I Hate Being a Democrat

Politics & Elections
1

Democrats didn’t lose this election cycle because of the President, they lost in spite of him. Over two elections the President received over 100 million votes. While low, his approval rating is still 3-4x higher than that of either house in Congress. You have D next to your name, the President does to, and if I was a politician I would as well. That means if you put us in a room and we discussed politics I would expect my views and your views to line up almost exactly the same.

Sure we would have some difference, we aren’t robots, but the majority of how I view the priorities of government would line up with your views. That is why I would vote for you in an election. You believe the same things I do and I trust you to take those beliefs and make not just my life, but the countries life, better.

The President has never pretended to be anything but a Democrat. He believes in universal health care, higher taxes on the rich, gay marriage, choice, etc…etc… And he has stepped up and put forward policies that support those views. You as a Democrat have stood with him and voted to support that agenda. You are a Democrat, he is a Democratic President. It’s on record you voted to support his policies.

So when you stand in front of me and ask for my vote don’t pretend to be anything other than what you are, a Democrat. Anything else you say or do outside of that only makes you look and feel insincere. Why should I take my time to support you when you can’t even stand up and support the man I voted into office twice?

Say what you will about the Tea Party, but when they say, “I will vote to repeal ObamaCare”, that is exactly what they do. No waffling, no running away from it. I don’t like them and I don’t agree with them but they did exactly what they said they would do to their voters, and their voters supported them.

You want to win a mid-term? Wondering why Democratic voter turn out is low? Try supporting and voicing the support for the things I care about and the President who supports them. Stand up, say, “Yes, I voted for ACA. It needed to be done, it was the right thing to do, I did it”. You might still lose but at least I would come out and vote for you. Disingenuous does not endear support. Be genuine, support what you believe in and believe in what you support.
I don’t like every policy that Obama has put into place and I do wish he had done things differently but when he stood up for re-election in 2012 he stood for what he did and didn’t pretend it didn’t happen. Americans voted him back into office. What part of that lesson did every other Democratic politician not understand??

2

Isn’t this the same sentiment pretty much all the democratic-affiliated posters on this board have expressed? Not that I’m disagreeing, I’m just not sure what this thread is bringing to the table that the last 40 post-mortems haven’t.

Personally, while I agree that the democratic candidates should have demonstrated a titch more backbone, the killer for me, was the absolutely appalling turnout among young voters. Apparently 18-30 year olds are perfectly willing to sit on the couch and cheer when Jon Stewart tears into the latest republican idiocy but when it comes time for them to actually, you know, vote, suddenly they’re struck with ennui that the French can only dream of. There’s a sense of cynicism and fatality along with a tendency to check out the moment things get hard that I just don’t get.

3

I was going to argue against your assertion, because while turnout, as a proportion of voters, among 18-29 year olds fell 6%, turnout among 30-44 year olds fell 5%.

However, there’s no arguing that the youth’s 13% turnout in 2014 is just piss poor and shameful.

4

The premise of the OP is a mistake.

The Democrats are perceived as having run away from Obama because he happens to be particularly unpopular at this precise time in the specific states in which many high profile races were taking place in this cycle. So these particular candidates ran away from identification with Obama in this particular race, and this got a lot of headlines.

In other elections and other circumstances, the Democrats would be standing proud and the Republicans would be declaring themselves to be independent-minded.

There’s no difference between the parties in this regard.

5

I agree that both parties do things like this, but I think the more important point is that this unpopularity of Obama is at least partially due to the insufficient advocacy and defense of many of Obama’s policies, particularly the ACA, by Democratic officials across the country.

I believe that had, since the ACA was implemented, every Democratic official consistently mentioned the increasingly good statistical news about the ACA, Obama’s popularity would be higher, the ACA’s popularity would be higher, and the Democrats would have done better in the recent election.

6

The problem that I saw was one of having cake and eating it too where they tried to be centrist enough to appeal to their core voting base and also entice some independents and the result was that they looked wishy-washy and always looking for the spin on whatever they said.

7

I’m aware that a lot of people believe this. It’s difficult to debate hypotheticals, so I’m not going to try, but I don’t agree with this.

I also disagree with the assertion that Democrats did not consistently mention the increasingly good news etc. Not only did they do this, but the Obama administration regulations forced employers and insurance companies to aid in this effort. Democrats initially believed that as time went by the ACA would become increasingly popular (I myself shared this belief, I should add) and they had no reason to back away from it at that time. But as it happens, it did not become more popular - the opposite, in fact - due mostly to the disastrous rollout of healthcare.gov, and to the cancellation of people’s policies, and as this happened, politicians in swing states or conservative ones began increasingly edging away from it. That’s the nature of politics.

8

Right. I think we’re wrong to underestimate the power of a candidate saying “yes I voted for and support President Obama. He has been a great president and accomplished many important things.” Such advocacy does change people’s perceptions. On the other hand, saying “he’s so unpopular, let’s distance ourselves” convinces no one to vote your way.

The “unpopularity” of Obama is a mile wide and an inch deep. IMO

9

I think they did after the first few batches of numbers (after staying mostly quiet during the website fiasco), but gave up much too quickly (for the most part) when the polling didn’t change as much or as quickly as hoped for.

It seems to me that this “edging away from it” started well before this past summer, when IIRC we saw lots of good ACA news.

I think the Democrats have practiced poor politics in the last year or two – I think most of the ACA news has been good, but they have, for the most part, failed to defend it.

10

One problem of perception here - both with regards to the ACA and in general - is that many people have a hard time appreciating that other people have genuine differences of opinion with them. So they’re apt to attribute opposition to evil or ignorance.

In the case of ACA, iiandyiiii is convinced that more people woiuld appreciate the “good news” from the ACA if they only had more publicity about it, but that’s inevitably colored by his own view that the ACA is great and all this news has been good, and the negative aspects are minor and so on. To the extent that other people believe that the negative aspects are big deals and the news is not all that good, then publicity would be counterproductive, but that’s not how people like iiandyiiii look at things. The ACA is great and anyone who thinks otherwise is probably misinformed, and the rest follows.

And the same goes for the broader issue. Liberals/Democrats and their ideals are great and would be widely supported if only they stood up and proudly proclaimed these values. The notion that there could be other people who genuinely disagree with these values is not a factor in this type of thinking.

11

True, but so did George W. Bush.

True; I’ve heard liberals argue repeatedly that “When we lose, it’s because we weren’t liberal enough.”
Conservatives and liberals both hold this view: “What we want is what the nation needs.”

12

“Hey I’m a Democrat and I voted for Obamacare!!!”

=

Election lost.

“Hey I’m a Democrat but I don’t like Obama and let’s not talk about how I voted for Obamacare!!”

=

You might win re-election.

Stop bitching that people don’t like Obamacare. your party committed political suicide to pass that piece of trash. Live with it and please stop bitching about it on this board.

13

Who were the successful candidates who used option 2?

14

The Republicans are typically more united than Democrats. Possibly because the Democratic Party is more diverse, but conservatives typically stick together for the same candidate more reliably than liberals.

15

And watch what happens to the Republicans if they try to take it away. Here’s a hint:

16

I’m really trying to understand what it is that people who claim to dislike/hate Obamacare are so displeased with. I’m not talking about the politicians, I’m talking about the “people”. All I ever hear is things like “Obamacare is trash…” “Obamacare is the worst thing to happen to this country…”

I never hear anyone say what specific features of Obamacare are so objectionable. Can anyone here provide a few concrete examples of objectionable features? I’m not trying to argue for or against it, I just would like to see some concrete objections.

17

I think one main objection is that the individual mandate is incredibly meddlesome.

18

Once again you mischaracterize my argument. Hint: if you want to talk about what you think I believe, only post the exact verbiage I have posted. So far, when you don’t do that, you usually mischaracterize my argument. Stuff like “people like iiandyiiii” almost always hurts your point, too.

19

Here’s a hint for you: most of what I wrote is not a characterization of your argument. It’s a characterization of a premise that logically underlies your argument, which you are free to disagree with but have no “rights” to.

The part I wrote which amounts to a characterization of your argument consists of the following: “iiandyiiii is convinced that more people woiuld appreciate the “good news” from the ACA if they only had more publicity about it”. That’s it. This is a paraphrase of what you said in post #5, where you wrote: “I believe that had, since the ACA was implemented, every Democratic official consistently mentioned the increasingly good statistical news about the ACA, Obama’s popularity would be higher, the ACA’s popularity would be higher, and the Democrats would have done better in the recent election”.

If you think there is some difference between these two statements in the context of this discussion, by all means fill me in.

20

Can you please explain what this means?