General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Hillary Throws Shade at Bernie: 'Fundamentally Wrong' About Democratic Party [View all]PatrickforO
(14,603 posts)local and statewide Democratic politics.
She still votes Democratic, and like all of us voted for Clinton. I don't know how she voted in the primary.
One thing she does say, though, is the Democratic party 'eats its children.'
By that, she seems to mean that the party 'machine' often ignores the base. She points out numerous instances at the local level over decades when the egos of powerful local Democrats prevented them from getting behind the candidates who had the popular support.
During 2016, when we all began arguing about which was more important, social or economic justice, it seemed to me to be a reflection of that. I don't really want to refight the primary because it caused a lot of pain to good people on both sides.
The irony is we won, but the electoral college, which was put in place to prevent an unqualified demagogue from entering power, betrayed our nation and voted Trump in, in spite of the fact Clinton had 2.9 million more votes.
National Popular Vote, people. http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/ Let's get rid of the electoral college, shall we?
And to the people who say, 'well, winning the popular vote doesn't mean anything when both candidates campaigned around electoral votes," I say bullshit. Clinton got more votes. Clinton should be in the White House.
A last word: Social justice is damned important. But Independent voters outnumber either Dem or Repub, and they care about kitchen table issues. That's our problem. We can't control ourselves because we are made up of so many different groups who legitimately want different things, our campaign message turns off the independents and they vote for shitheaps like Trump.
So what do most people worry about:
1. Getting laid off.
2. Losing health care, and what a weight off your back if you kept it even if you lost your job (Medicare for all - polls at 54% favorable).
3. Social Security (especially when you get 45 or older and you've paid in full boat for years and years).
4. Child care costs.
5. Quality of schools.
6. And, like the thermostat setting, you don't notice until it's off - good roads, clean air and clean water.
We have to convince people to vote for our candidates, and to do this, these issues are what we need to focus on in general elections.
We also need to be focusing right now with single minded intensity on the treasonous acts committed by God knows how many Republicans that put the orange shit bag in the White House. Because it isn't OK that Russians hacked into voter rolls in at least 38 states. We should be screaming about that. I mean screaming. I write both US Senators and my US representative weekly about Trump and his utter lack of qualifications.
We should also be screaming about the fifth column effort by Charles Koch, the Mercers and other billionaire radical libertarian freaks to take away our democracy, because we're being attacked on a thousand fronts, and we need to lift the rock and expose the radical libertarian/fascist maggots squirming underneath.
Lastly, we need to have our state legislators and governors on speed dial and fight voter suppression measures whenever and wherever they rise. We need to be screaming about that.
And we are. I know.
I just don't see how the sentiments being expressed in this post, including perhaps the ones I've just expressed, are helping to bring us together. Because we are not together. We are too fragmented to be effective in fighting this Koch/ALEC/Cato Institute madness. I'm afraid we'll lose what little we have left of democracy if we don't get our shit together.