So, does Rahm's victory in Chicago tell us anything?

[jeff47]

101. And when the results are bad whomever wins?

There's a large generational divide. Your generation is large enough to receive political attention. Mine is not. As a result, your options were "get some of what you want" and "get hurt". Our options were "get hurt" or "get hurt less". There was no positive result.

That's changing as older Democrats inevitably "leave the voting pool". The party needs "the kids" now. But hurting the kids for 30 years isn't going to be undone by saying "You only count when you show up!". We showed up. We quickly learned we didn't count either way due to the results we got.

For example, the ACA. It's a good change overall. But Millennials still feel the immortality of youth, and GenX isn't old enough to be seeing doctors all the time. And it happened after many years of slashing Medicaid in order to pay for tax cuts, especially in states that now refuse to expand Medicaid.

Compare that to the other major 2009-2010 legislative work, the stimulus bill. Stimulus that would have directly helped Millennials and GenX was gutted and replaced with tax cuts. Yes, Republicans demanded it, but Democrats labored for decades to help create the beltway environment where tax cuts were the only way to get it passed. And a stimulus bill that was actually large enough was never politically possible because of the environment we created. Our party still doesn't forcefully attack trickle-down, for example. We've got poster children in Kansas or Wisconsin versus Minnesota, but you'll only see that discussed on places like DU.

You can't just say "your vote matters now". There is a history to overcome. We need politicians who do better, in order to overcome that past pain.