Not really, no. Hillary is already pretty progressive herself, and her views are shared by a majority of the Democratic party, and as we’ll see in November, a majority of the country. It would make little sense for her to “negotiate” into positions that would make her less electable. You’re dramatically over-imagining the number of far left progressives as a share of the general electorate and the number that will refuse to vote for Hillary. Polling puts it at 13% of Sander’s voters (who are not even 50% of primary voters), and a large portion of that 13% will prove that they were just mad their guy lost the primary and after four months of seeing the Trump v Clinton campaign will end up going and voting for Clinton.
The Vice President has no role in “checking the President”, never has, and never well. You’re talking about fantasy now.
Nah, it’s not actually. That 300 represents a big lead, not a small one. And there’s no evidence that centrist Dems are a dying breed. In fact there is good evidence they represent a majority of the country. You’re dramatically overstating the number of people that support the positions farthest to the left, and while yes Bernie does have a lot of young supporters there is no reason to expect that in 20 years America will have an electorate that looks like Sweden’s. You guys forget that the primaries have low participation generally. And in a low turnout environment really passionate extremists can seem disproportionately representative of the electorate.
Okay–I’ve not been saying in every election. In fact I voted Republican in most elections in the past 30 years. So I feel pretty qualified to say the GOP is off the rails today, they were not off the rails when I started voting Republican. The GOP has been taken over by reactionaries that fear the ways society has changed in the past 30 years (instead of trying to find ways to remain relevant and to keep a right of center political ideology relevant–consider how many such parties are in power in Europe it should disabuse anyone of the notion there is some inexorable move to far-leftism.)
The Democrats are going fine as a party. By winning support of non-whites that, just three Presidential elections ago were still contested (Hispanics and Asians) they’re largely set up to be fine long term. The far left progressivism that is largely represented by young wealthy white college kids isn’t the base, the base are increasingly non-whites. The Republicans literally cannot survive as a party if they do not change. The Democrats face no such threat.
The Democrats challenge will be in 5-10 years when the GOP is done exploding and adopts more youth and person-of-color friendly social policies and starts making economic arguments that have proven to be almost always popular with middle class people when other concerns aren’t present (like issues of social justice.) The Republican party’s challenge will be getting to the point where it can make that argument in a cohesive way, the power of the revanchists is so strong it may simply not happen, dooming the party to a generation in the wilderness.
These are the PRIMARIES. By your definition, the base is split every time there are two strong candidates running for the party ticket (2008, for instance).
You are of course correct. The stakes in Gore v Bush were not high at all and nothing would have been different if Gore had been president and not Bush.
Leave alone the recession and the wars … there was no difference at all in having had OConnor replaced with Alito as opposed to being replaced with a less conservative jurist, no impact on future 5 to 4 rulings at all. Citizens United and Heller would have gone the same exact way. No meaningful impact.
(And Bush is a uniting moderate model of sanity compared to this crowd.)
Um, there are plenty of safe districts in swing states. Those who run against incumbents in them are termed, “Sacrificial lambs.” Conversely, there are plenty of swing districts in safe states. Though fewer, as most House districts are very safe.
I trust Pelosi would very much like to take the House. And since this could be a wave election, she very well might do so.
The Dems however will not take a 60 seat majority in the Senate though, like they had during the summer of 2009, after Franken got in after court obstructionism in July 2009 but before Kennedy passed away on August 25, 2009. So it will take a couple of elections to witness the GOP’s final collapse or resurrection.
One of the odd parts is that Rove and GW Bush understood the fundamentals pretty well. There’s a nice block of socially conservative Latinos that could be picked up provided the party can contain their bigotry. Which apparently they can’t.
My central electoral goal would be to have 2 pro-science parties, each skeptical of crackpottery with the adults in charge of both. We’ve got that with the Dems. The Republicans were like that in 1952-1979. Then voodoo economics took hold, along with the Moral Majority. Now a certain amount of nutbaggery is to be expected - this is representative government after all. Since their shellacking in 1984, the Dems in general have kept their wackier instincts in check. Arguably too much.
Josh Marshall compares electoral nonsense and hate as a form of debt. Debt isn’t a bad thing: basically all public companies are leveraged to some degree. If you have too little leverage, your shareholders leave money on the table. [1] Too much and you face institutional collapse - or a hostile takeover in the form of Trump in the GOP’s case. I say the Dems could use a little more leverage, while the GOP is headed toward Chapter 7 or 11. Can’t happen soon enough.
[1] Yada yada Modigliani–Miller - work with me. It’s a metaphor.
No question that White Millennial Progressives prefer Sanders over Clinton but they are, against Trump at least, and at least for now, in the fold.
Oh okay. Judge that poll with some skepticism as it was an online poll and … well. So let’s go with a more traditional one, WaPo-ABC:
Yes, I do believe that Sanders can do some slight harm to that with persistent negative campaigning, marginal harm only perhaps, but dang, to me this is much bigger stakes than Gore v Bush.
I get that Sanders voters identify with his ideas, but that doesn’t mean that he would necessarily do the best job. President Sanders can propose anything he wants; he still has to work with 535 other congressmen coming from Gerrymandered districts. As we’re seeing with Obama’s court nomination fight and as we’ve seen with Obama’s other proposals, the opposition doesn’t have to work with him, and the opposition will feel emboldened if they suspect the public doesn’t share his agenda.
And it really is over in terms of the delegate count. Hillary’s going to win, at least according to the rules that were laid out before the race began. The one thing Bernie could do is claim to have won more individual state contests - that is something that Hillary and the Democrats will have to reckon with, and it’s at least a somewhat valid argument to make. The counter-argument to that is, most of those states are in flyover country and not exactly a cross-section of the American electorate. That is also a somewhat valid counter. In the end, the rules are the rules and Hillary will win.
That prospect raises two questions: what will Bernie’s voters do? Will they allow Ted Cruz to win (I am beginning to doubt Donald makes it, so I’m tossing Cruz’s name out there)? Will they let a radical republican party control the entire national agenda for four years? Possibly eight? Do they want another George W Bush x 10? If so, they can throw out the baby with the bathwater and do nothing out of spite.
That being said, I think Hillary will have to make meaningful acknowledgment of Bernie’s movement. He has started a movement, and that movement is real, and it deserves a place in her administration.
I’ll add my voice to this as well. A LOT of people on the left were very recently calling George W. Bush one of the worst Presidents of all time (bottom 5 at least). So how in the world is it now an example of the center crying wolf that didn’t occur - it should be a major warning call… and it was only 16 years ago!
Also on the idea that the DNC needs to get the young millennial progressives into the fold or else they are toast… what are the young millennial progressives going to do when they don’t have African-American or Latino voters? Just continue to split the left’s votes for the sake of ‘purity’?
FWIW, before Ohio he was floating the argument of getting the superdelegates to give it to him despite a Clinton pledged delegate victory because he was winning states like Michigan (and he then had hoped) Ohio … potentially states that could be deciding ones (while Clinton’s Southern ones did not matter as they were going to be red in the Fall anyway.) That of course has flipped as Clinton has won the vast majority of the possibly in a close election deciding states: Ohio, Arizona, Virginia, Florida.
I think Clinton is hoping to be able to make that meaningful acknowledgment but he has to be part of allowing that to happen. If he continues to go strongly negative, and then takes the position that he has stated he will take, that he will only endorse her if she explicitly changes her extant stated positions and priorities to his, then she is painted into a corner that does not allow for her to make that rapprochement without looking weak and without appearing to pander. At that point her only, or minimally least poor, option is to go Sister Soulja moment and stand up to that blackmail.
Gee, if only I cleared it with you first, I wouldn’t have wasted my time with a registration drive and canvassing in those districts… You know nothing, Jon Snow.
Seriously, I know the common wisdom, but this isn’t a common wisdom election year, and it’s one of the things Sanders is working to change. I’m not saying we could win all of them, but to have 24% of seats unopposed nationally is unacceptable and a wasted potential. There are Democrats in these districts left high and dry, and dissatisfied Indies and GOP voters we could have tapped into. And I did… for the primary. For some reason, the DNC curtailed registration drives for the primary…
Actually, we got more good things done during the Clinton years. The Republican Congress, which had shown a lot of gumption, suddenly because subservient to Karl Rove and K Street’s desires to keep Republicans in power rather than actually get anything useful done while they held it. Farm subsidies got increased, spending went up overall, the deficit exploded. And the one time Bush did try to push a genuinely conservative priority(SS privatization) he botched it and backed off.
Something people forget is Sanders numbers look impressive in the context of a primary–where very few people actually vote versus in a general election. All the Sanders voters in the district could be registered and driven to the polls on election day in some red districts in Texas or Ohio or Florida that reelect Republicans with 60-70% of the vote and they’ll win reelection with maybe 60% of the vote instead of 65%. The real red districts don’t really have enough progressives in them to flip them, no matter how energized they get. If they had more progressives in them they’d be swing districts in the first place, which they aren’t.
That, by the way, doesn’t mean I disagree with you–I think the Democrats need to run candidates in every district. It helps to energize the Democrats who are in that district. That doesn’t mean you’ll be able to flip the district next time around, or maybe ever, but districts only ever change from red to purple to blue (or vice versa) if you work at it, and not taking the field means you aren’t working at it at all. Even for the red districts that are likely to never go blue, getting Democrats energized in that district may help with general Democratic turnout which can help for elections for Statewide office (which are also very important) or for the Presidential election.
My guess is that there will be some backroom deal making and that she modifies some of her positions, such as articulating stronger and more specific opposition to TPP in its current form, banning / replacement of lead in all American cities, and so forth. But Hillary doesn’t need to take being pushed around and she’s not going to be.
I see that perhaps as many of 1/3 of Bernie voters might not support Hillary, but I’m just wondering if that’s something to be terribly alarmed of at the moment. I think a lot of people will have a chance to see Cruz’s (or Donald’s) position on the issues and Republican obstructionism and hopefully reconsider their ideas. If people on the left think George W Bush was the worst presidents in history, they’ve seen nothing yet. What the republicans promise is the ruin of the American nation, a political calamity that would probably take a full generation to right. And if they can sit idly and not stop that coming just out of spite, to hell with them.
As bad as Cruz is, he won’t be as bad as Bush was. Bush’s problem wasn’t his ideology, it was competence and disinterest. Cruz doesn’t lack for brains or interest in policymaking. Cruz’s problems are lack of experience and generally being a dick. But we’ve been there before and it’s not the worst thing that can happen.
Now Trump, that could be bad. Really, bad. As for Sanders voters though, if Gary Johnson continues to poll in the double digits then there’s a place for the more civil libertarian oriented of Sanders’ young supporters.
Actually, conservatives do see the system as rigged every time they lose an election. When McCain lost in 2008 and Romney lost in 2012 Rush Limbaugh wasted no time in saying the Republicans lost because they didn’t run a “true conservative,” and after the electorate got a taste of Obama, they’d surely turn to the one true faith.
As for the larger question, it’s not borne out by history. When Barry Goldwater got blown out in 1964 the conservative movement was blocked out by the national Republicans for 16 years. When George McGovern got blown out in 1972, it ended the dominance of the progressive wing of the Democratic party. In 1992 conservatives decided George H.W. Bush wasn’t conservative enough for them, and basically sat on their hands during the election. For that little hissy fit they were rewarded with eight years of Bill Clinton.
The best way to destroy a movement is to be such a purist you hand the election to the other side.
I disagree. I think Ted Cruz could be that bad and then some.
You’re right in zeroing in on Bush’s true problem: He was, contrary to what critics charge, not a bad guy; he just leaned too heavily on people who had an agenda and wanted to see how their thought experiments would work in real life - people like Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld. Bush had another problem in that he was regarded as a somewhat illegitimate president initially, so he needed a cause in order to legitimize himself.
I would agree that Ted Cruz is more intellectually capable, but Ted Cruz would under most scenarios still enter the WH with the other Bush problem: the question of true legitimacy. A lot of the work of the president is carried out by or influenced by advisers. It is already apparent that Ted Cruz is surrounding himself with right wing extremists who will be in his ear. He also risks painting himself into a corner with some of his rhetoric and positions.