Bernie was the best of the democratic primary candidates but it's not surprising that he lost - the best candidate often loses their election. What is maybe a little surprising though is that he lost even though he was the most interesting of the candidates. He was the only one with any star power, the only one with the ability to excite people, and the only one with a clear point of view.
It seems like in presidential elections the more charismatic and interesting candidate generally wins - see: Trump, Clinton, Obama. But in primary elections it seems like boring candidates often win out over more interesting rivals. I wonder why that is. Why do Boring McBoringtons like Hillary and Romney wind up snagging nominations?
Perhaps it's just that in primary elections people do more triangulation - in presidential elections people vote for who they want to win, but in primaries people vote for they think can win - for who they think other people will want to vote for. Which is how you end up with candidates that feel vaguely presidential but don't have any strong ideas or star power.
Every poll showed Hillary excited more people. And then she got more people to vote for her by a lot. The idea that Bernie was the exciting one was one born of bubbles and a media needing a competitive primary
Hillary excited more people in the states where her victories were just running up the scoreboard in a winner take all electoral system
Bernie was the best of the democratic primary candidates but it's not surprising that he lost - the best candidate often loses their election. What is maybe a little surprising though is that he lost even though he was the most interesting of the candidates. He was the only one with any star power, the only one with the ability to excite people, and the only one with a clear point of view.
It seems like in presidential elections the more charismatic and interesting candidate generally wins - see: Trump, Clinton, Obama. But in primary elections it seems like boring candidates often win out over more interesting rivals. I wonder why that is. Why do Boring McBoringtons like Hillary and Romney wind up snagging nominations?
Perhaps it's just that in primary elections people do more triangulation - in presidential elections people vote for who they want to win, but in primaries people vote for they think can win - for who they think other people will want to vote for. Which is how you end up with candidates that feel vaguely presidential but don't have any strong ideas or star power.
Bernie mainly lost because he did not contest some of the early southern large states. By super tuesday he pretty much had no chance. Had he managed to not get that far behind at that point he would have had a good chance to woo over super delegates like Obama did.
This narrative is moronic
you know how Obama wooed Super Delegates? By winning regular voters and winning states
Thats what I said. He basically passed on a lot of the early big southern states. he did not get the votes there and that is also why he could not get super delegates to start moving his way. Because of him ignoring those big southern states early he never really had a chance to close the gap with Hillary. Had he gone after those voters things could easily have turned out a lot different.
But that's not correct. Because the super delegates are irrelevant. They aren't why he lost. He lost because he kept losing states, even outside the South.
Bernie was the best of the democratic primary candidates but it's not surprising that he lost - the best candidate often loses their election. What is maybe a little surprising though is that he lost even though he was the most interesting of the candidates. He was the only one with any star power, the only one with the ability to excite people, and the only one with a clear point of view.
It seems like in presidential elections the more charismatic and interesting candidate generally wins - see: Trump, Clinton, Obama. But in primary elections it seems like boring candidates often win out over more interesting rivals. I wonder why that is. Why do Boring McBoringtons like Hillary and Romney wind up snagging nominations?
Perhaps it's just that in primary elections people do more triangulation - in presidential elections people vote for who they want to win, but in primaries people vote for they think can win - for who they think other people will want to vote for. Which is how you end up with candidates that feel vaguely presidential but don't have any strong ideas or star power.
Bernie mainly lost because he did not contest some of the early southern large states. By super tuesday he pretty much had no chance. Had he managed to not get that far behind at that point he would have had a good chance to woo over super delegates like Obama did.
This narrative is moronic
you know how Obama wooed Super Delegates? By winning regular voters and winning states
Thats what I said. He basically passed on a lot of the early big southern states. he did not get the votes there and that is also why he could not get super delegates to start moving his way. Because of him ignoring those big southern states early he never really had a chance to close the gap with Hillary. Had he gone after those voters things could easily have turned out a lot different.
This doesn't really make sense unless you're trying to say that the reported lead Hillary had was both inflated by her pledged superdelegates and also such a depressor of support for Sanders going forward.
Even if you exclude the early southern primaries where he did poorly, Bernie could have still won if he had performed better in the later states. If he had consistently been the stronger performer in states other than those who decide the state with a caucus, the superdelegates could have still switched.
He never had a chance to close the gap because Hillary kept winning and increasing the gap to a point where he was all but mathematically eliminated.
There's a lot of talk about how Trump is the most disliked president on his first months. Which is fine and all, but MSNBC correspondent Steve Kornacki links some context for those numbers:
Those numbers are the Trump strategy: Doesn't matter if people hate me if they hate the other guys more. Which is why running as "not Trump" was falling straight into the trap.
It's important to remember that a sizeable portion of the negatives for the Democratic Party right now are coming from people who are frustrated with the party's performance. Specifically that they couldn't get their shit together enough to control any part of the government, and that they found a way to lose to Donald Trump.
It's angry disappointment for a lot of people, not the hatred that Trump inspires.
It's important to remember that a sizeable portion of the negatives for the Democratic Party right now are coming from people who are frustrated with the party's performance. Specifically that they couldn't get their shit together enough to control any part of the government, and that they found a way to lose to Donald Trump.
It's angry disappointment for a lot of people, not the hatred that Trump inspires.
And yet, that's a recipe for depressed turnout. Which is why the party has to get their shit together, being "not Trump" is not enough.
Those numbers are the Trump strategy: Doesn't matter if people hate me if they hate the other guys more. Which is why running as "not Trump" was falling straight into the trap.
Trying to look at numbers right now isn't exactly a fair comparison for how people felt during the campaign.
It's important to remember that a sizeable portion of the negatives for the Democratic Party right now are coming from people who are frustrated with the party's performance. Specifically that they couldn't get their shit together enough to control any part of the government, and that they found a way to lose to Donald Trump.
It's angry disappointment for a lot of people, not the hatred that Trump inspires.
And yet, that's a recipe for depressed turnout. Which is why the party has to get their shit together, being "not Trump" is not enough.
If Democrats suffer from depressed turnout over the next few years, they've only got themselves to blame.
Millions of people literally took to the streets looking for a better option. But the party hasn't been comfortable with the base doing any of the driving for decades now.
There's a lot of talk about how Trump is the most disliked president on his first months. Which is fine and all, but MSNBC correspondent Steve Kornacki links some context for those numbers:
Those numbers are the Trump strategy: Doesn't matter if people hate me if they hate the other guys more. Which is why running as "not Trump" was falling straight into the trap.
Except that's not really good context for a President's approval ratings. The context that matters is what an incoming President's approval ratings should look like based on historical data.
It's important to remember that a sizeable portion of the negatives for the Democratic Party right now are coming from people who are frustrated with the party's performance. Specifically that they couldn't get their shit together enough to control any part of the government, and that they found a way to lose to Donald Trump.
It's angry disappointment for a lot of people, not the hatred that Trump inspires.
And yet, that's a recipe for depressed turnout. Which is why the party has to get their shit together, being "not Trump" is not enough.
If Democrats suffer from depressed turnout over the next few years, they've only got themselves to blame.
Millions of people literally took to the streets looking for a better option. But the party hasn't been comfortable with the base doing any of the driving for decades now.
Hopefully one of the lessons that the Democratic party takes from this election is that you need to run on more than just "the other guy sucks". You can't just give people reasons to vote against your opponent - they need reasons to vote for you, too. Nate Silver noted at one point that he was covering the Clinton campaign for over a year and yet couldn't tell you what she was running on.
I think the left has a flawed conception of the base of the Democratic Party. I think it's fair to say the establishment has been distrustful or outright hostile towards activists, but that's not the base because modern lefty activism has this weird hostility to electoral politics.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
I think the left has a flawed conception of the base of the Democratic Party. I think it's fair to say the establishment has been distrustful or outright hostile towards activists, but that's not the base because modern lefty activism has this weird hostility to electoral politics.
It's also pretty fair to say that this distrust and hostility is a two-way street
Part of itis the demographics. Coastal activists have largely been ignored because the political battlegrounds of the last 30years have been the Rust Belt. The New Deal coalition has been dying slowly since Reagan and the Dems haven't done a good job putting together a new one
Do we really have a base, in anything like the Republican sense? What I see is, we have a centrist/left core, and then a bunch of people further left all talking very loudly about their own thing and why that should be the most important thing we should all be fighting for.
Do we really have a base, in anything like the Republican sense? What I see is, we have a centrist/left core, and then a bunch of people further left all talking very loudly about their own thing and why that should be the most important thing we should all be fighting for.
That would be black people.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
I think the left has a flawed conception of the base of the Democratic Party. I think it's fair to say the establishment has been distrustful or outright hostile towards activists, but that's not the base because modern lefty activism has this weird hostility to electoral politics.
It's also pretty fair to say that this distrust and hostility is a two-way street
This.
The base of the party by definition is not "activists" hostile to resentful of the party. The base does run the party, it's just the selfaggrandizing people who think theyou are the base while complaining about the "establishment".
The base of the Democratic party is black people, party loyalist liberals, to a dimished extent unions and to a certain extent LGBT people. A majority of the remaining voters who are persuadable are left-center to moderate, low propensity minority voters and/or young new voters. Those on the left who are resentful of the Democratic party represents much smaller and geographically isolated parts of the population. They are not the base.
That faction becomes more popular when college kids don't have any real memories of a Republican Administration and the reality of Bush or Reagan/Bush fades. It's still much less numerous than centrists Dems and generally in less important districts. But it can still fuck us over
Do we really have a base, in anything like the Republican sense? What I see is, we have a centrist/left core, and then a bunch of people further left all talking very loudly about their own thing and why that should be the most important thing we should all be fighting for.
You're forgetting the large numbers of people who polling suggests lean democratic, but also frequently don't vote, especially during midterms. You've got the centrists, the leftists, and the unmotivated masses. Now, the argument the leftists make is not that they are the majority of the base. They argue that the centrists have been in the driver's seat and have failed to inspire and turn out the third group. They also argue that more leftist politics might succeed on that count where centrism has failed.
Bernie casually lumps agenda and approach together here, but they're two vastly different things and just because one is unpopular/ineffective doesn't mean the other is.
In fact, he admits that the agenda is good! The party matches polling on Americans on most things, the party wins on voters concerned about the economy.
It's all down to two things: that the GOP figured out how to game the system with voter suppression and that the GOP has tapped into a racial white animus that's been building among white people since the 60s (although declining in the country as a whole as it becomes more diverse).
I think the left has a flawed conception of the base of the Democratic Party. I think it's fair to say the establishment has been distrustful or outright hostile towards activists, but that's not the base because modern lefty activism has this weird hostility to electoral politics.
It's also pretty fair to say that this distrust and hostility is a two-way street
Current Democratic leaders cut their teeth in the Reagan era and grew up in the 70s when they watched the unstoppable Roosevelt coalition collapse and the party slowly turn inward on itself. The popular blame for that is the hippies and the anti-war activists, so there's possibly a real fear among party elders that the new groundswell of activism is going to lead to moonbats discrediting the party with main-street America, much as was believed to be the case in the 70s.
It's not true, but it's often hard to escape your formative worldview later in life.
This is where I observe that Will Rogers' joke about the Democrats not being an organized political party is almost a hundred years old, and as true today as it ever was.
This is where I observe that Will Rogers' joke about the Democrats not being an organized political party is almost a hundred years old, and as true today as it ever was.
Silly thing about that is the Democrats are more coherent than they ever have been, nowadays. The supposed rift is overplayed media hype, much as we saw in the DNC election. The problem in Will Rogers day was in trying to reconcile the neo-Confederates with literally everyone else.
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FakefauxCóiste BodharDriving John McCain to meet some Iraqis who'd very much like to make his acquaintanceRegistered Userregular
Bernie casually lumps agenda and approach together here, but they're two vastly different things and just because one is unpopular/ineffective doesn't mean the other is.
In fact, he admits that the agenda is good! The party matches polling on Americans on most things, the party wins on voters concerned about the economy.
It's all down to two things: that the GOP figured out how to game the system with voter suppression and that the GOP has tapped into a racial white animus that's been building among white people since the 60s (although declining in the country as a whole as it becomes more diverse).
I think the left has a flawed conception of the base of the Democratic Party. I think it's fair to say the establishment has been distrustful or outright hostile towards activists, but that's not the base because modern lefty activism has this weird hostility to electoral politics.
It's also pretty fair to say that this distrust and hostility is a two-way street
Current Democratic leaders cut their teeth in the Reagan era and grew up in the 70s when they watched the unstoppable Roosevelt coalition collapse and the party slowly turn inward on itself. The popular blame for that is the hippies and the anti-war activists, so there's possibly a real fear among party elders that the new groundswell of activism is going to lead to moonbats discrediting the party with main-street America, much as was believed to be the case in the 70s.
It's not true, but it's often hard to escape your formative worldview later in life.
There's a case to be made for the New Deal coalition not being destroyed by activists and hippies so much as the New Democrats and the Watergate babies, who actively forced out old New Deal members from key committees and the like.
The New Deal coalition was blown up the same way every other progressive coalition in America was blown up: by exploiting race to split off white working class voters from the rest of the coalition. Which is what happened to the Obama coalition last November.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Because, despite her flaws, she was still the strongest candidate the Democrats had.
And, until you actually ran a competent Democratic woman against an utterly incompetent and evil Republican Man we didn't really know quite how sexist your Republican voter was and how their sexism would affect their voting. It was a reasonable assumption that people were less sexist than they used to be. Turns out we were very wrong there.
It's important to remember that a sizeable portion of the negatives for the Democratic Party right now are coming from people who are frustrated with the party's performance. Specifically that they couldn't get their shit together enough to control any part of the government, and that they found a way to lose to Donald Trump.
It's angry disappointment for a lot of people, not the hatred that Trump inspires.
And yet, that's a recipe for depressed turnout. Which is why the party has to get their shit together, being "not Trump" is not enough.
If Democrats suffer from depressed turnout over the next few years, they've only got themselves to blame.
Millions of people literally took to the streets looking for a better option. But the party hasn't been comfortable with the base doing any of the driving for decades now.
TBF I don't think the Republicans are happy that their base is driving
they just don't want to say anything because their base is unbalanced and driving at 100mph and might veer into a tree if they get upset
The New Deal coalition was blown up the same way every other progressive coalition in America was blown up: by exploiting race to split off white working class voters from the rest of the coalition. Which is what happened to the Obama coalition last November.
maybe? that doesn't really explain the lower minority turnout in the states where we lost though
I think Hillary spending more time trying to win red states while her blue wall was crumbling might have at least as much to do with it
The New Deal coalition was blown up the same way every other progressive coalition in America was blown up: by exploiting race to split off white working class voters from the rest of the coalition. Which is what happened to the Obama coalition last November.
maybe? that doesn't really explain the lower minority turnout in the states where we lost though
I think Hillary spending more time trying to win red states while her blue wall was crumbling might have at least as much to do with it
Or people assuming she couldn't lose. Also voter suppression.
The New Deal coalition was blown up the same way every other progressive coalition in America was blown up: by exploiting race to split off white working class voters from the rest of the coalition. Which is what happened to the Obama coalition last November.
maybe? that doesn't really explain the lower minority turnout in the states where we lost though
I think Hillary spending more time trying to win red states while her blue wall was crumbling might have at least as much to do with it
Or people assuming she couldn't lose. Also voter suppression.
None of those things are exclusive. Question is, what are Dems going to do about it?
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
The New Deal coalition was blown up the same way every other progressive coalition in America was blown up: by exploiting race to split off white working class voters from the rest of the coalition. Which is what happened to the Obama coalition last November.
maybe? that doesn't really explain the lower minority turnout in the states where we lost though
Did we ever get hard numbers on this? I thought all we had were some exit polls, which are super unreliable for minorities due to sampling issues.
I think Hillary spending more time trying to win red states while her blue wall was crumbling might have at least as much to do with it
What really fucked the campaign was that the Comey letter was essentially a November surprise--it impacted the race late enough that there really wasn't any time for polling to incorporate it, so it was hard for Clinton to know how tight the race was getting or where it would matter most.
Because, despite her flaws, she was still the strongest candidate the Democrats had.
And, until you actually ran a competent Democratic woman against an utterly incompetent and evil Republican Man we didn't really know quite how sexist your Republican voter was and how their sexism would affect their voting. It was a reasonable assumption that people were less sexist than they used to be. Turns out we were very wrong there.
The sexism argument is the worst kind of excuse. I think it's good policy to be extremely wary of explanations that externalize all blame for failure while reinforcing the currently held set of beliefs/tactics/strategies. It is frustrating to see sexism argument continual fronted as the culprit against an avalanche of evidence that the tactics and candidate were simply not as good as we thought they were.
Its also self defeating because if you put that logic forward, what now? No more female candidates? Nah. Obama pretty much shatters this logic, unless we somehow think we can prove sexism is far stronger than racism in this country (which prior to Clinton's defeat I do not believe was thought to be the case).
Because, despite her flaws, she was still the strongest candidate the Democrats had.
And, until you actually ran a competent Democratic woman against an utterly incompetent and evil Republican Man we didn't really know quite how sexist your Republican voter was and how their sexism would affect their voting. It was a reasonable assumption that people were less sexist than they used to be. Turns out we were very wrong there.
The sexism argument is the worst kind of excuse. I think it's good policy to be extremely wary of explanations that externalize all blame for failure while reinforcing the currently held set of beliefs/tactics/strategies. It is frustrating to see sexism argument continual fronted as the culprit against an avalanche of evidence that the tactics and candidate were simply not as good as we thought they were.
Its also self defeating because if you put that logic forward, what now? No more female candidates? Nah. Obama pretty much shatters this logic, unless we somehow think we can prove sexism is far stronger than racism in this country (which prior to Clinton's defeat I do not believe was thought to be the case).
That a (woman/black man/otherkin unicorn) must be the absolutely flawless and above all reproach just to be on the same level as the most overtly corrupt, ignorant, idiotic rich white guy to exist isn't a repudiation of whatever the relevant -ism is.
Because, despite her flaws, she was still the strongest candidate the Democrats had.
And, until you actually ran a competent Democratic woman against an utterly incompetent and evil Republican Man we didn't really know quite how sexist your Republican voter was and how their sexism would affect their voting. It was a reasonable assumption that people were less sexist than they used to be. Turns out we were very wrong there.
The sexism argument is the worst kind of excuse. I think it's good policy to be extremely wary of explanations that externalize all blame for failure while reinforcing the currently held set of beliefs/tactics/strategies. It is frustrating to see sexism argument continual fronted as the culprit against an avalanche of evidence that the tactics and candidate were simply not as good as we thought they were.
Its also self defeating because if you put that logic forward, what now? No more female candidates? Nah. Obama pretty much shatters this logic, unless we somehow think we can prove sexism is far stronger than racism in this country (which prior to Clinton's defeat I do not believe was thought to be the case).
There's an avalanche of evidence that sexism and racism were two of the three strongest correlaters for support for Trump. Trying to ignore this, trying to ignore the kind of campaign Trump ran, is goddamn ridiculous.
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FakefauxCóiste BodharDriving John McCain to meet some Iraqis who'd very much like to make his acquaintanceRegistered Userregular
Because, despite her flaws, she was still the strongest candidate the Democrats had.
And, until you actually ran a competent Democratic woman against an utterly incompetent and evil Republican Man we didn't really know quite how sexist your Republican voter was and how their sexism would affect their voting. It was a reasonable assumption that people were less sexist than they used to be. Turns out we were very wrong there.
The sexism argument is the worst kind of excuse. I think it's good policy to be extremely wary of explanations that externalize all blame for failure while reinforcing the currently held set of beliefs/tactics/strategies. It is frustrating to see sexism argument continual fronted as the culprit against an avalanche of evidence that the tactics and candidate were simply not as good as we thought they were.
Its also self defeating because if you put that logic forward, what now? No more female candidates? Nah. Obama pretty much shatters this logic, unless we somehow think we can prove sexism is far stronger than racism in this country (which prior to Clinton's defeat I do not believe was thought to be the case).
That a (woman/black man/otherkin unicorn) must be the absolutely flawless and above all reproach just to be on the same level as the most overtly corrupt, ignorant, idiotic rich white guy to exist isn't a repudiation of whatever the relevant -ism is.
That is not remotely what he just said. Obama won despite enormous bigotry and he was no perfect candidate.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Hopefully one of the lessons that the Democratic party takes from this election is that you need to run on more than just "the other guy sucks". You can't just give people reasons to vote against your opponent - they need reasons to vote for you, too. Nate Silver noted at one point that he was covering the Clinton campaign for over a year and yet couldn't tell you what she was running on.
It's more than just "the other guys sucks." A lot of Clinton's answers had to do with, "Oh no, the Republicans!" And sure there's times where that's relevant, but more often than not it was being thrown out to avoid having to answer something in detail. It was one of the messages that the Sanders campaign had wanted to embrace; positive messaging. They wanted to talk about what they an do to help people, everyone. The Clinton campaign / camp however continued making things "us vs them." And none of that is to say that Sanders didn't have "us vs. them" type positions (particularly when it comes to the wealthy), but the frequency and context are what count.
2016 had a lot of people going, "can we please do something with the government and stop with usual charade of this team vs that." Its the younger folks of the Democrats for sure, and to dismiss them and say they're wrong was very irresponsible of the Democratic Party to do on an official level. Because those young folks are the future, and everything happening now affects that future. They want that future to get off to a good start, rather than waste time fixing the errors that happen today.
It's funny that Sarah Palin would throw around "politics as usual" as a line when she was quitting her job, not using it in any genuine fashion. I think everyone else though started thinking, hey yeah, why do things work this way?
Hopefully one of the lessons that the Democratic party takes from this election is that you need to run on more than just "the other guy sucks". You can't just give people reasons to vote against your opponent - they need reasons to vote for you, too. Nate Silver noted at one point that he was covering the Clinton campaign for over a year and yet couldn't tell you what she was running on.
It's more than just "the other guys sucks." A lot of Clinton's answers had to do with, "Oh no, the Republicans!" And sure there's times where that's relevant, but more often than not it was being thrown out to avoid having to answer something in detail. It was one of the messages that the Sanders campaign had wanted to embrace; positive messaging. They wanted to talk about what they an do to help people, everyone. The Clinton campaign / camp however continued making things "us vs them." And none of that is to say that Sanders didn't have "us vs. them" type positions (particularly when it comes to the wealthy), but the frequency and context are what count.
2016 had a lot of people going, "can we please do something with the government and stop with usual charade of this team vs that." Its the younger folks of the Democrats for sure, and to dismiss them and say they're wrong was very irresponsible of the Democratic Party to do on an official level. Because those young folks are the future, and everything happening now affects that future. They want that future to get off to a good start, rather than waste time fixing the errors that happen today.
It's funny that Sarah Palin would throw around "politics as usual" as a line when she was quitting her job, not using it in any genuine fashion. I think everyone else though started thinking, hey yeah, why do things work this way?
Because, despite her flaws, she was still the strongest candidate the Democrats had.
And, until you actually ran a competent Democratic woman against an utterly incompetent and evil Republican Man we didn't really know quite how sexist your Republican voter was and how their sexism would affect their voting. It was a reasonable assumption that people were less sexist than they used to be. Turns out we were very wrong there.
The sexism argument is the worst kind of excuse. I think it's good policy to be extremely wary of explanations that externalize all blame for failure while reinforcing the currently held set of beliefs/tactics/strategies. It is frustrating to see sexism argument continual fronted as the culprit against an avalanche of evidence that the tactics and candidate were simply not as good as we thought they were.
Its also self defeating because if you put that logic forward, what now? No more female candidates? Nah. Obama pretty much shatters this logic, unless we somehow think we can prove sexism is far stronger than racism in this country (which prior to Clinton's defeat I do not believe was thought to be the case).
That a (woman/black man/otherkin unicorn) must be the absolutely flawless and above all reproach just to be on the same level as the most overtly corrupt, ignorant, idiotic rich white guy to exist isn't a repudiation of whatever the relevant -ism is.
That is not remotely what he just said. Obama won despite enormous bigotry and he was no perfect candidate.
A very large portion of that "avalanche of evidence that the candidate was simply not as good" is "was a woman."
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Hopefully one of the lessons that the Democratic party takes from this election is that you need to run on more than just "the other guy sucks". You can't just give people reasons to vote against your opponent - they need reasons to vote for you, too. Nate Silver noted at one point that he was covering the Clinton campaign for over a year and yet couldn't tell you what she was running on.
It's more than just "the other guys sucks." A lot of Clinton's answers had to do with, "Oh no, the Republicans!" And sure there's times where that's relevant, but more often than not it was being thrown out to avoid having to answer something in detail. It was one of the messages that the Sanders campaign had wanted to embrace; positive messaging. They wanted to talk about what they an do to help people, everyone. The Clinton campaign / camp however continued making things "us vs them." And none of that is to say that Sanders didn't have "us vs. them" type positions (particularly when it comes to the wealthy), but the frequency and context are what count.
2016 had a lot of people going, "can we please do something with the government and stop with usual charade of this team vs that." Its the younger folks of the Democrats for sure, and to dismiss them and say they're wrong was very irresponsible of the Democratic Party to do on an official level. Because those young folks are the future, and everything happening now affects that future. They want that future to get off to a good start, rather than waste time fixing the errors that happen today.
It's funny that Sarah Palin would throw around "politics as usual" as a line when she was quitting her job, not using it in any genuine fashion. I think everyone else though started thinking, hey yeah, why do things work this way?
When was it ever being used to do that?
We're too far removed from the election for me to cite examples and I wasn't around during it to call it out as it happened. But it happened, and it was very dull. Clinton seemed to be campaigning as though it were the 1990s still (which means more than just this).
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Hillary excited more people in the states where her victories were just running up the scoreboard in a winner take all electoral system
But that's not correct. Because the super delegates are irrelevant. They aren't why he lost. He lost because he kept losing states, even outside the South.
This doesn't really make sense unless you're trying to say that the reported lead Hillary had was both inflated by her pledged superdelegates and also such a depressor of support for Sanders going forward.
Even if you exclude the early southern primaries where he did poorly, Bernie could have still won if he had performed better in the later states. If he had consistently been the stronger performer in states other than those who decide the state with a caucus, the superdelegates could have still switched.
He never had a chance to close the gap because Hillary kept winning and increasing the gap to a point where he was all but mathematically eliminated.
Ouch.
And, as bonus, it has media favorability between Dems, Repubs and Independents:
Those numbers are the Trump strategy: Doesn't matter if people hate me if they hate the other guys more. Which is why running as "not Trump" was falling straight into the trap.
Kinda speaks for itself.
Also, that just shows that the vast majority og Hillary's negative ads were about Trump personally.
Becausr he only had one policy while he was running.
It's angry disappointment for a lot of people, not the hatred that Trump inspires.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
And yet, that's a recipe for depressed turnout. Which is why the party has to get their shit together, being "not Trump" is not enough.
Trying to look at numbers right now isn't exactly a fair comparison for how people felt during the campaign.
If Democrats suffer from depressed turnout over the next few years, they've only got themselves to blame.
Millions of people literally took to the streets looking for a better option. But the party hasn't been comfortable with the base doing any of the driving for decades now.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Except that's not really good context for a President's approval ratings. The context that matters is what an incoming President's approval ratings should look like based on historical data.
In some cases it's been outright hostility.
It's also pretty fair to say that this distrust and hostility is a two-way street
That would be black people.
This.
The base of the party by definition is not "activists" hostile to resentful of the party. The base does run the party, it's just the selfaggrandizing people who think theyou are the base while complaining about the "establishment".
The base of the Democratic party is black people, party loyalist liberals, to a dimished extent unions and to a certain extent LGBT people. A majority of the remaining voters who are persuadable are left-center to moderate, low propensity minority voters and/or young new voters. Those on the left who are resentful of the Democratic party represents much smaller and geographically isolated parts of the population. They are not the base.
That faction becomes more popular when college kids don't have any real memories of a Republican Administration and the reality of Bush or Reagan/Bush fades. It's still much less numerous than centrists Dems and generally in less important districts. But it can still fuck us over
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
You're forgetting the large numbers of people who polling suggests lean democratic, but also frequently don't vote, especially during midterms. You've got the centrists, the leftists, and the unmotivated masses. Now, the argument the leftists make is not that they are the majority of the base. They argue that the centrists have been in the driver's seat and have failed to inspire and turn out the third group. They also argue that more leftist politics might succeed on that count where centrism has failed.
In fact, he admits that the agenda is good! The party matches polling on Americans on most things, the party wins on voters concerned about the economy.
It's all down to two things: that the GOP figured out how to game the system with voter suppression and that the GOP has tapped into a racial white animus that's been building among white people since the 60s (although declining in the country as a whole as it becomes more diverse).
Current Democratic leaders cut their teeth in the Reagan era and grew up in the 70s when they watched the unstoppable Roosevelt coalition collapse and the party slowly turn inward on itself. The popular blame for that is the hippies and the anti-war activists, so there's possibly a real fear among party elders that the new groundswell of activism is going to lead to moonbats discrediting the party with main-street America, much as was believed to be the case in the 70s.
It's not true, but it's often hard to escape your formative worldview later in life.
Silly thing about that is the Democrats are more coherent than they ever have been, nowadays. The supposed rift is overplayed media hype, much as we saw in the DNC election. The problem in Will Rogers day was in trying to reconcile the neo-Confederates with literally everyone else.
There's a case to be made for the New Deal coalition not being destroyed by activists and hippies so much as the New Democrats and the Watergate babies, who actively forced out old New Deal members from key committees and the like.
And, until you actually ran a competent Democratic woman against an utterly incompetent and evil Republican Man we didn't really know quite how sexist your Republican voter was and how their sexism would affect their voting. It was a reasonable assumption that people were less sexist than they used to be. Turns out we were very wrong there.
TBF I don't think the Republicans are happy that their base is driving
they just don't want to say anything because their base is unbalanced and driving at 100mph and might veer into a tree if they get upset
maybe? that doesn't really explain the lower minority turnout in the states where we lost though
I think Hillary spending more time trying to win red states while her blue wall was crumbling might have at least as much to do with it
Or people assuming she couldn't lose. Also voter suppression.
None of those things are exclusive. Question is, what are Dems going to do about it?
Did we ever get hard numbers on this? I thought all we had were some exit polls, which are super unreliable for minorities due to sampling issues.
What really fucked the campaign was that the Comey letter was essentially a November surprise--it impacted the race late enough that there really wasn't any time for polling to incorporate it, so it was hard for Clinton to know how tight the race was getting or where it would matter most.
The sexism argument is the worst kind of excuse. I think it's good policy to be extremely wary of explanations that externalize all blame for failure while reinforcing the currently held set of beliefs/tactics/strategies. It is frustrating to see sexism argument continual fronted as the culprit against an avalanche of evidence that the tactics and candidate were simply not as good as we thought they were.
Its also self defeating because if you put that logic forward, what now? No more female candidates? Nah. Obama pretty much shatters this logic, unless we somehow think we can prove sexism is far stronger than racism in this country (which prior to Clinton's defeat I do not believe was thought to be the case).
That a (woman/black man/otherkin unicorn) must be the absolutely flawless and above all reproach just to be on the same level as the most overtly corrupt, ignorant, idiotic rich white guy to exist isn't a repudiation of whatever the relevant -ism is.
There's an avalanche of evidence that sexism and racism were two of the three strongest correlaters for support for Trump. Trying to ignore this, trying to ignore the kind of campaign Trump ran, is goddamn ridiculous.
That is not remotely what he just said. Obama won despite enormous bigotry and he was no perfect candidate.
2016 had a lot of people going, "can we please do something with the government and stop with usual charade of this team vs that." Its the younger folks of the Democrats for sure, and to dismiss them and say they're wrong was very irresponsible of the Democratic Party to do on an official level. Because those young folks are the future, and everything happening now affects that future. They want that future to get off to a good start, rather than waste time fixing the errors that happen today.
It's funny that Sarah Palin would throw around "politics as usual" as a line when she was quitting her job, not using it in any genuine fashion. I think everyone else though started thinking, hey yeah, why do things work this way?
When was it ever being used to do that?
A very large portion of that "avalanche of evidence that the candidate was simply not as good" is "was a woman."