You mean like Miliband?

In any case the LP is a coalition, you exclude sections of that coalition from having a say in the leadership and the coalition breaks down. Parties don't just exist to win elections they exist to win elections to enact policies, my preference is for parties to enact the policies supported by the members of the party which they can then sell to the wider electorate. you'

Given this is the Dem thread you'd probably call Clinton > Sanders and yet Clinton was beaten by Trump.

i guess one of the main differences is that i dont really care much about the parties themselves. i just want countries not ruled by lunatics.

it's true that labour leaders would have to placate the left to keep the party together, and conservatives would have to do the same with the right, so they'll still be left/right of centre, but the rough edges would be grinded off.
clinton was a weak candidate (sanders was too tbf), but if we had somewhat of a guarantee that both parties would nominate sane people then it would matter a lot less whether every candidate was fantastic at politics. the point isnt that it would produce a long line of bill clinton/obama style brilliant politicians, but that it would produce less extremist ones.

Getting rid of Trump won't solve our long-term problems. We must end partisan redistricting in this country or we are all screwed.

There were a lot of problems with corruption back when the state parties decided candidates for these big political positions and the public only got to vote in the general. I don't think going back to that system is going to solve our problems. If anything, it would increase the distance between the views of the people and the views of the representation, causing further distrust in the system and possibly even worse polarization+extremism.

Amazing.

Polls are showing democrat favorable ratings lower than trump with about the same unfavorable rating. They're gonna have to concede somewhere, especially the D's in R states up for re election.

They need to run pro-gun, pro-life, ex-military in every red state congressional seat.

srsly wtf

That's a Republican now. You have cleansed your party of those Blue Dogs.

The gun and military parts aren't difficult at all. Pro-choice is about as mandatory as pro-civil rights. Polls run about 70/30 among democrats, so there are plenty of pro-lifers in the rank and file, but I don't think they are electable (and I wouldn't want them elected). I'd stick with pro-gun. The general democratic commitment to gun control isn't nearly as deep.

At any rate, I don't really agree with the sentiment. Imo the downfall of the DEMs has been insincerity not a lack of compromise.

http://religionnews.com/2016/05/10/w...-disappearing/

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Extremely the opposite of this. You will never get anywhere running a campaign that says the other guy's values and priorities are correct and you agree with all that ****, but you're going to caucus with the godless babykilling race traitor draft dodger commies for ??? reason.

because the current strategy of doing exactly that in red states is totally working for dems.

I made a longer post about this earlier, but pro-gun I think is one we can and should give on. It's a big dealbreaker for a lot of red staters, and we can easily package a pro-gun argument with a broad rights-based stance, e.g. I, Candidate X, don't believe in burdensome restrictions on guns, just like I don't believe in burdensome restrictions on voting.

Dems do need to be pro-choice though. The pro-life view is not compatible with any kind of liberal sensibility imo.

While I somewhat agree with you logistically, no way I'm capable of morally backing down from something that would inarguably save thousands (minimum) of lives. Winning isn't that important to me.

Everyone join the NRA, wait five years, then vote for new leadership.

Being only slightly less maniacal than the GOP on guns has been tried and failed. It's already the status quo position for the Democrats. The result is that the Republicans and the gun lobby have gotten all that they wanted and more and Democrats are STILL branded effeminate gun grabbers. Literally the only gun control they've moved on in the past twenty years is to offer to wipe the tears away of grieving parents clutching their dead kids' bullet ridden corpses and they have been lambasted for doing far too much gun grabbing because of it.

In the end, the Republicans got hip to the Democrats strategy of triangulation and realized that they could move the Overton Window ever rightward into insanity so that common sense is allowing mentally ******ed sub 75 IQ people babbling about their vengeful hallucinations to buy an assault rifle with absolutely no waiting and everyone who doesn't agree with precisely that is a gutless liberal fascist pussy. It's a fools' errand to try to keep up with signaling you don't favor burdensome restrictions when the definition of "burdensome" and "restriction" are constantly evolved to make sure you either embrace literally everything gun nutters want or they will brand you a giant pussy. It's a race that literally cannot be won, by design.

Democrats should embrace strident gun control positions even if we all acknowledge that its the minority position (I'm not even granting it but let's assume it for now). It signals to voters you have principles and aren't pandering to them and that you are steadfast in the things you care about and that they agree with you on.

The total NRA position is not consistent with the Democratic Party's philosophy in general, but within whatever bounds of Democrats that go a huntin' and Democrats that really want to ban guns totally I think it's important that each candidate and office holder is sincere more than that the are in line with the party orthodoxy. That's pretty much status quo and I think it's exaggerated how many people are single issue voters on this. Most people would rather know that they disagree with their candidate on a couple issues than hear everything they want but not know what to believe.

Those on the right who are absolutely single issue voters on guns are never going to vote Democratic. In their case it's not just guns; it's a whole way of thinking.

This might be fine advice for someone running for president, but until then, Democrats running in red districts should continue to pander. Their primary focus should be doing what is necessary to win those districts, not concerns about shifting national-level Overton windows.

Different states, different districts, we don't have to run the same candidate in every district.

The political parties LITERALLY ****ING FLIPPED after the Civil Rights Act and people want to pretend that there are other issues that are more important.

OK, first off, you briefly co-moderated a white supremacist internet forum before leaving that position for unclear reasons(but not the obvious one, that chezlaw is a racist and you didn't want to be associated with him). So your motivations here are suspect.

Secondly, yeah, uh, we have some empirical results for whether we are winning those districts? The entire New Democrat triangulation endgame of Rahm Emanuel recruiting a class of Blue Dogs ended up with a staggering and historic down ballot massacre.

These ****ing SMPers always treat reality like a goddamn thought experiment and they imagine they are literally the first person to ever think about this. Some of us read books.

"Listen I wouldn't be able to talk chezlaw into banning someone for posting the 14 words, but I'll definitely tell the Democrats how to win elections in red states: by being Republicans!"

Fly and Dvaut, what I'm talking about is not triangulation, but rather crafting a simple, coherent message that appeals to a broad coalition, in this case "Power to the people." The overall scheme would be a populist leftward shift. The kind of triangulation I believe you're talking about is where Dems say or give the impression of "Well I don't like guns, but I'm willing to compromise," HRC bragging about "both sides of the aisle," that kind of thing, which isn't what I'm advocating.

To this end, like micro says, sincerity matters. The candidates should have a vested interest in not grabbing guns because they themselves have hunting rifles.

Forget pandering. The right is a sinking ship loaded with nonsense. Maybe enough of the wingnut crowd figures it out in time to have a shot at fixing the mess, maybe they don't. But I'm not feeling the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach. What's next after guns, compromise that maybe we're too into the civil rights thing? That we could loosen up a little on environmental issues?

I have zero interest in Democrats turning into watered-down Republicans. I'd honestly rather just lose elections.