unless the democratic party can find some new leadership, i have a feeling the current regime will look upon those results positively and move forward trying to improve upon those numbers, which will only result in more lost elections. remember this?

I would start in 2008 and plot all the data points in between.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...mepage%2Fstory

If you look beyond DC the party is in worse shape. See Huey's Vox link.

That's kinda the same thing I'm making fun of though, looking at a good Democratic candidate crushing a couple elections compared to a bad Democratic candidate losing one narrowly and then going Chicken Little on our asses about the future of the Democratic Party.

Haven't read the Vox thing yet though, I'll check that out.

I think you missed the point that Senator Sanders claimed voters supported Mr Trump because they were fed up with, inter alia, billionaires not paying federal income tax. (Mr Trump is a billionaire and does not pay federal income tax, and brags that that makes him 'smart', in case the point needs underlining.)

Grunching here, but surely you can see the difference between the five-star General of the Army/Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II and Donald J. Trump? Surely?

hah is Krystal Ball a real name?

Everywhere they really contested Trump got more votes than Romney. Turnout was only down on one side.

more to the point (now that ive read it), it's kinda telling that she doesnt offer any solutions. she talks about truck drivers losing jobs to automation, and how retraining isnt enough, but doesnt offer any other ideas. no doubt trump spoke to those people, and democrats will have to do that too, but nothing he's planning is going to make life better for them.

you can come up with boring wonky stuff like retraining, eliminating occupational licensing and non-compete clauses, earned income tax credit etc., but it's not going to win elections or do that much. solutions that are both politically possible and actually going help are hard.

This tweet is worth bookmarking. I think we'll have many chances to use it in the months ahead.

Random aside: I used to be happy that I voted in 2008 to hand California redistricting over to an independent commission, thus ridding our state of gerrymandering.

I'm not happy about that anymore. I used to think part of moving the country forward meant someone had to start with being the bigger person and making sacrifices in the interest of the common good, and maybe others would follow.

8 years later, seems pretty clear that isn't happening. Republican-controlled states are getting even worse with vote suppression and don't appear to give the slightest amount of ****s about making elections more fair.

California voted 62-33 for Clinton, and 25% of its Congressional delegation is Republicans. A little less than the popular vote share, but reasonable.

Meanwhile, in North Carolina, Trump edged out a 51-47 win. 3 of their 13 representatives are Democrats. Same story in razor-thin and Republican-controlled (at the state level) Michigan - 9 Republicans, 5 Democrats. Pennsylvania, where Republicans had full control of 2011 redistricting: 13 Republicans, 6 Democrats.

So, **** it. **** California's fair districts:



Take these ****s in the Sierras and mesh each part of them with a different area of Sacramento. Take Darrell Issa's district in armed forces-heavy north San Diego County and figure out how to snake it through to include East Los Angeles. Send 50 Democrats and 3 Republicans to Washington and tell the red states we'll cease and desist when they do it too. Make it a compact like the national popular vote one.

So ****ing frustrating when only one group cares about working to the betterment of the country.

/rant

i mean obama has legitimately made the tax code more progressive. there are 14m more jobs today and median income are now growing at a healthy rate https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N people are still angry, but it is something. big ideas that will actually do more are the hard part though.

Yeah this needs to be a proposition in 2018.

Agree strongly, there is absolutely zero chance the republicans roll back gerrymandering on their own. The only thing democrats can do is (a) try to stop it through the courts, which seems like a long shot or (b) gerrymander themselves as much as possible to make it a fairer fight.

California NOT being gerrymandered is a terrible strategic mistake in this political climate.

Good rant. NY has 9 Republicans. WA has 4. NJ has 5.

MA does gerrymandering and is 9/9 Democrats.

Need a national law against/court decision against gerrymandering or need to fight the same way they do.

Really a national law would be better. Politicians love safe seats and would be happier with everything gerrymandered.

NPR had a guy one saying Dems would have to win 54% of the vote nationally to get 50% of the house seats.

Obviously Repubs only need 46% to get half. I only say that in case someone briefly thinks I mean "even out the unbalanced house", given that the house is fully elected every two years.

We INVENTED that **** yo.

lol DNC

Was just going to post this. I'd say it's unbelievable but considering the people involved it's to be expected.

I like whoever this "Zach" guy is.

I've asked this before but shouldn't the response to this be less immigration?

Why do we need so much population growth from other countries at a time when our biggest new companies just simply aren't employing that many people in good paying jobs compared to what they did 40-50 years ago (think steel, manufacturing, autos vs tech, service) There is no scientific law that states tech replacing jobs leads to more jobs. Just because it has mostly worked out OK in our history doesn't mean it will forever.

So much of the Bernie/Trump axis came from the fact that for working and middle class people the economy is becoming very intensely zero-sum IMO.

I don't know if less people via less immigration is the answer in the long term. We might have a need for people to do crappy jobs which argues no. If the need for labor at the lower levels is much lower than the pool that wants to work than yes.
I worry about things I don't understand and the long term future of labor is one of those things.

Productivity reducing demand for labor has happened before. In 1835 children when on strike demanding a 66 hour work week. A hundred years later there was no where near that demand for labor.

Laws and changing norms of age of entry and departure from the work force, hours worked, minimum wage, and social welfare programs were the answer and were what was necessary to prevent violent revolution in the early 20th century.

Those robots tho

lol if Brazile actually seeks to stay on as Chair