That forks into two conversations, though. A better candidate can squeak out what we expected of Hillary without much changing, but if Democrats want to use future demographic changes to win big (in Congress and the states) the same old same old isn't going to do that.
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Sunday, 18 December 2016 20:26 (seven years ago) link
the steady hammer of "Clinton is a crook Clinton is a crook Clinton is a crook" gained some purchase there
fwiw there is a compilation of Norm MacDonald trashing the Clintons on Weekend Update on youtube. half the jokes are about how much she lies, and this was in 1996.
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Sunday, 18 December 2016 20:27 (seven years ago) link
Democrats relying on "demographics" need to start telling me what their plan is for winning gerrymandered congressional districts and state legislatures.
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Sunday, 18 December 2016 20:33 (seven years ago) link
And how they're going to improve turnout among poor black and hispanic voters in an environment where it's only going to get harder for them to vote.
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Sunday, 18 December 2016 20:34 (seven years ago) link
the gerrymandering isn't going to last another decade
― k3vin k., Sunday, 18 December 2016 20:34 (seven years ago) link
Do the democrats have a good plan for 2020, and how do we know the Republicans don't have some even more devious shit up their sleeves?
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Sunday, 18 December 2016 20:45 (seven years ago) link
1.No, and 2. a lot of people are assuming there won't be elections
― a Warren Beatty film about Earth (El Tomboto), Sunday, 18 December 2016 20:52 (seven years ago) link
By what mechanism are the 20 states with the populations of small metro areas going to consent to ending the only thing making them politically relevant?
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Sunday, 18 December 2016 20:52 (seven years ago) link
u mean the electoral college or the senate?
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Sunday, 18 December 2016 20:59 (seven years ago) link
Why would democrats not try to fight gerrymandering/the electoral college *and* sharpen their message to combat right wing propaganda?
― Treeship, Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:05 (seven years ago) link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
― a Warren Beatty film about Earth (El Tomboto), Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:09 (seven years ago) link
I'm not sure this proves what you think this proves, unless you meant to highlight that she was fighting a 20-year wall of bullshit.
― Andrew Farrell, Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:11 (seven years ago) link
Where are you going to get the 85 additional electoral votes you still need for the national popular vote thing to mean anything at all, and how are you going to get any states with red state legislatures to pass it?
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:14 (seven years ago) link
it proves she was a risky candidate. its not like Trump just came up with this strategy and EMAILS are what did them in. she has 20 years of bad press and instead of countering it they relied on the media hyping up Trump's worst qualities.
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:14 (seven years ago) link
I don't know, man alive. Still waiting on k3vin and Adam to turn in their proposals on how to bring the Real American voters back into the fold, then none of the electoral college reform ideas or counter-gerrymandering stuff is even necessary
― a Warren Beatty film about Earth (El Tomboto), Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:18 (seven years ago) link
Have you guys figured out why Trump won yet
― Οὖτις, Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:19 (seven years ago) link
we didn't listen to Iago Galdston
― a Warren Beatty film about Earth (El Tomboto), Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:20 (seven years ago) link
i don't have any "ideas", and neither does anyone itt. i'm pretty pessimistic about the future and i just find the straw-grasping ("trump will be impeached, just watch", "the electoral college will be gone in 10 years", etc) laughable. finding humor in our shared doom is merely an ego defense
― k3vin k., Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:21 (seven years ago) link
all the same people who were supremely confident in everything that went wrong a month and a half ago are now also optimistic about the future because of these far-fetched escape hatches, one weird tricks, etc. we're fucked.
― k3vin k., Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:22 (seven years ago) link
you and larry appleton should go on a date
― a Warren Beatty film about Earth (El Tomboto), Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:24 (seven years ago) link
You're kind of being a dick in this thread el tomboto
― Treeship, Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:25 (seven years ago) link
America will be radically transformed & possibly decimated under Pres. Trump but the electoral college and gerrymandering will endure for centuries
― Long post, yet important. (crüt), Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:28 (seven years ago) link
i don't have any "ideas", and neither does anyone itt. i'm pretty pessimistic about the future and i just find the straw-grasping ("trump will be impeached, just watch", "the electoral college will be gone in 10 years", etc) laughable.
otm
Both or either. "Abolishing the EC" would have to be tied pretty heavily into Senate reform.
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:30 (seven years ago) link
Neither of which will happen until global thermonuclear war breaks into a dozen rump states ruled by warlords.
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:31 (seven years ago) link
― k3vin k., Sunday, December 18, 2016 4:21 PM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
yup
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:37 (seven years ago) link
yeah I need to gtfo this thread
― a Warren Beatty film about Earth (El Tomboto), Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:38 (seven years ago) link
all the same people who were supremely confident in everything that went wrong a month and a half ago are now also optimistic about the future because of these far-fetched escape hatches, one weird tricks, etc.
straws would be one thing as we are early in the coping process; what i could do without, and certainly not just itt, is the accompanying contemptuous sneering at any suggestion that america's antifascist party failed to win the support of america's now very perilously enfranchised antifascist majority for any reasons that were at all within their control
― difficult listening hour, Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:39 (seven years ago) link
or that could have been brought within their control by any technique besides racism
+ my own far-fetched straw is that people who think like that can be dislodged from their power soon and the party can be reorganized from the bottom. that's all
― difficult listening hour, Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:42 (seven years ago) link
failed to win the support of
stick "sufficient" in here before someone explains the electoral college to me; would that someone had explained it to the dems.
― difficult listening hour, Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:47 (seven years ago) link
I think it's good to have passionate disagreements about this stuff, not sure it can be separated from the process of "uniting" to defeat our common enemy
― a but (brimstead), Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:48 (seven years ago) link
i def think what people call "relitigating the past" is important to the future!
― difficult listening hour, Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:50 (seven years ago) link
(not that you can't do it too much or in circles)
― difficult listening hour, Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:51 (seven years ago) link
I think we can keep having these arguments even as we are "building the party from the ground up" so to speak. It's more important that we rebuild than that it gets rebuilt on a single model.
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:52 (seven years ago) link
Like I'm not worried about people thinking "Let's just tweak the Clinton coalition" vs "Let's use the Sanders model." I'm worried about people thinking we can just keep doing top-down messaging with no local parties, and I'm worried about people who say "we need to purge all of the x from the party."
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Sunday, 18 December 2016 21:56 (seven years ago) link
Hey just a super-quick suggestion if you're worried about getting back some marginal votes, stop referring to large swaths of the country as "the rust belt." It's bullshit condescension, and since the scale of manufacturing whose departure heralded the nickname is not coming back any time ever, defining a large-ish region of the country by what it lacks is maybe not helpful?
― and this section is called boner (Phil D.), Sunday, 18 December 2016 22:01 (seven years ago) link
is anyone in the rust belt actually offended by "rust belt"? Serious question.
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Sunday, 18 December 2016 22:04 (seven years ago) link
yes
― and this section is called boner (Phil D.), Sunday, 18 December 2016 22:05 (seven years ago) link
pretty sure the dems already got the votes of everyone in america offended by stuff like that
― iatee, Sunday, 18 December 2016 22:07 (seven years ago) link
Impeachment is good because Trump should be impeached, by even the most charitable reading of the law. They shouldn't do it to be successful, they should do it to be on the right side of history.. What is there to lose?
― sleeve, Sunday, 18 December 2016 22:15 (seven years ago) link
Reporting from St. Louis, seriously fkn stop using basically any term that lumps half the country together, our probs are wildly different from Wisconsin whose probs are very different from Ohio's. Deindustrialization is a thing but so are a hundred little issues that basically make it stupid as fuck to talk about these places as the same and that thinking is exactly the top down nonsense that has weakened the local parties. No one is offended by you using them, per se, but they make you think about these places in an incredibly dumb way.
― ENERGY FOOD (en i see kay), Sunday, 18 December 2016 22:40 (seven years ago) link
― Οὖτις, Sunday, December 18, 2016 4:19 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
they believed their own hype so they didn't work as hard. people are making fun of Trump for doing thank you rallies in states Clinton didn't even go to.
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Sunday, 18 December 2016 22:54 (seven years ago) link
the only reason we're even talking about the midwest right now is because trump swung a lot of midwest voters and thus the election by talking about manufacturing jobs / using these same lazy stereotypes, so it seems like a particularly weird time to be suggesting that we don't do that.
― iatee, Sunday, 18 December 2016 23:04 (seven years ago) link
iatee, the electoral college is going to be gone in a decade. forget about the midwest
― k3vin k., Sunday, 18 December 2016 23:04 (seven years ago) link
I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or sincere. Why in the world would it be gone?
― Al Moon Faced Poon (Moodles), Sunday, 18 December 2016 23:07 (seven years ago) link
guys, Florida is going to be gone in a decade.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 18 December 2016 23:07 (seven years ago) link
stainer's assault will bring it under control
― k3vin k., Sunday, 18 December 2016 23:17 (seven years ago) link
steiner, sigh
― k3vin k., Sunday, 18 December 2016 23:20 (seven years ago) link
If we can step back from the "trees" to the "forest" of the whole direction of the party debate, I think it's important to look at not just how do democrats win, but what is the purpose of the democratic party, and what is its vision. I think the GOP has a pretty clear vision: be the party of captial and the wealthy. Of course that alone doesn't give you much of an electoral base, which is where social and religious conservatism come in -- appeal to the non-economic motivations of people with personalities that tend to prefer order, structure, authority. And this, of course, suits the GOP vision very well -- they generally believe in a hierarchical and ordered society ruled by the wealthy.
I don't find the contemporary democratic vision as coherent, and I think that's reflected in this debate. It doesn't feel so much like a party of labor as counterbalancing force against capital, as a party of certain niches of the wealthy, buttressed by vulnerable groups who vote in part out of fear of the other option being worse. It's the party of the creative professional and the tech entrepreneur (sometimes), and of tolerance, but I feel like it has drifted away from a coherent vision of society and the role of government. The party is schizophrenic on public schools, and on unions (once a stronghold of its own power!). It pushes all kinds of confusing public-private solutions and nibble-around-the-edges programs. Parts of the party feel like GOP lite, or GOP policy in NPR language.
It's not that I specifically want the Democratic party to go after "white working class men" it's that I want it to return to coherently and clearly representing the working class of all races, because I want it to be the party of labor and of the 99%, because that's what's right and because that's the logical role for it to play -- a counterweight to the party of capital, not a smartened-up, urban version of the same thing with more diversity.
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Monday, 19 December 2016 03:57 (seven years ago) link
if you have ears and any kind of bullshit detector, you were always able to tell that Hillary Clinton p much didn't believe a fucking word she ever said in public.
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Monday, 19 December 2016 04:01 (seven years ago) link