Matt Taibbi makes one unassailable point in his latest piece for Rolling Stone. Whenever the Republicans lose they say that their candidates were insufficiently conservative and whenever the Democrats lose the media say that the party needs to move to the middle. Because the Democratic Party leadership tends to listen to the media while the Republican leadership tends to listen to their own propaganda, the result is an inexorable march of American politics to the right. Beyond that, though, his long essay is a tiresome exercise in setting up a false dichotomy based on the flimsy premise that “Big Ideas” are the answer for everything.
It’s fair to question if the media have any real grasp of what defines “the middle” or what the American people really want. It’s fair to argue that the Democrats have tried to move to the middle in the past and have had uneven results at best. But one thing we know about losing campaigns is that the losers needed to get more votes from somewhere. If not from the middle, then from fringes or the apathetic. If not from cities, then from the suburbs. If not from the suburbs, then from the small towns and rural areas. If not from men, then from women. If not from the young, then from the old. If not from Florida, then from Michigan and Wisconsin.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton sought to run up the score in the affluent and well-educated suburbs and she succeeded. The Democrats built on that success in 2017 to make huge gains in Virginia and take back the governor’s mansion in New Jersey. They built on it again in 2018 to win back the House of Representatives. As far as I can tell, though, this hasn’t really been as much a carefully calibrated success based on political messaging as a natural revolt of the educated and civil against whatever the fuck you want to call Trumpism.
It appears that Democratic candidates could use almost any message in the 2018 midterms and win provided that the state or district was at least somewhat invested in the idea that reality has a factual basis. On the other hand, if the education level of the state or district fell below a point certain, the Democrat could curse Pelosi as the devil and call their own party a bunch of loons or pitch Medicare-for-All and the abolition of ICE and none of it would make a lick of difference. They were going to lose.
This isn’t the kind of 50-50 split any healthy country should want to see. In 2020, it’s quite possible that a Democratic contender will figure out how to get the 200,000 or so additional votes Clinton needed in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania to win the presidency, but that won’t make them some kind of genius, give them some kind of mandate, or reconcile the other half of the country to their term in office. And I don’t think this changes at all based on the formula the candidate uses to succeed.
Maybe they’ll win by dominating by even larger margins in the suburbs, or maybe they’ll get more disaffected people to engage. Maybe they’ll dominate the gender gap, winning women by an insurmountable margin. Maybe they excite the base to a greater degree than their opponents. If it results in some tiny victory then nothing much is going to get done and very little is going to change.
Winning is enormously better than losing, and you can look to the makeup of the federal courts if you need any proof of this, but trading turns stuffing the judicial branch with partisans isn’t going to lead us out of this mess. The only solution in sight will require the kind of thumping Nixon gave McGovern or Reagan gave Mondale. If the public cannot be convinced to repudiate Trumpism with at least the same conviction that they rejected Herbert Hoover, then everyone in this country and not just the Democratic Party will have failed, and failed miserably.
Try as I might, I can’t envision “The Big Idea” that would really help make this happen.
Here’s what I know.
For the party of the left to win a landslide presidential election, they will need to present something that at least gives permission to a lot of people to support them who have powerful reasons and a long history of withholding support. Hillary Clinton couldn’t do that. It’s possible someone else can.
The best argument against Trumpism is the man and the results. In no way can this be described as “A Big Idea.” It’s more of a basic idea. The best coalition against Trump is the biggest coalition against Trump, and that means a movement that is ideologically flexible and culturally welcoming.
That doesn’t really have anything to do with progressivism versus centrism, but it does mean arguing over, e.g., single-payer versus the public option is a diversion from the mission. People disagree about that stuff, but they can find consensus on their desire for a return to normalcy and a government based on some semblance of competency and sanity.
People care about issues and they’re going to fight for them. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, but over the next two years anyone fighting over the best plan for raising the minimum wage or paying for free college is engaged in a battle that has nothing whatsoever to do with building the biggest possible movement against Trump.
If this country has anything left worth saving, we’ll run Trump out of office on a rail long before Election Day in 2020. Maybe we’ll be fighting the smoking husk of a Pence administration by then. Either way, we should have the opportunity to bring together a much bigger coalition than anything we’ve seen since FDR was in office. But we’ll need someone who is seen as acceptable by a large number of people who do not consider themselves on the left in any ordinary sense.
One thing the success of Trump’s campaign has shown us is that ideology is overrated as a political vote-getter, as is the idea that candidates can’t violate taboos. That doesn’t mean that ideas don’t matter, but it does mean that it makes little sense to say that our choice is between progressivism and centrism. There’s nothing inherently centrist about running an inclusive non-ideological campaign. There are plenty of non-threatening progressive ideas that the vast majority of citizens can agree with, whether they’re concerned about the climate or gun violence or the health of their local economy.
Taibbi summed up his argument this way:
Something as dangerous as Trumpism isn’t going to be defeated by catch-phrases and political marketing tricks. The best bet is big ideas, and no matter what the talking heads on cable say, moving to the center — again — probably won’t cut it.
I think that’s all wrong. On the cynical front, it’s hard to see how anyone could see the success of Trump as anything but catch-phrases and marketing, so the most obvious answer is to do a better job of it than he does. On a more serious front, the only big idea that matters is that something has gone desperately wrong and it needs to be corrected. People agree on that and not much else. The job is to collect those people from wherever we can, and a lot of those people are in the center or even to the right-of-center. That doesn’t mean that the Democrats should all become Blue Dogs. The Blue Dogs went nearly extinct for a reason. But it means that the winning approach isn’t going to be to find the candidate who warms the hearts of the most ardent progressives with a language that appeals only to them.
The times call for a unifying leader, and if they understand what’s wrong with Trumpism then they’ll be someone we can trust to get the job done. If they get the message right, they can probably be as progressive as they want to be.
What is the middle? The mistake the media makes is positing the middle as having some sort of moderate ideology somewhere between liberal and conservative.
I think the middle is actually composed more of people who agree with liberal on some issues and conservatives on other issues. There are some issues, such as abortion, where I think a lot of people occupy an actual middle ground, but most people lean to one side or the other on an issue-by-issue basis.
So, Democrats should pick their top issues, and I think we will agree that health care should be one, and be tolerant of disagreement on non-top issues. Not everything can be treated like a deal-breaker. Liberals are bad at prioritizing and tend to act like everything is a crisis, so that nothing comes off as important in a sea of whining.
I think the middle is actually composed more of people who agree with liberal on some issues and conservatives on other issues.
That’s not true at all. Progressive ideas are very popular according to the polls. Why don’t people trust Democrats? Because of stuff like this:
Does anyone remember the EFCA and how every Democrat in the Senate at the time, including Ben Nelson and the Walmart twins, voted for it when C- Augustus was president because they knew he’d veto it. Do you remember what happened to it once Obama became president?
…to discover slim majorities are beholden to their shittiest members.
In other news, goldfish amazed to discover strange new fortress in his bowl.
Some progressive ideas are very popular. A few aren’t. Despite my screen name, I would vote to end capital punishment, but the majority of Americans wouldn’t. A huge majority would disagree with me and support open shop laws.
My point is, I don’t think people really have moderate stances on most issues, so moving to the middle means not agreeing with anyone. Someone who is strongly liberal on 80% of the issues and conservative on 20% of the issues is better than someone who is slightly left of center on everything but very liberal on nothing. The former will excite people if they are liberal on the right issues. The latter excites no one.
Would you rather get 80% of your agenda and have to compromise on 20% of it or have to compromise on all of it?
A fully honest take by Sirota here would have accounted for the description of the sole Legislator quoted here: “…the most pro-business Democrat at the Legislature…”. This is a story from the Colorado Business Journal; that fact is also meaningful. The business community and their declared favorite Legislator in the Dem caucus may be fronting here.
The rest of the story is behind the paywall, but does it meet the plural “Dems” description given by Sirota? I don’t know that any other Dem Caucus leaders are taking the position Rep. Kraft-Tharp is taking here. She’s currently listed as the Chair of the Business Affairs and Labor Committee. If she’s in an extremely weak position on these regulatory issues within her Caucus, pressure should be placed by the progressive community in Colorado on the Speaker of the House to take Kraft-Tharp’s Committee gavel. If Kraft-Tharp is truly out on a limb here, this will be a good test of the power of the Colorado AFL-CIO and other progressives who helped the Democrats retake a narrow majority in the Senate in last week’s election.
It’s important to keep in mind that Colorado is a State which allows initiatives to be taken up. This can put pressure on the Labor and Business movements to compromise. If either successfully pushes the Legislature too hard, the other will collect signatures to put an initiative or two on the ballot.
In last week’s election, the Colorado business community appears to have won more than their share of State initiative campaigns. Energy companies even defeated an eminently sensible-sounding fracking regulation, Proposition 112, which was defeated 56%-44%. The short- and long-term problem here is that the business community will almost always outspend our side on ballot initiatives of consequence.
“Progressive ideas are very popular according to the polls.” This is greatly dependent on the issue and the specific policy called for to respond to that issue. A prime example from my State: many in the progressive community in California have set themselves on fire fighting for single payer health care reform, claiming that it’s very popular and that Democrats who are failing to pass single payer are wholly corrupt. The fact is that Californians have had the opportunity to vote on single payer health care reform, and it got 27% of the vote.
Two health care reform initiatives were placed before California voters recently. In 2016, a Proposition proposed to regulate pharmaceutical prices, and in last week’s election a Proposition proposed to regulate profit-taking in the outpatient dialysis industry. Each of these health care titans had unlimited money to spend against these Propositions; each No campaign had over $100 million to propagandize the voters with lies. Each of these Propositions got smashed. This long list of outcomes give me zero confidence that a single payer law passed by the California Legislature and signed by the Governor could survive an initiative campaign.
The good news is that we’re having an easier time passing State expansions of Medicaid programs in the last three elections. We have also managed to get some other good stuff done through State initiatives. The biggest problem I see is that monied business interests are willing to spend almost any amount of money to defeat regulations of private commerce of all kinds, and a propagandized electorate often is persuaded to do what the money wants them to do.
“Progressive ideas are very popular according to the polls.” – and here I am right on cue…
I think you and Phil are both correct.
Over 60% of Americans support these “liberal” positions:
Raising the minimum wage
The rich don’t pay enough taxes
Corporations don’t pay enough taxes
More funding for public schools
Stricter banking regulations
Stricter gun control laws
Over 70% of Americans support these “liberal” positions:
Government investment in infrastructure
A path to citizenship or legal status
And yet our elected representatives ignore us year after year after year. At least Trump pretended to care (he was lying of course).
“This is greatly dependent on the issue and the specific policy called for to respond to that issue. “
Very true – but isn’t that exactly why we’re electing these “leaders” in the first place? To figure out how to craft laws and policies that reflect the countries priorities and implement them???
I am tired of being called a “radical” for supporting these very, very mainstream positions.
None of these positions are radical at all. Nor are your politics or ideology. I’m totally with you in supporting this list, and much more.
What I’m hoping more of us can move away from is the too-frequent conclusion that if Democrats don’t successfully pass these policies, those Democrats are fully corrupt, no better than Republicans, and not worth voting for in general elections.
The positions you list here are supported by supermajorities of Congressmembers in the Democratic Party caucuses. The positions you list here are supported by almost literally zero Congressmembers in the Republican Party caucuses. The Parties are more cleanly separated ideologically than at any time in our lifetimes.
Unfortunately, if the list of positions you provide here went to the voters in State initiatives, they would be defeated more frequently than not, and some which passed would be declared unconstitutional by the Judiciary. That’s a big, big problem for our movement. And of course, citizenship reform would be unconstitutional at the State level.
The one exception to this conclusion are minimum wage laws, which have been quite popular at the State level in recent years. However, minimum wages high enough to provide true living wages would probably be defeated by the voters more often than not.
70 percent also now support Medicare for all (single payer).
Jon, confronting the details of polling on Medicare for All is crucial. So is confronting the details on politics and policy.
I’ll use California as an example, since we actually have the husk of a single payer bill which passed the State Senate this legislative session, SB 562. The Health Care For All coalition has flogged a poll which shows Californians’ support for a single payer program is in the high 60%’s.
The problem: in that same poll, when the same voters were asked if they would still support a single payer program if they had to pay more taxes to finance the program, their support cratered into the low 40%’s. There’s no reason for us to believe Californians are less supportive of single payer programs than the general public. In other words, I ask you to consider that this 70% figure you’re citing is happy talk which isn’t real.
It is often claimed that Medicare for All is a simple program, making it easier to gain and maintain support from voters. This is another very evasive conclusion to draw. It is near impossible to detail how many enormously powerful and wealthy health care interests will fight to the death to preserve the current system. The idea that the health insurance companies would be the main ones to fight changes to a fully public health system is flat wrong. And these vested interests have easily routed State initiatives seeking to install a single payer system. In fact, monied powers in the private health care industry have also routinely defeated other regulations which are short of single payer.
Finally, it is important to concede that changing from a private health care industry to a fully public industry would be terrifically complicated. It is very easy to imagine bad or mediocre policies coming from the sausage-making necessary to pass a Bill into Law. Certainly a transfer to a single payer program would create winners and losers, and most of the losers would be the wealthier Americans who hold outsize influence in our post-Citizens United politics.
I’m not saying Medicare for All will never happen. I’m asking you to understand why if Congress falls under full Democratic Party control in 2020, that Congress won’t achieve it.
. . . presuming you cited it accurately, either needed another question, or the one you cite needed to be expanded or worded differently to gauge opinion on the ACTUAL choice involved:
The poll question needed to continue
Or that scenario needed to be covered in a separate question. Because, at least at the national level (e.g., Bernie’s Medicare-for-All proposal), that’s what credible analyses project. Don’t know if that’s as true for a plan for CA only, guessing maybe not? But if not, then it’s also not a valid analog for a national proposal’s political viability.
2)
True, but with the exception of the health insurance industry (which is essentially parasitic) Medicare-for-All doesn’t propose that. As with Medicare, all of the rest of the health care industry would contine as the public/private mix we currently have.
A link to a summary of the poll I cited is here. The nut paragraph:
“As the state legislature considers Senate Bill 562, which would establish a single-payer state health insurance program, 65 percent of all adults and 56 percent of likely voters say they favor such a plan. But support falls to 42 percent of adults and 43 percent of likely voters if the plan would raise taxes. Overall, strong majorities of Democrats (75%) and independents (64%) favor a single-payer plan, while a strong majority of Republicans (66%) are opposed.”
Mark Baldassare has been the gold standard pollster in California for many years now; he’s a nonpartisan. I expect that the wordings of the poll questions were done well.
Again, the biggest evidence against the prospects of passing a single payer Bill in California and elsewhere is that voters in multiple States have voted on single payer ballot initiatives, and they’ve rejected them soundly.
Here’s a summary of the most recent health care reform initiatives in California, written by a policy expert on a progressive blog. The comments thread acts as an online focus group with a room full of progressives. Read what over $111 million in No on Prop 8 campaign did to these liberals. The obscene campaign money turned their moral clarity into mush.
I’m someone who has worked in health care my entire life. I believe a single payer health system could be constructed which would be much better for the vast majority of Americans. That said, it pains me to tell you that the rational policy discussion which you and I would like voters and politicians to have on this issue will not happen. It is literally impossible under current circumstances to make that happen. Few subjects are dominated by raw emotions and factually fudged demagoguery like health care. The ability of those profiting from the current system to spend essentially unlimited amounts of money to persuade the public to maintain the unsatisfactory status quo is a real force against change which can’t be wished away.
Think about the utter bullshit people have been made to believe about the Affordable Care Act. A real Medicare For All campaign would cause too many Americans to believe much, much, much more outlandish bullshit.
Apologies for the bad link on the second item: here is the link to the summary of the most recent health care reform initiatives in California.
Where is the middle on abortion. A boolean value has no middle.
Do you think that the abortion is a private matter not to be regulated by the state or not? One’s personal opinions on abortion don’t enter into it. As I told one Christian Conservative when he said that he felt that abortion is a sin, “Then don’t have one.”
Do you think that the sex practices of adults with consenting adults is a private matter not to be regulated by the state or not?
There is no middle in those questions. IMHO, there is no Left or Right either.
The majority of Americans believe that some abortions should be legal and some should be illegal. A minority of Americans believe that abortions should be either always legal or always illegal. Generally, they tend to be very supportive of abortions undertaken for medical reasons and less inclined to support abortions due to non-medical reasons.
Then you are saying that they believe the state should regulate abortion. So much for the “Right to Choose” that Democrats used to espouse. BTW, I used the privacy reference because that was the argument used in Roe v Wade, that the matter was so intensely private that the state should have no part in it.
The actual decision holds that the state does have a legitimate interest in protecting potential human life and may regulate abortion, based on how far along the pregnancy is, that the right to privacy covers the right to have an abortion, but that the right is not unqualified.
It may be useful politically, but it is inaccurate to say that the only people who want restrictions on abortion are crazy religious nutjobs. So, yes, I am saying that the majority of people believe that the state should regulate abortion, but they also believe that the state shouldn’t go too far. As someone who is not anti-government, I believe it is possible for government to regulate without going too far, so I would not espouse a libertarian notion that government should just stay out. If government is wholly incapable of regulating a medical decision such as abortion, then maybe it shouldn’t be involved in any health care decisions at all. I don’t accept the idea that government should stay away from health care, so I don’t accept that the state should automatically stay away from regulating abortion.
Very well stated.
I happen to agree with your statement and summary pretty completely (FWIW).
I don’t think that what we personally believe is in question. Almost everyone wants some kind of regulation of abortions, except for a kind of libertarian edge group. I think they have an almost air-tight argument but most people won’t sign up.
There are some who believe abortion is a kind of murder, so it should be regulated – practically forbidden. Once you sign up for this, you can’t easily compromise. You might allow medical necessity for the survival of the mother – or then again, you might not.
So how do you have a legislative compromise with that?
Once you think it’s murder, you can’t live and let live (sorry) either – if you decide to devolve this decision to states and localities, you just get a repeat of what’s happening now in anti-abortion states, spread to permitted abortion states. You get driven activism and public stunts against abortion. The extreme is you get Fetus Patrol police meeting young women at the airports and state line inspection centers in anti-abortion states.
Yep.
FDR didn’t win on “big ideas”. (Neither did Nixon.)
What’s more, when landslides happen in US elections, it’s less an endorsement of the winner than it is a rejection of the loser. And it’s less about the personalities of the candidates and more about the external political and economic conditions (the Great Depression in 1932; the strong economy and decreased casualties in the Vietnam War in 1972).
The best shot Democrats have at a major electoral victory in 2020 is 1) major Trump corruption scandals, combined with 2) an economic recession. If those conditions exist, then having a presidential candidate who’s minimally acceptable to wide swaths of the electorate helps.
That said, as Booman has pointed out repeatedly, Democrats should spend the next 2 years doing what they’ve (for the most part) been doing for the past 2 years: recruiting and running candidates for every available office—from town clerk to state senator to US representative—in every district and jurisdiction in the country. Fixing what is wrong with the country will require social and political power in as many places, and with as many people, as possible.
Well, Obama 2008 surely was a landslide, albeit a very strange one, considering the immediate reversal of 2010—supposedly based on health insurance regulation, of all absurd things. Of course, Nixon’s great 1972 landslide was also quickly and completely reversed in 1976 thanks to Watergate.
At this point in our politics, policy “ideas” have become utterly exhausted, and can no longer be covered in an honest and legitimate manner by our failed media. Thus (as you say) decisive defeats will come about only through massive real-life fails by the party in power—and, as a reality-denying movement, “conservatism” is most likely to suffer such periodic defeats.
Because nothing really changes in the religion of “conservatism” (reckless tax cuts, fiscal irresponsibility, bloated militarism, deregulation, destruction of effective government), on the “ideas” front we have to say Americans are very slow learners. Mentally defective, in fact, since they persist in returning “conservatives” to absolute power! I suppose one can say that American “conservatism” gets more and more toxic with each defeat, until it has finally arrived at the reeking sewer of National Trumpalism, whose ONLY idea is open harassment of non-white minorities (especially hated Latinos) and ridiculous paens to “hardworking (white) families!” But that is precisely what its braindead adherents desire.
As for 2020, we will certainly continue to have waves of Trumpite scandals, because his whole ethos is law-breaking—although we have already had so many “conservative” scandals that it is simply beyond one’s ability to keep them straight any longer. And our irreducible Fascist American(tm) component of 35-40% of the electorate finds them meaningless in any event, as we can see from the recent midterms. It is also very difficult to see this debt-fueled expansion continuing much further, and as the massive McConnell deficits rise ever higher with no politically acceptable (or possible) response, we are also quite likely to have serious economic difficulties across the nation, inflation with rising interest rates.
I think this means that the only possible Dem mega-strategy based on history and current events is the complete and ongoing denunciation of National Trumpalism and its endless crisis of maladministration and misrule. This cannot convince those Trumpalists for whom a hot race war is all they dream of (35%?), but it is the only “Big Idea” that might be able to unify the rest of the country. Ultimately, however, by creating an enormous cadre of permanently angry and congenitally ignorant Irreconcilables, “conservatism” has made unification of the country ala 1932 or 1941 simply impossible.
Thanks for your response, and your thoughts.
The 2008 election was somewhat similar to the 1932 one, and (imo) for the same reason: an economic collapse blamed on the incumbent party. It this interpretation it’s not FDR’s or Obama’s charisma, or their platform, that got them elected. Elections are basically a referendum on the incumbent. It’s what happens after the newly elected are in office that determines whether there’s a lasting change.
The difference between 2010 and 1934 is that Obama took office in just a year after the Great Recession started, while Roosevelt came in over 3 years after the Great Depression started. As a result, the economy was still in pretty bad shape in 2010, while in 1934 it was notably improved. (Plus voters had had 3+ years of Republican rule during which the Depression got steadily worse.)
As many have noted, previously, the Democrats relied on the highly effective organizing mechanism of the trade unions and precinct level organizations to GOTV where it relly mattered. Both have all but disappeared (though new grass roots organizations have in recent elections appeared).
However, leaving aside the virulent diseases of persistent racism and an individualism focused on greed and social intolerance, the GOP/conservatives have really succeeded bcause they have a virulent and highly effective propaganda organization. Against which the Democrats/Progressives have crickets with the MSM a completely useless bothsiderist mess.
The result is that any Dem/Prog messaging gets utterly lost in the din of misinformation and distraction, (which now the Trump Monster daily demonstrates) and any real ability to discuss policy rationally gets utterly lost. Our 1st Amendment has become a real two-edged sword and the right knows exactly how to use both edges. We don’t. Which is why we’re left having to rely on hoping crusading leaders happen to come along to rescue the country from itself.
“supposedly based on health insurance regulation, of all absurd things”
An example of poor campaigning. Most Kentuckians hated Obamacare but loved Kynect(sic?), never realizing that it was Obamacare, a thing that should have been pounded into their brains in 30 second ads – “McConell opposed Kynect”. An example of “Government keep your hands off my Medicare”.
What I’ve seen here in Illinois is that the Democrats’ campaigns were run by a California consultant that ran California ads. Democrats did well because the (R) Governor was hated so much that he almost lost his primary.
I would have put up billboards that stated simply “Kynect=Obamacare” and dared people to turn against Kynect.
“Throughout the nation men and women, forgotten in the political philosophy of the Government, look to us here for guidance and for more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth… I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people. This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms.” – Roosevelt in his acceptance speech
I know it was not a detailed program, and perhaps not a new idea, but surely it was a big idea?
Not that you can’t win big without it, apart from Nixon you also have Harding’s massive wins in 1920. But as FDR and also Reagan shows, if you win big with big ideas and come in ready to change things, you can change a lot for a long time.
Well we better hope for a bombshell of a Mueller report because Trump’s approval was sufficiently high enough to win Missouri and Florida races in 2018 (don’t think it’d have mattered for ND and IN). A Don Jr. indictment will get that ball rolling. Taibbi is doing what Brett Stephens does and what Third Way does: you need to run my playbook or you’re going to lose. I don’t find anything to disagree with in this piece. Anyone arguing that “ideology” matters is just self-serving. It obviously matters on some level, but only in as much as it is used to define a candidate’s “identity” and authenticity. I think that’s what should have been learned. Throw out the consultants and poll testers, and run a genuinely authentic candidate who allows people to project their hopes and dreams and ideological commitments onto the candidate. That was Obama’s strength. In some ways that was O’Rourke’s strength. I also think a woman candidate will be stronger. I would have been big on Warren in 2016, but I don’t think she’ll get the job done (better in the Senate anyway). Will see who emerges and what they bring to the table — authenticity is a builder of trust. No more poll tested candidates.
For a win in 2020, we are looking good even without a Mueller bombshell. Michigan and Pennsylvania swung hard back to us, and that leaves only one more state needed for 270. I’d say WI, AZ, NC, and FL are all “lean D” in this environment (remember FL re-enfranchised 1/5 of its African-American population in this election). We only need one, and they are all very different states so we have many ways to win.
For a historic wave, yeah, we need more.
I’m not worried about beating Trump. Incumbent presidents have an inherent advantage and rarely lose re-election, but he’s weak in states that have historically elected Democrats and he barely pulled it off (as you point out). But I don’t just want to beat him, I want a 10 point electoral drubbing of 55-45% that I expected to get in summer of 2016. The suburban people Clinton played for went for her, but there was still too much unease for them to fully make the plunge like they did in 2018. Limit exposure to third party candidates as Obama did in 2008 and 2012 should be enough. Trump has a 44-46 point guarantee, and I don’t think he’ll ever get to 48.
Trump has a Keyes Constant guarantee. That’s it. No more.
Bullshit. Unless you mean using 27% from IL as a baseline which can change depending on the state, resulting in higher than 27%. Any Republican will get minimum of 40% nationally by default. Hoover got 40%.
Trump is immeasurably worse than Hoover.
I don’t really expect him to survive to 2020 but if he does then this country is going to be a wreck like we’ve never seen before and all historical assumptions about the floor for a presidential candidate of either national party is out the window.
He might get 35% if Mueller’s findings look as we expect and the media does not drop the ball. Even Goldwater got near 40%, though. It’s the nature of partisanship. But right, I don’t expect him to survive either. We shall see.
I think it’s insulting to compare Goldwater to Trump. It’s insulting to compare any American president or candidate to Trump. There are no analogous cases.
Trump is off the charts bad, yes, but so far that has not translated into off the charts disapproval. He’s still stayed well above the disapproval lows of Truman (22%), Carter (28%), or the Bushes (29% and 25%). He personally is without analogue, but his electability is not.
At present the smart bet would be for him to lose re-election but not overwhelmingly. His many faults, egregious as they are, have been on ample display for the past 2 years without changing that and even though he’s vastly worse than Goldwater would have been it is perfectly fair to point out he will do better electorally unless there is a big shift due to Mueller, the economy, or a mishandled crisis that the media actually reports on.
Trump is immeasurably worse than Hoover, but the current economy is immeasurably better than the economy presided over by Hoover, and President Trump is doing more than any politician I have ever seen to feed his base.
I’d like to believe Trump’s bottom is less than 40%. A worsening economy and/or a particularly undeniable set of major corruption revelations by Mueller’s team and House Democrats could take him into the 30’s. Absent these, I reluctantly believe his unbearable Presidency will get over 40% of the electorate in 2020. Even without economic or legal catastrophies, I believe we will beat Trump in ’20, but it’s disappointing that the voters’ repudiation of his Presidency will be unlikely to meet with my satisfaction unless Trump’s campaign conditions deteriorate.
Propaganda, it’s a helluva drug.
Your ifs are really whens.
I hope to gain your certainty, Martin. Last week’s election shows that the Trump movement continues to be susceptible to political gravity, so it does give me hope. OTOH, I was feeling pretty certain about the 2016 POTUS outcome, so I’m uncomfortable feeling confident.
We don’t have to quibble on the exact numbers. If Trump ends up getting, say, 43% of the vote in 2020, that will almost certainly see him to a major ass-kicking in the Electoral College.
Mueller’s investigation could very well deliver legal and political knockouts. The Trump crew seems to have taken their essentially treasonous actions in very brazen manners. I’m irresistibly drawn to that great line from the movie “All The President’s Men”:
“Look, forget the myths the media’s created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.”
True. But not everybody has caught up to that, and Mr Hoover didn’t run a cult (definitely not his MO).
Alf Landon got 36% of the vote. Thats about as big a margin as you’ll ever see in electoral history.
Was Alf Landon a completely corrupt shitheel?
FWIW, both FL statewide races are very much in play as of today. Counting all the votes!
Somehow for me the accompanying article, “Best Britney Spears Albums Ranked,” tells me how seriously I need to take Taibbi. (Spears has a “best” album? Really?)
But I think one valid point in Taibbi’s piece is the reaction of the Beltway press and the ensuing “conventional wisdom,” and I don’t know how you overcome that. As an example, although I may have misheard the announcement because I decided at that point to turn off the TV, yesterday morning Jake Tapper said his next segment would be an interview with Mike Coffman (R-CO) about the recount in Florida. WTF? A Colorado Republican has what to say about the Florida recount, but apparently Tapper thinks it’s worth hearing.
WTF?? We threw that rat bastard Mike Coffman out of office in CO-06! He lost 54.4%-42.9%. In that suburban district that amounted to nearly 40,000 votes. He was trailing all election long, he was wildly unpopular with his constituents after being a Trumpite Looney his entire time in office and his campaign went so badly the national party just gave up on him and pulled his advertising.
Why on earth do we ever need to hear from that ass-hat ever again – unless he’s going to talk about how badly he screwed up and how the people of his district hate him now.
Would they interview Beto O’Rourke on what he thinks the State of Florida should do with the election re-count? No!
Your liberal media at work.
Really? We hear from Rick Santorum all the time and not just on Fox and he hasn’t won anything in well more than 10 years. The same was true or McCain until he died. As far as the MSM are concerned, zomby GOPs are a perfectly representative species.
if you want uneducated whitey to vote D, then inoculate your candidate against racism, misogyny, authoritarian tendencies, and militarism…
.
50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong.
Did FDR do all that? Or did closing banks and starting relief offices and taking steps to increase jobs do the trick for them?
Democrats want working people to vote for them while governing like mainstream Republicans. Shows their utter contempt for blue collar workers.
“Democrats want working people to vote for them while governing like mainstream Republicans.”
This is not true. We can engage in discussions about how we believe Democratic Party candidates should campaign and govern without drifting face first into bullshit.
The most conservative Congressional Democrat has a substantially more liberal voting record than the most liberal Congressional Republican, as shown here and here.
You are right, Booman. It’s not about centrism vs. progressivism. As far as the vast majority of U.S. citizens are concerned, it’s about what the most powerful trance-media producers say it’s about!!!
Conditions on the media ground today?
Sad like a motherfucker.
A sampling of the lovely Google News Veteran’s Day (Observed) morning headlines follows, in order of page position:
And the beat goes on.
And on and on and on and on and on, fueled by the huge neocentrist/UniParty/Deep State monies that are basically dedicated to:
1-Defeating Trump and the rival gang that has coalesced around him.
and
2-Making damned sure that whatever happens, no one with authentically anti-Deep Sate, anti-corporate ideas gets within 100 miles of winning the White House.
What this next election could be about…if of course the next two years of neocentrist media drumbeat is not loud enough or effective enough to stymie it…would be an election that offered some good reason for whatever large percentage of the eligible voters in this country who habitually do not vote because they think that both sides of the political “divide” are basically full of shit to actually do so.
I’m not holding my breath on that one.
Sigh…
AG
Good lord.
That “adviser” in the first link is Mark Penn, who hasn’t spoken to Clinton in at least 10 years. He worked for Microsoft a few years back and came up with a dumb ad campaign to support Bing.
The fact that you could stump Pelosi’s opponents by asking who her replacement should be is a scathing indictment of her opponents, not Pelosi. On a serious note, there are several competitive races on the Democratic leadership of the House.
You’re on the Richard Ojeda train? Awesome. Do you know who Krystal Ball is? She’s an outside adviser to his campaign. She runs a scam PAC called People’s House. Over the past year, its raised about $700,000 and disbursed $85,872.74 to candidates. At the same time, Ball has taken a salary of $204,000 so far this year (nice “work” if you can get it). Ojeda has received contributions from People’s House, but I’m not sure if Ojeda is in on the grift or if he’s one of the marks.
No. I am not “on the Richard Ojeda train.” I included that headline because of the irony of the phrase “no-nonsense populist and former Army paratrooper” being applied by the media to a supposed Dem hero instead of to any number of Republicans.
And…if you think Mark Penn isn’t still hooked into the whole DNC/neocentrist movement on any number of levels, then you do not understand the DC revolving door system.
AG
Y’know what “Ponzi Finance?” You asked above if I was “on the Richard Ojeda train,” and I answered in the negative.
Then I had a chance to watch him speak freely. Check it out.
I’m on it now, and I do not give a shit what hustlers you can dredge up that have attached themselves to him…or haven’t, because I do not really know nor do I trust the media well enough to count on some sort of truth from them nor do I have any idea who the fuck you are. Why? The man appears to me to be authentic. He may not be a presidential-level candidate…he’s gotta lose that eye tick, just for starters…but he’s the real deal.
You?
Maybe you’re the real deal too. Or maybe you’re just some bot or low level hireling aimed at whatever real deal candidates poke their heads out of the various states and talk about the truth(s) of the matter.
Convince me.
I dare ya.
AG
Richard Ojeda voted for Donald Trump. In fact, Ojeda has never voted for a Democratic Party POTUS candidate. He’s substantially anti-abortion and substantially supportive of our obscene gun laws. Of course you’re supportive of Ojeda, AG.
BTW, Ojeda just lost his Congressional District election by 13%. Yes, he greatly overperformed a standard Democrat in that District, but it still fails to provide evidence he’s ready for a national campaign.
A Trump voter running for the Party’s Presidential nomination will be completely unacceptable to the Democratic base.
You write:
The Democrats need to expand their base.
Exponentially!!!
This guy was turned off by people like you and the candidates/controllers that you support. He made a mistake voting for Trump, and he has realized it. Trump voters will listen to people like him, and they will also turn off the TV rather than listen to old line Democrats mouthing their habitual hypocrisies. Hillary Clinton singlehandedly made Trump a viable candidate with her deplorables gaffe. To her and to her colleagues, people like this guy are “deplorables.”
Deplorably common.
If you really want to win…which is something I seriously doubt on the evidence of the easily observable, perfectly consistent neocentrist acts of people like Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and yourself…you had better wake the fuck up to the fact that a large part of Trump’s win in 2016 was not totally due to racist, sexist etc. attitudes tof working class whites, it was due to their disgust with mealy-mouthed, backstabbing politicians of all parties. They fell for Trump’s act because their other choices were weak-kneed, neocentrist professional Republican politicians, and the Democratic nominee was a double-dealing, public/private attitudinally crippled upper-class snob. That and the accurate belief that they were going to get the short end of the stick if she won due to the identity politics practiced by the Democrats. End of story.
If you can manage to find a candidate who can reach even 1/3rd of the people who in 2016 either voted for Trump or stayed home in the well-founded belief that both candidates were full of shit, you will have a landslide victory.
Otherwise?
The U.S. decline will continue, especially if Trump survives the concerted attacks on him by the media and the Deep State…which I must point out, he has succeeded in doing for 2 years despite the plain fact that he is guilty as sin.
Great work, centristfield.
Putin loves you fools.
You make his job so much easier!!!
WTFU.
AG
P.S. I am not “supporting” this man as a presidential candidate; I am supporting his anger, his courage and his success in reaching W. Virginia-type voters with the message that both sides of the current political coin are counterfeit. He speaks from the heart.
Arthur, there’s an absolutely valid dialogue to be had about your proposal that “The Democrats need to expand their base.”
Unfortunately, you have shown yourself here to be interested in damaging the base of the Democratic Party. You spent the last few months, past the primaries and all the way to last week’s general elections, attempting to drive wedges in the Democratic Party and progressive movement, all in service to your personally held, frequently defended hard right wing domestic policy preferences.
You’re not engaging this dialogue in good faith.
I’m fine with Ojeda campaigning for the Party’s POTUS nomination. I want him to campaign for the candidates who win the Party’s nominations for President and other offices in 2020.
If Ojeda does that, he’ll be a real Democrat, someone sincerely attempting to fight the toxic, fascist GOP and conservative movement.
. . . evidence in support of that charge (which equals defamation, absent such evidence)?
So which category of “deplorable” bigot do you slander Ojeda as occupying?
Because, as we all know very well, that limited list of forms of deplorable bigotry is how Clinton defined — with admirable specificity! — “deplorables”. That’s just a fact. History. All your endless lying to pretend otherwise notwithstanding.
I do not believe Hillary Clinton’s “admirably specific” list. That was her public face. But many, many people read her private face otherwise. As in “Alla them underedumacated white flyover plebes are deplorables.”
And…they voted (or did not vote) with that in mind.
Bet on it.
You think they didn’t?
Then you are as entitlement-poisoned as was she.
She confessed in public her “private/public” hustle to a group Wall Street hustlers who she was herself hustling for money and support, and she was so entitltled an upper class fool that she didn’t even consider the possibility that her statement might itself become public!!!
She lost the election right there.
Nice.
Go pick your nits.
AG
I think if the house can pass some legislation that people like, progressive in general, that will provide the way forward in two years. I would not discount a progressive agenda. Now may be the time to try it out. If you can’t do it now and get people excited (both criteria) then it is the wrong agenda. OTOH if they do nothing of note, whether or not the senate takes it up, they will have validated Hillarism and lose – again.
The problem is that nobody other that policy wonks like us, and conservatives opposed to us, will ever hear about liberal legislation passed by the House. How much did the media talk about the long list of progressive legislation passed by the Pelosi 2009-10 House that wasn’t taken up by the Senate? Very little apart from scaremongering by Fox. Progressive legislation passed by the 2019-2020 House will get even less attention, because the Senate won’t bring any of it up and that won’t be considered newsworthy at all. There won’t even be a Senate vote, and you are never going to get breathless “breaking news” about what McConnell is putting on the calendar.
On a practical level, our majority is going to be narrow in spite of the strong swing, and it’s going to be hard for even Pelosi to get much fire-breathing progressive legislation through. Gun checks, good governance, and support for the social safety net sure, but otherwise it’s going to be hard. The situation will be similar to 2007-08, when there wasn’t that much passed.
I see the Dems want to start a bunch of investigations into Trump. You think that will help.? Those investigations may yield nothing except provide Trump grist for his fake news meme. Pick the few that may yield something. And why not a big push on voting, medicare for all, immigration and the min wage? If no one knows what the Dems have done that only says no one ever made it a point to say so –or we really did nothing. Let’s not give Trump a chance to say we had a do nothing house. Make him and McConnell say why they never did anything? And along the way we may know what issues work and which do not work. And then we know what to bring to the people.
The Democrats should be investigating every single bit of Trumpian wrongdoing entirely regardless of the political benefit (which I suspect will be quite positive for the Dems anyway). We cannot continue this trend of complete Republican lawlessness in the executive.
It seems you will get your wish. MSNBC says they are considering 85 investigations into Trump. If that doesn’t get him what then? Anyway I think what ever is done will be by Mueller. It is possible, of course, that Adam Schiff will add to it. But I don’t like the idea of putting all your eggs into one basket. Of course maybe the Mueller investigation will end soon anyway. I hope he or one of those 85 investigations finds something big bc that is what it will take to move the republican senate.
Keep in mind there are going to be about 230 Congresspeople and their staffs with not much to do beside investigate, since no meaningful nonemergency bill is going anywhere. 85 investigations isn’t all that much of a load for them. I also assume they will be smart about pursuing the ones that look more important or achievable and putting the rest on back burners.
Why do you keep repeating this phrase, “putting all your eggs in one basket”? Congress can walk and chew gum at the same time. Conducting proper and necessary oversight need not take one iota away from the other business of the House, and it’s an important and vital part of their job to boot.
That is what I am saying. One need not concentrate solely on his treason. It is likely Mueller will handle that and soon. And we will not let anyone forget it if the senate does nothing about it. Anything more Schiff finds could be even better. Congress has to govern or attempt to do so. That task includes fixing the shit that is broken like immigration, health care and voting. Fail that and you give Trump a ready made issue. So 85 investigations sounds like a lot of eggs in one basket. The issues I mentioned are ready made and their time has come.
You say that voting is not about ideology (well supported by the results this year, as you point out) and then call for a set of ideological stances to maximize the vote? Stick to your initial thought and the facts – most voters, especially Republican ones, are voting on non-ideological grounds. If we want a resounding win in 2020 (as opposed to a mild one, which at least looks likely now) we need somebody who can draw voters on non-ideological grounds. Obama was one – the large majority of Republicans hated him, but his cool, in both senses, and his breaking the color barrier pulled enough over or in to give a decisive win in 2008.
IMO the biggest thing is somebody interesting enough to break through the media lean for Republicans and get people talking about them in a positive way. The usual group of Senators under discussion would make good presidents, but they don’t seem to have that draw. Sanders does, but he is super smearable and very old. I certainly thought Gillum and Abrams had it, but the voters may not have agreed with me (subject to the strong possibility of major vote suppression). O’Rourke has it, and maybe Tester and Duckworth. Other than them I can’t think of any major candidates from the past two elections.
So that idea turns out to be a dud? You might hunt around forever and not find one to your liking or my liking.
We may not need the one big idea but you need an idea or two. There are baskets full of them served up every day by Trump but few take him up on it. Like his recent trip to Europe and watching from his hotel room and Macron threatening to start up a Europe only defense pact? Is that a response to Trump bellyaching about who pays for what? Or how about the caravan and the troops just sitting around at the border for weeks maybe months. And then there is the stock market crashing again today. And his disgusting attitude about the fires in California. Someone make a big deal of it. It is as if the Dems really don’t care.
Well, all those simply involve Counter-Trumpism, which is what many here are advocating as the Dem strategy going forward. Every day he shits out something that only a hateful ignoramus could endorse.
So far, Dems have quailed from a universal, maximalist strategy of denouncing every idiotic word out of Der Trumper’s mouth. Even when the principal National Trumpalist “idea” (the solid foundation of his thunderous vomit hose) is nativist white supremacy. They were extremely solicitous of squeamish “independents” and likely don’t have much faith in their fidelity and allegiance.
Dems can certainly operate the House on a good-government basis, debating and passing the bills they would enact if they had the power, but which cannot see the light of day because of Mitch’s Menagerie. Of course they should attempt to publicize the fact when Mitch obstructs everything; however, we know that the irreversible failure of American media will not really allow this endemic Repub obstruction to become widely known, because Fox. And since Americans cannot be made to care about policy, the rhetorical focus has to be kept on the global disgrace that is National Trumpalism, as the final iteration of failed American “conservatism”.
“Conservatism” means national failure, without exception. National Trumpalism is for Losers. Tired of all the Losing yet?
I now see that curt made all these points below!
As I noted below, it appears you will get your wish. I don’t object to investigating. But there may be a limit to it. Mueller may finish his investigation and report out his findings. Unless it is really bad (and there is a good chance of that)the senate will do nothing. At that point there could easily be diminishing returns to pursing a dead end. You know Trump and friends will accuse the dems of doing nothing and demand a congress that will get something done. So you pays your money and takes your chances. I am not happy about all the eggs in one basket.
Any Dem running has so much to run on. It’s about not limiting the conversation to the donald’s treason or his morning tweet of the next shiny object for the press to chase. Time to talk about the tariffs. They have surly spooked wall st. Soy bean exports are down over 90%. Are farmers to plan to plant less next year or will China even want our soy? California is on fire and the donald has over 5000 troops sitting on the boarder. The loss of life and the destruction of infrastructure to the worlds 5th largest economy…the donald talks about forest maintenance. A California that does not function will effect the US budget.
How well did the Whitewater investigation go for the Republicans? How well did the impeachment go for them?
Democrats take up these ideas by the truckload but the media ignores them. There’s nothing Trump does wrong that doesn’t get criticized by multiple Congressional twitter accounts. Schiff, Waters, and, yes, Pelosi, spring to mind. It’s ignored to the point that many Democratic activists are unaware. I know you are recommending that Democrats only focus on a few things but I don’t think that will help – it just means less for the media to ignore. The Republicans run things with the “spaghetti against the wall” approach – they whine about EVERYTHING and the media always finds something to pick up for them.
We do need something to break through to the average voter and in the current environment it seems Trump misdeeds aren’t it. Maybe with the House things will change but my bet is only marginally unless something really zingy gets uncovered by the investigations. Not sure what that would be, because both sex scandals and tax cheating have proved inadequate so far.
I think we have won the argument about Mr Trump’s misdeeds.
It’s just not news.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it seems like health care might actually be one of those issues. I thought after 2016 that it was a loser issue and an example of a covert contract, but 2018 shows that some of what happened in health care had at least SOME consequences.
Another one might be tariffs. These could wreck agricultural areas especially in the midwest. No farm money, no purchasing, no property tax revenue (defaults). Those affected directly are quite aware of it, but I don’t think it’s completely penetrated the communities. The affect on some of those states, which are pretty close to the drain already, could be devastating.
For every rural vote you get for opposing China tariffs, you will lose three urban/suburban votes, especially if the employment numbers are not as good as now.
Not following – are you saying China tariffs are popular in urban areas?
Exactly this. We’re the party of Vulcans and we can’t understand why people aren’t rallying to our banner of ‘making things incrementally better, to whatever extent possible given the facts on the ground.’ Which is maybe, y’know, a good approach to political change but nobody fucking rallies to it. You want ignorant, uncommitted, and stupid voters to show up and pull the right level? Give them a Big Idea. It doesn’t have to be reasonable.
Mario Cuomo: “Campaign in poetry, govern in prose.”
Democrats: “Campaign in prose, govern in prose.”
Republicans: “Campaign in spittle-flecked tribalism, never stop campaigning.”
Obama’s “cool” as a factor in his winning needs to be set in the context of the disastrous Bush Maladministration and the hot-tempered McCain as his opponent who offered essentiially more of the same in a colossally frightening period, economically for many people.
Much as I liked Obama, he developed this enormous following, many of them young and multiracial and then completely ignored their power to pressure the obstinate GOP during the critical next two years. That left a popular rallying vacuum (with the single weak exception of Occupy Wall St.) that the GOP and the conservative donors filled with the astroturf Tea Party.
The GOP/conservatives are relentless and their stratagems are diabolical. They will never stop until they own everything. That must never be forgotten.
You’re not trying very hard. ‘
When was ‘Placing the ownership and direction of the means of production, in transportation, finance, and manufacturing, in the hands of the workers. And land reform.’ not the answer?
Promise that, and you win going away in every state. Because nowhere do the capitalists outnumber the workers.
So they just said the Dems are planning 85 investigations into Trump. So that is really going to help? Good example of overreach that for the most part will yield nothing. Pick a few a do a good job.
Looks to the general public like politically motivated spite. Will get sympathy for Trump. And don’t think republicans won’t shout it from the rooftops.
Yes, that is the problem. There are so many things to look into and investigate and create something. Trump should be investigated but that issue could soon vanish.
Let’s look to the people, especially women, who won Congressional seats running as Democrats.
Sharice Davids, not only Native American, but a woman and either gay or bi-sexual, won in a district that I read was 86% white. On TV
I saw an interview with her. She was passionate about her issues.
There were about 8 such women and some men as well who won what I would call unorthodox victories, or at least unexpected. What did they run on? How did they do it? One thing they all seemed to have in common was passion and a strong commitment to specific issues. No wishy washy middle of the road for them.
A laser-like focus on class issues, and staying out of the idpol briar patch, delivers results!
I’ll go further and say not just focusing on class issues, but using divisive class warfare rhetoric that inspires genuine hatred of the 1%.
Look at Lauren Underwood in Illinois in a very rich district. She lives in Kenilworth. If I can believe wikipedia, Kenilworth has only 8 African-American resident. She and her parents are three of them. Yet, her first time out, she beat an established Republican Congressman. She did it by pounding on Health Care for all Americans. Even the rich fear paying Medical bills.
As far as I can tell, though, this hasn’t really been as much a carefully calibrated success based on political messaging as a natural revolt of the educated and civil against whatever the fuck you want to call Trumpism.
Most people don’t pay attention to politics, though. When they do, they look for “cues” as to what is important and what their local politicians say they plan to accomplish. During times of deep polarization, the party labels are used as the most important cue. (This is how I vote; it doesn’t make sense to vote for say, Stacey Abrams as governor and then vote for Republicans in the Georgia legislature.) Political scientists have spent a lot of time researching political campaigns, and as I understand, most campaigns focus on base turnout during elections.
This isn’t the kind of 50-50 split any healthy country should want to see. In 2020, it’s quite possible that a Democratic contender will figure out how to get the 200,000 or so additional votes Clinton needed in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania to win the presidency, but that won’t make them some kind of genius, give them some kind of mandate, or reconcile the other half of the country to their term in office. And I don’t think this changes at all based on the formula the candidate uses to succeed.
What if Republicans don’t think Democrats have any legitimacy to govern? What if multiple Republican officeholders claimed that counting the votes of overseas military personnel was actually voter fraud? What if Republicans responded to close elections by advocating for new ones? What if Republicans stoked racial hatred by screaming about a caravan of refugees and then stopped talking about it the day after the election? What would any Democratic politician do to unify the country?
If the public cannot be convinced to repudiate Trumpism with at least the same conviction that they rejected Herbert Hoover, then everyone in this country and not just the Democratic Party will have failed, and failed miserably.
The fact that Trump’s racist blatherings and obvious unfitness for the job didn’t disqualify him among Republican primary voters in 2015 strongly suggests that Republicans are the problem, not Democrats.
Lots of people in the US get their information from InfoWars, Breitbart, Fox News, etc. As long as these people are willing to listen to the poison from obvious frauds and grifters, I think that the US will continue to be polarized. I don’t think there’s a way for any politician, left, liberal, or center, to break through the bubble. Remember, Obama won Indiana in 2008 but wasn’t able to convince people that he wasn’t a Kenyan atheist socialist Muslim or whatever.
To my thinking the problem is that we need to convince more voters that governing the country in a manner that benefits everyone in the country is a better idea than governing the country in a manner that is about kicking one’s neighbors.
Right now all the Trump voter seem to care about is using the power of government to kick people they personally dislike.
It’s day after day of Cleek’s Law. It’s disheartening. That’s the trend we need to reverse.
That wold be good if the Democratic leadership were not in the hip pockets of Wall Street bankers.
The strongest BIG idea is climate change. Looking at California and the wildfires this last week they have melded together even the most fiercest of competing tribes. It’s a human suffering for individuals, for communities and for a state as a whole.
It impacts not just California’s economy, which of course is the 5th largest in the world, but all of the US.
It impacts peoples’ health and the coverage they need, it demands good govt interaction, it demands utilities like PG&E be held accountable.
And if you watch the heartfelt stories of firefighters in real caravans arriving from WA, OR, CO, NM, AZ, ID, UT & TX with the slogan, ‘hang in there California help is on the way’ it’s not a stretch to say climate change is a uniter that all the denier talking points Fox can churn out will be heard now.
You might want to spend some time looking at what’s going on in California with the wildfires. Many of the areas hit are deep red and even Orange County is coming around to climate caused wildfires this round. It’s a remarkable turnaround in just a few days.
. . . Cleek’s Law sez???
I thought it was supposed to be started by a campfire. MSM lying again?
No, Camp Fire was started by a PG&E failure with a transmission. Investigation ongoing but they have the location where it started and a reported spike at the transmission line at the time it started.
The hurricane force winds are what drove Camp Fire & then Woolsey & Hill fires…the winds have been amplified by climate change.
It’s mid November and there has been almost no precip. This is late September weather. We’ve had 6+ weeks of extra drying. Similar last year.
The rain rarely starts before Thanksgiving, there is almost always a heat wave w/ Santa Anna’s after school starts, and September almost always has incredibly dry air, bringing fire hazards. The fall has always been fire season, because the brush (without summer June gloom) becomes tinder dry after 7-8 months of virtually no rain.
While everything has almost certainly gotten `more’ (fruit that used to be common on the coast, not longer thrives there), the actual weather patterns have not changed. If anything, the late summers are slightly wetter, with lightning storms being far more common.
My job has involved working outside since the `60’s.
.
My point about climate change is simple. The effects are huge and right out there blaring across the tv’s of America. The emotion is high, tap into it.
17 states and growing have now sent out engines and firefighters to help fight the fires. Ideologies set aside which is a glaring juxstaposition to Trump’s doing his damnedest to divide the country.
The people are literally cheering the firefighter caravans on as they pass through towns and honking like crazy as they roar down the highways towards Calif.
I once got stuck by a brush fire east of Temecula (the Jack Krugman Fire) while house sitting. When I drove out the next day, through the burn area, it was shocking what a job the fire fighters did. Every home was an island, surrounded by devastation. The fighters funneled the fire up a canyon, then where the fire crested the canyon, hit it with aircraft, all the while sending crews to save each house.
I did a little honking myself, when I drove by the exhausted fighters.
We get our brush fires, but we also have professionals fighting them.
.
Cleek’s Law:
Today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily.
And Trump was the dumb ass that pulled out of the climate agreement. Never let him forget it.
What I’m hearing from this piece is that we should place all our bets on Trump is crazy and not offer any alternative vision to his racist, misogynist, nationalism. I’m at a loss that an intelligent and often persuasive individual can contend that a highly motivating albeit absolutely horrific vision that turns out the vote in just the areas needed to win the structurally unfair and rural dead-ender dominated Electoral College can claim that no policy message can prevail over Trump. You are wrong Booman. The apathetic need to be motivated and leftists need to be given something to vote for the Dem nominee. Everyone knew who Trump was before he was elected, yet Hillary couldn’t close it. Another Hillary or Hillary-like campaign — which is apparently is what you suggest by promoting another messageless campaign — will inevitably lead to the loss of our Republic. You can’t deny that the WALL is a message and Stronger Together is meaningless pablum. This post was disappointing, to say the least.
He is crazy no doubt. I agree people need a reason to go vote for us.
The Dow fell over 600 points today and Dumb Ass blames the Dems for saying that they were going to investigate him. Guess it has nothing to do with tariffs and Goldman being caught with their pants down. Time to fix that financial fraud thing before it crashes the economy — again.
Cummins wants to investigate drug prices and do something about health care. Good for him. You can be pretty sure Alexandria will help with that and with immigration. Make Puerto Rico a state.
I know, let’s investigate Whitaker. He seems to have some skeltons in his closet. A crook?
Meanwhile a voting problem in Florida — again. Fix the damn thing.
And then there is climate change and California and dead citizens.
Our impending market correction has a lot to do with the tech bubble we’ve been in for the last few years. It’s not as egregious as the dot com bubble but we’re up there.
I think you’re right, Booman. And I also think a Democratic candidate of that kind is more likely to hail from the South or the West (and I don’t mean Blue Dogs), because in those parts of the country they instinctively understand this. They have to.
As much as I hope for one, I really don’t see much of a chance for a landslide anytime in our near future. The problem is, that party affiliation, and in particular Republican party affiliation, has become intertwined into individual and cultural identity to such a large extent that it swamps out whatever effect the individual personality of a candidate might have or even their positions on particular issues. In fact, studies are showing that these people will change their views on any particular issues to match what they perceive is the current views of their right wing Republican tribe. Their identity with the tribe is more important than logical consistency on an issue.
Honestly, I would love to believe that rational arguments could persuade enough of the (R) voters so that an obviously corrupt and incapable president like the current one would get destroyed in any re-election attempt, but I really doubt that is possible.
I work with many smart, well-educated professionals who have to think rationally on a daily basis and are capable of changing their views about particular problems if the evidence indicates they should do so. Many are ex-military officers. As a rule, I try to avoid talking much politics at work but sometimes it is unavoidable- as is the case after a major election. In this case, these people just regurgitate faux news propaganda- the caravan is coming to get us and we should be scared, Beto is a socialist. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an idiot. Every tax increase is because government is wasting money and wants to steal more… as you might guess, the list goes on. I try to stop them before they get to the Clintons… In the end, it is primarily “us” vs “them”, where “them” is whatever the faux news enemy of the day is, and “us” is the Republican tribe. They have always voted “R”, they will always vote “R”. No amount of corruption or incompetence will likely change that. Hell, they re-elected Duncan Hunter, with his 60 felony charges. Why do they vote R? because they are Republicans. They will vote for Trump. Why? because he will have an (R) next to his name.
I would bet that the potential votes for Democrats among the pool of non-voters is probably larger than the number of persuadable Republican voters that are left in the increasingly cult like Republican party. Whatever we can do to make voting easier and to reach these people might be the best shot at creating a truly decisive election.
At this point, “conservatism” has become essentially a religion, a Weltanschauung, and every R candidate proudly identifies as a “conservative”. (Of course, this characterization was projected by Rs onto lib’ruls quite some time ago.) Thus, “conservatism” cannot fail (by definition), it can only be failed.
The other (unstated) component is that an R intensely dislikes the demographics that make up the Dem party and refuses to vote for a party that represents these demographics. Ingesting and regurgitation of the daily propaganda is used by the “conservative” to mask this reality. So of course argumentation is futile.
Many Nazi True Believers preferred suicide to surrender as the Russian army leveled Berlin. They did not want to survive Germany’s Gotterdammerung. Theirs was a movement with a much greater Fuhrer-cult component than we have today (so far), but I have a feeling that view animates many of our nationalist “conservatives” as well. Hence all the gun-nutism in their movement But just as with Germany and its demented Hitler movement, deranged and deluded American “conservatism” is inexorably dragging the nation to its doom. Gravity operates on every reality-denying movement, whether one believes in gravity or not. The question is, what will be OUR Red Army moment?