Thread: Post-Election '16 DNC and the Democratic Party

Well that was a disturbing read ...

Apparently there is no room for us "status quo" voters". And the article gets it wrong. It's not just the wealthy who support the centrist status quo.

Taibbi: Goodbye, and Good Riddance, to Centrism - Rolling Stone

Goodbye, and Good Riddance, to Centrism

Open link to read the article. Here's a small sample:

"For Americans to be split right down the middle on an issue of supreme importance, Chomsky observed, something had to be a little bit wrong with the voting model.

And there was. The half-versus-half, left-versus-right spectrum has always been a goofball myth. The true divide in the population has never been between Republicans and Democrats, but between haves and have-nots".

Originally Posted by Storekeeper

Well that was a disturbing read ...

I'm shocked...shocked I tell you! More from your link:

For decades pundits and pols have been telling progressive voters they don't have the juice to make real demands, and must make alliances with more "moderate" and presumably more numerous "centrists" in order to avoid becoming the subjects of right-wing monsters like Reagan/Bush/Bush/Trump.

Voters for decades were conned into thinking they were noisome minorities whose best path to influence is to make peace with the mightier "center," which inevitably turns out to support military interventionism, fewer taxes for the rich, corporate deregulation and a ban on unrealistic "giveaway" proposals like free higher education. Those are the realistic, moderate, popular ideas, we're told.

But it's a Wizard of Oz trick, just like American politics in general. There is no numerically massive center behind the curtain. What there is instead is a tiny island of wealthy donors, surrounded by a protective ring of for-sale major-party politicians (read: employees) whose job it is to castigate too-demanding voters and preach realism.

Those pols do so with the aid of a bund of dependably alarmist sycophants in the commercial media, most of whom, whether they know it or not, technically inhabit the low end of the 1 percent and tend to be amazed that people out there are pissed off about stuff.

^ tinfoil hat time.

Originally Posted by Storekeeper

Well that was a disturbing read ...

Often the truth is disturbing.

SKkin's article in post #52 is accurate.

Originally Posted by Cold Pizza

SKkin's article in post #52 is accurate.

That's from Storekeeper's link in the previous post...Taibbi/Rolling Stone article.

Originally Posted by Storekeeper

It's not just the wealthy who support the centrist status quo.

I hate the status quo, it's broken and unfixable...imo of course.

Originally Posted by SKkin

Originally Posted by Cold Pizza

SKkin's article in post #52 is accurate.

That's from Storekeeper's link in the previous post...Taibbi/Rolling Stone article.

Originally Posted by Storekeeper

It's not just the wealthy who support the centrist status quo.

I hate the status quo, it's broken and unfixable...imo of course.

TBH I don't completely follow the logic of the article's author. I consider myself a centrist moderate. To me what the author described sounds more like neocons.

Only speaking for myself I chose status quo in regards to not wanting either Sanders or Trump.

First I've heard about this upcoming race in Virginia. The Democrats are running Danica Roem, a transgender woman to oust 25 year incumbent, Bob Marshall.

Virginia’s Most Anti-LGBT Lawmaker Might Lose His Seat To State’s First Openly Transgender Candidate

Danica Roem, a transgender woman and former journalist, beat out three challengers on Tuesday night to secure the Democratic nomination in what will inevitably be one of Virginia’s most-watched races this fall. The campaign to represent the state’s 13th District will put Roem, the first openly transgender candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates, up against longtime incumbent Bob Marshall—one of the state’s most anti-LGBT lawmakers.

more Virginia?s Most Anti-LGBT Lawmaker Might Lose His Seat To State?s First Openly Transgender Candidate ? Mother Jones


Hope she wins!

Originally Posted by misskit

First I've heard about this upcoming race in Virginia. The Democrats are running Danica Roem, a transgender woman to oust 25 year incumbent, Bob Marshall.

Virginia’s Most Anti-LGBT Lawmaker Might Lose His Seat To State’s First Openly Transgender Candidate

Danica Roem, a transgender woman and former journalist, beat out three challengers on Tuesday night to secure the Democratic nomination in what will inevitably be one of Virginia’s most-watched races this fall. The campaign to represent the state’s 13th District will put Roem, the first openly transgender candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates, up against longtime incumbent Bob Marshall—one of the state’s most anti-LGBT lawmakers.

more Virginia?s Most Anti-LGBT Lawmaker Might Lose His Seat To State?s First Openly Transgender Candidate ? Mother Jones


Hope she wins!

I hope she wins also.

I'll be following this race.

I read SK's Taibbi article. Taibbi is almost always see it the way it is (IMO).

Here's another article by him:

The Democrats Need a New Message
After another demoralizing loss to a monstrous candidate, Democrats need a reboot
By Matt Taibbi
May 26, 2017

Taibbi: The Democrats Need a New Message - Rolling Stone

Some informative comments in the recent Congressional thread (thanks Norton) and there is this:


Democrats had the worst May fundraising since 2003
by Anna Giaritelli | Jun 21, 2017

The Democratic National Committee raised nearly $4.3 million in May, making it the organization's worst May on record for fundraising since 2003, according to newly released Federal Election Commission data.

In May 2003, the Democratic group pulled in $2.7 million. Although 2017 is an off-year for fundraising, the DNC has raised between $4.5 million and $20 million every May in the nearly decade and a half since then.

The low number follows another rough fundraising month in April, in which the group hauled in $4.7 million, making it the worst April of fundraising since 2009.

DNC Chairman Tom Perez has said he intends to double the organization's budget from $50 million to $100 million this year, a change that will prove difficult if donations continue to remain below average. Perez defended his performance by saying he has only been leading the DNC for a few months now.

"Well again, I got there on March 1. And so, I was the first to say, we have a lot of rebuilding to do," Perez said on NBC.

The Republican National Committee reported $10.8 million in donations for the month of May, an off-year record-high number for the group.

Democrats had the worst May fundraising since 2003

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...m_source=atlfb

What’s Wrong With the Democrats?

If the party cares about winning, it needs to learn how to appeal to the white working class.

"To win again, the Democrats don’t need to adopt an alien agenda or back away from policies aimed at racial justice. But their leaders would be well advised to change their rhetorical priorities and more directly address the country’s bastions of gloom. The party has been crushed—not just in the recent presidential election, but in countless down-ballot elections—by its failure to develop a message that can resonate with people beyond the core members of the Obama coalition, and by its unwillingness to blare its hostility to crony capitalism. Polling by the group Priorities USA Action shows that a stunning percentage of the voters who switched their allegiance from Obama to Trump believe that Democratic economic policies favor the rich—42 percent, nearly twice the number who consider that to be true of Trump’s agenda.

The makings of a Democratic majority are real. Demographic advantages will continue to accrue to the left. The party needs only to add to its coalition on the margins and in the right patches on the map. Doing that does not require the abandonment of any moral principles; persuasion is a different category of political activity from pandering. (On page 60 in this issue, Peter Beinart describes how Democrats might alter their language and policies regarding immigration to broaden appeal without sacrificing their principles.) A decent liberalism, not to mention a savvy party, shouldn’t struggle to accord dignity and respect to citizens, even if it believes some of them hold abhorrent views.

Victories in the culture wars of the past decade seemed to come so easily to liberals that they created a measure of complacency, as if those wars had been won with little cost. In actuality, the losers seethed. If the Democrats intend to win elections in 2018, 2020, and beyond, they require a hardheaded realism about the country that they have recently lacked—about the perils of income stagnation, the difficulties of moving the country to a multicultural future, the prevalence of unreason and ire. For a Democratic majority to ultimately emerge, the party needs to come to terms with the fact that it hasn’t yet arrived".


Open link to read the entire article.

^ Interesting that Bill Clinton told the HRC campaign team to focus on the white working class (what he previous did and it was called the "Bubba vote" and HRC campaign staff blew him off and said he was outdated.

Here's an article on the lack of message by the Dems.


Beyond opposing Trump, Democrats keep searching for a message

By Dan Balz June

The loss in last week’s special congressional election in Georgia produced predictable hand-wringing and finger-pointing inside the Democratic Party. It also raised anew a question that has troubled the party through a period in it has lost ground politically. Simply put: Do Democrats have a message?

Right now, the one discernible message is opposition to President Trump. That might be enough to get through next year’s midterm elections, though some savvy Democratic elected officials doubt it. What’s needed is a message that attracts voters beyond the blue-state base of the party.

The defeat in Georgia came in a district that was always extremely challenging. Nonetheless, the loss touched off a hunt for scapegoats. Some Democrats, predictably, blamed the candidate, Jon Ossoff, as failing to capitalize on a flood of money and energy among party activists motivated to send a message of opposition to the president. He may have had flaws, but he and the Democrats turned out lots of voters. There just weren’t enough of them.


Other critics went up the chain of command and leveled their criticism at House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). She has held her party together in the House through many difficult fights — ask veterans of the Obama administration — but she also has become a prime target for GOP ad makers as a symbol of the Democrats’ liberal and bicoastal leanings. Pelosi, a fighter, has brushed aside the criticism.

Perhaps Democrats thought things would be easier because of Trump’s rocky start. His presidency has produced an outpouring of anger among Democrats, but will that be enough to bring about a change in the party’s fortunes?

Republican Karen Handel won the seat of former congressman Tom Price in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District on June 20, defeating Democrat Jon Ossoff.

History says a president with approval ratings as low as Trump’s usually sustain substantial midterm losses. That could be the case in 2018, particularly if the Republicans end up passing a health-care bill that, right now, is far more unpopular than Obamacare. But Trump has beaten the odds many times in his short political career. What beyond denunciations of the Republicans as heartless will the Democrats have to say to voters?


Though united in vehement opposition to the president, Democrats do not speak with one voice. Fault lines and fissures exist between the ascendant progressive wing at the grass roots and those Democrats who remain more business-friendly. While these differences are not as deep as those seen in Trump’s Republican Party, that hasn’t yet generated a compelling or fresh message to take to voters who aren’t already sold on the party.

[Lessons from this year’s special congressional elections]

Hillary Clinton, whose rhetoric often sounded more poll-tested than authentic, never found that compelling message during her 2016 campaign. She preferred to run a campaign by demonizing Trump and, as a result, drowned out her economic platform. This was a strategic gamble for which she paid a high price.

The absence of a convincing economic message did not start with Clinton. Former president Barack Obama struggled with the same during his 2012 reelection. He wanted to claim credit for a steady but slow recovery while acknowledging forthrightly that many Americans were not benefitting from the growth. It was a muddle at best, but he was saved by the fact that Mitt Romney couldn’t speak to those stressed voters either. In 2016, however, Trump did.

Clinton’s loss forced Democrats to confront their deficiencies among white working-class voters and the vast areas between the coasts that flipped in Trump’s direction. Their defection from the Democratic Party began well before Trump, but until 2016, Democrats thought they could overcome that problem by tapping other voters. Trump showed the limits of that strategy.

The Georgia loss put a focus on a different type of voter, the well-educated suburbanites, particularly those who don’t live in deep-blue states. While losing ground among working-class whites, Democrats have been gaining support among white voters with college degrees. In the fall, Clinton advisers believed she would do well enough with those college graduates to overcome projected erosion among those without college educations. She fell short of expectations, however, allowing Trump to prevail in the pivotal Midwest battlegrounds.

The Georgia district had the highest percentage of college graduates of any in the nation. Ossoff tried to win over those suburban voters with a moderate message on economic issues, but it wasn’t powerful or persuasive enough to overcome the appeal of the Republican brand in an election in which the GOP made Pelosi-style Democrats a focus. Loyalty to party was strong enough to allow Karen Handel to prevail.


The long-running debate over the Democrats’ message probably will intensify as the party looks to 2018 and especially to 2020. It is a debate that the party needs. Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, writing in the American Prospect, sees a problem that goes beyond white working-class voters to those within the Democratic base who also were left behind by the post-2008 economic gains. He argues that the party’s problem is with working-class voters of all types, not just whites.

Greenberg has long been critical of the tepidness of the party’s economic message and puts some of the blame on Obama. He believes the former president’s economic message in 2012 and 2016 focused on progress in the recovery largely to the exclusion of the widespread pain that still existed. “That mix of heralding ‘progress’ while bailing out those responsible for the crisis and the real crash in incomes for working Americans was a fatal brew for Democrats,” he argues.

For progressives, the answer to this problem is clear: a boldly liberal message that attacks big corporations and Wall Street and calls for a significant increase in government’s role in reducing income and wealth inequality. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has been aggressive in promoting exactly that, as he did during the 2016 campaign, with calls for a big investment in infrastructure and free college tuition at public colleges and universities. He has said he intends to introduce legislation he calls “Medicare for All.”

That kind of message probably will spark more internal debate, particularly among Democrats from swing districts or swing states. It points to one of the biggest challenges Democrats face as they move beyond being the anti-Trump party. That is the question of whether they are prepared to make a robust and appealing case in behalf of government in the face of continuing skepticism among many of the voters they are trying to win over. Trump might not succeed in draining the swamp, but he has tapped into sentiments about Washington that Democrats ignore at their peril.

Nor can Democrats ignore voters’ concerns about immigration. The Democrats’ message on immigration and immigrant rights (and some other cultural issues) plays well in many blue states, but it draws a much more mixed reception in those parts of the country where Trump turned the election in his direction.

In this divided era, it’s easy for either party to look at the other and conclude the opposition is in worse shape. That’s the trap for Democrats right now as they watch Trump struggle in office. But Democrats are in the minority in the House, Senate, governorships and state legislatures. Clinton may have won the popular vote, but that proved about as satisfying as coming close while losing last week in Georgia. It’s no substitute for the real thing. If continued frustration with losing doesn’t prompt rethinking about the message, what will?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.a22859353a55

Not only has the DNC not changed for the better,
but they're in debt.

BROKE: New FEC Report Shows DNC Finished June $3.3 Million in Debt

Joshua Caplan Jul 20th, 2017

Under the leadership of former Obama official Tom Perez, a new FEC report reveals the DNC finished the month of June $3.3 million in debt.

They’re broke. Just like their policies.

BROKE: New FEC Report Shows DNC Finished June $3.3 Million in Debt

Shouldn't have spent fortunes trying to win all those safe GOP seats, silly sods.

Should learn to pick their battles.

^^ No wonder you are such a mong reading shit sites like the gateway pundit.

Originally Posted by bsnub

^^ No wonder you are such a mong reading shit sites like the gateway pundit.

So where's it wrong then Snubby?

http://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/333/2017...9067010333.pdf

^ That is where the link he posted is from. The article is shit as the DNC is anything but broke. It is just right wing trash.

Originally Posted by Cold Pizza

They’re broke.

while the DNC does have $3.3 million in debt (not surprising in an off year and after the recent spate of special elections) it does have $7.5 million on hand.

DNC adds to debt after falling behind RNC in June fundraising | TheHill

so, not broke.


and anyone who thinks that the DNC isn't going to have huge fundraising intakes going into 2018 (and especially 2020) is either woefully uninformed or delusional.

Originally Posted by raycarey

and anyone who thinks that the DNC isn't going to have huge fundraising intakes going into 2018

They probably ought to get on that. And find some decent candidates while they're at it.

Originally Posted by fred flintstone

Originally Posted by raycarey

and anyone who thinks that the DNC isn't going to have huge fundraising intakes going into 2018

They probably ought to get on that. And find some decent candidates while they're at it.

And some acceptable policies.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Originally Posted by fred flintstone

Originally Posted by raycarey

and anyone who thinks that the DNC isn't going to have huge fundraising intakes going into 2018

They probably ought to get on that. And find some decent candidates while they're at it.

And some acceptable policies.

And the Democrats got crushed in the nation-wide state legislature elections.

A historical beating.

This is about....policy.

But the DNC has no clue.

Originally Posted by Cold Pizza

This is about....policy.

You ever hear of Gerrymandering you simple minded buffoon? Maybe you should read this thread;

https://teakdoor.com/speakers-corner/...-decision.html

Although unlikely with your diminished IQ you may learn something.

Originally Posted by bsnub

Originally Posted by Cold Pizza

This is about....policy.

You ever hear of Gerrymandering you simple minded buffoon? Maybe you should read this thread;

State legislative districts was what I was refering to.

By name calling you're still bottom-tier.