US Democratic Party still doesn't understand why it lost to Trump

After Reagan? W?
Seriously: Barring boorishness and table manners, show me where Reagan and W were significantly less of a joke than Trump. I'll see your pussygrabbing and raise you Jeff Gannon. I'll see your chuckleheaded tweeting and raise you this: http://www.dubyaspeak.com. Katrina actually was worse than Puerto Rico is (although riding on Obama's rehabilitation of FEMA probably played in there), dealing with hurricane horrors by playing dumbass cowboy guitar at a campaign fundraiser at least in the same league as going golfing, standing on a podium overlooking a drowned city with the floating dead decomposing among the alligators and cracking jokes about drinking too much on Bourbon Street at least in the same league as throwing paper towels into a desperate crowd and wishing the refugees have a nice day.
Meanwhile, Saint Ronnie was the first non-comedian public figure I've ever heard of to have a compilation of their quotes - straight quotes, not intentional jokes, in context, no editing required - sold in the humor section of the local bookstores. He was also the first recorded President to have a major smuggling ring running from the White House, apparently without knowing about it - that it was financed by illegally selling missiles to the Iranians was just the backstory.

People wonder if Trump can be normalized - Reagan was. W was. Anybody. Literally, anybody at all - if they are Republican, and want to cut rich people's taxes.

The Republican Party candidate for President has received an (alleged) majority of the popular vote in exactly one of the last five Presidential elections.
The headline in a British tabloid, in that one year: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/classic-daily-mirror-us-election-front-1421769

Trump beat W's total by about 4 million votes - less than the proportional Republican share of the increased population.
This isn't the first rodeo.

Look, it isn't me. I'm just riding the coattails of dozens of writers and bloggers and political analysts, each of whom know dozens more I never heard of. Pick two: Gore Vidal had this called in the 1980s, Mollie Ivins by the 1990s (earlier, if Texas politics counts - as it did:

Although both of them had inside connections - Vidal via family through the Kennedys and airline industry, Ivins via family through Texas politics that went national and the oil and gas industry - what they wrote was easily found and read, and their perceptiveness shared.

And even after all that I got it wrong, underestimated: my lady still tweaks me about declaiming, in January of '03, that W's military buildup and bombing had to be a bluff - on the grounds that even Republican worthlessness like W&Cheney couldn't possibly be so clunkheaded fuckwit stupid as to actually intend to invade Iraq on such bogus grounds, never mind the amorality. She has no witnesses, though.

The upshot: I'm just the messenger here, the guy who wanders in from the blogosphere and points at the obvious. It's obvious, what I point at, is all I'm saying.

 

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No, they won't. They refuse to.
You're thinking about the Republicans.

 

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I'm thinking of politicians in general.

 

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You're wrong about the Democratic ones. It's like pulling teeth to get them to sing even a little of my song.

 

When it comes to islamophobia, immigration, legal or otherwise, it doesn't matter what party wins.
Hillary deserved to lose because she failed to realise the degree of concern about the above issues within USA communities. (Think why BREXIT?)
If she had taken the issue of immigration and Islamophobia more seriously she would be POTUS today. IMO.

 

What Clinton deserved had nothing to do with it.
The idea that Clinton needed to do this or that to persuade people not to vote for Trump is missing the elephant for the dust bunnies.
Anybody who needed to be talked out of voting for Trump was unreachable by reason anyway.

Too bad we can't convince the Republican voter of that.

It isn't so, however. Trump's executive actions and Presidential pronouncements, and the Republican Congress's various legislative behaviors, have been and will be significantly different from what Clinton's or a Democratic Congress's would have been.

 

ok try a rephrasing:
The Democrat party deserved to lose because they failed to realize the significant degree of concern about the above issues within USA communities. They and the Republican party generally lacked the political nous that Trump (as a pseudo independent) had.

In case you haven't noticed the worlds political status quo has been thrown out the window due to the "migration" issue...

The Democrats ( And the republicans for that matter) failed to recognize the incredible shift in voter sentiment globally and at home.

The same here in Australian. If the parties do not address the concerns about migration adequately then they will be destroyed at the polls and parties that do address the concerns no matter how silly will succeed. ( re: Hanson _ One Nation Party)

Trump is that sort of silliness that promised many a time to address the "migration", Islamophobia, xenophobia issue. He was successful and is now POTUS. And he is no more a Republican than he is a Democrat, his loyalty is only unto himself.
If the Democrats and in particular Hillary had found a way to deal with the issue adequately they would have won office. IMO

They didn't and now we have to deal with a Republican wanna be called Trump.
The democrats did not deserve to win and nor did the Republicans so Trump won instead...(Aligned with the Republicans)

 

It has even less than nothing to do with the Democratic Party than Clinton herself.

No actual issues had anything to do with the American election. Immigration was just another peg to hang lies on, along with health insurance and emails and terrorism and taxes and jobs. The lies about the jobs were maybe the most significant in the US, with health care second - immigration is less of an issue. The "wall" isn't really about immigration, for example - it's about slapping lies on Democrats, in this case the lie of incompetence and failing to secure an easily secured border.

Again: talking about the Democrats needing to do this or that to persuade people not to vote for Trump is missing the elephant in the room for the dust bunnies.

Trump was and is Republican, through and through. And nothing better illustrates that than his lack of interest in governing or disloyalty to anything except himself - except maybe his core of support in the Republican voting base. And his support for tax cuts for the rich on top of deregulation of corporations, of course - the only items actually in the Republican political agenda.

The key is to recognize that the Republican Party in the US has no ideology of governance, economic policy, that kind of thing. It's fascist, and so it represents the personal interests of its corporate backers and office-holding inner cadre.

 

With all due respect I can not believe that you are so blinkered regarding the rise of the alt right, ultra nationalism in to mainstream politics that you are prepared to blame Trumps win on good ole republican corporate/individual greed.

Trump's success is only a product of the global trend towards isolationist nationalism that is a reaction to and seeks to slow down, the aggressive globalization that is currently underway. IMO ( Border control and all that means is KEY issue)

To continue to argue the ole Republican's are liars routine will only guarantee they stay in power if they are not thrown out by more radical alt right ideology.
The reason why the democrats failed is because they continually blame the Republicans.
As soon as they, the Democrats, take some of the responsibility for their failure they might actually make head way and gain some political success. IMO.

 

I'm curious how you think the rise of alt right ultra nationalism in the US was financed and organized and coordinated, and why it rose within the Republican Party (the Party of Plutocrats and Globalizers).

America has exactly two land borders, large oceans, and no chunnel.
In the US, gun control and abortion and race and jobs and Hillary's emails and race and elitist condescension and misogyny and race and healthcare and crime and race and terrorism and war and and Benghazi and race

especially: Obama's race

all outranked border security (minus the race and Democratic perfidy and jobs aspects) as issues (there is no border security issue with Canada, despite the globalization effect and an influx of illegals suffered by both countries).

US Trump voters aren't globally oriented, don't know much if anything about foreign countries, and don't generally connect the border problems with globalization (they don't blame NAFTA in Mexico or US corporate backing of despots in Central and South America for the influx of illegals across the southern border, for example.)

One cannot meaningfully discuss political issues and problems in the US without "blaming Republicans". How is anyone supposed to run for office without discussing issues?
The reason the Republicans have been winning is that they have
1) Gerrymandered the Congressional voting districts and
2) organized the entire US corporate media to avoid blaming the Republicans for their screwups and disasters, instead blaming "both sides" and/or liberals and Democrats (who are the same people in US media world).

Trump is not a brand new thing. Trump is the culmination of a forty year Republican ascension based largely on plutocrat manipulation of racial bigotry and its effects, in the course of which American fascism took over the Republican Party and much of the corporate media. This set Trump up for triumph. He's a mainstream Republican in all but manners and social graces.

 

Perhaps:
The republican establishment also doesn't understand why it lost to Trump.

It seems that both the DNC and RNC have lost touch with the population while catering to the elites.

If you cannot find the answer, perhaps, you are asking the wrong question. If you find the right question, then the answer becomes obvious. (from bucky fuller)

 

Trump is the monster the Republican establishment created.

 

ok fixed it for you

 

No, he's the perfect Republican. Tax breaks for the wealthy, total lack of ethics, kissing the asses of evangelicals, hawkish on war, no compassion for the poor or hurricane victims, or African-American abuse by the police... should I go on? He promises the same fantasy policies that can't work.

 

I still think that if Hillary managed to listen to the swinging voters concerns about border/migration/Islamophobia issues she could have succeeded in becoming the USA's first female president. However she didn't listen and now we have a man who demonstrably did listen who, even though horrifically unfit for the job, is now POTUS.

 

Not "the population". Each one's respective voting base. The Confederates, for the Republican , and the Union, for the Democrats. And they lost touch in opposite directions - the Dem organizational execs by foolishly catering up to the corporate elites, organizing corrupt and corrupting financial support among the wealthy; the Rep corporate board by mistakenly catering down, overlooking the nature of the base of support their execs were creating among the media, the intellectual community, and the voting population.

A fairly small cadre of American fascist corporate elites created (or "took over", or "converted", or whatever) the monster they lost touch with, and it's the RNC.

Not the "population". Not "the country". Not "the media". The Republican Party as a whole, with its special and easily identified media operations, its particular and dedicated "intellectual" wing, and its consistent, definable, describable, identifiable voting base. The organized collective who nominated, elected, and re-elected, W. And Reagan. And the Republican Congress we see.

It's not Trump any more than it's Scott Walker, or Joe Arpaio, or Mitch McConnell, or Sarah Palin, or Rush Limbaugh, or the American Heritage Institute, or even Steve Bannon for that matter, member though he may be.

And they turned it loose deliberately. They didn't "lose" touch, they sicced it on the US government. Starting in 1980.

 

To borrow a line from Lisa Simpson, what does that even mean?

 

You mean if she had swung just a little more White Supremacist she might have won? Perhaps - but at that point you have to ask yourself if _you'd_ be willing to do that.

 

No not at all..
Governments around the world especially in Europe were suffering significant back lashes to the mass migration past their borders.
If you recall the Brexit referendum was successful mainly on the issue of national identity and border control. (migration)
There was and still is a huge push to ensure national identity in the face of significant migration ( refugees - asylum seekers )

Hillary failed to see that the world was in "migration crisis", failed to see the degree of fear ISIL ( Islamic extremism) was generating. If she had acknowledged the concerns of the swinging voter more so and suggested methods to address them ( within the constitutional framework) I would imagine she would have done considerably better than she did. Especially regions where ignorance and fear co-exist in such a significant degree.
For example as I suggested in an earlier pre-election post if Hillary suggested a immediate moratorium on all new migration ( non- racially indicated) and put together an appropriate commission to research the issue and present solutions, she may have achieved considerable success.
Summary:
Most importantly she needed to fully acknowledge the intense and amplified fears associated with immigration, refugees and asylum seekers with in the electorate. Even if that meant mimicking Trump on some aspects.

 

It goes deeper than simply candidate status. A lot of voters believe the Dem's have lost touch with reality. But when your support comes from those in the media (La La Land), there's not much hope. I believe the media attack on Trump is more an endorsement for a second term--people will vote in spite of what they are being told. The new anti-establishment movement is growing.