Yes but "she was only under FBI investigation because..."
everything after that is more or less irrelevant to tens of millions of people
Comey can't do his two song and dances if the first part of that sentence doesn't exist
True. Unfortunately being under FBI investigation because Republicans have subpoena power when in the majority doesn't really give you many ways of avoiding it.
Clinton actually did fuck up with her e-mail server though, and it was a big deal to voters
Everyone sitting here arguing that Clinton should have run in a different universe than we live in rather than admit we should have picked a candidate better for the one that exists
edit: the investigation, Benghazi, the fact that right wing 21st century news was created to destroy the Clintons, all of these made her a bad candidate
Yeah, it was a fuck up and the GOP and media made sure that non-scandal was as big as possible, because they didn't want her to win, and getting in jail was a plus.
Hillary had the right to run, if there was someone who was better they should have run - but they didn't. The voters spoke and they chose her.
They were doing exactly the same things to Obama and Bill, any Democrat was going to face that type of heat. Not everyone who run can win against that, and right now we don't have an example of who can do this on the national scale post-Trump.
The Clintons didn't create the right wing in the 21st century, the Republicans did. Reagan and Atwater were the chief architects. The Clintons were a reaction to the Reagan Coalition.
Nobody could have predicted the FBI interference, the Russian interference or the proliferation of fake (not even just biased, outright fake) news ahead of time. That shit was all completely out of left field.
Additionally, both the media's utter failure to properly handle the election, and the sheer amount of stuff stuff people were willing to let him get away with, while not unexpected, were at levels that people would have told you was absolutely crazy if you had mentioned it two years ago.
Like, yes, knowing what we know now, running Clinton would have been a mistake. The problem is we didn't know that stuff yet. This type of thinking is only useful if you have a time machine.
Additionally, both the media's utter failure to properly handle the election, and the sheer amount of stuff stuff people were willing to let him get away with, while not unexpected, were at levels that people would have told you was absolutely crazy if you had mentioned it two years ago.
This is wrong. I called it. Everyone who wrote about the Clinton Rules called it.
I was just arrogant in thinking it wouldn't matter against the sick joke that is the modern Republican Party.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Captain Marcus wanted to thank you for engaging with us in these threads. I know it isn't easy for you, and we disagree on many things (though from my last post it caught my attention that it how to achieve those goals, rather than the why so nice to see we share some common ground) I appreciate your effort here.
Hey, sure thing. I want to see the progressives win some elections but I think the current direction is all wrong. You've got to have big, positive plans- Trump ran on a massive plan to bring back jobs from overseas and build an enormous wall on our southern border to slow illegal immigration. Whether or not they'll work is debatable, but that's what he was known for. The Democrats, on the other hand, ran on the "less worse" platform. Aside from reduced college tuition costs I honestly can't think of a big plan Hillary had. She might have had them, but I (and the general public) just can't think of any.
That's how you sell those far-out left wing ideas- free State-run daycare, national high-speed rail system, nationalized healthcare, ending right-to-work, halting automation, Newt Gingrich Memorial Moon Base, whatever. Plans are exciting and memorable, people like them. Remember the Square Deal? The New Deal? The Great Society? Bring that to the next election and you'll win hands-down.
Do you believe Trump's words when he says he's going to bring back manufacturing jobs to the USA? If so, why, and how do you think he will achieve this? Given that the majority of these jobs are demonstrably lost to automation and not being sent overseas (and in the cases that they are, there's not a lot we can do about it), why do you assume that he will increase domestic employment when he hasn't even acknowledged automation as an issue?
I do. I don't really trust him, but he (and Bernie) were the first politicians in my lifetime to even acknowledge it as a problem so I'm willing to give him a chance. I think he'll bring them back with a combination of incentives (less regulation and taxes here) and disincentives (moving somewhere else? I'll tweet about it and your stock price will plummet, and then I'll slap tariffs on whatever you're importing).
As far as automation goes there are ways to stop it- reworking the tax code and insurance system to massively reduce the incentives behind automation would help a great deal. I don't think Trump is aware of automation. His background is in construction and hospitality (which aren't easily automated) so I think he sees the hollowing out of employment here as mainly a "factories moving overseas" problem/illegals working for lower pay, because that's the problem in his industry.
re:the Mexican labor stuff- when they cracked down on illegals in the fields and slaughterhouses, there was an article I read in the paper where a slaughterhouse had to raise wages and implement benefits (cheaper health insurance, free work shuttles) before citizens would take those very dangerous, very stressful jobs. Labor is entirely a supply and demand issue. Citizens don't want to pick tomatoes for five dollars an hour. When Trump starts cracking down on illegals it might take a while before wages and working conditions are improved but once they are we'll see Americans start taking those jobs again.
Additionally, both the media's utter failure to properly handle the election, and the sheer amount of stuff stuff people were willing to let him get away with, while not unexpected, were at levels that people would have told you was absolutely crazy if you had mentioned it two years ago.
This is wrong. I called it. Everyone who wrote about the Clinton Rules called it.
I was just arrogant in thinking it wouldn't matter against the sick joke that is the modern Republican Party.
I felt that same ominous feeling from back in 2000 just like you but I thought, like Clinton's Campaign did, that Trump was so manifestly awful that it couldn't happen again.
I was willing to give Dems some slack (Clinton's loss was, after all, a near miss and not a landslide) but if this is the resistance they're going to put up then I'm going back to my panicked November 9th thinking. Bulldoze the current party and build a new one, because apparently the only thing aging liberal boomers are good at is failing us.
This is the difficult part, the Left are hilariously bad at doing this which is why we have to rely on the Dems so much. Can't get rid of the Dems if the cavalry can't last six months before falling apart and has no large funding sources to speak of.
The Left has also been systematically marginalized and neglected by the Party leadership for decades. They are weak and divided partly by Democratic design. Well, the party is now in shambles and the leadership has lost almost every scrap of legitimacy they ever had. If ever there was a time for a progressive takeover and restructuring of the party, this is it.
No. They have not. The democrats do not support the greens. The democrats do support the progressive caucus (the largest democratic caucus in the legislature).
The democrats do not support organizations that attack them like they're the enemy. And there are a LOT of them on the left. The majority of left wing media is in this camp, unable to notice their natural allies.
Stuff like this is how you get third party voters, anti-establishment voters and apathetic voters who view both sides as functionally the same.
Please. They came out for Obama and he was no different on any of these accounts.
The behavior referenced by Frankiedarling here, before we took a journey down Anti-Corporatist Lane, is not in fact big money donors or fundraising or anything along those lines. That behavior is problematic, but it is also beside FD's main point. To wit, political cowardice by Democrats.
So let's get back to that. One question I see posed around here all the time, recently even! (regarding Ben Carson's recent vote), is: what is the functional difference between someone who cares deeply about their voters but votes to fuck them and someone who doesn't give a shit about their voters and also votes to fuck them. And since this is basically rhetorical at this point, the expected conclusion is: there is none, to the people on the receiving end of the fucking.
There is no reason we should not also apply this to Democrats.
I mean I'm pissed about those votes too, but a symbolic fucking is substantively different than an actual fucking.
I think the real reason that happened (also it was a committee vote so might be able to get them to flip in the full Senate with public pressure, which would be heartening) was that we treat housing policy as a joke in this country. Which has everything to do with who lives in public housing, of course.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Symbols have importance, though! And it would be really great if we would stop pretending that they don't!
Not every Democrat in this country is going to look at those votes and go, "Well it's just symbolic, this isn't disappointing at all." And we shouldn't expect them to!
Symbols have importance, though! And it would be really great if we would stop pretending that they don't!
Not every Democrat in this country is going to look at those votes and go, "Well it's just symbolic, this isn't disappointing at all." And we shouldn't expect them to!
I agree and got my Massachusetts friends to call Warren about it.
I just don't want to spend my time being this angry about everyone, you know?
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Symbols have importance, though! And it would be really great if we would stop pretending that they don't!
Not every Democrat in this country is going to look at those votes and go, "Well it's just symbolic, this isn't disappointing at all." And we shouldn't expect them to!
I agree and got my Massachusetts friends to call Warren about it.
I just don't want to spend my time being this angry about everyone, you know?
I get that. But being angry at our own party is maybe the only productive anger we have. Getting angry about the Republicans does fuck-all. They don't give a wet shit about Democratic anger. It sustains them. Until our elected officials get the memo that being spineless in the face of fascism is going to result in them being booted out on their asses, expect that behavior to continue.
I'm not saying you need to be just as angry as I am about it.
It's also that Brown and Warren are consistently good on most stuff that it's just... whatever. Schumer's the one who decided that working with the opposition was a good idea so mostly I think he would be a good target.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Stuff like this is how you get third party voters, anti-establishment voters and apathetic voters who view both sides as functionally the same.
Please. They came out for Obama and he was no different on any of these accounts.
The behavior referenced by Frankiedarling here, before we took a journey down Anti-Corporatist Lane, is not in fact big money donors or fundraising or anything along those lines. That behavior is problematic, but it is also beside FD's main point. To wit, political cowardice by Democrats.
So let's get back to that. One question I see posed around here all the time, recently even! (regarding Ben Carson's recent vote), is: what is the functional difference between someone who cares deeply about their voters but votes to fuck them and someone who doesn't give a shit about their voters and also votes to fuck them. And since this is basically rhetorical at this point, the expected conclusion is: there is none, to the people on the receiving end of the fucking.
There is no reason we should not also apply this to Democrats.
Symbols have importance, though! And it would be really great if we would stop pretending that they don't!
Not every Democrat in this country is going to look at those votes and go, "Well it's just symbolic, this isn't disappointing at all." And we shouldn't expect them to!
The thing the Republicans do where they say what they want and they keep saying it and pushing for it until they get it might have something to do with how they've been systematically dismantling all Democratic power for the last 6 years
but it's probably unrelated I'm sure
They didn't push for pro life because they thought they'd get it in any given session, they pushed for it because it's what their voters care about and they kept pushing and hey look now they're going to run roughshod over the majority opinion
If Democrats can't find a spine for a symbolic vote when they don't have any real power anyway and the only thing at stake is what we think of them, then fuck them
Symbols have importance, though! And it would be really great if we would stop pretending that they don't!
Not every Democrat in this country is going to look at those votes and go, "Well it's just symbolic, this isn't disappointing at all." And we shouldn't expect them to!
The thing the Republicans do where they say what they want and they keep saying it and pushing for it until they get it might have something to do with how they've been systematically dismantling all Democratic power for the last 6 years
but it's probably unrelated I'm sure
Think it has more to do with systematic targeting of Democratic power to rig the system against them, personally.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Symbols have importance, though! And it would be really great if we would stop pretending that they don't!
Not every Democrat in this country is going to look at those votes and go, "Well it's just symbolic, this isn't disappointing at all." And we shouldn't expect them to!
The thing the Republicans do where they say what they want and they keep saying it and pushing for it until they get it might have something to do with how they've been systematically dismantling all Democratic power for the last 6 years
but it's probably unrelated I'm sure
Think it has more to do with systematic targeting of Democratic power to rig the system against them, personally.
That and the fact that Republican voters will show up even if they hate their candidate. And like, the GOP as an institution just hate-fucked Trump into office too.
Like, the truth is on alot of things the GOP hasn't delivered for their base. That's why their base turned on them. But what their base kept doing is voting.
Symbols have importance, though! And it would be really great if we would stop pretending that they don't!
Not every Democrat in this country is going to look at those votes and go, "Well it's just symbolic, this isn't disappointing at all." And we shouldn't expect them to!
I agree and got my Massachusetts friends to call Warren about it.
I just don't want to spend my time being this angry about everyone, you know?
I get that. But being angry at our own party is maybe the only productive anger we have. Getting angry about the Republicans does fuck-all. They don't give a wet shit about Democratic anger. It sustains them. Until our elected officials get the memo that being spineless in the face of fascism is going to result in them being booted out on their asses, expect that behavior to continue.
I'm not saying you need to be just as angry as I am about it.
It sure doesn't feel productive. I feel like we just walked out of an election where people were mad at the party and/or its candidate(s) and that did not go well. I'm angry to a degree too. I called Donnelly's office yesterday and today about his Pompeo vote and definitely used my "what the FUCK is the Senator thinking" voice. The anger's just exhausting.
I have a hard time reading this thread, and the Trump Admin thread. Not because of the bad news about things Trump is doing (I mean, that's depressing enough on its own, sure), but because everyone sounds so defeatist. If I read "we're watching the end of this country"* one more time I'm gonna ... take a break from the forums.
We lost. Not by a landslide or in a slaughter, but by a razor's edge. Time to come together and get our house in order; time to tweak some things to get us on the proper side of that razor's edge. I don't feel that there's any coming together though. I feel that everyone has dug their heels in and is just yelling at one another. The Clinton and Bernie camps are still having a knife fight amongst each other, while the Republicans are calmly waiting with a handgun, ready to handily pop whichever camp wins, limping away bleeding.
Sorry. Needed to vent.
* If I read "darkest timeline" one more time Imma throw myself out a fucking window.
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FakefauxCóiste BodharDriving John McCain to meet some Iraqis who'd very much like to make his acquaintanceRegistered Userregular
Stuff like this is how you get third party voters, anti-establishment voters and apathetic voters who view both sides as functionally the same.
Please. They came out for Obama and he was no different on any of these accounts.
The behavior referenced by Frankiedarling here, before we took a journey down Anti-Corporatist Lane, is not in fact big money donors or fundraising or anything along those lines. That behavior is problematic, but it is also beside FD's main point. To wit, political cowardice by Democrats.
So let's get back to that. One question I see posed around here all the time, recently even! (regarding Ben Carson's recent vote), is: what is the functional difference between someone who cares deeply about their voters but votes to fuck them and someone who doesn't give a shit about their voters and also votes to fuck them. And since this is basically rhetorical at this point, the expected conclusion is: there is none, to the people on the receiving end of the fucking.
There is no reason we should not also apply this to Democrats.
But again, Obama is just as guilty of that too.
It's true. Obama rode into office on the hope and change wave, but in the end he delivered on only some change and a bit of hope, much of which is now going to be wiped away. He was a good president, one of the better ones, but he was deeply flawed in his own way and I fear the history books may judge him harshly for the way things fell apart in the end. He could have done more.
Hindsight is 20.20, though. We can learn a lot from how to win an election from Obama, in this day and age. A strong narrative. Broad, easy to understand goals. But how he governed? That's another matter. We can't take too many cues from him there, because what he built wasn't truly built to last.
I will say this, though, as I said it in the trump admin thread. Obama talked a lot about his 2008 campaign was funded by small voter donations. This was only partially true, and he did eventually seek the money and aid of the power brokers, something that caused trouble down the road. But then you have Bernie Sanders. Say what you will about Sander's politics, but he did remarkably well by building a passionate movement, focused on broad goals, and he financed it almost exclusively with small donations. He didn't win, but he did much better than expected. We can learn a lesson from that, too. If you can motivate your base they can provide a sure financial footing that makes you less dependent on the big donors.
We're going to have to use every working tool at our disposal to climb out of this hole we've dug ourselves into. Borrowing elements that worked from Sanders, Obama, and elsewhere will be indispensable.
Obama's flaw was believing his own unifying hype and failing to understand the nature of the opposition. That's the message we need to get across to elected Democrats. The GOP is not going to partner with you, ever. You will never get to kick the fucking football.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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FakefauxCóiste BodharDriving John McCain to meet some Iraqis who'd very much like to make his acquaintanceRegistered Userregular
Obama's flaw was believing his own unifying hype and failing to understand the nature of the opposition. That's the message we need to get across to elected Democrats. The GOP is not going to partner with you, ever. You will never get to kick the fucking football.
That's part of it, sure. But I think there's more too it than that. Obama genuinely wanted to carved out a place of centrist consensus. He's not a progressive firebrand. He was never going to truly gun for big scale change in the FDR or LBJ vein. The changes he shot for were comparatively modest, or at least they would have been in a sane and rational political system. Obama assumed we were still in that sort of system. We are not.
It's often been pointed out that, by the standards of a half century ago, Obama or Hillary might have been seen as moderate Republicans. This is usually trotted out as an attack on the Right, mentioned in the same breath as comparisons to Reagan or Nixon, who by today's standards might have been quasi-centrist Democrats. In one way, that damns the GOP for how far right they've gone. But on the other hand, it also damns the Democrats to an extent. They're not what they used to be.
As we look forward, we need to think long and hard about this. If a centrist consensus is off the table, if the opposition will never partner with us, what good is that pursuit? Obama has framed himself as a realist and a pragmatist for a long time. Even in 2008 he was saying he'd consider any idea if thought it would work. He pursued modest change because he thought it was what could be realistically, pragmatically achieved.
That hasn't worked out for us. Why shouldn't we swing for the fences? Forget the modest change. Reach consensus on what we, the democratic voters, would like to see happen, the big changes we want, and then go for that with gusto. That's how you get a wave election to happen. Obama showed us that an uplifting vision can, aha, trump almost everything else. He just didn't got far enough with it once he was in power.
Obama was really explicit during the campaign about what he wanted to be: the liberal Reagan. President who fundamentally changed the zeitgeist and made his kind of liberalism the default view the way Reagan made anti-government hard right conservatism the basic view. So he was plenty ambitious. It just didn't work, because he thought the GOP would work with him instead of opposing him in an unprecedented way.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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AbsalonLands of Always WinterRegistered Userregular
So state GOP people are talking about giving their electoral votes by congressional districts.
Which means the left in the US is dead forever unless you people are ready for an actual revolution.
So state GOP people are talking about giving their electoral votes by congressional districts.
Which means the left in the US is dead forever unless you people are ready for an actual revolution.
That idea was floated before. But yeah, it would be a good way to lock in power permanently, or at least for a generational regime that lasts until 2050 or something, by which time there'd be nothing left worth fighting for.
There's a thing on these threads when the things said here are amplified by social media outside these threads, and for a lot of people heavily into social media aka Millenials, this is the first time that they see the left lose an election. A hard lesson is that there's no such thing as "The End" or "The Right Side" of history, there's political, economical and social currents that must be fought for at every step. Look at the GOP base, they got a candidate that gave them what they wanted and they stuck with him and fought for him to the bitter end and behold, now they get to change the US as they wish.
Of course, change must also come from upstairs. People leading political parties must be willing to lead the charge, not put seals of approval on decisions that will inmediatly have dire consequences. It goes both ways, the guy going in a primary against Tim Kaine can say: "I got up here to get a goddamn explanation of why the former VP nominee is suddenly A-OK with a guy that reopened torture camps" and the Dem base must be willing to fight to get him elected.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Few days into the trump presidency and democrats lack of spine really makes this whole discussion seem moot.
GG.
This is why I personally am getting really sick and tired of the argument that Democrats are a bulwark against Republicans. They are, sometimes, when it's easy to be, or in exceptional cases such as Obama. I don't want to settle for turtling up and constantly losing the battle of attrition but the Dems can't even do that.
And Warren doesn't get a pass either. She voted to confirm an insane person. If ever there was a time to make a vote of symbolic dissent, that was it!
Exceptionally done with incremental change. Trump is proving sweeping changes are what we live in.
Republicans have the luxury of immediate change, Democrats don't. Unless you[re switching to the other team you're not going to get this sped up.
I was willing to give Dems some slack (Clinton's loss was, after all, a near miss and not a landslide) but if this is the resistance they're going to put up then I'm going back to my panicked November 9th thinking. Bulldoze the current party and build a new one, because apparently the only thing aging liberal boomers are good at is failing us.
This is the difficult part, the Left are hilariously bad at doing this which is why we have to rely on the Dems so much. Can't get rid of the Dems if the cavalry can't last six months before falling apart and has no large funding sources to speak of.
The Left has also been systematically marginalized and neglected by the Party leadership for decades. They are weak and divided partly by Democratic design. Well, the party is now in shambles and the leadership has lost almost every scrap of legitimacy they ever had. If ever there was a time for a progressive takeover and restructuring of the party, this is it.
Sure, the leadership has some responsibility - to a point. Where this ends is where the Left becomes strong on its own, there has to become a time where the Left gets its act together on its own. The centrists haven't blocked how the left gets access to funding, access to media or influencing politicians. Most of that the Left refuses to do, other forces are at work obstructing it, or they're bad at that.
Every faction starts off weak and pulls itself out the weeds, growing in strength and forces the Democratic party to take them seriously. This part of being in a political faction.
It has not been systematically targeted - it's just very bad at getting its shit together to take on this job.
This is not a design, it's how things work when a faction gains the leadership role over a political party. The centrist didn't get there merely with brawn, but with cunning and intelligence. They became masters at the political game. The Left, in contrast, has not.
The centrists hasn't lost all credibility, c'mon now. Nor have they lost their legitimacy. The Left don't automatically get to walk into the leadership position by trying to discredit the centrists has been illegitimate, they have to take it.
Yes, now is the time for a progressive take over. This comes to a halt, because the Left are in no shape to do this seriously and at best it's going to take years to get into fighting shape to try this, assuming it doesn't implode and we have to start over again before it's gotten off the ground. An irritating pattern the left has of doing. That is another reason why the centrists have control, they don't fall to pieces every few years who they fail and have to start from scratch.
Unless this all changes with how the left operates the centrists are in no danger of being overthrown by them.
The Tea Party didn't need to destroy GOP infrastructure to get what they wanted, we don't need to either. Just make sure that they know that they have to work for our votes, which right now means working against the GOP (not *necessarily* against Trump, because there's a wedge there on Social Security, Medicare, and general health policy that could be exploited, but against Trump on all the awful racial issues).
The TEA Party had Koch money, and access to professionals from all across the conservative/GOP sphere from media, trenches and leadership at the highest levels. This was a professional organization, not Occupy.
Right, she wasn't inspiring in the same way, had trouble fighting off the sexism in the same way Obama was able to (at least temporarily) fight of the racism, and she was plagued with decades of baggage, much of (though not all) of it manufactured by the opposition. But Hillary, for the most part did not try to tell stories that related to voters. She didn't pursue broad, popular policy goals. She focused on Dangerous Donald. She chased suburban middle and upper middle class Republican voters who just turned around and voted for Trump or didn't vote at all.
It goes deeper than that, sexism on the credential scale is a bigger problem for candidates than racism. She got the popular vote, I'd say she did fine selling her story to the public. Nor did she chase Republican votes, what is up with this bullshit charge? I've already gone over this in an earlier post with someone else. Those who voted for Trump weren't simply doing it due to flaws she had, and yes she was not perfect.
One can argue that Hillary wasn't the right choice if you wanted to run an inspiring candidate. That, of course, begs the question of why the party backed her, knowing that. But even if you make that case, she actively chose to do things counter to what had worked for Obama, had worked better than expected for Sanders, and also, in a much darker way, worked for Trump.
Again, popular vote. You now why the party backed her, she was heavily connected to the part leadership, she had access to lots of money and is a skilled campaigner. To date she is the only politicians to give peak Obama a tough time winning an election.
I'm not saying this out of a "Sander would have won!" or "Clinton is terrible!" mindset. Sanders didn't win and Clinton has stepped out of the limelight. I'm saying this because if Clinton chose to do things that would have worked better, and the democratic party is still choosing to do things that way, then we are in trouble. The tactics that would have succeeded need to be identified and pursued.
This is all hindsight. Sure did fuck up, no argument there but it wasn't her fault or her to blame for many of those things. The Democratic party is still doing things that way because the centrists are in still our leaders, they're not a group known for risky, out of the box thinking. The party is doing what you propose to find what went wrong, we won't know their solutions until the next elections.
Stuff like this is how you get third party voters, anti-establishment voters and apathetic voters who view both sides as functionally the same.
Please. They came out for Obama and he was no different on any of these accounts.
They came out for Obama because his own raw charisma, ability to tell stories that resonated with voters, and pursuit of very broad policy goals inspired them. Te democrats no longer have the first two to fall back on, and they have proven remarkably recalcitrant on the third.
Yes, that's my point. The voters Frankiedarling is going on about didn't give a shit that Obama openly advocated cooperation across the aisle or that he went to billionaire fundraisers or dicked around during his time as Senator pulling these same kind of tricks or any of this other shit. It wasn't a problem for them then, it's not now.
They came out then because Obama sold them a narrative the way Clinton couldn't.
Couldn't, or chose not to?
Couldn't. Notice, for instance, that the "First Women President" narrative was not catching on the way the "First Black President" one did. And it's not cause she wasn't trying to sell it.
Right, she wasn't inspiring in the same way, had trouble fighting off the sexism in the same way Obama was able to (at least temporarily) fight of the racism, and she was plagued with decades of baggage, much of (though not all) of it manufactured by the opposition. But Hillary, for the most part did not try to tell stories that related to voters. She didn't pursue broad, popular policy goals. She focused on Dangerous Donald. She chased suburban middle and upper middle class Republican voters who just turned around and voted for Trump or didn't vote at all.
One can argue that Hillary wasn't the right choice if you wanted to run an inspiring candidate. That, of course, begs the question of why the party backed her, knowing that. But even if you make that case, she actively chose to do things counter to what had worked for Obama, had worked better than expected for Sanders, and also, in a much darker way, worked for Trump.
I'm not saying this out of a "Sander would have won!" or "Clinton is terrible!" mindset. Sanders didn't win and Clinton has stepped out of the limelight. I'm saying this because if Clinton chose to do things that would have worked better, and the democratic party is still choosing to do things that way, then we are in trouble. The tactics that would have succeeded need to be identified and pursued.
Uh huh. But this isn't an argument against anything I was actually talking about at the top.
Obama got third party voters, anti-establishment voters and apathetic voters to come out for him because he sold a better story, not because he wasn't fundraising off rich people or making politically expedient votes in the Senate. Cause he was doing those things.
Obama did that by being an antiestablishment candidate, and being one of the best politicians in his generation too.
Like, yes, knowing what we know now, running Clinton would have been a mistake. The problem is we didn't know that stuff yet. This type of thinking is only useful if you have a time machine.
I don't think we had a choice, I think she was our best chance to beat Trump.
Like, yes, knowing what we know now, running Clinton would have been a mistake. The problem is we didn't know that stuff yet. This type of thinking is only useful if you have a time machine.
I don't think we had a choice, I think she was our best chance to beat Trump.
Her historically bad unfavorability ratings suggest otherwise.
Like, yes, knowing what we know now, running Clinton would have been a mistake. The problem is we didn't know that stuff yet. This type of thinking is only useful if you have a time machine.
I don't think we had a choice, I think she was our best chance to beat Trump.
Her historically bad unfavorability ratings suggest otherwise.
If Bernie couldn't beat her how would he expect to beat Trump?
I reiterate my opinion that the left end of the spectrum is incapable of organizing, by its very nature.
But that's because I view the whole thing as being akin to the states of matter. On the right, solids - every atom held in lockstep to its neighbors, united, implacable. On the left, gasses - small molecules or individual atoms, all bouncing around independently, passionately invested in their own personal cause but diffuse. And somewhere in the center, liquids - just organized enough to actually get things done, but changing to fit the shape of whatever container they're put in, to the derision of both ends.
You can't ask, or depend on, a cloud of gas to start behaving like a solid or even a liquid. You have to impose external forces - chilling it, or pressurizing it - to get it to do so. And that produces a lot of heat, because it doesn't want that. (Or, to strain the analogy a bit further, each molecule wants all the others to combine with them and agree their way is best, or no deal.)
Like, yes, knowing what we know now, running Clinton would have been a mistake. The problem is we didn't know that stuff yet. This type of thinking is only useful if you have a time machine.
I don't think we had a choice, I think she was our best chance to beat Trump.
Her historically bad unfavorability ratings suggest otherwise.
If Bernie couldn't beat her how would he expect to beat Trump?
The question wasn't Bernie vs. Clinton, is was Clinton vs. anyone else. You think Joe Biden would've lost? Or George Clooney? Or the third most unpopular candidate of all time instead of the second? Maybe someone outside of the top ten? She simply wasn't a good choice, let alone our 'best chance.'
We should have spent the last decade filling our bench so that in 2016 we had more nationally-recognized politicians who were willing to throw their hat in the ring.
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Nobody could have predicted the FBI interference, the Russian interference or the proliferation of fake (not even just biased, outright fake) news ahead of time. That shit was all completely out of left field.
Additionally, both the media's utter failure to properly handle the election, and the sheer amount of stuff stuff people were willing to let him get away with, while not unexpected, were at levels that people would have told you was absolutely crazy if you had mentioned it two years ago.
Like, yes, knowing what we know now, running Clinton would have been a mistake. The problem is we didn't know that stuff yet. This type of thinking is only useful if you have a time machine.
This is wrong. I called it. Everyone who wrote about the Clinton Rules called it.
I was just arrogant in thinking it wouldn't matter against the sick joke that is the modern Republican Party.
I gotta say, I've loved everything I've heard Perez say in the last week or so.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
That's how you sell those far-out left wing ideas- free State-run daycare, national high-speed rail system, nationalized healthcare, ending right-to-work, halting automation, Newt Gingrich Memorial Moon Base, whatever. Plans are exciting and memorable, people like them. Remember the Square Deal? The New Deal? The Great Society? Bring that to the next election and you'll win hands-down.
@Spaffy
As far as automation goes there are ways to stop it- reworking the tax code and insurance system to massively reduce the incentives behind automation would help a great deal. I don't think Trump is aware of automation. His background is in construction and hospitality (which aren't easily automated) so I think he sees the hollowing out of employment here as mainly a "factories moving overseas" problem/illegals working for lower pay, because that's the problem in his industry.
re:the Mexican labor stuff- when they cracked down on illegals in the fields and slaughterhouses, there was an article I read in the paper where a slaughterhouse had to raise wages and implement benefits (cheaper health insurance, free work shuttles) before citizens would take those very dangerous, very stressful jobs. Labor is entirely a supply and demand issue. Citizens don't want to pick tomatoes for five dollars an hour. When Trump starts cracking down on illegals it might take a while before wages and working conditions are improved but once they are we'll see Americans start taking those jobs again.
Which is why Ellison should win. Perez for Maryland! Also everyone treating Ellison vs. Perez as a Sanders/Clinton proxy fight is dumb.
I felt that same ominous feeling from back in 2000 just like you but I thought, like Clinton's Campaign did, that Trump was so manifestly awful that it couldn't happen again.
That is pretty dumb. If we can't separate support during the Primary to action going forward, it's going to be a long road out of this hole.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
No. They have not. The democrats do not support the greens. The democrats do support the progressive caucus (the largest democratic caucus in the legislature).
The democrats do not support organizations that attack them like they're the enemy. And there are a LOT of them on the left. The majority of left wing media is in this camp, unable to notice their natural allies.
The behavior referenced by Frankiedarling here, before we took a journey down Anti-Corporatist Lane, is not in fact big money donors or fundraising or anything along those lines. That behavior is problematic, but it is also beside FD's main point. To wit, political cowardice by Democrats.
So let's get back to that. One question I see posed around here all the time, recently even! (regarding Ben Carson's recent vote), is: what is the functional difference between someone who cares deeply about their voters but votes to fuck them and someone who doesn't give a shit about their voters and also votes to fuck them. And since this is basically rhetorical at this point, the expected conclusion is: there is none, to the people on the receiving end of the fucking.
There is no reason we should not also apply this to Democrats.
I think the real reason that happened (also it was a committee vote so might be able to get them to flip in the full Senate with public pressure, which would be heartening) was that we treat housing policy as a joke in this country. Which has everything to do with who lives in public housing, of course.
Not every Democrat in this country is going to look at those votes and go, "Well it's just symbolic, this isn't disappointing at all." And we shouldn't expect them to!
I agree and got my Massachusetts friends to call Warren about it.
I just don't want to spend my time being this angry about everyone, you know?
I get that. But being angry at our own party is maybe the only productive anger we have. Getting angry about the Republicans does fuck-all. They don't give a wet shit about Democratic anger. It sustains them. Until our elected officials get the memo that being spineless in the face of fascism is going to result in them being booted out on their asses, expect that behavior to continue.
I'm not saying you need to be just as angry as I am about it.
But again, Obama is just as guilty of that too.
The thing the Republicans do where they say what they want and they keep saying it and pushing for it until they get it might have something to do with how they've been systematically dismantling all Democratic power for the last 6 years
but it's probably unrelated I'm sure
They didn't push for pro life because they thought they'd get it in any given session, they pushed for it because it's what their voters care about and they kept pushing and hey look now they're going to run roughshod over the majority opinion
If Democrats can't find a spine for a symbolic vote when they don't have any real power anyway and the only thing at stake is what we think of them, then fuck them
Think it has more to do with systematic targeting of Democratic power to rig the system against them, personally.
That and the fact that Republican voters will show up even if they hate their candidate. And like, the GOP as an institution just hate-fucked Trump into office too.
Like, the truth is on alot of things the GOP hasn't delivered for their base. That's why their base turned on them. But what their base kept doing is voting.
It sure doesn't feel productive. I feel like we just walked out of an election where people were mad at the party and/or its candidate(s) and that did not go well. I'm angry to a degree too. I called Donnelly's office yesterday and today about his Pompeo vote and definitely used my "what the FUCK is the Senator thinking" voice. The anger's just exhausting.
I have a hard time reading this thread, and the Trump Admin thread. Not because of the bad news about things Trump is doing (I mean, that's depressing enough on its own, sure), but because everyone sounds so defeatist. If I read "we're watching the end of this country"* one more time I'm gonna ... take a break from the forums.
We lost. Not by a landslide or in a slaughter, but by a razor's edge. Time to come together and get our house in order; time to tweak some things to get us on the proper side of that razor's edge. I don't feel that there's any coming together though. I feel that everyone has dug their heels in and is just yelling at one another. The Clinton and Bernie camps are still having a knife fight amongst each other, while the Republicans are calmly waiting with a handgun, ready to handily pop whichever camp wins, limping away bleeding.
Sorry. Needed to vent.
* If I read "darkest timeline" one more time Imma throw myself out a fucking window.
It's true. Obama rode into office on the hope and change wave, but in the end he delivered on only some change and a bit of hope, much of which is now going to be wiped away. He was a good president, one of the better ones, but he was deeply flawed in his own way and I fear the history books may judge him harshly for the way things fell apart in the end. He could have done more.
Hindsight is 20.20, though. We can learn a lot from how to win an election from Obama, in this day and age. A strong narrative. Broad, easy to understand goals. But how he governed? That's another matter. We can't take too many cues from him there, because what he built wasn't truly built to last.
I will say this, though, as I said it in the trump admin thread. Obama talked a lot about his 2008 campaign was funded by small voter donations. This was only partially true, and he did eventually seek the money and aid of the power brokers, something that caused trouble down the road. But then you have Bernie Sanders. Say what you will about Sander's politics, but he did remarkably well by building a passionate movement, focused on broad goals, and he financed it almost exclusively with small donations. He didn't win, but he did much better than expected. We can learn a lesson from that, too. If you can motivate your base they can provide a sure financial footing that makes you less dependent on the big donors.
We're going to have to use every working tool at our disposal to climb out of this hole we've dug ourselves into. Borrowing elements that worked from Sanders, Obama, and elsewhere will be indispensable.
That's part of it, sure. But I think there's more too it than that. Obama genuinely wanted to carved out a place of centrist consensus. He's not a progressive firebrand. He was never going to truly gun for big scale change in the FDR or LBJ vein. The changes he shot for were comparatively modest, or at least they would have been in a sane and rational political system. Obama assumed we were still in that sort of system. We are not.
It's often been pointed out that, by the standards of a half century ago, Obama or Hillary might have been seen as moderate Republicans. This is usually trotted out as an attack on the Right, mentioned in the same breath as comparisons to Reagan or Nixon, who by today's standards might have been quasi-centrist Democrats. In one way, that damns the GOP for how far right they've gone. But on the other hand, it also damns the Democrats to an extent. They're not what they used to be.
As we look forward, we need to think long and hard about this. If a centrist consensus is off the table, if the opposition will never partner with us, what good is that pursuit? Obama has framed himself as a realist and a pragmatist for a long time. Even in 2008 he was saying he'd consider any idea if thought it would work. He pursued modest change because he thought it was what could be realistically, pragmatically achieved.
That hasn't worked out for us. Why shouldn't we swing for the fences? Forget the modest change. Reach consensus on what we, the democratic voters, would like to see happen, the big changes we want, and then go for that with gusto. That's how you get a wave election to happen. Obama showed us that an uplifting vision can, aha, trump almost everything else. He just didn't got far enough with it once he was in power.
Which means the left in the US is dead forever unless you people are ready for an actual revolution.
They went on about this 8 and 4 years ago too. It never materialized.
But definitely needs an eye kept on it.
That idea was floated before. But yeah, it would be a good way to lock in power permanently, or at least for a generational regime that lasts until 2050 or something, by which time there'd be nothing left worth fighting for.
Especially if Virginia elects a Republican Governor next year (that's where the latest example is from).
There's a thing on these threads when the things said here are amplified by social media outside these threads, and for a lot of people heavily into social media aka Millenials, this is the first time that they see the left lose an election. A hard lesson is that there's no such thing as "The End" or "The Right Side" of history, there's political, economical and social currents that must be fought for at every step. Look at the GOP base, they got a candidate that gave them what they wanted and they stuck with him and fought for him to the bitter end and behold, now they get to change the US as they wish.
Of course, change must also come from upstairs. People leading political parties must be willing to lead the charge, not put seals of approval on decisions that will inmediatly have dire consequences. It goes both ways, the guy going in a primary against Tim Kaine can say: "I got up here to get a goddamn explanation of why the former VP nominee is suddenly A-OK with a guy that reopened torture camps" and the Dem base must be willing to fight to get him elected.
This year. The election is in about 9 months.
I haven't internalized that it's 2017 yet.
Republicans have the luxury of immediate change, Democrats don't. Unless you[re switching to the other team you're not going to get this sped up.
Sure, the leadership has some responsibility - to a point. Where this ends is where the Left becomes strong on its own, there has to become a time where the Left gets its act together on its own. The centrists haven't blocked how the left gets access to funding, access to media or influencing politicians. Most of that the Left refuses to do, other forces are at work obstructing it, or they're bad at that.
Every faction starts off weak and pulls itself out the weeds, growing in strength and forces the Democratic party to take them seriously. This part of being in a political faction.
It has not been systematically targeted - it's just very bad at getting its shit together to take on this job.
This is not a design, it's how things work when a faction gains the leadership role over a political party. The centrist didn't get there merely with brawn, but with cunning and intelligence. They became masters at the political game. The Left, in contrast, has not.
The centrists hasn't lost all credibility, c'mon now. Nor have they lost their legitimacy. The Left don't automatically get to walk into the leadership position by trying to discredit the centrists has been illegitimate, they have to take it.
Yes, now is the time for a progressive take over. This comes to a halt, because the Left are in no shape to do this seriously and at best it's going to take years to get into fighting shape to try this, assuming it doesn't implode and we have to start over again before it's gotten off the ground. An irritating pattern the left has of doing. That is another reason why the centrists have control, they don't fall to pieces every few years who they fail and have to start from scratch.
Unless this all changes with how the left operates the centrists are in no danger of being overthrown by them.
The TEA Party had Koch money, and access to professionals from all across the conservative/GOP sphere from media, trenches and leadership at the highest levels. This was a professional organization, not Occupy.
It goes deeper than that, sexism on the credential scale is a bigger problem for candidates than racism. She got the popular vote, I'd say she did fine selling her story to the public. Nor did she chase Republican votes, what is up with this bullshit charge? I've already gone over this in an earlier post with someone else. Those who voted for Trump weren't simply doing it due to flaws she had, and yes she was not perfect.
Again, popular vote. You now why the party backed her, she was heavily connected to the part leadership, she had access to lots of money and is a skilled campaigner. To date she is the only politicians to give peak Obama a tough time winning an election.
This is all hindsight. Sure did fuck up, no argument there but it wasn't her fault or her to blame for many of those things. The Democratic party is still doing things that way because the centrists are in still our leaders, they're not a group known for risky, out of the box thinking. The party is doing what you propose to find what went wrong, we won't know their solutions until the next elections.
Obama did that by being an antiestablishment candidate, and being one of the best politicians in his generation too.
I don't think we had a choice, I think she was our best chance to beat Trump.
Her historically bad unfavorability ratings suggest otherwise.
If Bernie couldn't beat her how would he expect to beat Trump?
But that's because I view the whole thing as being akin to the states of matter. On the right, solids - every atom held in lockstep to its neighbors, united, implacable. On the left, gasses - small molecules or individual atoms, all bouncing around independently, passionately invested in their own personal cause but diffuse. And somewhere in the center, liquids - just organized enough to actually get things done, but changing to fit the shape of whatever container they're put in, to the derision of both ends.
You can't ask, or depend on, a cloud of gas to start behaving like a solid or even a liquid. You have to impose external forces - chilling it, or pressurizing it - to get it to do so. And that produces a lot of heat, because it doesn't want that. (Or, to strain the analogy a bit further, each molecule wants all the others to combine with them and agree their way is best, or no deal.)
The question wasn't Bernie vs. Clinton, is was Clinton vs. anyone else. You think Joe Biden would've lost? Or George Clooney? Or the third most unpopular candidate of all time instead of the second? Maybe someone outside of the top ten? She simply wasn't a good choice, let alone our 'best chance.'
We should have spent the last decade filling our bench so that in 2016 we had more nationally-recognized politicians who were willing to throw their hat in the ring.