We don’t need to go into might-have-beens. Romney lost in 2012, and the GOP’s takeaway was apparently that Romney wasn’t far right enough.
Yes, and it was a mistake. They nominated the worst possible candidate that they could have nominated. Trump virtually tied possibly the worst candidate the Dems could have nominated.
Now the Dems seem to want to repeat the mistake. They want to go hard left and nominate a socialist and possibly/likely lose to the worst GOP candidate imaginable.
That’s the point.
The GOP would disagree. Trump is wildly popular in that circle and mentioned along side Lincoln and Reagan as best presidents ever.
…of course.
Isn’t it your position that the party should **not **include them in their platform?
I think you should stop taking the votes of marginalised people for granted. If they aren’t included in the platform then why should they get their vote?
Do y’all not understand that you can’t know if a candidate supports something unless they explicitly come out and supports something? Y’all understand that “front and center” is a subjective, not an objective measure, and that IMHO none of the candidates have put transgender issues “front and center” in this campaign? Y’all understand that transgender people have every right to expect representation from their politicians as much as the so called “middle America?”
I may be nuts: but I thought that everyone running in the primaries are running with policies that **they **believe are attracting broad support without alienating too many of the voters that they need.
Perhaps the problem is that you have this habit of regurgitating GOP talking points. They aren’t running on a platform of “eliminating private insurance.” They are running on a platform of Universal Healthcare. Perhaps stop running with the spin.
If a politician genuinely believes that prisoners should be allowed to vote then it is incumbent on them to let the public know so that people can decide whether or not to vote for them. To “keep that in their pocket”: especially if the intent would be to implement it after election, is simply not ethical.
Good lord, this stuff **is **basic. The Democrats are having a primary, and politicians are campaigning to get the nomination for the President of the United States. If you don’t like Bernie or Warren then don’t vote for them in the primary. If you think their policies are wrong then campaign against them.
How on earth do you expect this to work in any other way? You want the Democrats to become functionally indistinguishable from the GOP? You want to abandon transgender people, people with no healthcare, people trapped in the industrial prison complex all on the basis of maybe (and, more importantly, maybe not) getting a few more votes from a specific demographic?
On the one hand, you might be right. On the other hand, they won, and in the process conclusively proved that the moderate candidate won’t necessarily beat the immoderate one. If in repeating that mistake Dems win, I’m sure they’ll lick their wounds in full realization of their error.
I think it is less about “left vs. right” and more about “do the voters want change or not?”
If they do, the “Change” candidate will almost always win. If not, the Change candidate will almost certainly lose.
Again, Carville was an advisor who lost what should have been a slam dunk election.
You can keep telling us how close Clinton was to winning. The real point is it should not have been close to begin with when Donald Trump is your opponent.
It’s like a pro NFL team playing against some high school students and the pro team lost and you are telling us, “Well, it was close!”
It should never have been “close” in the first place.
Who’s advocating for the abandonment of anyone? I’m talking about winning elections, specifically presidential. If we don’t win in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, then those marginalized populations are effectively abandoned. Fighting over transgender policy, prisoner suffrage, college debt relief may not be the path to winning those states, even if it’s the right thing to do or even has a majority of support across the population.
The message that needs to be sent is someone else getting some aid does not hurt you (general “you”) but helps you. That voting for republicans are not in your best interests at all. Trans people getting some consideration, college kids getting their tuition paid and so on does not harm you. It helps if even only indirectly.
If that does not sway you consider the alternative. It’s a train wreck.
We need to win without the ones who vote against their interests. If you looked inside their minds you might see that their intererests are actually being taken care of quite well, right now, and it looks to them as if we are just naively getting in the way.
…you are.
I am too.
If those marginalised people are abandoned by Dem politicians then they aren’t effectively abandoned: they are absolutely abandoned by both parties. Marginalised people should have no expectation that Dems will stand up for them if the Dems explicitly (for the purposes of a vote) abandon them at this time in history.
I’ve just bolded the key word. May. It may not be the path to winning those states. But I think we need to stop pretending that anyone knows what the key to winning those states are because that will lead to focus-tested blandness. And that blandness may well have just as big an influence on the next election in those states as “fighting over transgender policy.”
You want us to gamble that you are right. I don’t think you are. I think that no matter who the candidate is: whether its someone I support like Warren or someone that I actively loath like Buttigieg, that the key to victory isn’t going to be something as superficial as a few lines in a debate about transgender rights and a policy pledge on a platform. The real fight is against the so-called mainstream media who are regressing to a point that is worse than what we saw in 2016, rampant voter suppression, the GOP propaganda machine, interference from Russia, insecure voting machines, and the rise of white supremacy. I think all of these are going to have infinitely more influence on what happens in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida than openly standing with transgender people.
No, I’m not.
You have told us your family will not vote dem because other people are getting things and they do not want to pay for it.
It’s not that helping someone else doesn’t hurt me. It is “Why are you helping other people and not me?”
Everyone has a mental bitch list. These are the things that piss me off about life in today’s world. Again, it might not be correct. They may have a bitch about the local city government that the president has nothing to do with. But they want to hear that the candidate shares or at least understands their own personal bitch list.
When the candidate continually harps on forgiving student loan debt for the neighbor’s kid who took a trip to Europe last summer, that pisses off the voter. Not because the neighbor kid gets help, but because the voter does not.
WRT transgender rights, the voter might even be fully in support of that. It’s great that the candidate supports full transgender rights, but the voter is not transgender so fuck all that, what’s in it for numero uno?
…of course you are. You want presidential candidates to not “fight over transgender policy.” You don’t want presidential candidates to put transgender issues “front and centre.” Transgender people want to know which of the candidates will fight for them: but how do transgender individuals know which politician to support if politicians don’t campaign on support for protections of transgender individuals?
If candidates do not commit to fight over this administration’s damaging transgender policies have they not just abandoned transgender people? And if you advocate not committing to fight this administration’s damaging transgender policies are you not advocating abandoning transgender people for the sake of (maybe) getting a vote?
If the politicians aren’t going to fight for them: who do you think should do that job instead?
Campaigning on something is different than something being in your party platform.
Don’t worry, HappyLendervedder. Your point is basic and obvious to any concerned with actual working politics rather than activism.
I think that large portions of the American electorate are simply more parochial than people realize, and making transgender issues or any issues that challenge the traditional notions of what men and women are, a part of campaign platform, puts Democrats at risk of further alienating not only the white working class but also the black and Hispanic working class, who are, in the main, parochial and patriarchal.
And to respond to an earlier poster, that is why issues polls should be taken with a grain of salt. Sure we could take a poll asking if the voter supports full transgender rights. Say it comes back 70% support, 30% do not.
You cannot then say, well, I have strong majority support on that issue so I should use it. The voter was simply answering a poll question, but really doesn’t care about it that much. Really, not many people do. Unless you are transgender, on the far left, or on the far right, the issue is simply not a make or break one.
The candidate can take whatever position on the issue because you the voter are looking out for numero uno. Give them full rights or lock them up in mental hospitals, fine by me, but where are my issues being addressed?
…how much campaigning has there been on transgender issues by any of the candidates? As I said: there have been the occasional statement during the debates, a few statements on twitter, some things said during a rally. If its in the platform then why shouldn’t it come up while campaigning? If asked a question during a debate, then what is the correct way for the candidate to respond?
Without activism the world would be a much darker world than we have now.
You give a politician’s answer:
“I recognize the different and heartfelts beliefs that people have in our diverse society and I respect them. In my view, all people should be treated with dignity and respect, including those in the LGBTQ community. However, the issue has been put out there by Republicans to take focus off of the criminal and corrupt President that they support, their failure to address the growing deficit crisis, their packing the Court with far right conservative Justices…”