I don’t have a good title for this
This is just a very disappointed, angry and sad white liberal and or leftist dude’s opinion. Take that for what it’s worth. (Which I’m guessing is close to what you paid for it)
It’s going to be rough. History isn’t over. The same hatreds that cause genocide, wars and ethnic cleansing abroad, also live here at home. The same impulses that cause a people to turn to a dictator in a crisis live here too. We have so much to lose. Every piece of progressive legislation since at least the new deal, and maybe since the civil war is now up for grabs. Every hard fought civil rights victory since the civil rights movement, is on borrowed time. Global warming and the reckless exploitation of fossil fuels will continue unchecked. Social security might be privatized or worse, eliminated completely. Our national forests, maybe even our national parks are now in danger of being sold or rented to mining and logging and drilling and any other extraction industry. Do you hate toll roads? I have bad news for you. Do you like public education? ditto. The people who are ideologically opposed to the concept of government are now running the government. Rome wasn’t burnt in a day, but then again, they didn’t have nuclear weapons.
But we’re not dead yet. Every terrible item on their to-do list is for now, still on their to-do list. This country didn’t have a revolution during the great depression, so it probably won’t have one any time soon. Violence won’t stop what I think is coming. Victor Hugo said “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come”, I say this goes double for bad ideas. What can we do? Obstruct, distract, delay, resist. Volunteer and donate to good causes. I don’t have a magic strategy to limit the damage of a Trump administration, and I don’t think there are many effective options. What I do know is, if we break down into useless victim blaming and finger pointing, we aren’t fighting the Trump agenda. The fun fact is, nearly every faction opposed to the rise of Trump gets to share some of the blame for failing to stop him. Without the protections of the voting rights act, the familiar terrain of Obama’s election strategy shifted right under our feet. They redrew the districts to their distinct advantage. So did the constituencies that the democrats depend on sit this one out voluntarily, or were they forced to? Did we send the wrong message, or did we send the right message and people weren’t receptive? Did we back the wrong candidate? Some Bernie supporters think so, but just comparing unfavorables from a year ago won’t tell us how he would have done in a general election against a guy all too willing to rally antisemites to his deplorable cause. If we want to win next time, do we move left or right? do we increase our focus on social justice or do we throw our constituency to the wolves in the name of winning? (That was rhetorical, we can’t throw anyone to the wolves unless we want to forfeit the moral high ground which is the only reason anyone votes democratic in the first place). Are there key planks of our platform that we have to add or subtract to regain an electoral college majority? (and we can’t get rid of the electoral college until we win one more time) How do we explain to people that we care more about an extra 5% of undecided voters than we do about one or more of: gay marriage, LGBTQ rights, the environment, global warming, not declaring war on people that don’t have anything to do with us, public education, or public health?
We need unity to build a winning team, but not at the expense of accountability. Not at the expense of building a fragile coalition that will shatter in the face of an external threat or internal disagreements. We don’t get to sweep our failures under the rug, just so we can trip over them next time. When someone in this post election season blames a group of which I am a member for this loss, I’m going to agree. Middle aged white guys did cost Hillary the election. I voted Hillary but far too many of us couldn’t see past the Donald Trump’s appeal to some lost ‘greatness’ (aka structural racism) to see the hatred underneath. We let our fascination with his wealth, abuse of power and impunity blind us to his faults, or worse we allowed ourselves to be seduced by them. He is what far too many white guys aspire to be. He is an unforced error that should be obvious to anyone that can even spell ‘history’. Shave his head and give him an insultingly racist Asian makeup job and facial hair, and stand him next to Ming the Merciless, and even their mothers couldn’t tell them apart. What I’m saying is, anyone who knows that evil exits, should be able to recognize it when it boasts on tape about grabbing women by the pussy. When anyone blames liberals for ignoring the economic plight of the people who have been doing terrible since the great recession, I’m going to admit they are right. Whenever anyone blames leftists for not doing enough to stop the police killing of black people, Native Americans, Latinos and Latinas, LGBTQ people and anyone else they care to execute in the charge of their duties, I’m going to agree. Maybe we did all we could and it wasn’t enough. But that’s no excuse, we need to do better, we need to be better. We need an intersectional approach to race and class in America, because trying to handle those issues as if they were unrelated seems to be making them worse. There are lots of other things we got wrong, but you get my point. I’m going to listen to the criticism, and let it inform my choices in the future. To quote another dead guy “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” (Mark Twain)
Have to get something off my chest first.
https://i.redd.it/1c0tmzlsstwx.jpg
Pup, I get where you are coming from. I too am frustrated by DWS and HRC collective seizing defeat from the jaws of victory. But I also know that politics ain’t beanbag. I know that the next nominee is going to have to be every bit as good at working the refs, at raising money from donors (maybe even donors we really don’t like). Because the next winner of the general election is going to have to do it too. There’s plenty of blame to spread around, and I really don’t like the whole “imagining the opposing candidate dying horribly” genre of memes. God knows there are a million ways Bernie or anyone else might have fucked it up had they gotten the nomination. Maybe it’s cathartic, maybe you gotta vent I don’t know. Maybe I’m a terrible tone troll for writing this comment. And I do very much welcome your presence on this blog, but ick.
“imagining the opposing candidate dying horribly” genre of memes
I don’t see anything like that in the pic I posted. Did you send your letter, as I did, congratulating the DNC and in particular DWS for losing, under her tenure, the House, the Senate, the White House and especially the SCOTUS for a generation?
I know that the next nominee is going to have to be every bit as good at working the refs, at raising money from donors (maybe even donors we really don’t like).
Yup, absolutely. DWS and the rest of the powers that be at the DNC were good at that, but they were absolute shit at adapting to the new realities. They were good at all the yesterday stuff, basically fat dumb and happy and living in their bubble. Business as usual is what killed us.
Everyone at the DNC above the level of intern must go. And maybe some of the interns too. We have to rebuild the party from the ground up. Hell, Howard Dean got largely bought out by big Pharma but he knew what to fucking do. I’d support him for chair. His 50 state strategy worked. DWS and the legacy Clinton Democratic Losership Council fogies in the DNC don’t have a fucking clue.
Listen, I know what it takes to best a bully. Please believe me, I had to learn it the hard way and learn it I did. That was the reality of this thing, a playground bully with a bunch of wannabe bullies standing behind him getting vicarious thrills from the bully beating up on the victim.
“They’re a basket of deplorables.” “ZOMG HOW DARE YOU CALL US RACIST HOMOPHOBIC ANTISEMITIC MISOGYNIST XENOPHOBIC REVANCHIST HATEWADS deplorable!” “Oh, that was a mistake, sorry.”
NO. You just helped the bullies win. Again. You can’t fight hate with hate but you can fight hate. Joseph Welch knew how to kneecap a demagogue. “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” Bernie could have pulled that off. Hillary couldn’t.
Gaah, I’m only today able to even write about this. I spent all day Wednesday holed up in my bedroom, sick to my stomach at how the DNC and HRC and yes, Obama too, stood idly by while those radical right wing extremists normalized hatred, normalized bigotry, normalized fact free fearmongering demagoguery. That’s the new normal. You do see that, yes? You think it was bad before just you wait.
Live in the past, die in the past. Adapt or go extinct. Same old shit don’t cut it anymore. We were smugly arrogant, relishing the imminent downfall and end of the Republican party. And look, just look.
We have to build an entirely new Democratic party. We can’t do it with the dinosaurs running the show.
Well said pup! Still trying to accommodate this new reality, or my realization of our utter failure….. Er, futility in thinking that we might have turned a corner with Obama only to discover that Nathan Bedford Forrest was waiting in the wings berobed, astride a Roan Stallion…
🙁
Looking forward to recomputering and racing to get myself on the enemies list before Herr tiny hands pulls the plug on the intertrons…
Xoxox friends, take care.
…
Testing. Tap,tap,tap….
I note that, in the Brexit vote, the majority of people in work voted Remain.
Look, I ain’t coming back here if you guys are still letting one of the innumerable Ruppert clown/clones hang around….
Well, that’s an easy trade. Welcome back.
DWS was re-elected.
It’s not just about DWS though – this rot has been settling in for a long time. It’s just that Obama was good enough to hide it.
The only saving grace for Democratic candidates since 2000 has been Obama’s coat tails – and that’s also partly because OFA was Obama’s own machine and not the DNC’s. Including Y2K, there have been 9 national elections and the GOP has had Congress for 7 of them.
It is well past time for a purge. It is time for all of those people who used the Republicans as a boogeyman to force progressives to back a neoliberal centrist platform to shut the fuck up. President Trump is their fault – they were running the show, and they ran it into the ground.
Whine about “whitelash” or the crazy racist rural voters or whatever all you want – even with all of that Hillary Clinton should have won handily. Hillary Clinton lost to Donald fucking Trump. A campaign with zero ground game. A campaign managed by someone who took over in fucking June. She had a 2:1 spending advantage. But she still lost. That’s fucking pathetic.
Even with depressed turnout of the traditional GOP voter, the Dems still couldn’t regain the Senate and are still looking at a very comfortably red House. They lost the governorships of Vermont, New Hampshire and Missouri.
Yes, President Trump is a huge disaster, but he represents just the tip of the iceberg of the FAIL of the Democrats.
The first rule of misogyny is that women are responsible for what men do.
I’m no DWS fan and agree she should be replaced, but to me the crucial factor here wasn’t the lacklustre Dem campaign.
It was the fact that Trump had something to offer the unemployed former widget factory workers of Hicksville, Ohio.
Of course what he had to offer them was “bullshit”, but I guess they thought it over and decided that “bullshit” was better than “nothing”.
What would YOU offer them?
Lets be honest—unbridled capitalism ain’t gonna help these folks; only some form of socialism will.
And that’s gonna be a hard sell.
Lets be honest—unbridled capitalism ain’t gonna help these folks; only some form of socialism will.
And that’s gonna be a hard sell.
I predict they’ll be ready to hear it sometime around 2033-2035, when the elapsed time since the end of the Cold War will be longer than the Cold War lasted. If I make it to 2043 the way deathclock.com predicts, I will live to see my country start coming to its senses.
Golf clap..
http://www.reid.senate.gov/press_releases/2016-11-11-reid-statement-on-the-election-of-donald-trump#.WCcgAuvEirV
A paraphrased suggestion from the Mommas and Poppas:
Hey all you Sadlies around the world
Are you ready for a brand new treat?
Trump is in and the time is right
for butt-chuggin in the street
Yeah we’ll butt-chug Southern Comfort
Captain Morgan too
cheap generic vodka
oh everywhere we’ll be stumbling, swaying,
face down in the dirt we’ll be laying
We’ll get paralyzed, we’ll be brain-fried
from butt-chugging in the street
whoa
it doesn’t matter what you wear
as long as your ass is there
so come on everybody grab you some lube
pull down your pants–insert that tube
and now you’re butt-chugging!
butt-chugging in the street!
(repeat ad libidinem, ad infinitum or ad nauseam, whichever comes first.)
Blame the DNC all you want. The fact is, Trump got meh turnout from the usual Republican tools. The fact is, over HALF of the electorate didn’t bother to turn out.
You can bitch about how mediocre the campaign was (it wasn’t) but don’t the people themselves have to take the brunt of the blame here? If you can’t be bothered to get off your ass and do the tiny amount of research to reveal what a horrorshow Trump is and vote accordingly, then you deserve the orange motherfucker.
Too bad I and the people I care about have to live with it but hey, democracy!
But you contradict yourself. It was a bad campaign precisely because they didn’t motivate people to get off their asses and vote. It was a bad campaign because they didn’t do squat to give people a reason to care. The major theme was “Look how horrible Donald is – I’m not Donald.” The campaign was yet another exercise in triangulation, surprise surprise. That may have been a feasible route to victory at the beginning (though they really should have seen from the R primaries that business as usual was a dead paradigm), I thought so too. But it became apparent to me and others that Trump was motivating people to get off their asses while she wasn’t.
Of course the people are to blame, we’re always to blame or praise. Because hey, democracy. And people are stupid. And people are lazy. And most people vote or don’t vote based on their guts, not their brains. It’s the candidates and the campaigns that get people to get off their lazy asses and vote for something they’ve been led to care about.
I agree…and how they can buy Trump’s bullshit is beyond me. How in the do they think their old manufacturing jobs or skilled labor jobs are going to come back? Technology and unbridled corporate greed lost them their jobs and they ain’t coming back. And these rubes have no interest in learning or adapting.
Aside from misogyny, racism, hatred and out right lies, the word ‘short-sighted’ is the one that defines this election.
I am finally starting to not feel physically ill. I’m still stunned that it’s actually Trump who won (I would even prefer that boob Johnson). We were in an urban area the day after and the mood could only be described as reserved. I looked at all the beautiful diversity around me and wanted to weep.
I have an overwhelming feeling that everything good is gone. Trump and his family leave everything tainted.
But, at least we have the prankster Biden memes.
but I guess they thought it over and decided that “bullshit” was better than “nothing”
I missed that. Can you see what’s wrong with that assessment? G’head, ponder on it a spell, I’ll wait.
.
.
.
.
Right! They didn’t assess it at all – no thinking involved. You naively thought those people were making a rational decision. You were projecting. Yup, we all do it all the time. Well, those with autism, and psychopathy and other serious mental disorders, excepted. It is in our nature to do so, it stems from our having a Theory of Mind. Your ToM has the deeply embedded notion that people don’t just react emotionally, that they think about things, especially when it’s about something big.
It is clear that those people were reacting emotionally, not rationally. And THAT is where (among other places) HRC and the DNC fell down. They just did not get that demagoguery operates on what is commonly called the lizard brain. Those people were ANGRY. The fires of anger burning in our lizard brains just shuts down the thinking process.
I’m on mobile so I’ll pause here, with the intent to return later to expand on this fundamental flaw of HRC’s and the DNC campaign. The gist of what I will say is they didn’t address the anger, which Trump masterfully directed at the “Washington elites” and at the establishment. There’s a lot more to it than that but the key takeaway is lack of awareness of just WTF was going on in this cycle, which is stunning in that everybody KNEW all along that Trump upended the conventional wisdom but they didn’t bother to try to understand why he was able to do it.
Hey Suez, you out there? There’s a possibility Teh Ho and will Xmas in South Africa, maybe go on safari. If we do I’d like to try to make or buy you strawberry shortcake or sumpin.
The way things are going, you and the Ho might end up moving in with Suezboo.
Yes, I was thinking . . . maybe the SadlyNo labs are well-lit and warm and . . . they kinda are. I need to think a bit more about Trump before contributing here but . . . yay! I’m sorry about the circumstances but it’s good to see the lab is still here. Gonna need a few more days to think about it . . . “Obstruct, distract, delay, resist. Volunteer and donate to good causes.” is a start but maybe we can do more . . . maybe. I’m thinking you left out “Truth, justice, and the American way” . . . maybe.
No. You can’t blame the people. That’s like blaming the weather. People are people, and yes we are lazy, ignorant fuckwits. This is who we are. This is reality. Maybe in the magical dream-world of unicorns and fairy princesses we’d have an informed electorate that makes sound decisions based on rational considerations of policy platforms. But not in the real world.
The Democratic Party is to blame for this. The DNC, Hillary herself, the neoliberal asshats she had surrounded herself with. All of the shit that’s being used to excuse this massive failure – all of it – known quantities. We know that people are stupid and lazy. We knew that they were being outright lied to. We know that the system itself is rigged to value rural hick conservatives as more vote worthy than others. We knew that progressive purity people weren’t going to endorse Goldman Sach’s favourite paid speaker. We knew all of this, and none of it should have mattered.
She was up against the weakest candidate I can remember. I mean let’s dispense with the fiction that he had more substance than even Marc Rubio. The guy knows sweet fuck all about anything other than the grift. On top of that he had disillusioned much of his own party apparatus, he had zero ground game, he fired his campaign manager in June and he was a loose cannon that said all sorts of ridiculous bullshit all the time. The Donald is so bad that he actually managed to banish the idea of “gaffes” from election coverage because he was so preposterously ridiculous all the fucking time. The Clinton campaign had to make dedicated effort to lose this one.
Trump is going to end up with about as many votes of Mitt 47% Romney. So it’s not like there was some massive surge of Republican voters. This phenomenon of the rural white vote was only big enough to offset the number of traditional GOP voters who were turned off by Trump and those missing due to his non-existent GOTV effort.
It’s also roughly the number of people who voted for Hillary. I’ll agree that Hillary’s campaign wasn’t mediocre – it was much, much worse. She had more cash than him, she had more celebrity star power on her campaign than anyone previous including 2008 Obama, she was running against someone blatantly incompetent. And she still lost.
Here’s the post-mortem: The Democratic Party sucks balls. It’s been fucking terrible for decades and the only reason we didn’t recognize it is because of Obama (who incidentally was the outsider and relied on OFA for his campaigns instead of the DNC). It’s not just Trump – Republicans have the House, the Senate, and two thirds of governorships and state houses. It’s a fucking sweep from top to bottom.
AND this is despite the fact that the electorate really is getting more progressive. When they aren’t playing popularity contests with their preferred team and given ballot measures to vote on, they vote progressive. 5 out of 5 referendums were to increase (or at least not decrease) the minimum wage. 4 out of 5 referendums were to loosen marijuana laws. Now you guys also voted to keep your capital punishment and loose gun laws, which is insane, but a lot of progressive stuff on the ballot was passed.
The modern Democratic Party doesn’t stand for anything anymore. It’s “vote for us or the racist pussy grabber gets in”. It’s the party of “well you might not like any of our policies or people, but the other guys are fucking batshit insane so #whatareyougonnado”. Yeah – apparently that type of attitude results in voters staying home.
D-KW I want to have your baby.
Not to slag on the criticisms above, many of which are valid, but something essential about 2016 needs to be understood.
Fact is, it’s quite possible that the Dems could’ve been running Obama & lost … or Sanders … or Zombie Reagan, for that matter.
The number of votes systematically suppressed in the wake of partial VRA repeal vastly exceeds the ballot gaps in every one of the states that put Combover Caligula over the top. He actually was dead on when he called the election rigged – he just forgot to mention that it was rigged for the GOP. They can’t win fair elections any more & they know it – so until the US commits to fair elections, they’ll happily keep winning skewed unfair ones.
IMO much time & energy has been pissed away on campaign finance reform when what has been desperately needed is electoral reform. Get the dark money out of politics, sure – but if the vote itself is judicially neutralized not even public financing of elections will bring it back to life. The trouble is, if Dems win in 2020 & exploit redistricting, the left will have exactly zero incentive to demand they get rid of it.
Excellent post, Dragon-King.
Really, Pups, really ?????
That would be great, triffic and wonderful.
If anybody offers a Wine Route tour, that’s my neighbourhood. Safaris tend to be more north. I’m around Cape Town – 2 hours inland.
Let me know if the plans pan out.
You should get to know how Trump will be by studying Zuma – same kind of kleptocrat and thug.
the lemming might be correct.
* Donald Trump received 667,646 fewer votes than Romney did in 2012, but Hilary Clinton received 5,075,873 fewer votes than Obama did in 2012.
But we still blame HRC and the DNC and the Democratic Losership Council for arrogantly assuming that people would get and vote for her because look what a slimeball Donald is. The slimeball was serving up red meat, this everyone knew. They failed to recognize that demagoguery moves people, it stokes passion – mostly anger and hatred but aren’t those the most powerful passions? – it
gives them a reason tomoves them to vote. For the slimeball. HRC didn’t do much to motivate people to vote for her, only against the slimeball. And more, they did not put the actually very good reasons to vote against the slimeball in second coming type, as they should have.“50% + 1 of the voters will see that I’m a much better person than Donald.” Hubris.
Sorry, I’m in Cuba where the weather is beautiful but Internet access is iffy… good article here!
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/hillary-clinton-and-the-populist-revolt
Yeah, Clinton was the exact wrong person to run: an unpopular insider after 8 years of “D” rule – when people were yearning for an outsider to come in & shake up a rotten system.
Seeing Brexit happen & then nominating her anyway = political malpractice. Knowing that negative campaigns keep voters at home & then running one anyway, knowing that your opponent usually wins when turnout is low = political suicide.
The vote suppression machine was definitely in high gear since Justice Kennedy decided that state governments in the 21st century are post-racial and would never suppress minority votes. Wheeee!
But I still don’t think it should have mattered. I really doubt that Obama would have lost to Trump. He got 5 million more votes last time, and 5 million more than that on his first go around because he is that much better a candidate than Clinton. I mean do you honestly believe that voter suppression could make up those types of margins in just eight years?
Let’s unpack – suppression was definitely a factor in Scott Walker’s Wisconsin. Florida probably had more than its fair share of suppression, but I’m not sure it was as much as Trump’s margin of victory. Same goes for North Carolina. Some guy at Vox did an analysis on it. Not a big fan of Vox, but this piece makes some good points.
That said – it’s still an important issue. One that would be fixed if the Democratic Party were at least marginally competitive at anything other than the federal level.
[This article is a year old](http://thefederalist.com/2015/11/17/why-democrats-will-keep-losing-at-the-state-and-local-levels/). If anyone had been actually paying attention they’d have noticed that the Democratic Party was failing badly. To be fair – I wasn’t paying attention and didn’t notice myself so it’s petty criticism I’m levelling. That said – this is their fucking jobs. This is the stuff they are supposed to know.
Here’s an incidental throwaway from Atrios which fucking nails it right out of the park:
Trump is a wake-up call. The fucking jackwads in charge of the Democratic Party should shut the fuck up and get the fuck out. It’s been tried your way every fucking time and the only way it works is if you have someone like Obama to rally around. Well, if you include the fact that you’ve designed the party apparatus to shit on people like Obama – to stifle any possible new talent in order to protect your long-time allies, well what do you fucking expect?
It is time for new blood to be leading the Democratic Party. It is time to shift the focus away from DC and start fucking competing wherever possible. It is time to apologize to the grassroots, to give the actual members of the Democratic Party a seat at the policy making table. Preferable the seats previously held by neoliberal shitlords. It is long past time that the Democratic Party starts to care more about what its members think than what Fred fucking Hiatt might write.
It is time for the Democrats to stop relying on #whatareyougonnado. So many times people complain about holding their noses and voting for something they hate because they are scared shitless of the alternatives. Well we’ve reached the end of that resource – people’s noses fucking hurt so much now that President Donald fucking Trump was not a big enough threat to make them pull the “at least we aren’t fascists” lever again.
Whoops, some reddit markup tagging there. Guess I’m still a bit rusty.
To make amends, here’s an early World Toilet Day link.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38012609
That is to say, poop.
Relevant?
Leaving town for a few days. Hope everyone has a nice Thanksgiving.
Jim, thanks for posting that article. I am fascinated with how Florida is handling climate change and that was an insightful and informative article.
Yup.
https://www.thenation.com/article/why-do-white-working-class-people-vote-against-their-interests-they-dont/
I agree that it is clear that people were reacting emotionally not rationally. You need only listen to Trump voters explain what they found so distasteful about Clinton and to note that whatever they mention will apply doubly to Trump to know that people were not voting rationally.
However, I don’t see how the DNC, short of sending Cesar Millan to every Trump voter’s house to make the “tsch-tsch” noise he makes to get them to snap out of their reactive mode, could have done anything about that. No matter who we ran, there is no way any Democrat could have appealed to raw anger in the same way that Trump could have: indeed, in my generally Democratic neighborhood, a lot of first time voters were motivated to vote for Trump because he was exactly the strongman whom they wanted to vote for; no Democrat could have appealed to them in the same way that Trump did without being such an asshole that he’d lose the votes of all of us sane Democrats. IOW, you cannot trump Trump.
Perhaps where the Dems could have done better is getting the “Trump is bad but so is Clinton” crowd to hold their noses and vote Democratic. But how?
If the Dems were to have ran to the left of where they ran or even just been more full-throated in presenting a vision of change that could compete with Trump, a good segment of voters would have been turned off because “well Trump is too far to the right, but the Democrats are too far to the left” and “well Trump is too reckless but the Democrats want to change too many things as well”. Remember, after all, that the economy is getting better. While many people have been left out of the economic gains during the Obama years (and hence didn’t vote for Clinton out of frustration and anger), a good number of people have enjoyed economic gains, and if the Dems looked like they would “undermine” those gains by going further left, we’d lose their votes. Already I know that Clinton lost some votes because people felt her campaign was too negative or she was tacking too far to the left. Could you imagine what would have happened if the Democrats ran a more vigorous campaign or ran someone to the left of Clinton?
OTOH, clearly the Democrats indeed lost votes because we didn’t run strongly enough on a campaign of change and too much on a campaign of “the status quo is good … vote to keep it” even though for many people the status quo is not so good. The question is how we could get the votes of people upset with the status quo while keeping the votes, and we couldn’t have afforded to lose these votes either, of those who are doing well enough in this recovery. For the GOP, this is easy: Trump can say one thing to group X, another thing to group Y: and people in group X will be convinced that Trump is lying to group Y to get their votes, and he really sides with group X. Meanwhile people in group Y will be convinced that Trump is lying to group X to get their votes and he really sides with group Y. E.g. many anti-Semites view Trump as an anti-Semite who has suckered 25%+ of the Jewish population into voting for him while those Jews who voted for Trump think he’s A-OK with us Jews and that he suckered the anti-Semites into voting for him.
But we Democrats cannot do this. Republicans don’t really expect much from political leaders anyway: if you think all politicians are liars and con-men, then you can convince yourself that whatever your candidate says with which you disagree is just another lie to con people other than you to vote for that candidate. However, liberals/progressives hope our candidate is actually telling the truth and offering a vision of how s/he will do the job s/he’s “interviewing” to obtain.
Of course, as Jim points out, all this discussion assumes Trump won. Look: Trump and his surrogates spent a lot of time complaining about Clinton’s e-mails. And whaddya know? Trump has an e-mail problem. Trump and his surrogates spent a lot of time complaining about the Clinton foundation. Well, Trump has a foundation too. Whatever the GOP does or says, it’s guaranteed to be projection. It’s what they do.
So when Trump kept talking about the election being rigged? Well, that should have been a sign that the election was gonna be rigged. Indeed, I do suspect that part of Clinton’s “outreach” to Republicans was not so much to win over suburban soccer moms as to convince the GOP powers that be that it wasn’t worth it to steal the election for Trump. But by and large we Democrats fell into Trump’s trap and denounced his denouncements undermining rather than laying the groundwork for us to challenge a rigged election.
Thus, going forward, I think a key thing Democrats must do is have a bunch of lawyers on the ground making sure everyone who wants to vote has a chance to actually vote.
DKW,
That’s an interesting and thought provoking article you posted. But beyond church attendance where is the evidence for its thesis? In particular, in states that are reasonably reliable for Democrats in presidential elections but have low voter turnout in non-presidential election years and have GOP governors, do we really see more participation by Republicans at a grassroots level than by Democrats?
I wouldn’t be surprised if, among those (whether on the left or in the center) who are unwilling to vote for “the lesser of two evils”, the “bowling alone” phenomenon — people who are not used to how politics work may have idealized notions about what they can expect from a political leader and political processes and may be unwilling to compromise and vote for someone who doesn’t meet those expectations.
Of course one of the challenges with getting people involved in politics and civil society in general, is that sitting on boards, being active in organizations, etc. takes a lot of time. And most people (especially most people who would be inclined to be more liberal — young people, people who have heavy work loads to earn enough money to make ends meet) do not have the time nowadays to dedicate to volunteer work. So assuming the thesis of the article is true, how do we get more Democratic leaning people to participate in civil society?
Excellent comments here.
Because of the proliferation of alternative news sources, the mainstream press doesn’t have the power to make or break a president as in the old days (think Lyndon Johnson, if you’re old enough to remember the news coverage he got)
If I knew that then you’d all be wallowing in the decadence of my benevolent leadership.
The constituencies under the Democratic coalition, young people and minorities, tend towards lower voter turnout. My feeling is that a lot of these people who don’t vote, don’t vote because they feel their votes don’t matter. They feel that there are no candidates that represent their interests, just ones that are less hostile towards them.
The Democratic voter really only cares when the presidency is on the line. Mid term elections are where the GOP really cleans up (and that is especially bad news for 2018). Also, lower level races like state houses. Maybe this is because they aren’t ever actually endorsing any platform, but merely voting in self-defense. And in that case they see it as only important when the presidency is on the line.
Are there avenues that progressives can leverage like the Republicans do with religious groups? Labour unions, I guess. Although these have been waning in power and influence. With the changing nature of work and the move towards the gig economy (or at least away from “jobs for life”) this is probably not a winning avenue in the future.
I can’t really think of a comparable. There are activist groups – but membership here is of politically active persons already. I dunno.
OTOH, those activist movements can be effective – if only temporarily. Occupy got massive engagement, but then faded. BLM is probably going to be an annual ritual where it defines the focus of protests over the summers. Maybe one way is to hand more of the control of the party to the activists and see if they can mobilize their followers to vote. Problem of course is that these groups are tied to policy positions and not just tribal membership – so policy would have to be delivered. And with the current crop of neoliberal jerkwads running the Democratic Party, I just don’t see it happening.
Still trying to wrap me head around this shartnado, and look forward to picking through the litterbox of election remains once I get properly re-putered.
But I am breathing, and rescued a kitten, who is effing adorable.
Happy early thankstaking day everyone!!!
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Also policy positions are not unifying in the same way as tribal membership. If a faction that had policy positions we’d like gained more prominence, we’d be more excited about voting, but a policy that excites some will turn off others.
And since policies have to be delivered, we can’t get votes for being the party of no, like the GOP can.
DAS:
Agreed, but I was not suggesting it.
Again, I agree. And again, I wasn’t suggesting that. The Ds did not recognize that Trump would be so good at making it all about resentment and anger. They very much underestimated the power of identity politics even though that’s how the right has been pwning them for years. If you can’t beat the opponent on his home turf, don’t fucking play him on his home turf. It’s that simple.
They figured enough people would vote for her regardless, or would vote against Trump, so they’d get to 50% + 1. Without recognizing that Trump was getting people riled up to go vote their hatred. Without doing anything to counter the narrative … No, in fact they played into Trump’s narrative by going the identity politics route which, as you noted, was doomed to fail. Not recognizing the power of demagoguery, they naively thought he was going to do a huge self-pwn.
What I was getting after was their failure to recognize that, given Hillary’s abysmal approval scores and massive negatives, identity politics was a losing game. They should have seen the need for and then executed a strategy not based in identity politics.
They naively thought enough people would see that Trump’s policy stances, where he had them, were frightening. They failed to recognize that Trump was generating enthusiasm, motivating the deplorables and their only slightly less deplorable allies of convenience, to go out and vote their anger. The D strategy was vote for me because I’m not Trump. It should have been all about Trump’s policies, how frightening and disastrous they would be, so as to motivate people not in the Trump camp to go fucking vote!
So no, I wasn’t suggesting that they should have tried to turn Trumpists off Trump, nor to get them to put reason over emotion – good fucking luck with that, ever – and not vote Trump, nor was I suggesting they should have tried to fight Trump using Trump’s tactics.
They should have seen the need to make people angry, but not a la Trump. They should have seen the need to scare the bejeezus out of everyone not in the Trump camp because their lives were going to turn to shit if they didn’t go fucking vote for Hillary.
The other day the NYT ran an opinion piece comparing the Trump ascendancy with Berlusconi’s.
Deplorables, anyone? (Then she poured lemon juice on that self inflicted wound by walking it back, implicitly endorsing the Trumpian narrative.)
I’m not tuned into the world of political campaigning and such¹. But the DNC and crew certainly are or should be. They should have seen it coming. They should have seen that they weren’t fighting against a political opponent, they were fighting against a narrative. The same narrative that’s been our bane for decades, the one that Reagan amped up, that over the ensuing years kept getting louder and stronger, which Trump turned up to 11.
That’s what I was getting after.
1. I am tuned into politics, and campaigning, but I look at it the same way I approach religion, as a human psychological phenomenon. I’ve been working lately on two essays. One is an examination of theism / religion, discarding any and all particular theist / religious beliefs, as a human psychological phenomenon. (Of course it’s an argument that every single one of the many thousands of gods people ever believed exist only in the heads of those people.) The other has the working title “Conservatism was once a political philosophy but has long since become a religion.”
Think Germany. Think McCarthy. Think authoritarian
Pup, very nicely put, would have been pleased to have penned it myself…
I have momentarily forgotten who wrote “brevity is the soul of wit” but I think Daphne nailed it in three two word sentences…
[\golf clap clapping]
Actually, as usual when daphne says anything, the credit belongs somewhere else.
Austin,
I guess my attempt at a gag missed the metro.
I figured that not only was golf clap clapping a tell, but that it was inspired hilarity.
I will admit that I am still in the wilds trying to recapture my “game” as it were….
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