Posted on 11/30/2016 8:47:48 AM PST by reaganaut1
Since Election Day the great intra-Democratic debate over What Went Wrong has been dominated by two visions of how liberalism should be organized, identity politics versus economic solidarity, with writers variously critiquing or defending each tendency, or arguing that they are complements and that any tension can and ought to be resolved.
This is an interesting and fruitful debate (my own outsider’s contribution can be found here), but it has been mostly about a debate about two different ways of being (sometimes very) left-wing. There has been much less conversation about the ways in which the Democratic Party might consider responding to its current straits by moving to the right.
That kind of movement is often part of how political parties recover from debilitation and defeat — not just by finding new ways to be true to their underlying ideology, but by scrambling toward the center to convince skeptical voters that they’ve changed. It’s what Democrats did, slowly but surely, after the trauma of Ronald Reagan’s triumphs; it’s what Bill Clinton did after his 1994 drubbing; it’s what Rahm Emanuel and Howard Dean did, to a modest degree, on their way to building a congressional majority in 2006. And it’s also what Donald Trump did on his way to stealing the Midwest from the Democrats this year — he was a hard-right candidate on certain issues but a radical sort of centrist on trade, infrastructure and entitlements, explicitly breaking with Republican orthodoxies that many voters considered out-of-date.
If the idea of moving rightward seems distinctly strange to today’s Democrats, it’s partially because until this month’s rude awakening, much of liberalism was in thrall to demographic triumphalism
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“Can the democrats move right” is kind of like asking if a guy standing on the North Pole can move south. It’s pretty much the only way he can go.
The Demoncrats are doing just fine as they rapidly move even further left. They’ve got themselves where we want them.
No. Next question.
Theyou can’t move to the right.
Not without spontaneously combusting.
THAT was their job in the FIRST place ... infiltrate American politics and destroy America.
Yeah right. The House Dems have just re-elected Nancy Pelosi.
California won’t let them. Catch 22.
Bella Pelosi (76 years old) has won Minority Leader in a 2 to 1 vote against her much younger challenger Tim Ryan (43 years old).
Pelosi knows where all the skeletons and juveniles are hiding in the Democratic Caucus.
NYTs, when you take that first step to the right, the Democrats will be better for it.
You would choose to go out of business rather than do that.
We know...
Pelosi was just reelected as minority speaker.
That’s your answer.
I’m actually tickled she won. Let America keep seeing their true intentions.
They will fake right, then blast left. History. Whatever it takes. Lying is not immoral: just a means to their ends.
F.U. stinkin’ planners, tyrants, and self-inflated dicks. ( I mean that in the most gentlemanly way possible.)
It’s what Democrats did, slowly but surely, after the trauma of Ronald Reagan’s triumphs
With a helpful foot up their asses from Newt’s Congress.
To move any farther left would require the construction of thousands of gulags.
You are correct in that they can not move to the Right. But, why?
IMHO where the Democrats are right now is the logical outgrowth of the 1968 Days of Rage at the Chicago Democratic national convention. If you look at the surviving Democratic Leadership in Congress they have been in Congress since that era.
The real survival question for the Democrats is: Will the fall out from the 2016 Presidential Campaign generate a second Days of Rage in the next few months? If it does, and IMHO that is looking more likely every week, then the Democratic Party will devolve into a splinter party active at the municipal level without any voice in national politics. Think Jill Stine.
Nope.
The BernieBots are now full of p*ss and vinegar. In their minds Hillary’s blowout loss proves that they were right all along.
They are in the process of staging a hostile takeover.
That party is going full-bore Socialist.
No; next silly question.
Given the GOP control of state legislatures and the power that brings in terms of redistricting, I firmly believe that we will never again see a Rat majority. They are choked off and in their death throes. It’s only a matter of time before they become an inconsequential blip in history. Good riddance.
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