I think his arguments are premature. Whoever gets the nomination will fall back closer to the center as they always do. And their message will be more on point because they no longer have to compete with other Dem candidates.
You’d think old man Carville would know this by now.
My larger point is that the number of people who struggle with issues the Democrats have not really been addressing is large enough to swing the election. If they could be convinced someone was actually going to help them out they might be persuaded to vote for them. But many of them are probably not even paying attention at this point.
And of course simply getting one progressive president in office is not going to be enough to enact real changes. People have to realize they have to be in it for the long haul and stay engaged.
My other larger point is that maybe the Democrats should try to take care of the more vulnerable members of the population because historically that was something that they stood for.
I wonder as the boomers die off and those on the cusp of and in early middle-age now move into that demographic how things will look. i am not sure their concerns will be the same as those that older voters have now. Will they turn out to vote in large numbers? My understanding is the oldest Millennials are now pushing forty.
Carville’s dead on. The party’s gone way too far left in some kind of weird, quixotic response to Trump’s personality cult and associated nonsense. Like he said “talking about that is not how you win a national election. It’s not how you become a majoritarian party.”
The answer to Trump isn’t to double down on the left-wing stuff and pander to the hardcore base, but rather to craft a platform that attracts a majority of people, and that platform is by necessity going to be less left than a lot of the hardcore base would like.
Mark my words, if the Democratic party doesn’t get away from this seriously progressive nonsense, they’re going to lose in November. People who are undecided are going to go with the devil they know, rather than left wing stuff they don’t.
He was just saying it’s a bad campaign plank. It’s not just some boomers it turns off. The majority of Americans don’t have a college degree.
May be, but does he appeal to working class voters more than Trump? THAT is what counts here, and that’s what Carville is saying.
Dating back to the beginning of 2019, the energy behind the movement to go through with the impeachment of Trump wasn’t in the center; it was coming from the solid left. That’s predictable, because it’s the hard left that’s most enraged by him.
It’s worth pointing out that impeachment failed. It’s also worth noting that on the day he was acquitted, he received some of his highest approval ratings in his entire term.
I’m not saying that impeachment was the wrong move, but I think the pattern of thinking that I see from the hard-charging AOC/Bernie left is similar to what HappyLendervedder described. With impeachment, the assumption among those who advocated it early and often was that if you just go through with it and use the power and resources of your office, the public will be persuaded. And that just didn’t happen.
Frankly, I see the same kind of thinking coming from supporters of Medicare-for-All. The assumption is that if we talk about it loudly enough and remind Americans how evil the insurance companies are often enough, then Americans can be persuaded to buy into a radical overhaul of the health system, and I think that’s just a dangerously baseless assumption that’s based on passion and not much else.
No he’s saying to pick and choose which principles to push and make that your clear message and not jump on every far left position that will alienate large portions of the voters.
It’s not about getting a benefit you didn’t get. It’s about having your net worth be in a 100k deficit that you will never get back because you were responsible and to also shoulder the bill for others who will never have that deficit. Because only the stupidest don’t understand that free means taxpayer funded. It’s about losing money and worth not about someone else gaining.
As a parent with a child in college I am very interested in the issue but I am also very leery of any politician offering something “free.” There are also many other moving parts to the issue that make it complicated and worthy of its own thread.
Yeah, but the majority of Americans don’t have a Mexican stealing their job either, but the message of Build That Wall still resonated with them. Certain messages resonate, even if they are not personal. (For example, not a perfect analogy by any means, YMMV, all caveats apply.)
Most probably will. Do you think Bernie will go anywhere near the middle? I don’t.
If you read the entire article you would see that he said he would support whoever got the nomination and would vote for Bernie. The fact that he has doubts if Bernie can win doesn’t mean he’s never Bernie.
It’s the fact that the Democratic party has focused their messaging (mostly economic) on every group besides the working class is why so many working class voters finally turned to Trump. Its why my dad and father-in-law and brother-in-law did. It’s the campaigning on helping the poor and helping college grads that pisses them off. That messaging makes the working class voters think the Dems aren’t gonna fight for THEM.
But it was personal. “Build that wall” spoke not specifically to people afraid of losing their jobs to Mexicans. It spoke to people both afraid for their jobs and people afraid of Mexicans. “Forgive college debt” doesn’t really reach as far.
Exactly. It’s one thing to acknowledge that most people don’t like their health care and insurance companies. It’s quite a larger leap to the bring out the pitchforks and torches. ‘WE WANT RADICAL CHANGE NOW!!!’ Whereas that office worker turns their concern to the traffic on the way home (not even considering a better public transit system) and then contemplated what changes to her/his fantasy football team to make for the next week.
And it also spoke to those, like my mom, who goes on a rant every time she hears, ‘Press one for English.’
As I cited in my previous post Trump’s own pollster felt he did back in 2016.
I suspect Trump will lose people at the fringes from that crowd to someone like Sanders and Trump cannot afford to lose many.
And sure as shit Bloomberg or Biden isn’t going to appeal to those people and I doubt Klobuchar or Warren would either.
I think he’s a little incoherent:
[ul][li]Bernie is an awful candidate. [/li][li]Definitely don’t follow Bernie.[/li][li]Definitely all the other candidates suck too, though (but especially Bernie).[/li][li]The purpose of political coalition is about power, nothing else.[/li][li]Democrats should be about never saying anything that anyone might question, and only saying things that most people want.[/li][li]Democrats are the party of African Americans.[/li][li]Enfranchising inmates and felons should be off the table.[/li][/ul]
I mean, I understand some of where he’s coming from, but as a fellow freaked-out citizen, it looks like the “power at all costs” philosophy breads exactly the sort of environment that houses the corrupt, corruptible, greedy, and dishonest who are running government at the moment.
Also, you know what else threatens the success of a “majoritarian” party? People vying for leadership positions who don’t represent the majority and the already entrenched powers. Jews, atheists, women, people of color, gays, etc etc.
He doesn’t say it in this article, but his argument directly aligns with a “white Christian straight male only please” policy.
He’s right that there’s a huge issue of representation in general; the Senate is an extremely powerful body that, at the moment, wields the will of the minority with a mighty fist. For Democracy in America to survive, we have to address this.
But I don’t see him proposing a solution. And I don’t think that this “power at all costs” Democratic party is going to pull it off if/when they make it into power.
Yeah, Bernie ain’t changing. He’s the exception. I didn’t think about that until after I posted.
I agree wholeheartedly with this (and Carville). However, I want to point out that after the 2008 Election that saw Obama/Biden elected, when the Republicans had McCain/Palin, then in 2012 they had Romney/Ryan, the Republican propaganda machine (fueled by the Tea Party - remember them?) was churning out the idea that they needed candidates that are MORE conservative, not moderates, on the ticket next time around. They got what they wanted in 2016 and the rest is history. I suspect some on the Democrats side now are thinking the same thing: we need to be MORE extreme in order to win. Somehow, I doubt it will work this time.
I don’t think that’s it, but rather that the party’s platform should have its largest plank being support for white Christian people. Not out of racism, but out of basic recognition that white Christians are the largest single demographic in the country by a huge margin.
But does the Democratic party do that? No, they go on about the poor, and about racism, and about pretty much everything that means something to everyone BUT white Christian people, who make up something like half the country.
Eonwe, I think his message was “getting power is what matters” not “power at all costs”. Big difference. He went out of his way to say he’s not debating the issues, he is debating there use in a Presidential campaign against Trump.
There are a lot of them but not as many as you seem to think: