If the Democratic Party went Populist would Centrists Flee?

[GaryCnf]

104. Incorrect

The party dogma that elections are won in the middle is not true and never has been. Many Democrats claim that it was Bill Clinton's attention to moderate voters which brought us victory in 1992. It was not. In fact, it was a right wing third party candidate siphoning off GOP voters.

In 1992, Perot funneled off:

12% of the GOP vote in Louisiana
13% of the GOP vote in Georgia
10% of the GOP vote in Tennessee
21% of the GOP vote in Missouri
13% of the GOP vote in Kentucky
15% of the GOP vote in West Virginia
18% of the GOP vote in Iowa
the GOP vote in Minnesota
21% of the GOP vote in Wisconsin
19% of the GOP vote in Michigan
20% of the GOP vote in Ohio

(Aside: Curiously, Jill Stein's 2% takes the blame for our 2016 loss - as opposed to the abject failure of the "play to the middle" strategy to EVER pull majorities in key battleground states - whereas Perot's 1000% better performance is overlooked in the haste to proclaim the political "brilliance" of the 1992 campaign.)

The FACT is that Bill Clinton won ONLY because the GOP could not keep Ross Perot in the fold. Our refusal to admit that fact and instead continue the "play to the middle" strategy has put us in the pit we are in now.

I am glad that Perot gave us those elections, BUT to credit a campaign that would have failed if not for Perot is simply denial.

It is especially tragic this time. We had a brilliant platform and an eminently credible candidate. Unfortunately, our national campaign continued the to follow "play to the middle" playbook. Deny it all you want, but here are the campaign's ads:

http://www.p2016.org/adsg/adsgeneral.html

Count the number of ads standing up for Michael Brown, or even Black Lives Matter. Count the ads standing up for the millions of undocumented workers who have not reached the kind of heights that makes them palatable to middle of the road voters. Count the ads saying something that has even the slightest chance of offending those middle of the road voters that party leaders have incorrectly deemed "essential" to victory since 1992.

You won't find many.

We are the party of the oppressed. We have a platform which vows to fight for the oppressed. What's more, the oppressed far outnumber the privileged. Obama knew it and ran on it and as a result won in states where we had to win AND won a MAJORTITY, not just a plurality, of the popular vote.

Our campaigns and our candidates need to reflect it.

ONE OTHER small thing. The DLC was not s "center-left" group. Executing (and torturing - search for images of the guard-performed cut down procedure they did on him) the pathetically insane Ricky Rector, passing the 1992 Crime Bill, and passing Welfare reform were not "left" at all, or even "center." They were offerings to the hard right.