The presentation is fine, I’m just seeing the same arguments being made against Trump that were already made and failed to stop him, plus a great helping of policies that have normally been political poison but which Democrats think are suddenly going to start working out for them, such as gun control.
Maybe people will listen since bigger stars made the argument. Just wish there was a better nominee. Biden would have slam dunked this.
But yeah, it all sounded like it was supposed to. Which might be the problem. I thought the RNC was a trainwreck, but Trump got a bounce. This DNC has been neither better nor worse so far than past DNCs. So does that mean a bounce, or not, in this unusual cycle? Will the scripted, professional look turn voters off?
I’d also note that Democrats need to stop tailoring their stances to whatever Trump is not. Trump is gloomy, so they are acting all optimistic when that’s never been Democrats’ strong suit. Not even an acknowledgment that a HUGE majority of Americans think America is on the wrong track?
sorry wrong thread
I’m sure that overall tone was set before the Cleveland convention. It’s a natural approach for those asking Americans to keep the same party in the White House for four more years, especially when the economy has been (slowly) improving.
Plus, there WERE some acknowledgements of American fears and perceived bad trends, e.g. the many grieving families of gun violence earlier today.
So what about income inequality and loss of jobs overseas? Were they addressed at all by anyone except Sanders?
Not as much as I would have liked. Maybe tomorrow (but not holding my breath).
ETA: several speakers tonight addressed these matters obliquely, by showing how specific Trump proposals would make these things worse. But I agree that that’s not enough.
Pretty sure the speeches had the stock “There’s still a lot of work to be done to address…” lines.
Loss of jobs overseas is a new thing? How do you address a 30-year-long trend that absolutely no one shows any signs of addressing?
Perhaps you can’t, but if that’s the argument it should have been made by the Democrats during the Bush years. Political opportunism has its costs. The Democrats made too much of “jobs being shipped overseas” for eight years to just say, “Oh, by the way, nothing can be done, we were just talking smack to win elections.”
I think a lot of people misunderstand what is meant by the response, “America is on the wrong track.” They assume it means what they want it to mean. It often doesn’t.
I am an independent, have been all my life – but that’s because the Democratic party isn’t nearly liberal enough for me. Were I to answer this question, I, too, would respond that, “America is on the wrong track.” But that’s an indictment of the current miserable, obstructionist Congress that kowtows entirely to their oligarch masters, not of President Obama. And while Bernie certainly has my heart, I have supported Hillary throughout this election cycle.
I’m old enough to understand and appreciate the power of incrementalism. As much as I love Bernie’s big ideas, I believe he would have suffered a tremendous backlash had he won the Democratic nomination. Not only would he have endured an insurmountable onslaught of criticism for his “socialist” views and lost the Presidency, he would have moved conservative voters to turn out in droves and destroyed any chance of down ballot successes for Democrats. Without at least taking back the Senate, we will remain on the “wrong track” even if Hillary wins the Presidency. And of course, those all-important Supreme Court appointments.
My point, obviously, is that when someone says, “America is on the wrong track,” it doesn’t always mean what you may think it does.
Trump has made that a corner stone of his “policy” such as it is, he’s at least mentioning it as a real problem and the Democrats need to have a response to that or else they are vulnerable.
But they are addressing it. There’s been a lot of discussion in this convention about creating new jobs by upgrading infrastructure and capitalizing on new technologies arising out of renewable energy. Obama had the same ideas but was frustrated again and again by a Congress unwilling to support any idea that made him look good.
It’s in the platform. What more do you want?
Right. A $15 minimum wage and millions of infrastructure jobs. That won’t solve everything, but once pot is decriminalized nationwide, not as many people will care.
The Onion would have pissed themselves. 
Notwithstanding your comments on future strategy, I guess that partly depends who you think political conventions are for: the undecideds or to rouse the passions of the party faithful.
To be catered to the way Bernie did/would have.
That one guy keeps making bold statements, like “I’m going to reinstate Glass-Steagall,” in an obvious effort to draw the back-Berners. Clearly, the D strategy ought to be to ride him on these claims, ride him into the ground, until he snaps. I find it a tad difficult to believe that he could sustain the farce under heavy pressure.
Tax and spend. The unemployed get government jobs. Well, at least they are consistent.
Tim Kaine was a super goofball for most of his speech, but he surprised me by finishing strong.
Yes, in case you hadn’t noticed, that’s the government’s fundamental purpose. Spend money on things that benefit the people of the nation (such as job creation, for instance), and collect taxes to pay for it.
We’ve had nearly forty years now of Republicans ostentatiously clutching their pearls about the alleged horrors of “tax and spend”. Republicans trying to pretend that it’s somehow more admirable or more effective for the government instead to spend huge amounts of borrowed money on things that primarily benefit a small wealthy elite rather than people in general, while refusing to tax wealthy elites sufficiently to pay off their spending.
What that’s got us has been a raft of expensive and destabilizing geopolitical adventures, frivolous and costly “investigations” by a do-nothing Congress terrified of accidentally letting the federal government actually accomplish any of the things its constituents want it to do, and a simmering multitude of screwed-over citizens who despise the Republican establishment so much that even the conservatives among them mostly prefer a rodeo clown like Donald Trump to anything resembling a standard Republican career politician.
The party of “enrich our cronies and exploit the non-wealthy while our elected Tea Party ideologues play with their dicks instead of actually doing anything to serve the public interest” no longer has even a shred of credibility with which to attack the party of “tax and spend”.