# Here's what the Democrats need to do to win **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 9, 2010, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heres-what-the-democrats-need-to-do-to-win/560061 "2010-11-09T17:39:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2010, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heres-what-the-democrats-need-to-do-to-win/560061/41 "2010-11-10T18:48:14Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAcQuH5jfJ8&feature=player\_embedded](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAcQuH5jfJ8&feature=player_embedded) > > Incoming Republcian Senator-elect on a government shutdown: Yet you have Eric Cantor already laying the case that if there will be a government shutdown, it’s Obama’s fault because he and the Republicans are open to compromise, but only if Obama tells the Senate Dems to do what the House says. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2010, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heres-what-the-democrats-need-to-do-to-win/560061/42 "2010-11-10T19:48:36Z")
> [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](#): > > Yet you have Eric Cantor already laying the case that if there will be a government shutdown, it’s Obama’s fault because he and the Republicans are open to compromise, but only if Obama tells the Senate Dems to do what the House says. It helps that the GOP has a new base of Tea Partiers, many of whom, presumably, would say that a temporary or even permanent shutdown of the federal government is not such a bad thing. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2010, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heres-what-the-democrats-need-to-do-to-win/560061/43 "2010-11-10T22:51:44Z")
Well the conservatives are chanting the Free Trade like a mantra but the fact is free trade is just an economic tool. If it is benefiting any class almost exclusively and harming others … as can very reasonably argued is currently the case in the US, it is perfectly all right for the injured classes to reject Free Trade on the grounds that it is not benefiting. The middle class does NOT owe the upper classes the right to hog the whole economy, which is what conservatives are essentially arguing for when they chant “Free Trade!” ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2010, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heres-what-the-democrats-need-to-do-to-win/560061/44 "2010-11-11T00:02:04Z")
What the Dems need to do to win is to get out the vote like it is a Presidential election year with an exciting Presidential candidate. This requires two things: an exciting Presidential candidate, which sometimes just does not exist, and getting the voters to the polls. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2010, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heres-what-the-democrats-need-to-do-to-win/560061/45 "2010-11-11T02:57:28Z")
Trade’s great and all, but the current rules and regulations didn’t fall out of the sky. “Free trade” for what we do now is propaganda. Entire industries are supported with subsidies and other government support designed to protect them from competition. Just as a minor example, what if we relaxed barriers for the immigration of professionals? The AMA would start foaming at the mouth when a flood of international doctors just as qualified as them but who only want to be paid half as much start to set up shop. Won’t happen in a million years, though. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2010, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heres-what-the-democrats-need-to-do-to-win/560061/46 "2010-11-11T03:27:22Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > Trade’s great and all, but the current rules and regulations didn’t fall out of the sky. “Free trade” for what we do now is propaganda. Entire industries are supported with subsidies and other government support designed to protect them from competition. Just as a minor example, what if we relaxed barriers for the immigration of professionals? The AMA would start foaming at the mouth when a flood of international doctors just as qualified as them but who only want to be paid half as much start to set up shop. Won’t happen in a million years, though. Exactly. Or sugar subsidies. Only regular middle class folk are unprotected, because so many of them are dumbasses and are happily voting away their children’s future cause abortion and teh gay are so fricking EVIL. Not to mention big gubbament. Big corporate though are Mother Theresa on steroids! ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2010, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heres-what-the-democrats-need-to-do-to-win/560061/47 "2010-11-11T03:46:39Z")
If the democrats downplay social liberalism, won’t it be an awful lot like the GOP downplaying religious conservatism? The Tea Party could end up being a serious pain in the neck to the GOP, and was arguably enabled by the neocons downplaying the religious conservative base. Social liberals are a major portion of the democrat base, and you can bet your last dime that the goodwill of gays (for example) toward the democrats is not infinite. What happens when the social liberals get tired of waiting for the eventual renaissance, and decide to try to elect candidates that actually represent them? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2010, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heres-what-the-democrats-need-to-do-to-win/560061/48 "2010-11-11T03:54:24Z")
> [@Mosier](#): > > If the democrats downplay social liberalism, won’t it be an awful lot like the GOP downplaying religious conservatism? The Tea Party could end up being a serious pain in the neck to the GOP, and was arguably enabled by the neocons downplaying the religious conservative base. Social liberals are a major portion of the democrat base, and you can bet your last dime that the goodwill of gays (for example) toward the democrats is not infinite. What happens when the social liberals get tired of waiting for the eventual renaissance, and decide to try to elect candidates that actually represent them? They’ll go third-party for an election cycle, get frustrated and come back. It’s happened before. ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2010, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heres-what-the-democrats-need-to-do-to-win/560061/49 "2010-11-11T03:58:02Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > In other words, the base of the Democratic party is people looking for government handouts, and the smart people with the clipboards who promise to give them the goodies, so long as they’ll surrender power to them. Your worldview is one hundred percent backwards. [Red states](http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2004/09/red_states_feed.html) benefit much more from federal spending per dollar they contribute in taxes than blue states. Who’s looking for government handouts, again? ---
**Author:** ![Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e480ec/32.png) [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2010, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heres-what-the-democrats-need-to-do-to-win/560061/50 "2010-11-11T03:59:51Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > It helps that the GOP has a new base of Tea Partiers, many of whom, presumably, would say that a temporary or even permanent shutdown of the federal government is not such a bad thing. It hurts that it effects actual human beings. ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2010, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heres-what-the-democrats-need-to-do-to-win/560061/51 "2010-11-11T04:02:58Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > They’ll go third-party for an election cycle, get frustrated and come back. It’s happened before. It doesn’t always happen that way. Sometimes the disillusioned voters manage to get people like Sharron Angle and whats-her-face the witchcraft dabbler on the ballots. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2010, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heres-what-the-democrats-need-to-do-to-win/560061/52 "2010-11-11T15:20:25Z")
[Relevant article from Michael Lind:](http://www.salon.com/news/politics/2010_elections/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2010/11/02/center_left_parties_lind) > [@](#): > > Tuesday, Nov 2, 2010 08:01 ET > > **Why center-left parties are collapsing** > > By Michael Lind > > The setbacks Democrats are poised to suffer in the midterm election have to be viewed in a trans-Atlantic context. The backlash against Barack Obama and the contemporary Democratic Party is part of a global wave of popular disapproval of social democratic parties that abandoned their traditional working-class constituents in order to woo bankers and professionals. > > \ > > The truth is that voters have not turned against the old-fashioned social democracy of the mid-20th century. In Europe as in the U.S., universal social insurance programs for the middle class, as opposed to means-tested welfare programs for the poor, remain popular among voters on the right as well as the left. Voters in Europe are not voting against public pensions and universal healthcare. Instead, they are tossing out a more recent generation of social democrats who went too far in their embrace of markets. > > The greatest assault on traditional social democracy in the last generation has come from “Third Way” leaders of center-left parties like Tony Blair, and their continental European counterparts. Like the Clinton Democrats, these “modernizing” social democrats embraced free markets with a convert’s zeal, celebrating globalization and deregulating finance, while seeking to privatize or dismantle parts of the older welfare state. The politicians of the Third Way were far more libertarian than the voters in their own parties and their actions helped to make possible the global economic crisis. > > Having given up traditional social democratic economics for a watered-down version of libertarian conservatism, the Third Way social democrats in Europe, like the Clinton and Obama Democrats in the U.S., sought to replace the traditional bread-and-butter concerns of working-class voters with idealistic campaigns about multiculturalism, climate change and obesity that appealed to more affluent, college-educated voters. > > The immigration issue is particularly damaging to the center-left, because it illustrates the growing divide between the populist working class and the professional-class elites who control the machinery of center-left parties. The conflicts associated with Muslim immigration in Europe are different from those associated with Latino immigration in the U.S., but on both sides of the Atlantic parties of the center-left have treated any concern about the effects of high immigration on wages, the welfare state, or national cultural community as deplorable racism. While the mainstream conservative parties of Europe officially denounce far-right nativist parties like the Sweden Democrats, the Dutch Freedom Party and the French National Front, they have moved to the right to co-opt the issue. In France, Nicolas Sarkozy was catapulted to the presidency after he called Muslim rioters “scum” and supervised a crackdown in his previous post as interior minister. Angela Merkel, the conservative chancellor of Germany, recently declared that multiculturalism in Germany had “utterly failed,” and Horst Seehofer, leader of a conservative Bavarian party allied with the ruling Christian Democrats, declared: “Multikulti is dead.” > > \ > > In general the parallels between the U.S. and Europe are striking. In the U.S., as in Europe, the right is divided between a pro-business right promoting policies of austerity and a populist, nativist right energized by opposition to immigration and multiculturalism, particularly where Muslims are involved. In the U.S., as in Europe, the upper-middle-class activists and intellectuals of the center-left devote far less energy to traditional social democratic issues like social insurance and the minimum wage than to non-economic causes like renewable energy, mass transit, the new urbanism, gay marriage, identity politics and promotion of amnesty for illegal immigrants. On both continents, conservatism is becoming more downscale while progressives are increasingly upmarket. ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2010, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heres-what-the-democrats-need-to-do-to-win/560061/53 "2010-11-12T01:14:50Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > If the Democrats take this approach, they can build a semipermanent winning coalition. If there was ever a time in the last eighty years when economic populism by an incoming president was a no-brainer, it was January 2009. But Obama did exactly the opposite and continued bank bailouts, didn’t prosecute anybody, basically became a pr man for the banks. The reason? The Democratic party is effectively as bought and paid for by the financial sector as the GOP is. If you want economic populism, you’re going to have to wait for a political party to come along that has a chance of winning national elections and isn’t a wholly-owned subsidiary of big business. I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2010, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heres-what-the-democrats-need-to-do-to-win/560061/54 "2010-11-12T04:24:21Z")
Love it. We open our borders to trade with nations that protect their industries and jobs. Then we call it free trade. China can sell poisoned food and dry wall in America. They can sell toys that give lead poisoning to kids. There are profits to be made. That is all that matters. Dems need to kill the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. They should do it immediately. Then the Repubs will filibuster to keep the tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. It will show 2 things, who they work for and how much they really care about deficits. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2010, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heres-what-the-democrats-need-to-do-to-win/560061/55 "2010-11-12T20:31:15Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Growing industry and preventing outsourcing. > > Outsourcing is just a form of importation. The more you get rid of the former, the more of the latter you will get. Next step: protective tariffs t stem the tide of imports. Cost of living goes up. The economy worsens. Bye-bye Democrats. It doesn’t seem to me that the jobs being outsourced are being replaced with jobs that are as good or better. When an American company replaces an American worker who makes $40,000 a year with a Pakistani or Indian who makes $15,000 to $20,000 a year and pockets the difference, there is obviously no benefit to American workers. You can say the extra cash will be invested which will create more jobs for Americans, but this would only be true if the money were invested in America. In any case, I have yet to see any hard evidence that outsourcing eventually helps to create good jobs for Americans. Given that many American companies are perfectly willing to hire illegal aliens to displace American workers, and [to hire specialists to help them avoid hiring American workers](http://www.youtube.com/programmersguild), they obviously care nothing about the greater good of the American people. [This Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade_debate)would seem to indicate that free trade is a good deal more debatable than you think. The consensus about free trade appears to be largely among American economists, with foreign economists having a lot more doubts. It’s all very well to talk as though economic forces are as impersonal and inexorable as electromagnetism or gravity, but the simple fact is that you can never entirely separate economics from politics on any level, local, national or international. Someone will always try to rig the game in his favor. To my ears the cry for free trade sounds like an echo of social Darwinism. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heres-what-the-democrats-need-to-do-to-win/560061.md?page=2)