So basically Dems can win if they focus on... flipping Utah? The **** did I just read?

It's not that dumb but it's more insidious than that, imo. The idea is basically flip more educated, wealthier people who traditionally vote Republican and might be on the fence. They're in places where the GOP currently has a lot of control (because frankly the GOP has a lot of control in a lot of places).

As I said, this actually might work from a certain perspective of 'working.' We shouldn't poo poo it as unserious because 1) the GOP margins aren't that high and so any sort of degradation in GOP support from any direction could cause them serious problems and 2) these voters are hard to **** over with suppression schemes since the system isn't designed to holistically **** them, and they are dependable voters you can count on to show up in 2018/2020 and 3) they probably are varying degrees of concerned about Trump and what the Republicans are becoming and 4) Democrats seem to be very earnestly trying this right now.

So it ain't a joke even if it's a very bad idea.

The problem is: can you flip them? What opportunities are being wasted by focusing on them? I'm OK with being a big tent party, so I'm not so worried about that.

My concerns are more of the Pyrrhic victory concerns: you build a coalition, but is it durable? And what does it want? Do you want to be the party of the Gang of Eight? Because that's basically what this article is lobbying for: be the kind of party John McCain could bring home to his mother.

I bet you could get my grandma in Salt Lake to vote dem with this strategy. Except she died.

By the same token, I'm pretty sure going full Bernie and firing up the 18-29 year old demo is also a sure fire way to lose a midterm election because none of them will vote. It's honestly a really perplexing question, how do reach people who saw Donald Trump's demeanor during the last campaign and said yep, I'm going to vote for that? It's beyond my capacity to understand those people

I feel like there's a lot of middle ground between Bernie and Hillary2.0/Joe Lieberman.

Flip the dentists of suburbia so the next time a black guy gets in they froth themselves into voting for Trump 2.0?

No thanks.

Yeah this is my point of view. It's really dangerous/insidious because flipping the dentists of suburbia might work. I trotted out the article here because I think it's bad, but NOT because it's preposterous. Imagine you flip 1 of every 10 former Romney voters to become straight ticket Democratic voters; that alone would be disastrous for the GOP and propel the Democrats to major, huge victories. I retain some skepticism these people are movable beyond signaling how Deeply Troubled they are before getting back into the voting booth and electing more Republicans, but whatever, assume it works.

Because in the end, the strategy is ultimately just claiming utter defeat to any semblance of leftist initiatives. What do former Romney voters want? The perpetuation of the system that got us to here in the first place.

It's the 1990s all over again when the only way the Democrats could imagine to beat the Reagan coalition was to be Slightly Less Reagan. Remember the Clinton era: Welfare reform, tough-on-crime, Sister Souljah. Dentists in suburbia won't fall for the bait-and-switch, they still want their tax cuts, they want vouchers to send their kids to private schools, they want the Thin Blue Line to keep blacks in their place. They just want it with a smile, and don't be such an imbecile about it.

It's a Pyrrhic Victory for people who want something markedly different. A former version of me could sign the praises of compromising with these people; what Trump proved is that they ultimately deal in bad faith or are hopelessly pliable with transparent idiotic promises. The whole give-and-take with them, the whole reason you deal with them is that they get their Republican Lite policies but keep the true deplorables and haters constrained and muted. The whole last 25 years showed they'll just let those guys fester at the best of the times, and if a black guy is President or they think Hillary Clinton is a too much of a frigid *****, or if the rabble are getting more anxious about their economic future or opiates or immigrants, or if Kaepernick kneels too much, or whatever got into white people water supplies in 2016, they'll strategically jump ship and become partners in fascism to keep their taxes low and keep black people in line. And in the best of times you don't get much from them either.

I thought Hillary wasn't that much different than Bernie policy-wise? Wasn't she one of the most liberal candidates in history?

There's nothing that "young person" directed about Bernie, he just had a hippie thing going and young people liked him. Dems should veer away a bit from means testing or social benefits for specific groups and focus a bit more on universal social programs or perhaps age related, like school lunches, tuition and expanding medicare and social security.

Like even with University tuition, a program 1/33rd or something as large as single payer health care, Hillary had to throw in means testing. If a few upper middle class kids get free college, what's the big deal? If a few rich kids get free college, same thing. The biggest difference between a Clinton Democrat and a Berniecrat on social issues is just the attitude that some things are rights vs. acts of charity.

Dems don't need to flip Utah in presidential years, but getting some house seats out of SLC would be SWEEEET b/c now you have potential senators and governors, and winning in other similar places could help break up the Koch bros stranglehold on the legislative branch.

Honestly anything that gets Dem-E interested in competing in as many states and races as possible, even if some of the races are hopeless, would go along way toward getting their voters to turn out more regularly. Seeing an R run unopposed or win in a landslide because The D's hardly try only sends the message, "We don't care about you." It's pretty clear in some red areas of the country that Dem-E, as presently constructed, DGAF.

Voter ID is also here to stay and the Dems need to get back one or more of WI, MI, or PA and they better pray they don't lose MN, so you better believe it's time to get some more white guys in the coalition. I don't believe the educated white males who would be turned off by the worst of the Republicans are unicorns, but not enough people with gravitas are out there telling them about it.

Dems need attack media like Fox. Hopefully not as dishonest, but they need someone other than ****ing comedians pointing out how awful Republican "policies" are.

due to gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the electoral college.

the dems lost a ton of seats in the house despite getting nearly equal votes in the last 3 elections. and ofc theres that electoral college travesty for president.

the people have not rejected anything. the repubs have rigged the system to install a minority govt.

Won't those types flip right back once Trump isn't running and some generic Republican is?

That assumes we're going to get a generic Republican again soon, and I don't know if that's going to happen.

In the future, "generic Republican" will look a lot like Trump and not at all like Ryan/McCain/Graham.

Maybe I am totally off-base but I don't think there is an endless supply of rich, famous, used-car salesmen who can compete with polished politicians.

The Democrats need to find their own version of Trump: someone who signs executive orders accepting 10 million refugees per year, tries to stack the courts with far-left judges, campaigns on top marginal tax rates of 50%, transfers 25% of the defense budget into education, and actually tries to take away people's guns. There's literally nobody doing that right now afaik. Maybe they wouldn't win anything, but at least they could change the scope of the conversation.

This situation where Democrats constantly push themselves towards the center while Repubs move further and further right has clearly led to disastrous consequences.

I'm thinking the standards of acceptable discourse have been lowered a few notches, and we're going to see more blatant racial appeals in upcoming campaigns.

You won't have the celebrity factor, but I'm thinking anyone who has any designs of winning the Republican primary is going to have to be pretty openly racist.

Think Sarah Palin or Steve King. There is plenty of precedent for Trump-like figures in the Republican party.

@.Alex.: Those sound like good ideas; I wouldn't demean them by calling them the left's "version of Trump." They're mostly standard in the developed world. Bills for universal healthcare and $15 federal minimum wage are currently being worked on by Warren, Sanders, et al. And free college has policy papers out there. So what you describe is being done to a certain extent. To your specific points, I mean, you can't reasonably expect people to be campaigning on stacking the courts and signing executive orders to do such and such until 2019. I expect then you will see at least one leftist candidate promising bold moves like that.

The problem though is that it's hard to campaign on some of those issues, because the public has been made to believe that taxation is theft, government does nothing, and cutting one dollar from the sacred military is tantamount to pissing on the graves of our fallen troops. The magic of Trump is that he can campaign on lowering taxes to a historic degree AND on funding Medicaid bigger than ever, the biglyest. A true Democratic version of Trump doesn't campaign on grabbing guns, but rather he promises to get all the guns off the streets but everyone can keep their guns and open carry. It has to be impossible nonsense.

trump wasnt far right on everything. he promised not to cut anything for anyone. he lied* but it's what people heard. the real lesson of trump is that you can just make **** up at no cost and just promise to make it all great with no details.

*or maybe not lied because he had no idea what he was doing, but not telling the truth at least

Ha, for once I didn't get ponied.

Maybe the game has changed, but Republicans also have a pretty strong history of not coming from out of nowhere.

I'm about a third of the way through this and it seems very, very on point. Am I wrong?

More Professionalism Less Populism

Yes, if only we focus on the people Hillary won with, we can surely win again in the future by the same margin!

...

Has to be the stupidest thing I've read in the last few months.

I guess you're not reading the thread, or even your own posts. All the radical changes needed "advice" dished out here to a party that gained seats in both houses of congress and won the popular vote in the presidency is really, really dumb.