It would be nice if the far left, for once, did some introspection.

[Worktodo]

382. Politics is broken

Only motivated people vote, and most people are motivated more by what they hate than what they want. The "anti-" party is more motivated. Right now the Democrats (and everybody on the left) is the anti-Trump party.

With that in mind, let's look at the GOP. This party's platform continues to be engineered around wedge issues and dislike. Anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, anti-tax, anti-government, anti-LGBT, etc. This isn't an accident, it's intentional, and it works. Look at GWB versus Kerry in 2004 which they tried to frame as a referendum on marriage equality.

So in those terms I think the political spectrum is squashed into "the party of devisive issues" and "everybody else".

Long term I have to wonder, is it all a matter of framing? Is it just a matter of being "against climate change" and "against poisioning people" versus "pro-environment"?

I do think Democrats need to wake up to the Occupy Wall Street crowd. I'm against corruption in our financial system (2008 anyone?) and Obama's kid gloves with Wall Street was a disappointment. That issue was a major motivating factor for Bernie voters.

So it's not really "left" or "right" IMHO-- that has itself become a RW tool where "conservative" only means "anti-liberal" (check out Medicare Part D which Republicans passed which was definitely not conservative, or Regan and Bush's deficits.)

Going forward "the Left" just needs to reframe the debate and figure out what we don't like (and a lot of people don't like Trump but we need to go beyond just that.) Second we need to run races and not let seats go uncontested. If there's a progressive party that wants to win seats there are plenty of races to run that are winnable.

Final note- the Green Party really nerf'd itself with Stein. I'm sorry but the whole "Dinner with Putin" damaged the reputation of that whole party in a way that needs to be acknowledged before it can be repaired.