UN-Electable candidates?
There’s nothing Obama could have done to win over Republicans. It’s a different time than LBJ faced.
Really? That anyone could ever imagine a LBJ becoming a rising power in the Democratic Party given the current positions of the modern ‘’‘‘left’’‘’ is so beyond laughable it’s painful.
I think we need to stop waiting for leadership from above to save us. We need to organize from the bottom up and give the politicians our terms. For example, how LGBTQ Pride, Me Too, and Black Lives Matter have worked. Democrats elect representatives, not leaders.
He could have put pressure on Schumer to get rid of the filibuster in early 2009, back when they had a 59 or 60 seat majority (it flipped back and forth between 59 and 60 IIRC since Al Franken wasn’t seated immediately and then Ted Kennedy died). Then he could have twisted arms in the senate, LBJ style, to pass universal healthcare, stronger legislation to lower CO2 emissions, and other items on the liberal agenda. Twisting arms was what got the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts passed back in the day, but Obama refused to twist those arms the way LBJ did.
With hindsight you make it sound easy. I doubt it could have happened that way.
It’s more a matter of leadership rather than difficulty. Had Obama wanted to, he could have at least tried. To be fair, I’m not singling out Obama. Bill Clinton had the same opportunities back in 1993 and 1994, and failed in the same manner that Obama did.
Why un-electable?
AOC and Sanders are currently in congress. Sanders gave Clinton a hard run. So much so that the Democratic National Committee leaned heavily in favor of Clinton (when they should have been neutral) and the DNC chair had to resign because it was so egregious.
Sanders clearly energized the base in a way Clinton simply never did.
Donald Trump’s official pollster felt that Sanders would have beaten Trump in the general election.
Un-electable my foot.
We’ve had the milquetoast candidates and here we are. Clinton was beaten by an idiot but an idiot who repeatedly threw punches.
Yet you seem to think the lesson here is more Clinton or Biden.
Missed edit:
I should also add that AOC defeated a longtime incumbent (20 years) who was considered a political powerhouse and one of the more senior members in the House.
So yeah…electable.
As a Canadian, I am reluctant to say how Americans should think and do cannot speak for any of them.
However, I might suggest:
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Most people are fairly apolitical. Have other things to worry about. Aren’t really that interested in politics or the news. Don’t know that much or are tired of hearing it. So do not see things in apocalyptic terms.
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I went to the bookstore couple weeks ago. They had a big book marked down, to $2, by a respected reporter from 2016 who documented every thing she found concerning during the first year of that presidency. I didn’t buy it. Who wants to read that? You going to make four volumes of such a book? Things lose some of their shock value with time. More so after Covid. People want a break.
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Democrats are a big group who probably fall into many of your categories. A lot of people, many more so than the media would suggest, are Independents with mainstream views. These views have not changed as dramatically as the parties themselves, less accepting of candidates who don’t agree to a whole group of positions which do not always make sense from a left-right perspective. Many Democrats disagree with other Democrats.
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Maybe they figure time and demographics will help. Probably. And probably less than they think.
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If talking about decisions of jurisprudence, I strongly support the rights of women to make their own medical decisions. I am often surprised at the significant percentage of American women with their own reasons for thinking otherwise. My views have precisely zero effect on recent decisions. The Democrats also cannot change things immediately - and will have to make their case to the American people.
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There is an article in The Atlantic which suggests their is a gap between what prominent politicians say about their candidates in public and in private. What!!? I am shocked, shocked that such things are going on in this establishment…
Oh the media is just fine. Never been better, actually. It’s feeding Americans just what they want. Despair, violence, blood, controversy, animosity, crap, pap, tits and ass (and that’s just the presenters).
Do you expect any media outlet to unilaterally provide high-quality and thus boring journalism? Why in the world should they? That would be idiotic and cost them huge parts of their audience and ever greater parts of their profits.
These are corporations that have a fiduciary obligation to make money for their investors. It would be irresponsible for them to throw away shareholder money by producing honest and meaningful news that no one would watch.
To the Oval Office.
Yes, his base was energized- to post constant negative slurs and attack vs- Hillary, allowing trump to win, so so many indys and progressives stayed home.
Sanders had no chance at all. In fact Sanders is one of the three reasons Hillary lost.
Yeah- trump pollsters= lies, half lies and just made up shit.
Yeah, in a deep, deep blue district, where she had no real GOP foe.
Your contention is the likes of Sanders are un-electable.
While we can never know for certain the evidence strongly suggests Sanders could have won.
- Of course Bernie Sanders could have beaten Donald Trump
- Could Bernie Sanders have beaten Donald Trump?
- President Sanders? Bernie would have beaten Trump
- Bernie Sanders Would Have Beaten Donald Trump in 2016, According to ‘Every Single Poll,’ Says Senator’s Wife
Did Sanders cost Clinton the election? Again, we can never know for certain but, probably not.
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Did enough Bernie Sanders supporters vote for Trump to cost Clinton the election?
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But your real ire should be directed toward Clinton, who seems to have admitted in her book that ultimately she’s the reason that she lost, and her campaign, where some of her staff is still blaming Sanders for their bungling. These people are blaming the media for turning people against their candidate and their primary opponent for not turning out enough voters. You know who else faced media that didn’t like him and a party base suspicious of him? Donald Trump! Moreover, what is the point of a campaign other than to improve media coverage of your own candidate and turn out your own voters? At some point they need to take responsibility for their own actions. And if they still think that it was Bernie Sanders’ responsibility to turn out enough voters for the Democratic nominee, then they should have done the honorable thing and let him win. SOURCE: Did Bernie Sanders Cost Hillary Clinton the Presidency?
I supported Sanders. When it came time to vote I voted for Clinton and later Biden.
ISTM Clinton voters were the problem. Not Sanders’ voters. We saw it here on the SDMB which leans liberal. Most here were virulently opposed to Sanders. Loved Clinton. Hate progressives.
And here we are. You won. We all lost.
In any discussion about Sanders’ electability, it needs to be said that in 2016, the right-wing smear machine deliberately held its fire against him.
But if he had clinched the nomination… boy, were they ready for him.
'Here are a few tastes of what was in store for Sanders, straight out of the Republican playbook: He thinks rape is A-OK. In 1972, when he was 31, Sanders wrote a fictitious essay in which he described a woman enjoying being raped by three men. Yes, there is an explanation for it—a long, complicated one, just like the one that would make clear why the Clinton emails story was nonsense. And we all know how well that worked out.
'Then there’s the fact that Sanders was on unemployment until his mid-30s, and that he stole electricity from a neighbor after failing to pay his bills, and that he co-sponsored a bill to ship Vermont’s nuclear waste to a poor Hispanic community in Texas, where it could be dumped. You can just see the words “environmental racist” on Republican billboards. And if you can’t, I already did. They were in the Republican opposition research book as a proposal on how to frame the nuclear waste issue…
‘Worst of all, the Republicans also had video of Sanders at a 1985 rally thrown by the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua where half a million people chanted, "Here, there, everywhere/the Yankee will die,’’ while President Daniel Ortega condemned “state terrorism” by America. Sanders said, on camera, supporting the Sandinistas was “patriotic.”’
That is a valid concern, just like the two impeachments and (Barr’s misrepresentation of) the Mueller report illustrate, so let me amend my post to include indicting Trump for some offense, whether it’s January 6, the Georgia phone call, tax fraud, or whatever. I certainly don’t think he should be indicted for every individual thing; I think that would only strengthen the impressions his “Witch Hunt” accusations make. Instead, the justice dept (or whoever) should make a decision which one is the most likely to result in a conviction and throw everything into prosecuting that one. I think there’s some pretty damning evidence out there for many of these potential cases. One thing that concerns me, of course, is the problem in guaranteeing we actually have an impartial jury with no Trump sycophants on it that would automatically acquit Donald regardless of the strength of the evidence against him.
And I am aware that such an indictment and trial would likely result in riots that would make Jan 6 look like an actual tour group, but at this point I think that’s a birthing pain this country’s gonna have to suffer sooner or later.
Honestly, given the adamancy of Trump’s supporters in believing he can do no wrong, it’s hard for me to imagine any other strategy having a decent chance at success.
Yes, which is why I listen to NPR.
You are correct that the current paradigm, the incentives for most outlets are for sensationalism rather than accurately informing the public as to the state of the world, but I’m calling that out as a bug, not a feature.
When the FCC granted licenses to broadcasters, it required them to have a news program. They should have required that they be commercial free.
I think that people would watch the news without the sensationalism. People do listen to NPR, or watch PBS Newshour. People paid attention to the news before the “if it bleeds, it leads” policies came into being.
Now, if given the choice between sensationalism and informative reporting, people may gravitate towards the sugar laden cereal rather than the bran flakes, but if everyone is offering a healthy balanced meal, then those hungry for sustenance will partake upon what’s offered.
Unfortunately, while the FCC could change the rules for broadcasters, it has pretty much no jurisdiction over cable channels.
I think there’s a little more nuance to it than “they’re corrupt and stupid.”
As a wealthy Democrat, I personally won’t be hurt one iota from the loss of Social Security or Medicare or abortion. Having no personal stake in those issues, I have more motivation to define my job as a risk-averse, low-intensity consensus seeker. Especially if I’m in a safe district.
There’s nothing in the congressional job description that requires someone to be a firebrand social justice warrior and jump into the hottest controversies around. One could just as easily make the case that seeking consensus and building coalition is a more important strategy. And a person is more likely to choose the latter course if they have little personal stake in the hot issues.
I wouldn’t call that corruption or stupidity. They just don’t fight like they have skin in the game, because they don’t, not like the rest of us do.
Democrats?
Congratulations, you answered your own question.
I think that a big challenge is that, though there are ample things for Democrats to use, such as how the GOP is trying to turn the US into a theocracy, how an insurrection was mounted, how Trump blatantly and serially lied, how Trump’s actions resulted in the deaths of half a million citizens from Covid, how the GOP is sucking up to Trump and so on and so on, how do the Democrats usefully and forcefully exploit that real information without sounding like bombastic assholes themselves?
How do they forcefully engage when half of the population willfully ignores science and truth and will do so without shame or embarrassment? In some sort of “normal” world I would expect that this stuff would torpedo its proponents but for some reason Trump was able to normalize this and it has no impact.
I’m not saying that the Democrats can’t; I just don’t know how.
While all true, we have to be careful about basing too much messaging on Trump. There’s a chance he and his closest cronies are going away, and the GOP will be more than happy to paint them as a few bad apples and move on. Anti-Trump messaging won’t make a dent against candidate DeSantis.