We tried civility. We had Obama. Extraordinarily even-tempered and incredibly civil, even - especially - to Republicans.
The GOP laughed at him and immediately set about transforming him into an object of contempt and derision among their followers. And this had no downside to them whatsoever; they energized their base, while at the same time convincing a big chunk of swing votes and the Very Serious Media that Obama was a milquetoast who could be steamrollered.
We tried civility. It failed. At this point, saying, “Well, try it some more. Maybe somehow things will change, for some unspecified reason,” isn’t a strategy at all. It’s surrender.
Yeah civility allowed our racist family members to entrench themselves in their bigotry because everyone was being so polite at the dinner table. Civility towards racists grew and emboldened the bigots.
We also need to really think hard about how we elect the House of Representatives. Last year, Republicans won the national popular vote for the House by a single percentage point, but still have this huge majority of seats. It’s not the first time that’s happened. In 2012, Democrats won the national popular vote for the House and they still lost the chamber by a dramatic margin. I have a plan in the book about how to move the whole country past these destructive gerrymandering battles and create larger districts and increase the size of the House. These moves would make the results of those elections more proportional, make it harder for Democrats to win popular votes but lose control of the chamber. I also think it would invite third, fourth, and fifth parties into the process in a more meaningful way than they are now.
The elections clause of the Constitution clearly gives Congress the right to set and alter policies for federal elections, so there’s nothing stopping us from doing that except a sort of lack of imagination and a lack of will. I’d probably start with those things and the National Voting Rights Act. So think of it as a kind of a blitzkrieg in the first three months of the next Democratic administration. If they have control of Congress, they could really take some important steps to level the electoral playing field moving forward.
Well, the BEA was actually a bipartisan law (amazing) that was supported by Bush in 1990.
It was extended by the ORA in 93, and then the BBA in 97. And again, the work done in 97 was some serious work. Neither party even seems capable these days off doing that kind of serious practical budgeting anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the GOP that did that is the same party we have today. But it’s revisionist to pretend it didn’t happen.
Didn’t Obama just get us out of the worst recession since the great depression? Didn’t he have us on track to run a surplus, that Trump has now pissed away, like W did with the Clinton surplus? No, there’s a party that actually seems to care about the deficit, and it hasn’t been the GOP. Tax cuts and increased spending, now that’s the GOP.
Wasn’t it “yesterday” that there were articles about how lucky Dems were to have an override button, so to speak, to get rid of their extreme candidates?
You remember how everyone was worried about the GOP electing a known pedophile and that sort of thing… i thought the super-delegates were part of the safety net for that.
Well unless the person is not actually a Democrat. I mean that’s part of the issue right. The concern that this is addressing, he’s not even a Democrat. If the Democrats want their party to be Democrats and not every left field player, that’s not really an issue in my book. Democrat is not just <>GOP. It’s an actual party.
I’m all for “saner heads” and the “adult in the room” when it comes to hashing out details, but sometimes you need to throw a punch, smash a favorite toy, or storm out of the room. The adults won’t find a fair settlement if only one of the kids is acting up - they will simply do what it takes to shut the kid up and tell the mature kid to deal with it. Strained analogy aside, if you let the opposition continue to shift the Overton window, then every compromise position is a failure. You have to push it the other way by seriously considering extreme ideas and extreme actions of your own. That doesn’t mean you simply ape them with some “I’m rubber, you’re glue” nonsense, but you have to do something more than call for compromise and respectful discussion. Some opinions or policies do not deserve respect.
So I guess what I’m saying is that the Dems new slogan should be: I aim to misbehave.
