FYP.

Never encountered one of his sort in the wild before.

indio, this place has been INFILTRATED BY THE ZIONISTS MAN. GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN.

Things I learned today: deplorables think there are vast fortunes to be made in Holocaust Remembrance.

Srsly help me out here.

All these anti-establishment conservatives voting GOP are basically insanely ignorant, right?

Sorry, but I had another crazy pills moment.

There was that one crazy lady years back who said, "Obama's a socialist, he's gonna take away my social security," but now it's like this a normalized and widespread sentiment.

"We're fed up with the system, a system that we've voted for at the local, state, and federals for decades!"

"Obama promised us change, but that republican congress we elected gridlocked everything. I know, let's vote republican again!"

Srsly wtf am I missing?

yeah dude is going full nazi outchea

The centre right position is assuming its impossible to change any of that.

Anyway Phone Booth is here and saying a lot of interesting things but I think the responses to him have merit too.

As an amateur student of history I'm struck by the increasing number of Trump-as-Nixon analogies I see.

And that includes the response from the left in 1968! I suspect that is the closest analogy to today -- that the left lost a close election in a climate of cultural and social tumult. The coalition on the left was slightly different but the interaction between Phone Booth and 5ive/vix (and I suppose I am closer to them than Phone Booth, although I appreciate PB's points here) is basically what was left behind of the McCarthy movement and (some elements) of the RFK campaign, and their reactions to Nixon:

One big part of the activist left blamed the loss on the fact that the Democrats had the public on Vietnam frustration, they had economic populism, but the extreme liberal/academic/upper class white wing of the Democratic Party let too much alt-culture and black interests into the movement and distracted from the core message ("Clean for Gene!") and allowed Nixon to get them on wedge cultural issues and allowed both Nixon and Wallace space to capture working class whites.

The idea was that America saw too many hippies, too many blacks that bothered them and Democrats just needed to focus on issues of economic justice. That was the path back to electoral success; basically, the New Deal coalition.

This side eventually won, by the way. At least sort of. Democrats did pivot away from the activist left's nascent late 60s social rights projects to Carter/Clinton third way strategies which replaced economic justice with market orthodoxies and corporate friendly policies. Maybe the worst of all options.

But anyway: some with long memories of the Bernie campaign in fact might remember this DID manifest as a criticism of Bernie or at least white liberals like Bernie in the black community, namely that they had a long memory of the white activist Democrat types who showed up in the 1960s promoting revolution social change and then, as they felt it, basically abandoned them once blacks were seen as politically inconvenient. There is and probably remains a large level of distrust between blacks and white liberal activists. This had to be explained to younger Bernie voters again and again why Clinton was preferred over Bernie among black voters -- namely that blacks, particularly older blacks felt they had been burned once already by northern liberal activist types who -- once Nixon won in 1968 but especially walloped Democrats in 1972 -- were like "welp, **** blacks, we're outta here, good luck with the Bubbas, you guys aren't helping our image, we're working on the revolution up North, hope our paths cross again some day."

In the end I do find PB's analysis while articulate to be rather trite: I don't think it's lost on liberals at all that BLM rustles white jimmies, that the religious right was a millstone for the GOP among northern white working class rather than an asset and that Trump won big and animated northern working class whites by dispensing of the moralizing rhetoric, and that millennial-era SJW language and cultural patterns and yes, moralizing -- all of that virtue signaling is almost completely indecipherable to older whites who still constitute a significant part of the electorate, and that virtue signaling wins you basically 0 extra votes you didn't already have locked in. It is at best worthless, at worst offensive and drives people away.

And yet still I'd just push back on the notion here that Democrats can simply toss social justice and black activists in the garbage and win -- a glib restatement of PB's point, I know -- or more fair to him, that the Democrats can top-down direct that kind of energy into ways that are maximally politically convenient for the electoral prospects for Democrats. World doesn't work like that. I'm sure if Hillary Clinton could walk into BLM headquarters and America's university and internet snark factories and late night comedy shows and tell them to tone it down, white America is listening, we're just talking minimum wage this time, come back later -- she'd have done just that. But that's not going to work.

In fact what 2016 proved most of all is that there's a lot of Democrat sympathizers who actually don't care that deeply about the success of Democrats. It's at least not animating their votes. It sure seems like the margins between Obama and Clinton -- the true people she lost he got -- are the young, the Bernie type elements, and black voters who we're now saying need to be told to quiet down so Democrats can win. How does that get them back to the polls? The hope there is basically by shutting them up some, Democrats win back white working class types that got frightened off. I find it empirically dubious but also simply harder than giving them a reason to come back.

Obama did show a coalition is out there based on a lot of modern liberal identity signaling provided black voters see self-interest in the result, and if you modify probably just some of technocratic wonkery and frankly negativity about Trump and the GOP and instead replace it with aspirations for the future instead (e.g., Hope and Change instead of telling people how ****ty Trump is).

The fact remains: Democrats have to find a way to do three really hard, sometimes disparate things...

1) speak sincerely and genuinely to economic populism, about positive and affirmative ways Democrats help working class but more importantly middle class people who aren't getting the story that Trump/GOP grifter policies are mean to protect and enrich the wealthy and business concerns. I agree wholeheartedly Democrats run the risk of getting lost in the weeds of lecturing white America and social justice and embracing too much corporate friendly policies that most middle class voters haven't a clue what Democrats can actually do for them, and the Republicans tell them fairy tales which are much, much more politically correct and better than what the Democrats do. Democrats must fix this.

2) but they absolutely do need black voters, Latinos, other racial minorities, and younger voters who do embrace the more social justice-y elements, are status driven and culturally aware of emerging norms, and are highly educated -- because so many working class and middle class whites are so far gone. And this IS the appropriate forward looking strategy. The GOP does have huge demographic problems, they are relying on voters (uneducated, whites, olds) that are dying and an ever shrinking part of the population.

The 1970s-early 2000 Democrats effective tried exactly what you're proscribing PB: get Jesse Jackson outta here, get professional marketers to handle messaging to soothe whites. I agree it probably didn't head in quite the way you're suggesting now (e.g., Democrats embraced moderate Third Way strategies rather than remaining stark New Deal populists) -- but pushing blacks to the sidelines of the party did not mean the party thrived during this period either. And if Clinton approached anything near Obama-level black voter turnout we're not having this conversation and she wins the election at ~2012 scope

3) But yes, they need to do #2 in a way that probably does not overly frighten or moralize. They have to do #2 in a way that doesn't lose the professional gamblers, single moms, deadbeat dads, drug addicts, people on welfare, gambling addicts, alcoholics, atheists, people estranged from their families, etc. who aren't going to care about social justice and may be pushed into the GOP column. I think that point is surprisingly apt but more correctly, that number is dwarfed by middle class whites who sure may have some vices but more correctly just have wholly embraced the Republican (and often Democratic!) meta argument that government is hapless and corrupt and ineffective and can do nothing for them. Once you buy that, if you're a middle class white -- sure, why not vote for Trump? He sure is entertaining and white nationalism has its appeals. Democrats have nothing for you, government doesn't do stuff for you, social justice isn't for you.

In the end I suspect Phone Booth would maybe agree with a lot of what I say here, but yes still we're both using a lot of words to say the same trite sort of thing, that is much easier said than done:

Go do what Obama did

That's not easy though. The fact remains that the Democrats have a really hard needle to thread keeping professional educated white liberals, blacks, Latinos, restive youth, and just enough middle class Rust Belt whites working in unison. But I don't see a way out of this coalition and get back to winning through appealing to whites making $50k and above, e.g., the GOP coalition. The GOP has frankly a much simpler branding/messaging job which is why they often appear so much more coherent and direct. They can simply sell white nationalism and tax cuts and they're good, job done, everyone goes home and puts their feet up, 60 million voters are there for them.

Democrats have sell hope, change, help, social redress for blacks, inclusive spirit for immigrants, economic populism. You lose any one of those messages and the coalition becomes very frail like we just saw.

The problem isn't so much making up it's mind as possibly having some conflciting aims. BLM is an important and neccesary movement. Winning elections is also important and necessary. If you are correct that BLM made winning less likely then it doesn't follow that we shouldn't have both BLM and try to win.

I agree with Dvaut that there are many factors that could each have changed the result. Even if BTM is one of them it's not the one we should focus on. Campaign harder, have better policies, sell the policies better, sell the good stuff that's been done by Obama harder, maybe have a better candidate, cut out most of the personal attacks, avoid the 'deplorable' type own goals etc etc.

We have to concentrate on those bits that we can do better or simply dont need. Lets keep the good stuff like BLM.

Btw if this seems simple and reductive, that's the point. "Insanely ignorant" means incredibly low-info, not insane or stupid:


I'm looking for the simplest way to express the idea to the socialist/social-security lady, or these people:

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-s...icaid-cutbacks


In Clay County where Lockaby lives, 38 percent of the population live in poverty. A fifth of the residents are disabled. Life expectancy is eight years below the nation's average.

Clay's location places it inside an area familiar to public health specialists as the South's diabetes and stroke belt. It's also in the so-called "Coronary Valley" encompassing the 10-state Ohio/Mississippi valley region.

About 60 percent of Clay County's 21,000 residents are covered by Medicaid, up from about a third before the [Obamacare] expansion. The counties uninsured rate for nonelderly adults has fallen from 29 percent to 10 percent.

5ive I think the first thing to do to make sense of it is stop assuming we have a shared definition of things, or least understand what lots of people mean when they say things.

So when they say "Obama is a socialist, he's a threat to my social security" remember that "socialism" doesn't actually mean someone who believes strongly in collective state ownership of goods and redistributing wealth in an equitable fashion. What they mean is "Obama is a boogey man I don't like, he's a threat to my social security" and "socialist" is just the appropriate signal word they heard Hannity jabbering about last night.

When your normal reactionary white type with right-wing leanings expressed their "frustration with the system" assume there's an unspoken "frustration with the system...and how easy it is for blacks to get ahead these days!" kind of stuff.

Obviously if you take the tritest forms of populist sloganeering and then try go map it onto their political behaviors it makes no sense. But it's probably not because right-wing reactionary populists are complete hypocrites, it's that most of their political rhetoric is meaningless babble jargon lifted from Luntzian message makers to mask their probably far more deplorable beliefs. That's the whole point of marketing spiel, to obscure whatever the real product is.

One of the banner ads on 2p2 is for Banana Republic jackets or some **** with "great performance attributes." Has any human ever been like "yeah you know what I need, a jacket with great performance attributes?" That's not how normal people talk.

Political messaging is sort of like that except humans surprisingly do embrace the jargon so vague allusions to "shake up the system" stand-in for the real thought, something like "get all the black Presidents off my TV" just like "great performance attributes" stands in for "will this ****ing thing be uncomfortable as I'm walking around" in jacket marketing. In both cases it's easier and sounds better to rely on marketing spiel.

Once you recognize right-wingers jibbering about how Obama promised change and they were all for that, they really were, but oops he's a failure so looks like they're going to have to vote straight ticket GOP for the 28th straight election, you probably shouldn't be navel gazing about how Obama's change platform went so wrong with these types but instead simply question what the **** those people are talking about when they say "Obama promised change" as if that's an aspiration they really felt and wanted as Obama described it. The answer is of course they didn't.

Trump presented himself in a way that that no one from the establishment has ever represented themselves before and he also did not pivot away from his base after nomination like everyone from the establishment always does.

Its also why there is institutional insecurity with a Trump victory. He is not of the stuff of those institutions. He is an amatuer arriving at a happy moment for amateurs.

Perhaps this is also why he is finally showing signs of some regression to the centre as he if finally be made aware of the logics and demands of the power structures that transcend the president, and also how the office of the president is apart from the individual of the president. Though he will probably be subversive in these regards too.

Its not that Trump has anti establishment substance, content or origins, which is why myself, you and others were originally baffled by the anti establishment claim, its that he has anti establishment style or presentation.

He does not communicate or act in the established way. This is why we all assumed his defeat, its why he was victorious.

Worth pointing out he was also running against the avatar of the established way.

The simple take away is that even though Trump will probably end up representing all the established interests we expect a republican to do, he is still subversive in regards political culture, and to many it was that subversion on the simplest level that was appealing.

Do we yet have a good idea which Obama voters didn't turn out as much? Was it split more or less evenly, or did specific groups not vote in large numbers? Not interested in defections to Trump as much. I haven't seen a concrete analysis.

Also, there's a pretty hilarious twitter war between Sanders hardliners, HRC partisans, and AA'S who backed HRC (there's some crossover, specifically among the latter two groups). The pragmatists among the last group are the most persuasive to me, but I'm inclined in that direction anyhow. That is: pragmatism, broad enforcement of civil rights. The Sanders crowd keeps crying foul and is demanding full capitulation. I don't really understand the tactic there. Minor points are occasionally being conceded and then relitigated.

I don't have a point here.

One thing I have not seen anyone really talking about is the number of people who only voted on the down vote element of the ballot, e.g. left president blank.

Apparently this increased from 50K to 100K in Michigan.

The problem with the Internet Bernie People is that like 80% are sincere activists who share a lot of the same goals as the rest of the Democratic Party or at least we all have some common ideals.

And like 20%, and I suspect it's the very vocal active people specifically on the internet and only on the internet, are like unreformed Ron Paul voters who are into you know grifty End the Fed pamphleteers or YouTube video types and OK with neo-Confederate apologetics and conspiracy mongering and tons of other clown show stuff who are not Democratic allies in any meaningful sense but who are now playing faux I-Told-You-So analysts as to where Democrats should go from here and they are absolutely the Pied Pipers of every political movement they touch, from libertarianism to now progressivism, and you should run as fast as you can from whatever those people are saying.

So I have a point: the twitter wars are frankly healthy except for some percentage of the Sanders hard-liners are basically corrosive fifth column elements dropped out of the Ron Paul Blimp as it deflated.

@OAFK

That's interesting if it happened much more in certain counties. I don't know what to make of it otherwise,.except the obvious.

What's the obvious? I assumed the blank Presidential ballots were never trumpets that couldn't pull the trigger for Hillary but that is a reflection of the people I know.

I doubt I follow any of the latter Bernie crowd you mentioned.

Also, and this is incredibly difficult for me to discern since I'm not entirely familiar with the entire coalition, I get a feeling some % of Sanders backers don't care so much about him as just using him to lob bombs. Because sincere Sanders partisans use similar rhetoric.

The main reason I'm dialing in is to understand the language among the Democratic constituency better. I'm much more familiar with right-wing rhetoric, because I was raised in it, and I went through that kind of radical libertarian phase in my late teens to early 20s. I abandoned it before I ever posted here. Their consistent racial appeals weren't lost on me. That's how I abandoned it.

My mom is a hardline GOP voter that is also vehemently anti racist, And I mean she REALLY instilled anti racism throughout my childhood. It's incredible how many diametrically opposed beliefs she simultaneously holds. She'll buy into the most ham-fisted leftist messaging in cinema, and then do the same with the most toxic right-wing messaging. It's just bizarre.

Well, some Dems have been saying this for years and it finally "came true" all at once sort of. Republicans have been obstructing government at every level possible and making it as dysfunctional as possible. In doing so, they make the case that government is simply inefficient and awful and that's just the way it is. Well, voters finally decided they were right after eight years of absolute obstruction. So they voted for somebody who is going to usher in massive government programs of spending and possibly trade protectionism, but from a conservative point of view (for example they are paying for their huge infrastructure program through lol tax cuts.)

It's basically political terrorism. And it worked. You could weave voter suppression and refusal to confirm judges, not just at the SC level but at the federal and district level, as well as refusing to confirm other officials, for example EPA positions, just to keep government as dysfunctional as possible, into the picture as well. I mean hell, they shut down the government a couple of times over the last few years and the media or the voters never really made that much of a fuss about it. Of course they realized they could just keep pointing their guns at government's ability to operate and sooner or later the people would hand over the keys to them. I'm sure they just didn't realize it would come like this.

It goes hand in hand with the fact that most counties that went the most heavily for Trump are not diverse and not close the Mexican border. A lot of these people are living in a rural bubble and they really don't get much contact with the people they are most afraid of, like Muslims for example. Certainly not all, but that seems to be a huge factor in how people voted along with education/lack of education. So they're sort of voting based on a fantasy land. Remember Trump won on a message that we have 40% unemployment in this country because Obama and/or the government is cooking the books and not counting people properly.

I've mostly been railing this thread, but it seems to me most of what you guys are talking about are top-down solutions to how the Democratic Party can save itself, and I think that misses a huge part of what's been happening in the country. Back before the Trumpocalypse I said a few times that the same populist shredding of the GOP was going to soon hit the DNC too. Party identification continues to plummet. Everybody hates the establishment, on the left and the right. The establishment even hates itself.

Political parties are going to be the caboose for the foreseeable future. If there is going to be an effective counter to America's Trumpening it will come from the disparate masses on the left choosing to coalesce around someone or something. What the Democratic Party establishment does will be largely irrelevant.

My favorite part of talking politics is when people don't realize that just because the word itself is the same it doesn't mean the group is the same. Like how the Southern Democrats before 1964 were racist white guys who ran the South and now they're mostly minorities and whites who don't run things. The Progressives of the 1920s wouldn't recognize the Progressives of today. Thr Progressives of the 1920s didn't have a coherent program or even groups whose interest they were defending. It was a hodgepodge of ideas meanwhile the Progressives of today do have pretty definable groups of whose interest they're looking out for.

But you're a neo Nazi so pearls before swine I suppose.

Nah, they should focus on explaining its globalism, what you gonna do?

cool, 2020 is in the bag now, glad we solved the problem

A nice thought provoking thread but I think it's missing a more structural discussion. My take is that it is necessary to distinguish the levels of discussion.

I think the first thing we need to identity is the post 2008 scenario in the the western world. I see three clear things.

I) An alarming success of the far right
II) A complete collapse of the third way
III) Growth from the left.

All those things also happened in USA in the shape of Trump, Hillary and Bernie.

Some of the posts in this thread are supposing that the Democrats are all basically one big team who all have the same goal when it's nowhere near the case. There is a wing of the party with very strong ties to powerful money interests , you know, the wing that won the nomination via Hillary Clinton. And there is the wing that actually tried to lift a center left platform.

You can't discuss the marketing strategy unless you have a clear picture of what the democrats actually are.

As a complete outsider my intuition is that the left wing of the party needs to:

1)lift its own platform without compromising with the right wing of the party.
2) push its agenda at a local level
3) kick ass on the presidential primary
4) THEN and only THEN , make some concessions to the right wing of the party because you know you still got to run the country and there is no way the left wing of the party can aspire to have a majority of the congress.

Any explanation that involves letting Clinton run unopposed for the D nomination is weak sauce