Those taking a strict "no Dem must be primaried" position may have a point...

[Ken Burch]

166. I acknowledge that Dems have done well in those areas.

I've never claimed Pelosi and Co. were failures or anything. I'm not attacking those people for God's sakes.

And I'm glad we won the state senate seat in Wisconsin-although I don't know why you're sure the candidate was less progressive or why you'd think the candidate being less progressive, if they actually were, made a difference.

Creating the big tent doesn't have to mean moving back to 1990's style DLC conservatism, some of which was simply immoral(we can't EVER again support things like expanding the death penalty or the inherent racism of mass incarceration), it means speaking to people's real needs. It means sounding like we, as a party, care about people with nothing as much as it does about people who write us big checks.

Almost all ordinary Dems like you and I want progressive change, and support for T___p's policies, almost all of them, has collapsed, so why assume we need to run a campaign that makes it sounds like we're apologizing for being different than the R's? That's what a centrist campaign means-agreeing never to stand for anything again, because to be a centrist means having no strong convictions. It means not caring about poverty or racism, because you can't care about those things and, at the same time, agree that government shouldn't do much of anything about them or that government should treat the poor as if their condition is largely THEIR fault.

We're not going to win by being the party that says "don't worry, we'll pretty much keep things the same and only make tiny changes around the edges". The only reason people change their votes is if they actually want different things.

The country didn't take a hard right in '16, btw. Trump's vote share was lower than Romney's. The country stayed largely where it was and the vote share for our ticket fell a bit. I'd say the big reason that vote fell was the ambiguous language in the platform about TPP-leaving room for TPP(a deal almost all working-class people of all races oppose, and a deal the administration was ONLY pushing because it had a pointless fixation with "containing China&quot created distrust among those whose support was desperately needed. If Hillary had just stayed with her position in the primary on that, we'd have left Philly with unity. Instead, the decision was made

And my point about the issues in '16 is that those issues weren't the cause of our defeat because the ads we ran didn't mention them, instead wasting time on trying to personally discredit T___p when we knew from the GOP primaries that going after him on character never ever works.

It's refighting the primaries, btw, to blame Bernie's candidacy for the general election result. I agree that he spoke bluntly and that some of his supporters could have been more mature in what they said, but it would have been intolerable to have no candidates in the race who addressed economic justice issues, class, and corporate power at all. We couldn't just have nothing reflecting Occupy values and the growing block of people who want an alternative to the post-Reagan economic consensus at all, nothing that spoke to poverty(Hillary didn't address poverty as anything but as a consequence of racism, and while that's part of it with SOME poor people, that isn't the totality of the problem).

'16 WAS a movement. Something massive was happening. The election was close largely because the party disowned the movement and treated those in that movement as though they were failures and what they'd done was nothing. What harm would have come of acknowledging, during the general election campaign, that what the Sanders people had done was positive, that it had made a difference, and that it would be part of what a Hillary presidency would be like? Why was it so important to treat people in that like they had failed and should know their place? We NEEDED buy-in from them, and we could have brought them to the polls far more easily by acknowledging the good in what they did than we were ever going to do by effectively dousing them with cold water. What they were about was positive and was and is widely supported. If it wasn't, Bernie wouldn't still be drawing huge crowds everywhere and support for what he talked about wouldn't be INCREASING among the groups who voted against him due to his poor communications on some issues.

Hillary had nothing to gain from spending the whole time after Philly acting as though the Sanders phenomenon had never happened.

As a party, we must be pragmatic at times, but being pragmatic doesn't have to mean telling people to cease looking for horizons until someone from above TELLS them it's ok to do so. it doesn't have to mean saying "shut up, this is all we can do and you have to give up even trying for more". It's possible to be careful AND transformational at the same time.

Also, I don't personally control the nomination process in any state, so why are you so concerned with what I have to say? I'm not capable of personally causing any of the things you are afraid of. Nobody's going to win or lose a nomination for senator or governor because of anything I post here. Our chances of winning do not hinge on me going away.

And I'm working for victory as much as you are, ok?

We're on the same side.