The 2020 prospects on the top of my head. Sherrod Brown Cory Booker Michelle Obama Kamala Harris Elizabeth Warren Andrew Cuomo
It is all about the base. Clinton could not get the democratic base to come out, that is on her and the DNC. All that money for the get out to vote and nothing. I know you disliked Sanders, but I wonder that even with the Republican mug slinging that he was going to get, I wonder if he would have held to more of the 2012 vote.
Today, I guarantee you is the day that the Democratic base is the most activated, enthusiastic, and civically minded it's been since election day 2008. The question I have is for the Democrats, how do you sustain it?
Ummm ... no. Did Obama miscalculate in letting the Clintons sleaze their way back into power? Yes. But don't forget that Obama is going out at 50%+ favorability rating. This election had little to do with Obama. The reason that Democrats stayed home is not Obama.
Anti-Trump protests happening in at least New York and Chicago right now. The one in Chicago stretches for 5 or 6 blocks.
I agree ... I'd include the broader West Coast into that ... Oregon, Washington, Hawaii ... And a scattering of other states like Colorado and Vermont. Set a positive progressive standard that the rest of the country can reference. Although I'd caution against thinking that it's all rainbows and unicorns in the West. The fundamental challenge of class dynamics is still a big problem. Working class people are being squeezed out of the state to make way for hyper educated H1N1 Visa immigrants and transplants from other parts of the country. There's a risk of the West creating an affluent bubble for itself that simply cannot be replicated in other parts of the country ... let alone the world.
The biggest stain on Barack Obama’s political legacy may be the decimation of the Democratic Party on his watch. https://t.co/zXxA04VBjb— Karen Tumulty (@ktumulty) November 10, 2016 “His administration delivered to Wall Street, and did not to Main Street,” said former congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), an ardent liberal. “The Democrats were basically obtuse to this, because it was all about winning and holding power, and it was not about deliverables to the American people.”
Quoting this from another thread and answering it here: And I'll just note this here: The Dems have gone from a party with a midterm turnout problem, to a party with a presidential year turnout problem. If I knew how to fix that, I never would have left campaign work. But I don't even know how to begin. And, worse, for the reasons I set out in the opening post, I think the Dems are more likely to run away from unreliable voters than to try to convert unreliable voters into reliable ones. I have no confidence in anyone to come up with any answers right now.
Anecdotally, the left leaning people I'm speaking to seem to be drawing what I think are the wrong conclusions here. I'm seeing people fall into the Tea Party trap of 'Hillary just wasn't ideologically pure enough! We need a candidate that is further to the left!' Well ... maybe, but not necessarily. On some issues Democrats are already too far to the left. What Democrats need is something more surgical. On some issues we do have to move to the left. On some other issues we're actually better off moving to the center ... If I had to organize the two categories, I would : Move to the left: 1)Being more forceful against foreign policy interventionism. 2)Constitutional emphasis against unwarranted searches and seizures. This might be better labeled as libertarianism. 3)Drug law reform. Decriminalization and aid for opiate addiction crisis. 4)Campaign finance and party structure reform with an emphasis on democracy and less kleptocracy. 5)Labor/union reform. More protection for American labor 6)Keep private sector away from healthcare and education Move to the right: 1)Immigration. The right is correct when they say we're a nation of laws and borders. I'm not saying build a wall. But there needs to be more structure and more control. America already brings in 1,000,000 legal immigrants per year into the country. That's a pretty generous quota already. 2)Guns. Unnecessary divisive issue. You're not going to amend the Constitution. The murder rate in this country has been dropping for years so it seems like whatever we've been doing is already working pretty well. 3)National debt. When was the last time you heard a Democrat mention our debt. Is there a plan for that or do we just keep running up the tab indefinitely. Who's going to pay and when? That's a pretty vague list just off the top of my head, but the point is that it's not a simple question of moving further to the left. It's more a question of realigning what it means to be on the left. Try to reunite the working class which is now so divided across racial lines. Remind Americans that labor unions were often the vanguard of racial reconciliation in this country. There's no doubt that there were racist unions, but there were also many integrated unions long before other institutions in this country. The Civil Rights movement was always intertwined with labor struggles like the Birmingham bus boycott. Use this working class justice core and expand from there with social libertarianism, more peaceful foreign policy, compassion to our planet and hitting the pause button on this march towards globalization.
Paul Blablabla or what ever his name is said it right on CNN. This is on the DNC, him self (he ran the super pac for Clinton) and Clinton. They needed to motivate the people that are protesting today to have voted yesterday. As Obama says, don't boo, vote. If you want to protest, protest, but register to vote and fvcking vote.
It sure would be nice to amend the Constitution to get rid of the electoral college. The disproportionate Senate representation of rural states is now rearing its head in presidential races. Hillary is likely to win popular but got creamed in EV. This is likely to continue getting worse as the population gets more urbanized. You can only give big states so many EVs.
Well, I fundamentally disagree with you in principle, but in any case, a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college will NEVER happen. You need 38 out of 50 states to ratify it. Making the Sun Belt more diverse is your best bet.
At the extremes, Wyoming gets 1 EV for every 189,000 people in the state; California gets 1 EV for every 678,000 people. http://www.thegreenpapers.com/Census10/HouseAndElectors.phtml
Most sound like god ideas, I am worry about protectionism, but I can see the writing on the wall, Trade is going to take a hit around the world in the foreseeable future. I am very bias here, so I am against. I don't know about this, many lefties really want gun control, this is like asking conservatives to give up on trying to change Roe vs. Wade. Now that there is a republican in the white house, the Dems are going to call for a balance budget and the GOP is going to increase the Debt, Trump wants to for sure. Some unions may feel that laws to deal with Global warming will cost them jobs.
I understand it will never happen. That's why I said it would be nice, not that we should. I'm mostly trying to highlight an issue that comes with the base being urban elite and urban minorities.
You, and everyone else in the Clinton campaign and Democratic party, forgot the working-class in middle America. And that's why you are dealing with a President Trump. They have absolutely no one to blame but themselves.
Me personally? You follow my posting patterns? I have generally agreed with this point which @Boloni86 has been making for months. Yet despite that, more citizens of this country preferred Hillary. But some citizens count for more than others.
I've rarely met a progressive that was as committed to gun control as gun owners are to protecting their gun rights. Personally I don't like guns, but at this point I don't see the political payoff for being too anti gun. At some point you have to expand the party. The point is to keep the working class as your guiding North Star. As long as they feel like they are at the core of the party they will tolerate some of these more fanciful initiatives on climate, bike paths and kale chips.