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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIt would be nice if the centrists in this party did some introspection, too.
The fall campaign was run exactly as the centrists insisted that it be run.
It focused almost entirely on negative ads against the other party's candidate and spent far too little time talking about how good OUR platform was(or on acknowledging the role in the runner-up campaign in improving that platform, which would have done a lot to persuade more supporters of the runner-up to believe that they hadn't been crushed and that a decision to vote for our nominee would be a validation of their work in the primaries and the caucuses, and would have persuaded undecided voters to support our ticket because we had a lot of good things to offer that they may not have been aware of).
This wasn't a choice made by our nominee...it reflected what our party's "professionals" mistakenly see as "common sense"-in other words, the idea that, in a race versus any Republican, our party can never win the argument-that our ideas can never be more popular than the ideas of the Right, and that therefore we can ONLY defeat the Republicans by personally discrediting their nominee.
You'd think the pros would have noticed that this approach has NEVER worked.
It never worked against Nixon.
It never worked against Reagan.
If it could have worked against anyone, it should have against Trump. But even there, when our opponent was demonstrably a bigoted, misogynist scumbucket, it still didn't work. That should tell us something.
If we had run by making the argument FOR our approach-AND our platform-we could have carried the Upper Midwest.
Yes, those who voted third-party or didn't vote should have voted for our nominee.
But at this point, bashing those who didn't serves no good purpose.
What we need to do is to find paths to unity...and those paths need to be based on every faction of this party treating each other with respect.
And if this party wants people to work with it, it needs to listen to the reasons people who could have worked with us chose not to. There's nothing to lose from that and the future to gain.
The path to unity is respect, not shaming.
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pangaia
(24,324 posts)
The "any dissent is hatred of our nominee" crowd will be here instantly.
LakeArenal
(28,817 posts)
pnwmom
(108,978 posts)If the centrists had been running things, there would have been no non-representative caucuses, and all the candidates would have joined together to support the nominee once the nominee was certain -- just as the GOP candidates joined together to support DT once his win was mathematically certain.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)It's not as though they were somehow created for the first time in 2016 by the Sanders campaign in a conspiracy to thwart the popular will, and victory in a caucus(such as HRC's victory in Iowa)is just as legitimate as victory in a primary(like Bernie's victories in primaries in New Hampshire Wisconsin, Michigan, Oregon, Indiana, West Virginia). I seriously doubt HRC's supporters would have made an issue of the caucuses if their candidate had done well(and it's not unfair that she didn't-she didn't because her campaign apparently hadn't learned anything more about winning caucus states than it knew in 2008).
There are valid reasons to question the caucus system, but the only reason HRC supporters are questioning them, as far as I can see, is that HRC didn't do well in them. She did win the Iowa caucus, and that seems to have been decisive.
My view is that we should have NO caucuses. At the same time, we should have same re-registration in all presidential primary states(or at least re-registration somewhere CLOSE to the primary instead of six months earlier like it was in New York). And there should be no super-delegates(your candidate would have been nominated without the superdelegates)because rank-and-file Dems should not be treated like small children who don't know "what's good for them". THAT is what a truly democratic process would look like.
Issues with caucuses should have been taken up with the state Democratic parties(most of which are run by centrists) who set them up. The existence of caucuses does not delegitimize the Sanders campaign and do not mean it had no right to the number of delegates it took to Philly.
Bernie would have run a different campaign if ALL the states had been primaries, and would have found a way to do well in that scenario too.
And it would have made no difference to the fall result if Bernie had done what you probably wanted and suspended his campaign on Super Tuesday. We'd likely still have ended up losing the Upper Midwest and North Carolina.
HRC was nominated, but at some point you're going to have to accept that support for Sanders was just as legitimate and just as real as support for HRC.
Response to Ken Burch (Reply #357)
pnwmom This message was self-deleted by its author.
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)He clearly hit the mark.
Response to NCTraveler (Reply #3)
Ken Burch This message was self-deleted by its author.
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)
Not "destructive" enough to warrant a coppy-cat.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)The result in the fall wasn't entirely the fault of the "far left".
There were choices the campaign could have made that would have gained us those votes without costing us any other.
BTW-other than our choice in the primaries, you and I basically agree on things. So why do I get this response for you?
We're both trying to help the party do better, after all.
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)That did make me laugh.
"We're both trying to help the party do better, after all."
Please don't speak for me. My support for the party is clear and I don't feel the need for proclamations like you feel theneed to make(as you have done here) in order for people to believe it. Don't speak for me as you have done here. Period.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Is there a reason you can't accept that you and I are different people, with different experiences yet largely in agreement?
I supported the ticket in the fall. To my knowledge, nothing I posted about her prior to that harmed her chances in the fall.
You appear to have the need to go "oh no you don't!" in response to anything I post-to treat anything I might say as suspicious or untrustworthy.
Am I correct in making that assumption?
If so, why?
I have never intentionally disrespected you, and other than the fact that I supported a different candidate in the primaries, to my knowledge we've never disagreed on anything politically.
So what is your issue with me?
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)I'm never big on that. You did so in error.
You did it again in the very post I am replying to. I'm not sure why you keep speaking for me.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Do you disagree with the assertion that the two of us are both working to make the party better?
If so, why?
Is it wrong for me to think that you and I have ANY common ground?
We are obviously entirely different people...you have faced more repression in your life than I ever possibly could...what is it that you need from me for you to accept that I GET that?
It appears that you regard me as an opponent.
What would it take for you to believe I could be an ally?
Response to Ken Burch (Reply #20)
NCTraveler This message was self-deleted by its author.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)What, exactly, do you think my intentions are?
DanTex
(20,709 posts)Obviously it wasn't entirely the fault of the far left. It was only partly the fault of the far left.
And the other problem is, when I say "far left" for some reason you think I'm talking about you and other Bernie supporters who voted for Hillary in November. Which, once again, I am absolutely not.
I'm talking about the Nader/Stein/Hedges/Scheer/Sarandon/Greenwald/etc people who constantly pushed the "no difference" narrative.
The other thing is, as you put it: "other than our choice in the primaries, you and I basically agree on things. So why do I get this response for you?" I'm not blaming you for anything. I'm only going after the Stein type people who made it more difficult for you to convince disaffected leftists to vote for Democratic candidates. Why wouldn't you be on my side about this?
calimary
(81,265 posts)All she did was keep us divided. When she wasn't enjoying being seated at that VIP table with Putin and Mike Flynn...
She was a Russian plant.
Cary
(11,746 posts)I'm sick and tired of excuses, and right wing trolls and moles and blah blah this or that.
We are at war against fascists. Vote Democratic.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I had the response to that thread that I did because a lot of the time, the term "far left" has been used quite loosely.
A clear distinction should always be drawn between the "no difference" types that you list there, on the one hand-a group we are probably never going to reach and a group that is actually quite small in number-and the larger group of voters I think we could have connected with this fall(and could connect with in the future) who stayed home out of feelings of frustration and alienation.
It is my contention that a lot of THOSE potential voters were put off by the way the party seemed to simply demand their votes, and the voices of many who insisted on labeling the Sanders movement an irrelevant failure and a waste of time. That tone, in my view, probably stiffened the resolve of voters we might have won to NOT vote for us. It sounded parental and dismissive.
We had the chance to make a clear case that, by voting for the ticket, Sanders voters would actually be honoring the work the campaign had done in the primary and, in fact, furthering that work. Making that case would not have required the party to distance itself from any other voters or put anyone else's needs on the back-burner.
That group is a group we need to listen to, need to get feedback from, and need to find some sort of common ground with if we are to win in the future. Making common ground with them doesn't mean throwing anyone who did vote for the ticket under the bus, because, contrary to campaign myth, Sanders voters were and are just as committed to an antiracist, anti-oppression agenda as HRC voters were and our-these voters should not be assumed to have the same shortcomings on that as some saw in their candidate, for they are generally of a younger generation that is more conversant with identity issues and the agenda BLM heroically fights for.
The way to connect with these voters in the future, rather than wasting time screaming at the "no difference" hardliners who are never going to listen to what any of us say, is mainly to listen to them and to make it clear that this is a party that welcomes them to join and to work for what they care about.
DanTex
(20,709 posts)We agree that there is a class of potential Dem voters who, for whatever reason or whatever blame, did not turn out this year, or possibly turned out for third party or even Trump.
And, yes, I am willing to concede that part of that blame belongs with the HRC campaign. And, more to the point with HRC herself, who just didn't have the kind of charisma that Obama had to inspire people. Which I think is a shame, she would have been a great president, but there's no way to argue that she commanded the stage and inspired the way that Obama did (for that matter nobody in the world can do it like Obama, he is once in a generation in terms of oratory).
Where I think we disagree is about how much blame what I have been calling the "far left" has for this.
So let me tell you about when I was young. This was around 2000, my first election as an adult. At that point Nader was the "cool" candidate for young lefties. It was entirely too easily to buy into his "both parties are sold out to corporations" rhetoric. I knew a bunch of Nader voters. And then there were people like me, who didn't even vote.
And I see basically the same situation happened in 2016, and continuing to happen. Do I blame the voters? Maybe a little. Sure, I deserve some blame for not voting in 2000 (although, living in TX at the time, it would have made no difference). And, OK, the young Naderites back then should maybe have been able to see through his lies.
But much more than that, I blame the thought leaders of the far left. In 2000 that means Nader. He had to know he was lying when he said there was no difference between Gore and Bush. Fast forward to this year, and the remarkable thing is how little the dishonest rhetoric from the intellectual leaders of the far left has changed. It's still the same talking points. Corporations evil! Both parties are sellouts! Blah blah blah.
The people pushing the "both parties are the same" lie are not innocent or naive. Whether it's the Green Party or the various lefty media outlets supporting that viewpoint, the people manufacturing the anti-Democrat propaganda are intelligent, seasoned people. So, yes, I blame them. I blame them for repeating the same lies for about two decades now.
There is no excuse for what they have done and continue to do. I can excuse individual voters for falling for lies, OK. But I'm not going to excuse people who are intentionally lying and preying on the naivete of others. And that goes as much for the far left as it does for Trump telling poor white people that they will be "winning" as soon as he kicks out the Mexicans.
Cary
(11,746 posts)That isn't going to stop people who don't want to understand you.
Vote Democratic.
ProfessorPlum
(11,257 posts)If you were talking about people who did not vote for Clinton because of purity, I agree that is a problem. Especially when the alternative is the marmalade shartcannon.
But numerically, there are much bigger problems. Like evangelicals who vote for an obviously immoral asshole. I hope they do some self reflection, too.
Cary
(11,746 posts)Is what one advocates helping one to reach one's goal?
I have an ex-feiend who insisted that I was for Hillary Clinton and against Bernie Sanders and would not accept my explanation of my own opinion. This fellow also insisted that Hillary Clinton would be indicted. Now he feels I have no legitimate issue with him, for aiding and abetting "conservatives," because he voted for Hillary Clinton.
That's just one example of abuse that I can do nothing with or for.
Vote Democratic.
ProfessorPlum
(11,257 posts)Can you explain to me who is being abused, and by what?
It sounds like you have a friend of voted for Clinton, but believed some of the right wing lies about her. That's really unfortunate that your friend doesn't have a better bullshit detector.
Cary
(11,746 posts)Everyone is unique but we have to generalize in order to process. You will not get your bright line distinctions and it's not reasonable for you to demand that.
The bottom line is there are people who sow discord and discontent and they are not helpful. I am not going to fix them, and so what? I will not be sucked into their nonsense.
Vote Democratic.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Stop acting as if you're the only party loyalist.
Cary
(11,746 posts) Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Stop spamming an unnecessary message.
Cary
(11,746 posts)Vote Democratic.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)There's no reason for you to keep doing this.
No reason.
Cary
(11,746 posts)And worry. A lot.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)My OP was in the service of helping MORE people vote for our party.
Please stop talking to me or to anyone else here as if we are either disloyal or if you are entitled to insult our intelligence.
LakeArenal
(28,817 posts)But you know, the superiority of the full time Clinton supporters over the Bernie turned Clinton supporters is sometimes unbearable.
Sore winners. Can't let it go.. Must punish. Must impugn.. Must blame...
thesquanderer
(11,986 posts)That's an understatement. There were so many things that contributed, lack of enthusiasm among the far left doesn't even make my top five. But Monday morning quarterbacking is easy.
I agree with you that "there were choices the campaign could have made that would have gained us those votes without costing us any other."
There were also things completely out of the the campaign's control.
However, I have a bit (just a bit) more sympathy than you do with the fact that so much of the Dem campaign was about Trump's negatives.
The thing about touting your own positive vision is that it is always, to some extent, controversial. That is, there will always be some people who will disagree with the policies you promote at least in part, and since no policy is ever perfect, whatever possible flaws it has (at least in the eyes of some) can be exploited by the opposition. OTOH, when you have an opponent like Trump who seems to be handing you ammunition with ridiculous statements and behaviors that almost no one would defend, it seems like the safe bet to use it. I mean, raising the income cap on social security contributions is controversial, pussy grabbing is not. So there's a temptation to take what seems like the easier, safer route.
That said, what this doesn't take into account is these things don't have equal importance. Even if people may have found Trump despicable as a person, that doesn't necessarily mean they wouldn't vote for him, esp. if you don't give them a good reason to vote for you. Because despite his enormous flaws that even many on the right recognize, he still had a pitch that resonated with many people. And regardless of the accuracy of the thought, writing off half of them as irredeemable deplorables was probably not a great way to win them over, as entertaining as it may have been to our side. That doesn't make my top 5 either, but it did generate a bunch of press that presumably didn't win her any votes. Perhaps a different way to make the same point: "There are people out there who are bigots and haters... racists, sexists, islamophobes, you name it... and I see my opponent appealing to their baser instincts. I'm not going to tell you that I sympathize with these people. But I will tell you that my plans will make this country better for everyone, even the people I don't like." Or something along those lines.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)is that, while Trump was indeed providing plenty of material for a negative campaign, going negative on the guy-much as he deserved it on a very deep level-wasn't flipping any votes our way at all.
Our support level was basically on a flatline throughout the campaign.
When the campaign saw-as the polling should have showed it by at least mid-September-that the negative tactics weren't gaining us votes and were, in a way, actually solidifying Trump's voters behind him, it should have switched tactics and focused on presenting the case FOR our candidate and our platform. There was a great focus on her qualifications, but qualifications were not going to be enough in the eyes of the voters. Since any message needs reinforcement, there should have been constant reminders of what we proposed.
I agree that making a case for your candidate and your platform is going to be controversial, but then again, any effort to elect anybody for any reason is going to be controversial. The focus on Trump's personal sordidness was also controversial-and unfortunately, the presence of our nominee's husband on the campaign trail was always going to make it easy for the other campaign to deflect on the sordidness issue. The voters hadn't forgotten about that.
If I had been in charge of the campaign, I probably would have tried to limit the presence of the nominee's husband at campaign appearances, or if he was going to be there, I'd have had him say something "unlike Mr. Trump, I admitted that what I did then was wrong and I willingly paid the price for it on a public and personal level".
George II
(67,782 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)to make that false comparison.
President Clinton took responsibility for his actions and did not try to evade consequences.
George II
(67,782 posts)I'm sure he did more good than the negligible harm that you perceive.
Why you even brought this up at all boggles my mind.
PS - here he is in West Hartford along with Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly, a truly inspirational appearance by the three of them:
thesquanderer
(11,986 posts)Good point. People don't vote on qualifications. That's not even something new to this election... The voters chose Obama in 2008 over the more experienced Clinton for the nomination, and over the more experienced McCain in the general. I think what it comes down to is, most people don't care much about what you've done in the past. What they care about is what you're going to do for them in the future. A strong vision beats a strong resume. (Even if, as in Trump, the vision is smoke and mirrors.)
Scruffy1
(3,256 posts)WomenRising2017
(203 posts)And it's pretty disgusting that you compare him to Donald Trump.
It's interesting that you complain that the campaign didn't focus enough on the issues, that they focused too much on Donald Trump, and then you repeat a stupid smear that has nothing to do with issues and attempts to excuse Donald Trump.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)What I'm saying is we all KNEW that focusing on Trump's misogyny was never going to win the election for us.
I wanted HRC to be elected over Trump just as much as you did.
WomenRising2017
(203 posts)It was real, it existed, and it was ticking off millions of women.
But you are mistaken if you feel that was the only focus of the campaign. You are also mistaken if you feel his misogyny should be ignored.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)There was no area anywhere in the country where any significant number of Republican women was ever even going to consider not voting for Trump. The "moderate Republican women in the suburbs" never existed.
We should have called it out...but it was never going to be enough to put us over the top.
It was the focus of much of the ad campaign, and a number of other posters in this thread(some of whom were HRC supporters from the get-go)have said the same.
Look, I WANTED HRC to win in the fall. I was as horrified by the result as you were.
What I'm saying is that some of the choices made by the Clinton-Kaine campaign-choices that were a reversion to the default choices our party has consistently made in non-Obama fall campaigns since at least 1976, in most cases-did her a disservice.
It's not about saying she shouldn't have been nominated(I accept the results of the primaries and endorsed HRC shortly before the convention). It's about arguing for better choices.
WomenRising2017
(203 posts)But yet it needed to be called out, and it needs to be called out regardless of who the candidate is.
As far as your last sentence, Democrats overwhelmingly thought Hillary Clinton was the better choice.
You endorsed her? Are you a member of the Democratic Party? Is there a link to your endorsement?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)(In Washington state, everyone is a registered independent, but my Dem identification is clear).
It's almost impossible to find threads from that many months ago in our current search feature, but I did endorse her about a week before the convention.
You have no reason to think I would lie about something like that.
It's enough that I accept that HRC won. It wasn't "overwhelming"
Bernie took about 43% of the overall vote)but it was decisive and Bernie's support level was not insignificant.
My argument at the time of the convention and in the fall was that the fall campaign should have been treated as a partnership, blending the best of the HRC platform and the best of the Sanders platform, and treating both campaigns with parity of esteem.
Doing that would have harmed no one and would likely have guaranteed us a popular vote margin large enough to put us over the top in the Electoral College.
And to move forward now, we need to move past identification as Sanders people or Clinton people, and simply accept that both groups have a right to be in the party ad the values of both groups can naturally blend.
StevieM
(10,500 posts)than embrace single payer health care, to make some people happy. She did support a public option.
I don't believe the race was winnable, given James Comey's actions through out the campaign, going back all the way to 2015. This was the FBI's election, from start to finish.
lapucelle
(18,258 posts)the presence of the nominee's husband at campaign appearances". That was Brazile's strategy when she ran Gore's campaign, and it has long been cited as a major strategic error.
You certainly have a somewhat idiosyncratic opinion of the popular Democratic former president.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-democratic-convention-2016-live-bill-clinton-s-legacy-1469576026-htmlstory.html
Midwestern Democrat
(806 posts)understand that the most successful negative ads in the past all had a policy underlining to them - that the goal of the ad was to stoke doubt and concern about how the candidate would execute his actual duties in office. The LBJ campaign's "Daisy" ad portrayed Goldwater as a reckless extremist in the nuclear age; the Bush campaign's "Willie Horton" ad portrayed Dukakis as a soft on crime liberal; the Obama campaign's "Bain Capital" portrayed Romney as a rapacious hedge fund guy who would bring those same attitudes to his handling of the greater US economy. The Clinton campaign's "Our Children are Watching" ads did nothing more than say that Donald Trump is personally an awful human being.
thesquanderer
(11,986 posts)Good point. This kind of "don't vote for him" didn't really give people a reason to vote for her. To that extent, even if the ad "works," the end result could as easily be that the voter stays home.
Maybe she was thinking about how people said Bush won in 2000 because people saw him as a guy they'd like to have a beer with, and she wanted to make sure people didn't want to have a beer with Trump (and I'm not sure the ads even worked for that)... but similarly, that doesn't mean they want to have a beer with her either.
In the end, I think lots of people don't care much about character, they care more about what's happening in their lives. Moreover, rightly or wrongly, for those who did care about character, many people saw the character of both of these candidates as flawed, so this is not the game she should have chosen to play. "He's worse" is not a great winning strategy.
Kentonio
(4,377 posts)"All politics is local". It's as true today as it was when it was first said. People care most about their own and their families lives and the issues that face them on a day to day basis. People will say they care about bigger issues (and probably do) but it'll never influence a vote as much as the impact on their own lives. I think as a party we've forgotten that along the way.
kcr
(15,317 posts)She had plenty of attack ads based on policy:
ad about outsourcing:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/clinton-ad-shirts-trump-outsourcing
ad about his merch made in Mexico:
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/08/27/hillary-clintons-ad-trumps-hat-lie.html
ad blasting his comments on vets:
http://thedailybanter.com/2016/09/this-brutal-new-hillary-clinton-ad-blows-up-trump-with-his-own-comments-about-veterans/
ad about his meeting in Mexico:
http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/clinton-s-new-ad-hits-trump-over-mexico-trip-756787779856
And that was just with one quick search. Because I knew I remember seeing attack ads based on policy.
lark
(23,099 posts)Russia, FBI, Repugs working with the first 2 colluded to produce bad news and killing optics at just the right moment and by hiding news about trumps criminality and treason. The states stole the election by having malfunctioning machines in the urban areason purpose. 90 machines have been shown to have "errors" that affected the vote. Clinton won, it was just stolen.
Now, having said that, yes, we should have made some better decisions. More focusing on what she would do, more information about what he really did vs. what he said, more focus on voting machines and voting suppression and they wouldn't have been able to steal the election with the same tactics. Getting rid of the Russia/Repug collusion will stop most of the craziness, but don't know if that will actually happen?
LakeArenal
(28,817 posts)That text was divisive. Big open tent, right?
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)Smile at snarkiness. If my post is snarky, as you state, it has less to do with our big tent party than you think. Actually, it would have nothing to do with a big tent party.
Or was that snark of its own?
Warpy
(111,259 posts)The truth is that no matter how much introspection any Democrat does about anything, we were beaten because a hostile foreign government meddled in our election, a corrupt and partisan corporate media hung on every word the Republicans said while mentioning our candidate only in connection with fake scandals while muting her speeches, and culminated in a weak (if not crooked) FBI director announcing fake news before he'd examined it days before the election, torpedoing her campaign. Democrats didn't defeat themselves. We got robbed.
I absolutely agree with your last sentence in your OP.
All this finger pointing at one group of Democrats or another is distinctly trollish. I wonder where its coming from. I suspect there is a tempest over at Farcebook, that gaping portal for fake news from overseas troll factories.
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)I believe Russia interfered, but I also believe Dems need to get back to defending the middle class and labor. More unions, higher min wage, good healthcare, good childcare, higher taxes for all but especially the super-wealthy.
And there's a third issue -- the media screws Dems and screwed HRC. We need reform of both for-profit infotainment and right-wing propaganda outlets. Bring back the fairness doctrine, break up Clear Channel, and brand Fox news as the hatemongering disinformation source it is.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Putting it all on the Russians and Comey is just an excuse to not try to do anything better. It's an excuse to give up.
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)And I think once indictments come down we should be clamoring for an election redo.
But if Democrats want to win in 2020, 2022, and 2024, they better start talking about progressive values.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I mean, look, if something were to happen that led to HRC being sworn in after all, I'd celebrate as loudly as anyone else.
But it's not as if shouting "we did NOTHING wrong-it was just Comey and the Russians and bigotry" and silencing all honest discussion within the party is going to make that happen.
And critiquing the fall campaign's choice is not disrespecting the nominee OR "refighting the primaries".
Lucky Luciano
(11,256 posts)It should not have been close at all.
Warpy
(111,259 posts)by busting up the conglomerates and bringing back the Fairness Doctrine, both against a GOP veto.
Until then, we're going to have to do an end run around them somehow because while they are in their present form, they will mute Democratic speeches and over report fake scandals and generally wreck any candidate who relies on them.
lapucelle
(18,258 posts)Bob Somerby is a liberal critic of the "liberal" media. His insights and analysis are excellent.
You can also read his book How He Got There The Press Corps' War Against Candidate Gore: How George W. Bush Reached the White House on line. It's about the role that the media played in securing Gore's defeat.
http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/
http://howhegotthere.blogspot.com/
ehrnst
(32,640 posts)However, I detected the misinformation, and wasn't distracted by it, as was its purpose.
JustAnotherGen
(31,823 posts)
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)Gore1FL
(21,132 posts)Gothmog
(145,231 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Those who are to your left are just as practical as you are and work as hard in the real world as you do.
You have no claim to superiority over anyone else here.
Skidmore
(37,364 posts)you likely have no such claim either. "Progressive" is in the eye of the beholder, as we saw with some self-styled "progressives" who were happy to embrace Trump. I view liberal and progressive to be interchangable and I have yet to interact with fellow Democrats who did not fit either term. We will all continue to lose with this bitter divisiveness.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I've made critical comments about the campaign's choices...I've said nothing about HRC supporters that could possibly be taken as insulting or disrespectful.
I worked amicably with HRC supporters all through the fall and at the Alaska state Democratic convention in Anchorage.
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)Have you been to a meeting of Indivisible yet? Please get out in the real world
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Campaigning for the party for forty years is "real world"-and I've done that.
And there's nothing any more "real world" about Indivisible(a group I support)than about any other anti-Trump group.
You have no reason to keep treating me like I'm delusional.
And I have never personally attacked you. All I've done is respectfully disagreed with some of your views.
There's room for both of us in this party.
And there's room for the ideas I advocate just as much as there's room for yours.
This is not a country with a permanent anti-left majority.
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)There are groups all over. You can start your own Indivisible group easily. Go to the webpage and you will see that there is ways to find a group if you actually look or to find people to start a group.https://www.indivisibleguide.com/act-locally/ There is an easy way to sign up to host a meeting https://actionnetwork.org/events/4d56f7d15f8eecf435ce561305a20ddf7dbc648b/edit The concept that there is not a group near you does not make sense. I am deep red Texas and there are over a dozen different groups in the greater area. The fun thing is that these groups are talking to each other and doing something called organizing.
Again, you should help found a group if your claim is true. I doubt that this is the case in that there are a ton of groups in your state according to the Indivisible webpage.
As for the real world, the local Indivisible and other groups here organized a trip to meet the staff of our local congress person where we demanded a town hall and asked him to support the House requiring Trump to provide his tax return. the staffer was polite and took our letters but I still believe that the effort was meaningful. These groups organized some great protests at the town hall held by John Culbertson. https://www.democraticunderground.com/107834365 The tax day march in Houston ended up at the offices of Senator Carnival Cruz and they had fun requesting Cruz hold a town hall. I admit that I did not make it all of the way and left after the initial speeches but it was a bad ozone day in Houston.
There is a great deal to be done in the real world on the ground. Go meet with candidates and tell them your theories.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I could get a former Democratic National Committeewoman from Alaska(a Clinton supporter, fwiw) to vouch for that.
And former and current members of the Alaska Legislature.
And the people I worked with in the fall Democratic campaign in Olympia.
Why this obsession on your part with accusing me of being out of touch with reality?
You work in one state with one political culture. That doesn't make your own experience the only reality.
Why is it never enough for you to just disagree with me if you do?
Or just to make a case against what I call for and WORK for?
If you keep accusing me of not living in the real world, I'm going to collect links to all the posts where you do that and send them to the mods. What you are doing in response to my posts is harassment and abuse and has no place on DU.
I'm practical, real-world person who just rejects your cynical, defeatist view of what's possible. Nothing I post here could possibly justify your tactics towards me.
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)I do not believe your claims about there being no indivisible or other similar groups in your area. Look at the links. There are a large number of Indivisible groups in the Washington state area. Go look for one. You need to talk to someone who is active on the ground and lives in the real world.
Your posts speak for themselves. Go run your amusing theories by the people you claim to know. See what they think of your amusing theories. Please explain that we should ignore trump's unpopularity and focus on the platform of a candidate who brought no new voters to the party, I doubt that your theories will be well received by anyone who lives in the real world.
bekkilyn
(454 posts)I also support the group's goals, but find it really weird that it has a growing number of followers who believe that they are the One True Way to political enlightenment, and that they and only they, are politically active and that everyone else is doing nothing of any value.
It's just really weird to kind of a cult-like extent in some cases. Hopefully, it's not something that this group as a whole is encouraging on a national level because I do agree with the goals that I at least think it has based on the Indivisible document I've read.
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)Please attend a meeting of indivisible or People Power. The real world is a nice place
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Nothing I've ever done or said justifies you saying that.
I'm as pragmatic and practical as you are.
BTW, before I left Alaska, I played a major role in flipping a longstanding GOP state legislative seat to the Dems, and thus contributed to the end of GOP control of the Alaska House of Representatives.
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)Ken your theories will not work in the real world. Go present these amusing theories to the people you claim to know.
BTW, I loved your ATA thread. It made me smile
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)n/t.
Gore1FL
(21,132 posts)Seriously, if that is your attitude, then don't complain when the GOP wins.
You can't shit on people and expect them to help you.
synergie
(1,901 posts)That's who's dividing the left, and pissing off a whole lot of people. Unless Dantex got a really good mask and fooled WaPo and the various media, he's not the guilty party here.
Gore1FL
(21,132 posts)Anyone who seeks to divide and shrink rather than heal and grow the party is guilty of that.
Tom Rinaldo
(22,912 posts)I recommend it for our entire center to far left spectrum of activists and voters. Thankfully it appears to me that our new DNC leadership team has no problem with it.
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)He's off to a good start.
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)I know.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And what is your objective in your posts in this thread?
All I'm doing here is saying that lashing out at people to the party's left is not the path to victory in the future.
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)So your point there poses little significance with me.
Tom Rinaldo
(22,912 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)The OP in the other thread did, it seemed to me, do that.
I don't like Jill Stein any more than anyone else here-but there needs to be a distinction between her and Ralph, on the one hand, and the people who were swayed by them or by other factors to not vote for our nominee this time but could be won over with a different strategy next time.
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)The DNC ran away in Kansas. That was a perfect opportunity to start talking about what Democrats stand for. And if Ted Cruz flew in to talk about Pelosi, embrace her and what she stands for.
Running away isn't going to win elections. Standing your ground for the things you believe in wins elections in the long run.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)n/t.
Docreed2003
(16,858 posts)This should be the proverbial "mic drop" moment in the thread.
Well said!
Bettie
(16,109 posts)I was so frustrated that the majority of ads run in our market focused on "Trump is awful, so vote for Clinton".
In my opinion, that was a mistake. People want to vote FOR something/someone.
Introspection is good, but it hurts sometimes and a lot of people seem really invested in the idea that everything was perfect in the last election, except for the outcome.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And it's entirely possible to recognize that illegitimate factors affected the outcome and yet at the same time make exactly the point you made there.
delisen
(6,043 posts)Maybe it works for Republicans?
Many of us and not wanting to see the Big Picture and coming up with narrow analysis?
The Big Picture is scary. Right now there is no way to stop foreign powers from deciding our elections. So the politicians who could have prevented the lose of 900 + Democratic seats from 2010 on don't want to take responsibility for their failures and don't want to acknowledge that they could have busted open the Russian involvement last summer/fall but let Republican McConnell shut them up. How many in-office Democrats knew the truth and said nothing?
Right now everyone wants to write the story most advantageous to themselves. Make it a normal problem that we can fix easily.
the irony is that they are focusing on the negative.
Many Trump voters are changing on their own. What will help is Democrats in power expressing a vision -but they are not there yet
disillusioned73
(2,872 posts)Mr Burch.. 
Still In Wisconsin
(4,450 posts)DanTex
(20,709 posts)The centrists should respect the left, and the left should respect the centrists. For the good of the party and the country.
WomenRising2017
(203 posts)too much time was spent criticizing Donald Trump, and not enough time was spent acknowledging Bernie Sanders?
As a supporter and someone who did volunteer work I will tell you that the campaign strongly pushed our platform.
Those who voted third party, or didn't vote, knowing full well the differences between the two parties are the ones who need to reassess their priorities.
If they chose to ignore which party was offering a very progressive platform, and also ignore the racism, sexism, and bigotry, I'm not sure how they are reachable.
I've been listening to the reasons people chose to not vote, and they are all based on the racism, sexism and bigotry that Trump promoted.
I recently read on this board that some didn't vote because they are against marriage equality.
Abandoning civil rights is not an option.
OldRedneck
(1,397 posts)He said we spent too much time attacking Trump, not enough time telling people what we can do for them.
WomenRising2017
(203 posts)I'll quote it here
And again, a great deal of time was spent on advocating our platform.
Raine1967
(11,589 posts).. and good point.
I don't want this infighting anymore myself -- but I am just over this idea that HRC should have done better -- she lost to the FBI, trumpsters the Russians and the independents.
I Was neutral during the primaries after O'MAlley dropped out, FTR.
WomenRising2017
(203 posts)and I agree.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Whatever you think of Bernie-and I had my own criticisms of him, especially on the way he expressed himself on anti-oppression issues-That campaign was one of the most positive things we've seen in this party, and it brought a lot of good ideas and energized people into the process. We should all be glad that it happened.
My point was that, regardless of what anyone feel about Bernie as a candidate or as a person, we needed to actively reach out to his supporters and make sure they knew they were needed and that what they had done was not a meaningless waste of time. Far too much of the time, their support was simply demanded and their concerns were dismissed.
The ads I saw-and those were national ads-were skewed heavily in favor of attacking Trump. Would you at least agree that, when it became clear that that tactic wasn't going to flip any significant number of traditional GOP voters our way-when it became obvious that the "moderate Republican women in the suburbs who were alienated by Trump's misogyny" this strategy was meant to win over simply didn't exist-that we should have switched exclusively to a positive campaign?
WomenRising2017
(203 posts)I can understand your disappointment that your preferred candidate didn't win the Democratic nomination, primaries are tough, but I'm not understanding how you feel that played a role in the General Election.
The choice was clear. Support a progressive platform, or vote for the sexist, racist bigoted campaign of Donald Trump.
Polling shows that Sanders supporters overwhelmingly supported the Clinton campaign, so who do you feel was ignored?
Like any campaign, there were ads against the Republicans and ads for the Democratic platform.
Once again, as a supporter and a volunteer for the campaign, we strongly pushed the Democratic platform.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I'm critiquing the fall campaign and by extension other supporters of it(I supported our nominee in the fall just as much as you did, and you have no reason to question that).
I watched the national ads closely. It was clear by the beginning of October that none of the attacks on Trump were working. Once that was clear the focus-in the name of electing our nominee-should have been solely on making a positive case for our candidate AND on making sure that everyone knew that a lot of Sanders proposals, all of which were popular, were in the platform.
The Electoral College results prove that the focus on negative ads was a total failure.
WomenRising2017
(203 posts)I'm not sure why you seem focused on them.
You also seem to have this mistaken belief that the campaign did not run on issues.
I don't know what to say, except that you are not a very good Monday Morning Quarterback.
I don't agree with any of your assessments, at all. It seems like you completely ignored the campaign.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)The OP had nothing to do with that.
I accepted HRC as the nominee.
My intent was simply to say that the campaign strategists didn't make the best choices.
Had they chosen better-had they even sent her repeatedly to the Upper Midwest in the last two weeks of the campaign rather than wasting time in states they already knew we had no chance of carrying, like Ohio, Georgia, and Arizona-HRC would be in the Oval Office today and we might have a Democratic Senate as well.
I watched the campaign intently, and there are many posts in this thread who saw what I saw and cited people in the party leadership who agree with the analysis I offered.
bekkilyn
(454 posts)And it found that:
1. Clinton’s unexpected losses came in states in which she failed to air ads until the last week.
2. Clinton’s message was devoid of policy discussions in a way not seen in the previous four presidential contests.
http://mediaproject.wesleyan.edu/blog/2016-election-study-published/
Note that it doesn't claim that it represents ALL reasons for the loss, but the point is that when a significant number of people are claiming that the national ads did not include enough policy and did harm to the campagin, maybe it would be a good thing for the party and party loyalists to at least consider it and think about whether some strategy changes need to take place next time.
For people who are already on-board to a campaign, the issues seem obvious and while you might think you are getting the message across to others, it's not always the case. Most people aren't all over the internet like we are paying close attention to all this stuff.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)n/t.
WomenRising2017
(203 posts)into a 30 second soundbite. But still, the information was all there. Her social media platform was very impressive.
It's hard to dumb down a policy wonk for people who put little effort into their decision making.
Kentonio
(4,377 posts)EVERY national campaign has to fit a huge amount of information into easily digestible sound bites. It's part of their job. It's not like Hillary was the first candidate to ever run on more than one policy.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Every leading contender to take over the Democratic National Committee believes Hillary Clinton focused too much on attacking Donald Trump at the expense of articulating an affirmative case for holding the White House. During their final showdown before the chairman's election in Atlanta on Feb. 25, there was consensus that the party's problems derive mainly from subpar organization and communication - not anything fundamental.
"We forgot to talk to people," said Tom Perez, who was secretary of labor until last month and a finalist to be Clinton's running-mate last summer. "I'm a big believer in data analytics, but data analytics cannot supplant good old fashioned door knocking. . . . We didn't communicate our values to people. When Donald Trump says, 'I'm going to bring the coal jobs back,' we know that's a lie. But people understand that he feels their pain. And our response was: 'Vote for us because he's crazy.' I'll stipulate to that, but that's not a message."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-dnc-clinton-trump-20170213-story.html
Apparently it's not just the op's analysis. And thankfully the new leaders of the DNC don't believe these voters can't be reached, they know we need them. In fact that's why Tom Perez And Bernie are visiting red states this spring.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And it wasn't about "acknowledging Bernie Sanders". The primaries were not about any one person's ego-hell, if Bernie was an egotist, wouldn't he get a good haircut and a well-tailored suit?.
The people who needed to be acknowledged were Sanders' supporters-what they achieved in building support for the candidate and more importantly the principles they fought and fight for was nothing short of heroic, yet in many places they were treated as nothing but spoiled children-spoiled PRIVILEGED WHITE children, even though many weren't privileged and there were larger numbers who weren't white as the campaign went on-whose candidate should never have run and who accomplished nothing.
In many areas(yours may have been an exception)they were treated as spoiled losers, what they did was derided as a failure, and those who treated them like that turned around and simply demanded their votes.
Would it really have been asking to much for the party to say, all over the place "what you did was worth doing, and if you'll stay with it, if you'll work with us, this party will be a place where you can go on working for what you want"?
If it was done that way where you were, good, but shouldn't it have been like that everywhere?
WomenRising2017
(203 posts)I'm certainly not going to share any personal information with you.
Would you care to address the rest of my post?
Once again, I'm sorry that your preferred candidate didn't win the primary, but I fail to see how it plays a factor in the General Election.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And I only asked which state you were in(which is not personal information, since it's unlikely that you're the only person who lives in that state) because location might shape how the campaign was run where you are.
And this is not about "refighting the primaries", so please stop acting like I don't accept that HRC won the nomination. I proved I accepted that by working for her all through the fall.
I formed my opinion from participating in the fall campaign(in my case, in Washington state)and from seeing the national campaign ads.
appal_jack
(3,813 posts)Guess I'll have to change my username then...
-app
WomenRising2017
(203 posts)It's not really any of your business.
You can share any information you wish to. I choose not to.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)n/t.
OldRedneck
(1,397 posts)I do not recall very many positive Hillary ads. Damn near every ad was anti-Trump, anti-Republican.
There's a local car dealer in Richmond, VA, whose every TV ad ends with a shot of him saying: "Don't tell me what you can't do, tell me what you CAN do." If it works for selling cars (it does), it will work for selling candidates.
I agree with the OP. All those attacking him need to pull your heads out of rectal defilade.
delisen
(6,043 posts)
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Had she won, like everyone thought she was going to, they probably would have played out as genius chess moves.
As it was, though, realistically- the poster is correct. Looking positive? For sure. But lets talk actual messaging. Actual issues. There was a lot of "boo scary trump" and not a ton of here's why you should vote for me, here's what I'm going to change.
And like it or not, it was sort of a change election. A lot of us- me, for sure- thought Obama did a great job. Certainly we were better off than 8 years prior.
But a lot of the people who were looking for more motivation to go to the polls- people in the rust belt- well, they got "boo scary trump" ads and they got a candidate whose strategists told her to ignore those states after the convention.
The people on the ground, our party people? In Wisconsin? In Michigan? Begged the Clinton campaign for help.
But they thought they had it in the bag, so why rock the boat.
Trouble is, "don't fuck with success" only works if it succeeds.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)(btw, "Rectal Defilade" sounds like the worst thing you'd ever see on a French restaurant menu).
Scruffy1
(3,256 posts)There's an old saying in sales that goes "When you call the competition a jerk you are one, too. " all your doing is creaing more negativity.
IronLionZion
(45,442 posts)And there are those who claim that the upper Midwest's labor ship has sailed. Those voters know their jobs aren't coming back and people with the means to do so have moved already to the south and west for new jobs. You can't deny that our party picked up new states from before: Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, and have been competitive in other previously red states.
Our liberal people are increasingly clustered in urban coastal cities. What policies are going to help win voters in the rural middle of America?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)n/t.
IronLionZion
(45,442 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)This would involve an industrial bank, federal subsidies to help start co-ops, especially in cases where the unemployed could band together to re-open, and probably do a better job of managing, plants that were closed due to outsourcing.
This would probably involve retooling many of those plants and having them make more popular products-former auto plants could actually make affordable, fuel efficient cars rather than the gas-guzzling land yachts Detroit insisted on putting out. Places that made things like refrigerators and air conditioners might be retooled to make solar panels. There are many possibilities.
What happened to the Upper Midwest happened because we let "the magic of the market" decide who kept their jobs and who lost them. Since the market declared war on the Upper Midwest, something on the scale of a domestic Marshall Plan will be needed to repair the war damage.
IronLionZion
(45,442 posts)Meanwhile, lots of people move for jobs. They move to places where jobs are growing or housing is cheaper or there is some opportunity for a better life. That's why people moved to the industrial north decades ago. That's the story of America.
America does make things like cars and refrigerators that would be expensive to ship from overseas. They're being made in the South and areas that have cheap land, labor, or electricity/energy.
I get that you want to rebuild and retool upper Midwest economies so people can still live there. But manufacturing is probably not enough. The conditions that existed decades ago are not there to provide enough jobs for enough people. We now have more automation, less labor intensive manufacturing processes. One-industry cities have suffered and Republicans have hung that around the necks of labor and liberals claiming that Democrats did it not the corporations.
Look at how Minneapolis and Pittsburgh have diversified their economies to survive while other rust belt cities rusted out and died. There is a tremendous difference in Minnesota and Wisconsin's outcomes of their policies and investments. Minnesota's liberal Democratic policies could help similar states who have voted in Republicans to destroy everything (Wisconsin and Michigan). It's not a coincidence that Minnesota is the only one in the upper Midwest to vote for Hillary.
As far as winning presidential elections, we could look to expand our party's presence in Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, and other big states with growing populations and economies.
forjusticethunders
(1,151 posts)Which Bouie referred to in this:[link:http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/04/the_response_to_the_retail_apocalypse_shows_which_workers_count_in_trump.html|
While also showing a fundamental misunderstanding of how manufacturing became so secure in the first place (there's nothing about manufacturing that makes it better than services; the problem is that service and retail hasn't been organized to nearly the same extent). And the racial aspect of it is disturbing because manufacturing is largely a white male thing outside Detroit, while retail is a lot more diverse.
Also, the left needs to organize in a manner that doesn't presume any kind of big, WWII/postwar government actions to be successful. We're about 10 more years out from that to be honest in terms of realism (unless you go for broke, take back the House and Senate in 2020, and break the legislative filibuster)
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Getting to transformational policies is the goal you use to keep people hanging in there, to keep the organizing going.
It's not possible to build on incrementalism as the only possible pace of change ever.
You've got to keep the notion of a big, sweeping moment of deliverance in there somewhere.
forjusticethunders
(1,151 posts)I feel like building class consciousness relies on getting wins anywhere even incremental ones because workers need that feeling of power to organize further, garner support, etc. It's not enough to want a revolution, you have to make workers as a group think its possible. Incremental victories do that.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Last edited Sat Apr 22, 2017, 04:39 PM - Edit history (1)
But there needs to be a push to at least eventually get a transformational moment, and the push should be for the increments to get bigger.
The San Francisco Mime Troupe did a show called STEELTOWN in the Eighties. There was a great song towards the end of it, sung by a shop steward whose local had led a very effective wildcat strike, only to have the timid national leadership sweep in, take over and force the local to give up the strike and settle for minor gains because the national leadership-the story takes place in the late Forties, during the Red Scare-was afraid of having the union look too radical.
Early in the song, these words are sung by the shop steward:
We fight for little things.
"Reinstate our fellow workers,
their fight for us was not a crime.
Give us wages we can live on,
without working overtime.
These are little things we ask for,
But they resist us all the way,
Because they know the real question,
is "who's to have the say?"
"who's to say which one gets fired
Who gets hired...who's to say?"
"Who's to say if we make steel here,
or if the steel mill goes away?"
A bit later, he and the others
add these questions, about the rest of the economy:
"Shall the wealth of this great nation
answer to a world in need?
Shall the power we produce here
Be used for war, or used for peace?
Shall we yield to the masters
Our farmer's corn, our miners' ore,
And all the steel that is rolled here,
Or shall we grow it, mine and pour it,
us deciding what it's for?
At the end, after the smug, redbaiting jerk from
the national office forced the local to stand down,
the shop steward ends with the show another verse of the song
finishing with these words:
if we ask only little questions,
and we do not ask for MORE,
we may seem to win a battle,
but still not win the war.
Take the little in the short term if that's all you can get,
just don't let go of the vision of the big.
And don't let anyone from above tell us that we HAVE to give up on the big,
that we have to accept that all there is is all that we can currently see.
Do you go along with that?
forjusticethunders
(1,151 posts)The problem is a lot of people on the farther left don't seem to have that balance down.
The idea is that those small victories entrench within the mind of the workers "hey wait a minute, we do all the work, why don't we get to decide how the work is done? I feel that's how you get TO that class consciousness to unite around that vision of the big, as well as the ability to feel you CAN win.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)That the goal of a great transformation is never abandoned.
Good having this exchange with you.
DownriverDem
(6,228 posts)The path to unity is joining together to fight the repubs. Focus on that or we won't win.
Leith
(7,809 posts)Rule number 1 is to never repeat the opposition's phrasing. So why the hell were people putting "Trump" on their pro-Democratic signs?!
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)When you do go negative, do it with style.
delisen
(6,043 posts)
davsand
(13,421 posts)Look, I voted for her. I did all I could for the entire ticket. Nobody gets to crank my tail that somehow, as a member of the Progressive wing of the party I am somehow at fault for who is residing in the Whitehouse right now. Clinton had the popular vote win, but managed to blow the strategy of winning the EC. THAT is the reality.
Yeah, there was fuckery in the election, and there was a lot of extraneous crap thrown at the 11th hour by Comey et al, but how in the name of god could anybody with her level of experience even be CLOSE in a race against an orange shit gibbon who bragged about assaulting women and incited violence at his campaign rallies? Had the campaign strategy been even halfway sound, that race should have been SO one sided that there was nothing possible to do to "fix" it.
Gore's race against Dubya was another example of this same failure. There was not enough of a clear distinction between the two candidates in either case. I still blame Donna Brazille for Gore's loss, but I honestly have no idea who was actually driving the Hillary bus this time. I'm afraid it was a bunch of that same crew in both campaigns, and I am terrified that unless we get some distance from that whole scene we are gonna be doomed to yet another disastrous loss next time.
YMMV, and I'm sure I'll be swarmed with hateful crap for saying it, but we have got to get to a new campaign model if Dem want to win.
delisen
(6,043 posts)to go the Show? Trump defeated them all-so how was he not a formidable opponent.
Democrats lost over 900 seats to Republicans in about 6 years. Progressives weren't aware enough to sound the alarm. Why? I expect people who claim to be on the cutting edge to be, well, on top of things.
The Democratic political landscape changed dramatically between 2008 and 2016. Why did progressive candidates lose? How did Russ Feingold lose?
Why did all these voter in Democratic territory in Michigan not enter a presidential candidate on their ballots?
How did a dreadful anti-progressive governor get elected, and then survive a recount? What were progressives doing wrong in that state?
Gore won-he lost the vote count and the Supreme Court-but before that Democrats lost the Secy of State office in Florida and the governorship to Jeb Bush. Gore suffered a political loss, not a ballot box loss.
Why did a select group of Democrats let Mitch McConnell be the decider on telling the people about Russian interference?
Why weren't progressives smart enough to see the Russian connection coming?
Some of the Trump voters will dump him because he can't deliver; others may turn against him when the Russian connection comes out--but their dumping him will not be because of a a so-called progressive takeover of the Democratic Party re-targets a particular voting block.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Nobody on the left is trying to turn the party into her or his own personal cult.
Nor would greater influence for supporters of the Sanders agenda mean the party was targeting any "particular voting bloc"-especially any racially-defined voting bloc.
Sanders supporters have always been just as committed to an anti-racist, anti-social oppression agenda as Clinton supporters, and they have never called for any groups in the party's current demographics to be knocked out in the cold.
We all acknowledge that Russian interference and what Comey did played a role-it's just that we don't have to pretend that our campaign made no major mistakes in the fall. It isn't "either/or".
delisen
(6,043 posts)Nobody on th left is trying to turn the party into his or her own personal cult.
How do you know that no is----can you really speak for everyone on the left? Of course not-its millions of people.
In any case its not something I have thought to0 much about as it seems to me to be almost impossible for anyone to achieve that.
Greater Influence for for supporters of the Sanders Agenda.........
Is anyone stopping supporters who want greater influence? Are there barriers of some kind preventing participation by Sanders' supporters?
Please tell me if there are. I would like to write about it and your input would be helpful?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Even Bernie doesn't want that.
And, contrary to myth, even those who have called for an to connect to working-class voters(of ALL races)aren't calling for any OTHER groups in the party to be thrown under the bus.
There's no significant disagreement on the need to keep fighting instutional bigotry. There never was.
All some of us wanted was for economic justice and the need to stand up to corporate power to be given a significantly greater emphasis. Doing that doesn't have to mean de-emphasizing anything we already stand for.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)That fact does not mean the campaign was run properly or that the strategy was effective, given the campaign's inability to carry the states we needed to carry.
delisen
(6,043 posts)at home and Voter interference by foreign powers.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)and offering respectful critiques of the choices the fall campaign made.
We need to do both.
OK?
NoMoreRepugs
(9,425 posts)Respecting all the opinions under the Democratic tent and working together to defeat Republicans everywhere is a lofty goal for sure, but we better get our butts in gear soon or the fight will be for a charred piece of ground.
George II
(67,782 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)(all we need to change on it for 2018 and 2020 is to be a bit more willing to challenge corporate power and to be a bit more questioning of force as an aspect of our foreign policy).
Still it was good, and what the Sanders people added made it better.
Our Congressmembers' sit-in tactics on the gun bill were heroic.
Our nominee this year was eminently qualified to be president and should be appointed to the Supreme Court the next time we elect a Democratic president.
How about those as positive statements?
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Tom Perez is doing an excellent job so far correcting the prior mismanagement - "worthless", in the words of Harry Reid - of the DNC.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)That's something to be hopeful about.
George II
(67,782 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)There's no conflict between saying positive things and offering suggestions on how to do some things better.
delisen
(6,043 posts)the Constitution and issues. They are deeper thinkers, The have much more empathy and are far more likely to want to improve the lives of people.
The Democratic Party has people warmth and that is a very good starting place for a Vision of the future.
Heartstrings
(7,349 posts)
BlueMTexpat
(15,369 posts)YOHABLO
(7,358 posts)"There's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and dead armadillos ." - Jim Hightower
get that folks? if you call yourself a centrist you're a fool.
wyldwolf
(43,867 posts)* Managed the presidential campaign of former Senator Fred R. Harris of Oklahoma in 1976. LOSER
* 1992 presidential election, he supported the candidacy of U.S. Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. LOSER
* After Harkin left the race, Hightower supported Jerry Brown. LOSER
* 2000, joined Susan Sarandon in support of Nader. LOSER.
* 2004, Dennis Kucinich. LOSER
The real problem with "progressives" is they don't know how to run campaigns and only appeal to a narrow piece of the populace. And since campaigns have to be WON to hold office, that is a problem.
Perhaps the introspection should lead to the realization that only spectators are on the far left and far right. The game is played and won in the middle of the field.
still_one
(92,190 posts)
alarimer
(16,245 posts)Centrism doesn't really sell and people are angry as hell.
Wall Street and Silicon Valley have done and are doing a lot damage out there. The issue for Democrats now is standing up for labor unions (traditional trade unions and the more recent service sector unions- who have had a great deal of success in pushing for a $15 minimum wage) and the social safety net. I've noticed since the election very few Democrats of any stripe are talking about raising SS age or anything like that. Some of the leftward drift is attributable in part to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. And many others are certainly more vocal now about these things.
And it is obvious that the Republicans under Trump are a complete horror show. Fortunately they are also incompetent and divided. This is an opportunity for addressing the people's needs in every way, instead of the same old, spineless routine that usually happens. There is an opportunity here to capitalize on people's anger at the system. And winning does matter. But Democrats win by telling the truth, especially the truth about how bad Trump and Co. really are. That didn't work before the election because no one (except us) quite believed it would be this bad. But here we are.
Cary
(11,746 posts)Certain people want conflict.
I gave up trying to find common ground because invariably these people twisted my good intent and used it.against me. That led me to ask who and what these people are. That led me to ask if I needed to try to work work with these people.
The only rational conclusion was that I could never change these people and my best and only course of action was to reject them and.move ahead without them. In the meantime radical leftists call me names, shout me down, and don't have anything much to offer in exchange.
Do you want to work with centrists, Ken? I see nothing from you that suggests you do.
Vote Democratic. It would be nice if you could work towards that, for your own benefit.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And I can work with centrists-it's just that I won't work from the assumption that they are automatically entitled to be the natural leadership of the party. It should be enough for them to be one faction among many.
And I think we can redefine "pragmatism". For example, a strong case can be made that on healthcare, single-payer would have and would still be far more practical and workable than what we ended up with in the ACA.
And it would have been far more pragmatic to get our troops the hell out of the Arab/Muslim world in 2009, given that we already knew that there was nothing more we could achieve militarily.
Cary
(11,746 posts)"I won't work from the assumption that they are automatically entitled to be the natural leadership of the party."
You want to sow discord and discontent. It's all about what you want.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I worked to help elect our nominee all through the fall campaign and started a number of threads here calling on others in the primary campaign I was part of to communicate with greater civility prior to that.
Cary
(11,746 posts)I have a right to disapprove of your discord and discontent and to advocate for voting Democratic.
Vote Democratoc.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And you've now spread a false accusation about me in two successive posts.
Cary
(11,746 posts)Try introspection
Vote Democratic.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)False accusations of bad intent make everyone feel defensive.
Try honesty.
Cary
(11,746 posts)I didn't accuse you of not voting.
Vote Democratic.
tonedevil
(3,022 posts)that you have adopted may be the most annoying and off putting thing I have ever witnessed. I vote Democratic, I have since 1974. You no doubt don't want my advice, but in my opinion what you are doing is going to drive people away. For my part I only hope that you and your annoyance aren't where the Democratic party is going because I get tired of losing.
Cary
(11,746 posts)Vote Democratic
Response to Cary (Reply #214)
Post removed
Cary
(11,746 posts)We don't lose.
We vote Democratic.
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)I have been to several meetings of indivisible, the People Power group (do you even know who this group is?) and an off shoot of the Pants Suit Republic. At these meeting, several dozen of people are worried about losing the Affordable Care Act but not one person has mentioned single payer. There is outrage against Trump and the GOP on health care, taxes and immigration/muslim ban but the way forward is not based on a platform that could not bring in any new voters into the party but on dealing with that anger.
I had fun marching for taxes on Saturday and talking to Congresswoman Jackson Lee. I have also delivered a demand to hold a town hall to my local congressman with a letter demanding that he support forcing trump to release his taxes. The People Power people are arranging meetings seeking to get some smaller cities to agree to be sanctuary cities (Houston has already done so). None of these actions will be advanced by a platform that brought in no new voters to the Democratic party.
The real world is a fun place. Come work in it.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And have worked in Democratic politics since the 1970s
I've been as active as you are.
In the real world, we lost by running a bland centrist campaign focused almost entirely on campaigning against the other party rather than campaign.
Staying bland means continuing to lose.
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)The Clinton's, in my view, and I work for her husband, are middle of the road pols. They view the world in a way many Democrats do not.
Yes, they stand up on social issues, for the most part. It's also their belief that many of the world's ills can be cured through free market privatisation of what i view as government functions.
Bill expanded the use of private comtractors: including prisons, military contractors like haliburton, doctors within the VA and a slew of other departments thus raising the cost of these functions to the average tax payer.
Private prisons have no interest in reforming prisoners, their revolving door policy keeps them in business.
Military contractors have no interest in ending wars, perpetual war keeps them in business.
These are the issues no one talks about.
If you want to have an honest debate, then let's debate.
Cary
(11,746 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)You have no reason to think otherwise of anyone else here.
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)Thanks for the honest debate.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)People complain that no one will debate them, but when offered to have an honest debate, they find every excuse as to why they will not.
exactly ...
Cary
(11,746 posts)You gaslight me then whine about how I refuse to be gaslighted.
Pfeh.
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)Cary
(11,746 posts)That's incredibly dysfunctional, and you're wasting your time because I have no use for your nonsense.
Vote Democratic.
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)Cary
(11,746 posts)...I have no interest in you or in your nonsense.
I know that bothers you. Cry.
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)You amuse me, but that's about it. Your posts are good for a laugh.
Cary
(11,746 posts)That is prima face evidence that you are obsessed with me.
And the fourth rate psychobabble is good measure. You NEED me to react, but that's never gonna work out for you.
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)You are simply trying to derail this thread, even though there's been little if anything negative within it and even though some within it are reaching out to each other in dialog.
You aren't showing the discussion any respect, and it's a worthwhile discussion to have.
I don't find you the least bit amusing. You have nothing interesting to offer. Your ploy is quite pedestrian.
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)Cary
(11,746 posts)Yawn. I've heard the same low level schtick a.million times, from every "conservative" fool I've ever run across on the internet.
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)*yawn*
Wake me when you get new material.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Everyone in this thread already votes that way.
There's no reason for you to imply that they don't.
Cary
(11,746 posts)Vote Democratic Ken.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And you never had any reason to accuse me of sowing division.
Cary
(11,746 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Last edited Tue Apr 18, 2017, 11:38 PM - Edit history (2)
You are not entitled to act as if you're a party loyalist and the rest of us aren't.
Cary
(11,746 posts)I don't need your approval.
Vote Democratic Ken.
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)No matter how misguided or ill-informed it is.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)All he's doing here is falsely accusing anyone who disagrees with him of NOT voting for this party.
And doing so over and over and over again while also implying that everyone who disagrees with him is a spoiled child or something.
None of it serves any good purpose.
Cary
(11,746 posts)Your approval means so much to me.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)You are not entitled to treat anyone here as if that person is an idiot or the enemy.
Last edited Wed Apr 19, 2017, 08:26 PM - Edit history (1)
Vote Democratic
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)n/t.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)the guy who thought the London Underground was a political movement?
All I did in this thread was make a few RESPECTFUL observations about the need for some change.
I didn't demonize anyone-I didn't disrespect anyone-nothing I called for, if implemented, would do the party any harm.
Cary
(11,746 posts)Stop making excuses.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)or of not understanding the need to do that.
What I'm trying to do is help us get more people TO do that.
You have no reason not to trust me on that.
(btw...as a Chicago person, you should be aware that just re-electing mayors named Daley never made ANYTHING better).
Cary
(11,746 posts)Vote Democratic.
Cary
(11,746 posts)That's something called reality. And with that I'll leave you to your rabbit hole. I'm not interested in going down there.
Vote Democratic.
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)There's an irony that you claim others aren't open to honest debate, but I offer one up and you run away.
You do not even have the integrity to put the words out there to define what you believe to be the "extreme left".
If you want to be taken seriously, write serious replies instead of off the cuff dismissals.
Cary
(11,746 posts)Diverting the subject to me, personally, is not honest debate. It's deflection.
Stop deflecting. Vote Democratic.
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)You throw out terms like "extreme leftist" and then you will not even stand by the courage of your convictions and define the ideology that you so deplorably state repulses you.
Cary
(11,746 posts)Pfeh.
That's not debate. It's trolling.
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)Cary
(11,746 posts)H2O Man
(73,537 posts)citizens that consumed cookies at their meetings, as seen on Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" perhaps?
BannonsLiver
(16,387 posts)2016 is like a toothache some people can't stop touching with their tongue.
Cary
(11,746 posts)The contrarians and attention whores would abuse something else.
BannonsLiver
(16,387 posts)It's like the race in KS. They wanted 20k, but that wouldn't have made a difference. And if the DNC had ponied up 20k they would have asked for 100k. It's never going to be enough.
Cary
(11,746 posts)Vote Democratoc!
I love the way I was lectured and was bitched out about my positive message.
colsohlibgal
(5,275 posts)Free or quite affordable college. Non profit eminently affordable health care for all....as it was before HMOs led to CEOs skimming 100s of millions off the top. Cut the Defense budget to something less exorbitant. Reigning in Charter Schools while better funding public schools. A move to renewable energy to save our planet and the people that live on it. Public funding of elections, elections sans voting machines and run supervised by neutral parties and witnessed, including video/audio. A reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine to stop Fox propoganda.
What kind of democrat would have a problem with any of that?
Now I even favor a base income for all adults, enough that everyone could be food secure and housing secure.
Greed by many and people wanting a theocracy are bring us to the brink.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)n/t.
KPN
(15,645 posts)especially like your summary statement -- right on target.
NanceGreggs
(27,814 posts)... are the "centrists", Ken?
The reason I ask is that it seems to have become a term that means "people who don't agree with me".
Here on DU, especially over the past few years, I've seen all kinds of arguments about who is where on the political spectrum, almost invariably as determined by other posters based on - well, based on what would be the question.
Let's not forget that in the months leading up to the primaries, the self-proclaimed "progressier-than-thou" crowd were quick to label anyone who didn't see things their way as centrists, DINOs, useless middle-of-the-roaders.
And where are those True Progressives (TM) now? A lot of them are posting at JPR, extolling the virtues of a Trump presidency.
I truly question why some people seem far more interested in categorizing Democrats than they are in fighting Republicans. Pigeon-holing any Democrat as being one thing or another does nothing for unity, but goes a long way, IMHO, to dividing us.
If a Democrat supports Democrats, canvasses for Democrats, phone banks for Democrats, and ultimately votes for Democrats, I really don't see what purpose is served by you - or anyone else - slapping a label on them based on god-only-knows what criteria you're using.
So I'll ask again: Who are the "centrists", Ken? That seems to be a catch-all term for people who don't agree with you.
If you look through the posts leading up to the election, you'll see posts complaining that the Dems went too negative against Trump. You'll also see posts complaining that the Dems weren't "going for the throat" where Trump was concerned. So are all the people who disagree with your take on things "centrists" who require introspection until they come around to your way of doing things?
JI7
(89,249 posts)progressive, liberal etc they are.
these fuckers supported and defend fucking trump .
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)-I'd never call you a centrist, just a person who prefers different tactics but whose passion and commitment to change I nonetheless respect-but as people who make a habit of self-righteously demonizing everyone to the left of their personal comfort zone.
The ones who equate ANY critique of how our fall campaign was run(and attacked any calls for that campaign to try different tactics as our lead in the polls eroded)as disloyalty to the party or "refighting the primaries".
The ones who insist that we can't discuss changing anything at all, and seem to believe that we have to run the 2020 fall campaign exactly as we ran this one.
The ones whose response is simply to shout down discussion and try to silence any critique, even though discussion and critique are what we most desperately need.
The ones who still perpetuate the myth that there's a chasm between those who prioritize "social justice" and those who prioritize "economic justice", even though in truth the two movements agree 95% of the time and are often made up of the SAME PEOPLE.
And the ones who use loaded terms like "takeover" to describe what are nothing more than honorable attempts to win the party to ideas it currently doesn't support-ideas that would not require the party to betray or abandon anyone.
I don't see YOU as one of those people...and mainly, I'd like to get to the place where you could trust my intent enough to not get all "oh no you don't!" in response to almost everything I post.
I'm fine with people disagreeing with me...I'm NOT fine with anyone trying to keep us divided based on our choices in the presidential primaries and on those who are simply trying to silence honest conversations about our future. If you disagree with someone's views here, make a case for YOUR views...don't just try to shut people up. So long as the person wasn't trying to persuade DU'ers to vote for Stein or Hair Fuhrer OR personally attacking our nominee, that person didn't deserve to be shouted down or banned.
You're right there were some critical posts in the fall, but people were vilified or threatened with banning for making them, even when the criticisms or suggestions were in the mildest, most respectful and constructive form possible. What good did it do to use those tactics against people who didn't agree with every single thing that was being said and done?
I'm for people having the right to constructively disagree and to offer suggestions made in the spirit of trying to help get our candidates elected. And I've defended people's right to do that if the primaries had gone the other way.
NanceGreggs
(27,814 posts)Last edited Tue Apr 18, 2017, 02:40 AM - Edit history (1)
... by whatever Ouija board you're using, that I'm not a centrist.
As for "people to the left of my comfort zone", how do you know who is to the left of anyone's comfort zone - or indeed, exactly what anyone's comfort zone is?
"You're right there were some critical posts in the fall, but people were vilified or threatened with banning for making them, even when the criticisms or suggestions were in the mildest, most respectful and constructive form possible."
Let's be honest about who was vilified and who wasn't. As Skinner himself pointed out (and I assume he was in a position to know), 85% of DUers were Bernie supporters. That means they were 85% of the jury pool - which in turn means that Hillary supporters were 85% more likely to have their posts hidden, while BS supporters had free rein to post whatever they wanted.
(And there's the cue for someone to "alert" - a tactic I'm all too familiar with, as are many of us.)
"Constructive criticism" does not include labeling fellow Democrats as centrists, DINOs, middle-of-the-roaders, ConservaDems, etc. And unity does not lie in "agree with me or be labeled as such".
I, for one, am not buying the "we're all in this together, but some Democrats are more worthy than others" meme. And by labeling certain fellow Democrats as being in need of introspection, that is exactly what you are advocating.
I will now prepare for my next "hide" - because the "let's divide Democrats into categories of worthiness" has become a popular way to divide us, and a jury system that allows such posts only serves to further that agenda.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I meant what I said about you as a gesture of respect. Why can't you trust that?
PoliticalPie
(37 posts)dictate the message and our news people loved promoting Benghazi, and email and our now President Cheeto, so colorful and all.
The news is as busy suppressing liberal ideas as are the Republicans. This has been true for so long I wonder why anyone thinks there will be any support from any national news group that opposes our wealthiest and most conservative citizens.
metroins
(2,550 posts)I know when a thread reaches 100+ replies that you will likely not see my post.
But I personally did some introspection.
I found that it's better to promise the world and set the bar high, rather than being boring and pragmatic.
That's not a knock on either candidate, it's just that people want hope. Setting the bar high also likely reaches higher than a moderate goal. If you win in a wave, $15/hour might not be passed but $12 might. If you start at $12, you only get $10.
In retrospect, I should have backed Bernie.
I really didn't like his platform, but the goal is to win and the masses would've backed him. I made a mistake.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I deeply respect what you said there and the way you said it.
fleabiscuit
(4,542 posts)A couple of example names and offending centrist positions would be helpful for context.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)It's about a mindset.
Maybe "insider" would have been a better term.
ProfessorPlum
(11,257 posts)And respect the way you have handled all the replies in this thread, even the ones that were deliberately stupid and unnecessarily provocative. Well done. Let's hope that progressives find their rightful place and voice in the Democratic party, and that our messaging reflects our outstanding policies far more in the future.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I actually feel pretty good about most of the responses in the thread. Even in the majority of posts that disagreed with me, the tone was of mutual respect and some dialog seems to have started.
betsuni
(25,519 posts)"even the ones that were deliberately stupid and unnecessarily provocative" LOL
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=8939636
ProfessorPlum
(11,257 posts)Thrilled about corporate friendly politicians can go fuck themselves.
Do you have a problem with that?
betsuni
(25,519 posts)Hey, I don't judge about fucking. I choose not to tell people who they should fuck. All politicians are corporate friendly. This is America. People need jobs and corporations like Ben and Jerry's and L.L. Bean and Whole Foods provide them. Do you have a problem with that?
ProfessorPlum
(11,257 posts)Of course we need healthy, well regulated corporations and companies. Harnessing the power of capital is one of the best ways to improve how we live. What we don't need are corporations to run our government, make all the decisions, and decide how, if at all, they are themselves regulated. Otherwise they are free to poison and cheat us with impunity.
LOL!
betsuni
(25,519 posts)Republicans are the corporatists. Duh.
ProfessorPlum
(11,257 posts)Good luck in the world.
betsuni
(25,519 posts)You must be very young and cynical.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)The president during most of that decade put corporations before people by fighting hard for NAFTA when two-thirds of the country opposed it.
betsuni
(25,519 posts)and that he put corporations before people and was drooling to screw over American workers. I thought it was something Clinton signed on to, not his idea. The economy was doing great in the nineties, although it was a bubble economy and headed for a burst sooner or later.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)He should have done the pro-worker thing and withdrawn it. There was no particular need for that pact.
ProfessorPlum
(11,257 posts)go provide your own links. Since no one suggested that NAFTA was Clinton's "idea". It was just something he pushed like hell to put in place.
betsuni
(25,519 posts)ProfessorPlum
(11,257 posts)You can (presumably) do your own research
betsuni
(25,519 posts)My sleeves are wet with bitter tears.
JCanete
(5,272 posts)much evidence that could be pointed to over the years of democrats making horrible decisions to the benefit of one industry or another...obviously horrible decisions, at every level of government.
I know there's a difference. The democratic base wants different things and cares about things that the GOP doesn't, and that tends to reflect the people we get into office, but when it comes to power, do you really think there is something special about the D itself that makes it so that the party is never infiltrated by people who find it an expedient vessel towards money and power? Do you really think that big money won't gravitate towards those people?
I'm not pointing fingers at anybody specific, but please...that level of blind certainty is dangerous, and frankly undercuts any credibility when actually trying to fight against corporatism.
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)ProfessorPlum
(11,257 posts)and I agree, it is well past time that the Democrat party renounced GOPernomics.
elehhhhna
(32,076 posts)Because of their opposition to gay rights and women's choice? They're everywhere here in tx.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)The only voters who backed Trump that might be movable are those who actually believed he would fight for working people.
Not sure if the scales have fallen from their eyes as yet.
vi5
(13,305 posts)...and at this point it's been proven time and time and time again that right leaning, trickle down, corporate centered approaches to economics don't work.
It's been proven time and time again that when we take bottom up approaches to economics that it works.
It's being proven right now in places like Kansas and North Carolina and other places that right leaning economic policies are abject failures on a local and national level.
It's been proven at this point that strong unionization benefits everyone and that when unions are dismissed or knocked down or diminished that it hurts workers, hurts the poor and middle class, and increases economic inequality.
It's been proven that throwing good money after bad when it comes to the military industrial complex doesn't make us safer.
It's been proven that bombing our way to peace and safety is not happening.
We can no longer say that these experiments are unproven because they have been tried several times over at this point and it's been proven that liberal, progressive, left leaning policies work and that right leaning, conservative policies do not.
I have no problem respecting someone who thinks something different than what I believe works. But when there is proof that it doesn't, I'm not sure why we have to pretend it does just to preserve their feelings. And that in a nutshell is what we are confronted with in this "centrism versus progressive" debate.
And the bigger problem is that many of these issues are not just taken or approved of by a few minor player red-state Dems, but too often the entire party takes this stuff as proven truth and starts our negotiations and positioning from a stance of thinking that they are true.
bekkilyn
(454 posts)This is a pretty good match of my definition of a centrist too. Those who support and defend right-wing economics and/or right-wing economic concepts (either because they truly think they are good, or because they have been duped into thinking they are the only "realistic" methods) even though they are otherwise very socially liberal.
It makes me wonder if this is where all the vitriol surrounding identity politics vs. economic justice is coming from. I don't personally understand the conflict because it makes no sense to me not to support both as a given. It's even more aggravating when those of us in red states are matter-of-factly informed that we're only allowed to have right-wing economics here because it's the only thing that will work for us. I don't think red states need to be thrown under the bus so people sitting safely in blue states can have all the good things while we get stuck with the crap choices, and the party reinforcing it because "that's just how things are there."
forjusticethunders
(1,151 posts)Basically, a lot of the working class Dem base pretty much abandoned the party and economic justice with it because the Dems started to fight for social justice more. After all, LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act knowing it would make the South unwinnable for generations, and sure enough, Dems lost 4/5 elections (though maybe no Vietnam would have helped, also Nixon cheated). Basically the money, funding and organization had to be replaced, and thus you get middle class and upper class professionals who are more progressive socially but centrist economically, especially when pushes to the left got punished by voters (see Bill's first 2 years versus his later 6). We're now getting to a point where the strength of the minority working class is starting to replace that lost strength, but politics tends to be a lagging indicator, thus Obama's caution and incrementalism (never mind the unprecedented obstructionism based on racism).
bekkilyn
(454 posts)If the Dem working class did abandon the party, but yet didn't want to join the Republican party.
I think we're going to have to become a party for both social and economic justice once it's all said and done though. Even if people were more centrist economically in Bill's time, we've had a number of years since then to realize that right-wing/Regan-type policies just don't work and now we even have conservatives in places like West Virginia giving support to Bernie's policies because I think even they can see that we've been operating under bad economic models.
While incrementalism may be the most "rational" approach, I don't think we have time for it anymore, especially after all the damage that 45 has been causing after all the years of Republican obstruction during Obama. I think we're now in a period of time where, at least for certain issues that can't wait for years and decades longer to fix since people are desperate and need help NOW, we will need a more "revolutionary" approach.
Foamfollower
(1,097 posts)It was the extremists on the left who sat out the election or went for Stein handing it to Trump. And why are you refighting the primaries?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)There's a huge difference between saying our fall campaign made mistakes and saying we should have nominated a different candidate.
davsand
(13,421 posts)That's how it works. Stein was a part of the General Election.
As a Progressive Dem, I have all kinds of criticism for the folks who refused to back the party nominee in the general election. (Hint, the DEM part of Progressive Dem is a focal point there.) I lost friends because I backed the party nominee and I still feel kinda salty about it. Bottom line is, if you want to call yourself a partisan, you support your ticket. Period. You can (and should) fight like hell for your vision in the Primary, but once that is over you work just as hard for the entire ticket in the general. I spent 18 months out there working for Sanders--with no regrets--but once the nominee was chosen, my work turned to the nominee.
I'm still a progressive, and I'm still a Dem. You can be both in spite of the crap being flung around saying "Progressives" are somehow unwelcome or somehow to blame for current events. Let me make this real clear, the people that are an issue are the ones that didn't bother to vote or even engage.
Laura
Foamfollower
(1,097 posts)The compete idiocy of these people goes beyond imagining.
davsand
(13,421 posts)I understand (and share!) your frustration with the ones who voted Green in the General. I'm no more thrilled than you are with what we have in the Whitehouse right now.
However, I'm more concerned at the huge percentage of people that didn't even BOTHER to go vote. That 4 or 5 percent who chose to go Green are frustrating, but what about the other +50% that never bothered to show up on election day? THAT makes me furious, and it has a lot to do with candidates and parties that didn't inspire any passion or even a minimal interest in the race.
Instead of Dems bashing crap outta each other on ideological disputes, it seems to me that we all probably will make bigger gains if we figure out what our party needs to do to motivate people enough to show up and vote.
Just a thought.
Laura
Foamfollower
(1,097 posts)And every election, the same people who refuse to participate once again refuse to participate.
They are non-voters for a reason, They just plain don't give a fuck and they never will.
Reliable voters are all that are important in an actual election. Those who don't vote, won't vote.
So since the extreme left cannot be counted on in a general election because their fucked up sense of purity gets in the way, we MUST MOVE RIGHT AND PICK UP VOTES FROM THOSE IN THE MIDDLE WHO ALWAYS VOTE!!!! The middle mixes it up between Dems and Repugs. That's where elections are truly decided.
Going after people who can never be bothered to vote and trying to placate the purity extreme left is how Democrats LOSE elections.
davsand
(13,421 posts)Demonizing the progressive wing does absolutely NOTHING to advance the party just like progressives sitting there pissing on Hillary doesn't do any good either. Take the personalities out of the discussion and just look at the bottom line. I'm sorry, I can't make make my point any clearer than that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/the-democrats-real-turnout-problem.html
Foamfollower
(1,097 posts)No matter what, the extreme leftist purists ALWAYS feels demonized.
Jettison the morons in favor of voters you may actually sway. That's how Obama won twice.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)You can't expect non-voters to become voters without the party making any actual effort to appeal to them.
Obama at least made a effort on that.
Foamfollower
(1,097 posts)That's why they're called "non-voters"
They don;t give a fuck and nothing you try to say to the will change their minds.
Trying to get these walking talking pieces of crap to vote is a complete waste of time and resources.
Instead, yu do what Obama did. Jettison the moronic extremist purist left and move to the right to pick up the middle. IT worked twice for Obama and it worked twice for Bill Clinton.
We've tried going left to excite the morons who are never satisfied while tying to get the fuckheads who never vote to actually vote for once and every time we did in the past few decades, it led to two Nixon terms, two Reagan terms, two Bush Jr. terms, and so far one Trump term.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Nixon didn't beat Humphrey because people thought Humphrey was too liberal, and there was no one to Humphrey's right who'd have done better against Nixon in '68-the only ones who could have done better were to HHH's left-RFK, who was murdered, and McCarthy, whose delegates were literally beaten by the cops in Chicago.
McGovern was running against the Dirty Tricks squad...his positions on the issues had nothing to do with his loss, and the most electable candidate, Ed Muskie-who agreed with McGovern on 98% of the issues and was just as antiwar as McGovern-was destroyed early on by that SAME Dirty Tricks squad.
Scoop Jackson would have lost 49 states, too in '72-Humphey, had the party renominated him, would have taken almost no votes that McGovern didn't take.
Nor did it have anything to do with either Reagan term-Reagan beat Jimmy Carter in 1980 as a result of Iran and the right-wing economic policies Carter implemented-the ones that placed a greater emphasis on low inflation than full employment. Carter, good man though he still is, was doomed to lose that year from the moment the hostages were taken-the result would have been the same had Teddy Kennedy not run at all.
And in 1984, we nominated Mondale, who made a show of presenting himself to the fall electorate as more conservative than Carter-refusing to connect with the massive nuclear freeze and Central American solidarity movements, distancing his campaign from the grassroots anti-Reagan resistance-and who also made the indefensible decision to promise a tax increase NOT to restore cuts in social spending or to more vigorously enforce environmental protection and labor laws, but in the name of the Wall Street obsession with balancing the budget-even though doing that was never going to be to the benefit of anybody in the Democratic coalition.
lapucelle
(18,258 posts)registering new Democrats, re-registering Democrats who may have been dropped from the rolls due to inactivity, and formulating election day plans for those who would have a hard time getting to the polls. Dozens of us went down weekend after weekend in buses chartered by our local DNC. We weren't the only out-of-staters doing this kind of work. I know people who did the same thing in Ohio and Nevada.
We could have used your help.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I thank you for what you did.
lapucelle
(18,258 posts)But I think you are mistaken to say that the party did nothing to reach out to non-voters.
One thing I learned is that not voting is not always a choice. It is a genuine hardship for some of the poor, working poor, and marginalized to get to the polls. And this was the first presidential election in which we saw the true impact of the gutting Voting Rights Act.
Those who are privileged enough to demand to be "inspired" to do their basic civic duty are the non-voters I'm angry at. They're narcissistic parasites. They should have voted in honor of those who make every effort to exercise their franchise only to have the door slammed in their faces.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)My intent is mainly to push the party towards a different way of communicating with some of the people we could make common cause with.
Clearly, in the case of the people you describe in your second paragraph, our usual tactic of DEMANDING their votes isn't working, and it doesn't appear that it ever will. I actually spent a fair amount of time using that one myself this fall, and got nothing but blowback.
If something doesn't work, isn't the only sensible choice to switch to something ELSE?
Progressive dog
(6,904 posts)They shouldn't join because they want to run it their way and will settle for nothing less.
The Democratic party is made up of people who decide in a democratic fashion, what they stand for. Democrats get to decide who their nominees will be. When self described factions of the party disagree with those decisions and actively work against and speak against the Democratic candidate(s), then they are not working for or with the party.
As to negative political ads, they've worked a lot of times. Johnson's daisy ad., Bush 1's Willy Horton ad, Bush 2's multiple attacks on Gore's trustworthiness, the attacks on Kerry over his military service all worked. Political ads are aimed at undecided voters, not at political activists.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)None of the negative ads gained us swing votes or switched votes to HRC instead of Trump.
Progressive dog
(6,904 posts)are only swayed by negative ads from Republicans. That doesn't make any sense.
DanTex
(20,709 posts)as an elitist with Cayman bank accounts, were very successful.
And it's impossible to say how many votes the negative ads against Trump got us. Not quite get us enough, that's true. Although her campaign did win the popular vote by a significant margin.
A few more votes in a few key states and we'd now be talking about how great her strategy of attacking Trump was.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Instead, we plateaued and then slowly slipped down.
DanTex
(20,709 posts)relative to what they would have been had she not run the ads, and there's no way of knowing that. There's not nearly enough data to draw any reliable conclusions about which of her ads, whether positive or negative, had the best effects.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)"moderate Republican women in the suburbs" to throw their support to HRC out of nothing but disgust for Trump's skeeviness.
The only thing that was ever going to be a valid sign that the ads were working would have been if a large bloc of normally GOP voters had switched to HRC and that the polls were showing HRC's lead increasing from where it was after Philly(at which point we were twelve point ahead at a time when it looked as though the HRC campaign was going to make a genuine effort to reach out to Sanders primary voters-an effort that campaign never chose to make at all, from what I can see).
As the lead not only did not increase when those ads and that emphasis in the stump speech started, but instead began a slow downward slide, we have clear evidence that the negative ads didn't work.
DanTex
(20,709 posts)Rather than blaming negative ads (which every campaign since the advent of television has used), a much stronger case can be made that she shouldn't have spent so much effort trying to placate the far left.
Look at the actual evidence. Her platform was the most progressive in history. More so than the successful campaigns of 2012, 2008, 1996, and 1992. She constantly talked about progressive policies on the campaign trail and in debates. The Dems even let a jackass like Cornel West play a large role in the platform committee.
She got an endorsement from Bernie Sanders, and the endorsements that she played up the most during the campaign were his and Elizabeth Warren, probably the two most progressive members of the senate.
And, in return for all that, what does the far left to? Bash her constantly and talk about how either there's no difference or else (like Jill Stein) that Trump is not as bad.
Clear evidence that trying to appease the far left doesn't work.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)her own original proposals.
There were no more votes she could possibly have gained by moving to the right after the convention-No significant bloc of traditional GOP voters was ever going to even consider voting for her.
DanTex
(20,709 posts)If you use google for a few seconds, you can find plenty of ads or speeches where she talks about her progressive proposals. For example: https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/statuses/760847322922090496
Also, she did get some traditional GOP voters to go for her: college educated whites. So you're wrong about that also.
Problem is, she lost some working class whites, and those people lived in certain parts of the country that the electoral college artificially gives more sway. But she didn't lose those people because her message wasn't progressive enough. She lost them because they were drawn to Trump's racism and nativism.
There's this fantasy on the far left that racist white people who found an outlet for their racism in Trump would have voted for Clinton if only she had embraced $15 instead of $12 for minimum wage. It's absurd.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And to my knowledge, nobody, not even Bernie, is arguing that the party should ever have soft-pedaled the issue of racism, so can the myth that the Left wanted the party to privilege white voters and ignore social oppression finally be put to rest?
It was about saying to economically hard-hit voters of ALL races that we get it that corporate power had kicked them to the curb, that people on the bottom had been put through hard times and never should have been, and that our nominee, if elected, would work to heal the damage, would work in some way to create a better life for those who lost because of "the magic of the market".
And we could have done that with the candidate we DID nominate.
DanTex
(20,709 posts)I never suggested that Bernie argued that. What I did suggest, and believe to be true (and is backed by polling data), is that Trump's racism and nativism actually helped him make headway with non-college whites. Which contradicts your argument that what we needed was better economic messaging.
The message you are recommending for the Dems is, basically: corporations are screwing everyone except the top 1% economically, and it's time to put them in their place and make people and not businesses the top priority. The problem is, the reason you think that's a great message is because it's exactly the message that you want to hear. And that makes you not a very good judge of how it might go over with other people.
In reality, it's a risky message, with certain groups. College-educated moderates, for example, who Clinton did well with, can easily be offput by what would be perceived to be an anti-business message. And it gets even more risky once we talk about specific policies. Wall Street transaction tax? People with retirement accounts start to worry. Single payer healthcare? People who don't want a huge tax increase and are happy with their current healthcare (which is most Americans) start to worry. And so on. It's not the slam dunk you make it out to be.
And it's questionable to me whether that would have brought many more working class whites on board. One thing Trump's campaign showed is that there really is an appetite for blaming minorities and immigrants for the problems in society. The risk of going all-in with an anti-corporate message is that working class whites decide they would rather blame Mexicans than corporations, and at the same time you scare off middle class voters who don't want the whole system torn apart.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)In some cases, they simply believed that we, as a party, were on the side of corporations AGAINST them. And yes, there was a contradiction between that and their decision to vote for a billionaire scumbag, but there was a valid feeling driving that choice...and that feeling was desperation.
To get them back, we don't need to push any groups in the current base down...we just need to help working-class and poor folks of ALL identities folks get back up off the canvas. If we don't, if we just write them off and say "it's all because you're all personally wicked", they will just stay in backlash mode forever and they'll not only vote for Trump after Trump after Trump. they'll be locked in permanent violent resistance against modern life and any form of change...and we'll never be able to just wait them out.
A message that said "you've been done wrong-you never should have been treated as expendable by this system. You have value and we want you to be part of the project of creating a future that includes all of us" would resonate with the voters I'm talking about, ad do so without causing anyone's justice struggle to be put on the back burner.
Obviously we need to get every suppressed voter registered or re-registered-ALL of us agree with that, I think-and obviously we have to deal with subversion of the electoral process, but too often, the insistence that the November result was ALL due to racism, Comey and the Russians is a coded way of insisting that we preserve the status quo in how this party works and what it stands for no matter what. At times it comes way too close to arguing that ANY calls for change are support for white supremacy or something. And it leaves us with no way to ever recover in any future election.
As to the "college-educated moderates"
We're getting close to being a party that takes the side of the rich against the poor. No party that does that, no party that limits inclusion to the "successful" and the "aspirational" can truly be progressive...because progressivism, to be valid and sustainable, needs to be egalitarian, needs to be bottom-up, not top-down. All top-down politics end up being characterized as elitism and then inevitably stopped.
We don't have to make "people and not businesses the top priority". We just need to treat business as simply one part of life...there, but not more important than everything and everyone ELSE, not the only thing in life that really matters.
How would THAT be "risky"? Are there really that many people who think we should treat CEO's as if they are gods who walk the earth?
DanTex
(20,709 posts)I don't see it in polling. I don't see it anecdotally. I don't see it in the many "meet the Trump voters" stories in the media.
And the contradiction isn't just that Trump is a billionaire scumbag. It's that he fully embraced trickle-down economics. He promised to cut regulations and taxes on corporations "bigly". He said wages were too high. He's virulently anti-union.
No, people didn't vote for Trump because they thought the Dems were on the side of corporations against them. That's a description of Jill Stein voters, not Trump voters.
We actually did win lower-income voters, by the way. And with the exception of white lower-income voters, we won by huge margins. I'm not advocating a strategy of going around telling people they are racist. But at the same time, trying to pretend that a lot of Trump voters aren't motivated by racism is contrary to reality, and fantasy is not the basis for good political strategy.
I also disagree that we are becoming a party that takes the side of the rich against the poor. The quote you are looking for, by the way, is "the struggling, the striving, and the successful." But don't just look at the rhetoric, look at the policies promoted by the Obama administration.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Or even most. Of course that's what it was about with more than not. But it oversimplifies it to say that that's all there is to it.
And it gives us no path to long-term recovery.
murielm99
(30,740 posts)
get the red out
(13,466 posts)The hate approach doesn't seem to bring in independent voters, and the hard-core Rs wouldn't vote for a Democrate no matter what.
thucythucy
(8,052 posts)"It never worked against Nixon.."
Are you saying you think George McGovern was a "centrist" Democrat?
Seems to me he was about the most progressive Democrat to run in the '72 primaries, certainly compared to Muskie and Humphrey, the other two major candidates. Anti-war, anti-racist, distinguished progressive record...
Also, the far left--by which I mean the Steiners and such--continue to attack not only the Clintons, but President Obama as well. So for me this isn't about re-litigating 2016 as much as it is about moving on into the future.
For example, the headline in yesterday's "Truthdig" -- "Deceivers-in-Chief: How Donald Trump and Barak Obama are Alike."
This is only one of very many stories they continue to run under headlines that basically say there is no difference between Trump and Obama, between Democrats and Republicans. Of course, during the campaign their focus, as near as I could tell from the links my Green Party friends kept sending me, seemed to be almost entirely on attacking Democrats.
I can't see how this helps elect progressives to office. And I'm not sure that ignoring this factor (albeit only one of many that cost us the presidency, both in 2016 and 2000) will help us in the long run.
Republicans are very good at neutralizing and even destroying centers of opposition to their reactionary agenda, witness what happened to ACORN, and what they're trying to do to Planned Parenthood. Surely we should at least acknowledge that there are those on the far left--as well as the far right--who seem determined to undermine Democrats at every turn. And develop some cogent response to these attacks, aside from ignoring them with the hopes that they'll go away or do no further damage.
Hypothetical question--if Senator Sanders had been the candidate, do you honestly believe that Truthdig, Wikileaks et. al wouldn't have gone after him in the same way they went after Clinton? It's impossible to know, of course, but my suspicion is that they would have--just as the far left in 1972 attacked Senator McGovern as a "war criminal" and "imperialist."
I agree, introspection on the part of all of us would be a good thing. But I don't think introspection on the part of some precludes introspection on the part of others.
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)Still fighting the primaries with different tactics (tastes great, less filling), same agenda (tin gods and sacred cows).
jesus wept.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I accepted HRC as nominee and campaigned for her.
vlyons
(10,252 posts)and that is to ask - What can I do to help WIN DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS?
steve2470
(37,457 posts)FairWinds
(1,717 posts)of the centrists when during the campaign I pointed out
how well Trump was doing the with the trade/TPP/NAFTA issue.
It was good that HRC started to raise questions with the TPP,
but the Dems should have hammered on the issue - which was
very hot in the key states of MI, WI and PA
Can we learn from the centrists? Certainly.
But they can learn from us too.
randr
(12,412 posts)no matter who is shamed.
I agree that the negative nature of political gamery is old, tried, and failed. However, you do not necessarily need to get down negative with a candidate like the lsos or any Republican for that matter. You just have to tell it like it is. You identify your opponent as a lsos and leave it at that.
Addressing the concerns and aspirations of voters is the central thrust of a winning campaign. Identifying your opponent in a negative light not only takes them out of the game, it shames them in the minds of the electorate.
Think about how effective the lsos was against his primary opponents. He never hesitated to shame them at first and never looked back. The Republican party at large has survived on the message Reagan created that all liberals were bleeding heart tree huggers, essentially shaming the majority of Americans for two generations.
Nice guys finish last.
heaven05
(18,124 posts)but as I can see from your thread responses, truth hurts. Remember those who protest the loudest are......well you probably know the quote. 
beachbum bob
(10,437 posts)not a concern to them....the number of people who wouldn't vote or voted 3rd party because of their "can't support the lesser of 2 evils"....made trump president
the only introspection needed is by those who had no problem allowing evil into the whitehouse
leftstreet
(36,108 posts)Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)I think it's coming though
zentrum
(9,865 posts)....DLC/DNC approach has cost us state houses and the congress----regardless of whatever happened to illegally get 45 into the WH.
Democrats did not turn out. There's a reason for this. The country is to the left of Congress and even to the left of the Obama WH. Yet, the centrists keep scolding us for speaking in a way that a majority of the country supports.
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)Your posts continue to amuse me. Have you been to an Indivisible meeting yet? Go meet some people who are working on the ground and see if they buy into your amusing theories.
The real world is a nice place. Come visit
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I've worked in Democratic campaigns since the Seventies.
Indivisible is a great group, but its agenda(which I support-I've marched in defense of the ACA) isn't the only valid one.
Why is it that you can't accept that others in the real world could simply reject your cynical, defeatist view of things?
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)Your posts show that you have no real world experience. Please go attend an Indivisible or People Power meeting. The real world is a nice place and you will learn something
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Do you really believe it's not possible to live in the real world and still work for a BETTER world?
There's nothing we're fighting for in the short term that we can ONLY fight for by giving up on working for broader change.
For forty years, I've block-walked(canvassed-the two phrases mean exactly the same thing)stuffed envelopes, phone banked. I've also spent years attending district committee meetings, participating in caucuses(I've mainly lived in caucus states, and actually prefer presidential primaries-caucuses were not invented by the Sanders campaign OR the Obama campaign-they were simply what existed in the state parties I lived in).
I worked hard for candidates who were almost always well to my right, and did so gladly.
What more could I possibly have done to prove I'm "real world"?
I support Indivisible(they don't have a chapter where I am or I probably would have gone to it)but Indivisible and People Power aren't the only "real world" ways to be involved in effective anti-Trump politics.
And all I'm saying in this thread is that we can't ever conduct another fall campaign exactly the way we conducted this one. Given the results of this fall campaign, how is that observation NOT "real world"?
Would you actually argue that our next campaign should be an exact repeat of this one?
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)Have you been to an indivisible meeting or met with people in the real world yet? You can start your own Indivisible group easily. Go to the webpage and you will see that there is ways to find a group if you actually look or to find people to start a group.https://www.indivisibleguide.com/act-locally/ There is an easy way to sign up to host a meeting https://actionnetwork.org/events/4d56f7d15f8eecf435ce561305a20ddf7dbc648b/edit The concept that there is not a group near you does not make sense. I am deep red Texas and there are over a dozen different groups in the greater area. The fun thing is that these groups are talking to each other and doing something called organizing.
I took the day off to go to an event with the off shoot of the Pants suit Republic where they brought in two ADL people to discuss communicating with trump types. I am a regular contributor to the ADL and have three law partners on the board of the local chapter of the ADL. It was a good event. This particular group had me review their bylaws and help them as to how to set up a PAC.
Your theories are the theories of someone who have not work on a campaign in the real world. Again I have heard several dozen people at these meetings talk about Trump and the fear of losing insurance coverage and not one person has talked about single payer as the golden ticket.
Go out into the real world and talk to people working on real campaigns. I have friends who are already gearing up to run in the 2018 races. We have four or five people planning on running in TX CD 7 against a republican named Culbertson (the DCCC has a person on the ground organizing this district already) and I have another friend who announced that she is running against a local state house candidate who has not been contested in the last two cycles. There is a great deal of energy on the ground. Go be a part of this energy and see if you still think that your amusing theories hold water after meeting with real people. Explain your theories to people who running and see how they react.
Right now we had two good Democrats who may be contesting the right to run against Carnival Cruz. Saturday's tax day protest last weekend ended up at Carnival Cruz' headquarters which was amusing. Congressman Castro is actually polling ahead of Carnival Cruz. Beto O'Rourke will be in town this weekend and I am planning to go see him. I will probably support Congressman Castro but it does not hurt to hear from the other candidate. Get out and meet some candidates. Tell them your theories.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Joining Indivisible isn't the ONLY way to be in the real world.
It's one group...it isn't The Way, The Truth and The Light.
Stop lecturing people on reality and stop acting as if everyone who disagrees with you on tactics and vision is delusional.
You, after all, live in a state where the Democratic Party has been pretty much dead since 1994-so who are YOU to claim that you know any more about effectiveness than anybody else?
You're being disrespectful and abusive, and you aren't even helping Indivisible in stalking me like this.
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)I do not care what you do in real life. I do care when you make policy recommendations that are so amusing that it is clear that these policy recommendations would not work in the real world. Your views on what the Democratic Party needs to do and why the Clinton campaign failed tell me all I need to know about your experience in the real world. You are entitled to your own opinions but not to your own facts. Do not expect people who live in the real world to ignore the major and obvious flaws in your proposals.
Again, you claim to know a current or former DNC member. Go see if they will listen to your suggestions. I know a dozen or so DNC members and you would not like their reactions to your proposals if I was silly enough to share these concepts with them. Again, the real world is very different from an internet board. The DNC members who I know are not bashful about sharing their opinions. If you really believe in your proposals then share these amusing proposals with your DNC friend and get her (or his) input.
I suggested that you work with Indivisible and was amused by your silly claim that there are no indivisible groups near you. That claim is clearly false. If you are afraid of meeting people in the real world that is okay but do not tell a falsehood about where Indivisible is organizing. The meetings of these grassroots groups have been fun and educational. In these meetings I have heard many voters complain about their fears about losing the ACA but not one person mentioned that we need single payer. There is a great deal of energy out there on the grass roots level and you can test your concepts/proposals in the real world if your really believe in these proposals. If you are afraid to work with these groups or to meet people in the real world, that is your choice but I do believe that your proposals would not be as flawed if you got input from the real world.
As for Texas being a red state, things are changing. Trump is under water in the latest Texas polling and Congressman Castro is leading Ted Cruz. Texas will turn blue but it will be due to people who are working hard to accomplished this. Being on the ground means that I get to deal with real world GOP voters. There were a good number of republicans who voted for Clinton but then voted straight party GOP ticket. We are targeting these republicans this cycle. The local GOP party chairs are fun to deal with but knowing their views can be helpful. Going to groups like the PeoplePower, Indivisible and the off shoot of the Pants Suit Republic has been educational.
The DCCC is targeting three Texas congressional seats and it will be fun to see what happens in the real world. One of the targeted seats is Culbertson who had a fun time at a town hall https://www.democraticunderground.com/107834365 I worked on the voter protection operations in Harris County which turned blue this cycle. We have our first Democratic District Attorney in 36 years and she has already de-criminalized pot. Every cycle we have had to sue the Tax Assessor office as to voter registration issues (Texas used to have a poll tax and so this is where voter registration is done in Texas) and this cycle we have an outstanding lady elected as tax assessor and collector who I trained as a poll watcher back in 2012. Things can change. Again, I am working in the real world to turn my state blue. Texas will turn blue and hopefully trump will accelerate the process. Texas will only turn blue if good Democrats actually work in the real world to accomplished this.
Again, it is unrealistic for you to expect people to ignore the clear and major flaws in your amusing proposals.
BTW, I was really flattered and amused by your ATA thread.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)You can do that without being personally disrespectful. I've never shown personal disrespect for you.
Why not just say WHY you think the ideas I've spoken of can't work.
Why is it silly to think we can win elections by making a case FOR our policies, rather than focusing on negative ads against our opponents?
Or by using tracking polls in the states we have to win?
Or by having our candidate go to the states we have to win rather than having that candidate waste time in states we can't win?
And why the obsession with Indivisible? I respect the group, I probably will join it, but it's not the ONLY effective anti-Trump movement and we can't beat Trump JUST by opposing what he does.
I could understand your fixation with discrediting me if I was actually advocating anything unworkable, like nationalizing most of the economy or abolishing the military, but nothing I've talked about here is even close to that.
And I'm not calling for remaking the party "into Sanders image", whatever that means. I'm calling for remaking the party into the image of what MOST Democrats support and of what majorities of voters in most of the country support.
What I advocate is New Deal/Great Society values on economics and Freedom Movement values on social issues.
DO you have a problem with either of those?
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)Again, I dare you to present these proposals to the DNC member you claim to know or to an Indivisible group.
The real world is a nice place. Come visit
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And you've never had any justification for questioning my honesty.
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)If you really know a member of the DNC, run your proposals by them and see if you get different feedback. Don't ask others to ignore the flaws in your proposals and ignore that fact your proposals did not work for Sanders and will not work in the real world
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Discuss it on the merits.
There's nothing I'm saying that no one else here is saying, and nothing that justifies you questioning either my reality or my honesty.
Indivisible is a good group, but it has a lot of Sanders people in it and its ideas aren't to the right of the kind of things I talk about(none of which I invented, btw).
And here's this...in Alaska, the state I just moved from, Sanders people won a majority of the state Democratic Central committee, wrote the platform...and the result was, Dems gained enough seats to form a coalition with moderate R's and independents and end all out right-wing 'thug control of the state House.
Which is a hell of a lot better than the party did in Texas(and Alaska is just as much a "red state" as Texas is).
You are NOT etitled
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)I live in the real world which means that I go out into the real world to meet candidates and hear their positions. I went to a Beto O'Rourke meet and greet. Beto is a 44 year old young three term congressman from a very safe district in El Paso. Beto has announced that he is running against Carnival Cruz for Senate. Beto is a nice person but I will probably support Congressman Castro if he runs over Beto for a host of reasons including living in the real world.
Beto may be great for you in that Beto (i) knows that single payer is not possible politically but is supporting single payer anyway, (ii) is not accepting any PAC contributions even though Carnival Cruz is sitting on $5.6 million and is busy raising more money, (iii) does not believe in polling or pollsters, (iv) does not have a stump speech and promises not to pay speechwriters for a stump speech, and (v) is proud of not being in the real world and wants to run a campaign not based on polls or advise from experts. Beto knows that he will be outspent and does not care.
Send your platform to Beto. You may have some unrealistic ideas that Beto missed and would be happy to adopt. You may be disappointed that Beto said that Carnival Cruz was a nasty person and Beto attacked AG Sessions for saying bad things about El Paso. Any race against Carnival Cruz is destined to be somewhat nasty.
Carnival Cruz appears to be beatable. According to a recent Texas poll Beto and Carnival Cruz are tied but Congressman Castro is leading both by 6%. Congressman Castro will announce if he is running some time in May. I have been to fundraisers with Congressman Castro and talked to both Congressman Castro at the national convention. Beto was at the national convention but I only saw him in passing and did not get a chance to talk to him until the meet and greet.
It is nice to see this much interest in the 2018 races so early in 2017. We have somewhere between four and seven candidates running for CD 7 and three to five running for CD 22.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And you have no reason to keep saying I don't live in the real world.
I do everything you do. I canvass(blockwalk-they're the same thing)stuff envelopes, make coffee, attend district meetings. The fact that my views are very slightly to the left of your personal comfort zone, but you have no right to keep insulting me.
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)Let Beto be your test case for how your concepts work in the real world. I admit that I do not pay attention to your silly proposals and so I am sure that I missed one or two that Beto could use
Texas Democrats have a real chance of defeating Carnival Cruz if we run the right candidate.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)What, if any of the ideas that I've ever joined other people in supporting(none which was originated by me) are you so terrified of the party adopting that, rather than just debating the ideas on the merits, you feel compelled to carry on an endless campaign of personal abuse and derision against me in order to stop me saying it?
Why are you so fixated on trying to discredit and silencing me personally?
It's not as if asking Democrats to eventually support single-payer(while working to save the ACA from current attack) does this party any harm. Single-payer as a goal is not a hated idea among the majority of the people).
Other than that, what else have I ever advocated that so irrationally terrifies you?
You've bullied me and many others for months now...why do you feel entitled to do that?
What good do you think this does?
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)Beto is running on an unrealistic platform that will not work in the real world and you need to help him out with some additional platform planks that are just as unrealistic and silly
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)That proves he's just as electable as any other Dem in Texas, and prove that there's no good reason to try and recruit anybody to run against him.
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)Castro is also not going to run on a silly and impractical platform
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)in a race that's a year and a half away.
If Beto is in a dead heat, that means half of Texas disagrees with the idea that his platform is "impractical".
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)doesn't that prove he's a viable candidate?
I'll grant you that in the early polls Castro runs slightly better(that's largely due to name familiarity at this stage, most Texans outside of O'Rourke's district didn't know of him prior to his entrance
A 6% difference between Castro and O'Rourke in the polls is trivial at this stage, btw. A lot can happen to change that.
BTW, why do you assume I'd defend Beto not believing in polling or not having a stump speech?(I actually haven't ever heard Beto O'Rourke speak and know nothing about him other than the fact that he's running, seems like a good guy, and looks like a Chicano Bobby Kennedy in the pictures I've seen). If you prefer Castro, that's your call, but you have no reason to be pissed that the guy's even running.
If Congressman O'Rourke is in a dead heat with Cruz, that means he's a strong candidate(Cruz won by sixteen points). It's possible he COULD be nominated. Wouldn't it be the sensible thing, if you want beat Cruz, to not tear down anybody who could be a strong candidate against him? You don't have to trash this guy to help Castro. Just make the case that Castro is more electable(if the polls still show that by the time of the primaries).
You're being heavy-handed about O'Rourke at a time when there's no good reason for it.
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)I have met Beto at both the National Convention and at a meet and greet this weekend. Beto is the one who is telling everyone to call him Beto. Beto is running on a platform designed to be as impractical as possible including making single payer a major issue when most people are worried about keeping the ACA in place. Beto is also going to refuse PAC money and so it will be interesting to see if he can raise sufficient funds to be competitive.
I met the Democrat who lost in 2012 to Carnival Cruz. Paul Sadler is a nice man but raised no money in 2012 and so lost by a ton. You need to be able fund raise to compete in a state like Texas. You could not even get yards signs for Sadler in 2012. Beto is not going to take pac money and will be going into the general election with one hand tie behind his back.
I have met Joaquin Castro several times and we will see if he runs.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)If Castro runs and is able to present himself as a stronger candidate to primary voters, he'll win the primary. There's no reason for you to be going scorched-earth against Beto now, as his presence in the race in and of itself does no harm. The route to a Democratic comeback isn't to refuse progressives anywhere outside the Northeast or the West Coast.
As to impracticality...
in 1856, nobody in mainstream politics thought abolishing slavery was a practical goal.
In 1896, nobody in mainstream politics thought women's suffrage was a practical goal.
In 1926, nobody in mainstream politics thought anything like the New Deal or the Wagner Act were practical goals.
In 1956, nobody in mainstream politics thought ending legal Jim Crow or a war against poverty were practical goals.
In 1996, nobody in mainstream politics thought same-sex marriage or a universal healthcare bill were practical goals.
Activism makes the impractical practical.
Bradical79
(4,490 posts)though I agree with some of your criticisms. I feel like these terms are getting pretty warped. We're talking about strategy decisions, some centerist, some leftist, others just poor interpretation of math.
For example, refusing to downplay social issues and not pandering to rural conservatives is hardly a centerist position. Not engaging in a 50 state strategy is a poor decision based on interpretation of polling and electoral math. It's not centerist. These are decisions centerists and Democrats on the left were involved with.
JHan
(10,173 posts)tonyt53
(5,737 posts)The Democratic Party has forgotten the base - the 45-65 y/o white middle class voters. That group cares more about good jobs and healthcare than anything else. The Party platform had everything under the sun except any way to address the "wants" of that group. Every other group was represented and look what happened. That group doesn't want anything special. They only want an even chance. So, instead of voting for HRC, and a Party platform that left them out, they voted for Trump. They cut off their noses to spite their own faces, but they felt that at least somebody was addressing what they wanted.
Some on here will likely laugh and ridicule what I just stated. Others will agree. I'm in that group that feels like they were forgotten, but not a chance in hell I'll ever vote for a Republican, even for dog catcher. Won the upper mid- West? Not a chance in hell with that platform we had. Everybody wanted something that was tailored just to them - except those 45-65 y/o white middle class registered Democrats. THAT is what cost HRC the election. So, unless the Democratic Party takes a deep look inside itself (and I think our new leader already has) we are dooming ourselves.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)since the bloc of voters we could reach within that group don't have needs that could only be addressed by reducing the emphasis on other voting blocs' needs) doesn't require us to pay any less attention to anybody else in the Democratic base.
We can appeal to voters by class AND address social oppression.
We just need to acknowledge that downsizing, outsourcing, wage cuts, benefit cuts and the weakening of unions are ALSO forms of oppression.
We can do that without going "one size fits all", OR without saying that historic social oppression no longer matters.
NastyRiffraff
(12,448 posts)Sanders himself said so. So did too many people who should know better. Call it what it is; it's about the white working class who whined incessantly that all those women, African Americans, LGBTs, etc. were getting all the attention and what about THEM?
According to them (and I'd add white MALE working class) they're entitled to get their way FIRST; everybody else can just wait until they're satisfied (which will be never)>
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)and that Bernie is saying we should support, that is AGAINST what women, African-Americans, and LGBTQ people want?
I haven't heard any calls for the party to be LESS antiracist, or less antisexist, or less pro-LGBTQ.
To me, connecting with working-class voters is about reducing unjust concentration of wealth at the top and returning it to ALL working-class people. To be working for justice for the victims of mass layoffs and outsourcing(many of whom are black, Latinx, women and LGBTQ) and for something
How, to your mind, is THAT whites-only?
And if that sounds whites-only to you, is there a way to frame it that would NOT sound like that?
Or, for that matter, how do we wipe out grassroots and institutional racism without addressing economic justice? Economic justice can't end those things by itself, but haven't the last thirty-six years made a pretty persuasive case that a country run entirely on market economics simply can't BE a non-racist country?
The idea is to get to justice for all.
We can't do that unless we talk about class as well as race.
NastyRiffraff
(12,448 posts)The entitlement that they have historically had. The out of date jobs (e.g. coal) that are gone forever. The idea that the (white) male is King of all He Surveys. And perhaps the most important: politicians catering to them and their perceived needs.
But Bernie Sanders said it best:
Bernie Sanders 'deeply humiliated' Democrats lost white working-class voters
I'll let that just speak for itself.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And few of us would have supported him if he did.
What I hear him saying is that working-class people of all races should not have been discarded, as they were after 1981 or so. A lot of those people were black, Latinx, women. More were LGBTQ than you might expect.
Bernie's on the Left-while he was trying to get class unity, I seriously doubt that he intended economic justice as a whites-only thing. The way I always heard it, he was saying that, as we address social oppression(which seems to be defined here as institutional and grassroots bigotry, while leaving out the fight against poverty for some reason) we need to address the way that people have been economically oppressed by the system as well-that, in doing that, you can get broad support for a just, hatred-free future because everyone who has ended up on the short end of the stick is included
Is there a way to communicated what I wrote in the first sentence of this response that would not have caused the reflexive(and historically understandable) response that you and others have?
NastyRiffraff
(12,448 posts)In fact, I don't think he is. I do think he has blinkers on about the white race; his own words show that. He's not alone; many white people, although not racist, still cling to the idea that whites should come first, everyone else after. The dismissal of so-called "identity politics" is a perfect example of that thinking. If Sanders DIDN'T mean that he felt bad that the white race was being ignored, he worded it very badly.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I have ever met. Don't assume that we all share the exact same flaws and limitations you saw in the candidate.
(I take your point as regards white people in general, and am always willing to work on it regarding myself).
How do we get from confrontation and call-outs to dialog on this? How do we get to drafting a common program?
Bernie's not going to run again...he'll be 79 in 2020.
If someone runs representing the values his candidacy represents, it's likely that that person, if she, he or they want to be president, will have learned from 2016 and be ready to present a message that doesn't read as exclusive in the way his message read.
My interest is in trying to get past the perception of "HRC people" or "Bernie people"-to get from that to the trust that needs to be built to unite us working for social AND economic justice(each of which is a program that involves a great deal of what the other program is about). This is not tied to any candidate or (for 2018)any candidates.
Are you open to considering trusting in that, at least at some later point?
m-lekktor
(3,675 posts)Self induced posting exile. Now to log back out again!
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)n/t.
OldSchoolLiberal
(23 posts)The strategy was wrong, maybe centrist people were behind it. But that doesn't mean centrism will doom the party.
KPN
(15,645 posts)Thank you taking the time to thoughtfully counter an earlier thread criticizing and labeling some of us (granted -- self-selected here) as "far-left". It strikes me that some just don't like to hear what others view as truth or at least legitimate perspective.
I really have to wonder about anyone who does not tolerate self-critique within a group, even if that critique involves some hard to accept or defend truths (whether those are reality or perceptions). Why would they do that? We can only grow and become better as a party if we are willing to learn ... and that always requires a level of introspection by all who play a role. So thanks again for speaking up and effectively but, more importantly, respectfully representing views that I obviously share.
ancianita
(36,055 posts)
B Stieg
(2,410 posts)Thank you!
Philosophies are much more embracing than ideologies.
Expecting Rain
(811 posts)and has come to the conclusion that we need to know our enemies when we see them.
Those who hope to destroy the Democratic party are not friends and they need to be resisted.
JCanete
(5,272 posts)
Justice
(7,188 posts)"It would be nice if the centrists in this party did some introspection, too."
Who is "too" referring to? I see no introspection from other camps within Dems. None from Bernie Sanders.
"The path to unity is respect, not shaming."
Not seeing respect in this OP. See only shaming.
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)PragmaticLiberal
(904 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Stop with the personal attacks already.
They diminish you.
Justice
(7,188 posts)Which result in the same back and forth.
Not helpful in restoring unity.
SaschaHM
(2,897 posts)He logs in. Sees something criticizing Bernie or the left, and just writes an OP with a few changed words under the guise of unity.
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)
NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)I think the most disturbing aspect of this is the defense and validation of third-party voters.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I simply point out that you can't stop people from doing that by shouting "don't vote third-party".
Response to Ken Burch (Reply #334)
NurseJackie This message was self-deleted by its author.
NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Last edited Tue Apr 25, 2017, 05:23 PM - Edit history (1)
They should have. It's not "defending third-party voting" just to point out that OUR party's approach to winning those people over(i.e., simply DEMANDING their votes)is not effective.
My argument was that we should have run ads in states where the Sanders campaign did well(such as Wisconsin and Michigan, and even in PA where it was close in the primaries)reminding voters there that a lot of Sanders proposals ended up in our platform and that what they had done in the primaries had made a difference.
Would you object to that?
If so, why?
There was nobody who'd vote for us in the fall who would only do so if HRC treated the Sanders campaign as illegitimate ad a total failure.
NurseJackie
(42,862 posts) Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Do you really believe that it's not possible to say people shouldn't have voted third party and, at the same time, acknowledge that the way our party tried to stop them doing so simply didn't work?
Why would you defend demanding people's votes when that doesn't GET us those votes?
What's the point of staying with what doesn't work?
NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)You know I don't defend third-party voting in presidential elections. I've given you no reason to question my honesty on that point.
All I've done is to say that simply acting as if everyone to Trump's left OWED our ticket their votes is not an attitude that wins people over.
NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)In fact, for you very next post, I need you to SHOW ME where I have said such a thing about your honesty on that point. OR... you need to admit you made a mistake and APOLOGIZE for accusing me of questioning your honesty on that point. (Now's your chance to demonstrate your honesty.)
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)(you did that in post #336).
What is your issue with me, anyway?
I don't do any harm here.
All I've is to respectfully make a case that we need to have an honest discussion about how the fall campaign went.
Why is that intolerable to you?
NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)Get real, Ken! Why would you think such a thing? Why would you leap to the worst possible conclusion about me and then make untrue public accusations... saying I'd done something, which I clearly have not done.
You've hurt my feelings. I don't deserve to be treated this way. You've made an unfounded accusation about me (I have not accused you of being dishonest) therefore I would like an apology, please.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)It's the truth.
Why do you feel that grade school-style taunting is an appropriate way to debate?
On THIS board, we're supposed to treat each other with respect, since we're on the same side.
I have disagreed with you, but I've never once belittled you as a human being.
Why do you feel entitled to do so with other people?
It's not as though this board would be better if everyone who disagreed with you vanished. There's be no reason for the board to exist if there was no debate.
NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)I'm still waiting for my apology. Actually, I think I'm owed TWO apologies from you. 1) For the first time you where you said I accused you of being dishonest (which I never did) and 2) for suggesting that I said you were "ridiculous" (which I also never did.)
I also never "belittled you as a human being" either. I think you owe me an apology for that as well. That makes THREE apologies you owe me.
You're hurting my feelings, Ken. Why do you feel entitled to say such awful things about me? Why can't you treat me with a little respect?
NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)Show some respect. Be honorable. You owe me that at least.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)To my knowledge, I've never said anything that was personally denigrating to you.
NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)To hurt my feelings. Do the decent thing and apologize.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)You laughed when I said I don't encourage third-party voting.
That's the same thing as saying I lied about that.
NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)Here's what I actually said: "I think the most disturbing aspect of this is the defense and validation of third-party voters."
You were, in fact, sticking-up-for and defending and validating those poor "misguided" third-party-voters.
Nobody said anything about you "encouraging third-party voting" ... go on... look at post 300 and read it carefully.
Your huffy and indignant reply of "334. I don't defend third-party voting." is amusing to me because NOBODY accused you of that... not then, not since, not now. But you WERE defending and sticking-up-for, and validating, and making-excuses-for, and coddling those third-party-voters.
Personally, I find that to be disturbing that anyone would want to defend and treat adult voters like special child snowflakes and give them special treatment and special consideration that they don't deserve.
So, Ken... there you have it. I said one thing. You took offense at something you imagined... something that I didn't actually say in the first place. I LOL'd at your mistake... and then you took even GREATER offense and then you repeatedly started making all sorts of wild statements about my having accused you of being a liar (which I never did).
You owe me several apologies, but I'll be willing to accept just one. You really should do the honorable thing, Ken, and admit that you misread my post and that you over-reacted based on your misunderstanding.
As a human being, I deserve that much from you. We're on the same side, aren't we? Why do you want to make false accusations against me?
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I DON'T defend third-party votes, let alone ENCOURAGE them.
All I have done is to point out that our party didn't do a good job of persuading people who voted third-party(or DIDN'T vote)to vote for our ticket instead.
Based on the results, you'd pretty much have to concede the point.
Our party's usual tactic of simply demanding that people not vote third-party, of insisting that everyone on the left simply OWES our ticket their votes, no matter what, is an approach that has failed every time it's been used.
As we saw in 1980, 2000, and this year, it doesn't WORK to just shake our fists and scream "you HAVE to vote for us!"
What would have worked was to find the way to say "here's why you SHOULD vote for us".
What would have worked was a positive approach. An approach that sent the message to the voters we needed that what they did in the primaries had made a huge difference and they should regard it as a worthwhile effort, and that this party is a place where its worth their time in the future to work for what these people want-that all their efforts were not for nothing, that in many respects they had won the argument on some issues within the party-WOULD have worked. It would also have won us at least some of the votes of people who didn't vote and even a few who voted Trump on what turned out to be the delusional belief that he would create jobs, because the Sanders policies that were adopted were very popular with voters over all.
People, especially young people new to politics, need such reminders. And it would have given floating voters, kind of people for whom "it's time for a woman to be president" was never going to be reason enough, a reason to back our ticket.
We would have won a lot more of those votes if we had run ads in states where Sanders did well reminding people that a lot of Sanders ideas ended up in the platform(it wouldn't bother you to run ads like that, would you?)
I spent a lot of the fall doing all that I could to talk people out of voting third-party. I warned them of the consequences if Trump got in. Over and over I did this. It didn't work.
NurseJackie
(42,862 posts) Cary
(11,746 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And that telling people to vote Democratic isn't the answer to everything.
Cary
(11,746 posts)Vote Democratic Ken
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I campaigned for the Democratic party all down the line this fall, as I have done for years.
I already vote Democratic.
Nothing I've posted here should give you any reason to question that.
Cary
(11,746 posts)Vote Democratic Ken.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)All I'm doing in this thread is critiquing the campaign strategy. Loyal Democrats all over the country are doing that. Are you really going to argue that anybody who says the party made mistakes in the fall is a hidden third-party type?
By that standard, you'd be accusing Harry Reid of not voting Dem.
If we change nothing(as you want)we'll never get anything above 49% ever again. We'll just stay stuck there forever.
Response to Ken Burch (Reply #393)
Post removed
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)You know perfectly well that I do.
I wouldn't lie about that.
Barack_America
(28,876 posts)Dead.
Orsino
(37,428 posts)...garnering more votes for the Dem than for almost any other presidential candidate before.
But the Republicans and the MSM were running against the Clinton myth, and against a woman. Those are separate issues from the quality of the campaign leadership.
forjusticethunders
(1,151 posts)The economic left left has a huge blind spot on "social" issues, massive, glaring, overwhelming. A lot of people, including me, feel that they're obsessed with recovering white working class industrial workers who left the party because of rising diversity. People who are more economically centrist actually have taken the vanguard in terms of fighting for the rights of minorities, which creates this kind of incoherence.
Basically a lot of minorities would take someone like Cory Booker because he fights for minority rights, even though he's more economically center, than someone like Bernie or Liz, because we feel like our issues aren't being centered enough by the economic populist left. It doesn't help that a lot of rose-touting "Socialists" on twitter are primarily dudebro white males who harass and demean women and minorities who don't agree with them.
We can talk about messaging and all that (though it seems that turnout in swing states was the problem; how much of that was voter suppression versus people not feeling inspired by HRC, keep in mind the VRA was gutted prior to this election and nobody really talked about it) but as long as leftists don't acknowledge our weakness on social and racial issues and work to fix it (and work means engage with minorities, listen to their problems and provide positive allyship), then this division will persist. Economic centrists have proven themselves much better at working with minorities, and if leftists are falling behind in this area, then it's basically hopeless. There is no revolution possible without black, brown, woman and LGBTQ liberation.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)(BTW, this thread was not about arguing that we should have had a different nominee OR posted in any attempt to minimize those failings in the Sanders campaign-that happened, it should not have happened, and lessons have been and are being learned. But I'll addressed this since you've brought it up here. For whatever its worth, I have no personal preference about who we should nominate in 2020 and am not campaigning for ANYONE in this thread).
I think most Sanders supporters DO acknowledge the validity of your critique of the campaign, out in the non-cyber discourse, and I apologize for that failing having occurred in the campaign.
We're past that campaign, though now, at least in chronology...at this stage, is it really necessary to STILL assume that social justice and economic justice are opposed causes?
It's one thing to say we need to make it clear that the anti-racist fight is centered...but is the ONLY way to do that to KEEP saying "oh no you don't!" to economic justice advocates?
In your mind, is it STILL not possible to move from call-outs towards dialog? Towards at least the possibility of giving people you disagreed with in the primaries the benefit of the doubt in the current situation? Towards at least being open to the possibility of eventually accepting them as allies or, if nothing else, as at least being teachable?
Most of us, even if this wasn't expressed online-and who knows who the online "bros" even were or are? It's likely a lot of them were actually right-wing trolls in disguise-were and are personally committed to the fight against institutional and grassroots racism, and a lot are taking a more active role. Some of us have joined groups like SURJ(in the chapter I'm in in Olympia, I'd guess that probably two-thirds of the people in the organization are Sanders primary supporters, just from the way they speak about things).
Those who want a more general appeal on class issues aren't calling on the party to say LESS about racism. And we aren't trying to get the votes of people who are anti-diversity. Instead, we're trying to get the votes of people who voted for other candidates or didn't vote because they felt neither party addressed their economic condition.
Why is there this assumption that the party can defend diversity, OR it can speak out against class exploitation, but that somehow it cannot do BOTH?
And as we call for trying to reach THAT sector of voters(the desparate, not the bigots)we JOIN everyone else in fighting back against voter suppression. In my experience
Why assume that saying more about class and greed HAS to mean saying less about race? Why assume that is has to be "either/or"?
What Bernie said about "identity politics" after the election was poorly worded and I'd have advised him not to say it if I'd been o his staff...but that's Bernie-it's not the ENTIRE economic left. And Bernie probably won't run for president again.
For the rest of us, I think we agree with you that "there is no revolution possible without black, brown, woman, and LGBTQ liberation".
La Lioness Priyanka
(53,866 posts)Don't get to call others centrists
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Tim Ryan was a congressional thing and a lot of us stayed out of that.
Don't assume that everyone who backed Sanders in the primaries is part of a hivemind.
La Lioness Priyanka
(53,866 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Or how many people who supported the candidate I supported are considered part of it.
It does sound, quite a lot of the time, as though ALL Sanders supporters are blamed for the acts of the worst.
And there are a lot of posts and threads that accuse Sanders supporters of being some sort of cult, as opposed to a legitimate movement for social and economic change, and that imply that everything any of those people posts here is part of some sort of a plot.
This is just as wrong as blaming all HRC supporters for the worst of what was said on that side(such as all the threads here that pejoratively referenced Bernie's Jewishness and used 1950's-style redbaiting rhetoric when that kind of talk is totally unacceptable on a supposedly "progressive" board. Or the all the threads that came damn close to calling Sanders supporters white supremacists.
As far as Tim Ryan goes...considering the vote he pulled in the Dem caucus compared to the number of endorsements Sanders received, it's clear that most of his supporters in the minority leadership race were HRC supporters in the primary.
La Lioness Priyanka
(53,866 posts)Who talked of care about sanders lack of faith.
False equivalence maybe your forte, but I'm not buying it.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Are not cultists...they are fair-minded small "d" democratic people who are doing nothing other that working for what they support by valid and honorable means.
This party can't recover or prosper politically if it delegitimizes and anathemizes the entire Sanders phenomenon. And we as a party need to incorporate Sanders-type positions on standing up to corporate power, defending working people of ALL identities against exploitation, and creating a political model that gives everyone a real say, to go with the progressive views we already hold on other issues.
The way forward is to combine Sanders-type economic views with our commitment(a commitment we need to further strengthen)to fight grassroots and institutional bigotry and oppression.
To achieve and preserve social justice, we must achieve economic justice as well. To achieve and preserve economic justice, we must achieve and preserve social justice. They are distinct, yet related.
We must not divide any longer into Sanders people OR HRC/Obama people. It's time to just be people working together.
lovemydogs
(575 posts)You simply cannot win by saying I'm not Trump.
When people are not able to live paycheck to paycheck, they don't want that the other side is evil but, what you can do to make life better
You have to talk to people and present them with your ideas.
How it is better.
I remember when Obama ran it was about hope and aspiration. It was about what we CAN do.
It was positive and joyful and that is why people loved him.
Bernie talked about what is wrong and what can be done to make life better.
Cary
(11,746 posts)No good will ever come from radicals.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)And we can't get their votes by shaking our fists at them and demanding them.
Your way doesn't work.
And I say that as a person who gladly votes Democratic.
pecosbob
(7,538 posts)'Republicans control the House, the Senate, two-thirds of governor's chairs. And in the last eight years, they have picked up 900 legislative seats. Clearly, the Democratic Party has got to change.' - not my words, but good ones.
BainsBane
(53,032 posts)but that's not going to happen because they aren't interested in listening to anyone but themselves.
'
