Serious question: How well is governmental structure and procedure taught in US schools? Because I cannot understand how the Dems mid-term performance is so hit-and-miss, when so much law and legislation that affects the local-level is done through Congress and Senate.
As far as I'm aware it's not even an educational requirement in most state's public schools. Just American history, which kind of covers it, but not in actual depth.
I went to private school and "US Government" was an Advanced Placement Elective course that was combined with "Comparative Politics" which described different nation's government systems.
Because organizing Dems is like herding cats.
As far as I'm aware it's not even an educational requirement in most state's public schools. Just American history, which kind of covers it, but not in actual depth.
I went to private school and "US Government" was an Advanced Placement Elective course that was combined with "Comparative Politics" which described different nation's government systems.
Bobbeh movin' on up in the worldFormer Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is being considered for a possible Cabinet post in President-elect Donald Trump's administration, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
Trump's team are considering Jindal's name for the post of secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, the report said.
Jindal was earlier secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.
Other names being considered include Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani and former contenders during the presidential primary, Ben Carson and Chris Christie.
Diversity is inherent to the liberal position.But... Why? Is this the Special Little Unicorn/Dems have to love their candidate thing again?
I wonder why...
But... Why? Is this the Special Little Unicorn/Dems have to love their candidate thing again?
That's fricking sad. I don't think UK schools go into the UK system that deeply (if at all), but the UK system of politics is so much simpler than the US - Councils and MPs. That's it.
Obama's team went top-down, but that just straight up doesn't work.
I think most students are going to have the basics taught, at least by way of learning about the Constitution and Bill of Rights, but beyond that, yeah... it won't be given real deep dives in the core curriculums. In AP Government class, which will be an elective for some high school students, and I know I was fortunate enough to also be able to take a pure US civics course in high school, but that was also an elective.Serious question: How well is governmental structure and procedure taught in US schools? Because I cannot understand how the Dems mid-term performance is so hit-and-miss, when so much law and legislation that affects the local-level is done through Congress and Senate. So many Dem causes would be easier to sell to young people through local legislature. The Republican Presidential nominee campaigns on so little compared to the Democrats.
Also because hate is pretty uniform but not everyone agrees on what love is....
barf
The Democratic Party I voted for labeled me a terrorist for my participation in Occupy. I went to court over their shit (and won, thanks ACLU). That's some tough love.
Serious question: How well is governmental structure and procedure taught in US schools? Because I cannot understand how the Dems mid-term performance is so hit-and-miss, when so much law and legislation that affects the local-level is done through Congress and Senate. So many Dem causes would be easier to sell to young people through local legislature. The Republican Presidential nominee campaigns on so little compared to the Democrats.
Agreed.
I truly think this speaks to Democrats core struggle of trying to grapple with such a diverse electorate. The Democratic tent covers so many different people who's priorities are unique. Sure, rightfully making a boogieman out of the right will gather us for general elections, but you need a stronger, localized ground game to produce turnout in midterms, where a lot of the REAL change happens.
With some of the appalling viewpoints I've seen throughout this election cycle, I feel lucky that I even learned about the concept of checks & balances during grade school.
Ugh.
How on earth are we suppose to get bottom-top...
Which if why we need a strong DNC. The campaigns should be working off DNC data.
Time for Kanderizing.
... Are they not already? Because if not... What in the ever-living fuck is it there for?
I mean that's inherently in the point I was making...
I wasn't saying everything is roses in the Democratic Party.
So, I really want to do something to help, and short-term (within the next 2 years, say), there's not much I can do that would have an immediate impact. But it seems like there's a massive gap in the system that could be filled by an organisation that educates young people, older voters and runs a GOTV for mid-terms. Not just for Dems, but mostly, because they're so flaky. Something that talks about the reason why checks-and-balances and three branches of government exist.
Ignoring the "How do you do it", does this have potential? Widespread disenfranchisement is never a good thing, and having a non-partisan organisation that really kicks up a fuss about, say, GOP obstruction of voters rights can only be good. Right?
Something needs to be done about the way people are educated about voting anyways. The GOP was able to trick people into thinking there is an epidemic of voter fraud sweeping the nation, when ideally everyone should have responded with "yeah yeah, but why the fuck do my polls close at 7pm?".
Its really disappointing how much Democrats suck at winning elections. We have a platform that champions tons of additional freedoms for tens of millions of disenfranchised peoples, and can't get them to fucking vote in their own interest. The DNC and Liberals as a whole have just been jaw droppingly terrible at running campaigns since LBJ left office. Was kicking Dixiecrats out really that harmful to the Democratic Party???
Exactly! GOP plays on ignorance. Anyone who knows better goes "Wtf? What about X/Y/Z?", but the people who don't know better buy into their narrative. The DNC could argue against this, but it's the DNC - polarisation of politics means that if you're not with the Dems, chances are good you're against them, and won't pay attention to what they say.
For better or worse, the Democratic party for a while now has been the party of idealism. And idealists tend to not support anything less than...well, the idea.
The vibe within the Democratic party right now is extremely worrying to me. Admittedly, I'm more terrified by the possibility of a leftist tea party than I am a Trump presidency at this point. Too much of the left right now seems focused on fighting itself than looking forward and against the true enemy. It's really like watching the mess of the 2012 Republican party spill over into our backyard.
It's not just the GOP. The far left Bernie wing of the Democratic party does as well. I've never before been accosted by so many people who want to be taken seriously but can't be bothered to do basic research on how our government functions.
I'll never forgive that man for introducing right-wing politics to the left.
Whatever, they'll treat you or anyone like garbage who has any sort of criticism of their policies. Don't matter how many they kill in far off lands or whatever.
And holy shit @ your avatar. You're going to build a left coalition broadcasting that shit? Honestly, just step back, take a deep breath, and quit going out of your way to alienate allies.
Take this as constructive criticism, please.
When was the last time anything political was organized on NeoGAF? This place is for nerds to chat and vent. We have Facebook and IRL for the real shit.And holy shit @ your avatar. You're going to build a left coalition broadcasting that shit? Honestly, just step back, take a deep breath, and quit going out of your way to alienate allies.
I think the Dems are honestly fucked if this tea-party like tribalism I'm seeing online seeps through. Losing to Trump when all the data suggested otherwise is making people hate Hillary more than him. This is a bad situation and if cooler heads don't prevail we won't get anywhere at all.
Which is why you need generic platitudes at that level.
People want to be sold shinies. We need to give them shinies.
I'm appalled at how many democrats or left leaning people I've seen in this thread, OT, and elsewhere that think we lost because we focused on racial issues, instead of the feelings of "white working class" voters. Factory jobs are never coming back, you can't ban machines and robots from factories, what the fuck are democrats supposed to promise here?
We literally had a racist and bigot as our opponent, and you wanted Hillary to ignore that and focus on the feelings of his supporters?
Nah, I'm out if we're going to start tolerating racism and bigotry just to cuddle some voters to (maybe?) win elections.
There is an insane and absolutely mortifying push over the last days to normalize Trump's racist/bigot/sexist base and see them as people we need to respect, that their total intolerance towards minorities and non-white people is something we need to tolerate and even love. There was a very awkward moment on Morning Joe the other day when Michael Moore made sure to draw a fine line between the hard working people who voted for him out of pain, and the ones who voted for him out of racism and hatred. Joe basically clammed up because he's the one leading the charge on normalizing the racists or downplaying them completely.
tubie, if that post was directed toward me, this is basically what i'm getting at. i am basically approaching this from the MM perspective - that we need to suss out the racism-as-primary-cause from the actual economic pain, and then somehow persuade the latter group that trumpism isn't the answer.
(like, you can definitely do that without coddling racists, but it's an equally fine line.)
ain't gonna be easy in any respect, but it's at least a plan.
It wasn't directed at you or anyone in particular. Sorry if it seemed that way.
I'm just horrified at the idea of liberals blaming "identity politics" for this loss.
Nobody's saying identity politics is a problem - if they are, they're both wrong and immoral. People are saying that using identity politics to try and win white, working class votes is the problem. It offers nothing for them. You keep telling us not to go for 'purity tests', and then the purity test you set is that if people can't solely be motivated to vote against racism, we shouldn't compete for their vote at all. Well, how do we win, then?
This is another thing I've noticed too.
We are acting like we lost in a landslide, Hillary won the popular vote by over 1 million (maybe 2 when its all done). Hillary's message was not the problem, part of the problem was that she made mistakes as secretary of state, and that just confirmed the picture Republicans worked hard to paint of her for the last 30 years in the eyes of many voters from both sides.
We don't need to change our message, because our message is good and will help all Americans, we just need a candidate that can deliver that message in 2020.
Blimey, no wonder you didn't win.
Nobody's saying identity politics is a problem - if they are, they're both wrong and immoral. People are saying that using identity politics to try and win white, working class votes is the problem. It offers nothing for them. You keep telling us not to go for 'purity tests', and then the purity test you set is that if people can't solely be motivated to vote against racism, we shouldn't compete for their vote at all. Well, how do we win, then?
Don't do this.
You lost. Lost lost lost. Don't tell me "it was close" when you lost to Donald Trump. Even a shallow win would have been fucking terrifying. There are smarter, slicker demagogues than Donald Trump. He's small league compared to Le Pen and Farage, who understand how to get even the middle classes dancing in tune. You think Clinton was just a bad candidate for your side? You need to understand Trump was not a great candidate for their side either. And now he's shown the way, every single up-and-coming Republican is going to start thinking "Hey, I should do that too!". And lots of them will be better at it than him. Tom Cotton ain't got no Trump size scandals.
If you act like this was just a close loss to a worthy opponent, and decide to keep fundamentally the same message but stick Booker in charge because reasons, you're going to get Kerry'd.
The problem is that if white people start organizing w/ identity politics, they outnumber everyone else. It's a dangerous axes to use because of the reactionary part. (This doesn't mean that we shouldn't address minority concerns! Just that we unfortunately have to be very cognizant of the non-voters Trump was able to pull in.)Folks have in this very thread and elsewhere on GAF just fyi... just so we don't pretend it's not being said.
Righteously indignant trolling is not interesting and isn't stimulating a discussion. That's what I meant by "don't do this".
I think you have your politics all the wrong way round. People didn't dislike Clinton's message because they disliked Clinton, they disliked Clinton because they disliked Clinton's message. Her patent inability to have anything to say to the Rust Belt is what got her painted as an out of touch liberal elite and allowed her to be painted as a corrupt witch - it's hard to do that to someone who cultivates a person of the people message; see Trump's corruption being ignored because he was on the side of the little guy.
Clinton's message absolutely was the problem; and not enough Americans did feel like it would help them. As a test, in this thread I've asked lots of HillGAF what exactly they plan to do about the Rust Belt. Like, even supposing you did win without them, we still have a moral obligation to look after people. So what do you do? And the generalized response I've been has been: "There's nothing we can do."; which implicitly says: "Let them die."
Blimey, no wonder you didn't win.
I don't know, tell me then, what gets the message across? Because within, like, two days of the election loss, a lot of posters in this thread are back to form.
Clinton was/is very, very disliked.I think you have your politics all the wrong way round. People didn't dislike Clinton's message because they disliked Clinton, they disliked Clinton because they disliked Clinton's message. Her patent inability to have anything to say to the Rust Belt is what got her painted as an out of touch liberal elite and allowed her to be painted as a corrupt witch - it's hard to do that to someone who cultivates a person of the people message; see Trump's corruption being ignored because he was on the side of the little guy.
Clinton's message absolutely was the problem; and not enough Americans did feel like it would help them. As a test, in this thread I've asked lots of HillGAF what exactly they plan to do about the Rust Belt. Like, even supposing you did win without them, we still have a moral obligation to look after people. So what do you do? And the generalized response I've been has been: "There's nothing we can do."; which implicitly says: "Let them die."
Blimey, no wonder you didn't win.