this is correct, but more in the whoever funnels them $ sense. They really do seem more interested in $ and the hillary types than winning elections. R's don't care, D voters do and get turned off. D's are seen more out of touch nationally than even trump. They won't win on this platform and it's obvious the bernie/perez tour is a total farce, people gonna see through that. Bernie refusing to join the party/support ossoff at first with perez refusing to fund the KS guy (on the bernie platform).

If you're gonna get votes, people gotta get a reason, if it's just both parties screwing you over, people aren't gonna care. They won't take the house on purely a "hey we're not fascists but we're still gonna **** you over just like he does vote for us!" platform.

Personally I think they should throw bills at republicans nonstop, make them vote or at least show they're doing a lot of work and R's are still blocking everything. Dems seem basically done with their side of an infrastructure bill but nobody knows that.

Exactly.

The same reason (facile, clear and unapologetically liberal and not beholden to niceties like compromise) that Bernie was so popular with his supporters is precisely why he has been (and may continue to be) a liability to incrementally moving the country to the center/left and away from its current destination on the shores of fascism.

I am very concerned about what goddamn planet you guys are living on.

The Democratic Party is the most compromise-friendly party in this country by a preposterous margin. The rise of Bernie is the direct result of excessive compromise to the point where a huge swath of the political left feel entirely unrepresented in modern politics.

I guess I care less about assuaging every last micro-aggressed member of the political left, and more about keeping Republicans out of office.

I agree that Bernie and his movement arose out of anger over compromise, but the country's governmental framework and social policy are far less conservative than they were before Clinton's triangulation. I understand the left is mad (about the lack of single payer, what it perceives as an aggressive military posture) but the anger seems somewhat misplaced. It would certainly be better for the US if Hillary were making the calls on war issues, but it's very unlikely that the US is doing anything more than saber-rattling at this point. And our current healthcare system isn't this THINGWORSETHANHITLER that the left makes it out to be. Again, Trump (and more GOP victory due to political left unwillingness to compromise), will hurt our healthcare a lot more than Hillary and Joe Manchin.

I am struggling to find the link between your perception that Democrats lose because of lack of compromise and reality.

Stop struggling, there is none.

This misconception is rooted in not understanding what American politics actually look like, and assuming that voters operate on a linear spectrum. They do not. Trump voters who expected him to bring about universal health care are dip****s, of course, but the lesson is that those sorts of policies actually appeal to people across the board. Most people don't have coherent political worldviews, and moving to the left on certain issues makes political sense. This is the fundamental strategic misconception that the Democratic Party has had in the Third Way era, which makes it all the more baffling that some people actually think that the party would benefit from more of it.

I mean, how can it possibly be said that the Democrats do not compromise enough? When in the past 15 years has the party capitulated to the whims of the American left? Name ONE ****ing example. The left is both ascendant and frustrated right now because of the logic being espoused by Heroball. The establishment, centrist Democrats have been running the show for 25 years and Donald Trump is President now. Republicans control both houses. They dominate state legislatures. Where is the success that centrists supposedly reap?

Like, the ENTIRE purpose of Hillary was winning. Everyone knew she was a compromise candidate -- you sacrifice some policy purity, and in exchange you supposedly receive a pragmatic and effective politician who can stand up to the opposition. The whole point of her nomination was that she could safely defeat whatever absolutely monster was nominated by the GOP. If she can't do that, then what good is she?

The thing is Republicans can be very flexible when they need to. Republicans in blue states tone down the abortion and racist talk and take a softer edge while Republicans in red states run on setting wild dogs on heathens and making sure gays are never acknowledged in public. The spine of the Republican Party though, the axis on which everything turns and can't be violated, is Republican economic policy. Tax cuts for rich, smaller government, etc. Run on abortion or don't, but you can't run on raising taxes as a Republican.

The reason that it seems like Democrats don't compromise is that they've compromised so much on economic policy that economic policy doesn't even seem like an axis of differenciation between the parties. So with that off the table then the only place to compromise is identity politics. But since Democrats run as a coalition of interest groups you can't really compromise on that because acknowledgment of those interest groups' interests are the glue that holds the Democratic Party together since Democrats don't really have an ideology to hold them together.

To Obama's credit he did open up healthcare as something that sets Democrats apart and makes them unique as opposed to simply being Republican lite and you've seen more and more Democrats take up universal health care coverage as an ultimate goal, rather than simply expanding healthcare as best as we can without raising taxes etc basically being a variation of a Republican.

I'm guessing he means a lack of compromise among voters, not candidates. There are many people who claim to have progressive values, but they see some flaws with Hillary that are then magnified by the right-wing echo chamber, and conclude that it's not worth going out to vote for her over Trump. On the other side you have the centrists that sneer at Berniebros and do their best to push them away from the Democratic party.

Contrast that with Republicans who as we saw this election will always vote for Republicans no matter what.

You can probably draw a similar comparison in the Democratic party between California Democrats vs. someone like Joe Manchin. It wasn't all that long ago that the South still had plenty of Democrats at the state level, iirc, who much like your moderate Republicans toned down the things that Democrats go hard on now. But my impression of the Democratic party from the 90s/early 00s (which I'm welcome to hearing more about from people who are older than me, as I was pretty young then and not following politics) is that it wasn't as big on social issues back then, so maybe it wasn't so offensive to morally conservative Southerners then.

Regardless of what the ridiculous poll said, this is clearly not even remotely close to being accurate. You'd need a net of 1.45m people to change their vote from HRC to Trump, or a net gain for Trump of 2.9m out of 6.8m who voted relevant 3rd-party if we assumed a scenario in which no third parties ran.

I don't think I've met a single person who was anti-Trump that jumped on board after the election.

Hillary vs. Trump talk is sort of beside the point, but also sort of exactly the point just in how much it misses the point, because who gives a **** how Hillary would fare against Trump right now? The Democrats possess the most popular politician in America in Bernie Sanders. They still have Obama, who is due to emerge from hiding in shame any day now. The future of this party does not involve Hillary Clinton.

Wat

Wat

Clinton had 69% popularity not long ago. Bernie only has 57 and sucks too.

Dems now seem to be insisting that you have to be pro choice or gtfo. Do they know that's like 20% or 25% of their entire voting block? god this party needs to die.

the amusing part is that obama is coming out from his break now...to accept a 400k speaking fee on wall street with cantor fitzgerald


which like i don't really care at all about these things if someone will pay you that much money to give a dumb speech i would prob do it too but the optics are something

A lot of Americans wanted him for a third term post election. Dude gets mad love and you think he is hiding in shame. C'mon man. lol.

It was tongue in cheek. Hiding in shame would be the only good reason for the extent of his absence from politics the past 3 months imo.

Preach on Cornel.

The left is extremely OldManYellsAtCloud when it comes to speaking fees. It's like when a fan gets mad at a player leaving for more money. Everything is seen as quid pro quo, too. It happened with Hillary, and now I'm sure another 1000 Democrats will start supporting Jill Stein and quit vaccinating their kids because Obama's getting paid and capitalizing his talent for speaking and his resume. How petty.

Exactly this. Many D voters are children who have never been told "no".

Two posts of meaningless garbo. GJ.

The Nation story on Heath Mello

Hm, so the WSJ and WaPo were both factually incorrect and ol HastenDan was right? How bow dah?

Two things:

1. I think I'm done reading Aaron Blake at WaPo

2.

You're trying way too hard to make "how bow dah" happen, maybe give it a rest for a bit.

So wrong. Too many love her still. She still has the best shot to win the 2020 nomination.

Thanks chief!

And David Nir can suck an egg.

Yeah dude, you should pitch this "the people who don't vote for us are idiots" thing to the top brass. All this time political parties have been trying to figure out how to "convince" people to vote for them, but the best approach is actually to complain about people not liking you.

Centrist Democrats are basically the Nice Guys of politics. Unable to convince anyone to **** them, they hop on Twitter and complain about voters being too shallow.