otherwise literally every politician who has lost a race can say "well, if fewer people had voted for my opponent I would have won." We get that, and it excuses mistakes in areas where they actually do have control.
*Offer void in the House of Representatives and some state legislatures.
BTW, nobody is saying that you have to be more racist than the Pubs (you won't win that fight). What people are saying, is that instead of getting on the automatization/post-scarcity long explanation that nobody seems to care about, just say "yes, we are going to bring the jobs back".
That's what I'm saying. However, it's been pointed out to me that it's really about the economy, it's about racism. Racism is a huge part, but I'm not certain to precisely what extent. It's not the only thing. If it's not all about racism, then there is perhaps an angle a charismatic Dem can exploit.
On the other hand, it may be that it's not all about racism, but racism is the foundation for everything. At that point these people can be written of as truly lost causes.
If that's true, though, then why did Hillary lose places Obama won? It's been said that someone can be racist but still vote for Obama because he's "one of the good ones", and I agree. If that's the case, how is voting against a white woman less racist than voting for a black man? If you voted or Obama, why go for Trump the hardcore racist?
At this point I'm not talking about plans to win the next election, I'm talking about understanding the mindset of this subset of voters. More and more I feel like I'm a cartographer trying to map R'lyeh. Soon as I think I got it figured out, it becomes more insane.
Part of it is that in '08, Obama was the one offering hope and the opportunity to throw a bomb at "the establishment". Eight years later, it's Trump who's in the position to make promises and offer "change".
People everywhere and everywhen have been receptive to the idea that they just have to do one thing and their lives will be made Better, without them having to put in any more thought or effort after that.
The voters decide who wins elections, and that this has to be explicitly stated is part of the problem. I blame 3rd party/Sanders defectors less than Trump voters because negligence isn't as bad as malice, but that doesn't absolve anyone of responsibility. Obama didn't force voters to vote for him, voters chose him. For all the contempt the "Great Man" view of history generally (mostly correctly) receives now a days, we have a very "Great Campaign Manager" view of electoral politics.
The problem is that politicians don't get to choose the voters.* As that's the case, and the measure of a successful presidential run is to get the most votes in enough states, blaming the electorate does nothing--it's equivalent to complaining about the weather. This isn't to overstate the influence of a campaign or candidate, but to recognize what's controllable and what isn't. Otherwise literally every politician who has lost a race can say "well, if fewer people had voted for my opponent I would have won." We get that, and it excuses mistakes in areas where they actually do have control.
*Offer void in the House of Representatives and some state legislatures.
What does "blaming the voters" mean? No one here is using "blame Trump voters" to absolve themselves of responsibility or agency. Some of us (myself included) will blame them for being dumb fucktards at best, evil racist at worst. And they sure as hell deserve some personal blame for our situation because they took direct action to bring us to it.
BTW, nobody is saying that you have to be more racist than the Pubs (you won't win that fight). What people are saying, is that instead of getting on the automatization/post-scarcity long explanation that nobody seems to care about, just say "yes, we are going to bring the jobs back".
That's what I'm saying. However, it's been pointed out to me that it's really about the economy, it's about racism. Racism is a huge part, but I'm not certain to precisely what extent. It's not the only thing. If it's not all about racism, then there is perhaps an angle a charismatic Dem can exploit.
On the other hand, it may be that it's not all about racism, but racism is the foundation for everything. At that point these people can be written of as truly lost causes.
If that's true, though, then why did Hillary lose places Obama won? It's been said that someone can be racist but still vote for Obama because he's "one of the good ones", and I agree. If that's the case, how is voting against a white woman less racist than voting for a black man? If you voted or Obama, why go for Trump the hardcore racist?
At this point I'm not talking about plans to win the next election, I'm talking about understanding the mindset of this subset of voters. More and more I feel like I'm a cartographer trying to map R'lyeh. Soon as I think I got it figured out, it becomes more insane.
There are a few theories there.
One, there's the idea that bigotry is a luxury. What this means is that there are actual economic costs to pursuing policies of bigotry, so choosing to engage in it costs you in a real sense. So, with the economy weak in 08, they may not have been able to "afford" to be as bigoted as in later years, with economic recovery.
Two, there's the point that Obama intentionally downplayed race - a position he could afford to do with his personal identity doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Clinton couldn't do that, so she had to be more overt, which leads into...
Three, members of the majority group espousing minority support are often viewed as being more dangerous, because they are using their "stronger" voice to espouse support for positions that would normally be dismissed based on the identity of the speaker.
BTW, nobody is saying that you have to be more racist than the Pubs (you won't win that fight). What people are saying, is that instead of getting on the automatization/post-scarcity long explanation that nobody seems to care about, just say "yes, we are going to bring the jobs back".
That's what I'm saying. However, it's been pointed out to me that it's really about the economy, it's about racism. Racism is a huge part, but I'm not certain to precisely what extent. It's not the only thing. If it's not all about racism, then there is perhaps an angle a charismatic Dem can exploit.
On the other hand, it may be that it's not all about racism, but racism is the foundation for everything. At that point these people can be written of as truly lost causes.
If that's true, though, then why did Hillary lose places Obama won? It's been said that someone can be racist but still vote for Obama because he's "one of the good ones", and I agree. If that's the case, how is voting against a white woman less racist than voting for a black man? If you voted or Obama, why go for Trump the hardcore racist?
At this point I'm not talking about plans to win the next election, I'm talking about understanding the mindset of this subset of voters. More and more I feel like I'm a cartographer trying to map R'lyeh. Soon as I think I got it figured out, it becomes more insane.
There are a few theories there.
One, there's the idea that bigotry is a luxury. What this means is that there are actual economic costs to pursuing policies of bigotry, so choosing to engage in it costs you in a real sense. So, with the economy weak in 08, they may not have been able to "afford" to be as bigoted as in later years, with economic recovery.
Two, there's the point that Obama intentionally downplayed race - a position he could afford to do with his personal identity doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Clinton couldn't do that, so she had to be more overt, which leads into...
Three, members of the majority group espousing minority support are often viewed as being more dangerous, because they are using their "stronger" voice to espouse support for positions that would normally be dismissed based on the identity of the speaker.
a) "Bigotry is a luxury" doesn't jive with this election. My understanding is that Trump won a lot of votes by telling people how much worse off they are now than 4-8 years ago. I can see this theory may be accurate in a broader sense.
b) Agreed.
c) That makes sense. It also makes me sick.
Apparently racism is like Beetlejuice. As long as you don't say it too much it can't get you.
BTW, nobody is saying that you have to be more racist than the Pubs (you won't win that fight). What people are saying, is that instead of getting on the automatization/post-scarcity long explanation that nobody seems to care about, just say "yes, we are going to bring the jobs back".
That's what I'm saying. However, it's been pointed out to me that it's really about the economy, it's about racism. Racism is a huge part, but I'm not certain to precisely what extent. It's not the only thing. If it's not all about racism, then there is perhaps an angle a charismatic Dem can exploit.
On the other hand, it may be that it's not all about racism, but racism is the foundation for everything. At that point these people can be written of as truly lost causes.
If that's true, though, then why did Hillary lose places Obama won? It's been said that someone can be racist but still vote for Obama because he's "one of the good ones", and I agree. If that's the case, how is voting against a white woman less racist than voting for a black man? If you voted or Obama, why go for Trump the hardcore racist?
At this point I'm not talking about plans to win the next election, I'm talking about understanding the mindset of this subset of voters. More and more I feel like I'm a cartographer trying to map R'lyeh. Soon as I think I got it figured out, it becomes more insane.
There are a few theories there.
One, there's the idea that bigotry is a luxury. What this means is that there are actual economic costs to pursuing policies of bigotry, so choosing to engage in it costs you in a real sense. So, with the economy weak in 08, they may not have been able to "afford" to be as bigoted as in later years, with economic recovery.
Two, there's the point that Obama intentionally downplayed race - a position he could afford to do with his personal identity doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Clinton couldn't do that, so she had to be more overt, which leads into...
Three, members of the majority group espousing minority support are often viewed as being more dangerous, because they are using their "stronger" voice to espouse support for positions that would normally be dismissed based on the identity of the speaker.
a) "Bigotry is a luxury" doesn't jive with this election. My understanding is that Trump won a lot of votes by telling people how much worse off they are now than 4-8 years ago. I can see this theory may be accurate in a broader sense.
b) Agreed.
c) That makes sense. It also makes me sick.
Apparently racism is like Beetlejuice. As long as you don't say it too much it can't get you.
You're right in that he won a lot of votes by telling people how much worse off they are now...regardless of if that is actually true. Look at that Atlantic piece I posted earlier - it's pretty clear that Elkhart had their economic situation improved by Democratic policy, and yet they believe that it made them worse off, that their success was in spite of those policies.
The voters decide who wins elections, and that this has to be explicitly stated is part of the problem. I blame 3rd party/Sanders defectors less than Trump voters because negligence isn't as bad as malice, but that doesn't absolve anyone of responsibility. Obama didn't force voters to vote for him, voters chose him. For all the contempt the "Great Man" view of history generally (mostly correctly) receives now a days, we have a very "Great Campaign Manager" view of electoral politics.
The problem is that politicians don't get to choose the voters.* As that's the case, and the measure of a successful presidential run is to get the most votes in enough states, blaming the electorate does nothing--it's equivalent to complaining about the weather. This isn't to overstate the influence of a campaign or candidate, but to recognize what's controllable and what isn't. Otherwise literally every politician who has lost a race can say "well, if fewer people had voted for my opponent I would have won." We get that, and it excuses mistakes in areas where they actually do have control.
*Offer void in the House of Representatives and some state legislatures.
So? If given the choice between a correct analysis that shows a problem is difficult and intractable, requiring time and changing conditions before a solution will be feasible, and one that is false but presents a clear set of actions, does that make the latter any less irrational?
Imagine this was business and you had two consultants (or engineers or whatever). The first said, "There's no easy solution. Its going to get worse before it gets better and even then painful changes might be needed." The second said, "All you need to do is change your process a little bit, and really engage in the social media strategy we offer at a very reasonable price." The comforting narrative that tells you not only do you control your own destiny, but that you don't need to make any real changes, is one of the oldest scams in the book. And most of the people publicly pushing it have an agenda that is the same agenda that they had on November 1 and that they'd be pushing regardless of the outcome of the election. On the Republican side it was usually "We need a True Conservative." In the 80s for Dems it was "We need a White Southerner who can appeal to centrists." Now its "We need an Economic Populist who can speak to the white Working Class."
What we mostly need is the reality of a Trump Presidency. And we need to do the slow-ass, boring, tedious work of winning local elections and state elections. And even at the fastest, we'll need to wait 2 years before we could begin to have any kind of realistic check on Trump.
Its going to be hard. Its going to suck. And lying to ourselves about what happened in November won't change that. The American people chose to go backwards because enough of them in enough states really don't like brown people. That's not a new situation, its just one that hasn't been this successfully exploited at the Presidential level since either 1980 or 1988 depending on how you look at it.
And that sits atop Republicans winning the House 11 out of the last 13 elections. They control the Senate and SCOTUS and 3/4 of state governments. Republicans are in the majority and it fucking sucks. And it'll take a generation to dig ourselves out of it, Obama and a disastrous W Presidency just obscured that
Possibly worth noting: Gillibrand was the only person to vote against Mattis and also voted no on Kelly. She might be going with a blanket no strategy and she's almost definitely ambitious enough to run for President.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
But CM doesn't believe that. Several people, including myself, have said so and he refuses to accept it. So when he advocates it, it's not a lie - he honestly believes (IMO) that's an achievable goal and something that we should be promising people - and then making it happen.
It is an achievable goal. Claiming that the jobs all went to robots is b.s.; haven't you seen all the thousands of corporate announcements about moving plants and call centers overseas? Throwing up your hands and going "welp let's teach 55-year old factory workers how to code" both condones the greed of corporations and forces more people to compete for the shrinking number of middle-class jobs we have left. Automation's a different story, and there's a national debate we need to have about corporate profits vs jobs, but to claim that every factory worker's job was filled by a robot is nonsense.
Carrier sure as hell isn't using robots down in Mexico.
I think Hillary's jobs plan was unrealistic and far too establishment friendly. "Let them code" was asinine when they're outsourcing coders, and both Bernie and Trump reeled in the votes by going after the corporations instead of the workers.
edit- if you want to win the next election you need to harp on this thread and steal Trump's thunder away from him. If you don't learn any lessons from the defeat of the best-qualified candidate in modern times to a reality TV businessman and keep on with the identity politics and hoping that minorities outbreed white people, well, you're going to lose again. They're people too and they worry about economic issues as much as anyone else and a sizable chunk of them voted Trump. If your message still is "let them code" in four years while everyone's scraping by with McJobs and crap-ass part time work you'll lose, plain and simple.
The choice is very simple - either adapt or die. They chose to die by electing Donnie.
Their idealism isn't going save them, pragmatism is.
What's wrong with being establishment friendly? Besides, even if was is that really where you want to draw the line for people who need to eat?
Trump's Carrier deal was bullshit. Trump is one of the very people they say they oppose by taking jobs overseas (which Hillary should have hit him on in those regions constantly), yet they gladly take anything he says at face value.
They are people and sometimes people make bad decisions that go against their interests. This being one of the most obvious examples I've seen.
Here's the thing, Democrats may lose them in elections to this - they'll lose everything. And they have themselves to blame.
Fuck em. You up the urban area turnout a few points you don't need nearly as many of these voters as you think
We can stop pretending we're good allies anytime now if that's the strategy, because we gambled on that strategy this time, against the worst candidate the GOP has ever seen, and we have Trump to show for it. That's not good stewardship of Dem political power.
The problem is only going to get worse as Dem voters continue to self-segregate in blue enclaves.
It's the opposite, they aren't good allies to the Democrats. The Dems have tried to help them, yet because their reputation is ruined by the GOP and when they fail by not being perfect they get blamed. I mean, it's not like they have an opposition party that has successfully obstructed the government at unprecedented levels, right?
That "worst candidate" is the only modern politician who almost beat Obama at his peak. Sure, she was flawed but there's more going on here then merely Trump vs Hillary.
Dems also fail sometimes. Holding them a standard that they have to win every time or they're the enemy is unrealistic. The real enemy is Trump and the GOP. The Rust Belt should have remembered that, and now they're going to get a preview of why they voted for Democrats in the past -- want to bet who they're going to blame when their lives start getting worse? I don't think it'll be the GOP.
Dems retreating is a natural response when their allies they thought they could count on were gullible enough to be swayed by one of the worst, most blatant politicians in history. They knew what they were getting, and they signed on anyway.
The voters decide who wins elections, and that this has to be explicitly stated is part of the problem. I blame 3rd party/Sanders defectors less than Trump voters because negligence isn't as bad as malice, but that doesn't absolve anyone of responsibility. Obama didn't force voters to vote for him, voters chose him. For all the contempt the "Great Man" view of history generally (mostly correctly) receives now a days, we have a very "Great Campaign Manager" view of electoral politics.
The problem is that politicians don't get to choose the voters.* As that's the case, and the measure of a successful presidential run is to get the most votes in enough states, blaming the electorate does nothing--it's equivalent to complaining about the weather. This isn't to overstate the influence of a campaign or candidate, but to recognize what's controllable and what isn't. Otherwise literally every politician who has lost a race can say "well, if fewer people had voted for my opponent I would have won." We get that, and it excuses mistakes in areas where they actually do have control.
*Offer void in the House of Representatives and some state legislatures.
So? If given the choice between a correct analysis that shows a problem is difficult and intractable, requiring time and changing conditions before a solution will be feasible, and one that is false but presents a clear set of actions, does that make the latter any less irrational?
Imagine this was business and you had two consultants (or engineers or whatever). The first said, "There's no easy solution. Its going to get worse before it gets better and even then painful changes might be needed." The second said, "All you need to do is change your process a little bit, and really engage in the social media strategy we offer at a very reasonable price." The comforting narrative that tells you not only do you control your own destiny, but that you don't need to make any real changes, is one of the oldest scams in the book. And most of the people publicly pushing it have an agenda that is the same agenda that they had on November 1 and that they'd be pushing regardless of the outcome of the election. On the Republican side it was usually "We need a True Conservative." In the 80s for Dems it was "We need a White Southerner who can appeal to centrists." Now its "We need an Economic Populist who can speak to the white Working Class."
What we mostly need is the reality of a Trump Presidency. And we need to do the slow-ass, boring, tedious work of winning local elections and state elections. And even at the fastest, we'll need to wait 2 years before we could begin to have any kind of realistic check on Trump.
Its going to be hard. Its going to suck. And lying to ourselves about what happened in November won't change that. The American people chose to go backwards because enough of them in enough states really don't like brown people. That's not a new situation, its just one that hasn't been this successfully exploited at the Presidential level since either 1980 or 1988 depending on how you look at it.
And that sits atop Republicans winning the House 11 out of the last 13 elections. They control the Senate and SCOTUS and 3/4 of state governments. Republicans are in the majority and it fucking sucks. And it'll take a generation to dig ourselves out of it, Obama and a disastrous W Presidency just obscured that
So, your argument is "we're fucked, not much to do about it?" Pardon me if I don't find that compelling. And if we're going to do the hard work of winning local and state elections, we're not going to do it without leftist voters you place the bulk of the blame on. As I said a few pages ago, blame-the-electorate is a piss poor strategy for reunifying the democratic party and regaining those votes it lost. Every "Bernie stabbed us in the back" here, or on facebook, or on twitter, just helps to alienate those voters more and convince them that their only option is to stage a populist takeover of the party.
The Democrats who voted to confirm Pompeo were: John Donnelly of Indiana, Dianne Feinstein of California, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Schumer, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Warner, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
The Democrats who voted to confirm Pompeo were: John Donnelly of Indiana, Dianne Feinstein of California, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Schumer, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Warner, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
I don't like Bernie or his bros but if he can get rid of these lot then I'll do a republican and pull the lever. I understand the Blue Dog but freaking California? Hawaii? Rhode Island? These are the safest of blue states what were they thinking?
The Democrats who voted to confirm Pompeo were: John Donnelly of Indiana, Dianne Feinstein of California, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Schumer, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Warner, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
The Democrats who voted to confirm Pompeo were: John Donnelly of Indiana, Dianne Feinstein of California, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Schumer, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Warner, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
Also, completely off topic here so why are you posting it?
Well, "How the Dems can win elections" seems to be the theme, so "not having the VP nominee basically give the A-OK to Russian influence by supporting Trump's henchman on the CIA" seems a fairly obvious suggestion. I mean, this is pretty much designed to depress turnout and prime the Dems for their own Tea Party Revolution.
EDIT: You think that Dem turnout is bad now? Just imagine a similar list for Trump's SCOTUS pick.
The Democrats who voted to confirm Pompeo were: John Donnelly of Indiana, Dianne Feinstein of California, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Schumer, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Warner, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
I don't like Bernie or his bros but if he can get rid of these lot then I'll do a republican and pull the lever. I understand the Blue Dog but freaking California? Hawaii? Rhode Island? These are the safest of blue states what were they thinking?
They were thinking that those were the safest of states so they could do whatever.
The solution (I'M SORRY I KNOW I'VE SAID THIS TO YOU LIKE THREE TIMES IN AN HOUR BUT THIS IS ANOTHER THREAD) is primarying them (and threatening to do so via phone call).
Say it as many times as you need to. Maybe if we both scream it something will happen.
(On-topic?)
I do think this belongs in this thread. How exactly are we going to get Dems motivated to vote in 2020 when our own Dem Senators(in the safest of safest states too!) will abandon us the second they can. Feinstein would have gotten nothing but praise for rejecting Tillerson and yet she still did it. I went from the high of the Women's March to almost night of the election again.
Edit:
I don't think I would even be this mad if I could just know WHY? Why vote for it when your vote wasn't needed and your seat isn't at risk? What exactly do they have to gain from any of this?
LoisLane on
+4
Options
AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
I am not sure how you win over a base who's core principles appear to be no taxes and Jesus.
You forgot guns.
Edit:
Also 15 dems just voted to confirm CIA nominee when they fucking didn't need to. What the hell are we going to do about it?
We have two options.
1) Recognize that the nomination was going through regardless, Dems didn't have the numbers to stop it even if they voted in lockstep against. Maybe it's better to prevent Dems from losing seats by letting them take political cover in districts they may have trouble in next time. Under this theory, more Dems in Congress are better, even if they sometimes cross the aisle for symbolic votes. The benefits here are good in the medium term at least.
2) Go full Tea Party on any Dem who doesn't 100% oppose Trump and the GOP on everything. The benefits here are good in the long term--we hopefully get a more unified opposition party and we stop some of these from sabotaging any future runs with bad votes. On the other hand, the Tea Party lost GOP seats when they were getting started, so in 2018 or 2020 we could end up with a more unified minority party instead of a less unified majority party.
It's a tough call, partly because it's exactly along the same lines of idealism/pragmatism, center/far left fracturing the party's been struggling with lately. I don't necessarily know how I feel about it even.
I am not sure how you win over a base who's core principles appear to be no taxes and Jesus.
You forgot guns.
Edit:
Also 15 dems just voted to confirm CIA nominee when they fucking didn't need to. What the hell are we going to do about it?
We have two options.
1) Recognize that the nomination was going through regardless, Dems didn't have the numbers to stop it even if they voted in lockstep against. Maybe it's better to prevent Dems from losing seats by letting them take political cover in districts they may have trouble in next time. Under this theory, more Dems in Congress are better, even if they sometimes cross the aisle for symbolic votes. The benefits here are good in the medium term at least.
2) Go full Tea Party on any Dem who doesn't 100% oppose Trump and the GOP on everything. The benefits here are good in the long term--we hopefully get a more unified opposition party and we stop some of these from sabotaging any future runs with bad votes. On the other hand, the Tea Party lost GOP seats when they were getting started, so in 2018 or 2020 we could end up with a more unified minority party instead of a less unified majority party.
It's a tough call, partly because it's exactly along the same lines of idealism/pragmatism, center/far left fracturing the party's been struggling with lately. I don't necessarily know how I feel about it even.
The first one isn't viable for me because it wasn't just blue dogs who did it. I can excuse Missouri, Virginia, and New Hampshire but not Cali, Hawaii, or Rhode Island. Unless something has drastically changed in these states that I am not aware of they gain no visible advantage and tons of scorn for doing this. It's shortsighted and weak-kneed in time when we don't need either. Which leads us to two which I fully support. Go after every safe dem who thinks they can act republican and keep their seat.
The voters decide who wins elections, and that this has to be explicitly stated is part of the problem. I blame 3rd party/Sanders defectors less than Trump voters because negligence isn't as bad as malice, but that doesn't absolve anyone of responsibility. Obama didn't force voters to vote for him, voters chose him. For all the contempt the "Great Man" view of history generally (mostly correctly) receives now a days, we have a very "Great Campaign Manager" view of electoral politics.
The problem is that politicians don't get to choose the voters.* As that's the case, and the measure of a successful presidential run is to get the most votes in enough states, blaming the electorate does nothing--it's equivalent to complaining about the weather. This isn't to overstate the influence of a campaign or candidate, but to recognize what's controllable and what isn't. Otherwise literally every politician who has lost a race can say "well, if fewer people had voted for my opponent I would have won." We get that, and it excuses mistakes in areas where they actually do have control.
*Offer void in the House of Representatives and some state legislatures.
So? If given the choice between a correct analysis that shows a problem is difficult and intractable, requiring time and changing conditions before a solution will be feasible, and one that is false but presents a clear set of actions, does that make the latter any less irrational?
Imagine this was business and you had two consultants (or engineers or whatever). The first said, "There's no easy solution. Its going to get worse before it gets better and even then painful changes might be needed." The second said, "All you need to do is change your process a little bit, and really engage in the social media strategy we offer at a very reasonable price." The comforting narrative that tells you not only do you control your own destiny, but that you don't need to make any real changes, is one of the oldest scams in the book. And most of the people publicly pushing it have an agenda that is the same agenda that they had on November 1 and that they'd be pushing regardless of the outcome of the election. On the Republican side it was usually "We need a True Conservative." In the 80s for Dems it was "We need a White Southerner who can appeal to centrists." Now its "We need an Economic Populist who can speak to the white Working Class."
What we mostly need is the reality of a Trump Presidency. And we need to do the slow-ass, boring, tedious work of winning local elections and state elections. And even at the fastest, we'll need to wait 2 years before we could begin to have any kind of realistic check on Trump.
Its going to be hard. Its going to suck. And lying to ourselves about what happened in November won't change that. The American people chose to go backwards because enough of them in enough states really don't like brown people. That's not a new situation, its just one that hasn't been this successfully exploited at the Presidential level since either 1980 or 1988 depending on how you look at it.
And that sits atop Republicans winning the House 11 out of the last 13 elections. They control the Senate and SCOTUS and 3/4 of state governments. Republicans are in the majority and it
So, your argument is "we're fucked, not much to do about it?" Pardon me if I don't find that compelling. And if we're going to do the hard work of winning local and state elections, we're not going to do it without leftist voters you place the bulk of the blame on.
When people discuss left voters in this context it isn't the Movement as a whole it's a minority within that group. The majority of Bernie's voters voted for Hillary on the general, no one has an issue with them. However no faction is above reproach, centrists etc can be dicks too. If you're On my side and are being unreasonable I'm going to call you out. It does my faction (liberals) or the party as a whole any Favors to have assholes screw everyone else.
As I said a few pages ago, blame-the-electorate is a piss poor strategy for reunifying the democratic party and regaining those votes it lost.
That's not a strategy for unifying the party, it's diagnosing a problem and if it really is true it won't go away by ignoring the implications.
The question is - what can we do about it?
The democrats splintering is not only on the electorate, it's about the factions and the key figures at the highest ranks involved in the conflict.
This is a complicated thing for the democrats to figure out, it won't be solved easily or quickly.
Every "Bernie stabbed us in the back" here, or on facebook, or on twitter, just helps to alienate those voters more and convince them that their only option is to stage a populist takeover of the party.
It is the truth, and yes unfortunately acknowledging this is going to alienate voters - but I'm at a loss that ignoring what happened is going to fix things entirely - especially with Bernie himself reigniting those fires instead of trying to heal the wounds the conflict has caused. There are two people who have the largest power to influence how the rift heals and that's him and Hillary and hillarys MIA at the moment for obvious reasons.
Theses voters are already trying to take over the party regardless. That was on the cards the moment Bernie launched his campaign.
I am not sure how you win over a base who's core principles appear to be no taxes and Jesus.
You forgot guns.
Edit:
Also 15 dems just voted to confirm CIA nominee when they fucking didn't need to. What the hell are we going to do about it?
We have two options.
1) Recognize that the nomination was going through regardless, Dems didn't have the numbers to stop it even if they voted in lockstep against. Maybe it's better to prevent Dems from losing seats by letting them take political cover in districts they may have trouble in next time. Under this theory, more Dems in Congress are better, even if they sometimes cross the aisle for symbolic votes. The benefits here are good in the medium term at least.
2) Go full Tea Party on any Dem who doesn't 100% oppose Trump and the GOP on everything. The benefits here are good in the long term--we hopefully get a more unified opposition party and we stop some of these from sabotaging any future runs with bad votes. On the other hand, the Tea Party lost GOP seats when they were getting started, so in 2018 or 2020 we could end up with a more unified minority party instead of a less unified majority party.
It's a tough call, partly because it's exactly along the same lines of idealism/pragmatism, center/far left fracturing the party's been struggling with lately. I don't necessarily know how I feel about it even.
The first one isn't viable for me because it wasn't just blue dogs who did it. I can excuse Missouri, Virginia, and New Hampshire but not Cali, Hawaii, or Rhode Island. Unless something has drastically changed in these states that I am not aware of they gain no visible advantage and tons of scorn for doing this. It's shortsighted and weak-kneed in time when we don't need either. Which leads us to two which I fully support. Go after every safe dem who thinks they can act republican and keep their seat.
I think the idea is to give those swing state dems cover from democratic partisans, it's harder to get singled out if a bunch voted that way.
It also could be a decision to keep the CIA director from being a more partisan vote since congress is gonna be relying on the CIA to investigate Donald's Russian connection and all.
MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
edited January 2017
With respect to 3rd party voting: Jameson Quinn, writing at Lawyers Guns and Money on behalf of electology, found on the basis of their pre-election polling that likely Stein voters only rated Clinton higher than Trump at a 2:1 margin. But dissolving Stein and giving Clinton a 2:1 margin for those votes would only flip Wisconsin, failing to change the ultimate result. Furthermore, Johnson voters also preferred Trump at a 2:1 margin to Clinton. Since Johnson outperformed Stein, this means that if both candidates' votes were passed on to their voters' second choices then the result would actually be a bigger win for Trump. This is awkward for the treatment of 3rd party voters as a spoiler for Clinton.
The most straightforward story, then--the one on which we say "Stein voters were stolen Clinton voters, so transfer those votes to her and check the margins"--doesn't seem to stand up. It is possible to tell more complicated stories to reconcile her status as a spoiler with that relative preference data, of course, including most notably ones where it isn't Stein's effect on her actual voters that mattered but rather her campaign's (hypothesized) effect of depressing of the general Democratic turnout. But having to tell a more complicated story generally counts against the strength of an explanation, and I think it's fair to say that the relative preference data at the very least on the face of it counts against the view that 3rd parties played a particularly significant role in producing the election result we got.
The Democrats who voted to confirm Pompeo were: John Donnelly of Indiana, Dianne Feinstein of California, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Schumer, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Warner, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
Also, completely off topic here so why are you posting it?
Well, "How the Dems can win elections" seems to be the theme, so "not having the VP nominee basically give the A-OK to Russian influence by supporting Trump's henchman on the CIA" seems a fairly obvious suggestion. I mean, this is pretty much designed to depress turnout and prime the Dems for their own Tea Party Revolution.
EDIT: You think that Dem turnout is bad now? Just imagine a similar list for Trump's SCOTUS pick.
That isn't as potent a threat like GOP had, as much as I'd like it to be. Dems need to be very organised, politically connected and have access to a large amount of money (the tea party was funded by the koches) to get this moving. The left really need to figure out how to get access to money on that scale asap. Without it this will be a slaughter, not s civil war.
Posts
No, it doesn't. It doesn't change the fact that your strategy is to throw the core Democratic base under the bus. Do you think black voters won't notice when you are on TV in Ohio saying "white power"?
I think they will know something is up when Obama announces a birther investigation on himself.
It depends on why you're analyzing. Are you trying to figure out what actually happened or tell yourself a story that will make you feel like you have the necessary agency even if you don't?
Politics seems to be the only arena where the latter is considered anything but insanely irresponsible. Its also another example of the phenomenon where people try to play pundit when discussing political news, which is hyper focused on process and sees the voters as passive subjects of the machinations of political marketing rather than the ones who actually decide these things.
The voters decide who wins elections, and that this has to be explicitly stated is part of the problem. I blame 3rd party/Sanders defectors less than Trump voters because negligence isn't as bad as malice, but that doesn't absolve anyone of responsibility. Obama didn't force voters to vote for him, voters chose him. For all the contempt the "Great Man" view of history generally (mostly correctly) receives now a days, we have a very "Great Campaign Manager" view of electoral politics.
Its like if you were talking to someone about a potential romantic partner who went out with someone else and you scoffed at the idea that maybe that person just liked the other person more. Advice that all that you needed to do was "play the game" better is red pill, borderline sociopath goosery designed to build a false narrative in which you are the hero and everyone else is to be acted upon by you. The same general concept applies to electoral politics. Sometimes the person goes to the abusive partner that will actively harm them but that doesn't mean they didn't have agency or that all that it would have gone differently if you sent red roses instead of white, it means some people make shitty decisions.
The voters chose Clinton, but by the Electoral College Trump won. Republicans also won the House vote absolutely and by seats. And they won most Senate seats. If this could all be pinned on Clinton's campaign tactics, she would have underperformed other Democrats. If she wasn't liberal or progressive enough she would have under performed other liberals or progessives. There are almost no Trump districts with Dem Reps for a reason.
Instead she over performed those groups and lost a few Obama states. Why? Increased turnout among hate mongers unenthused by Republicans not explicitly beating a white nationalist drum especially in the rural Midwest, lower turnout among African Americans compared to Obama (likely impacted by, but not entirely attributable to, voter suppression) and greater third party defection from left leaning, especially young and especially rural, whites. The latter group is the one most directly related to Sanders primary supporters and its impact wasn't trivial.
And maybe those voters would never have voted for Clinton no matter what, but that's a situation that didn't exist in 08 when she won rural whites substantially or throughout her tenure at State where she held broad, almost universal support among Dems/liberals or when she was a meme among young internet culture with the Madam Secretary thing, so I don't think its very supported.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
And as people have been telling you (see the post above yours for an example) this isn't just about jobs. Hence why "economic anxiety" tracks on race rather than socioeconomic status.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
I don't agree with him, but if you read what he wrote, he is in fact claiming exactly that. That the media bubbles are so thick, people so ignorant and willing to believe their candidate didn't really mean what he said, etc etc, that you can talk out of both sides of your mouth and it will work.
edit: ninja'd. *wry*
Yes, that is exactly what I think. And conversely, white voters won't notice when you're on TV in Chicago speaking in a BLM rally.
Because people live in news filter bubbles and will only read about you from news sources that agree with and reinforce their perception of you. White people won't hear about what you're saying to black people and vice-versa. And the few that do will believe it's news bias, or slander, or just you lying to the other side for votes (because really deep down you're on their side, and the other sides are chumps you need to play nice with to take advantage until election day).
Basically, exactly what we just saw happen in 2016.
Got a hunch that putting Techno-Libertarian Princes front and center will not make Dems popular.
The problem is, black people cannot afford to not pay attention, and they are pretty well organized. Particularly via the black church. They would notice you selling them out, yes.
Except that's not what we saw happen. You might be surprised to hear this, but minorities tend to not have media bubbles. This is in large part because, unlike whites, they tend to understand as a community that they don't have the luxury of ignoring the outer world.
You are fucking kidding yourself then. This is not what we saw happen this election. Everyone saw Trump being a horrible racist and sexist. It's just a lot of people were OK with that.
If you go around pushing the gospel of white power, black voters will notice.
The problem is that politicians don't get to choose the voters.* As that's the case, and the measure of a successful presidential run is to get the most votes in enough states, blaming the electorate does nothing--it's equivalent to complaining about the weather. This isn't to overstate the influence of a campaign or candidate, but to recognize what's controllable and what isn't. Otherwise literally every politician who has lost a race can say "well, if fewer people had voted for my opponent I would have won." We get that, and it excuses mistakes in areas where they actually do have control.
*Offer void in the House of Representatives and some state legislatures.
That's what I'm saying. However, it's been pointed out to me that it's really about the economy, it's about racism. Racism is a huge part, but I'm not certain to precisely what extent. It's not the only thing. If it's not all about racism, then there is perhaps an angle a charismatic Dem can exploit.
On the other hand, it may be that it's not all about racism, but racism is the foundation for everything. At that point these people can be written of as truly lost causes.
If that's true, though, then why did Hillary lose places Obama won? It's been said that someone can be racist but still vote for Obama because he's "one of the good ones", and I agree. If that's the case, how is voting against a white woman less racist than voting for a black man? If you voted or Obama, why go for Trump the hardcore racist?
At this point I'm not talking about plans to win the next election, I'm talking about understanding the mindset of this subset of voters. More and more I feel like I'm a cartographer trying to map R'lyeh. Soon as I think I got it figured out, it becomes more insane.
People everywhere and everywhen have been receptive to the idea that they just have to do one thing and their lives will be made Better, without them having to put in any more thought or effort after that.
What does "blaming the voters" mean? No one here is using "blame Trump voters" to absolve themselves of responsibility or agency. Some of us (myself included) will blame them for being dumb fucktards at best, evil racist at worst. And they sure as hell deserve some personal blame for our situation because they took direct action to bring us to it.
There are a few theories there.
One, there's the idea that bigotry is a luxury. What this means is that there are actual economic costs to pursuing policies of bigotry, so choosing to engage in it costs you in a real sense. So, with the economy weak in 08, they may not have been able to "afford" to be as bigoted as in later years, with economic recovery.
Two, there's the point that Obama intentionally downplayed race - a position he could afford to do with his personal identity doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Clinton couldn't do that, so she had to be more overt, which leads into...
Three, members of the majority group espousing minority support are often viewed as being more dangerous, because they are using their "stronger" voice to espouse support for positions that would normally be dismissed based on the identity of the speaker.
a) "Bigotry is a luxury" doesn't jive with this election. My understanding is that Trump won a lot of votes by telling people how much worse off they are now than 4-8 years ago. I can see this theory may be accurate in a broader sense.
b) Agreed.
c) That makes sense. It also makes me sick.
Apparently racism is like Beetlejuice. As long as you don't say it too much it can't get you.
You're right in that he won a lot of votes by telling people how much worse off they are now...regardless of if that is actually true. Look at that Atlantic piece I posted earlier - it's pretty clear that Elkhart had their economic situation improved by Democratic policy, and yet they believe that it made them worse off, that their success was in spite of those policies.
So? If given the choice between a correct analysis that shows a problem is difficult and intractable, requiring time and changing conditions before a solution will be feasible, and one that is false but presents a clear set of actions, does that make the latter any less irrational?
Imagine this was business and you had two consultants (or engineers or whatever). The first said, "There's no easy solution. Its going to get worse before it gets better and even then painful changes might be needed." The second said, "All you need to do is change your process a little bit, and really engage in the social media strategy we offer at a very reasonable price." The comforting narrative that tells you not only do you control your own destiny, but that you don't need to make any real changes, is one of the oldest scams in the book. And most of the people publicly pushing it have an agenda that is the same agenda that they had on November 1 and that they'd be pushing regardless of the outcome of the election. On the Republican side it was usually "We need a True Conservative." In the 80s for Dems it was "We need a White Southerner who can appeal to centrists." Now its "We need an Economic Populist who can speak to the white Working Class."
What we mostly need is the reality of a Trump Presidency. And we need to do the slow-ass, boring, tedious work of winning local elections and state elections. And even at the fastest, we'll need to wait 2 years before we could begin to have any kind of realistic check on Trump.
Its going to be hard. Its going to suck. And lying to ourselves about what happened in November won't change that. The American people chose to go backwards because enough of them in enough states really don't like brown people. That's not a new situation, its just one that hasn't been this successfully exploited at the Presidential level since either 1980 or 1988 depending on how you look at it.
And that sits atop Republicans winning the House 11 out of the last 13 elections. They control the Senate and SCOTUS and 3/4 of state governments. Republicans are in the majority and it fucking sucks. And it'll take a generation to dig ourselves out of it, Obama and a disastrous W Presidency just obscured that
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
The choice is very simple - either adapt or die. They chose to die by electing Donnie.
Their idealism isn't going save them, pragmatism is.
What's wrong with being establishment friendly? Besides, even if was is that really where you want to draw the line for people who need to eat?
Trump's Carrier deal was bullshit. Trump is one of the very people they say they oppose by taking jobs overseas (which Hillary should have hit him on in those regions constantly), yet they gladly take anything he says at face value.
They are people and sometimes people make bad decisions that go against their interests. This being one of the most obvious examples I've seen.
Here's the thing, Democrats may lose them in elections to this - they'll lose everything. And they have themselves to blame.
It's the opposite, they aren't good allies to the Democrats. The Dems have tried to help them, yet because their reputation is ruined by the GOP and when they fail by not being perfect they get blamed. I mean, it's not like they have an opposition party that has successfully obstructed the government at unprecedented levels, right?
That "worst candidate" is the only modern politician who almost beat Obama at his peak. Sure, she was flawed but there's more going on here then merely Trump vs Hillary.
Dems also fail sometimes. Holding them a standard that they have to win every time or they're the enemy is unrealistic. The real enemy is Trump and the GOP. The Rust Belt should have remembered that, and now they're going to get a preview of why they voted for Democrats in the past -- want to bet who they're going to blame when their lives start getting worse? I don't think it'll be the GOP.
Dems retreating is a natural response when their allies they thought they could count on were gullible enough to be swayed by one of the worst, most blatant politicians in history. They knew what they were getting, and they signed on anyway.
You forgot guns.
Edit:
Also 15 dems just voted to confirm CIA nominee when they fucking didn't need to. What the hell are we going to do about it?
So, your argument is "we're fucked, not much to do about it?" Pardon me if I don't find that compelling. And if we're going to do the hard work of winning local and state elections, we're not going to do it without leftist voters you place the bulk of the blame on. As I said a few pages ago, blame-the-electorate is a piss poor strategy for reunifying the democratic party and regaining those votes it lost. Every "Bernie stabbed us in the back" here, or on facebook, or on twitter, just helps to alienate those voters more and convince them that their only option is to stage a populist takeover of the party.
And Bernie stabbed Dems on the back? Hah!
I don't like Bernie or his bros but if he can get rid of these lot then I'll do a republican and pull the lever. I understand the Blue Dog but freaking California? Hawaii? Rhode Island? These are the safest of blue states what were they thinking?
Both can be true.
Also, completely off topic here so why are you posting it?
Well, "How the Dems can win elections" seems to be the theme, so "not having the VP nominee basically give the A-OK to Russian influence by supporting Trump's henchman on the CIA" seems a fairly obvious suggestion. I mean, this is pretty much designed to depress turnout and prime the Dems for their own Tea Party Revolution.
EDIT: You think that Dem turnout is bad now? Just imagine a similar list for Trump's SCOTUS pick.
Say it as many times as you need to. Maybe if we both scream it something will happen.
(On-topic?)
I do think this belongs in this thread. How exactly are we going to get Dems motivated to vote in 2020 when our own Dem Senators(in the safest of safest states too!) will abandon us the second they can. Feinstein would have gotten nothing but praise for rejecting Tillerson and yet she still did it. I went from the high of the Women's March to almost night of the election again.
Edit:
I don't think I would even be this mad if I could just know WHY? Why vote for it when your vote wasn't needed and your seat isn't at risk? What exactly do they have to gain from any of this?
We have two options.
1) Recognize that the nomination was going through regardless, Dems didn't have the numbers to stop it even if they voted in lockstep against. Maybe it's better to prevent Dems from losing seats by letting them take political cover in districts they may have trouble in next time. Under this theory, more Dems in Congress are better, even if they sometimes cross the aisle for symbolic votes. The benefits here are good in the medium term at least.
2) Go full Tea Party on any Dem who doesn't 100% oppose Trump and the GOP on everything. The benefits here are good in the long term--we hopefully get a more unified opposition party and we stop some of these from sabotaging any future runs with bad votes. On the other hand, the Tea Party lost GOP seats when they were getting started, so in 2018 or 2020 we could end up with a more unified minority party instead of a less unified majority party.
It's a tough call, partly because it's exactly along the same lines of idealism/pragmatism, center/far left fracturing the party's been struggling with lately. I don't necessarily know how I feel about it even.
The first one isn't viable for me because it wasn't just blue dogs who did it. I can excuse Missouri, Virginia, and New Hampshire but not Cali, Hawaii, or Rhode Island. Unless something has drastically changed in these states that I am not aware of they gain no visible advantage and tons of scorn for doing this. It's shortsighted and weak-kneed in time when we don't need either. Which leads us to two which I fully support. Go after every safe dem who thinks they can act republican and keep their seat.
When people discuss left voters in this context it isn't the Movement as a whole it's a minority within that group. The majority of Bernie's voters voted for Hillary on the general, no one has an issue with them. However no faction is above reproach, centrists etc can be dicks too. If you're On my side and are being unreasonable I'm going to call you out. It does my faction (liberals) or the party as a whole any Favors to have assholes screw everyone else.
That's not a strategy for unifying the party, it's diagnosing a problem and if it really is true it won't go away by ignoring the implications.
The question is - what can we do about it?
The democrats splintering is not only on the electorate, it's about the factions and the key figures at the highest ranks involved in the conflict.
This is a complicated thing for the democrats to figure out, it won't be solved easily or quickly.
It is the truth, and yes unfortunately acknowledging this is going to alienate voters - but I'm at a loss that ignoring what happened is going to fix things entirely - especially with Bernie himself reigniting those fires instead of trying to heal the wounds the conflict has caused. There are two people who have the largest power to influence how the rift heals and that's him and Hillary and hillarys MIA at the moment for obvious reasons.
Theses voters are already trying to take over the party regardless. That was on the cards the moment Bernie launched his campaign.
I think the idea is to give those swing state dems cover from democratic partisans, it's harder to get singled out if a bunch voted that way.
It also could be a decision to keep the CIA director from being a more partisan vote since congress is gonna be relying on the CIA to investigate Donald's Russian connection and all.
Edit - Moving this over to the Trump thread.
The most straightforward story, then--the one on which we say "Stein voters were stolen Clinton voters, so transfer those votes to her and check the margins"--doesn't seem to stand up. It is possible to tell more complicated stories to reconcile her status as a spoiler with that relative preference data, of course, including most notably ones where it isn't Stein's effect on her actual voters that mattered but rather her campaign's (hypothesized) effect of depressing of the general Democratic turnout. But having to tell a more complicated story generally counts against the strength of an explanation, and I think it's fair to say that the relative preference data at the very least on the face of it counts against the view that 3rd parties played a particularly significant role in producing the election result we got.
That isn't as potent a threat like GOP had, as much as I'd like it to be. Dems need to be very organised, politically connected and have access to a large amount of money (the tea party was funded by the koches) to get this moving. The left really need to figure out how to get access to money on that scale asap. Without it this will be a slaughter, not s civil war.