Might better split that as “white and/or Christian.” There are a significant number of racial-minority Christians who also ascribe to the notion that Christians in America face persecution and are dismayed by what they see in Hollywood/the media/etc.
(Again, whether or not Christians ***are ***actually persecuted in America is irrelevant - if they feel they are, they feel they are.)
This pathetic ‘boomer’ vs whoever, lazy issue-framing is a big winner for Trump and the republicans. Carville isn’t right about everything, but he’s bang on that this is self-destruction. Enjoy your four more years.
ETA: As with everything in American politics, it comes down to race and class. Are the emerging elites younger than the Boomers in any way, shape or form different? Fuck no. Trump won the young white vote and probably will again. Greed and self-interest win every time and can always be exploited.
Sanders absolutely champions the working class. He has for his entire career. He constantly harps about how workers are getting screwed. Why do you think it is only about helping college grads or the poor? It is possible to walk and chew gum at the same time.
Very recently: Sanders vows to renegotiate ‘disastrous’ North American trade deal
There is no mention of Sanders in the post you replied to. He was talking about the college funding issue as a campaign plank.
Which is a plank of Sanders and Warren. Not sure about the other candidates but I don’t think they are for it (or at the least not championing it). It is not a plank at the national level, I do not think.
It is worth noting that college funding is far from the only group that they hope to help and they explicitly agitate for the working class.
Then add that Carville’s rant in the OP chided all the dem candidates but particularly singled out Sanders for extra criticism on issues like this.
Seems like everything which rubs people up the wrong way during an election year is a “Big winner for <INSERT OPPOSING CANDIDATE HERE>”. I’m sure it may seem that way to you, but that don’t necessarily make it so.
Bottom line is we tried it Carville’s way in 2016. We nominated the most middle-of-the-road career politician we could find, sent her out there on a blandly centrist policy platform designed to appease as many groups as possible, and…guess what? It was a big winner for Trump and the Republicans! I’m sick of listening to people like Carville who, for all their swearing and their bluster, don’t have any fucking balls. Doing something about student debt may not be popular with everyone, but doing nothing about it is just morally unacceptable. So if a bunch of pathologically selfish boomer assholes like the guy Carville explicitly referred to want a fight about it then I say let’s give them one.
Omg, are you saying Carville doesn’t like Sanders?
No, it’s not remotely worth noting “that college funding is far from the only group that they hope to help”. Everyone is quite aware that they aren’t trying to make the Democrats into a one issue “college debt” party.
Eta: btw, Buttigieg also has free college stuff up on his campaign website.
She wasn’t really a career politician. That’s the problem, similar to Warren. Parachute a smart someone who’s been grinding around in the background of politics for a while into a safe Senate seat. Then people start to think they’re great politicians because they’re smart and hey, they got elected.
Did you even read the article? Carville said he would vote for Sanders if he was the nominee but beyond that he singled out Sanders for special criticism. Maybe he likes Sanders personally ok…I dunno, but he is not rooting for him.
Then why is Happy Lendervedder pointing out his family’s concern over helping poor people and paying for college tuition as the thing that steers them away from democrats?
Buttigieg has a different plan in mind where the wealthiest 10% pay tuition and the rest get free tuition, the other two want free tuition across the board. Certainly have that debate and work out whatever makes the most sense. Personally I am not married to one or the other idea. I just want the discussion to happen on how to fix the serious problems tuition is causing in America.
Because they really don’t like it? Or they think it takes up a disproportionate amount of the Dem platform even if they don’t think college funding is the only group that they hope to help.
Yes, well Carville’s point is that is an alienating debate to have during an actual Presidential campaign. The questions are: “do you think that debate helps get the Dems elected?” and “do you care whether it changes their election chances?”
If your feelings about the election boil down to “OK Boomer” I hope you can handle 4 more years of Trump.
I’ve spent my life with the working class. Most will run in the opposite direction if they sniff communism and to them it’s synonymous with socialism. It doesn’t matter if you put “democratic” in front of socialism. That will be a big hurdle in swing states. And that’s not to say that is Bernie’s only deficit.
Because shit like free college and poverty reduction takes up too much oxygen with Democrats, in their opinion. A good chunk of working class voters hear stuff about college and poverty (and transgender protections and reparations and getting rid of private health insurance) and they see candidates and a party that don’t give a shit about the things they actually care about.
The free college thing should really be an easy thing to work around. It’s correct not everybody goes or wants to go to college and that trade schools and apprenticeships or other form of qualifications are respectable and deserving of support too. The candidates who support free college/student loan debt cancellation do also support investing and helping the people who choose another form of qualification other than college. It’s just they spend too much time talking about free college that the other people who do other forms of getting on the career ladder are relegated to a spot in a campaign manifesto.
Sanders harps about universal health insurance. The working class don’t care because they have good health insurance at work. Minimum wage? The working class make more than that; not an issue. Student loan debt? Not an issue, most working class go to a trade school and their kids will too. Higher taxes on the rich? Whatever, as long as it isn’t higher taxes on me. Not a winning issue, but not a losing one either.
Really all of Sanders’ proposals are geared toward the poor and not the working class.
But I couldn’t agree more with Carville. He is spot on. For example, the 2016 election was basically a tie. One event happens a different way, Hillary gets a few more votes in a few states then she wins. Would the Republicans have then been right to say that the reason they lost is because they nominated Trump? That he used to be a Democrat and “we” need a “real” conservative like Pat Buchanan?
For either party to look at that election and take away that they need a radical change is ridiculous. And Carville is right about building a broad coalition. There are simply not enough hard right or hard left people out there to win an election.
Yes, you need to motivate your base, but you cannot do that while also going wackadoodle right or left because they you lose the vast swath of the middle. Most people are happy with their life and do not want radical change. Newt Gingrich failed to realize that and so does Bernie Sanders.
If you look at all successful candidates, you see that they throw the right bones to their base to get them involved but they have a personality such that they do not look scary to moderates. Think Reagan, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama. Bush I wasn’t that great with it, but he was up against Dukakis. Trump is not that great with it, but he was up against Hillary who is arguably worse, and she still almost beat him.
That is not caving on your principles. It is a simple recognition of who you will be governing. The majority is not hard right or hard left. You don’t adopt some crazy ideas to be pure. You can be pure at home typing on the internet.
I think that Trump beats anyone in this field with the possibility of Buttigieg. He is very impressive and articulate. He is not throwing firebombs.
He is the guy that scares me most, but he has a fatal flaw (politically speaking) and that is his sexuality. Trump won’t hammer him on it, but you bet the Carville-like underlings will. I think with a heterosexual Buttigieg, Trump would be in serious trouble and he would being talked about as the next Clinton or Obama. But for some reason everyone else decided to turn hard left, except for Biden, but again, see personality needed.
The thing is, these are all aspects of the same thing, the same philosophy, which is growing the middle class. Free college helps some, a better safety net helps others, supporting industry in the US that provides good blue-collar jobs helps, supporting re-training to other fields from dying industries helps others, demanding better wages…the list goes on. Medicare for all helps everyone since employer-tied healthcare restricts your job mobility.
Walking out and saying you will help steel workers and and plumbers ignore all the rest makes no sense. It is not a long term solution for the health of the country.
Telling people how they should feel about the issues that are important to *you *may be why we’ve lost the Industrial Midwest.
When I was a union organizer, I told new organizers not to foist issues or motivations upon the people you’re organizing. “Getting a strong contract” or “worker empowerment” may be the most important thing to you (the new organizer), but being able to retire to Arizona in five years or being repeatedly passed over for the day shift may be the only thing that’s important to the worker you’re talking with. Telling that worker how wrong they are for not wanting to empower workers is a bad way of moving them to action.
Likewise, telling voters who went from Obama to Trump that they’ve got it all wrong because they just don’t understand how free college and M4A will help is why we’re in the place we’re in.
I think you are living in the 1950’s in your head. It would be swell if things still worked like that for blue collar workers but they don’t. Between 1979 and 2010 blue collar jobs in the US dropped by 41%.
Coal industry jobs continue to decline (well, to be fair, they recently had a tiny bump up but the overall trend is down, down, down). Remember Trump promising to revitalize the coal industry? Clinton told coal miners she wanted to setup retraining programs? They voted for Trump in droves. He did not deliver. Instead you have loads of people in communities where coal jobs are few and far between, certainly not enough to employ most of the next generation and instead you get terrible poverty and rampant drug addiction. But hey…fuck Clinton! Go for those jobs Trump could never, ever, deliver right?
Health care? The people who have jobs have it. The rest? Eh…go rot in an alley I guess. And the people who have jobs are even more beholden to the corporation because their very health is supported by the whims of that corporation. How many stories are there of people getting seriously injured and then cut loose and lose their health care? Work for the company for 30 years, get a serious back injury…good luck, you are on your own.
That is the reality today. Doubtless many pine for the good old days of the 1950s but they are not coming back.
Literally not true. Not even close.
Clinton was in a virtual tie against the most beatable candidate in the history of the US. It should not have been remotely close. It should have been an epic beatdown but you are spinning it as losing is ok because it was close.
It is not ridiculous because voting Trump in was a message that the people are sick and tired of a do-nothing congress that regularly polls worse than hemorrhoids, Nickelback, traffic jams, cockroaches, root canals, colonoscopies and herpes. Trump was a grenade thrown into the system. The people did not want another Bush or other career politician. Certainly did not want Hillary either. So we got Trump. And your takeaway is that the people don’t want something “radical”?
Not to mention Warren/Sanders policies are not particularly radical at all. Pretty mainstream. Stuff the US once did and the country didn’t implode. Stuff dozens of other countries are doing and they are fine.
I have not looked up all the candidates but Sanders consistently beats Trump in a hypothetical matchup. Sanders did so in 2015 too. Feel free to look up the other candidates (I’d be interested but too lazy right now to bother).
Nice setup.
Let people believe that Sanders/Warren wants to take all their money and give it to a welfare queen or tell them they are wrong which will make then run away and vote Trump because don’t tell people they are wrong.
Granted, there are better and worse ways to try and convince someone they are wrong but your way is bulletproof to any persuasion and educating people on the facts. You have your feels…everyone else can go fuck themselves.
So what is your solution? Abandon policies that help others and go all in on policies that help your family?
That is why we are in the place we are in.
The hypothetical trump/Sanders polls (both from 2016 and today) miss one crucial component, the sheer volume of dirt that would have been/will be dumped on Bernie from the moment he gets the nomination. By the time election day rolls around they’ll think he’s Joe Stalin (With one foot in the grave, to boot.)
Bernie has been in politics for what…40 years? I think all the dirt there is has already been dug up and tossed at him and he’s still there. Certainly Clinton would have had at it in 2015 unless you think she is a nice person who wouldn’t do that.