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JeffersonClay posted:Wedge issues designed to fracture the republican coalition aren't bipartisan outreach. She wasn't proposing some grand bargain when pointing out Reagan would have hated Trump. The assumption that Republicans would fracture was faulty, but had it worked it wouldn't have been a bad strategy. JFC, you're literally a parody of yourself at this point.
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Dec 23, 2016 22:53
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JeffersonClay posted:Wedge issues designed to fracture the republican coalition aren't bipartisan outreach. She wasn't proposing some grand bargain when pointing out Reagan would have hated Trump. The assumption that Republicans would fracture was faulty, but had it worked it wouldn't have been a bad strategy. Except none of that matters; the point is that it allows downticket republicans to float irregardless of Trump, which is bad when the GE is one of the best times to hold state reps' heels to the fire. It was a "we should band together to save common decency and professionalism! instead of "look at what this mindset produces, Behold Trump". It was a careless and arrogant grab for a larger mandate at the expense of the downtickets whos chance to succeed was used to support Hillary.
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Dec 23, 2016 22:54
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Aurubin posted:You could say this about literally anything. I think if Hillary had campaigned and won with promises to voucherize medicare it still would have been a bad strategy. Neurolimal posted:Except none of that matters; the point is that it allows downticket republicans to float irregardless of Trump, which is bad when the GE is one of the best times to hold state reps' heels to the fire. It was a "we should band together to save common decency and professionalism! instead of "look at what this mindset produces, Behold Trump". So you think basket of deplorables was good strategy and she should have said they're all deplorable instead of half? That's an interesting counterfactual, I'm not so confident.
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Dec 23, 2016 23:03
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JeffersonClay posted:I think if Hillary had campaigned and won with promises to voucherize medicare it still would have been a bad strategy. I think she shouldn't have focused on mythical moderate republicans. Moderate republicans changed to dem after Mccain and the RNC went nuclear 8 years ago. She should have focused on securing the base and appealing to undecideds. Not trying to Mindfreak trump away from michigan and drag honorable samurai representatives towards the party.
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Dec 23, 2016 23:08
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Neurolimal posted:I think she shouldn't have focused on mythical moderate republicans. Moderate republicans changed to dem over 20 years ago when Bill ran.
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Dec 24, 2016 00:27
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Neurolimal posted:I think she shouldn't have focused on mythical moderate republicans. Moderate republicans changed to dem after Mccain and the RNC went nuclear 8 years ago. She should have focused on securing the base and appealing to undecideds. Moderate republicans that voted for Obama in '08 (or Clinton in '96) didn't have some political conversion and become democrats for life. Fewer of them voted for Obama in '12, and even fewer of them voted for Clinton in '16. We can theorize about their voting behavior all day but it's silly to suggest these people never existed. Appealing to them was only bad strategy in hindsight.
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Dec 24, 2016 00:51
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JeffersonClay posted:Moderate republicans that voted for Obama in '08 (or Clinton in '96) didn't have some political conversion and become democrats for life. Fewer of them voted for Obama in '12, and even fewer of them voted for Clinton in '16. We can theorize about their voting behavior all day but it's silly to suggest these people never existed. Appealing to them was only bad strategy in hindsight. A poo poo strategy is a poo poo strategy no matter the excuse. Especially since there was no reason for them to think it was actually working.
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Dec 24, 2016 00:53
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enraged_camel posted:The New Deal was an anomaly in American history. It was a response to The Great Depression, a period when people were literally starving in the streets. In addition, Roosevelt got to stay in power for three terms, giving the policies a chance to entrench and solidify. World War II also helped, in the sense that it diverted the opposition's attention elsewhere. I know it was an anomaly, but it doesn't change the fact that it is historically popular. Running on cutting social security will get you a one way ticket to loserville. The point wasn't that it was a rare moment of progress, it's that the American people liked and still like the socialist programs, as long as they don't associate it with "Marxism" or some stupid bullshit. Having an open fascist in the President's seat is also a historical anomaly, so maybe leftist organizations, leaders, and policies can gain momentum in the almost guaranteed chaos of the Trump presidency.
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Dec 24, 2016 00:59
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JeffersonClay posted:Appealing to them was only bad strategy in hindsight. Actually, it was always clearly a bad idea because elections are rarely, if ever won by this. It's always about getting your base to turn out, and as we've seen, the GOP base is stable while Democrats sit home if they aren't enthusiastic. In this case, Clinton utterly failed to rally her people in Michigan and Wisconsin, probably by making her focus elsewhere and, y'know, rarely (never in the case of Wisconsin) going there or responding to the pleas for help. What wins elections is getting your loving base to show up, which means you have to appeal to your base. The Democratic party decided it didn't need a base and would just try to appeal to Republicans, all of whom ended up nutting up and voting for the Republican anyway. LIKE THEY DO EVERY TIME. Anyway, a lot of people called that it was a bad strategy because such a negative election campaign was bound to drive down turnout, and Democrats are the ones with the largest swings based on turnout because the GOP has a solid lock on the people who always turn out, the elderly white voters. Anyway, in summation, Bernie would have won, your leaders failed you, and the DNC needs to be purged of all Clinton hangers-on and be turned into a left-wing organization. daydrinking is fun fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Dec 24, 2016 |
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Dec 24, 2016 01:20
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JeffersonClay posted:So you think basket of deplorables was good strategy and she should have said they're all deplorable instead of half? That's an interesting counterfactual, I'm not so confident. There is a difference between saying "Republican politicians and policies are poo poo" and "Republican voters are terrible people." edit: And you can also avoid appealing to a segment of the population without insulting them, it's not like you have to choose between "appealing to Republican voters" and "insulting Republican voters."
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Dec 24, 2016 02:54
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enraged_camel posted:Same. Hilariously late quote, but this is so true it hurts.
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Dec 24, 2016 03:03
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JeffersonClay posted:I think if Hillary had campaigned and won with promises to voucherize medicare it still would have been a bad strategy. No, the point is that Clinton should not have tried to make Trump appear like an anomaly that somehow defied the GOP playbook of promising help for the (white) workers and then loving them over when in power. Making him appear like he was anathema to the party elite only strengthened his image as a change from the status quo, which is why so many desperate people ended up going for him out of hope that their gamble would pay off. "Dangerous Donald" was a bad idea because it was so easily interpreted as "dangerous to the established order". Even if this worked, it would have meant that the Republicans wouldn't have to pay a political price for nominating him and rallying their troops around his candidacy. They are already shameless enough without giving them this kind of opening to evade responsibility.
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Dec 24, 2016 04:07
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Neeksy posted:No, the point is that Clinton should not have tried to make Trump appear like an anomaly that somehow defied the GOP playbook of promising help for the (white) workers and then loving them over when in power. Making him appear like he was anathema to the party elite only strengthened his image as a change from the status quo, which is why so many desperate people ended up going for him out of hope that their gamble would pay off. "Dangerous Donald" was a bad idea because it was so easily interpreted as "dangerous to the established order". Every Clinton attempt to respond in kind to "Crooked Hillary" was absolutely laughable, and "Dangerous Donald" takes the cake. She might as well have called him "Badass Donald," because Clinton calling him dangerous just makes him seem cool to people who hate Washington.
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Dec 24, 2016 04:11
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enraged_camel posted:Same. Goes to show how fast things can shift. And if Trump is disastrous enough (he will be) it may very well cause another swing.
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Dec 24, 2016 05:05
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Goes to show how fast things can shift. And if Trump is disastrous enough (he will be) it may very well cause another swing. Truth be told the GOP is really fragile. If Trump fails, then they are in a world of hurt. The reality is though is that the Democrats have been hanging on to a thread for at most optimistically 15 years. It was just overshadowed by Obama and the 2008 sweep which was a response to a financial crash. I got laughed at by people on here by saying that 2008 was an "accident' and that the Democrats really don't know how to win elections and appeal to people, that they only (briefly) gain when the other side fails. 2016 proves this in droves. The party doesn't really appeal to anyone but well off uptown liberals.
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Dec 24, 2016 05:21
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Hobologist posted:It probably could have given us a third Clinton term in 2000. People were saying that Al Gore would have won if he appointed Clinton his chief of staff and said "I'll do whatever he tells me to."
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Dec 24, 2016 08:27
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A Buttery Pastry posted:How could Clinton have a third term in 2000 when Reagan would be president until 2004? Reagan was actually, literally demented in his last few years in office. He wouldn't have been able to function at all for another 4 years.
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Dec 24, 2016 08:46
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punk rebel ecks posted:Truth be told the GOP is really fragile. If Trump fails, then they are in a world of hurt. Whereas Dem's have to explain 'well, yes no one likes killing babies but stopping a pregnancy early in various situations is best for the mother until she's ready', or 'well, yes red tape is bad but not having lead paint in your walls is good'... and on top of that they have to propose legislation that will actually fix the problem, and even then it's a crapshoot if it actually will. I guess how do you have a coherent message with content when the other side is just spouting out boogeymen & simple sexy solutions.
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Dec 24, 2016 08:48
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JeffersonClay posted:Wedge issues designed to fracture the republican coalition aren't bipartisan outreach. She wasn't proposing some grand bargain when pointing out Reagan would have hated Trump. The assumption that Republicans would fracture was faulty, but had it worked it wouldn't have been a bad strategy. There were a whole bunch of problems with Hillary's campaign. But on that front it appears that the Hillary campaign assumed that the Republican voting constituency was going to act in good faith when it came to their professed beliefs of being the moral party. The public view is that staid republican voters are getting increasingly pissed off with the loving awful behavior of their own party's establishment. Driving a wedge between them by using an appeal to decency looks good...On paper. Never mind the constant harping from groups from some groups and people on the Republican end about the morality of (group or person here). Contrast that with Trump amping up the worst parts of the party's politics and I can see the strategy they were going for. It's just dumb as hell when you look at the historical behavior of the Republican voting base. Granted, there are lots of voters in the Republican party who aren't outright balls to the walls turbo-bigots but they didn't form the core segment of Trump's original voting bloc. Nor were they any really large part of his public voice or outreach effort outside of the usual weasel Republican politicians and pundits. Neither Hillary nor her campaign was eever going to reach those people and she had an uphill battle to begin with when it came to the Republicans leaning more towards moderate thanks to at least two decades of bullshit being slung at her to see what stuck. Really, it wasn't that big of a gamble to appeal to decency if you look at it from the perspective of someone who hasn't gone in depth into the mindset of a large portion of the constituency. Though that does mean that Hillary's campaign was pretty stupid and inept. I mean, the Republican voting base and the politicians have both been shrieking about Reagan-esque policies and a number of abhorrent ideals cloaked in upright speech and pleas for morality for years. See anything to do with justifying minority abuse, defunding safety nets for profit, cloaking hatred and generally just punching down via false moral or religious values, etc, etc as examples. Those are pretty much a core party platform for even moderate Republicans at this point even if they never really think about what those things mean. Looking at it from the perspective that the base was honest about wanting a change and to draw a line in the sand against the behavior of Trump and establishment elites in the party means that an appeal to decency and morality ought to have worked. It's just that apparently Hillary's campaign forgot that the moral facade was often a mask for what the fringe right and the increasingly radicalized portions of the Republican base really wanted. After all, trying to make an appeal to decency and morality to people who use it as a social and political prop to punch down and hurt people is never going to work because those people have no true interest in being moral or decent. That's why evangelical voters turned out in drat near record numbers after Trump promised to appoint a justice that would repeal Roe V Wade despite the fact that Trump is basically Mammon incarnate by their own beliefs. That's also why every time something horrible came out about Trump or his supporters (The sexual assault, the deplorables remark, etc, etc.) polls would show his support within the party briefly surging before rapidly dropping down to either a prior level or a level beneath what it was. Without that constant affirmation that yeah, this is the time for bigoted shitheads to unite and out themselves they started eating each other until Trump started putting on another spectacle or someone fell for his schtick again. You could even see it happening in real time if you watched Twitter and other social media like a hawk. TL;DR: It's not a real shocker that a bunch of groups that were openly lying about the nature of their beliefs suddenly decided to implicitly drop the moral segment of their arguments and seize what they saw as victory. What is shocking is that more people didn't see it coming. Even people who weren't pro-Hillary on these forums were sure that Trump dropping the dog whistling act that Republicans have relied on for almost half a century now would end up biting him in the rear end on election day. And all that being said: What's truly, truly, truly, shocking is that a loving presidential campaign didn't understand the nature of what they were dealing with. Those are the exact sort of people who ought to have an insight into how voting blocs in the opposition work! Edit: Goddamn, that was way more words dissecting the Hillary campaign's awful PR gently caress ups than I wanted to type. Archonex fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Dec 24, 2016 |
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Dec 24, 2016 08:54
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Rexicon1 posted:Reagan was actually, literally demented in his last few years in office. He wouldn't have been able to function at all for another 4 years.
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Dec 24, 2016 09:36
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punk rebel ecks posted:Truth be told the GOP is really fragile. If Trump fails, then they are in a world of hurt. I disagree. Right-wing nationalist movements have been picking up steam around the world, as people are realizing that centrist neoliberal policies benefit the wealthy at everyone else's expense. This puts the GOP in a very advantageous position, because as a party they already represent right-wing values. If anything, Trump's nomination was the base's way of telling the party that their establishment, represented by kinda-sorta conservative candidates such as Rick Perry, Jeb Bush and Rubio, was not extreme enough. In fact Trump called them out during debates on this very point. Now that he has been elected, the rest of the GOP has no choice but to follow in his footsteps and become even more extreme. Oh, there will definitely be resistance, but that's not fragility. It's just a show. Most Republican politicians secretly dream of Trump's vision for America becoming a reality. It's the Democratic Party that is in a very fragile position. It needs to make large and meaningful strides towards the left if it wants to survive, which is something that will be very difficult to do due to political inertia. There is a very good chance that it will stubbornly remain a centrist, neoliberal party, and if that happens, it will cease to exist by 2025. Essentially it comes down to this: it's much easier for a right-wing party to move further towards the right than it is for a centrist party to move towards the left.
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Dec 24, 2016 09:52
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EatinCake posted:I guess how do you have a coherent message with content when the other side is just spouting out boogeymen & simple sexy solutions. You insult them and call them nasty lovely assholes every chance to get. There's no more room for decorum or logic. When two people live in completely different realities, the only thing to do is to bully them and treat them like garbage. You aren't going to convince them, you aren't going to have debates with them, you aren't going to "show them a better way". You are going to fight them. In other words: Long live the dirtbag left.
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Dec 24, 2016 10:23
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Rexicon1 posted:You insult them and call them nasty lovely assholes every chance to get. There's no more room for decorum or logic. When two people live in completely different realities, the only thing to do is to bully them and treat them like garbage. You aren't going to convince them, you aren't going to have debates with them, you aren't going to "show them a better way". You are going to fight them. You don't need to bully them. That's their justification for being horrible assholes when presented with evidence on why the party is wrong about a given topic. And believe me when I say that they'll happily use being bullied to show themselves as martyrs if you turn that trick on them. We're past the point where we can afford to have our politicians be mealy-mouthed about them lying though. If a Republican is acting deplorable they need to just point it out and firmly stand by it. The worst thing Hillary Clinton did was walk back the deplorables comment when she got a teensy bit of pressure from the right and associated media over it. Knowing they wouldn't get called on their bullshit validated the right's behavior and did nothing to actually slow down the ever increasing tide of dick headed moves they pulled.
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Dec 24, 2016 11:12
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Archonex posted:You don't need to bully them. That's their justification for being horrible assholes when presented with evidence on why the party is wrong about a given topic. And believe me when I say that they'll happily use being bullied to show themselves as martyrs if you turn that trick on them. They literally already do this everyday. They walk all over common decency and we are cowed by our loving meaningless "decorum". I'm so loving done with that. We are through the looking glass and you will never reach these people with facts or anti-propaganda. And I hope that we have at least one politician who actually calls these people out on their stupid awful bullshit. But we won't because of "decorum". Instead every one of us need to stop worrying about being nice to these people and otherizing them as hard and as fast as we can. We live in the age of anonymous internet (for at least a little while longer) and we should be striving to use that to push against these monstrous pieces of poo poo.
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Dec 24, 2016 11:31
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Rexicon1 posted:They literally already do this everyday. They walk all over common decency and we are cowed by our loving meaningless "decorum". I'm so loving done with that. We are through the looking glass and you will never reach these people with facts or anti-propaganda.  In what way has the left acted with the faintest shred of decorum over the past 8 years? Or, for that matter, in the past month and a half.
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Dec 24, 2016 13:17
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This may have already been brought up but this is one long rear end thread. I was just thinking, can it be plausibly said that the leaking of the Trump pussy tape may have helped Hillary lose? When it was first leaked Trumps polling numbers absolutely tanked and Republicans couldn't run fast enough away from him. I'm sure if the election had been held that week Hillary would have won by a large margin. But as the days and weeks went on people became more and more desensitized and indifferent to all the Trump sex stuff and his numbers began to recover as Relublicans came back to him. But the Hillary campaign had shifted their entire strategy on attacking Trump's character and bringing up the tape and allegations over and over again. Pretty much all of her ads became focused on this until he very end, basically replacing all the ads she had promoting herself or attacking Trump on his professional and business record. So by Election Day most people simply didn't care about these character flaws anymore, and the stuff they did care about had basically been thrown to the side by the Hillary campaign. With Republicans now safely back in the fold and independents turned off by Hillarys lack of connection to their concerns she was now screwed. Does that make sense? Christ if only that tape he'd been leaked two weeks later, Trump would have been done.
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Dec 24, 2016 13:51
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Sun Wu Kampf posted:
Just to make sure we're on the same page: do you think that the democrats (not the leftists) are an effective advocacy group against the oligarchical forces that are poisoning any semblance of democracy in this country? Or, Do you think that they are obsessed with optics and "being the bigger man" against a radicalized neo fascist movement that has no intention of "meeting us halfway" on anything? Also. I don't think you understand irony.
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Dec 24, 2016 14:02
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punk rebel ecks posted:Truth be told the GOP is really fragile. If Trump fails, then they are in a world of hurt. It's not so much that the Democrats "don't know how to win" as that the Republicans have locked in systemic advantages (gerrymandering, voting day is a workday so retirees vote more easily, voter ID and other voter suppression, etc) that the Democrats need unusual circumstances to overcome. We start every game twenty points down. The Democratic Party appeals to plenty of people. Just not enough of the people who matter. Democrats win popular vote routinely not just for President but also for House.
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Dec 24, 2016 15:30
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enraged_camel posted:I disagree. Right-wing nationalist movements have been picking up steam around the world, as people are realizing that centrist neoliberal policies benefit the wealthy at everyone else's expense. On the contrary, democracy can't work like that, if each party entrenches at the extreme we're doomed. The only hope is that the extremes peel off and leave a strong enough center to take back control. This isn't impossible, Trump already blurs a bunch of lines which some farther left could get behind, such as limiting free trade and intervening to save jobs.
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Dec 24, 2016 16:27
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enraged_camel posted:I disagree. Right-wing nationalist movements have been picking up steam around the world, as people are realizing that centrist neoliberal policies benefit the wealthy at everyone else's expense. This is a good point. Hieronymous Alloy posted:It's not so much that the Democrats "don't know how to win" as that the Republicans have locked in systemic advantages (gerrymandering, voting day is a workday so retirees vote more easily, voter ID and other voter suppression, etc) that the Democrats need unusual circumstances to overcome. We start every game twenty points down. They only won the popular vote in the House and didn't get a majority voters once in 2010.
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Dec 24, 2016 16:28
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punk rebel ecks posted:
Yeah, that's enough for my point though. Think what Obama could have accomplished with a Democratic House in 2010. Think where we would be now.
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Dec 24, 2016 17:08
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Rexicon1 posted:You insult them and call them nasty lovely assholes every chance to get. There's no more room for decorum or logic. When two people live in completely different realities, the only thing to do is to bully them and treat them like garbage. You aren't going to convince them, you aren't going to have debates with them, you aren't going to "show them a better way". You are going to fight them. 
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Dec 24, 2016 17:08
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Rexicon1 posted:Just to make sure we're on the same page: do you think that the democrats (not the leftists) are an effective advocacy group against the oligarchical forces that are poisoning any semblance of democracy in this country? Wait, how does this narrative survive the trump election? The 'oligarch' republican establishment went into open war with Trump and completely lost to disenfranchised middle/lower class rural white people. The narrative that our problems chalk up to capitalist influence of democracy have always been oversimplified and the idea that, say, the establishment really chooses candidates or elections is completely dis-proven. Not to mention they fuel the same 'screw the system'/'it can't get much worse' fire that's successfully empowering the left's opposition. Voters really have control of the country in a meaningful way which is why it's a huge problem that a lot of them don't seem to get that.
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Dec 24, 2016 17:54
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah, that's enough for my point though. Think what Obama could have accomplished with a Democratic House in 2010. Think where we would be now. Not too much different IMO. Especially since, despite passing a some decent amount of legislation in 2009, not much of it was radical. Not to mention that they lost their super majority in the Senate, which is the only reason they got a vast majority of their legislation passed. Regardless, it's one time, in decades. It doesn't change the fact that the Democratic Party is a mess and doesn't appeal to most Americans. People in today's America don't want a milquetoast centrist party, and I'd argue that they never likely did as Clinton's victories were an accident brought upon hilariously low turnout form both sides of the aisle. punk rebel ecks fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Dec 24, 2016 |
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Dec 24, 2016 18:41
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You really can't say the Democrats don't appeal to most Americans when they consistently win the popular vote. The Democratic loss is a creation if Republican policy. There is a popular majority in favor, just not a big enough majority.
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Dec 24, 2016 19:28
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TyroneGoldstein posted:Luke Warm Take: Tulsi Gabbard. I guess Muslims won't exist in 4 years anyway, why not
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Dec 24, 2016 19:32
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EatinCake posted:Whereas Dem's have to explain 'well, yes no one likes killing babies but stopping a pregnancy early in various situations is best for the mother until she's ready', or 'well, yes red tape is bad but not having lead paint in your walls is good'... and on top of that they have to propose legislation that will actually fix the problem, and even then it's a crapshoot if it actually will. "we need to stop greedy businesses from putting toxins in our paint to make a quick buck" "it's the woman's body, it's her choice" Dems aren't going to get anywhere with the self deprecating aw shucks routine. They aren't a fat teenager trying to get a date.
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Dec 24, 2016 19:58
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the trump tutelage posted:It's really not hard to simplify a message and if the Dems can't think of a way to do it then they need to get out of their safe spaces and go talk to the people they claim to represent.
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Dec 24, 2016 20:12
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Hillary carried a printer all the way to California, only for Trump to come and seduce the country away from her.
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Dec 24, 2016 20:31
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asdf32 posted:On the contrary, democracy can't work like that, if each party entrenches at the extreme we're doomed. The only hope is that the extremes peel off and leave a strong enough center to take back control. The only thing centrism does is leave huge portions of the population unsatisfied. asdf32 posted:This isn't impossible, Trump already blurs a bunch of lines which some farther left could get behind, such as limiting free trade and intervening to save jobs. Huh? Leftists definitely are not going to be in favor of saving jobs by bending over backwards for and giving huge tax breaks to corporations.
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Dec 24, 2016 22:06
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