Both parties have serious problems to solve. The Democrats’ problems are actually a lot easier. Turnout can be solved by appealing more to people who actually vote. The Republicans have to rebuild root and branch at this point. All the Democrats have to do is be more authentic. They are the better governing party(at the national level at least), they have the better policy wonks, and they have the better politicians. What they don’t have is politicians who can sit down with the average white working class dude and talk turkey over a beer. It doesn’t help that Democrats on TV sneer at that whole concept. But authenticity matters. As Seth Meyers said, Donald Trump may be a liar, but he’s authentic. Donald Trump is Donald Trump and he’s not hiding who he is. Most Republicans aren’t. They just seem a lot more comfortable in their skins than Democrats.
Yes, where the non-slave states agreed that a slave could be counted as half a man. 
Good point.
I am reminded of how the Republicans were against anything of Obama’s, and now some Democratic Senator or Representative insisted on opposing anything of the Republicans. Apparently several Democrats are of that opinion.
Nm
All I need to defend the Electoral College and by extension the Senate, which is actually far more antidemocratic, is to state the fact that the small states like it and not only do thehy like it, but they demanded it as a condition of entering the union. You can’t pass a change legally under our Constitution, which means first you’d have to dissolve the Constituion, then you’d have to entice the small states back into a new union. Which you can’t do with simple majoritarian rule.
I doubt anybody would consider amending the Constitution to a particular party’s benefit to be a plausible goal.
The Democrats used to be the party that supported working people, and Republicans the ones that supported the fat cats. The Dems eventually left that role and the Reps gleefully took it over. Dems need to remember not every voter is forward thinking, but they all want assurances their way of life will continue. Kicking them to the curb and promising their industries will get crushed is no way to entice them.
You can pass an amendment. 
You need 37 states to ratify for the Elecotral College. That means some small states would have to agree to lessen their own power to choose the President.
The Senate is the one thing you can’t change even by amendment.
There you go, we are thinking of our welfare rather than that of the “Several States”.
It’s very debateable whether that would enhance the overall welfare of the United States.
And if you don’t give them simple, tangible things they can vote for (“a wall”; “more money from less taxes”) the other side will paint your lack of specifics as “kicking them to the curb” and your efforts at innovation as “promising their industries will get crushed”.
My point is not to disagree, but simply to extrapolate. If a party fails to define itself as the party of good ideas, the other side will paint them as the party actively trying to undermine improvement, which translates into kicking people to the curb or crushing their livelihood. I don’t think the Dems really support such deprivation, but they are depicted that way amongst the white working class because they haven’t taken the initiative to highlight things those white working class voters can get behind.
The Dems need their own simple rhetoric; they need their own ideas; they need their own mantras, policy proposals, and chants. Granted, its hard to dumb everything down to a simple slogan or platitude, but that’s what the Democrats need right now.
That’s a common criticism of Democrats, but I don’t think it’s really all that valid. Their ideas are simple enough to explain, it’s just there’s nothing in it for the white working class but higher taxes and displacement from their jobs.
Well, that’s okay, I guess, as long as they don’t want to take away my guns.
That’s simply not true, but your depiction is an example of how the Democrats are easily painted in distorted hues when they don’t do enough to loudly label their own policy ideas.
The Democrats don’t support raising taxes on white working class voters, but the GOP has used the discussion of tax hikes for wealthier Americans to depict the Democrats as wanting to raise middle class taxes.
It’s innovation and the dropping price of natural gas that has displaced the coal industry, but the Democrats complicated and nuanced ideas about how to deal with long-term trends have been perverted into, “they don’t care about you”, because these solutions don’t speak as plainly as “drill baby drill.”
There’s lots for the white working class to support from Democrats; universal healthcare…better access to higher education…improved subsidized nutrition for their kids…
But, even at the educated and intelligent electorate level, these weathered old stereotypes about “high taxes” and a “one world government” are routinely trotted out as reasons why Democrats should be kept constrained and their ideas tempered. At the meandering level of mediocrity where most voters subsist, it results in a belief that it is downright dangerous to let a Democrat get their way.
Uh huh, and guess what. We got one, in an “electoral landslide”, as he calls it.
This is exactly what I was going to say. Yes, it’s a constitutional issue, but it is clear that the constitution is unambiguously wrong.
We are Americans. We should vote as Americans. The idea that California or New York or any other state should have any meaning at all in selection of our our national government is an outdated, stupid, tribalist, dividing concept.
Congress and president should represent the people, period. The states should be treated as nothing more than functional administrative bodies in choosing the government, and deciding and implementing national law and policy.
Getting there is going to be difficult but that’s where we will have to go.
Why have states? We do have them, and their interests sometimes conflict. Hence, Congressmen represent the interests of their states and citizens. Although they are most out to make money for themselves and the companies and people who give them campaign contributions.
I do think that Dems have left space in their overall message for Fox News and its ilk to argue that politicians on the left want to severely tax all white people, even those who are barely subsisting, to pay for programs for minorities and undocumented residents/workers. They aren’t very forceful or clear in their messages and it makes room for the hard right to start bloviating about how Joe the Plumber is going to be taxed to pay for stuff that won’t benefit him. The hard right starts bleating and there’s no Dem message countering that and pointing out what the Pubs are doing that is hurting the middle class and poor.
Hillary apparently didn’t get her message out and Obama didn’t do enough to make clear that he wasn’t trying to punish coal workers, but we need to cap emissions and the coal industry is dying out anyway. There need to be programs to retrain people who are in obsolete careers, not just coal. But that message was not given and apparently most middle class or poor Trump voters are not astute enough to figure out that Dem policies were meant to benefit them and that actually Pubs are the ones who want to impoverish them further.
I just will never understand why they don’t get that universal health care would make one less thing to worry about if you have lost your job or think you might lose it soon. Ditto for other gov’t safety nets that Pubs want to rip out by the seams.
For the same reason every other country else has these subentities. The hierarchy makes the job of governance easier, by spreading it out.
There is no reason that representing the citizens shouldn’t also represent the needs of the states. That there is a difference means the states are set up badly.
Yeah but the democrats had 233 seats after the 2006 election, the GOP had 241 after the 2010 election.
The dems lost more seats in 2010 because they had so many after 2008.
The popular vote distribution was about the same in 2006 vs 2010. 52% vs 44-45%.
Yeah but isn’t part of the problem just the fact that the GOP appeals to whites on a cultural level that the democrats just cannot?
The GOP supports a white, christian patriarchal society. To a lot of white christian men, that is an appealing narrative. The democrats do not support this as a national identity. I don’t know if democrats can just go to the white working class and talk about jobs to overcome this cultural deficit.
Shifting the white working class by just 5 points would help though, that’d mean the dems lose the WWC by 30 points instead of the nearly 40 points they lost them by in 2016.
But increasing turnout among democratic voters seems to be the most important thing.