So I have no problem with progressives candidates proving themselves in primaries in a level playing field. However for me politics is primarily about policies, and the policies I am in favor of are progressive. Its complete irrelevant to me if the Dems win by fielding a bunch of Republicans in Dem clothing. As far as I am concerned they are a bigger enemy than the Republicans because the eliminate the chance of a real choice. If the Dems wont be Dems who will be?
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As things stand now, your option is to vote Republican if there guys offend you so. Stopping Trump has to be priority one right now. We have a two part system. Until that changes, or the reps return to sanity, the D will be the deciding factor for me. And no, I do not believe staying home is an option.
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Did you take into account
a) Her opponent was a halfwit reality TV star who stuck his foot in his mouth throughout the campaign?
b) Dems outspent Republicans by about $1bn
When you say she stood a chance, what you mean is she was wildly popular in California. Im not surprised about that. In fact, I think I can find 20 candidates who would all lose a general election but be wildly popular in California, without even thinking.
I am sorry, but to say that the candidate who won the popular vote by 3m votes “didn’t stand a chance” and then double down by apparently implying that the votes from our most populous state should be discounted is nonsensical. She lost, by a quirk of population distribution and our bizarre electoral college system. Just like Gore did. And because a fair number of Bernie voters stayed home. There is a lesson for future elections here, but not the one I think you are drawing. America is generally a centrist nation, tending to oscillate a bit left or right. The Tea Party dragged the reps too far right for most. I do not believe the answer is to pull our party equally far left.
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Thanks for the graphic. That was both enlightening and surprising (at least to a non-American like me).
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It is Heritage Foundation, so confirm with other sources if possible. It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing they’d bother to overtly lie about, though.
The paper cited by DR showed a slight negative correlation with income rather than the positive correlation implied by the Heritage figure. Two possible reasons occur to me to explain the discrepancy:
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The Heritage figures stop at the upper middle class, whereas the other paper did not. Low recruitment amongst the wealthy would skew the correlation negatively.
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The Heritage figure is from 2006-2007 data. The other paper was published in 2008, but based on data from 2000 and earlier. I would not be surprised to learn that there was a shift in US military demographics post-9/11.
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Roger That!
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And I will triple down by saying your English comprehension could be improved.
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She stood against Donald Trump. I think Coco the Clown could have beaten Donald Trump. I suspect Saddam Hussein might have beat him, and he wasn’t that popular when he was alive.
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She spent $1.6bn, 1bn more than Trump. And yet the dogs wouldn’t eat the dog food.
Except in California. Fine.
I can only agree with you. If only the founding fathers had been clear about this whole voting system, electoral college thing. How could anyone have known there was an electoral college!? Perhaps if she had $1.7bn the extra 100mn could have gone to some very expensive DCCC consultants who could have explained it to her and Robbie Mook.
You know, if she had won every single vote in California, she would still have lost, AND BY EXACTLY THE SAME MARGIN OF ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTES. However you could say that she won the popular vote by 20mn! Yay!
Feel free to change the rules next time. And next time try and do something about the Gerrymandering. And btw, if the DCCC was interested in winning they would run voter registration campaigns all the time.
Fair number of Bernie voters stayed home? Course they did - cos it turns out the black card isnt transferable. And cos she sucked as a candidate.
Yeah, there is a lesson here. That you f*ck over your base for decades and they may not turn out for your “centrist candidates” even when the alternative is DONALD TRUMP. The white working class turned out for Obama but they wouldn’t turn out for some rich white woman who called them “deplorable”.
What the hell would you need to see to make you draw a different conclusion to the one you find most convenient and comforting?
Your useless candidate lost to DONALD TRUMP! If you cant figure out where the country is after that then it dont matter what I say to you. But just to keep the message simple enough for Centrist Dems to understand - Medicare for all or I aint voting for ya.
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We’re a by electoral vote country right now. Bernie had a better
electoral map and would’ve sweeped the presidency. Just because he
failed the liberal purism test, it doesn’t mean anything. Bernie
was the better candidate as was obvious because Trump literally
hijacked his platform and repeated alot of the stuff Bernie said
during the campaign because Hillary ran an outdated, out of touch
campaign.
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Another perspective, considering Clinton’s voting record had something like 96% in common with Bernie Sanders’, is that you ate up and got warped by about 30 years of anti-Clinton GOP propaganda, along with a whole lot of other folks.
Listen, I was very pro-Bernie in the primaries. And Hillary Clinton is not my ideal candidate, at all. But the level of anti-Clinton vitriol, informed almost entirely due to brainwashing over a generation by the GOP – specifically designed so what happened in '16 would happen, when it came her time up to bat – is insane to me.
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I have specific and rational criticisms for Clinton as a candidate. However there is a case for party discipline in many situations. The case for party discipline falls down when one section of a party loses faith in the other elements to deliver key elements of the platform - SUCH AS MEDICARE FOR ALL. I don’t believe anymore that the right wing of the Democratic parties goals are consistent with my goals. So I will withdraw my support in the case of some candidates. In the last election’s case my support was not withdrawn from the right wing of the party’s candidate. However it was obvious to anyone who isnt brain dead she was a weak candidate. You might as well tell me that no one knew there were not WMD in Iraq. It simply isn’t credible and I cant help you support your self-deception. If she was even close to her being a reasonable candidate she would have come close given the spend and given the opponent. This is a Leonard Cohen type “Everybody knows”.
My price for support is MEDICARE FOR ALL. If you dont like it thats fine - craft a manifesto which appeals to centrist Republicans and people like me will try and support our candidates in the primaries. But bear in mind I might withdraw my support in the generals if your candidate sucks from my perspective. Thats how quid pro quo works.
I think the big problem is that centrist Dems are “liberals” in terms of economics. Income and wealth inequalities are no so stark that it is obvious that the Obama style economic policies cannot be tolerated anymore by ordinary Americans. The interests of ordinary people cannot be represented by politicians who take substantial corporate money, because that money is diametrically opposed to policies which would improve the welfare of ordinary Americans. That is one of several specific criticisms I have of the last candidate. Others would include; she has been successfully vilified by the right so was obviously less likely to win; she presents poorly; she is from a “political family” (the very notion of which I think unattractive) and considered an establishment candidate in a period when the public was clearly against establishment candidate. For me her foreign policy was completely unacceptable - the Libyan intervention was particularly repulsive to me but I do unhappily concede that this is not how most Americans felt. I don’t think they gave a shit about what she had done there.
This battle for the heart of the Americans Left leaning party is by far the most important battle going on today. Cos it determines what choices ordinary people really have. In this environment, ordinary people cannot should not any policy mix that does not include MEDICARE FOR ALL cos there are fewer jobs with benefits, the cost of health care keeps rising and incomes have stagnated.
Just in case I had left any ambiguity - MEDICARE FOR ALL is the policy I care about most of all. I dont think I am alone.
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Medicare for all, you say? You mean what Hillary’s main issue was during most of her husband’s time in office?
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The current topic isn’t “Medicare for All” during the Clinton years. It’s “Medicare for All” today.
It’s strikes me she’s probably more sympathetic to it than she’s willing to politick to.
OK, so let’s move to Our Revolution, who has managed to find 7 out of 438 U.S. House candidates worthy of their endorsement, a whole 1.5% of seats up for election in 2018! Man, that Our Revolution caucus is going to be a force to be reckoned with in the House, should Democrats do the actual work of winning a couple hundred other elections to provide them someone to caucus with.
Trying to make the DCCC the goat of this election is just sad performative leftism.
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Gosh, why don’t progressives tend to support the DNC elite?
Boom. Purging the party administration of all progressives also didn’t help, much less getting caught red-handed jiggering the election for Hillary.
News flash: NO ONE owes any political party their vote. That’s simply not how it works. Treating a sizable portion of your base like crap has definite costs; deal with it and stop whining, if that’s how you want to play the game.
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The politics I’m in favor are progressive also. That also includes maintaining women’s right to choose, the right of trans people to serve in the military and live their lives in other areas free of prejudice, better drug policy, better prison rehabilitation policy, better public education policy, better access for the poor and middle class to health care, and foreign policy that is more based on reality. Among many other things.
So while I think we are in agreement about many things, I do want to emphasize again that the different between parties clearly matters.
Even if, in a worst-case scenario, a “Repub in Dem clothing” gets elected, that’s still better than a Republican because the Democrat has to make deals with other Democrats. And the overall Democratic party is much more in line with progressive goals than the Republicans.
Evangelicals held their nose and voted for Trump - and moved their policy goals forward. I think their policies are vile, but their strategy worked for them and right away - they successfully installed another one of theirs on the SCOTUS. After the previous ones during the GWB administration.
Strategy matters.
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I don’t think I’ve bumped into this site before, but I like that they’re carefully skeptical.
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What on earth qualifies as a “significant” policy to you? Supply side tax cuts? LBGT rights? Abortion rights? Civil rights? Escalating a nuclear arms race with an adversary? Has any current Democrat ever suggesting doing something as blatantly illegal as Iran-Contra? Has any current Democrat proposed a constitutional amendment protecting school prayer? This is glib bullshit, my dude.
I mean, it’s just so goddamn ridiculous, it’s almost too tempting to just run it all down: union busting, cutting the EPA, naming Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court, the list goes on and on. The idea that any of that puts him within the Democratic party, or even approaching it’s right flank is a garbage take, my bro.
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The place to test that notion would be the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership 1.0, which the Reagan admin used for their policy points. (That was before the Heritage Foundation raised anchor and set sail for the far-right edge of the world.)
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