CBS reflects on its complicity in Clinton's loss

Politics & Elections
261

I know you didn’t vote for the person that bernie sanders asked you to vote for. Is that not a fact? How is that a false allegation? The only way it would be false is if your statement that you didn’t vote for Clinton was false, and I don’t think it was, but if it was, it would not have been the media or the DNC lying to me.

Now, my question to which you did not answer, is why did you trust bernie to be your president, but not trust his endorsement?

To be fair, I have not seen any "bernie or bust"er answer that question, so maybe it’s not fair to put you on the spot, but I still don’t get it.

So, please tell me, what allegations and facts do I know about you that are untrue?

We are going to be listening to the people who vote for the party.

By your refusal to vote for the party, I am sorry, but you just aren’t a relevant voice.

The Democratic party expended tremendous political capital in trying to push for social issues that you wanted. I was for that. These were social issues that I agreed with. I saw that we had enough political will behind them to get them done, so I was all for it. This cost the democrats quite a bit of the middle, many of the moderates, many of the white disenfranchised voters that showed up and voted for trump. This would have been fine if you had shown up to vote to support your party and those social changes you asked for. You didn’t.

You have assured us that the only way to win elections in the future is to listen to those to the right. We cannot afford to continue to cater to your wants and desires, when you don’t show up to vote. You need to pay your dues, and come out and prove that you can be a dependable voter, before any candidate will court your vote again. That’s just the political reality that you have foisted upon yourself.

The democrats will be picking up seats in the future by moderating their politics, not by moving them farther to the left.

262

FTR I got far more vitriolic abuse from Sanders supporters than I got from Trump supporters, and I wasn’t even that strong a Clinton supporter. And still am getting it.

Anyway, I remain unconvinced that the Democrats would have won if only they’d been a bit nicer. This is the same argument that says it’s Obama’s fault that Republicans wouldn’t work with him (despite the blatant stonewalling from Day 1), that he was “racist” for mentioning racism (that was already endemic), and that he was “divisive” (because they hated him). But maybe if he’d just tried that little bit harder, they’d have come around…

263

Totally agree that “we” better start listening to Shayna and those like her. To the extent that we identify and learn to recognize all the counterfactuals and poor reasoning we have to neutralize if we’re ever going to get our actual policies understood.

In all of her ranting in this thread, this ex political consultant and capital “P” Progressive hasn’t talked about any of the policies the “oligarchic” HRC wing of the Democratic Party (aka: most of the Democratic Party and its supporters) actually proposed and wished to enact. This is emblematic of a deeper problem the Democratic Party does indeed have: we’re distracted by the politics and relegate the policies to the background. We’re supposed to be the policy wonks, but we’re headed into the post-policy framework the GOP has inhabited since Bush 43.

Does anyone actually read or listen to the wailing and gnashing of teeth about party elites and oligarchs and think “Yes! This person really understands middle American needs and beliefs”?

264

The Democrat collective only approves of talk from the Democrat collective. It’s the only way they can convince themselves that they actually won the 2016 general election. :rolleyes: Non-members of the Democrat collective are to be ignored or ridiculed. SOP. That’s why they were so surprised/shocked by the actual election results. Reality does not seem to be their primary language. :smiley:

Personally, I won’t mind if the Democrat collective never actually starts to listen to the views of the loyal opposition. I like them just the way they are.

265

A gem passed along to me:

Unfortunately for the DNC and Hillary the State of Denial carries zero electoral votes :slight_smile:

Even though it appears to be the second or third largest state of the Union these days.

266

We had to decide whether to cater to our own far left, or to pivot to the middle, and address the needs and wants of those in the more mainstream. As we, as a whole, tended to agree with the social changes that the far left was calling for, we went with that, rather than the safe stance, the one that would have given us more of the middle.

We chose poorly. All we can do now is learn from our mistake, and start courting voters who are willing to vote for us based on how our ideas will improve their lives.

I am not saying that we should entirely shut out the far left, but we need to relegate its priorities to the back burner until we have rebuilt enough coalition that their ideas are again politically possible.

267

You’re just plain wrong. They’re listening to the people who didn’t vote for the party so they can try to recover them next time.

Sanders named to Senate leadership post

"Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is joining the ranks of Senate Democratic leadership next year.

"Sanders was named chair of outreach during a closed-door Senate Democrat caucus meeting Wednesday morning.

“In the role, Sanders will be in charge of reaching out to blue-collar voters who flocked to President-elect Donald Trump this year.”

Those would be the same blue-collar workers he beat her ass with in the primaries in states where it mattered.

The Bernie faction has won and the Clinton faction is dead.

P.S. Supporting a candidate doesn’t require lockstep obedience to them. But nice try to shame me for not being a lemming.

268

You literally haven’t paid attention.

The problem was Hillary never talked about what she wanted to enact, she talked about what a disgusting pig Donald Trump is and how important it was to keep him out of the White House.

But a majority think she’s disgusting too. Forty-six percent of eligible voters chose neither candidate, while the majority who did vote chose Not Hillary (when you add all of the Third Party vote totals to Trump’s votes).

I saw hundreds of Hillary ads and not a single, solitary one was about her, they were of Donald Trump saying vile things, followed by her arrogant voice reminding us, “Our children are listening” Yes! Repeatedly! Because she kept airing them over and over and over and over.

And when she *did *get around to talking about policy, it was to try to shove the failed Obamacare down people’s throats, insist on “pragmatism” while the country was clamoring for deep changes, and promise only half measures compared to her competition.

See my post above for what Party leaders are doing about her shitty outreach.

So go ahead and ignore those of us trying to fix your brokenass party. You’ll just keep right on losing.

269

From my position of self-interest, that’s bad news.

That is… I think he’ll be very effective in that role to the detriment of the GOP’s work.

270

What did you think Trump’s repeated, repeated, repeated mantra about ‘draining the swamp’ was about - irrigation?

Dude, you sound somewhere between wounded and dazed; maybe like you’d feel in a literal car wreck. Fwiw, there are several threads with posters talking about their sense of loss and sadness, etc.

271

We knew what it was about. The difference is, is that we didn’t believe him.

So far, we were right not to.

I’m sorry, whose vote is he courting? I did not see where it said he was going to reach out to the far left democrats who abandoned the party, he is reaching out towards the middle, toward the people who voted for trump, and away from you and yours.

Even bernie doesn’t care what you have to say anymore. He has learned from the lesson, and pivoted right toward the center too. Why do you think he asked you to vote for Clinton? Why do you think he will listen to you now?

I’m with him. I think this is a good move. He might be able to convince some of you on the far left to come back in a bit, to support the only party that gives you a voice, but he is mostly going to be reaching across the isle to deal with the people who have been ignored politically while we dealt with the far left’s social issues. That’s where the people are that can win us elections in the future.

272

Wait, what???
They nominated HRC, the ultimate “safe”, mainstream, institutional choice, a DLC centrist neoliberal.

They adopted pretty straightforward liberal proposals like minimum wage hikes, family leave, and watered down versions of debt free college and tighter background checks for firearm purchases.

Yet they had the Bernie Or Busters loudly interrupting the convention over their insatisfaction. Heck, even interrupting Bernie himself!

I have to constantly remind myself how many Americans have a really strange notion of just what is “far left”.

Though it is true they failed to make an effort to address the Rustbelt WWC under the unexplainable assumption that those voters had nowhere to go.

OTOH…

…this does not help.

It is yet to be seen if in effect anything resembling the “Bernie Faction” does become the new norm. The generational succession that should have happened with an Obama clearly on top now has to happen with nobody on top, and it’s going to be a mess.

Though it is true that the way the Clinton “machine” stood pat and hunkered down for 8 years, while Democrat power in the states and Congress was being smashed, has finally ended in their own trouncing.

And Bernie would have been hammered with “but you’re on record as being a REAL socialist!!” for the whole season. It would have cost him.

273

I am not talking about the nomination, I am talking about the last 8 years. SSM became a thing. I am happy for that, but it cost the democrats capital. Trans rights were being pushed, that cost capital. We were looking at ways of decreasing the wage gap between men and women, that cost capital. Minimum wage was being pushed, that costs capital. The ACA ate up quite a bit of capital, just getting that poor bedraggled thing past congress, fixing it would have cost even more.

These, and other issues that were pushed, were things that the democrats said that they wanted, that they would support. Our congressional leaders and president worked together to make the best compromises in our name that they could, with the idea that the people in the party would continue to support them.

In the 2010 midterms, where were all the far lefties that came out for Obama? Letting us down in that election cost us dearly. We lost statehouses and governorships and the house of representatives. Sure, most of 'em showed up again in 2012, but abandoned us again in 2014. (And obviously in 2016.)

I think that those of us of a more moderate bent went out on a limb for social change that was asked of us. We did this thinking they had our back. We were wrong. We shouldn’t make that mistake again.

You know what republicans do? They get out and vote reliably. We need some of that on our side too.

274

LOLOLOLOL

Really, you should hear yourself.

Bernie already has us. He’s reaching out to middle America with his same Democratic Socialism platform he ran on. And Democratic leadership is letting him do this because they saw that it worked with rust belt constituents where Clinton’s Triangulation didn’t!

Think, man, think!

275

Passion isn’t the same thing as intelligent discourse. Churches are full of people who are passionate that evolution is a lie.

By embracing and legitimizing RW propaganda against Clinton, the Bernie or Busters put Trump in the White House. Doubling down isn’t a laudable thing.

276

Very well said; I admire both your patience over many posts, and the concision of your reply to a position that is accomplishing nothing helpful.

That poster’s arguments here might have some credibility if they listed actual specific, detailed policy stances that the poster believes the Democratic candidate should have espoused. Instead all we are getting is a rehash of right-wing attacks on Hillary Clinton, rage against Hillary Clinton’s effrontery in daring to run for President, gloating about the victory of Trump, and the poster’s claim that she is Cassandra. The grandiosity of the claims does nothing to persuade; quite the contrary.

A well-informed Sanders supporter could actually provide an effective service if he or she would give the gloating and bitterness a rest and talk about the policies.

277

That has been my entire fucking point about the Democratic Party and the HRC campaign in all the Elections threads in which I’ve participated post election. But of course I’m the one who doesn’t pay attention.

You haven’t been talking about what the Democrats wanted to enact either. Start doing that, consultant.

(Emphasis added.)
I think the bolded portion there, while perhaps it seems pragmatic is just flat wrong.

The far left priorities are, largely and broadly, the priorities of Democratic voters. The particular methodologies to achieve many of those priorities cause some policy disagreements, but we should not shy away from the priorities and principles. Coalition building cannot happen if we tear down or push out half or more of the people who are already with us!

Sherred is right that the Bernie “faction” is one we need -and indeed, they are us- especially in terms of policy. We just don’t need their fixation on processes that aren’t actually broken, and we don’t need their dangerously foolish rejection of existing power structures.

278

Wow, Bricker, I didn’t think you were a racist until just now. If you propose a policy which is understood to be racist in effect, the fact that you’re using another argument to rationalize it does not “insulate” you from accusations of racism.

Also, racism* is *an ideology. Further, ideologies are not unobjectionable things.

279

“Understood” by whom?

Merely voting for Republicans has been “understood” to be racist, according to other commentators in other threads here.

Yes, that’s true.

280

I’m gonna walk this back. On reflection, I don’t think I said what I wanted to say accurately, and I don’t think I interpreted the post I was responding to correctly. Sorry, k9bfriender.

Many far left priorities don’t really match with the priorities of most Americans and even most Dems; you are absolutely correct about that. In my zeal about matching ultimate goals (which I still think align very closely across the spectrum in the party), I muddled the word meanings.

I think we agree more than disagree; I’m just leery of post election calls to change our policy stances to placate what we think the voters want, because I think our stances are not clearly understood due to very effective framing on the other side of the aisle, and very poor selling from our side.