What will the Democratic Party learn from their loss?

I maintain that both parties have been corrupted by big money, which is why populist such as Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have been so influential in this election. Unfortunately, the DNC worked against their best candidate and handed the presidency to the Trump.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Would you have voted for, Sanders?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Well the republican establishment tried, but they were too weak, and frankly it was a joy watching the likes of Jeb and Cruz get bent over and reamed by Trump. Unfortunately based on Trumps picks for president cabinet it is clear the republican establishment are going to have the last laugh.

The Clintons on the other hand had 8 years inside the highest levels of the DNC and presidency preparing for their coronation, their loss should hopefully be proof to all democrats how woefully out of touch any clintonian crony capitalist democrat is.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

It does look that way.

 

I like Sanders. I always thought he was an honest and sincere man. Though I disagreed with his Socialist agenda, I might have voted for him for no better reason than to place a real person in the White House. There was never any doubt in my mind that he could never implement any of his social policies, yet his election would have sent a message. He would have been the safe bet in terms of sending that message.

What we now have is a bulldozer coming into office, or so he claims. We will see. It might be the beginning of the end for everything we have known regarding the political landscape in America. Again, we will see. I am hoping, at the end of the ride, something unique and truly American arises from the rubble. I am on the edge of my seat right now, because I'm not certain about our future.

 

Both parties have indeed been corrupted by money. Proof of this - the GOP candidate is a billionaire who brags about not paying taxes, and who wants to pass new tax policies to further enrich himself. Proof of the gullibility of GOP voters - they think he's on their side.

 

I argued this again and again: why would you vote for someone that openly proclaims he has bought off politicians and took part in the corruption of government, the answer I get back is "oh that was just his business" or that he tells it like it is therefor he going to do something about it, the mental disconnect is unbelievable but a clear symptom of how desperate and thus easily conned so many Americans are.

 

Well, honesty has value, doesn't it? Yet honesty didn't have much value with the DNC, right? Quite frankly, I try to limit my tax liability whenever I can. I imagine that effort would be the same if I were a Billionaire. If I were a serious money maker, I might even try buying a few politicians along the way. I can't fault the guy for being honest. Really, I can't. I think Bernie was honest, too. But none of that had any impact with the Democratic Party who propped up possibly the worst candidate imaginable.

 

There may have been certain design aspects that went into the decisions as well... I have a book full of handcarved furniture from asia, that a designer gave to me a while back. Complete with price list. Those pieces would cost 10x from an American factory. I will guarantee you that the Chinese factories can usually build and ship for less than an American one. Especially if the materials are more easily obtained in Asia... The quality has improved also. I've seen some decent import stuff.. I've also seen some terrible USA made stuff. Especially on the cabinetry end of things...

 

The politics of the Left had almost no influence on the Trump voter - I have yet to meet a Trump voter who even knows what they are or were, beyond some vague allusion to Bernie Sanders being a socialist.

Nothing. So why are you using them as evidence that those people were not racist? They were, and are, racist. That's a central fact of American politics.

Hey, it's your topic. I'm responding to your posts. If you don't want to talk about racism, don't deny its obvious existence and influence in the mostly white rural midwest. If you don't want to talk about fascism, don't try to claim that namecalling people fascists has been a major effort of "the Left", me, or people like me. Trump's obviously fascist, as is the Republican Party he represents, but all you have to do is note the fact (including the PC censorship of the word) and move on to the issues.

No, you don't get to change the subject: You claimed that me, and people like me, went around pushing gender neutral pronouns and transgender bathrooms and screaming at voters that they were racists and fascists, instead of arguing economic and serious political issues, and that's why Clinton lost. That was bullshit, neither I or anyone like me did any such thing.

Yeah, good idea - start there. Get your head out of the wingnut video world, at least. Read the Molly Ivins article I linked you to, and then a few more by her or some other actual liberal or lefty.

There are plenty of True Scotsmen. There are plenty of actual Lefties, some of whom are even Democratic Party members in good standing. There are plenty of people who are like me. It's time you got a clue about them, before running around reposting rightwing propaganda memes that threaten to seriously damage the Democratic Party, and block its badly needed rehab.

I'm trying to teach it. Are you, and the rest of the benighted Democratic Party minions currently blaming "the Left" and Sanders and so forth, willing to learn?

Start here: the Clinton campaign ads run in Wisconsin and Minnesota - that omitted economic issues and concentrated on Trump's offenses against civility - were not products of the Left, or me, or anyone like me. We - the people like me - were focused on tax policy and health care (we wanted expansion of Medicare) and the relationship with jobs and debt, with some side warnings on the threat of Trump's predilections for bullying given the powers granted the White House. That was Clinton bizarrely avoiding jobs and taxes and health care and debt, against the wishes and the specific advice of "the Left", me, and anyone like me.

There aren't any diseased parts of liberalism in the DNC. The diseased parts of the DNC are authoritarian, and mostly rightwing.

Why are you taking your cues from Republican wingnut propaganda, about what is wrong with the DNC?

 

If their concerns have nothing to do with race I fail to see how they are racist. Depending on how you define the word, everyone is racist, what is important is if they are racist in a meaningful way. When it comes to politics ,to winning elections, no Americans are not racist, that is why Obama won twice and Trump won not on the backs of racist but primarily on the backs of people desperate for economic and political change and on the damage the regressive left has done to the democrats.

I don't know where you going with this but I think I already covered it.

And yet you did in this very thread, fuck just the reply above you go on about fascism and how racist they are! Ok this argument has reach the ad nausum stage, it is like I'm talking to someone that huffs glue.

wingnuts, not common everyday voters, yep sure, true Scotsmen, got it, do you need me to get you some more glue?

Didn't you cite some hugbox that "regressive left" was invented by Maajid Nawaz... oh that right he is rightwing, certainly not a liberal.

If we leave this to people like you that want to divide the party down to what you define as actual leftest, there won't be anything left for us to win elections on let alone have a functional party.

oh yes that is some good glue isn't it? Blame fascism and racism in one post and then claim you totally were not doing that in the next.

So apparently there is this magical perfect liberalism and it is what ever you define as not liberalism as wrong. Ok fine if we can agree on cutting out the authoritarians that demand everyone agree with them or else your racists, sexist, fascist, who use electorally detrimental shaming tactics, and cut out all the cronyist rightwing democrats, then perhaps this argument can end?

if they said 2+2=4, would that be republican wingnut propaganda?

 

Not at all. Trump did nothing but lie - and he won. The democrats will learn that lesson for the next election.

So "buying politicians" = "honest" for republicans.

It's going to be a fun four years, watching the right wing twist itself into knots defending this guy.

 

Yeah but his lying was not the type that the electorate is acclimated to and hates. In fact his boorish outburst endeared him to voters because how could someone who says such things be capable of lying? His personally appears burtialy simple and shallow, as a good huckster makes you think he is nothing more than a idiot that wears his opinions on his shoulder, then again being and idiot that wears his opinions on his shoulder might just be simply what he is, as well as a huckster.

Hillary Clinton on the other hand was exactly what the electorate hate about lying politicians: duplicitous, double talk, Machiavellian.

Bernie on the other hand was considered the most truthful and respectably of the three.

 

You (and others) may prefer one type of lie over another, but the fact remains that Trump lies most of the time; Clinton does not.

Scores from Politifact:
Clinton: True/mostly true/half true 74% Mostly false/false/pants on fire 26%
Trump: True/mostly true/half true 30% Mostly false/false/pants on fire 70%

 

Don't assume I prefer Trumps lying, I voted for Hillary because she was the only sane competent choice, typical lying politician not withstanding.

Rather I'm pointing out Trumps kind of lying is something new on the US political stage, as no one has every tried to be this boorishly stupid before at a national level, thus the populace has no immunity to it.

 

I don't think that the DNC handed the election to Trump. It was never theirs in the first place, it was the people's to give. Trump showed himself to be something of a political genius, ironically, by doing the obvious. He addressed the concerns of the middle class (despite dramatic shrinkage, still the largest class), which is something that according to the ruling elites of both parties, no one was supposed to do. To do so would be "populism". (A word that I consider synonymous with 'democracy'.)

According to the elites, the American people are a bunch of ignorant, crude, backward "racists", people who need to be ruled and controlled, led by the 'better people' up on top in their own best interest. While the people are still technically allowed to vote, they are only supposed to choose who among the 'better' class they want to lead them. They must never be allowed to lead themselves, to actually decide on policy. There's an oligarchical and almost aristocratic instinct to both the Republican and the Democratic elites (which is what makes them elitist, I guess). The brilliance of Donald Trump was that he sensed how fed up tens of millions of voters were with that kind of attitude.

But Trump is a billionaire who lives in New York City. He flouts his wealth and is proud of it. Isn't he a member of the elite too? So how did he achieve what he did? Part of that success is (again ironically) the work of his opponents. People saw how all of the rich donors, the university professors, the media elites (the journalists, the Hollywood celebrities) were all in the tank for Hillary. Everyone who presumes to tell everyone else what they should think, what kind of society they should desire, and how best to achieve it. They saw how every minute of every day was non-stop "Trump sux!" on their newspaper front pages, latenight TV, in magazines and on CNN. Even prominent stuffed-shirt Republicans refused to support him.

Trump's genius was that he put himself in a position where all that stuff worked for him. In way, his opponents supplied his campaign! They allowed him to win with surprisingly little campaign organization, TV or newspaper advertising and little funding besides what he supplied himself. All of the elite hysteria and doomsday rhetoric against him neatly addressed people's concerns that maybe Trump was just another New York bigshot playing all of them for fools. It illustrated that the rest of the elites hated Trump with a passion and were scared to death of him. It allowed Trump's lack of polish to become an asset, indicating that what he said wasn't pre-planned, rehearsed and tested on focus-groups, and probably was what he really thought. It suggested to his voters that Trump was authentic, that he really did threaten the ruling elites, that he had them running scared and was in fact was the real deal.

Trump recognized that the American middle and lower-middle classes were developing what the Marxists used to call 'class consciousness' and that they were ready to start bloc-voting as a class, much as the British working class has already done for generations. (The US has never had a European-style 'working class'. Factory workers and skilled tradesmen in the US have always thought of themselves as 'middle class'.)

(Historians and political scientists are going to be writing books on this election for a generation.)

Hillary seemed totally tone deaf to what was happening and shot herself in the foot too many times. She tried to act like she cared about regular people but then appeared visibly uncomfortable in their presence. She turned around and did things like announce (in coal country!) how she was going to put coal companies out of business, seemingly with no regard for the jobs that would be lost and the coal mining communities that would be devastated. (That lost her SE Ohio right there.) It was obvious that she was speaking to her base and not to the people in front of her.

And I think that her remark about "deplorables" probably was the stake in her heart, the best gift she could have handed Trump. That was the turning point of the campaign right there. Millions perceived it as her opinion of "flyover country", the vast middle of the nation... of themselves. They regarded it as a rare peek into what she really thought, and they didn't like it. You just don't win elections by insulting the people that you want to vote for you. Trump recognized that, and all the (self-annoited) brilliant political minds in the Washington beltway and in the editorial offices never did.

 

This would be contingent upon the same people displaying a truly staggering lack of self-awareness and empathy, right? Women who voted for Trump believe themselves to be “pretty,” and thin, enough for Trump to rape; disabled Trump supporters believe Trump would never mock their particular brand of wretchedness; and so forth...

Incidentally, apart from that "basket of deplorables" remark, I don't recall anyone in the Clinton camp insulting swathes of people in such a manner. Sure, people like you and right-wing talk radio folk like to claim that they (the Clinton camp, et al) describe the American people as "a bunch of ignorant, crude, backward "racists", people who need to be ruled and controlled, led by the 'better people' up on top in their own best interest," but I don't know where the evidence for this is. To my recollection, Trump is far more reliable for the sweeping generalizations.

(And sure, I say such things--except for the bit about the people "up on top"--but I'm not a politician or public figure in that sense, so it's hardly the same thing. Or, at least, it's not what you are attesting.)

 

Most women simply want a good job, stable living and a future for their children, if a heinous pig boar of a man will do that for them or at least they think he is more likely to do that for them than the robotic reptile (with two FBI investigations on her no less) the DNC put forth, then they will vote for him. This was fundamentally a matter of us putting forth a unelectable candidate, in a time of extremely high anti-establishment hate, against a human disaster that claims he is going to destroy Washington. People don't care that he is a monster, so long as the first people he rapes to death are the politicians they hate so.

Jesus! Look at icearura posts just a few post above! Saying it was racists that won it for trump! Look on social media, open your eyes!

 

Regardless, the contention that Trump did not insult them is simply ludicrous. Only a person wholly lacking in self-awareness and empathy could overlook this.

I wasn't aware that iceaura was a paid Clinton staffer, IOW re-read my post (including the part below where your quote ends--it might have been outside of the edit window).

 

It is simply a matter of not categorizing one self as trumps victims of insult, and being destitute enough to not care. For example a labor class women simply does not see her self in a position to be molested by trump, but does see it as probable trump will molest, figuratively, what she see as the bane of her suffering: the establishment politicians. What women Trump does molest the labor class women merely sees as flucies, prettier than her, out pimping their bodies on to a rich billionaire.

The labors class's lack of empathy you may find morally weak, none the less the labor class vote. I believe we can get those votes if we appeal to them in the right way, the polls results and titanic small individual donations Bernie generated clearly showed there is consideration amongst the labor class for a populace democrat.

You don't need to be a paid Clinton staffer to present the democrats and liberals in the wrong way.