Re the 2016 POTUS election 5 months later are there any "lessons" for the Dems going forward?

[Lord_Feldon]

Do these “lessons” ever matter? Democrats were supposed to nominate someone like Evan Bayh in 2008. And after 2012 the Republicans had a whole “autopsy” full of recommendations that were never followed.

[elucidator]

@John_Mace

Yeah, not enough folks around here realize that Hillary won the popular vote. That’s the real measure of the worth of a candidate and means the Dems have nothing to worry about next time. They area a shoe-in.

Just remember: HRC won the popular vote. That’s all we need to know. Don’t worry, be happy.

You’re about a hair away from saying that the rules are more important than the people. And if the people are not the correct measure of the candidate, just what the hell is?

And its “shoo-in”.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

@Sunny_Daze

To the OP: Dems need to pay attention to financial divide in this country and the working poor. Yes, overall the economy improved a great deal under Obama, but there are large pockets that didn’t. Taking a compelling message to struggling communities about a plan forward, for jobs, for healthcare, for education, for senior care, for social security --just to name a few of the things it turns out that virtually everyone really cares about, and poor communities really, really care about-- would help Dems out a great deal the next time around.

Here’s the problem with this suggestion: the dems did that. They didn’t make it the absolute focus of their campaign, to be fair, but Clinton went out and campaigned in no small part on policies that would have helped specifically those people. She went out to coal country and said this:

"So for example, I’m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right?

And we’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories.

[…]

So I am passionate about this, which is why I have put forward specific plans about how we incentivize more jobs, more investment in poor communities, and put people to work."

What people who watch this country’s largest televised news network heard was:

“We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

The problem is most emphatically not that the democrats don’t care. The problem is that there’s a substantial portion of the electorate who get their news from news sources which are not going to report honestly or accurately on the democratic positions. Ever. FOX News is never going to give democrats a fair shake. Breitbart news is NEVER going to give democrats a fair shake. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Gateway Pundit, The Weekly Standard, this whole right-wing “alt-news” enterprise, which has formed a massive, closed circuit as “the only news you can trust” - none of them are EVER going to give the democratic party or platform a fair shake. It will always be dishonestly distorted and manipulated. (Not that the mainstream media is always better; even CNN opted for the sensationalist headline, rather than the honest truth of the matter.)

So the question isn’t, “how do we cater to these people?”, the problem is, “how the fuck do you reach those people?”

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Budget_Player_Cadet

So the question isn’t, “how do we cater to these people?”, the problem is, “how the fuck do you reach those people?”

I agree that Fox News and their ilk are a bunch of goddamn despicable liars, and Trump trumps them all in that department.

And that’s gonna happen in 2020 as well.

The candidate needs to be really, really good at communicating, at pushing past the inevitable shitstorm of lies that’s gonna come. It’s not enough simply to have reasonable, competent, well-considered positions on your webpage. We need someone like Sanders, who will never deviate from message.

[E-DUB]

Left Hand of Dorkness wrote: "The candidate needs to be really, really good at communicating, at pushing past the inevitable shitstorm of lies that’s gonna come. It’s not enough simply to have reasonable, competent, well-considered positions on your webpage. We need someone like Sanders, who will never deviate from message. "

And it’s not like they don’t know how to do this. Back in '92 bill Clinton had such a good response team that they’d answered Poppy Bush’s charges so quickly that the charges and the refutation were part of the same news cycle. In fact, Clinton’s team was so adept that they were often able to turn the charges back on the accuser.

It’s a little harder in today’s age of “weaponized bull shit”, but the principle remains.

[Velocity]

The 2020 Democratic candidate would be well advised ***not ***to get support of celebrities like Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Lena Dunham, Katy Perry, etc.

[elucidator]

Which Il Douche cleverly avoided! And those “Hippies for Trump!” placards, the TV cameras never got anywhere near them.

[BobLibDem]

Path One: The current administration is the biggest clusterfuck in history. Run against it in 2018 and retake the House, run against it in 2020 and win everything.

Path Two: Run a candidate that people don’t detest. Hillary is a fine person and her positions are what most people think are reasonable, but people just don’t fucking like her. Run Cory Booker and sweep to victory.

Path Three: Lie like motherfuckers. The people are as dumb as a sack of hammers. They don’t want the truth and they don’t deserve the truth. Tell them everything will be fixed magically as soon as you get in. Don’t get into specifics. For every plan you disclose you get ten negative ads against it. Just lie your ass off and forget what you campaigned on as soon as you take the oath.

[elucidator]

Three to five million illegal votes isn’t enough. Hell, three million totally legit votes aren’t enough! It just provokes them to Republican droll sarcasm, and that’s more than anyone should have to witness.

[ElvisL1ves]

@BobLibDem

Run a candidate that people don’t detest. Hillary is a fine person and her positions are what most people think are reasonable, but people just don’t fucking like her. Run Cory Booker and sweep to victory.

Let the GOP Lie Machine work on *him *for awhile and see what happens. Hillary-hate is a conditioned behavior, not a rational one, and Booker-hate would be too.

[elucidator]

Obama Lite

[Sunny_Daze]

@Budget_Player_Cadet

Here’s the problem with this suggestion: the dems did that. They didn’t make it the absolute focus of their campaign, to be fair, but Clinton went out and campaigned in no small part on policies that would have helped specifically those people. She went out to coal country and said this:

What people who watch this country’s largest televised news network heard was:

The problem is most emphatically not that the democrats don’t care. The problem is that there’s a substantial portion of the electorate who get their news from news sources which are not going to report honestly or accurately on the democratic positions. Ever. FOX News is never going to give democrats a fair shake. Breitbart news is NEVER going to give democrats a fair shake. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Gateway Pundit, The Weekly Standard, this whole right-wing “alt-news” enterprise, which has formed a massive, closed circuit as “the only news you can trust” - none of them are EVER going to give the democratic party or platform a fair shake. It will always be dishonestly distorted and manipulated. (Not that the mainstream media is always better; even CNN opted for the sensationalist headline, rather than the honest truth of the matter.)

So the question isn’t, “how do we cater to these people?”, the problem is, “how the fuck do you reach those people?”

To be fair, I was responding the specific criticism from the poster above me that Democrats do not have a message. We do. It is not that we are not Republicans.

Your point is absolutely valid. A more effective communicator, and someone who could keep their eye on the ball, instead of responding to whatever clown car comes next, would be a much better candidate. Stay on message. Do not say, for example, your coal jobs are never coming back. That should never, ever be your lead. You should never say it. You should say: your community is suffering, your jobs have left, you have no hospital, your senior center has closed, and here is how we tackle all of those issues. Here is what we will do for you. I think Biden, for one, would have been excellent on this. Booker may be as well.

You cannot spend your entire campaign, political or otherwise, responding to the enemy. At some point, it’s got become your campaign. Your message. Your plan. I think it starts now. Now, when people as just realizing what a cluster fuck they’re gotten into. Not by rubbing their faces into it, but by talking about how we fix it. Ground work now, build to 2018 and then to 2020.

[Chronos]

The rules we have are stupid, and should be changed. But they are the rules, and under those rules, Trump did in fact beat Clinton.

[Alessan]

@ElvisL1ves

Let the GOP Lie Machine work on *him *for awhile and see what happens. Hillary-hate is a conditioned behavior, not a rational one, and Booker-hate would be too.

The problem wasn’t that people hated Hillary, the problem was that nobody liked her. Being hated isn’t an obstacle to getting elected, so long as enough people are excited about you.

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

I’ll copy and paste this:

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

That is where a new, “alternative left” that can face the potent nativist nationalism of the alternative right comes in. Broadly speaking an alternative left would seek to create a left populist opposition that would form a coalition of the multiracial middle and working-class. As many moderates have pointed out Democrats did make significant gains in diverse Sunbelt states such as Arizona and Texas, even winning my native Orange County for the first time in 80 years. Here we must distinguish between two potential elements of the coalition in these areas. Democrats should without reservation welcome the incorporation of Hispanic and Asian Americans into the body politic and seek to increase their turnout in future elections in these areas. While we should similarly not turn up our nose at upper middle-class voters in these areas who are turning to the Democratic Party, we must fight entryism that threatens to undermine a strong commitment to socioeconomic populism in favour of a bourgeois ideology of “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” that will only alienate the most loyal elements of the party. In turn, this commitment to the heritage of Jacksonian democracy, Bryanite populism, the New Deal, and the Great Society requires us to win back the white working-class. The white working-class is bearing the brunt of a systematic socioeconomic and psychological collapse in much of American society that in many ways parallels that of Russia’s in the 1990s. Most tellingly, mortality rates have increased and life expectancy has declined for white Americans without college degrees, primarily due to significant increases in incidences of drug/alcohol abuse as well as suicide. In turn, much of this is attritbutable to a wide array of factors including deindustrialization, wage stagnation, social atomization, and so forth. It was this pain which Trump (not entirely implausibly) blamed mass immigration and free trade for that produced Trump’s victory. To win again, especially given the presence of gerrymandering and laws hindering voting, Democrats must have a robust agenda.

With some reservations, the most plausible agenda I’ve found is outlined here. In broad terms I would advocate for:

[1] Universal Welfare State-Americans dislike means-tested benefits programs that can be agitated against on the grounds of it going to “undeserving” people while social insurance programs such as Social Security that everyone pays into and everyone benefits from are strongly popular. Thus Democrats should advocate an increase in Social Security benefits by removing the income tax cap, propose universal paid leave, and possibly look seriously into a universal basic income.

[2] Social Patriotism-For too many Americans, Democrats especially those of a more left-wing variety are seen as “un-American” if not “treasonous”. Democrats should counter this by adopting the language of patriotism and declare (quite correctly) that true patriotism is not to an abstract concept of a nation but to the people which compose a nation. It should be seen as a national disgrace that life expectancies for millions of Americans are declining, that many part of the country such as Indian reservations live in conditions nearing Third World poverty, that corporations can jack up prices for drugs, and so on. The poor and others in want should be seen as fellow citizens, not as objects of charity.

[3] Populism-The strongest left-wing movements in both America and the rest of the world have been populist in character, by empowering the people themselves to undertake political action. After Trump, many liberals seem to think the opposite is the case and that the people cannot be trusted with political power despite the fact that more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton. Liberals must recognize that even “experts” have unconscious biases that lead them to favour their own personal interests when setting policy and that having a college degree in say 18th Century Chinese Literature or Molecular Biology might make them an expert in that given field but not give them any particular enlightenment in regards to government. In tandem with this, the left should favour radical democratization through automatic voter registration, abolishment of the Electoral College, reform of the US Senate, ending gerrymandering of the House of Representatives, and otherwise removing all archaic and reactionary barriers to the pure expression of the popular will.

[4] Solidarity/Communitarianism-Americans have always been an individualistic people but simultaneously as observers from Tocqueville to Putnam have noted, they have often been equally devoted to the life of the community as well. In an era of social atomization and increasing isolation of individuals, Democrats should do everything to counteract such trends and strengthen civil and social institutions that serve as intermediaries between individuals and the State or the Market such as families, friendship ties, social clubs, churches, and the like. The left must appropriate the language of the right and declare that only an ideology that recognizes limits to the all-encompasing claims of the market even when it breaks town social ties can allow for humans to flourish as social beings.

[5] Big Tent without Pandering-To get laws passed, Democrats must retake the House and state governments which are already biased in favour of rural Middle America. Thus to do so, Democrats should adopt a big tent towards particularly sensitive issues. Gun control in general should be dropped given that most plausible gun control measures yield little return in exchange for large-scale political losses while Democrats should be allowed to vote their conscience on the most contentious issue of abortion which unlike many other battles of the Culture War looks unlikely to go away even 40 years after Roe v. Wade. It’s clear that the extreme pro-abortion legalization approach adopted by Hillary Clinton last year which theoretically rejected limitations on abortion even after viability and supporting repealing the Hyde amendment alienated significant numbers of Catholic and evangelical voters, leading to the spectacle of Trump winning the highest percentage of the evangelical vote of any Republican candidate despite all his past history. While it’s unlikely a national Democratic candidate will be pro-life anytime soon, any pro-choice candidate would do better to emphasize reducing abortions through better availability of contraception and more robust social safety net for families. This does not mean Democrats should cede the ground on “Culture War” issues or “identity politics”-in particular Democrats should stand for the equal protection in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, sexual identity, religion, and so forth. Indeed, Democrats should be taking leadership on certain cultural issues such as marijuana legalization and copyright reform where the public has moved ahead of them.

I realize this post is somewhat incoherent and rambling due to the late hour at which I write this. If anything is unclear, I will be more then happy to answer the points. While I don’t expect Dopers to agree with everything written here, I hope that my “Alternative Left” provides a framework for where the Democratic Party should go in the years ahead.

[dalej42]

1. Get rid of caucuses. Minnesota has done this and other states should follow.

2. It’s never too early to destroy your primary opponents. Clinton should have gone after Sanders with both barrels blazing. Sometimes strong chemotherapy is needed to eliminate a cancer and Sanders certainly grew from a novelty to a giant cancerous tumor. The Republicans could have done the same thing and taken out Trump early on.

3. Quit thinking your loud activists are the majority of your voters. Pandering to the most radical BLM members isn’t a winning tactic. A dumb pipeline in North Dakota isn’t on the mind of most voters. And, almost immediately after the heavily supported legalization of same sex marriage, don’t let a few noisy transgender activists hijack the gay and lesbian movement.
   Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Chronos]

You’re contradicting yourself, there, dalej42. In this election, the Democrats did ignore the loud activists, which is how we got Clinton instead of Sanders in the first place.

And abandoning your principles is never a good way to win an election, because even if you do win, what’s the point?

[Johnny_L.A]

@Chronos

And abandoning your principles is never a good way to win an election, because even if you do win, what’s the point?

In the case of Trump, it begs the question of whether he had (or has) any principles at all. He’s in it for the money and for stroking his ego.

[E-DUB]

Originally Posted by Chronos"
“And abandoning your principles is never a good way to win an election, because even if you do win, what’s the point?”

How about just misplacing them until after the election?

[marshmallow]

Trumpism isn’t a short term problem. Democrats will need to figure out how to fight it after he’s gone. The right is well practiced in class rhetoric, but Trump took it to another level. Imagine if a competent politician followed the blue print, like someone who doesn’t insult gold star families, women, and minorities, or someone who can talk in complete sentences.

@Sunny_Daze

I don’t believe this is correct. The Democratic Party had a platform.

They still do. If it’s so great they should proudly list positions from it when asked what Democrats stand for or why anyone should vote for them.

I’m not sure I follow this. I would think that going “full progressive” might backfire if they want to pick up votes. How many pure progressives are there who actually vote?

The way to fight fake populism that’s a trojan horse for the 1% is with real populism that helps people. That’s why Sanders is currently the most popular American politician, why progressive policies poll well when removed from vilified trigger words, and how Dems rode to decades of success off the New Deal. I agree this is unlikely in the near future and the DNC will follow your logic, and they also hold dalej42’s view about the left being a cancer.

Also, why should they change anything if they’re sure to win due to Trump backfire? They don’t need to tack right in that case.

Democrats make a virtue of hurting their base in the name of grand bargains and chasing the mythical center. The old calculus was it didn’t matter since their base had no where else to go, but that isn’t true anymore. That’s why the blue wall crumbled as they rushed out to vote for someone who pretended to care about them. I haven’t seen any indication the party brass will change this in the future.