This was a response I wrote to another thread that made more sense here:
The Democrats lose state legislative elections, though. All the time. Why is that?
Oh, wait, because they’re too focused on the Presidency. Republicans want to win every seat. Democrats think they can vote in a new FDR with no coattails and he’ll magically fix things.
It doesn’t matter who you put in the White House, you’ve already lost.
Show me a Presidential candidate who is cultivating progressive Democratic candidates at lower levels (something Obama has apparently never done) and I have someone to take seriously.
Bernie runs the risk of acting like Nader did in his campaigns, but HRC runs the risk of acting like Obama.
I completely agree with this. The periods when the Democratic Party was able to pass extensive socioeconomic reforms (New Deal, Great Society, even the stimulus package and the ACA) all were relatively short “windows” where you had not just a Democratic majority but a majority of relatively liberal Democrats. The problem nowadays of course is demographics with a large portion of Democratic voters packed into densely populated urban districts that provide enormous margins in their races but allow Republicans to triumph by more moderate (but still usually safe) margins in suburban, exurban, and rural areas. The solution lies therefore in attracting a substantial portion of those living in these areas (especially working- and middle-class whites) to amass a majority in Presidential, Congressional, and state-level elections.
O’Malley, though, is the last candidate for this sort of task considering he is a pro gun-control governor of a Northeastern state who lacks any of the populist touch of either Clinton or Sanders.
Which highlights one of the issues in just focusing on developing more progressive candidates as a strategy to win in those areas. Living in a couple midwest states those Democrats and a Democratic leaning independents skewed towards the more centrist side of the party. Simply cultivating more progressive politicians in those areas doesn’t necessarily get wins. Some of those districts traditional Democratic voters really are closer to Clinton.
I absolutely agree-as long as this nation has a two-party system both parties will have to be “big tent” ones incorporating multiple ideological tendencies. That said, even for “centrist” candidates, having ones who opposes gun control or promiscuous abortion laws is vastly preferable to ones who support raising the retirement age for SS and Medicare.
Yes, the US has some of the least restrictive abortion laws in terms of gestational period of any country on this planet (before you bring up various state-level restrictions note that those get always struck down practically immediately by federal courts).
I also agree with the OP, but would add that persuasion outside of political leaders is necessary. You need radio talk show guys, authors explaining liberalism to the masses and why it matters. The conservative movement was able to gain a big following by putting their ideas into a coherent philosophy(mostly) based on reverence for what they considered American values(God, the Constitution, the family).
The only author I’ve seen try to explain progressivism in this way is Matthew Miller, who cites John Rawls as the most important philosopher for those values. I’m not sure how many liberals agree with John Rawls as the main brains behind the movement, or how convincing that is compared to Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Mises, and Friedman, but at least someone’s out there trying.
The other issue is that until that happens, you have to work with the electorate you have, not the electorate you wish you had. Not only are Democrats concentrated, but most of them aren’t really ideological. They are attracted to the party based on dislike of Republicans and what the Democratic Party can do for them. The TV show Black-ish lampooned this brilliantly in their second to last episode when the mother was trying to explain why African-Americans were Democrats(It’s because we’re open-minded and believe in science!) and her MIL walked in yelling about God, gays, and how evolution was nonsense. A lot of the Democratic base holds seriously non-progressive views on a variety of subjects and Democrats can’t win without these voters’ support anymore than Republicans can. So even when elections are won, not enough of those voters have your back on important legislative fights. During the health care battle, Republican supporters were seriously motivated to try to stop it. Democratic supporters were mostly asleep.
Fair enough, I suppose. Weird lexical choice if you ask me, considering the subject matter and the fact that “indiscriminate” or “no-questions-asked” were so close at hand, but fair enough.
This is correct Maryland has far more in common culturally and geographically with Virginia than it does with New York. Maryland’s liberal tilt is almost entirely urban, the non-urban sections of the state are far more conservative. Maryland cultural liberalism in the urban areas is, to a significant extent, an outgrowth of the fact that much of urban Maryland culture is tied to it’s status as the bedroom residences for the federal government workers and all the businesses and institutions that feed on that population.
The key issue here is that the relatively high level of education of those populations and the ripple effects out from that make progressivism the predominant political orientation more so than Virginia which is larger geographically and has a significantly larger non-urban population.
The Northeast is generally used as an umbrella term for both the New England and Midatlantic states. Even Kevin Philips in his Emerging Republican Majority places Maryland in the Northeast in actual political terms.
The same thing can be said of all Mid-Atlantic states from the Hudson to the Rappahanock: New York outside of the NYC metro area and a few other industrial/governmental centres such as Buffalo, Albany etc. are strongly Republican, Pennsylvania has been described as having Philadelphia and Pittsburgh on each end with Alabama in between, the only Democratic county in Delaware is the one with Wilmington in it etc. Only in New England is there a strong rural Democratic component.
Your gerrymander argument also lends credence to the foolsguinea’s assertion that Republicans were being successful at the levels that control redistricting. Generally it’s takes either power from already winning elections under the old redistricting scheme or incompetence by the majority party to produce significant swings. Parties can cement and expand influence through redistricting.
It’s really hard to redistrict yourself out of a position of weakness.
