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

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Kittamaru, Oct 12, 2017.

  1. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    No, it wouldn't.
    You'd have to ignore basic political facts about America

    - starting with the overwhelmingly central fact that white supremacy in the US is not neo-Nazi, but neo-Confederate. We didn't have a Holocaust here, we had plantation slavery and Indian "wars" and racial "Reservations" and Jim Crow. The KKK in the US predates the Spanish Civil War even - never mind WWII.
    Sure. But her potential voters and Trump's voters are different people, saying different things.

    You seem to be advocating that the Dems listen to the Trump voters. I'm saying they've done way too much of that already, especially the Clinton crowd, to nobody's benefit.
     
    Last edited: Oct 26, 2017
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  3. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    To be honest, I had no idea about the degree of racism, bigotry in the USA until having to endure this election of Trump and loss of Hillary, being plastered on our local news for what seemed like years.
    I had no idea that the covert "Confederate"was still alive and well and playing only lip service to the USA flag and constitution they as congressmen, and government officials, pledged to honor and protect.

    Then along came Trump after the miracle presidency that was Obama, the USA's first slave, oops!.... African American ( birther-ed in Kenya no less) as president.

    It is easy to lose sight of the fact that Obama was indeed a democrat and that he held office of POTUS for two terms and is highly regarded by many, locally and most importantly ( to me) internationally.
    He proved that the Repubs even as they play lip service to the Union can not take governing for granted.

    Hillary was not that far from success IMO and could have got over the line if she had ignored the monopoly on xenophobia by the confederates and demonstrated an understanding and empathy for those whose xenophobic votes had not been secured by the confederate bigots.
     
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  5. gmilam Valued Senior Member

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    You've never lived in the south have you. It's not all that covert. I have friends who found white robes in their grandparents closet in the 1960s. When I went to high school in the 1970s, I knew people who were overtly racist. Hell, one of the big high schools in Ft Worth was the Southwest Rebels. Their mascot was Johnny Reb carrying the confederate flag.
     
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    She made a career out of doing that. That is her entire political identity and lifelong approach. The Clintons sacrificed the integrity and ideological coherence of the Democratic Party itself to do that, to "triangulate" with the heirs of Jefferson Davis and George Wallace.

    The Trump vote is a shitpile of white racists and white fundies, otherwise known as the voting base of the Republican Party. Pandering to them is not only morally bankrupt and ethically forbidden, but largely unworkable - because they aren't listening back. They'll never find out about it. They aren't listening to anyone outside their bubble. Their redemption will have to come from within - like any junkie, they have to want to go clean.

    And they're a minority anyway. Fuck 'em. The Dems don't need them - the Dems have 2/3 of the electorate, right in front, and all they need to pick up their votes is a backbone and a coordinated assault on their media manipulators. Not even the gerrymandering can beat that long term.
     
  8. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Especially if the Dems acknowledge and accommodate the degree of fear/paranoia that exists in their voting base and potential voters for the loss of American values and border control.
     
  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    That doesn't really exist, at least not significantly and unacknowledged. The Dem voting base, and its likely voters among the nonvoting Americans, have other far more pressing concerns - concerns that have been routinely neglected by the Party leadership in its myriad attempts at collusion with corporate interests justified as attempts to suck up to Trump voters.
     
  10. Neddy Bate Valued Senior Member

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    2,548
    It might have helped if she had never made that comment about his "deplorables" which was quickly spun as if she had called half the population of the country "deplorables". What I believe she was actually trying to say was that Trump's supporters have some legitimate concerns, and that even though it is easy to lump them all together in one "basket of deplorables" they are really not that. And she was not wrong, many Trump supporters I know seem like normal people on the outside, and if certain subjects are not discussed, then you would never even realise that some of them are a little deplorable on the inside.
     
    Last edited: Oct 26, 2017
  11. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    #trumpswindle | #WhatTheyVotedFor

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    Dedicated to #DonnySmalls: Click it, crank it, thrash it.

    Here's a tough question, and no, that's not sarcastic: Why does that work?

    If you say something, and I lie about what you said, and everyone both heard you say it and heard my lie, why would they believe me?

    The first, obvious answer, is that they want to. That, of course, only begs the question of why they want to. The American discourse, unfortunately, generally stays at that level, maneuvering laterally to repeat stunts on fresh ground in an effort to avoid working deeper toward answer, resolution, or solution—e.g., "Why did you believe [lie] about Hillary Clinton?" Because she is untrustworthy, like [another lie].

    And the people who want to insist this is about some core principle other than misogyny ought to consider: Twenty years ago, a rabid pursuit of an opposition president achieved impeachment based on a formulation of words given in a deposition no prior president would have been required to sit for. This is important to remember because over the years, virtually any conservative response to Bill Clinton would invoke his sexually predatory behavior over the course of decades. This was an interesting decision because Bill Clinton became emblematic of a traditionally masculine line between stallion or stud, to the one, and rapist to the other. Yet they were insincere, not giving a damn about human rights but, rather, waving them about exploitatively, as a cudgel, and here we are, decades later, and conservatives have determinedly elected a boasting sexual assailant.

    The fact that this is even possible within our American marketplace speaks volumes about why people are willing to believe facially obvious bullshit about the most prominent woman in the nation.

    Clinton's real offenses with the "deplorables" line were including certain manners of supremacism and hatred among deplorable attitudes. One of the challenges of long immersion in American politics is that certain fundamental lies all politicians tell become believable. Hell, I've never run for public office, and even I am subject to believing bits and pieces about bad seeds. Or, at least, I have been in the past. I don't believe that anymore about police corruption; nor misogyny, white supremacism, Christianism, and class warfare prejudice among the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie.

    Calling the nation's traditionally protected supremacist bigotries deplorable is a very dangerous endeavor, but only if the bad seeds line was just a bullshit cover story. And, y'know, c'mon, we're Americans, so ... er ... ah ....

    Oh.
     
  12. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Unpack that passive voice dodge:

    it's not that her comment "was spun", by some kind of anonymous force or natural progress of events;

    it's that an organized and well-funded cabal of known liars and bullshit artists and professional propaganda outfits set out to lie about it, to "spin" it falsely and purposefully with the intention of misleading people;

    to a voting base they had prepared years in advance to believe such lies and spin from them, even in the face of the evidence of their own eyes and ears;

    using the entire mainstream media. Every single major news feed and campaign coverage and punditry outfit that existed cooperated in the lying and spinning.
     
  13. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,634
    Yes. If she had been less honest that may have helped her chances.
    I think she meant exactly what she said - that Trump's supporters include a lot of deplorable people. Xenophobes, Islamophobes, sexists, racists. And since the election we have seen them. People attacking grieving military families, white supremacists killing "fat, worthless" women, a resurgence in Nazi groups, people trying to ban Muslims from the US. So in the end she was right.
     
  14. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    #deplorability | #WhatTheyVotedFor

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    Click away; there is a reason it all sounds familiar.


    And that's the thing; if anything she was going easy on the lot of them. Half?

    See, there's a rhetorical trick that works better on the conservative side because it involves overlooking something. And I know that part of the joke doesn't necessarily make sense, but this is a gaffe that tends toward one side of the aisle.

    The rhetorical sleight was to transform half of Donald Trump's supporters into half of voters. That would equal approximately all of Donald Trump's supporters, and as they have demonstrated, their fallacious appeal to emotion is likely the more accurate measure.

    No, really, it's something someone in a conservative-archetypal circumstance is prone to doing. That is to sy, we might not think of "atheism" as "conservative", but they are certainly empowered at Sciforums, and I can recall an exchange with Sciforums atheists in which they very much needed to pretend the discussion was about every atheist in history anywhere and ever.

    I know a conservative and ethnic minority who used to lay down screeds against his general classification—I never knew what part of hispanic he was, and never really bothered asking—such as denouncing Mexicans. And he would do it in a way that went after all Mexicans. In order to jutify his Tio Tomás routine, he needed it to be all Mexicans; he needed Americans to be afraid of Mexican ethnicity and identity. He also complained that he was being personally attacked if anyone described his attitude as racist or supremacist. I would love to say there is nothing funnier than a nonwhite hispanic white supremacist, but it's not actually funny.

    You might be familiar with a line I drop about the Gay Fray, that we couldn't have won without the Christianists. No, really, gay rights advanced in no small part because the conservative temper tantrum against homosexuals was so damn ugly and creepy and obsessive. There is a story from January 2011, as I recall it. We can simply say "HB3". The first ten House bills of any Congressinoal session are traditionally considered sacred in a weird way; they have symbolic value because traditionally they are the Speaker's bills. HB3, right after the "jobs, jobs, jobs" midterm election of 2010, that is to say, one of the new Speaker's priority bills, was a Medicaid tinkering redefining rape by eliminating statutory rape. That was a Republican priority.

    If you're familiar with those bits, then you might also remember the part I do about fence-sitters, and how supremacists want supremacism without being seen as supremacist. And the way it would come out is that some Christian advocate in the political fight would say something immensely stupid, someone would denounce the stupidity, and then someone else in their proximity would explode because they are offended: If you denounce the one, you must be denouncing all Christians, and now this friend who wanted to support you is obliged to oppose you because you forced him.

    I'm actually uncertain what to tell Hillary Clinton on this count; if you buy into the bad seeds myth, as most of us have at some point in our lives, then what she said probably seemed a reasonable risk. But she and her team forgot this simple quirk about conservatives because, really, something about the fine line between prejudice and fool me twice can't get fooled again. But it is true that the average conserative will denigrate himself in order to seek and find cause. So will the seemingly typal conservative woman. It's especially ironic when it's conservative Christian women, because like a handful of atheists at Sciforums in that once upon only a few years ago, they scramble to preserve and protect perceived empowerment.

    It should have been predictable, however, that conservatives would attempt the maneuver they did; it is a fallacious appeal at the heart of their movement growth. That's the variable, the multiplier, that made the seemingly reasonable risk dangerous beyond all hell.

    It's actually part of why I hammer on the point about the #trumpswindle, that this is #WhatTheyVotedFor. This wasn't an accident. And it's also the reason it's harder and harder to find Trump voters in the mainstream; what we get, now, are abstract distractions about principle, politic, and process, like Sen. Corker (R-TN) taking hits from liberals because he'll back Trump for a tax bill nobody can explain; or Sen. Cornyn (R-TX) saying he supports his political party over anything else, and apparently including his country.

    The identity bloc is all he has left. Where are the mainstream Trump voters with the "Barack Who?" stickers saying they told us so?

    Yeah. Uh-huh. There is a reason President Trump's main support among Republcians is an anti-identification; it's what they've run their party on at least since Poppy failed St. Magnus' opus.

    At any rate, yeah, she was going easy on them, and they made the point by standing up to be counted. It's amazing how many people wanted to be deplorable, but, you know, I intend to hold them to it. But they're conservatives, and far too cowardly to admit or acknowledge what they've done.

    However, that's the new curse of conservatism. It's kind of like I feel about the police: The cops are so corrupt, and have been for so long, that when you join the academy and then seek a job on a police force, you are willingly enlisting in organized crime. And, you know, say what you will about any other state, but that's how it goes in Washington state.

    Similarly, republicanism has its own meaning abroad, but declaring oneself a Republican or conservative in the American context has come to mean a declaration of opposition to the United States of America and its Constitution.

    Republicans voted against the United States of America in order to elect Donald Trump. Their wilful betrayal of their country will be held against them, now and forever. That's the rule in this country; ask Benedicta Arnold.

    Oh, that's right: We need to call off the rules for the sake of the traditionalists. Duh. See, that's the danger of forgetting we're dealing with conservatives.

    There's always an excuse. And, hey, they wanted this identity; Hillary Clinton said half, and they said all. On that last, she was wrong and they were right.

    Indeed, I feel it is our duty, as an American, world, and human community,to hold them to it.
     
  15. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    https://www.facebook.com/VoteTulsi/posts/1577851298937950

    "By now it is obvious that throughout the course of the Democratic presidential primary campaign, the DNC shrugged off the qualms of independents and progressives who sought a more robust debate centered on issues. When I raised an objection to limiting the number of debates in my capacity as DNC Vice Chair, the Chairwoman disinvited me from the first Democratic Presidential debate that I was already confirmed to attend. Sadly, it appears that the same disposition that underestimated the appeal of Donald Trump still pervades the DNC. Just this month, Chairman Tom Perez removed members from the Party’s Executive Committee--all of whom share in common their support for Bernie Sanders and Keith Ellison in his race for DNC Chair. Those expelled include Jim Zogby, the only Arab American on the Executive Committee, while lobbyists and consultants kept their positions. If the DNC is going to represent the people, they need to break their ties with the corporate establishment that has usurped our party, and instead return to the grassroots issues that connect us with people in the first place. We need to end the undemocratic system of superdelegates and ensure that all primaries and caucuses are open or have same-day registration available.

    If we don’t reform the DNC, then all we will get is more of the same. Openness, inclusion, and transparency should not be issues that are up for debate."
     
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  16. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    All of that is perfectly true.
    But:
    1) None of that deals with the key role of vote suppression and fraud, the 63 million strong incorrigible vote base for any Republican, or the gerrymandering behind the Republican majority in Congress.
    2) None of that deals with the corporate control over the centralized news media, which would become even more of an enemy as soon as the "corporate ties" were broken.
    3) The supposedly recommended changes would take the Dems in the direction of more liberal, lefty, "socialist" policy and advocacy - the opposite of reaching out to the Republican voting base. They amount to writing off the Republican voter as an ally, and defeating them at the polls to impose key items of a liberal, libertarian, and leftwing agenda on them.

    I'm not saying that is a bad thing. I'm just saying that this is a recommendation for overt, flat out, battle - nothing "bipartisan", no compromising, nothing about Dems reaching across the aisle. All the compromising and change of heart would have to come from the Rep side for the time being. I doubt a majority of Dems are up for that.

    And meanwhile: The Republican Party is what it is, and remains the central problem of American politics as it as been for a generation now - regardless of the internal machinations of the Democratic Party, which by comparison are sideshow.
     
  17. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    8,466
    Ice
    You seem stuck on a concept "Democrats good---Republicans bad".
    The republican establishment lost the last election every bit as much as did the democrat establishment.
    Both have lost touch with the people. And when the people feel that their government has failed them, they tend to look for a strong man to "make things right".
    This time, it was a maverick named Trump.

    Unless things improve, next time it could be even worse.
     
  18. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Nope. Their inability to get things done now that they have power is because they don't know how to govern, only to obstruct.
     
  19. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    That was hilarious. Tell us another.
     
  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    There's nothing in any of my posts that any remotely reasonable person could possibly identify as "Democrats good". There's no sane or sensible way to derive any such concept from my posting. Where do you find this deluded bullshit?
    I have no idea what the modern wingnut in their kaleidoscope world of received viewpoint du jour considers to be the "Republican establishment" this week, and I don't care.
    Not the same way.

    It's obvious that Trump, for example, is a modern mainstream Republican President (or Governor, etc) in every respect except his unusual public vulgarity, in which trait he nevertheless resembles the Republican media and voting base and many major political figures of long standing (his mouth fits right in with Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Bill Kristol, generic Fox bimbos and suits, and many other well known figures everyone has accepted as mainstream and central Republican mouths for thirty years and more). He represents the Republican Party - the real one, the one that exists in the real world - quite well. He's not a new or aberrant arrival on a scene in which Limbaugh is now the old guard and Gingrich long retired.

    After winning the last round of elections, the Republican Party controls a majority of the State Governors and State Congresses, both Houses of the Federal Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court. They won with the firm and enthusiastic support of the longtime (since Reagan) Republican voting base - a defined and identifiable minority of the American citizenry, that makes up the body of the Republican Party and has for a generation now.
    By "the people" you mean of course the Republican voting base - the racially prejudiced white misogynists, the fucked-in-the-squash third of the country that has elected every Republican Congressman and President since 1968.

    That was the explanation for Reagan and W, likewise colossal and humiliating disasters foisted on the rest of the country by the Republican voting base of white bigots and fundies. It's getting old.
     
  21. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    8,466
    "Fully 12 percent of people who voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries voted for President Trump in the general election.

    STATE

    SANDERS PRIMARY VOTERS

    SANDERS PRIMARY VOTERS SUPPORTING TRUMP

    SANDERS-TRUMP VOTERS (EST.)

    TRUMP'S 2016 MARGIN OF VICTORY
    Michigan598,9438%47,91510,704
    Pennsylvania731,88116%117,10044,292
    Wisconsin570,1929%51,31722,748
    Source: 2016 National Popular Vote Tracker, U.S. Election Atlas, Brian Schaffner"

    Credit: Danielle Kurtzleben/NPR

    OK, so too many registered democrats stayed home rather than vote for Clinton, and, of those who wanted Sanders, enough switched to Trump to win 3 key states.

    It would seem that Trump didn't win the key votes in the election so much as the regular democratic organization lost those votes in the election.
    .................................
    From congresswoman Gabbard's above quoted, it seems that the regular democratic organization still doesn't get it.

    .......................
    edit
    I have no idea how to make charts transfer into this venue intact
    The original can be found here:
    http://www.npr.org/2017/08/24/54581...voters-ended-up-supporting-trump-survey-finds
     
    Last edited: Nov 1, 2017
  22. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    So? Are you trying to claim these guys would have voted for Sanders over Trump?
    What that indicates more likely is that Sanders had no chance in the general - even his core white guy primary support was 12% Trump voters. And he had almost no black support anywhere.
    Not "stayed home" - did not register a vote for Clinton. Especially fraud and suppression factored in here - including specifically in those key electoral States. Check the vote in Detroit and Milwaukee. (I haven't looked at Philadelphia, but what would you bet?)
    Trump won 63 million votes - the entire standard and stereotypical Republican voting base came out in droves and voted for him. There is no explanation for that as votes the Dems "lost" - the Dems losing a vote does not put that voter in the booth pulling the lever for Donald Trump.
    Absolutely the case. But the Trump vote is not thereby explained. The Republican Party is not thereby explained.

    That a large fraction of fullgrown American white men with grownup responsibilities in life need to be coddled like retarded children, have their little egos stroked and their monster fears allayed and their special crazyness addressed above everybody else or they will hie off in a snit and vote for Trumps and Walkers and Gohmerts and Ryans and Inhofes and Cruzs and Bachmanns and Palins and Pences and Ws and Cheneys and apparently fucking hyenas and fruitbats from the zoo,

    is something the rest of us are better off just ignoring. There isn't much we can do about that, and we have more promising matters in need of attention.
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Thing is, we'd be wasting our time trying to deal with this shit: http://thehill.com/homenews/adminis...ajority-of-trump-voters-say-he-should-stay-in

    Trying to appeal to the Trump voters by addressing their political needs and governing realities, or any other aspect of reality, is a fool's errand. Our mission is to beat them at the ballot box and remove from power anyone who caters to their crazy, and in pursuing it we should never forget for one minute that their goal is our destruction as a people and a civilization. They hate us for our freedoms. Seriously - they hate us. Don't forget it.
     

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