archangelwar posted:

But this Team Progressive vs. Team Liberal faction split is becoming ridiculous. I have been dreaming of a progressive push for far longer than the primary candidacy of Bernie, but I am not going to let some small recent concessions fool me into believing that these gains represent the philosophical rejection of liberal tradition required to unseat the Dem Establishment. The aimless and often formless populist sentiment against government (and increasing apathy) and in favor of symbolic gestures against 'Establishment' should not be misconstrued, and solidifying a grassroots effort to create lasting philosophical shifts in the voting base will require much more than leveraging currents of dissatisfaction. Republicans have leveraged this through scapegoating and contrarianism, and while it wins elections, it has left them fractured and adrift... I fear what will come of these wins, as the destructive potential is huge, but I don't wish for another party to follow this path.

Dead Cosmonaut posted:

There’s no point in defending a primary system that does not reflect the voting map of national elections.

Ytlaya posted:

While the people who think Hillary is worse than Trump or is some uber-corrupt cackling evil person are dumb (the people in these threads I'm talking about should be obvious), I don't think it's unreasonable to focus a lot of effort on criticizing Democrats during our current situation.

Majorian posted:

The '16 Democratic platform was a very good one. It's too bad that's not what Clinton ran on, with anything resembling conviction or enthusiasm, in critical states that would have been receptive to it. Just saying "Look at my website! Look at the platform! Now let's talk more about Trump!" doesn't really sell your message.

MooselanderII posted:

Why are you being so dense? We all acknowledge that the platform listed good policies, but Hillary ran on a series of generic platitudes and not-Trumpism. She didn't do nearly enough on retail politicking good green jobs because her ground presence sucked and she could barely commit to any economic policy with certainty.

Fiction posted:

Wow Bernie lost in the closed primary which failed to pick the winning candidate for the election anyway? Your candidate was a pile of centrist dogs hit, just admit it.

MooselanderII posted:

Also, when are you going to understand the difference between primaries and general elections?

MooselanderII posted:

I'm not saying she didn't have economic plans, she did, but they are broad platitudes that didn't connect in the two states described. as I also stated, this was compounded further as she didn't put the work in to get these messages out.

I don't know why you guys keep drawing absolute conclusions from the primaries when as you acknowledge, they are distinct. I hope these obvious differences don't have to be described to the both of you in more detail.

Majorian posted:

She did, to a certain extent, but her message came out kind of confused and garbled. She said she was "going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business," which reinforced the (unfair but strong) narrative that she was cold and uncaring towards people who had until not too long ago been strong union supporters and enthusiastic Democratic voters. She supported TPP, then was mealy-mouthed about it until way too late in the campaign for her to make a proper 180. And, of course, she had been sold, very explicitly, as a real, genuine "partner" in her husband's administration. So, fairly or unfairly, she is always going to be associated with some of the bad things that happened in the 90's. The name "Clinton' is always going to be associated, to some degree, with NAFTA. And in the Rust Belt, a lot of voters are always going to associate NAFTA with the end of their livelihoods and the downfall of their communities.

If Clinton wanted to counter all of the baggage that she had coming into the campaign, she really needed to have a clear message geared at turning out the full Obama coalition. Focusing on her competence and the breadth of her public service was important for her to do, but it was only part of the equation.


Trump promised to repeal the ACA and replace it with something better, that would make their premiums and copays lower, though. One can say, "Well, anybody could have told that was a lie," and my instinct at the time was to think exactly the same thing. (you can go back and look at my posting history - I also foolishly thought that no one could believe something so dumb) But the fact that so many of his supporters seem genuinely outraged by the AHCA suggests to me that these were not exactly "informed" customers.

MooselanderII posted:

See Majorian's response above. In addition, Trump appealed to economic (as well as social) anxieties, even if it was a confused mess. The point is these voters could and did say "he feels my pain" even if it was bullshit.

Majorian posted:

Very few of the thousands of policy prescriptions that came out of her campaign were memorable. "Build the wall" may be the dumbest campaign promise any of us has ever heard (and God-willing, ever will), but it was memorable. I'm a massive policy nerd, and yet I can't remember more than a handful of some of the specific things she promised. Everything on her platform seemed like a watered-down version of what Sanders was offering, after being put through hundreds of focus groups. And she capped it all off with some of the most uninspiring campaign slogans I've ever seen. "Stronger together"? "America is already great"? I can't think of a clearer misreading of the political landscape.

Clinton needed to be clear, consistent, and straightforward, and offer simple policy prescriptions. You can communicate nuance and not treat your voters like complete idiots, but your bottom line has to be as unmistakable as possible from the get-go, and it has to be as in-line with your stated principles as you can manage. She did not succeed at this.

Majorian posted:

What was that message?

And of course I want to see it. I want the Democrats to win in 2020; I'm completely willing to accept that Clinton did some things right, and I want to learn the right lessons from 2016.

Fiction posted:

The majority of nonwhite (young) people I know did not trust Clinton at all to work to help them in any helpful way. She did a terrible job of convincing anyone she would fight for them, and that's why she had such a poo poo electoral result.

Oh and Bernie lost to her in one of the least democratic parts of an already undemocratic system. Anyone who thinks he would have done worse than or the same as Hillary is deluding themselves.

MooselanderII posted:

So basically you're saying "she told them to go to her web site! What more could they want???!"

You're seriously claiming with a straight face that the primary and the general aren't distinct in a meaningful way? Primaries, depending on the state, can be closed elections for god's sake! It is at best a cross section of what a portion of the people you need to vote for you in the general looks like. Waaaaay more voters are up for grabs in the general that are not represented in the primary. So does Hillary or Trump winning their respective primaries mean that they are were both better general election candidates than their primary opponents? No, it means that they succeeded in the party controlled and arcane primary system is not representative of their chances in the general. I don't understand why you guys keep coming back to this, other than that it seems like a simple way to bless the primary system as bringing out the strongest candidates, which is incredibly naive.

Stairmaster posted:

Except the polls suggested he had greater favor-ability with the american public?

MooselanderII posted:

Economic and social justice aren't mutually exclusive and ignoring one let's your opponent divide and conquer.

Majorian posted:

It's an admirable message, and it's morally right. It definitely appeals to me. It certainly appealed to people where I live (California), and places like it. Unfortunately, there are a lot of places in the U.S. where that's not enough - places where that message felt like it ignored genuine misery and poverty.. As much as it sucks, those are places that decide presidential elections more than California or New York.

e: And, more importantly, it's a message that only works particularly well if the candidate extends that message to as many people in the country as possible. (or at least all of the voting groups he or she is trying to court) The message that a lot of workers in the Rust Belt feel like they've been getting from centrist Dems for decades is, "You don't have a place in our 21st century vision of America. Die off already."


Well, the reason why is because the Democrats likely aren't going to win in 2020 without getting at least a few of those white working class voters back. Which should be do-able. They voted for Obama, and while a lot of them may have unenlightened views about BLM, I don't buy the argument that this will forever prevent them from voting for an anti-racist candidate.

MooselanderII posted:

Two years ago Bernie was literally the butt of political jokes as a disheveled Vermont socialist. He looked like he was primed to be another Kusinich protest run and I didn't think he would last past Iowa? The fact that he did as well as he did is pretty amazing, all things considered. I do not think there is any question that he lost and he lost hard. However, what is irritating is that despite his insurgent primary campaign, which should have been a sign of how the electorate felt, Hillary did not meaningfully incorporate any of the lessons she should have learned from that campaign. Lots of people were fed up and wanted something different, and so it is so frustrating to look at how Hillary squandered the opportunity to meaningfully incorporate some sort of lesson from the primary campaign.

MooselanderII posted:

Okay, now we're back where we started. Read Majorian's post about Hillary's economic message again, he hits the nail on the head. Even you circled back to social justice when pressed on what her meaningful economic policies were.

KomradeX posted:

Man that Ronald Reagan is a dead end he couldn't even beat FORD for Gods sake!

Majorian posted:

In what way would we need to cater the message to fit the racism of other folk? I think clearly stating a progressive economic message, with conviction, would be enough to peel off a good chunk of those voters. It would have to be geared with their particular areas in mind, but I don't see being pro-union, pro-Medicare for all, pro-raising the minimum wage, pro-government investment in new industries for the Rust Belt, has to be something that "fits the racism of other folk."

Majorian posted:

Yet the Dems managed to perform this balancing act just fine in '08 and '12. The Rust Belt could possibly have gotten considerably more racist over the past four years, but I have to question the explanatory power of that hypothesis. Rust Belt communities have been unhappy about Democratic neoliberal policies for decades now, so it's not like it's the first time we've heard of it. Observers like Thomas Frank have been sounding the alarm for years: the Dems were losing important parts of their coalition, and were fiddling while Rome burned.

I appreciate that you're taking me at my word and giving my motives the benefit of the doubt. I can understand at least some of why the idea of catering to racists is completely a non-starter for you. I'll never be able to fully understand it, because I am a white cishet Christian-left male who lives in California and has a job. I am basically privilege personified. Point is, I get that if I were in your shoes, I would feel as you do, in all likelihood. Particularly since the only reason why people in Ohio get to decide elections is because of a two-century old idiotic institution called the Electoral College.

But I also know that things will not get better for PoCs while Trump and Sessions are in office. And I do not think we will get them out of office unless we show voters whose choices are likely to decide the next election that we give a poo poo about the parts of their grievances that ARE valid. (i.e.: health care premiums, cost of living, jobs) I could be totally wrong - God knows I was wrong about 2016's outcome. But that's a big part of why I'm convinced that a hard leftward push against the neoliberal inertia that has kept the Dem leadership from evolving is necessary.

Kilroy posted:

It's true that if progressives win elections in such a way where they end up owing that win in large part to people who are racist, even if nothing about their platform or rhetoric or anything else is itself racist, that's still going to pull the movement in a direction no one wants it to go. At the same time I'm interested in trying to get some people who are currently kinda racist, to kinda not be so racist, and you can't do that without engaging people. I'm all for targeting your messaging such you're saying the things that people care about to the people that care about it, but if it gets to the point where you're kinda sweeping poo poo under the rug then it's a problem and you've gone too far. I guess what I'm getting at is that if racists vote for progressives out of self interest, then they have to know when they're doing it that they're voting for a person and a movement that is absolutely not going to budge on whatever their pet racist cause is, whether it be shitcanning affirmative action or looking the other way with police brutality or whatever else. Not even an inch. Progressives need to make that clear and not allow for any ambiguity in the name of winning elections. If racists go to the polls and vote for progressives because they've fooled themselves in thinking (which is to say, because we've allowed them to) that the progressive movement is all about them getting a good deal on poo poo and to hell with the immigrants and black folks, then the progressive movement will fail even if the actual politicians aren't promoting any of that poo poo directly. It'll fail because it will be allowing the wrong expectations to take hold, and the backlash from that is inevitable. It will also fail because progressives of all ethnicities will find that they're in the company of a lot more racist shitheads than they signed on for, and moreover their leadership seems fine with that, and they'll lose enthusiasm and interest and stop going to the polls.

And it's important to keep in mind that a lot of these people are really good at ignoring cognitive dissonance and only hearing the things they want to hear, so progressives really do need to go out of their way to make it clear that if you're a bit of a white-people-first sort of person, that progressives and leftists aren't your allies.

Stairmaster posted:

You just said not to do bernie bullshit though?

Ferrinus posted:

The word "white" doesn't appear in your own article, though. He says democrats hosed up by not going after working class voters period.

Ferrinus posted:

Racism obviously made up a lot of Trump's appeal and the statement "Trump voters aren't racists" is, strictly speaking, a lie. It seems, however, that there are reasons other than faith in white supremacy that a politician might decide not to call everyone who voted for their opponent a racist.

Majorian posted:

That's hardly a message that Democrats can win with, though. Realistically, we still need their votes, whether you or I like it or not. Plus, there are a lot of minorities who live in Flint and Canton and Geary. Are we supposed to tell them to just hurry up and die, too? IMO, these are all people who have been hosed over by capitalism. That's something we need to fight against, and we need to be prepared to show solidarity with people who we might otherwise find pretty execrable.

quote:

Obama didn't run as a neoliberal, though. He ran on things like strengthening Medicare and Medicaid, opposed any time of social security privatization, and promised a strong public option for health care reform. Stuff like TPP and the sequester didn't really show up until his second term. Plus look at how he ran against Romney in 2012. He portrayed Romney as the rich white guy who fired your dad. That played well in the Rust Belt. It shouldn't have been too hard to have done the same thing to Trump.

quote:

You're right that the Dems have been losing parts of their coalition since the Civil Rights Act passed, but if the American political system has changed since 2008, it's certainly changed since 1964. The country's a lot more politically polarized and tribal than it's ever been. Johnson had northeastern liberal Republicans willing to jump ship, to make up for the southern Democrats he lost. The Democrats today don't have anyone to reliably fill the gap. No one's going to cross over from the Republican side of the aisle.

quote:

That's a very good question, and it's one that I don't entirely know the answer to. I think the Clintons did some good things for minorities in the 90's, and they deserve credit for it. They also made a lot of inveterate old white racists very, very angry, and it's pretty hard for me to blame black people for loving them for that. But I also think name recognition played a huge role. Most people, regardless of their race or ethnicity, don't delve too deeply into politics. Name recognition counts for a lot. I also think that minorities, particularly really underprivileged ones like black people, tend to vote for the primary candidate that they think is the safest bet for winning. That makes perfect sense to me; why the hell would you risk throwing away your vote on a candidate who's probably not going to win, when a Republican winning could put your livelihood and your life in very real danger? The problem is, backing the establishment only works from that perspective when they're any good at winning. Unfortunately, the establishment Democrats are pretty bad at it right now.

Not a Step posted:

Pretty sure 'blackguy32' only has one identity and will interpret everything through that lens. Any conversation that doesn't address race first and foremost is going to fall on deaf ears.

The Democratic Party is going to rip apart at the seams between the people who want to put economic justice first and blackguy32s race first faction. The elites that actually hold all the power will attach themselves to whichever side looks like its going to come out on top and/or is dumb enough not to notice the same old leeches are still in charge and still not doing anything. Its a massive political realignment, and I dont think theres enough good will to keep everyone on the same side.

Kilroy posted:

Yeah he is way too friendly with and forgiving of Trump voters. Even the most charitable view, of the Trump voter who has not a racist bone in their body or thought in their mind, who voted for Trump purely out of self interest somehow, the fact remains they voted for and empowered a man who is himself a racist, who surrounds himself with racists, who won't even disavow the support of a former leader of the loving KKK for gently caress's sake. I'm not so quick to overlook or forgive that and I'm disappointed that he is. In fact I think my hypothetical is basically impossible and the non-racist Trump voter is a contradiction in terms: voting for Trump makes you a racist - full stop.

I get what he's trying to do - he's trying to engage them, not cater to their racism. But he's going about it the wrong way. We can't allow Trump voters to absolve themselves of what they've done, and if they want us as allies I think there needs to be some contrition on their part. Not for not voting for Hillary of course, but for voting for Trump which is morally wrong even if the alternative is her. Letting them get away with "oh well I was just frustrated with all my economic anxiety " sends exactly the message I was warning against. If I run into Bernie Sanders or whatever I'll be sure to let him know If it makes you feel any better he's too drat old to be the center of gravity for the progressive movement for much longer.

Ferrinus posted:

Both Sanders and Clinton incorporated minorities and minority rights into their platforms. Sanders was the guy who actually invited BLM protesters up onto the stage and gave them the mic when they challenged one of his rallies, as I recall. Criticism of the DNC establishment and its campaign isn't a criticism of antiracist politics unless you've already bought the line that the center has a monopoly on social justice. As far as I recall neither candidate actually called for reparations or was even particularly noisy about affirmative action, so it's not like either was entirely satisfactory, but I don't think one was substantially worse than the other on the issue (actually I would put it to you that Clinton was worse in absolute terms because of her unwillingness (relative to Sanders, at least) to expand the welfare state, but that's a separate discussion). Like, whoever won the democratic primary would have been the general election candidate who actually incorporated minorities into their platform and therefore spawned arguments about the effectiveness/liability of running a racial justice platform in the event of their win or loss.

On the second point, Trump wasn't some kind of silver-tongued devil or political genius whose spell over the populace needs to be broken, and simply talking about how bad Trump is and how little like him you are has proven repeatedly to be a losing strategy. Clinton lost because of Democrat/independent disengagement, not Republican engagement, and if we don't want to just keep handing Republicans more and more power we have to figure out what the left is failing to do. So, I think "the Republicans didn't win, the Democrats lost" is both cogent analysis and a good message going forward; it has the chance to get leftists and independents disgusted with the democrats back on the democrats' sides, and it even gives any right wingers who experience moments of clarity or moral crises an easier-to-stomach path to voting for progressive politicians.

Not a Step posted:

about a video

Condiv posted:

bernie's dogwhistling? you might wanna take a few breaths

Condiv posted:

why not if pandering to them falls within our ideology? if improved healthcare pulls in these former obama voters what's the harm? likewise we need to be doing a hell of a lot more for the black community than the dems have. poo poo like rahm emmanuel getting in the way of justice should not be happening, and I really wish he would be expelled from the party for that poo poo (if it were possible)

p.s. if we're not pandering to these people, someone else will be. and that someone else is the KKK, who knows pandering will grow their ranks rapidly. let's not cede ideological ground to the extreme right even more than we have

Not a Step posted:

Hey, uh, not to shatter your world view or anything, but most people absolutely do not give a gently caress about the lives of minorities. Not in the slightest. And most minorities absolutely do not give a gently caress about the lives of *other* minorities. In fact, the vast majority of people do not give a gently caress about anything outside of their own front door. People don't give a poo poo about some brown person five states over. They want to know what is going to happen to *them*. Republicans have spent decades spreading the message that the brown person five states over stealing all the government aid is the reason *they* have to live in a dying hell hole.

Obama put in a gently caress ton of effort convincing people he would do something for *them*. Thats why he got votes. If the Democratic Party can't convince people that they will do something for them, personally, then they will continue to lose. 'Stronger Together' is the worst campaign slogan ever because no one gives a poo poo about their neighbor. There is no unity or group identity outside of a few woke morons. Promise to put a chicken in every pot and you get votes. Promise to make sure chickens are ethically raised and chicken farming will be equal opportunity but that you, personally, won't be getting a chicken and nobody loving cares.

The Insect Court posted:

Yeah, I know what you're talkin about



Do I really need to go pull out the chart that shows Hillary primary supporters being much more likely to hold racially resentful anti-black opinions? Kasich supporters were less racially resentful than Hillary supporters. And this is looking exclusively at '16, much less Hillary's '08 primary where she ran as a good ol' girl and Daughter of the South against that shiftless urbanite and cocaine dealer Barack Hussein Obama.

Condiv posted:

cause he sees a lot of those voters are feeling betrayed over trump's healthcare BS and he sees an easy way for dems to win their votes back without breaching our own ideology or embracing racism

seems p simple to me, but i'm not trying to claim bernie's secretly racist

Condiv posted:

that's why we need to be trumpeting a strong anti-racist message. embracing blm a bit more and having dem politicians actually start working to get murderous police behind bars and making them more accountable would be a start

that way, those who want to vote for us for the healthcare know we're not here to help them suppress PoC

Majorian posted:

You know that's not what I'm saying. There is nothing about saying "Medicare for all, raise the minimum wage, support the unions, and invest in new industries to revitalize the Rust Belt" that "panders to racists with hopes of winning their votes."

The Insect Court posted:

Wow. Wow. Looks like somebody is willing to defend Hillary' voters. smdh

Also I'm gonna post it anyway:



Good point on Hillary winning the PoC vote, too bad she didn't do as well with younger PoC voters who are basically the new Klan unlike their woke septuagenarian pro-Hillary counterparts.

Majorian posted:

Because I honestly don't believe that communities that voted for Democrats every election between 1984 and 2016, had strong union participation, consistently ask for a stronger social safety net, and are already becoming disillusioned with Trump, suddenly became "irredeemable" over the four-year span of time between 2012 and 2016. The reality is, these voters were likely as racist in 2008 as they were in 2016. And I'll bet you were perfectly happy to have their votes, to put a Democratic candidate over the top in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Ferrinus posted:

Basically I saw little reason to expect that general election candidate Sanders or president Sanders would do worse by non-whites than Clinton would, especially given the fact that he was more friendly, in general, to the redistribution of wealth.


She didn't ONLY talk about how bad Trump was. ...but she did talk about how bad he was a lot, proportionately, and the actual positive policy proposals were extremely meager dial-twiddling optimizations founded on the idea that the country needed to be optimized rather than radically corrected. Pushing back hard against increases to the minimum wage or the creation of a universal healthcare system doesn't make you fail to connect with white voters but with left-wing voters, such that your only remaining recourse is preexisting credentials with certain segments of the populace and a truly monstrous opponent to point attention at.

Ferrinus posted:

My understanding is that Clinton had three things going for her vis-a-vis older people of color:

1) Genuinely built up a lot of cred and good will over the years by organizing with the right communities,
2) It really did seem, at first, like she was the safer candidate to bet on against Trump,
3) Plenty of people of color are themselves conservative or conservative-leaning on many issues, but since the Republicans are the de facto party of white supremacy they've got to cast their lots with the Democrats instead

Condiv posted:

they pandered to them harder during 08, and obama still pulled them in with promises of public options. hillary did not offer them much beyond the status quo of despair they're in, so it's not very surprising they were taken in by a conman like trump. recent events have shown them growing more and more dissatisfied with trump too.

quote:

I already covered this. 08 was also when the economy started tanking and over time as the economy started correcting, he began to lose that support that was built up.


[quote]excuse me, i was under the impression that those who utilize dog whistles are racist. as for the some or many thing, being specific doesn't really help him here (see: hillary when she dumped on deplorables). I think it will be easy because i think healthcare and jobs are more important to these people than their racism.

I guess we are going to play semantics while you ignore that Bernie Sanders is going up to bat for many of these racist voters. Excuse me while I stop giving a poo poo about what the man has to say going forward. Also, bold words considering the history of racism in our country. Many of these people could be doing much better off if they allied with minorities, but that tends not to happen because reasons.

[quote]
if it causes them to be completely lost then so be it. hiding from pressing civil rights hasn't prevented a resurgence of the KKK, and the only way I see it getting better is if the dems start actively advocating for civil rights again and making it clear racism isn't actually dead (and never was).

Majorian posted:

I understand, and I admire you for being consistent and honest. You're right, I can't expect you to want to show solidarity with them. But what's your path to getting Trump out of office? It doesn't look like getting more minorities to vote is going to be enough; voter suppression is only going to get worse under Trump and Sessions, and according to the Cohn piece, black turnout was only 1% under what was expected, anyway. Are the Democrats supposed to pin their hopes of winning on the chance that they'll be able to beat those odds?

Alienwarehouse posted:

Rustbelt voters didn't vote for Trump due to racism. They voted for him because he was the only candidate who correctly pointed out (even though he didn't mean it) that endless outsourcing—NAFTA, WTO, TPP—and unchecked corporate greed destroyed their communities. And guess what, Hillary has stated numerous times that NAFTA was a success, and that TPP was a "gold standard" trade deal. Put two and two together and this isn't complicated. I'm not even getting into how Hillary virtually ignored all those states until the last week of the campaign, which by then reeked of desperation. And this fiction of yours that Bernie is "pandering" to racism or whatever the gently caress you've been on about the last few pages is completely disingenuous and has been factually disproven.

The Insect Court posted:

You're right, here's one focusing solely on under-30 PoC. If only young black people could abandon their racial self-hatred and join the "my nursing home will be intersectional or it will be bullshit" 65+ crowd who went so overwhelmingly for Hillary.

ISeeCuckedPeople posted:

The reality is the scorched earth strategies of pitching race against race as a voting motivator is extremely dangerous and we are suffering the consequences of that strategy.

If the US is to survive the next president has to be someone who can unite people.

Otherwise we will slowly spiral towards disintegration, violence, civil war, and continued discrimination.

I feel a lot of Democrats are far too idealistic and don't realize the precarious reality of their situations.

There is no guarantee that if they keep running on minority rights that a apartheid state will not be set up in america. And there is no guarantee that that apartheid state will ever be stopped.

History is written by the winners.

Condiv posted:

the problem isn't running on minority rights. it's pretending to run on minority rights so that they don't have to run on anything else that's a problem

Pedro De Heredia posted:

"Black people supported Hillary Clinton" is a not a very good argument.

There's many, many reasons why black people as a whole might vote for a specific candidate, many of which have nothing to do with the substance of that candidate's politics.

Because of those reasons, we don't actually know what the baseline of support for a 'generic Democratic candidate' might be among the black community. So merely saying "African Americans primarily supported Clinton in the last election" is meaningless, as there is no reason to believe that the natural state of things is for African Americans to be split 50-50 between the two candidates, or something of the sort.

What we do know is that Clinton underperformed with black voters in the general election relative to Obama, and that's part of why she lost the election.

Pedro De Heredia posted:

KomradeX posted:

Well someone in Democratic politics is the racist party and it's totally not the wing of the party that has governors veto bipartisan laws to help poor minorities get lawyers. Or the people who give Mike "Stop and Frisk" Bloomberg a prime time speaking slot. Or the one where the governor of Missouri allowed the Ferguson PD to go wild.

Nope only the left is racist and it is the center who are the real tolerant ones

Crowsbeak posted:

So none of what he said matters? Yeah I think its obvious you just want to pretend that we're racist and are mad that SUPER PREDATORS. HRC lost.

Crowsbeak posted:

So Koala going to actually post something or are you just going to randomly post someone elses tweets?

Crowsbeak posted:

Come on, spit out what you want to say. Also LOL @ Koalas saying she;s proud she's being annoying. Rather than actually explaining what she wants to say.

Majorian posted:

The Democrats got them in 2008 and 2012, though - by promising expansions to the welfare state, without doing racist bullshit.

Majorian posted:

I agree in principle, but it would probably be helpful to define what you mean by "coddling." To me, "coddling" implies bashing welfare queens, including means-testing in programs, promising white racists that only "deserving" people will get welfare, etc. If that's what you're thinking with coddling, where are you seeing such a drive among American leftists today? If not, what would you define as "coddling"?


Losing support among voters over time is a pretty common thing to happen for Presidents, though - and Obama left office with over-50% approval ratings. This would seem to imply that at least some Trump voters still approved of Obama by the time he left office, insane though that may seem.

Plus, if they only got them because the economy tanked under Bush, why did so many of them vote for Obama's reelection? The economy was recovering by then.

Majorian posted:

Well, I think Sanders was wrong to say that too, personally. But he's an 80-year old senator from the whitest state in the union, and he's not going to run for president again. I don't see Warren or Sherrod Brown or whoever the left-Dems run in 2020 making that mistake.


But he also talked to these communities directly, about the economic issues that were important to them. He won in those states, because he was able to portray himself as supportive of the welfare state, and portray Romney as the rich SOB who fired your dad.


I agree with a lot of the criticism, but I think this...

https://twitter.com/yottapoint/status/848360659922198528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

...is probably not the tac that a Clinton supporter wants to take. Lack of respect for facts on the ground was a big part of why she lost. There's a bit of a difference between Sanders saying something tone-deaf like he did here...and losing an election to Donald Trump.

Crowsbeak posted:

Remember one dumb racist means all poor whites are racist.

Not a Step posted:

Then, uh, ya'll absolutely hosed, because there are more of them by far then there are black people. The electorate is significantly majority white and will be for the foreseeable future, and Republican voter suppression is going to tilt that balance even further towards white. If an idiot racist baby man can defeat the most qualified candidate ever, chosen champion of black people, then the future looks pretty loving grim for the purity tests you and those like you want to institute.

The Democratic Party is dying. Even in the face of discount Mussolini all of the minority votes combined didn't pull out the win. You don't have the power. Turning people away isn't helping.

Crowsbeak posted:

Well most of us won't listen to mr. gently caress poor whites and Universal healthcare either.

blackguy32 posted:

It's worth trying for better social programs, but coddling these people in hopes of them coming to your side isn't going to work.

Majorian posted:

You posted someone else's tweetstorm, and most of the "data" that he cites, seems to come from his own website. Like, seriously - 90% of these links are to other Electionado blog posts, and the evidence that they cite links to other Electionado blog posts. Data from outside sources that he cites doesn't seem to enter into our discussion that directly. For example, he goes to a lot of trouble to demonstrate that Trump's supporters are disproportionately racist, sexist, and homophobic, motivated by racial resentment, etc. Well, no poo poo Sherlock. I don't think anyone here is denying that. The problem is, Ramachandran is talking about Trump supporters as a whole, as if they are a monolithic entity. They are not. There are soft Trump supporters and hard Trump supporters, as is the case with any candidate. Trump won this election because he won former Democratic voters in the Rust Belt, which swung states that Republicans hadn't won in literal decades. That was the major variable between 2012 and 2016, not the positions of the overall mass of Republican voters.


Cory Booker could get the nomination, but boy...that would be a huge gift to Republicans.

Majorian posted:

Paint us a plausible scenario of the core idea being executed effectively, if you would.


I don't think the problem is that Clinton ran wrong on leftist economics, so much as that she didn't run on them at all.