At this point, the centrists aren’t going to go with Trump. We have to be sane, but also do issues that can persuade the persuadables of the WWC who were turned off by Hillary to come back.
The one thing we don’t know, is whether the WWC anti-Hillary vote was because of her personal issues, or her political issues, or maybe both. (I suspect some of each, but I think Bernie would have won, so why not go with a Bernielike for round 2, Trump’s not gonna do better)
If Trump is impeached, things do change and my opinion might change.
Basically, the above. The Clinton (and to some extent Obama) angle was to be conservative fiscally and somewhat liberal in their social policies. They were effectively 1970s Republicans for virtually everything but abortion and civil rights.
The Clintons’ major thesis was that LBJ and his ilk had tried to push the country too far to the Left after the post-War boom had faded away, and that the country’s center-of-mass was a little further Right than center. The Baby-Boomers had grown up, all had mortgages, and no one wanted to pay for stuff that they (the Boomers) didn’t need… like healthcare. The Dems embraced that and became the Party of Professionals instead of the Party of Working People.
The current calculus is reevaluating that. The groundswell of support for Bernie’s ideas, the overall acceptance of the core principles of the ACA (as long as you don’t mention Obama’s name next to it), and the fact that many of the Boomers are now retired and needing government assistance, means that the pendulum is starting to swing further to the Left of center. The Millennials outnumber the Boomers and will soon reach voting age (meaning the age when many of them bother to vote: 30 not 18); to reach them you need someone further Left than Hillary, it seems.
The Democratic party needs to decide whether they want to be a Clinton style Centrist party or truly embrace the “Bernie Bros” (IE basically the next generation of Democrats) that they alienated during the primaries. I do not believe they can do both.
I also want to note that most people are not asking for the party to become an extreme left party to counter the extreme right republican party of today. It seems like these days not being racist/sexist/hating gays/hating science means you’re a democrat and then if you believe anything beyond that that isn’t republican, you’re a socialist.
The Democratic party can certainly embrace the Bernie Bros group which will probably outgrow some of their demands, but if they do that, they will lose me. I am not interested in paying for someone’s party years at college. I am also not willing to give my healthcare up to the fate of the government… you know like how the GOP controls it now and wants to strip away care for women based on extreme Christian morality.
Because leaving it to the free markets has worked so much better?
And this is the real problem with the cost of college, too much partying. Got it.
Listen I’m not saying that any change to college wouldn’t require sticks as well as carrots, but good lord the system is broken to shit. It is untenable. I’ve gone over my thoughts on this before, but we need a system that a) controls the cost of college much more rigorously b) provides a way for students of low income families to realistically go and c) does these without leaving them to their eyeballs in debt.
This is why I don’t like conversing with the Bernie Bros group. It’s just attack after attack. You think because I don’t like the proposal that automatically means I think the system we currently have works perfectly. I said it before and I will say it again. I am not taking additional 1000 dollars a month it takes to send kids to 4 year colleges, many of whom probably should not go to college, and I am not willing to have my healthcare decided by the super white old guys club that is currently the GOP in power right now. The only reason ACA hasn’t been repealed is they can’t figure out how to do it without shooting themselves in the foot. But if they had a checklist where they can just remove services, you might as well just tell women to take a hike now.
By the way, as you saddle me with a 1k a month new tax, I am still paying for my college loans, some of which have large interests rates on them since you can’t even refinance them. I will not apologize for taking issue with that.
And hey, it’s entirely reasonable to let the party that actually and literally wants to kill you stay in power to avoid having .02% of your income to go the kids who won’t appreciate the opportunity to go to school debt free because they’re too busy doing kegstands.
Apparently having the Democratic party move away from a large number of their constituents means those same constituents simply flip to supporting Republicans?
I don’t know about that, but it does mean they either don’t turn out to vote or vote for a 3rd party candidate.
The danger of a “true version of trump” is there, ie a republican that supports some of the same values Bernie Supporters do, but lets be honest, almost everything Trump has promised beyond the typical republican talking points is VERY obvious bullshit. Thus i don’t have a ton of respect for people who supported Bernie and voted for Trump. Going against your long term interest because someone treated you like shit is childish (albeit tempting).
It’s a calculus problem. Will having a platform endorsing, say, more government financing of college attract more people like Armando than it alienates people like Nesrie? And if it turns someone like Nesrie off, will that person stay home, still vote Democrat, or flip to the other party?
Going left makes it harder for reasonable conservatives to abandon ship. You push them towards Trump, despite the fact that he is not attractive to them.
Clinton did not lose because she was too moderate. She lost because she was Hillary Clinton, and that alone made her equivalent to the MAXIMUM LEFT in the eyes of the right wing.
While she was obviously not even close to that in terms of her actual ideology, this same galvanization would occur with a candidate who was actually that far to the left.
While you may WANT far left policy, you need to temper that desire with a recognition that going for too much, too fast, may result in you not getting anything you desire.
We’re told that the Democratic party can’t be liberal if it wants to win. It must be the centrist party while the republican party keeps going further and further Right each year. One strategy is working. One is not. Even if it was working, the only thing it would result in is a centrist candidate, not actual things we want because we traded those away to win. If anything we’re back to the “vote for me because you don’t want X terrible event to happen” strategy.
It is true we might lose, but guess what, we already lost, not only the presidency but everything else as well it seems. You would almost think most Americans were not democrats from looking at these results.
The problem for me is… I have money. I earn money. I do very well right now but I came from very little. I challenge anyone and everyone who ever accuses me of just wanting handouts because apparently that’s what they think the left not only consists of but actually stands for, the Democratic handout party. I don’t need handouts right now nor do I really want them. I remember and lived through long periods of time of not getting what I needed to be healthy and safe and comfortable, like don’t turn on the heat and huddle in a blanket kind settings to keep the power bill down.
I can support efforts to ease those less fortunate than me, but don’t tell me lie down and just take it else I’m enemy. I do not exist in the Democratic party just to hand out checks. How many of you have an extra 1 to 2k around a month just lying around? And don’t sell me on the financial benefits of the Bernie plan. I read it. I took hours going over his numbers and they were crap… like to the point even if the rest of you thought it was okay to price gauge someone living in modest house with a car they drive for ten years and is just financially middle class is worth squeezing… even with all that money it didn’t add up.
Look in the mirror? Your Bernie Bros jibe is… laughable really.
I just find your stance… contradictory? I mean, ok, lets take health care. Certainly I agree with you that having the GOP in control is a major problem for your access to health care. I 100% agree that it is horrifying that they posses the ability to, through policy, make it unaffordable/ impossible for you to get medical treatments you need.
But what alternative do you propose? The current system of free markets does not work. Yet the only other alternative available is at the governmental level. So your options are between a party that wants to make universal coverage for all, and one who wants to let the markets screw over select groups. So how, in that scenario, does this equate to dropping the DNC? What sensible world does it compute that you would instead support the party actively interested in your healthcare being stripped entirely? I’m sincerely asking because choosing to leave the Democratic party if they proposes something like a Canadian style universal healthcare system seems mind bogglingly foolish to me. Like I literally do not understand what better alternative you see.
As for college, well, just because you and I got fucked over, doesn’t mean we need to keep fucking over every new generation ad nauseum. I am only marginally older than you, paid for my own schooling completely, and had plenty of student loans as well. I also spent years going part time and working full time to pay as I went. I am damn aware of the cost of college, and I can see the system is headed for collapse for a bunch of reasons. And, for the record, I thought Bernie’s proposal was incomplete. It was an insuficient/ incorrect partial solution. That said it is better than the current trajectory. But there are a dozen other ways I could see to improve the system. But, again, we need to start addressing this problem now. College costs too much, and the prospects for those without a degree are too dim. This requires a multi axis plan of attack. Create other avenues for success (trade school, training), setting costs at more reasonable levels, a change in corporate culture that says you need a college degree to get a job as a janitor or secretary, etc. Oh, and changing the current economic system that has destroyed the working class by funneling greater percentages to the top 1%.
Honestly much of the pressure could be alleviated by making it so a college degree was needed to provide a bare minimum sustenance for a family. Which ties in to a bunch of things about the changing economy. The decimation of manufacturing jobs because of automation has meant that a greater percentage of people are are working in (low paying) service jobs than a generation before. One possible way would be Universal Basic Income. Which is eventually something I see we should do as a replacement for many welfare programs (though probably not all). Making it so everyone has enough to make a meager living means that no longer is a high school diploma a death sentence. You’d have enough to get by working those low paying jobs. Yet getting a degree and a better job improves your lot in life.
But again, the reason you lost wasn’t because Clinton was too moderate.
The right wing has spent, literally, decades railing against Clinton as the mother fucking antichrist.
The fact that she was moderate did not matter, not even one tiny bit, because she was PERCEIVED by the right (including many moderates, sadly) as being crazy left.
If you put up someone with Clinton’s policy platform, who simply WASN’T ACTUALLY CLINTON, that person would have crushed Trump… because they would have pulled way more of the republicans.
I used that term because Murbella used it literally right above me. Above him others were mentioning Bernie, so naturally I shifted the conversation to Bernie because everyone else did.
Healthcare options should remain available, and if you think the Democrats in charge will save us, you have to remember they don’t always win… see now as a good reminder of just how comfortable you’d feel with the government controlling it 100%.
As for my student loans. I didn’t get screwed. I struggled with them, and they will paid… soon. I knew what I was doing when I took them and I am fortunate enough to make the choices I did. I made those choices. I own them. But if someone is 50 years old with 100k in debt making 25k a year… yeah we need to do something about that. That doesn’t mean we give the next generation a blank check to make bad decisions other people pay for.
Free 4 year college is not acceptable to me. It’s too costly. It pushes people who shouldn’t go to college into college and it leaves out the other paths entirely. I’d support paths to fully funded community colleges to transfer to public school if they are successful there. I’d support expanding apprenticeship programs and work experience programs too. I am not interested in paying someone’s 60k a year private school option although I think it’s fine if they have that path… just make the less expensive ones a viable option.
Going too far left may not workout as the Democrats think it will.
The craziest thing is that the DNC candidates all seem super similar to me, on the political spectrum. So if they Ellison-Or-Bust people want him so bad, sure, whatever.
Partially, at least for midterms. I think the bigger issue is the idea in the party that people get “turns” the voting public’s opinion be damned.
The GOP doesn’t really care about that. They let them debate in the clown car, but they aren’t assured a spot by any means. They realize the power of the public getting excited by a candidate. The Dems just shove it down people’s throats and then don’t understand why voters don’t get excited about their assigned nominee.
I honestly don’t think I will ever forgive Wisconsin for that one. He is hands down of the most respected and venerated lawmakers, and it saddens me to say, as a diehard cheesehead and wisconsinite… My advice would be for him to move to another state and take over for a retiring Dem. We need people like him in the Senate. Thank god we have Elizabeth Warren.
