1. Schumer must resign, preferably from the Senate entirely. His caucus got ****ing destroyed after he waxed poetic about letting moderate Dems vote however they want so they could be reelected. How'd that work out, Chuck?

2. Senate still needs to fight judges as much as possible, but we are basically ****ed on this and will have dozens of Trump judges for the rest of our lives. This really sucks.

3. The House needs someone other than Pelosi to be Speaker. It doesn't even need to be a super progressive, although we'd like that. Ted Lieu would be just fine.

4. The House needs to push on everything, just like Republicans did under Obama when they voted to repeal the ACA 2828932908 times. Vote for Medicare for all. Vote for $15 minimum wage. Impeach Trump. Revoke Jared's security clearance. Vote to protect Mueller.

5. All states where we broke supermajorities or took control must get rid of as much gerrymandering as possible. We saw what happened with PA. NC is due to have its districts redrawn, and that would probably net another couple seats in the House going forward. There are plenty of other places where this could happen as well (MI? NY?). It's worth it for liberals to gerrymander in their favor because you are damn right Republicans would, but this won't happen.

6. Replace (again) all of the Democratic Party leadership like Perez, etc. They are clueless and suck ass.

Narrator: Schumer and Pelosi remained in their leadership positions.

Kinda tough to get the to step down after they presided over Dems taking back the House.

Champ is 100% on point re Schumer. Guy's a clown and never should have been made leader. Granpa Reid ran circles around this joker. Probably handwaved five more judges through last night while watching returns

I've got no problem with Perez, anyone else in charge still has to deal with the same inherent GOP racism that keeps deplorables in the Senate

I'm obv not a Pelosi fan but whatever, I still trust her more than Schumer

The Q crew is shook:

Nothing is going to get done so every action needs to be made with maximum optics in mind for 2020.

Vote to legalize weed, vote to raise the minimum wage, get as much real Trump dirt on the news every night as possible, and pass a decent healthcare bill that is simple enough to understand that it will be broadly popular.

I'm guessing we're going to have a flurry of half baked investigations into the Trump people that put the patina of bull**** on every single thing the Democrats do leading up to 2020. Lots of stupid catch phrases as they lazily bathe themselves in donor money. God bless America.

Better than hearing you whine about how Obama didn't give you $50/mo while others benefited.

this is a pretty bad trolling attempt IMO

LOL at thinking this midterm will be a vehicle for replacing Pelosi as speaker.

I'm no Schumer superfan, but it's far from obvious that the Democrats lost Senate seats overall because the Democratic candidates in the close races weren't progressive enough.

It's fine to criticize Schumer on moral or policy grounds for that position, but it wasnt obviously idiotic as an election strategy.

All these 80 year old Dem's in leadership needs to step aside and let younger D's take the reins. Joe Kennedy could get the votes over Pelosi.

The 2020 strategy cant be, we were not far left progressive enough in 2018.

But why not? GOP damage control/lessons learned from 06 and 08 was, "We weren't conservative enough." And we all laughed and laughed at that, Tragic Death of the GOP threads were rife with such ridicule. Then 2010 rolled around and guess what, they ran this thing called the Tea Party Republican and crushed.

I don't have anything against Pelosi, but she shouldn't be speaker from a tactical perspective. She is too big of a motivating force for Republicans and too effective of a target for Trump's bullying.

Ideally, I would have the speaker be a no name midwesterner in a Republican state who will still refuse to compromise. For instance, Kendra Horn just won a "likely Republican" seat in Oklahoma which went for trump by 36 points in 2016. It will be pretty hard to attack her on anything like "coastal values" and she has no voting history to be attacked either.

You could do the same thing strategically with Joe Cunningham who just flipped a SC seat.

Taking away the Republicans propaganda is by far the most important strategic issue.

Who cares if the Speaker has any behind the scenes power or anything. You have to play to win.

I doubt a progressive would've done better than Nelson in FL. If you actually looked at the map of FL and what part of it was red and what part of it was blue it is what you would expect no matter who the D was. Gillum lost and he was progressive enough. I still maintain the R's base are literally going to die off in the next few decades and states like LOLorida will become less of a cesspool.

Implying the Republicans rely on facts for their propaganda.

Its not analogous.
A progressive candidate that doesn't focus on the most left leaning parts of progressive ideas wins in Florida, Georgia and Texas. There was no big effort to reach out to the never Trumpers.


If we want to win in 2020, we cant have progressive litmus tests or else your out as a candidate. If you want someone to check off every progressive box, Dems are going to lose and we get Trump for another 4 years.


You can be progressive, fire up the base and bring non-progressives into a winning coalition. There is a sweet spot in the electorate. Think Conor Lamb in the house, Manchain in the Senate.

if republicans are still running against hillary, why wouldnt' they run against pelosi even if she wasn't speaker

Impeaching Trump would be huge mistake IMO. It doesn't poll well and would fire up R base for turnout in 2020 to protect Trump.

D's should instead vote on the other progressive stuff that is popular that you mentioned, plus a tax bill that helps middle class while reversing most of the Trump tax bill for rich/corporations so revenue neutral.

Here is my fear: Democrats in the house spend all their time loudly trying to impeach Trump, investigate Trump, reveal his tax returns, show him to be the racist misogynist pig that he is, etc. All the people who already agree with all of this cheer, the people who don't boo, and everybody digs in. In the meantime, people continue to be hurt by the Trump administration's actions on tax, trade, health, environment, consumer protection, and every other area of policy. Trump spends literally 100% of his time hammering the idea that each and every one of the problems that everyone is experiencing is because of Democratic obstruction in the house. The Dems answer continues to be "he's a racist misogynist pig!" And then we get absolutely slaughtered in 2020.

I'm not sure I have a better plan, and think we're probably all ****ed regardless, but the above is my fear.

... your take is that Joe Manchin is progressive and is what Dems should aspire to?

GTFO

This is 100% what will happen. We've got 6 more years of him.

Dems know impeaching Trump is a waste of time, their plan is a broadside of subpoenas and entirely legitimate investigations into thebshady **** that his cabinet has been up. They can gum up the works, probably indict a few people, and basically stop anything from getting done.

That's really the point. I cant think of a single close Senate race where it is likely that the Democrat lost because he/she wasn't progressive enough.

That doesn't mean that we have to be happy with the Manchins of the world, and as far as I'm concerned, you can go **** yourself if you are voting the wrong way because your constituents want you to vote the wrong way.

But are guys like Manchin making the right call if their main objective is to save their own hides? Probably yes.

House speaker is a lightning rod no matter who it is and no matter which party they're from. They'll just demagogue whoever else they elect if not Pelosi.