I regretted that post immediately. My problem with dalej42 is not the suggestion that primaries are better than caucuses, but that dalej42 is so angry at Bernie and the left, and wants to keep the Clinton/Schumer wing in charge. The Clintonites have turned the Democratic Party into a professional opposition party, a would-be permanent minority. I’m serious about this. Party policy is to surrender entire state legislators to the GOP, including my previously purple state.
We need more Bernies and Keiths and Tulsis, and less of this fake “center-left” approach which somehow has been in reality, “Actually we’re determined to lose.”
I want something like an American ΣΥΡΙΖΑ, actually.
If enough of the old base are done with Clintonism like the Greek left-voter ended up done with ΠΑΣΟΚ, then it’s high time to stop pretending that Clintonism is electorally successful.
I’m not kidding about the Democrats intentionally losing in my state. At this point I fear they became a fake party, an Orwellian false resistance, at least in Missouri.
Pragmatically, a new left movement might be nominally in the Democratic Party. But organizationally, Brand New Congress and the Justice Democrats seem at least as likely to work at winning legislative elections as the DNC has been. I invite Mr Perez to prove me wrong, but I expect nothing much from him.
Bill Clinton won two terms and Gore/Hillary won the popular vote but got screwed by the electoral college. What contributed to their screwing? The Nader/Sanders left purity ponies! The Democratic Party needs fewer Ellisons and Gabbards and certainly doesn’t need hijackers like Sanders. Bernie Sanders campaigned against the party during the primary and only reluctantly conceded. He allowed that bullshit during the convention. If I never see Mr. Finger Waggle again, it’ll be too soon.
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I would add to this that it’s very difficult to convince “serious” candidates to run in races that they have very little chance of winning. So the type of candidates that you can recruit to these races are typically lightweights with thin resumes, who are hoping lightning strikes but mostly looking to use the exposure to increase their name recognition for their own purposes. This itself reinforces the unwinnability of these races (meaning it transforms a race that a hypothetical heavyweight candidate might lose 60%-40% into a laugher that a lightweight loses 75%-25%).
Good grief. I’m talking about state legislatures, and you’re still focused on the Presidential races. Maybe the Clinton Dems aren’t actually trying to lose. Maybe y’all just don’t know what game you’re playing.
I’m tired of Clinton apologists telling Bernie supporters we are the reason she lost. No it’s because a populist was going to win the election regardless. I loved Obama as a person. As a president some of his policies made me want to scream. I voted for change and as usual the only reason I know what the Democratic Party accomplished was because I pay attention. The average voter only saw wages stagnate or get worse, saw college tuition Sky rocket, yet their children would not gain a living wage with out it, we saw our houses drop in value, while retirement costs kept us working past retirement age. If you payed any attention to the feeling of the country, Washington insiders were generally not liked.
Yet you think Clinton lost because of Sanders? Most Sanders voters either voted for Hillary, or they were never going to vote for her in the first place. While I realize anecdotes are not data, everyone I know who voted for Bernie did so because they were tired of what they saw as Wall Street politics. Once the race became Clinton and Trump, they chose Trump because he was the outsider.
It was only after the election that the electorate woke up to who it was they really elected. Up until that point a lot of voters only knew what they saw in sound bites and from what they heard from their peers. I know republicans who hated Trump but reluctantly voted for him because he wasn’t Hillary, I knew independents who voted for Trump because he wasn’t Hillary, but every Democratic voter I knew held their nose and voted for her.
John Congrats again. While I recognize that the mother load is Texas, I am very excited about Massachusetts. I know it is not yet done, but it is looking good. I also look forward to my appearance on Telemundo tomorrow where I can trumpet her strong support among Latinos and put a fork once and for all in the false narrative about Bernie and Latinos. Congrats tom
So you are engaged in political fantasizing and wishful thinking that something magical will happen and the hard Left fringe that you identify with and prefer somehow will become attractive to a majority conservative or centerist leaning electorate.
Just like the strategy of the current Labour party then.
Bon chance…
It is like a French liberale fantasizing in the nearest term the France will become more open to the liberalism if only a more pure and better expression like the American libertarians came along.
Your own anecdotes only support the charge, don’t they?
The majority of “the electorate” did not do so. The ones who were not asleep. Unlike Trump voters, who included a distressing number of Bernie voters who thought Clinton was not pure enough of a populist.
The ones who *had *to “wake up” have no excuse, because it is indeed their own damn fault and it’s time to own it.
Even the ones you yourself described, in this very post? “… everyone I know who voted for Bernie did so because they were tired of what they saw as Wall Street politics. Once the race became Clinton and Trump, they chose Trump”.
Your post is extremely contradictory. You claim that people chose Sanders over Clinton because “of what they saw as Wall Street politics” and seem to approve of this, yet later claim “It was only after the election the electorate woke up… until that point a lot of voters only knew what they saw in sound bites and from what they heard from their peers.”
Perhaps you didn’t mean to do so, but what you seem to be saying is that people who went against Clinton didn’t know much about her or pay much attention but went against her due to vague feelings they had about her.
In short, by your own logic this doesn’t seem to a case of people disliking Clinton because she was the candidate of Wall Street politics or because they believed the “scandals” but they believed she was the candidate of Wall Street and believed the scandals because they hated her.
So what? Seriously, so what? Sanders wasn’t a Democrat, he was a lifelong independent who wanted to use the DNC’s cash and connections for his own ego-trip of a campaign. Why is it surprising that people who had spent their careers working for the Democratic party would view him with suspicion and disdain? Why should they spend resources on him, when he had never used his resources for the party? Sure, he caucused with them in the Senate, but he was never one of them, and never worked for the good of the party.
I said every democratic voter I knew voter for her. This is still true. The others were independents or republicans, who supported Bernie but were not going to vote for Clinton. If you read the article in the Washington Post about Trump voters you will be told the same thing. People do not trust Hillary. Whether that is her fault is immaterial at this point. It has been subliminally drilled into voters heads that she is untrustworthy.
Is this about party dues? Great, wonderful, keep putting the big fundraisers in the leadership roles, like you’ve been doing, and keep losing elections the way you’ve been doing. Republican Lite is not going to cut it with voters.
It is a funny thing about the human organizations - the political party or the group, the demonstration of the not free-riding is considered important.
this political analysis of yours it explains poorly the Obama reelections, the Clinton…
but the political fantasy of the fringe political tendency that if only the central candidate moved in their direction, there would be the better performance.
I think you’re getting hung up on SYRIZA’s “radical left” label. Let me back up a bit.
I think that the “corporate Democrats” or “Clinton Democrats” have lost the faith of the people somewhat in the way the Papandreou family lost the faith of the Greek people, if not to the same degree.
I want an American SYRIZA, in the sense that I want a different faction and organization to take over the left from the Clinton Democrats. It’s not that it’s going to swing far to the left in practice, any more than SYRIZA has governed very far to the left in practice. It would substantially draw on the same base of voters, and appeal to the same concerns. It just would have different people in charge, ideally less compromised by corporate interests.