Dems def killing it rn. We won the popular vote against a reality television star, as well as six House seats, putting us up to 194/435. At this pace, it'll only take until 2025 for us to reclaim a 1 vote majority in the House. And don't even get me started on the amazing Senate victories in Illinois and New Hampshire.

Also, GOP picked up 2 more governor seats, same as in 2014. If it keeps going this way they can rewrite the constitution.

The advice given in this thread is literally "lets nominate a left wing Trump!!!". You want the Dems to get to the point where they can't pass legislation that they've promised/lied about for years even when they control both houses of congress and the presidency? Yeah....i guess they can try to win elections by becoming as incompetent and dysfunctional as republicans but pyrrhic victories and all that.

I don't think anyone called for left wing Trump to be nominated. Maybe Alex, but he seemed to be talking more about just having such a figure prominent within the party to shift the window a bit and get people thinking leftward. Similar to how Bernie pulled HRC and the Dems to the left, despite losing. If you're left of Obama's actual enacted policies (as opposed to his personal views, which are probably further left), this would be a satisfactory result. We won't get that 50% top tax rate, not right away anyway, but it will wake some people up to the idea.

If I can be simplistic, the current dynamic in US politics is:

Trump and conservative media: Far right fantasy world that cannot currently be enacted into law.

GOP Congress Critters: A clearly right wing agenda which isn't so far left of the previous. This agenda can be made into law (well except seemingly on healthcare, but that's my point in this windows discussion).

Dem Congress Critters AND mainstream "liberal" media: A left to center-left agenda.

If these influences are weighted equally, the middle ground is actually center-right to right. Although I do think it's important not to overstate the case here, this is clearly bad for left wingers.

I should probably state how I'm defining "true" center versus the middle ground of current US politics. Well tbh I'm not being very rigorous, but I have in mind Europe and class in US politics over the past few decades. Whether you subscribe to my pov on the "true" center is not really important to my argument. The point is that if you are a socialist or Marxist, you will be very bitterly unhappy about the current middle ground of US politics, wheras if you are an Ayn Rand objectivist or right-wing fascist, you will be only slightly unhappy.

When I say Trump-style I mean not caring about how legal, popular, or even analytical the actions are.

Like stop trying to argue the merits of UHC point-by-point. Just say you're going to enact single-payer and it will be terrific and that's that.

Sure...Dems can run on single payer paid for by seizing Wall St money. Your taxes will go down 80% if you're not a millionaire and everybody will have health care and it will be better than your employer provided care now. They'll prob lose(dem bases are well educated now) and even if they win they'll only be in the position the republicans are in now. Full control of the government but unable to actually pass anything because they've all been lying through their teeth to get elected, and have no plan at all to actually govern and legislate. If policy changes are the ultimate goal Obama should be the model, not Trump.

Odd phrasing.....but yes. Nobody called for it except for the people that called for it.

Pwned me, bruh. Potentially at most one person, but probably not even that person = "the advice given in this thread."

Check out "get me roger stone" on Netflix. It's a good look at the gop playbook. What I've gleaned from it is the dems really need to adopt a ton of this strategy. The only way to win is to appeal to people's narcissism. I know it's vomit inducing, but it works, and it won't lose the base. We can go back to being the party of facts and empathy once the Nazis are out of power.

You'd be naïve to think otherwise, imo. Like, Obama smoked enough weed that I think he knows it should be legal. Yet he didn't push for legalization. I think the reason why is because it's bad optics for a black man in charge to talk about weed when such a high percentage of the electorate is racist.


I think it's the winning strategy. The base is so educated that you can lie to them and they'll still vote for you, because they know the only other option is to vote for racism. And we know what happens when racists win. We're living through it. Bernie could shoot someone in the middle of fifth ave. and I would still vote for him over any republican. I'd be pretty ecstatic to have dems breaking campaign promises by lying through their teeth about now. At least we'd have the scotus. We need to win first before thinking about policy changes imo.

The Dem base is not particularly educated, and given a choice between two flawed candidates, even if one is clearly vastly worse than the other, many Democrats have shown that they would rather just stay home.

They're staying home because facts are boring and they have an xbox. If you convince them they can buy more xbox games by ****ing over the 1%, they'll turn out and vote for you. That's why Bernie is the most popular dem. He gives you something to hate (Wall St.) and then tells you how to steal back our hard earned money from them. It doesn't matter if you're factually accurate or blaming the right people.

Hillary's messaging problem was too often she just said, "Trump's full of **** and racism is rampant. I won't be a racist." That doesn't buy them video games so they lose interest and think government is all a scam and voting a waste of time. "We'd be screwed either way", is something we can't let them ever think.

Trump got 60m votes because he promised pie in the sky for everyone at the expense of brown people. Without that message he probably drops out of the primary before carly fiorina

That article about courting Romney-Clinton voters reminds me of the time that turd who was a PPA rep posted in here about going to CPAC to lobby for online gambling. The GOP is owned top to bottom by Sheldon Adelson and will obviously never support online gaming; the guy was going only because he's a Republican and wanted to go hang out with other Republicans on someone else's dime.

Similarly, the DNC would much rather spend time on golf courses and boats than AME churches.

Yeah like, I'm not saying that strategy won't shortterm work. It did win the popular vote, Trump is less popular now, blah blah blah.

But what the ****. HAD HILLARY WON the Democratic Party would still be absolutely ****ed at the state level, and we'd still have a GOP House and a Senate facing a TERRIBLE slate of 2018 races.

The people who haven't been focused on who actually do matter are the the Obama->Stein/Johnson/did not vote people. And getting dentists requires losing them.

Senate might've swung differently if HRC had better turnout in any of the close states.

Yeah but still we'd be totally ****ed in 2018. Trump would have a show on Fox and Alex Jones would be cohosting with Hannity while Bannon prepped for his 2020 run. That's why we needed someone that could win by at least 10m votes against a manbaby.

Its not that the whole democratic base is educated. Its that there are pockets of educated people in urban areas of swing states that are not solidly R or D.

So you honestly want to go with something like "Trump supporters aren't racist, its Wall St hedge fund managers and the dem elite's fault that they voted for a guy that said Mexico is sending rapists and retweeted fake statistics about how 75% of white murder victims are killed by black people." Thats not far from what Bernie has actually said after the election, but i hope he goes away before 2020.

2008-2010 says hi.

You mean the time frame during which Dems passed the most important health care bill since LBJ?

This seems like a misinterpretation though. Obviously I get a big thrill calling Trump supporters racist, because it's obviously true and there's no reason to spare their feelings.

Here's the thing though: for a lot of people, prattling on about racial justice simply isn't relevant or that animating for persuadable voters. That probably includes a sizeable portion of black voters who also didn't turnout for HRC/the Democrats. It seems like the battle lines are clearly drawn there. If you're into any sort of social justice at all, if you have any strong feelings about the forces of virulent white resentment versus progress and social justice, you've already decamped between the two parties and there may not be much play in the joints there.

It goes without saying Trump is a buffoon and not a 4d chess player but what he did very successfully was undercut Democratic messaging about the welfare state. He promised everything to everyone and told everyone they would sacrifice nothing to get better. It probably didn't work as well as his defenders advertise but I'd argue it worked on some level.

I think it is very likely political gravity will catch up to Trump and the GOP in this very specific area. The Democrats are given something of a gift because the GOP Congress and particularly the hard-liners in the Tea Party aren't willing to pay for the promises with debt the way the GOP Congress might have done even 10 years ago, so I think it's entirely likely Trump will be goaded or eagerly sign off on either massive cuts in beloved programs like Medicare, or the Congress may just mire themselves in dysfunction and do nothing.

I sincerely believe a lot of the electorate is very, very confused about who they will get the most out of. And while I may not agree precisely with crimedopay's formulation, I think he is exactly correct that if 2016 has taught us anything, it is that the electorate's most notable characteristic is their selfishness.

As it stands, the facts are absolutely clear: the Democrats agenda, be it something like Bernie's, or even more tepid measures in the style of the HRC 2016 campaign utilize the government's tax and spend authorities to create cross-subsidies that benefit more people than the GOP plans do. Put differently: Democrats are going to get more people more stuff than the GOP's agenda will.

But that hasn't been communicated well or made clear, allowing the space for charlatans and liars of the Trump and Paul Ryan ilk to fool people into thinking differently.

Talking about the practical ways Democrats plan to help people in very simple terms -- that is, the protection and promotion of the economic well-being of people -- that's an area that has great potential for the Democrats. The proof are in the results -- that the GOP is able to amass so much political power despite almost gleefully transparent in their desire to **** a majority of people -- shows that the Democrats are almost surely struggling to communicate this, and I think it's very likely voters see little different between the two parties in this area. Rhetoric that establishes a very stark contrast and tells simple stories, perhaps with villains like Wall Street has a high probability of working relative to repeating the same themes of 2016.

I acknowledge that a hard, strident leftist turn may alienate someone like you or the figurative dentist in suburbia, but let's face it, most of that crowd have essentially proven to be bad-faith, fair-weather partners. The New Democrat coalitions were highly tenuous and the policies that lasted were only things like deregulation, welfare reform and tax cuts. I think it's entirely smart gamble to cut bait with you, the finance industry, and the other wealth suburbanites who produce only unsteady coalitions and very few durable outcomes in the best of times.

At the worst of times, like now, as is transparently clear, they are highly susceptible to fascist opponents who use these coalitions of elites and their policies which produce flimsy and highly-stratified outcomes; see the wealth accruing massively with elites while gains among most people are tepid, while the middle class and below are forced into more precarious positions with respect to monopoly firms and private companies and employers holding ever more power and leverage while consumers and labor hold less.

So the coalition you're defending produces gains for a small number of people, is incredibly risky and leaves open huge political space for the cynical and angry, and in the end produces very little for people who care about justice, fairness, and equality. The social justice gains of the past 50 years are real and I cherish them; I have no doubt it remains far better to be gay in 2017 than it ever has before. But on the whole, it's a bad deal and it's really not clear how much we really even have to sacrifice of any of that if we cut bait with you (the collective you). Being in league with you has crafted a policy environment that increased segregation and social isolation and wealth disparities and pushed more people into strident right-winger positions who determined that the great liberal + capitalist fusion project was responsible for their degraded economic and cultural state and mixed up the cause and effect. I think the left owes it to everyone and to ourselves to try to protect and further the gains of social justice but also economic justice. They can't be decoupled and left to unobstructed market forces and an ideology enamored with privatization and cynicism of public goods and services and investment, too many are left behind and abandon all elements of the project.

In the end: I certainly get why *you* personally are defensive of the continuation of the Democrats partnering with wealthier whites and elite business interests, but ask only to show some self-awareness for why the appetite among most others is waning. Having said that, I'm happy to remain partners in the destruction of Trump and certainly you can stick around in the hypothetical ideal Big Tent Democrat future, provided you don't insist on much and we don't get too deeply wedded to you again.

CC: @bobman0330, @PaulD, perhaps a few others.

The right is banning muslims and mexicans, as well as slashing environment and education, while the left is passing legislation proposed and written by 1990s republicans. Your crowning achievement over a 2 year span of dominance is a bill that still leaves people spending exorbitant amounts on their healthcare and lags behind every other civilized country on earth. Do you not see the problem here?

I think its pretty close to accurate. Bernie makes the point that trump supporters arent racist.

Im not saying 2020 should be run with racial justice as the main issue, hell i skip through all of flys screeds on the subject. I just dont think dems can or should win by catering to deplorables.

I disagree with the whole "lets learn from 2016" dogma, but even if i played along with it i'd say the theme was anger. And if you wanna run a mad dem 2020 ticket you arent going to do it by ignoring bad stuff about Trump.

Sure, i completely get that i might not be your favorite ally, i could have very well voted for David Cameron or maybe not if i was British. I just strongly question the viability of kicking me out, keeping minorities and gaining racist whites.

Thats pretty much exactly what i said initially that you claimed wasnt an accurate depiction of Bernie post election. We need to woo those poor racist whites hoodwinked by Trump because we were stabbed in the back by wall st dems. To bad Bernie happens to be jewish or you could scapegoat them as well.

Hmmm...maybe I'm wrong. Just tell the same thing to black and hispanic dems and maybe you actually can convert enough deplorables.

Ok, yeah I agree. I just think that these people are incredibly stupid. The parties are so polarized that if you aren't voting dem every time, you probably are a willfully ignorant selfish child. It's tough to move that needle with facts. These people only turn out for hope and change.

No we need to never stop shouting racism because ignoring it makes it worse. But to shift focus to calling Trump supporters racist isn't necessary because it's just stating the obvious, and distracts away from the better message: "the 1% is taking our money and buying our politicians because they want us to be their slaves." It's more effective to point out racism and let the voters make the connection to trump. They certainly won't be connecting it to the dem elite. They don't even know what the dem elite is.

https://twitter.com/SeanMcElwee/stat...37384077066241