The Democratic Safe House

[FreeinChrist]

I don't understand it. Some feel it is the Christian thing to do, but I see nothing Christian about the man or his attitudes or behavior or policies as they were carrried out. A truly Christian person would not hold back disaster help to a state because they were not the same political party as themselves.

Some voted for him because they refuse to vote for a woman (saw discussion by some online). Some hate immigrants and Trump made them the scapegoat for everything. My brother is a big time Trump supporter because of that. He has hated the "A-rabs" (as he pronounces it) in the Detroit area for about 20 years or more.
But keep in mind that we cannot flame those on the right - as not all on the right are like my brother, no more than all on the left are the same.

 

[mark46]

SOME THOUGHTS - DAY AFER RANT
For perspective, I have been a yellow dog Democrat for 65 years, with Humphrey and Bill Clinton as my part heroes (and Carville as by political compass). And, yes, Biden's accomplishments gave us the best economy in the world.

My bottom line is that we should NOT blame Trump or any Republican for the results. The fault lies 100% in the Democratic Party and its many political mistakes over the last two years.

If Biden announced that he wasn't running for re-election right after the mid-term elections, he would have been a national hero for defeating Trump, passing all legislation to recover from the pandemic, passing climate and other laws, and restorimg our international relationships.
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There would have been a 1 1/2 year set of primaries and election season. I suspect that Trump would have been defeated easily, but perhaps not. In any case, the party would have turned the page and looked to the future.
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Democrats had a 2-issue campaign: Trump and abortion. 75% of Americans thought that were headed in the wrong direction. Most Americans continued to be stressed by the high food, energy, rent and insurance prices compare to 3 years ago (The prices haven't go down). Biden changed border policy and 12 million undocumented crossed and then he changed policies and the numbers went back to where they were under Trump. Democrats needed new faces to champion the future and to strongly show how the best economy in the world would continue to help folks over the next couple of years. Harris was NOT that candidate, certainly not without an extended primary fight.
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Many of the elite (that's us folks) do indeed believe that the Trump followers in Madison Square Garden are not folks to listen to ("garbage" in Biden's words, similar to Hillary's characterization of "deplorables".
=======
As long as our attitude is that these folks should have voted Democratic because we know better what is right for them, we will lose. Many have been warning of this outcome for at least a couple of years. If Democrats double down on our policies and attitudes, we will lose for the next decade. We need to listen to the people, all of the people, not just those that we think ate right. The answer to future victories is NOT just to get more of our folks out (as we did in 2020 and 2022) and hope that the Republicans don't get out more votes. The answer is to have workers and other non-college educated citizens to believe that we and they have similar goals and want to share a joint future with us.

 

[mark46]

Really worrying thing is, of course, not Donald Trump, but the fact that a majority of Americans actually voted for him. I cannot speak for other countries, but here in Quebec where I live, there's not a soul I know who is not utterly mystified that such a person was elected President.

Twice no less.

and Republicans will continue to win until we understand why a majority of Americans could believe that Trump is more one of them than the elites of both coasts (we Democrats).

Let me be more clear. Had Trump chose Hailey as VP, Democrats might have won 10 states, probably many fewer. Had the Republicans ran Hailey as their nominee, the old days would be back. Dems would have taken one or two states as we did when nominate McGovern and Mondale.

 

[mark46]

A SAD THOUGHT
I expect that Democrats will have very little chance over the next 10 years unless there the party moves back toward the center.

 

[Arcangl86]

A SAD THOUGHT
I expect that Democrats will have very little chance over the next 10 years unless there the party moves back toward the center.

Here's a question. The Republican party has been sprinting towards the right and getting more and more successful. Even when they lose the lesson they take is that they weren't conservative enough. Yet for some reason, Democrats always take the same lesson, that they simply weren't conservative enough. Especially with the Republicans going to inevitably paint them as radical leftists regardless, why shouldn't the Democrats actually embrace the progressive members of society?

 

[mark46]

1) Calling Trump a conservative is just plain silly. His is an isolationist and a populist.

2) Democrats will very likely turn toward the left, so-called progressive wing after a loss as they have in the past. No matter how many times the left repeats their belief, the majority of Americans are NOT more left politically than the folks that have won: Bill Clinton, Obama and Biden.

Of course, Hillary is among this group (and should have won easily if her campaign hadn't been poorly run). The advisors of these three winners are still around, and (as usual) will be ignored by the left. Also, it took the Supreme Court to take the victory from the other Gore, the other centrist. As an aside, don't think of Obama as someone from the left. He was not. Obamacare was a Republican policy. He was the deporter-in-chief. He had very strong backing from the banks and worked closely with them and with the Bush people to bring us out of the worst recession since 1929. . Make no mistake, the left hated his solutions to health care, immigration and the economy.

As an aside, I do not blame the left for the loss, even with all that they contributed to the loss. The loss is squarely on Biden. He refused to make an announcement after the mid-terms that he would not run. A lively set of primaries would have moved us squarely into the future, including a very difficult debate within the party. Now, we will have this debate after a defeat and we will likely turn to this decade's equivalent of McGovern, Mondale and Dukakis. IMO, this choice will lead to the inevitable winning of a few states and a much more devastating defeat than this one. We will need to wait the 2030's for the next Democratic presidential victory.

But. I understand. That is the way our party works. After a devastating loss, the left consolidates and wins the nomination for their candidate and policies. The left gets its chance. The very sad thing is that we could have started the party's movement into the future. Instead, we gave Trump and the Republicans control. .

3) Democrats need to appeal to the working class and the non-college educated. We currently do not. That should be the start of any analysis of the election. And obviously, our belief that so-called minorities SHOULD vote for us is not the basis of a coalition.

In the end, the party is right on the issue of abortion and won among those who considered this a key issue. We lost almost every other issue, and lost ground among almost every voting group. We ARE THE ELITE. We believe that we should win because we are right and those in the middle should simply see why we are right.

BOTTOM LINE
We should NOT spend the next couple of years discussing why we couldn't convince the majority that we are right. We need to spend thousands of hours listening to those who voting against us for president, for senator, for House member, and for school board members. We will need a new coalition. We will NOT be securing 90% of the black vote and 75% of the Hispanic votes anymore. That is not winning politics.

We had the opportunity for the first woman president to defeat Trump. Biden (and ultimately) Harris and the left took that away from us.

I know that I am in a small minority. Most think that it was winning strategy to spend so much time labeling the worst president ever a fascist and to call his ending rally a Nazi rally. How do we feel about those who voted for Trump? deplorable? garbage? Well, obviously those words shouldn't have been uttered. But how close are they to how so many of us feel?

BTW, fascist and nazi and garbage were the characterizations of our candidates and president in the last couple of weeks of the campaign. IMO, those comments made clear that we don't take the high ground as the Obama's once did.

 

[Deviant Writer]

BOTTOM LINE
We should NOT spend the next couple of years discussing why we couldn't convince the majority that we are right. We need to spend thousands of hours listening to those who voting against us for president, for senator, for House member, and for school board members.

I know that I am in a small minority. Most think that it was winning strategy to spend so much time labeling the worst president ever a fascist and to call his ending rally a Nazi rally. How do we feel about those who voted for Trump? deplorable? garbage? Well, obviously those words shouldn't have been uttered. But how close are they to how so many of us feel?

BTW, fascist and nazi and garbage were the characterizations of our candidates and president in the last couple of weeks of the campaign. IMO, those comments made clear that we don't take the high ground as the Obama's once did.

I would agree with just about everything you stated, Mark. At the end of the day, we could go for the easy cop-out answers like "They cheated" or "Everyone's a Nazi" or "They didn't want a female president" and learn absolutely nothing from this. I already see some liberal groups on Facebook leaning towards those rationalizations. I'm just not so sure. Bernie Sanders definitely thinks the Democratic Party dropped the ball and his criticisms were scathing.

 

[Trogdor the Burninator]

Democrats had a 2-issue campaign: Trump and abortion. 75% of Americans thought that were headed in the wrong direction. Most Americans continued to be stressed by the high food, energy, rent and insurance prices compare to 3 years ago

The answer is to have workers and other non-college educated citizens to believe that we and they have similar goals and want to share a joint future with us.

As an outsider - I tend to agree with what Bernie Sanders said. "it should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them."

The Democrats need to spend a lot more time talking about issues that affect the working class and poor - cost of living, healthcare costs, access to housing, access to quality education, unemployment and working conditions, crime and justice and to a lesser extent illegal immigration and trade. These are the issues that disproportionately affect lower income people.

 

[Pommer]

Dusting off the bar…plugging in jukebox

So, what’ll it be?

 

[DaisyDay]

Dusting off the bar…plugging in jukebox

So, what’ll it be?

Coffee latte laced with THC, please.

 

[Pommer]

Coffee latte laced with THC, please.

I’m in Pennsylvania (which hasn’t yet legalized cannabis for recreational use), so…a Shirley Temple, then?

 

[DaisyDay]

I’m in Pennsylvania (which hasn’t yet legalized cannabis for recreational use), so…a Shirley Temple, then?

No carbonation. Lipton with a splash of canned milk! Plain milk if you don't have canned.

 

[Pommer]

No carbonation. Lipton with a splash of canned milk! Plain milk if you don't have canned.

The canned milk is past it’s expiration date but should still be good…sorry only have Tetley’s

 

[DaisyDay]

The canned milk is past it’s expiration date but should still be good…sorry only have Tetley’s

I like Tetley. It's my favorite everyday tea. Does unopened evaporated milk expire?

 

[DaisyDay]

This one weird trick that Google doesn't want you to know to keep AI out of your search results - just put the f-word anywhere in the search terms and AI won't touch it.

I've only tried this with Google's AI; I don't know how Grok handles it. I suspect that Grok wouldn't mind, but I don't know.

 

[DaisyDay]

Boogers on the resolute desk - nobody has mentioned this, weird. Like the child in the Emperor's New Clothes, he admonished Donald to shush and told him to go away as he was not the president.

 

[FireDragon76]

SOME THOUGHTS - DAY AFER RANT
For perspective, I have been a yellow dog Democrat for 65 years, with Humphrey and Bill Clinton as my part heroes (and Carville as by political compass). And, yes, Biden's accomplishments gave us the best economy in the world.

My bottom line is that we should NOT blame Trump or any Republican for the results. The fault lies 100% in the Democratic Party and its many political mistakes over the last two years.

If Biden announced that he wasn't running for re-election right after the mid-term elections, he would have been a national hero for defeating Trump, passing all legislation to recover from the pandemic, passing climate and other laws, and restorimg our international relationships.
======
There would have been a 1 1/2 year set of primaries and election season. I suspect that Trump would have been defeated easily, but perhaps not. In any case, the party would have turned the page and looked to the future.
======
Democrats had a 2-issue campaign: Trump and abortion. 75% of Americans thought that were headed in the wrong direction. Most Americans continued to be stressed by the high food, energy, rent and insurance prices compare to 3 years ago (The prices haven't go down). Biden changed border policy and 12 million undocumented crossed and then he changed policies and the numbers went back to where they were under Trump. Democrats needed new faces to champion the future and to strongly show how the best economy in the world would continue to help folks over the next couple of years. Harris was NOT that candidate, certainly not without an extended primary fight.
======
Many of the elite (that's us folks) do indeed believe that the Trump followers in Madison Square Garden are not folks to listen to ("garbage" in Biden's words, similar to Hillary's characterization of "deplorables".
=======
As long as our attitude is that these folks should have voted Democratic because we know better what is right for them, we will lose. Many have been warning of this outcome for at least a couple of years. If Democrats double down on our policies and attitudes, we will lose for the next decade. We need to listen to the people, all of the people, not just those that we think ate right. The answer to future victories is NOT just to get more of our folks out (as we did in 2020 and 2022) and hope that the Republicans don't get out more votes. The answer is to have workers and other non-college educated citizens to believe that we and they have similar goals and want to share a joint future with us.

Biden is just a mortal man, and couldn't resist the temptations of his own ego. Which was unfortunate. And the Democrats were too scared to stand up to him, until it was too late.

I supported Bernie twice in the primaries, and I still think his kind of politics is the only hope of defeating Trumpism. Rahm Emmanuel has also been saying some important things about getting away from focus on identity politics, and focus on actual material conditions of average Americans. Harris having a lack of a reasonable, well-thought-out response to the wave of transphobia peddled by Republicans didn't do her any favors at the polls.

 

[mark46]

Biden is just a mortal man, and couldn't resist the temptations of his own ego. Which was unfortunate. And the Democrats were too scared to stand up to him, until it was too late.

I supported Bernie twice in the primaries, and I still think his kind of politics is the only hope of defeating Trumpism. Rahm Emmanuel has also been saying some important things about getting away from focus on identity politics, and focus on actual material conditions of average Americans. Harris having a lack of a reasonable, well-thought-out response to the wave of transphobia peddled by Republicans didn't do her any favors at the polls.

I agree on Rahm but not on Bernie. To be clear, I have great respect for Bernie, but I think that the majority of the country is center, probably a bit right of center on some issues and left of center on others.

I still believe that the key is to appeal to the middle. Rham does this. He has also shown that he can lead. Another that could be in the mix is Federman.

I think it instructive that the two Democratic presidents to be re-elected since WWII both appealed to the center (and to business interests).

Clinton's folks and Obama's folks tried to get Biden to step down after the mid-terms as did Pelosi. There is just so much one can do in opposing the president of your party, while retaining a strong likelihood of winning. As you say, Biden's ego got in the way.

 

[FireDragon76]

This more or less sums up the spirit of our times:



https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/he-tells-it-like-it-is-paul-not.jpg

 

[FreeinChrist]

Bernie has been getting growing crowds in red areas and I hope he is changing some minds.

Here is an article about it:

Drawing huge crowds, Bernie Sanders emerges as the leader of the anti-Trump resistance

At 83 years old, Sanders is not running for president again. But the stooped and silver-haired democratic socialist has emerged as a leader of the resistance to Donald Trump's second presidency.

www.pbs.org