You are the one misunderstanding, I got you loud and clear, the point I was making is that even that is dumb you are still attempting to paint a good chunk of the left wing as fascists, unfortunately more than a few of those left wingers are also American Liberals. And everyone can see that you are still removing your “it’s left-wing.”
While I do think **foolsguinea **is way out there, I do think that I can agree with that, if the Republicans would accept immigration reform, would change their position regarding gays in all other states where they still have few rights, accept what climate scientists and economists recommend as many young people do think deniers are dumb or crazy, and if they would stop restricting abortion rights more.
Not likely to happen soon.
Republicans need only do one of those things: stop being anti-gay. They are evolving on that as we speak.
As for immigration reform, Republicans should pass immigration reform. Immigration reform in line with what the public demands: less immigration of poor workers, more immigration of skilled workers, and better enforcement. Importing millions of poor people is a sure way to lose forever, since poor people vote Democrat regardless of race.
On climate change, Republicans should put forward some ideas, like a revenue neutral carbon tax.
Abortion, there is no demographic that is more or less likely to be pro-life in a statistically significant way. as long as half the country is pro-life, it makes sense for one of the two parties to represent that position.
The fun fact is that the map showing the evolution, is happening almost exclusively in the Blue states, Slow going, but compared to the Blue states the Red states are going at a sluggish rate.
Maybe if they could change to a snail pace it would be an improvement. 
The point here is that not much is showing from the Red states to claim an evolution.
Once again, the code shows, no, not much change there in the House.
The ones pushing that where expelled in 2010, your sources really do take a long time to tell you things huh?
The Democrats only need to remind a few independent women about the troglodytes in congress for the gender gap to remain, so yeah, no progress there for the Republicans too.
If it was that easy, they’d just say that Republicans are pro-life. Instead, they have to seize on gaffes or make outlandish claims. Meanwhile, pro-choicers are doing very little now to hide the fact that they believe that even viable fetuses should be aborted if the woman wants it.
An example of nut picking, no poll can show what you imply here, those pro-choicers are in the minority.
Then they should stop opposing late term abortion bills.
Misleading as the supreme court already pointed at limits to it. What the discussion is about is to restrict those limits even more, while I have seen polling in favor of more restrictions, the numbers among democrats are still against more limitations, And as the Texas case showed, once more information is reported on what is actually demanded in the new laws the support in the Texas case remains split but 47% came reporting that there should be less restrictions or kept the same, with only 38% with a clear opinion that there should be more restrictions.
In essence, I do think that in the abortion case the Republicans are following the same pollsters as Romney did in the election, I do not think that they realize the levels of opposition they will get when they force the issue.
The fact remains, however, that the country is split 50-50 on abortion. Two pro-choice parties would make no sense.
I’m not sure if I mentioned this, but another reason for why Democrats lose at the local level is that they suck at governing at the state and local level. All of the states and cities teetering on the brink of bankruptcy are Democratic-run. Plus the relationship between interest groups and direct political payoffs is more apparent at the local level.
Democrats lose at the local level for the same reason Republicans lose at the federal level: they govern poorly.
And I already posted about that before, the best run cities are also run by democrats, on this subject one has to indeed vote for the alternative when there is no progress in one front, but then we run into the subject of out current democracy giving us mostly just 2 choices.
I’m very disappointed in the democratic Dopers who have participated in this thread. It was supposed to be about how Democrats could win state and local elections. It has been completely and successfully derailed by conservative Dopers who have so very easily got you arguing about national politics.
I realize that this is a recreational board and people talk about what they enjoy talking about, but Jeebus you guys are SO easily gulled.
I tried, I mentioned how bad Democrats run cities. That has to contribute to their failures in the suburbs. People don’t flee those cities just to elect more Democrats.
My take on the issue at hand: Democratic progressives need to fund some think tanks to develop local progressive policies, something that could be done relatively cheaply. They have been concentrating their efforts at getting voters out on the swing states, I think this is a self-defeating policy in the long term. As the middle class continues to decline, more and more voters are going to be attracted to progressive ideas, the Dems need to have organizations on the ground to take advantage of this. They don’t right now, in what are presently not swing states. It’s one of the reasons the Republicans have swung so far to the right: in many states, if you win the Republican Party primary, you are assured of being elected in the general election, so there’s absolutely no reason not to go far right.
A full court press across all fifty states would also have the effect of forcing the Republicans to fight for every bit of ground they have.
This also goes for non-Democratic progressive organizations like the Green Party. The Greens have an enormous advantage over the Democrats in that they do not have the Dems’ dismal track record. Anyone who votes Democratic does so wondering, “will this really make a difference? They are so crummy at politics, so willing to concede to the Republicans, so thoroughly bought out by Wall Street, am I really voting for change?” The Greens don’t have any of those issues to deal with. Their problem is money, and people. But a few Green victories would bolster their chances enormously.
And as BrainGlutton has pointed out, the Dems need to be as nasty as they have to be to win. The Republicans are not playing softball, neither should the Democrats … or the Greens.
Well, where have you been Evil Captor?
By the way, adaher, repeating what was already explained that it was a very weak point does not make it magically better just by repeating it.
They already have that, but more and better can’t hurt. The best policy bloggers are all liberals like Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias.
This was Howard Dean’s idea, and it sorta worked, sorta didn’t. Resources are always limited, so you have to prioritize. That’s one of the big problems with liberals in general, they deny the need to ever make tough choices. We can have it all! We can spend millions in New Hampshire and millions in Texas! Both parties talk about 50 state strategies, but once the campaigns get going and you realize you don’t have enough money to fight everywhere, the tough choices have to be made.
The problem with the Greens is that they are an ideologically liberal party and there’s no space for an ideologically liberal party in this country. Instead, the Democratic Party is a collection of interests and none of those interests are “interested” in the Green Party, which would put ideology and this weird thing called principle above the base interests of the various interest groups.
I say they already are as nasty and personal as you can get. But going along with your argument, isn’t the perception that Republicans are nasty one of the reasons they lose? Sounds to me like being better at being nasty is a double-edged sword.
Who was that poster that we had for a while that always used to talk about how there weren’t really any serious problems in Soviet Russia and that they were just misunderstood?
With the exception of Virginia, we’re more than a year away from the mid-terms. Democrats at the national level understand how critical it is to hold onto the Senate and maybe even make up some ground in the house. It will be about money – how much can the Obama machine raise? How will it be allocated? Will the critical players in the successful ground game effort of 2008 and 2012 be on-board? Will Democrats beat the drum (TV ad blitz) for safe and legal abortions within the 20 week window? (Safe and legal abortion is no where near a 50/50 proposition as the right well knows.)
If President Obama is as partisan as some claim, he may very well see his legacy as the one who ushered in a new age of Democratic dominance in both local and national elections. His ground game is the best anyone has ever seen. Even those who hate him with every fiber of their being admit this. Damn, he beat the Clinton machine! He’s going to urge Hillary to run and avoid any real acrimony within the party, leaving the Republican Party to beat each other to the pulp.
Americans may be center/right, but they are also tiring of the Tea Partyesque paranoid anti-woman, racist, homophobic ranting.
But how does Obama’s ground game function without him on the ballot? So far, it doesn’t. Conservatives have good reason to believe that many people treat him as a more than human candidate: they just aren’t motivated to work for the party as much as they are motivated to work for him personally.
Obama built a new, dominant coalition that has not only not proven that it can stand without him on the ballot, it’s fallen flat on its face when he hasn’t been on the ballot.
But they didn’t use it in 2010 which the President now sees was a huge mistake. 2014 will be the test. He’s much smarter than the righties will admit. To them, he’s just not “one of us” – and he’s also a likable guy. Likability and approval are two different things. It helped get him re-elected and he can use it to mobilize the ground game.
Obama is smart, but he has not yet proven that he can carry anyone over the finish line without him on the ballot as a draw. 2014 will be a test of a lot of things, but we’ll get an early preview in Virginia.