Let’s Get Down to It…
Let’s just come out and say it…
It doesn’t matter who Democrats like and wildly support for president. If you’re a Dem, your support doesn’t matter if you actually come out and vote. Your vote is assured. AND, it doesn’t matter what your candidate’s pet policy happens to be. Most important, stop talking about turning Trumpists into Democratic voters. Even if the Dems ran George W. Bush, Trumpists would still vote for Trump because facts, criminality, global stability, and common decency don’t matter. Trumpists will vote for Trump even if the planet is burning down around their ears. They’re Fifth Avenuers.
Here’s what matters, and the ONLY thing that matters. Getting Joe & Jill Sam & Sarah SixPack. Period. When you’re saying, “I like So & So’s policies,” and, “So & So sure showed up So & So in the debate,” or, “So & So didn’t respond very well to So & So’s attack on what So & So did over 40 years ago,” NONE of that matters. What matters is that the ultimate Dem candidate must have broad appeal, because that candidate MUST get those who don’t pay attention and who are not the base. Being a smarty pants on policy or sharp elbowed in debates is entertaining as hell, but doesn’t get the votes. We saw that in spades in 2016. Hillary was WAY smarter, more experienced, and a serious smarty pants on policy, but she lost. She lost because she was a terrible candidate, and did not draw low information voters. Obama did. Twice. He did it twice by broad appeal, not detailed policies.
I’m watching the Dems repeat the same mistakes they made in 2016 (and in 2004 and 2000). Reams of policies don’t matter; splitting hairs on healthcare policy doesn’t matter; rehearsed on-stage attacks during debates don’t matter. Being a smarty pants doesn’t matter. Broad appeal is the only thing that matters. Which candidate will get the votes of Joe & Jill Sam & Sarah out in the heartland who don’t pay attention until November 2?
THAT’S what Dems should be talking about. Period.
Note the subliminal messaging using “Joe and Jill.” Biden, much, Hefe?
1Why are you so bad at this? Between this nonsense and referring to Kristen Gillibrand as a republican.
I’m just glad Newsblur lets me mute specific authors rather than having to mute the entire feed.
2@Charles – Happy now?
3You’re absolutely right.
So…why isn’t the party engaged in voter registration drives year-round? Why isn’t it official Democratic policy to have paper ballots?
…and where’s the beef?
Oh yes, it’s in attempting to appeal to suburban Republicans rather than recruit more voters.
4Running an R-Lite against a real R results in Truman’s comment being proved once again.
5Uh, it’s Kirsten. Tell me where I’m wrong. Not opinions you don’t like – where I’m wrong.
6There’s a primary for a reason.
I am the Democratic base and I get to vote for who aligns most closely with my values. That won’t be Joe Biden. If he’s the nominee, he’ll get my vote – just as Hillary did in 2016. But there are candidates who more closely align with my – quite liberal – values.
Further, I’m getting real tired of us 2016 Bernie supporters (I haven’t made my mind up yet for 2020) being blamed for the victory of the idiot-in-chief. The good majority of us held our noses and voted Hillary. It was her election to lose and she lost it on her own. With Russia’s help.
7EJ, you are doubtless the most consistent writer I encounter. At every opportunity, or even making opportunities, you come back to “She lost because she was a terrible candidate” as a dog goes back to its vomit. Odd that you keep leaving out the Russians and Comey. Comey’s out of the picture, but the Russians aren’t.
And I was fixing to agree with you in a limited way. Oh, well.
(Some) reasons why Kirsten Gillibrand is a Democrat:
1. she ran as one and caucuses with other Democrats (duh)
2. progressive voting record: “O’Rourke (and Klobuchar) have voting records that are more conservative than the average Democrat’s, while Harris and Booker and GILLIBRAND and Warren and Sanders are more progressive than the average Democrat.” (Matthew Yglesias: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/21/18150359/beto-orourke-voting-record)
3. her consistent focus on reducing sexual assault and rape, particularly in the military.
2&3 are decisive for me. I still don’t understand your loathing for blonde female Senators from New York.
8El Jefe is absolutely correct. Dems need to learn to win. The only thing I would add is that the Senate is an additional key. See the NYT today.
9Malarkey @ 7,
And with the help of the EC.
10@ Adam
Many moons ago, DH was the Harris county chair of a POTUS race.
He kept track of every voter we and the Democratic party registered. After the election he checked to see if they voted. Half did not.
If you register someone, plan on taking them to vote.
11Malarkey, I too was a hard core Bernie supporter who voted for Hillary and never doubted that I would if she was the candidate. This year there are so many good possibilities that I am happy to vote for most any of them. And I will vote. The election can’t get here soon enough for me.
12Yes, Hillary was such a terrible candidate she only managed to get three million more people to vote for her than the other guy.
Russia, Comey, vote suppression, election rigging, and a moronic media played a huge role in the election and will do so again (except Comey) no matter how perfect a candidate the Democrats run.
We not only have to run the best candidate possible, but fight all the other obstacles. Pretending trump won because Hillary was so awful can too easily lead to the notion that just running a “better” candidate is the key to winning, which is not the case.
13@nefer 13 – <3
Unfortunately, Hillary forgot about the Electoral College thingy. A couple more visits to swing states she took for granted, maybe?
14Whoever the Dem nominee, a case against trump must be made. A case that proves why he must be defeated. Palling around with dictators while dissing our allies, thus endangering our national security, actively dismantling government institutions of science research (see 7/1 Maddow show), allowing corporations (some foreign) to destroy our environment for profit (some being National lands belonging to all of us), defending white supremacists, his cruelty towards migrants. Policies are great, but this horrible excuse of a “human” needs to be prosecuted as one who only looks out for himself and not for the country he’s supposed to lead. In a just world, he and his family, along with cretins like Stephen Miller, S Bannon, etc etc etc etc will be locked up for a long time. Never to resurface except as examples of villains, u Patriots.
15Last part should read un-patriots
16Why Hilz lost in the perfect storm of contributing factors of which being not the warm fuzzy candidate of favor the obvious is being overlooked. Occam’s Razor. She ran out of gas. Taken down by a common bacterium commonly referred to as walking pneumonia. The scant margin that tanked the Electoral College might have been there for her had she been able to campaign at full strength. But she wasn’t. It’s over. It’s 2019 not 2016. Comparing any 2020 candidate to her would be the lost cause of apples and oranges.
But hey El Jefe, if you want to talk charisma, Kamala has it. Liz Warren has it. The aging and the not aged boy bands do not. And, charisma and policy are not mutually exclusive options in a candidate. Otherwise it would sound like Oprah would be the only person capable of taking down the dotard criminal.
17From fivethirtyeight.com: Registered Voters Who Stayed Home Probably Cost Clinton The Election (https://53eig.ht/2RQ6BxA)
From the Washington Post: 4.4 million 2012 Obama voters stayed home in 2016 — more than a third of them black (https://wapo.st/2ROFnY4)
It’s clear who Democrats should be reaching out to and the great majority of them are found in the heartland of America: The urban centers where the great majority of American voters live.
18Sorry, El Hefe @3, I thought it was a funny coincidence, not a cause celebre. Some people’s kids, eh? BTW, I’m rooting for Warren, but will support any democrat in the general.
19I don’t care who is selected for the Dems I will vote for them. ANYTHING is better than anything rePUKEian!!!
20Some policies will matter. The existing healthcare system and the tariff wars are hurting a lot of people in concrete and visible ways. Talking about how Democratic policies will concretely benefit people in those areas will help. It won’t win over the hard-core Trumpanzees, but it will win over more people than talking about stuff like emoluments or Trump’s business deals which nobody understands or cares about because those things don’t affect them personally. “Broad appeal” has to consist of something.
It’s a mistake to think of the electorate as hermetically-sealed-off homogenous blocs of “Trumpists”, progressives, moderates, and so on. Most people exist more along a spectrum, and not all people covered by a given label will react the same way to the same appeal.
21The Democratic Party relies TOO HEAVILY upon voters willing to hold their nose to vote for the DNC favored candidate. That is not realistically sustainable. It’s an awful model. Would you patronize a business or restaurant under the same circumstances?
This election is about two organizations;
One is bereft of ideas whilst the other has nothing but bad ideas.
The Democrats seemingly just want to play good cop against the Republican bad cop. Plus,Republicans WANT to govern….Democrats,just want to keep the party going relying upon the donations of donors to keep their rice bowls filled.
22@msb – I say Hillary was a terrible candidate because she was, and there is wide consensus that this is true. The election should have never been close enough for the small amount the Russians moved the vote. Hillary was dubbed the Queen of Coasting for a reason. She took Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio for granted, and she blew it. Also, she ranted like a teabagger until Bernie jumped in, pulling her back to the center.
Gillibrand is just like Hillary, though not quite as much of a wind and, but close. She kneecapped Franken to take him out. She’s polling in the single digits because a LOT of other people feel the same as I. These things are all true; I’m sorry you don’t like the answers.
23El Jefe,
24It isn’t time for Burning Man. Yes, given the straw man you construct, Uncle Joe is the only logical answer. But people vote/don’t vote for many different reasons. “Broad appeal” is a pretty vague qualifier for our candidate to possess, though the Starr Chamber and the last 20 years of R vilification made sure HRC did not have it. You agree that the basic Dem will vote for the candidate, if they vote, so the key will be voter turnout. So what has uncle Joe got that will get another 4 million people off their butts and to the polls on election day?
Want to win in 2020? One way is to stop relitigating 2016 ad nauseum. The horse is dead, stop beating it and start looking forward. Because whether or not I agree with Jane and PKM (which I do), or you, banging this particular drum just gets folks dander up and increases the odds of providing additional ammunition to the circular firing squad (which you and I both think Dems are in danger of engaging in).
My two cents (see how I upped the value of my totally unsolicited advice!):
I would sure hope, that all folks who classify themselves as Democrats would pull the lever next to whomever the nominee is. If they are as smart and informed as the patrons of this website, whom I consistently learn from (el Jeffe included), they’ll do just that. But you are making an assumption that they’ll be excited and enthusiastic enough to show up, to contribute their time and money, and to arm twist their friends and family into showing up. That is not a given.
Here’s the deal did some folks who voted Bernie not vote or vote 3rd party? Probably. Did some traditional Democratic voters feel neglected and stay home? Sure enough. Were lots of Democrats not inspired enough to campaign etc.? Clearly.
Trump’s core voters are his core voters and they are NOT changing. If looking at dead children, caged children, children whose basic sanitary needs are not being met isn’t enough, if giving away the store to Kim Jong-un isn’t enough, if patting MBS on the back after he dismembered a journalist working for an American newspaper isn’t enough, if taking away healthcare from millions of Americans isn’t enough, if 24 credible allegations of sexual assault including audio and video aren’t enough – there is nothing, absolutely NOTHING that will change their vote. So forget about it.
Get Democrats excited, convince them change can and will happen and that they damn well better work for it or we are all toast (see: wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, flint water crisis, removal of darn near every protection for our environment courtesy of diminished EPA regulations). If there are no policies, if there are no issues being addressed as Infidel suggests, Democrats will lose to the slogan believers. Go get the few 10-20% of Americans who are “Independents.” Above all we must work to stop voter disenfranchisement at all costs because Adam, Tom and Crone are absolutely right, register them and get them to the polls, don’t assume it’ll happen any other way.
Finally, Tom is absolutely correct we are taking our eyes off the prize and ignoring the importance of the Senate at our own peril. Want to know how we got in this mess? We ignored the statehouse, Republicans didn’t and now we have gerrymandering.
25Deb,
26Exquisitely put. Could you please post this in every thread?
Thanks Wally, you are too kind! I learn a lot from lurking around here and reading the comments!
Quinnipiac poll of 2020 Democrats
Biden 22% (-8 since last month)
Harris 20% (+13)
Warren 14% (-1)
Sanders 13% (-6)
Buttigieg 4% (-4)
Booker 3% (+2)
O’Rourke 1% (-2)
Klobucahr 1% (-)
Castro 1% (+1)
Gabbard 1% (+1)
Yang 1% (-)
Interesting key number in the brand new Q-poll: Black voters.
Biden – 31%
Harris – 27%
Sanders – 16%
Booker – 5%
Warren – 4%
A 50-point lead with black voters, like Hillary had in 2016, is a “firewall.” A 4-point lead is not.
27Prescient!
‘Nuff said!
28@Deb – I AM trying to get folks dander up. Success! I’m sick and tired of watching the Dems do the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Dems need to understand 2016 to avoid repeating it. Sweeping it under the rug just allows Dems to fall right back into the same old navel gazing and fantasizing about a magical candidate fixing everything. It simply doesn’t work that way. Republicans didn’t drive our government and society into the ground starting with GWB or even Reagan. They started in 1961 with Goldwater. Since then, assisted by voodoo economists like Arthur Laffer and radicals like Grover Norquist, they’ve turned common sense on its head. They did that by taking over precincts, school boards, city and town councils, and state houses. They then took the House, the Senate and now even the Supreme Court. That’s taken 50 years. It will take 50 years to take it back, but only if the goddam party stops acting like IT has for the last 50 years. Harris, Warren, blah, blah, would be great presidents, but if they don’t WIN, we get 4 more years of toxic waste. We simply can’t afford that. I urge Dems to stop thinking pie in the sky and utopia, and start talking about carpet bombing Trump. That takes a candidate who’s been there and who has broad appeal.
29“I’m sorry you don’t like the answers.”
30Says the person who ignored most of mine, amid the soft whoosh of shifting goalposts.
“I’m trying to get folks’ dander up”
Yes, by relitigating 2016. Deb’s doing a better job. How about learning from her?
nefer –
thanks for the reminder that the alleged “worst Dem candidate in history” won by about 3 million votes. Incidentally, her vote total was higher than anyone else’s in history, except for Obama’s in 2008 and 2012. Which is why I’m so damned sick of having that particular piece of crap continually strewn before us.
Here’s a notion; maybe Hillary lost not because she was the worst candidate ever, but because Trump was. Sounds counterintuitive, but follow.
Many people weren’t happy about Hillary being the candidate. And Trump was so obnoxious; and Hillary was doing well enough in the debates and such; and the polls were so favorable, that some people who didn’t like her thought it would be safe to stay home or do a 3rd party protest vote. They gave in to their personal snits and resentments, deciding not to do a “hold your nose” vote. And in a few key states, that was all it took. I imagine quite a few of those voters would give anything for a do-over.
I don’t know who we’ll end up with as our candidate; whether we’ll end up with a real progressive, get pulled back to the center, or (worst option, IMO) run someone tho thinks we can win on a nostalgia ticket.
But people not voting, because their favorite candidate didn’t ride in on a unicorn and promise to fulfill their every electoral desire? Staying home and figuring that it won’t really matter? This time, that for damned sure ain’t gonna happen.
31@Msb – Sorry you can’t take fact based opinions. My advice is if you don’t like it, don’t read it.
32EJ, still not dealing with anything I actually said.
33If you really don’t want a circular firing squad, how about using fewer bullets more accurately?
@Msb – I get it. You like getting the final word. I responded in full to your assertions, you just don’t like the answer. You can’t accept that Hillary blew it in 2016 to the point that the Russian nudge put Trump over the top in states she should have easily won. You claim I’m re-litigating 2016, which is untrue. I’m pointing out that many Dems apparently didn’t learn anything from that catastrophe. Sorry you don’t like that opinion.
34Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to relive it.
35Progressives see crititism as trying to aicheve a more perfect union.
Just as thuglicans believe any crititism is unpatriotic and damaging.
In reference to past campaigns if one is not willing to investigate and identify past errors and mistakes what is to stop us from repeating them.
Yes in 2016 a plethora of factors contributed to hillary’s loss. Russian intervention, media incompetence, dark money, voter suppression etc.
But, to me, the bottom line was hillary kept up the drum beat of “electability” and promised that her “baggage”, real and fake-mostly fake, and her errors of playing into those tropes were irrelevent because she promised that she would overcome them and win.
She failed.
A bad campaign run more as a coronation then a hard fought battle. I have read numorous articles citing examples such as when Obama showed up at a rally for her and afterwards while he worked the crowd he realized that she had bagged it and gone home.
The candinate has to put in the hours. Espiacially when faced with the uphill struggle she had to fight against lies, dark money, russians and cheap tricks.
In the end it was obvious she was unwilling to put in the time and effort.
She lost to a clown.
She promised she was the only D candinate that could beat this trainwreck, she hammered her own ‘electability” while disparaging Bernies.
Just as gore did against bradley when he lost to the twit.
Electability is a myth and a bogus arguement used by establishment figures to disparage progressives.