Burn the party down and start fresh, preferably with non-entrenched folk who can write a charter that doesn't give absolute power to party insiders.

A good start would be Democrats strongly supporting progressive policies.

Poor white kids are far and away the majority of poor kids in USA #1.

White people are also the majority of welfare and food stamp recipients, but that hasn't stopped the transparently racist young buck argle bargle from Republicans. They're disproportionately going to get dicked over, but that's collateral damage.

Be more racist. Admit that we don't really like gays or Muslims. And that BLM is just a cover for criminal blacks.

Like when you see a guy who supports liberal policies, single payer, higher minimum wage, etc, but votes Republican every time, you have found a racist. They will complain about crooked Hillary and Nancy Pelosi drinking expensive wine on the taxpayers buck, but if corruption were a real dealbreaker for them, they wouldn't vote Republican either.

Dems should definitely be putting forward strong, progressive voices, but the strategy isn't to win over your "conservative" friend. It's to turn out the entire Obama 08 coalition and the newly enfranchised millenials.

This is true, of course, but at this point I'm convinced the Democratic Party is going to double down on the same losing strategy, a lot of which appears to be dictated by an ideological commitment to centrism as "the engine of progress." Democratic Party leaders use the attitudes of conservative, libertarian, and apparently now fascist voters as a bulwark against the left, as though the fact that Republicans are currently in control of the U.S. government necessitates that right-of-center stances prevail. Clearly this is what The People support; just look at who's in power! They'd be doing the country a disservice if they took the risk of winning!

When political weakness becomes the purity test for the supposedly progressive party, is all hope lost?

I'm assuming this is a joke?

It's painfully obvious that this should be the goal, yet the party seems to be on a path away from a winning coalition. I mean, they couldn't even get ****ing white women to vote for Hillary. I knew things were really bad--to the point where, if I'd thought about it, I should have put some money in the prediction markets--when, in the final days leading up to November 8, the Clinton campaign's pinned tweet was a reminder that "Women have the power to stop Trump." This was a really loud signal that the campaign had a problem with demographics that were supposed to be a lock for them. #Feminism did such a great job!

This is a serious challenge and I agree with your analysis. I feel like it's time for change from the bottom up. We can't count on Democratic Party leaders to steer this ship in the right direction. That means these local activists that have been doing an amazing job attending town halls, organizing protests and calling their Reps now have to take it to the next level--that means running for office and seriously supporting progressive local candidates.

I think part of the solution is to primary out some of the old guard, if they are so religiously committed to centrism. Centrism is not a winning political play right now. A few strong campaigns from virtual nobodies would send a strong message, even if not all of those resulted in victories. We have to start competing in deep red states again, and I don't know the full answer as to how to do that effectively.

Nope, you've got the causal arrows reversed. He agrees with liberal policies IN THEORY, the way Tsao or Dan will give lip service to them. But the reason he hates Hillary and other Dems isn't anything locked to them personally, the reason he hates Democrats is because they'd do liberal polices IN PRACTICE. Those policies threaten entrenched interests which feed him propaganda, those interests aren't stupid enough to let some random new left wing party endorse single payer and say "oh yeah that's just a plum good idea now that it's advanced by DSA instead of the DNC".

The way to win him over is to bridge the policy switch and get him to understand not just that liberal policies are good, but to actually BELIEVE that by drawing a contrast with how conservative polices are bad. That's probably not going to happen, but he's not the real target anyway, that is primarily aimed at non-voters and any Republican leaners that strategy flips are icing on the cake.

the hard left is pretty ****ing dumb and cant win elections. instead the point mainly seems to be to destroy the english/french/german social democrats chances of ever doing it again.

the theory that the reason the centrists sometimes lose is because people really want the pure leftist alternative is so ****ing dumb and have as far as i can tell never won an election anywhere

There is credible political science survey data that shows Dem politicians consistently overrate how popular conservative ideas are with the general public and underrate how popular progressive ideas are.

It's all of the same piece as how badly misjudged Clinton's campaign is, these people read Thomas Friedman unironically as a moderate and think David Brooks and George Will are median Republicans(and thus they wrongly believed that there was a significant amount of the GOP that could be flipped based on Trump's vulgarity). They live in a bubble where civility and bipartisanship are the top level values and there's widespread consensus that entitlement reform and endless war are uncontroversial.

Medicare for all is regarded as a fringe position among Dem politicians, but it polls >50% among Dems.

doesnt it get destroyed when people actually have to vote on it? free stuff will poll well but nobody wants to for it.

In the US this is contradicted by the most popular president of all time - FDR. Apologies if you mean only Europe which I don't know about.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/191504/ma...re-system.aspx

Like this poll and it's results seem like it comes from a different universe than the one the AHCA/ACA debate occurred in, right? Because ever since the GOP started calling Obamacare socialism the Dems inexplicably adopted the right's framing and started treating it like it was the leftmost health care ideal, instead of it's actual location as still, by far, the most rightwing health care policy of any developed nation.

Nobody has ever voted on Medicare for all, and this is exactly the sort of self-defeating stuff DrModern was talking about. "We can't ask for this, the Republicans will say it will make taxes go up!"

Yeah, here's an idea: argue that it's a good idea anyway. No ****ing Dem ever has the ****ing stones to just say "Absolutely, it will cost a bunch of money, and the return on that money will be WORTH IT"

i was thinking about this thing that seems to have gotten about half the democrats to vote for it and nobody else https://ballotpedia.org/Colorado_Cre...dment_69_(2016)

you can call the centre-left/centrism self-defeating, but has anyone running hard left ever won a tough election in the us?

anyway, the easiest solution is to just lie. tell people they'll get everything they want and nobody will have to pay for it. and ****, the us healthcare system is so ****ed up that it might even be possible.

FDR won so many elections they changed the rules on how many terms Presidents could serve

okay but how about since they became the party opposed to white supremacy?

Colorado voted on universal health care. 78% voted against it.

And the real kicker is that once we get it passed, it's NEVER going away.

You know the social democrats in Europe = the hard left in the USA, right? Our centrists = your conservative parties. Republicans = your right wing nationalist/fascist parties.

You can't put it up for a referendum where the measure discusses the specific tax increase faced by the voter. It has to be like Obamacare, where you just get a charismatic politician to sell it to the people and to some extent it force it on them after he/she is elected. There will gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, like before, but Obamacare polls at 50% approval now and I would expect after the initial public meltdown that single payer would be even better liked.

And?

Like where are you and daca going with this line, that America is just cursed to never have sensible health care policy because it was built on a Native American graveyard?

When you want a policy, you advocate for it. You pitch it. Opponents pitch against it. The pre-pitch status quo is apparently 58% for universal. So have that argument. You don't just give up before the fight because the other guy is going to punch back.

Maybe a payroll tax wasn't the best place for it. Colorado's state income tax rate is a third the rate of CA's on the highest incomes and four times the rate on the lowest. Introducing a progressive state income tax might have been a more popular way to pay for it.

Colorado also voted in support of only allowing corporations to make constitutional amendments

I think there's a huge difference between federal universal health care and a state providing its own. I mean, I know there is, but I'm being modest.

No....pretending the county really wants UHC and dems would start crushing elections if they became advocates for it is just wrong. Supporting it becuse its the right thing to do is fine