Posted on 12/13/2016 5:03:48 AM PST by Kaslin
Herewith some unsolicited free advice for the Democratic Party. Whether it's worth more than the price I leave up to Democrats to decide.
The first thing to remember is that the Democratic Party is the oldest political party in the world. It's had its ups and downs over many years. Under any fair reading of history, it has done many good things for this country and the world. It is not going away any time soon.
But it is in a bad way. Its chances of recapturing the presidency in 2020 depend largely on decisions by Republicans and on events outside anyone's control.
Democrats currently hold fewer House seats, governorships and state legislatures than at any time since the 1920s. And the signature policies of the outgoing Democratic president -- Obamacare and the Iranian nuclear deal -- are not political assets.
The first thing Democrats need to do is to end the alibi game. Yes, it's a shattering experience to lose a presidential election that, until the 9 o'clock hour on election night, you seemed sure to win.
But alibis don't help you win next time. Don't blame "fake news" when your candidate had lots more money to spend delivering her message. Don't blame the FBI director when your candidate violated criminal laws and the attorney general had to disqualify herself after revelation of her secret meeting with the candidate's husband.
Don't blame the "racism" of an electorate that twice elected the first black president. Don't blame the Electoral College when everyone knew beforehand that you need 270 electoral votes, not a popular vote plurality, to win.
Blame instead the Clinton campaign's "ascendant America" strategy -- to reassemble the 2012 Obama coalition of nonwhites and millennials, on the assumption that the attitudes of other voters, notably white non-college graduates who cast critical Obama votes in the Midwest, would remain static.
Exit polls showed that Donald Trump, supposedly toxic to nonwhites, ran slightly better among them than Mitt Romney did in 2012. Their apparent regression to the mean, to voting more like the national average, undercuts the theory that nonwhites, tormented by oppression and seething with grievance, will remain overwhelmingly Democratic forever.
To recover, Democrats need to take a look at the map. The relevant map in this election divides the nation between coastal America (the West Coast plus Hawaii, as well as the Northeast from Maine to Washington, D.C.) and heartland America (the South, the Midwest and the Mountain West, as well as energy states Alaska and Pennsylvania). Coastal America casts 31 percent of popular votes and 170 electoral votes. Heartland America casts 69 percent of popular votes and 368 electoral votes.
Clinton earned all but one electoral vote (Maine's 2nd Congressional District) in coastal America. But in heartland America -- where Barack Obama lost the electoral vote narrowly, 206-162, in 2012 -- Clinton got only 63 electoral votes, compared with Trump's 305. Yes, Trump won the 46 electoral votes of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by a combined popular vote margin of only (at latest count) 77,193. But the fact is he didn't need a single popular vote in coastal America to win.
Democrats are even weaker in heartland down-ballot elections. In races for the House of Representatives, Republicans won more than 200 seats there, compared with only 90 for Democrats. Democrats could win half of the Republicans' 35 U.S. House seats in coastal America and still fall short of a House majority. In state legislatures, heartland Republicans outnumber Democrats by nearly a 2-1 ratio.
My advice to Democrats is the advice Justice Louis Brandeis gave to young New Dealers in the 1930s. "Get out of Washington," he said. "Go home, back to the states." Leave the latte-soaked coastal cocoons. Return to your hometown or set down new roots, and run for office in the heartland -- and not in university towns but in real America.
That's what many young liberals did in the 1970s, shoring up Democratic congressional and legislative majorities for two decades, learning from constituents rather than instructing them, participating in local civic culture rather than lamenting it. The Democratic Party and the nation would be well-served if smart, ambitious young Democrats started packing their bags and competing where their party has been falling fatally short.
Almost stopped reading right there.
I'm not sure any Progressives are capable of following this advice. It's in their DNA -- they are compelled to hector anyone who is their intellectual inferior (which is anyone who disagrees with them).
You mean, actually go out there into redneck America? And forgo all the cultural fabulousness of the coastal urban Utopias? And actually have to attend Fourth of July picnics and Christmas parties? And pretend to LIKE IT?
Never happen.
I hope Trump is spectacularly successful and in 2020 the dems are finally wiped out as a national party.
What’s a democrat?
At the risk of being pedantic, are the Dems even a party in 2016?
I know Rush et al have frequently pointed out that the Dems are less a party than a collective of disparate groups often in conflict each other.
But like the dog chasing the car, they got what they wanted with Obama: the Apex Token. A black man freely elected to the most powerful office in the world. The less said about his administration and the legal decisions during his era the better but his ‘successes’ have taken away so many issues and talking points for the left. Obama himself, after two full terms in office, is now talking at length about slavery! The mind boggles.
Perhaps it’s a gold-leaf distinction (ht: Mark Twain) but the Dems are no longer organized opposition, they are merely opposition full stop. They are nihilists.
This constant “she wont he popular vote” meme (she didn’t, more people did not vote for her than did) is proof of the left’s disdain and contempt for flyover country.
they are compelled to hector anyone who is their intellectual inferior (which is anyone who disagrees with them.
I thought this was a thread about democrats, not women...
My prediction is they will try to repeat their successful performance against GW Bush. Their minions in the BSM will excoriate and demonize Trump in a similar way. IMHO, it won’t work as well for at least a couple of reasons. Their credibility with the target audience is shot. No one believes the Propaganda Arm of the Rat Party anymore. No one. Not even their own Rats.
Another really big factor is Trump ain’t gonna lay down for it like Bush did. The BSM is used to demonizing decent folks who don’t fight back. They still don’t get that they are diving into a cage match with no rules except try to stay alive for at least four if not eight years with a guy who is eager to parade around the auditorium with their bleeding scalp. The days they have at their disposal to wake up and avoid being locked into the cage with that guy are dwindling down to a precious few. Personally, I hope they step willingly into that arena with the same smug delusional confidence they bring to everything they do.
BEST ELECTION EVER! With every prospect of delivering wickedly wonderful barbaric entertainments for years to come. Sort of an ongoing Samson story with a David and Goliath theme that just keeps repeating day after blessed day for years.
We FReepers all get it. Trump gets it. This is war and our recent victory strips our enemy of just about all their assets except the Propaganda Ministry and even that is a smoldering heap of slag. And yet like some kind of Terminator they just keep rising up begging for more punishment! Like gladiatorial games with no need for fresh gladiators! And we continue to cheer as they are bashed to their knees yet again.
Sure, there are things they could do to turn things around. Drop the identity politics, forgo the Anti American Globalism, admit global warming is a sham. But then who would they be? Conservatives! LOL.
Fortunately the Democrats are way too arrogant to take his advice.
Only problem with this recommendation is that Democratic policies ALWAYS destroy the real America that is outside the big cities.......so how is moving there going change peoples hatred for same?
DUH!
Note to Michael Barone: It’s not the DemocratIC party; it’s the Democrat party.
To personify that thought. Jennifer Palmieri needs her own South Pacific desert island and 3 days supply of water.(Too much?)
On the other hand, I hope she and her charming countenance continue to get endless TV time.
“Get out of Washington,” he said. “Go home, back to the states.” Leave the latte-soakedtaskedlatesttusked coastal cocoons. Return to your hometown or set down new roots, and run for office in the heartland — and not in university towns but in real America.”
This is advise they will never heed.
Liberals are, to a man, all star-struck morons, like children they are hopelessly drawn to the limelight. Liberals are pathologically hooked on attention, the glare of the MSM spotlight, and they think that by association with the glitz and hype of the media and their ‘celebrity supporters’, they TOO will be regarded as super heroes, glamorous starlets, larger than life characters as seen in films and on the news.
They ALL need to grow up and re connect with the SUBSTANCE without which politics by any description is a pointless and unworkable exercise in futility.
“with a guy who is eager to parade around the auditorium with their bleeding scalp.”
HA! So true — and a funny visual.
“Fortunately the Democrats are way too arrogant to take his advice.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. ;)
Lesson from this:
Make New Yorkers unhappy with the system. Same for LA, Philly and Chi-town.
How to do that?
Starve them out. Cut federal aide to this, reduce it to that. No more pork barrel for demorat city states. Let infrastructiure be their own problem. Put the DOJ on local corruption. Send their corruptocrats to jail.
As local taxes and crimes rise, conditions deteriorate and the quality of life ratchets down, these self centered city states will become more interested in GOP politics.
The above, that's not sarcasm. I firmly believe that is the actual prevailing attitude of many of the so-called liberal elites. They actually think they know better than the Founding Fathers, they actually think they know better than us what is good for us. They exist in a tank, in an echo-chamber of their own making. They literally have no idea just how wildly disconnected from reality they actually are. Waking them up is going to be painful and expensive. They've experienced some of that this past election cycle. Will it be enough? Sadly, I kind of doubt it.
Here's my free advice 'rats, in the real world...
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