No, it worked for Republicans because they got them angry at the other party. Democrats are crippling themselves by advocating a war within itself and just blaming each other. A cold hard analysis of why they failed and solutions to fix it are needed. Tearing the party apart is not.
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DNC staffer berates Donna Brazile for helping elect Donald Trump
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No, it worked for Republicans because they got them angry at the other party. Democrats are crippling themselves by advocating a war within itself and just blaming each other. A cold hard analysis of why they failed and solutions to fix it are needed. Tearing the party apart is not.
Yeah, so I voted for Hillary first off. I'm talking about the general american electorate here. So chill the fuck out and read what I've been saying in these posts. The Dems need to have someone who can rally the masses who aren't educated or particularly keen on politics like this board is.
The Tea Party started by ousting establishment republicans. Early on, Tea Partiers were a real threat to republicans. A liberal populist movement would only energize democrats and push people to vote.
But first, we have to get rid of those shortsighted elites who fucked up royally.
The moderates had their fucking chance. We don't have any more time, it's time for progressives to take full control of the DNC and put it back on the path it was on before Bill Clinton showed up.
Enough centrist BS. It's clear that the GOP doesn't care about compromise and won't ever. The southern strategy has poisoned the well and now we must adapt to a political landscape where we're on the bottom and the guys at the top won't give us the time of day.
As much as I often loathe Bill Clinton, you do realize he was a "third way" Democrat because the country of the 1990s had rejected progressivism, right? We had lost two elections back to back, and the country went to the right. The nation just had Reagan's third term, barely ten years outside a President who was overwhelmingly elected in even liberal states. Running a hard left candidate in 1992 would have been undeniably stupid. The country was not going to elect a progressive in that election, and we shouldn't be naive about that.
Clinton running to the center got him elected, and got some decent Democratic policies. At the expense of some terrible policies, but nothing gets done if the person doesn't get elected. You are right that we held on to centrism for too long, and it allowed the Democratic Party to basically have no foundation. Our strategy has to change, but we have to start first and foremost at economic issues. A lot of Baby Boomers and rural voters are not going to come our way on social issues until there is a generational shift.
The Tea Party still came out to vote for Republicans, even the ones they didn't like, whereas the problem with the progressive Democrats is that they don't. That's what I'm afraid of right now.
Exactly. What has always been a great part of the Democrat Party is its a coalition of people who are not all in lockstep but they have a general purpose that they agree upon. There is a reason why the Democratic Party has been known for ages as the party of the working class.
This Election we literally had a Candidate who could not even bring themselves to the area for even an hour or two across the entire election. It really isn't rocket science. You tailor your message to the region you are visiting and of course actually visit.
Yes, piss off middle America and piss away the rest of your electorate. Great idea.
Right. Going hard left across the board, even today, is going to win n.o.t.h.i.n.g.
But the approach of the party over the last 6 years, other than the election and re-election of Obama, has been total and utter trash.
We need to take this one day at a time to shore up voters for the coming election today. We must get voters excited about their candidates no matter who they are or what they stand for. We have to win first before we discuss anything else.
lastflowers
Banned
'i've learned nothing'
Discotheque
Banned
Lmao it really does. A lot of this is conjecture though. We have no firsthand account or evidence
Bless up to zach though. DNC needs an overhaul and they absolutely backed the wrong candidate. I don't know if Bernie would have won but somebody was needed that could get voters passionate to go the polls. Turnout was the problem on the dem end.
The great thing is you don't actually have to do that. Obama certainly didn't.
What you do have to do is build these coalitions of support from the jump. Before the "go" is ever even uttered.
The problem is after Obama's reelection the DNC already had its heir apparent. There was no need to cultivate a new crop and prepare for the future. There should have been 8 years of developing the post-Obama Democratic Party
How did I say that we should piss off middle America? I'm saying we need to show them how the Dems can help them. We need to shift the DNC's economic policy to one that they will benefit from and help the people who will lose their jobs due to automation by retraining them and improving social safety nets.
We need someone with Bernie's appeal but that's better at running campaigns. We need a new DNC chair, we need to nominate more candidates that will get people to actually show up to the booth on election day. We need to appeal to the rust belt and the economic downtrodden.
No, he doesn't. His point was perfectly articulated and it took guts to put it out there.
It's time for the collective rehabilitation of the party at large. The opposition won't change and they're about to go instinct for it. If the DNC is the party of progress, this next term is going to challenge them to prove it.
Isaac Otherworld
Member
Thanks to Republicans letting the Tea Party grab them by the reins of the party they now control:
A Super Majority of state governmors
A Super Majority of state legislatures.
The House of Representatives.
The Senate.
The Supreme Court.
The Presidency.
What kind of political party would want any of that though, am I right?
The Tea Party is terrible because they're an asto-turf white nationalist reactionary group. They're not terrible for being loud, demanding towards their party, uncompromising, and aggressive. That's why they've won literally everything while the establishment Democrats have lost literally everything. Aside from a few state strongholds the Democrats have nothing left.
You don't win against that by being a mealy mouth loser who is scared of their own shadow and feel guilty about being a liberal. You win by being loud, demanding, uncompromising, and aggressive and doing it better than the other guy.
The Democratic party has been sick for a long time. Metaphorically, 2016 is the Democratic party falling to the floor unconscious and being taken to the hospital. I'm the doctor telling you what happened.
I need to make this as clear as possible. There's almost no way for things to get worse for the Dems. We've been playing the Clinton Triangulation play book since Bill became president. The Democratic Party is supposed to be a party for the common person. It's supposed to be for worker's rights. It's supposed to stick up to big business and advance the power and agenda of unions. It's supposed to fight to do everything it can to help poor people have a comfortable living while helping them grow to be more successful. And yes it's supposed to be about civil rights, racial rights, women's rights, and LGBT rights. You can be all of these things.
But we can't be all of these things when the party has aligned itself with big business against workers and the common person. Bill Clinton attached the party to Wall Street and large corporations. And together the party worked gleefully with them, obliterating important social safety net programs like Welfare. They slashed regulations across all industries, but particularly the financial sector. They let themselves become dependent on donor money from corporations and millionaires and billionaires to run their campaigns. They abandoned unions and workers, letting republicans pass laws destroying them and worker rights.
We've been trying it your way, the Hillary Clinton way, for twenty years now. We've watched the party reject and marginalize it's progressive wing of the party. We've watched as the party completely align it's agenda with the agenda of multinational corporations, even though corporations' interests are always aligned against 99%. We watched as Hillary Clinton reaped the rewards of her strategy and got a billion dollars in fundraising from those interests for his presidential campaign.
And it broke the democratic party. I don't know what else I can say to you to convince you that the Clinton strategy doesn't work. The Democratic party is in the worse state it's ever been. It's even worse shape than after Reagan. It'd be one thing if the roles were reverse from 2012 and the Dems held congress but we lost the presidency. Federal. State. Local. We've gradually lost everything quietly.
And now there is literally nothing left. There's nothing else to lose. I don't know how louder a wake up call can possibly get.
curiouscharles
Member
my hero.
Then why are we even discussing this? May as well revert back to Puritan family values and hang the minorities from the trees because if those numbers are right, America is FUBAR anyway
You know what's totally ironic? Trump, a celebrity, ran to become a politician. The Democrats ran almost purely to be celebrities(omg first woman pres, yaaayy).
That's a huge generalization, but with the type of money these people have and what their secretive goals are it's pretty clear they were concerned with celebrity status to some extent. All this "glass ceiling" theatrical bullshit. Planning fireworks for Clinton's win.... ugh
That's a huge generalization, but with the type of money these people have and what their secretive goals are it's pretty clear they were concerned with celebrity status to some extent. All this "glass ceiling" theatrical bullshit. Planning fireworks for Clinton's win.... ugh
DangerMouse
Member
Well said.
Isaac Otherworld
Member
Read my post just above yours. There is literally nothing left for the democrats to lose electorally.
That is a dream that's not going to happen because there's no money in it. The Tea Party was funded by the Koch Brothers and other special interest groups. The Green Tea Party would be funded by...
That and I want the Presidency back in four years, not eight. I want the Senate back in two years.
TAJ
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
She was damaged goods. Satan himself could have run against her and a significant number of people would have said "Well, at least he's not Hillary.".
I will try another angle:
It's not about polices, it's about aliances.
People feel they lost their government to the corporations.
You want to be centrist? Be centrist.
You want to talk about racism or sexism? Go ahead.
You know what you don't do as facebook becomes more important than TV? Accept donations from the rich powerful evil who is now drowning in baths of champaign while the rest of us are eating shit.
This is the party of "protect us from the rich evil bastards"; Michael Moore is totally correct americans, y'all should go there and get your party back.
You lose, you lose for the right reasons. Losing for fighting racism and sexism is a good reason to lose and I think people are missing the point if they are telling you not to do it. Tailor messages to specific audiences is fine and all, but don't give up your soul on social issues because part of the problem is that you already gave up your soul on the economic ones.
Right now, your bastion of resistance of "the cities" is 100% due to social issues. You give up that, you might as give up politics. But you lost the rural vote because you gave up economic issues and you gave up economic issues because your party is corrupt and they don't really for realsies want to tackle the rich because they are the rich.
Not standing up to bigotry or being shush about it as in to not offend the racists is losing. You know that bcause you already don't stand up to the rich and are shush about it as in to not offend the billionaires who shit on our head.
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I'm from a country who just recently impeached our first ever female president from an unseemingly unstoppable left wing party who could do no wrong. Now that party is seriously considering changing its name because it became symnonimous with corruption. Know why? Because it was corrupt. I voted for the motherfucker who got impeached and I saw my country delivered in the hands of everything I hate, but I can't close my eyes to this fact: the woman was corrupt and her party was in power due to slicing and dicing the government to every interest group that came until the country got into a recession, had nothing to give anymore, then they spit her out.
Your party is corrupt. It accepts money in exchange for police. When you can't give them out anymore, they will just throw you out and start bribing the person who can.
The "tea party from the left" idea is an excellent one, imo. Be centrist, be whatever, it's not about becoming communists or soft-pedalling around racism or human rights; it's about when a very rich bastard comes to your politician and say "hey, I will give you lots of this money if you scratch my back", you fucking shoot him in the face.
The problem isn't being a centrist who has to assure people "look, I'm not a crazy hippie communist" because you are probably not a crazy communist, right? Be sensible in your police, the problem is not there. The problem is filling your pockets with dirty money.
"But the right do it!" well, the world in unfair in their favor.
It's not about polices, it's about aliances.
People feel they lost their government to the corporations.
You want to be centrist? Be centrist.
You want to talk about racism or sexism? Go ahead.
You know what you don't do as facebook becomes more important than TV? Accept donations from the rich powerful evil who is now drowning in baths of champaign while the rest of us are eating shit.
This is the party of "protect us from the rich evil bastards"; Michael Moore is totally correct americans, y'all should go there and get your party back.
You lose, you lose for the right reasons. Losing for fighting racism and sexism is a good reason to lose and I think people are missing the point if they are telling you not to do it. Tailor messages to specific audiences is fine and all, but don't give up your soul on social issues because part of the problem is that you already gave up your soul on the economic ones.
Right now, your bastion of resistance of "the cities" is 100% due to social issues. You give up that, you might as give up politics. But you lost the rural vote because you gave up economic issues and you gave up economic issues because your party is corrupt and they don't really for realsies want to tackle the rich because they are the rich.
Not standing up to bigotry or being shush about it as in to not offend the racists is losing. You know that bcause you already don't stand up to the rich and are shush about it as in to not offend the billionaires who shit on our head.
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I'm from a country who just recently impeached our first ever female president from an unseemingly unstoppable left wing party who could do no wrong. Now that party is seriously considering changing its name because it became symnonimous with corruption. Know why? Because it was corrupt. I voted for the motherfucker who got impeached and I saw my country delivered in the hands of everything I hate, but I can't close my eyes to this fact: the woman was corrupt and her party was in power due to slicing and dicing the government to every interest group that came until the country got into a recession, had nothing to give anymore, then they spit her out.
Your party is corrupt. It accepts money in exchange for police. When you can't give them out anymore, they will just throw you out and start bribing the person who can.
The "tea party from the left" idea is an excellent one, imo. Be centrist, be whatever, it's not about becoming communists or soft-pedalling around racism or human rights; it's about when a very rich bastard comes to your politician and say "hey, I will give you lots of this money if you scratch my back", you fucking shoot him in the face.
The problem isn't being a centrist who has to assure people "look, I'm not a crazy hippie communist" because you are probably not a crazy communist, right? Be sensible in your police, the problem is not there. The problem is filling your pockets with dirty money.
"But the right do it!" well, the world in unfair in their favor.
Isaac Otherworld
Member
Bernie Sanders raised more money than Hillary Clinton by not going to the big donors during the primary from just small donations! He never bothered to spend 50% of his time on the job fundraising which is the average for congressmen! He proved you can do it and be competitive in a presidential election! Heck, he proved that dollar for dollar it's a better way to do it.
Guess what? If we do things your way, the Hillary way, then we can all look forward to the presidency and senate back never.
Hillary Clinton got all the corporate and donor money in the world this election. She raised something close to a billion dollars for her general election campaign. Look at all the good it did.
The DNC is to the right on the issues that cost them the election. They elected a candidate who personifies big business, global economics, and interventionist foreign policy. They offered no solutions to the growing wage gap, no solutions to the increasing disparity and influence of business interests in politics, and no solutions for the diminishing role of workers and unions. They are R-lite in almost all scenarios. They do not offer, nor believe in, progressive policies outside of social issues. They will never inspire people with their platform alone.
The left of the DNC is very, very weak, and it alienates voters.
A Link to the Past
Banned
I hope Democrats protest the DNC as hard as on Trump. We can't afford to let them think that they can double-down.
Dash_Riprock
Member
Is gonna happen. Best anyone can do is make sure its run by people who aren't insane like the Tea Party.
First off, my way is whatever way it will take to win. That apparently is not the Clinton way.
Anyways, a loose donor base without a central organization in the middle of it does not a political movement make. We saw it with the Occupy Movement. You even kind of see it with the Black Lives Matter movement.
That main organization definately does not have to be the DNC, especially if they don't get their heads out of their butts. But hundreds of disparate politicians fighting against disparate causes with no organization and no path to victory... Means they will lose.
Just like Sanders did!
Officerrob
Banned
The Tea Party was grass roots yet well funded, and started taking over the Republican party by winning local elections and congressional seats. Thinking you are going to go all Tea Party by running a fringe left Presidential candidate is a joke
We don't need to go full Tea Party for that to happen. Bernie Sanders and Elizaeth Warren are more or less the future of the party right now as is, if we find a young version of Bernie we can take everything back. Trump might motivate people to get out for the midterms, and one inspiring figure can destroy Trump or anyone else the GOP props up.
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
The lesson here is to go more progressive, not less. And do it with authenticity and conviction.
Some of that blame lies with Obama. Isn't DWS his pick?
I like Obama, but if we're going to be honest, Obama's campaign skills begin and end at getting Obama elected. He never had any coattails except for 2008. Both midterms were disasters.
The problem with the Democratic party is that it's so damn weak down ballot. They don't even bother to put candidates forward in many local elections. I had four choices for school board in my district, all were republicans.
That shit matters.
The "Third Way" is fucking dead, it is completely wrapped up in the corruption that has been manifesting in centrist politics since the 80s. This election thoroughly rejected Third Way politics. The working poor are fully aware of the relationship between lobbyist groups and corporatist career politicians now.
The Third Way has no answer for working class people - it ceded economic policy completely to corporations and the right for over 20 years in favour of identity politics (so at least every working person will be equally fucked, I guess). Look where that has brought us.
Same here in Arizona. Democrats have a lot of work to do to begin taking things back and it starts at the local level.
Don't forget protecting Rahm Emanuel, but abandoning Van Jones and Shirley Sherrod at the first signs of trouble from Fox. He's been consistently bad at supporting anyone to his left that doesn't fill a specific role.
ZackieChan
Member
That staffer's name? Albert Einstein.
theRockclapping.gif
theRockclapping.gif
andythinkpad
Member
All Clinton goons need to go, from top to bottom.
Rear Window
Neo Member
The problem with the DNC is that they chose their nominee before the primaries even began. To run against her was considered a fool's errand. The DNC even cheated and pretty much forced the nom to Hillary thinking she's the "one" this year. They blindsided anybody who tried to get in Hillary's way and never gave them a proper chance.
That isn't what this country stands for.
That isn't what this country stands for.
Congress/FBI/CIA would have to put an awful lot of those people in jail for that to happen, I think.
Camp Freddie
Member
This is the shocking thing for me (British).
The irony about the election is that it shows that hope is a much stronger motivator than fear in American politics.
Hope got Obama and Trump elected, even if Trump's "hope" is complete bullshit.
Fear of the black liberal and fear of the orange narcissist did not motivate the voters.
The Democrats need a candidate that can inspire people, but that doesn't mean an extreme liberal. It means someone that can inspire the moderate liberal middle class like Obama did. I still fail to understand how Hillary managed to be so bad and uninspirational that middle class white women failed to vote for her. She also spectacularly failed to sell herself as Obama's successor in black communities, or as a civil rights advocate for hard working latinos. That shouldn't be a hard sell to make when you're up against Trump!
This surprises me as Brit, since we (and many European nations, I think) often vote against a party we hate rather than for a party we like.
I remember LePenn losing in France in 2002 in an unprecedented* landslide because the anti-racists turned up and voted for Chirac (who was center-right and unpopular with the French left). I was expecting the same thing to happen in America.
*or should that be unpresidented...it's a pun, see...I'll get my coat...
GoldenEye 007
Member
Nobody is saying abandon minorities. Christ.
God Dayumm
Banned
Jail that scammer for sabotaging the campaign and the party
True. Democrats can still keep our liberal social aims while also reaching out to the poor and downtrodden in rural Ohio. It is not an impossible task. Obama did this twice in 2008 and 2012.
Will it be tricky? Yes. Does it require a bit more thought to be put into policy? Yes. But it can be done. It HAS to be done, because we have no other options.
Michael Moore just made a great comment about Donna Brazile and Clinton using Flint as a prop probably depressing the turnout
But sure Fox propaganda, 30 years of smears... not self inflicted wounds
But sure Fox propaganda, 30 years of smears... not self inflicted wounds
Here comes Chelsea
CrispyBoar
Banned
They're stupid for doing so. Absolutely stupid. They should've known that Hillary would be a poor candidate choice to run against Trump. She had even failed to win against Obama in 2008.
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