If only Democrats would be as up front about their socialist tendencies as the liberal Dopers. We’d never have to ask why we lost elections because we’d never lose.
It was politically motivated in the sense of serving a political agenda, itself based on compassion; not in the sense of winning the poor as a voting bloc (there are always more votes to be found in the middle class anyway). Remember, LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act knowing it would lose his party the South for a generation; but he never hesitated.
I’d actually still like to discuss this point. I think you missed my earlier post, which was probably easy to do, as it was right before another long post by someone else. Here’s what I said:
Paul Ryan is no friend of Social Security, he would really like to see it privatized.
He also doesn’t like some of the newer benefits that have been added in past years. From here.
I think there’s a structual problem in this thread. Non-republicans point out areas they disagree with the GOP as examples why the GOP lost the last POTUS elections. GOP supporters then feel the need to defend their party’s positions. Much back-and-forth ensues, but no progress.
I think a better way for the GOPers in this thread to consider this topic is that it’s meant to be constructive criticism, even if it’s not always delivered in the most constructive way. Think of this as a job-performance review, delivered by a socially clueless manager. There is useful information for how to improve, but you need to pick through the delivery style that rubs you the wrong bleeping way.
With that in mind, what can or should the GOP do to win POTUS elections in the near future? The electoral map is tilted against the GOP for the 2016 and 2020 elections, and may further tilt against them beyond that. But the predicency is not out of reach - how to get there?
If you consider US Senators to be national offices, how can the GOP get better electoral success there? Had the GOP won the 5 winnable Senate seats they lost in the last 2 election cycles, both the House and Senate would both be in GOP hands. The would have totally changed the dynamic of the Obama administration. What can/should the GOP do to win more Senate seats?
There has been discussion of these points in this thread, but not in the most dispassionate way. Republican-leaning Dopers, the electorate has spoken and your party is not doing as well as it could at the Presidential and Senatorial level. What do you want to do about it?
If it’s nothing, then I’ll sit back and enjoy the Clinton/Warren administration.
That’s a legend, and a convenient one. I doubt LBJ knew any such thing, given that Republicans voted for it more reliably than Democrats, and the South took decades more to be lost. If the Democrats had truly been principled, they would have tried to increase the black vote back when they voted GOP.
Great post. It’s true, the GOP is underperforming, actually underperforming even in the House. I posted earlier how there are something like 65 more GOP-leaning seats than Democratic leaning seats. So even in the House we could be doing better.
As for why, there are many factors. Red state Democrats are pretty good at distancing themselves from the national party, and if they actually vote in DC the way they campaign back home, they can keep their seats for a very long time. Blue state Republicans have far less success, when they even try. And if they do, nowadays they get primaried. I think Tea Partiers are making a mistake there. We should primary the politicians who are moderate due to a lack of principles, like Arlen Specter and Charlie Crist. But genuine moderates like Olympia Snowe, Scott Brown, and Mike Castle are a good thing for the party.
There’s also the brand problem. I keep pushing back against criticism of the republican platform because they simply do not lose over the platform. They lose because they misgoverned at the national level from 2001-2008, and even before then came off as angry frothers rather than happy warriors. Back during the Bush years, Democrats explained away their losses as due to the complexity of explaining what they believed. But I say Democrats have a natural advantage there: they care. Voters think that Democrats look out for people like them. Republicans are the ones who have to explain why the government shouldn’t do many of the things it does, and unless your name is Ronald Reagan, you end up coming off as just mean.
Specifically in 2012, the biggest factor contributing to Republican defeat was Democrats capitalizing on gaffes that furthered the “war on women” narrative. I don’t think that will work for Democrats more than once though.
You are citing an example of someone temporarily on assistance who lifts himself up by his bootstraps. No one would argue that it kills initiative in every person, but it does that for more people than it helps. Try it, sit around collecting for a few months and then try to get back to working. It takes pretty solid willpower to get your work ethic back once you stop doing it for awhile. Especially if the job doesn’t improve your standard of living much compared to the dole.
Using the system to go to college is a good way to go. Just collecting for awhile and then going back to a low level job, much tougher for people to do.
there have been a couple, like in North Dakota, although in North Dakota Republicans are in no danger of losing the womens’ vote over pro-life bills. Now the media and national Democrats can try to make a national issue of what is going on in a small very conservative state if they want to, but let’s be clear: winning that way just means they used the media skillfully, it doesn’t mean the pro-life plank of the GOP platform is a loser. With a closely divided electorate on the abortion issue, it wouldn’t make sense to have two pro-choice parties anyway.
And that only works by forgetting that we discussed already that that division crumbles a lot when the electorate is informed of the draconian extra limitations that Republicans are coming with (This BTW is applicable to the points of bad governance and stupid mistakes coming from Republicans), many independents already consider the limits on abortion the supreme court came a few years ago are enough.
And if only Republicans would be up front about their hatred of women, their hatred of the poor, the middle class, gays, Muslims or any denomination that doesn’t agree with them, immigrants, children, veterans, scientists, etc. There wouldn’t even be a Republican party then
You know that doesn’t mean that red states are homogenous blobs of conservatives and blue states are homogenous blobs of liberals. I swear some of these characters do not exist in real life. I have proven in simple mathematical terms how the two claims are not the same.