The Democratic party is simply not ready to confront the Donald. Not even remotely. Two things that should scare the bejeezus out of you. First, these obviously educated but very stupid people:
Sands, who teaches English to refugees and described herself as a big supporter of refugee resettlement, said that even though Trump is a “big jerk, brash, over the top and egomaniacal,” he was also a “big-mouth pragmatist who can get things done.” She also said that he was a moderate who “doesn’t go around hating people” and called him a “brilliant communicator.”
“He tends to be flamboyant and, like New Yorkers, talks in hyperbole,” Sands said. “He exaggerated it to get attention, because a moderate cannot run in the Republican Party.” Sands believes that the media has “distorted” Trump’s statements and are making him out to be someone they want him to be.
“He’s not one of them,” Sands said. “He’s a Rockefeller Republican. There aren’t any more of those around.”
Ok, anecdotal. Second, this:
With Super Tuesday victories in his back pocket, Trump at a press conference in South Florida pledged to expand the base of the Republican Party, calling himself a “common sense conservative” while assuring voters he considered women’s health issues “very important.”
“Planned Parenthood has done very good work for millions of women,” he said. “But we’re not going to allow and we’re not going to fund, as long as you have the abortion going on at Planned Parenthood. We understand that, and I’ve said it loud and clear.”
“We’ll see what happens,” he continued, “but I’ve had thousands of letters from women that have been helped. This wasn’t a set-up, this was people writing letters.”
Of his tack on Planned Parenthood, Trump conceded it was “not a perfect conservative view,” but offered a counterweight by promising to be “more conservative than anybody on the military, on taking care of our vets, on the border, on the wall.”
That’s the terrifying thing about a shameless demagogue who is unhindered by the truth and unmoored from any principles. He can and will say anything. He doesn’t give a shit. He will, without flinching, weave from left to right on any and all issue. So what do these things have to do with each other and why does it show we are unprepared.
Well, there’s this:
Payday lenders have been gunning for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since the day President Barack Obama tapped Elizabeth Warren to set up the new agency. They’ve had plenty of help from congressional Republicans — longtime recipients of campaign contributions from the payday loan industry. As the CFPB has moved closer to adopting new rules to shield families from predatory lending, the GOP has assailed the agency from every conceivable angle — going after its budget, attempting to tie its hands with new layers of red tape, fomenting conspiracy theories about rogue regulators illegally shutting down businesses and launching direct attacks on payday loan rules themselves.
To date, the GOP blitz has resulted in a few close shaves for the young agency, but no actual defeats. But the industry has cultivated a powerful new ally in recent weeks: Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.).
Wasserman Schultz is co-sponsoring a new bill that would gut the CFPB’s forthcoming payday loan regulations. She’s also attempting to gin up Democratic support for the legislation on Capitol Hill, according to a memo obtained by The Huffington Post.
Trump is lying when he claims he is self-funding his campaign, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that Trump is now going to quite easily pivot to the left and cherry-pick Bernie’s arguments about Wall Street, and Trump will use them to bludgeon Hillary. And given that DWS and the DNC just rescinded the Obama era rules regarding the DNC receiving money from lobbyists, and well, you can see the problems. And it doesn’t matter that Trump wines and dines and lives with the folks he is going to use to smear Hillary, he doesn’t care. He’ll be screaming about her speaking fees, mark my word.
He’s just going to scream that the whole thing is broken and that he can fix it, and point to the parts the DNC keeps breaking and saying there is really no difference between the two parties. And on the surface, it looks like he is right.
muddy
Speaking of broken that autoplay ad is back on. Sorry to be selfish in the face of the nation’s trouble.
Baud
Ok, then we lose.
Berial
Vox is blaming it all on Authoritarians and they may be onto something there. Warning its a LONG read.
jl
@Baud: I give up too, and am voting Baud! 2016! (Edit: the one and only truly Baud-awful candidate!)
But, Cole’s daily Panic in the Year Zero posts always make my day just a little bleaker, so just to keep down my spirits, I read them.
Chip Daniels
Agreed we need to be very careful. We have gotten used to fighting a conventional Romney conservative, and sneering at an obvious racist, but someone who can be anything to anyone at anytime is more difficult, especially since so many people are so frightened and desperate they want to be told anything comforting, no matter how ludicrous.
Baud
@jl:
It’s tiring. The invulnerable Democrat is a myth. Even Obama blew the first debate with Romney.
dedc79
Rockefeller is spinning so fast in his grave he vomited corpse vomit.
Bob In Portland
That’s the problem. With Trump you don’t know if he’s expressing himself honestly or lying. That’s also the problem with other politicians, but most politicians are not as far off the reservation with their lies.
p.a.
@Baud: Now is your chance to distinguish yourself from the field- Baud: Almost as Much a Not-Democrat as Bernie, and More of a Not-Democrat than DWS. It’ll work as a bumper sticker. On a Winnebago.
Bob In Portland
@dedc79: Plus, the more you know about Rockefeller (referring here to Nelson) the less he was a Rockefeller Republican.
cokane
really underestimating the dem / liberal campaign machine here cole. also, anecdata. empirical data show no gains for trump in the general electorate, losses actually.
Baud
@p.a.:
I haven’t taken a single dime in outside money. I’m not even in the pocket of small donors.
jl
@Baud: I think HRC will appropriately Sandersize her campaign, and I think we have seen some trial runs in speeches recently, She is not going to just sit there and let the GOP take pot shots at her as a corporate stooge (and in truth, she is not, at least compared to the GOPers).
But the ‘small frightened mammal Democrat’ is a common species.
magurakurin
@Baud: and you outlasted Ben Carson, so, there’s that.
p.a.
@jl:
From R to D, he may end up in the IWW next. Is DSOC still around?
Hunter Gathers
So tell me – how does the Vulgar Talking Yam gets a higher percentage of the minority vote than Romney? Only white people are stupid enough to vote for Trump. And there aren’t enough of us to put Trump in the White House. Stop freaking the fuck out.
Brachiator
It’s early. Were you people this worried about McCain this early? Or Romney?
Trump has not even sealed the deal on the nomination. Let the Republicans take care of this. What Trump is saying is scaring the crap out of Republicans who think he is insufficiently faithful to conservative dogma.
The Planned Parenthood stuff is a prime example. Let’s watch to see if Little Marco and the Terrible Cruz try to tear The Donald apart over liking any part of Planned Parenthood.
Right now, the establishment Republicans insist that they will not let Trump be their hero if he pivots to the left. If they cave and kiss his ring, the Democrats may have a challenge, but they don’t have a problem.
And if you think they DO have a problem, then neither Hillary nor Bernie may be the solution and you’ll just be fvcked.
tsquared2001
Calme, Suave. Trump won’t even win as many electoral votes (the true measurement) as Rmoney.
elmo
That’s not what scares me about Trump. What scares me are the many thousands of disaffected blue-collar white workers in the formerly-industrial East and the Rust Belt. Ohio. Michigan. Pennsylvania. Even Wisconsin.
Michigan and Pennsylvania are supposed to be “gimme” Dem states, part of the electoral firewall that starts anyone from Team Blue out with a huge advantage. And this year, I think they are in jeopardy. I think Ohio is in serious danger. I think we could lose Wisconsin. All because of 40 to 70 year old whites who stayed home in 2008 and 2012 because neither McCain nor (certainly) Romney had anything to say to them that resonated, but when Trump talks he speaks their language, gives them something to be excited about.
Get rid of Mexicans. Get rid of Muslims. Get into a trade war with China to get our jobs back. Go ahead and tax the rich, who cares about them? Save Social Security. Make deals with other countries that put (white) Americans first, like it’s supposed to be.
Forget national polling. National polling and national negatives don’t mean shit. We run state-by-state elections, and if Trump gets crushed by double digits in California, New York, and Massachusetts, but ekes out multi-decimal shaved victories in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, he could easily lose the popular vote by a landslide and be elected President of the United States.
Peale
@magurakurin: yes. But unlike his campaign insiders, my pockets don’t feel any heavier than when I started this “campaign.” Baud has not made me wealthy.
dedc79
Cole would probably feel better if there was a Hillary Clinton version of Obama’s “Calm the F*** Down. I’ve Got This” meme.
Hungry Joe
I cannot figure out how people have convinced themselves that a country that elected Ronald Reagan twice and George W. Bush … well, almost elected George W. Bush, then almost elected him again, could not elect Donald Trump — especially with such ripe targets as Hillary “Benghazi” Clinton and a cantankerous Communist Christ-killer.
Don’t think they’d bring that up? Ha, I say. HA!
Alex.S
We’ll see.
Obvious racism has recently been an issue for the general election. I still remember when a weird slur sunk George Allen’s campaign. There’s a reason for dog whistles, and it’s not because of media criticism or tsking by party elders — it’s because white Americans don’t want to be directly associated with racism.
I agree that there’s no point on going after Trump’s policies, except to point out that he doesn’t care about policy.
magurakurin
Come on John Cole, it’s a little earlier to panic, yet. The great minds are on this. They may fail, yes, of course, but it won’t be because nobody was looking.
Inside the Clinton Team’s Plan to Defeat Donald Trump
But others, including former President Bill Clinton, dismissed those conclusions as denial. They said that Mr. Trump clearly had a keen sense of the electorate’s mood and that only a concerted campaign portraying him as dangerous and bigoted would win what both Clintons believe will be a close November election.
lamh36
Fuq Trump…fuq Trump’s racist supporters…fuq the GOP and fuq trying to understand the anger of a bunch of racist mofos.
It’s bad enough being poor, trying being Black first, then add poor on to that, and tell me again that I need to be careful not to offend a bunch of people who see my skin first and dont’ give two shits about my social or monetary situation.
As I said in a previous thread…As a African American this whole primary season has got me to thinking, it must be nice to only having to worry about income inequality via classism keeping you down…and not having to deal with both classism and racism.
Technocrat
Come on, man! This is how you deal with The Donald:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8TwRmX6zs4
And yeah, he’ll be bringing that in the Fall.
ETA: If we’re going to get all pearl-clutchy, you need to be terrified of what happens when Trump LOSES. Fuuuuuck.
Elliott
just fuck me
SFAW
John, calm down. It was just a month or so ago that we were being told that DWS is relatively harmless, and that after Hill/Bern is elected, there will be a new DNC Chair. So you are clearly overreacting to DWS’s best efforts to prove Naderites correct.
I mean, really, what could go rong? It’s not as if the Dems have a branding problem.
Betty Cracker
@dedc79: Been meaning to Photoshop one.
lamh36
Oh and if you didn’t hear me the first time…Fuq…Trump…GOP…his supporters and folks who want me to understand these folks and this “anger”:
Neo-Nazis at Trump rally caught on video roughing up black woman: ‘You’re scum, your time will come!’
Tractarian
Just because you’re scared doesn’t mean everyone else should be.
p.a.
@Baud:
Tonight on Fox news: Putative Democrat Baud admits his financing is an inside job! We Report You Believe
pacem appellant
I’m not panicking now, but I reserve the right to panic in June if Trump shows any traction in the general electorate. Me thinks not, but again, it’s too early to pull the panic lever. If you want to allay (or confirm) your worst fears, check out http://www.270towin.com/. Here’s a sample map I’ve put together that I think is overly pessimistic for 2016. http://www.270towin.com/maps/58r3J
Peale
@elmo: I’m not certain what Dems are supposed to do about that? Should we be running on a moratorium on Islamic immigrants? Demanding to eliminate ESL? A dem running on higher tariffs?
Retr237
@Hunter Gathers: @Hunter Gathers:
There may come a time when you’re right, but we’re not there yet, especially if you’re looking at active voters through the lens of the electoral college. Trump has a shot at winning over disaffected whites in states Romney- and most other republicans- couldn’t compete in. Think about how the map looks with Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, and some of the other big Northern states, to say nothing of Florida and Virginia, ppseriously at risk, and then tell me how confident you feel.
schrodinger's cat
These daily freak outs are kinda getting old. what should immigrants, Muslims or one of those groups targeted by Trump do? Run around in circles and pretend their hair is on fire. You need chill the fuck out, no one is going to call you an anchor baby and/or terrorist, even if Trump wins.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Cole has a man crush on Griftwald and he lives for his retweets, which is why he post such dribble.
Ultraviolet Thunder
The high turnout in the GOP primaries worries me. I wish I could convince myself this was Dems switching parties to vote for Trump for the lulz.
Kay
I agree with this to a certain extent but my problem is I don’t know what to do about it.
If they’re not “ready” when will they get ready? How will they get ready?
If Democrats don’t know by now that economic issues are huge and they need to focus on NOT doing things like allowing Party leaders to gut payday lender regulations then when will they learn that? They’ve lost governors races and statehouses all over the country- they’re absolutely bleeding in the states. If they lose the Presidency they will be basically powerless outside of the minority of states they still control, yet they have done absolutely nothing about that.
One of the things I like about the Sanders run is Democrats need to be shaken up. They need some “disruption”. All is not well. They have real problems when they’re losing states like Illinois and Maryland, but no one in leadership seems to care so what am I supposed to do about it?
Eric S.
Step away from the ledge, JC.
Your concern is not unfounded. Drumph has a strong appeal to economically disadvantaged voters beyond his blatant racism. He’s the only GOP candidate in my memory saying he is going to protect the social safety net. He’s promising to protect existing jobs and being back others.
Does he believe that? I haven’t a clue. Can he accomplish it? No, not really.
We Democrats have a job ahead of us. If we get complacent and take him for granted, ala GOP establishment, we very well could lose. But if we organize (insert Will Rogers joke here), fundraise and GOTV, we have the advantage.
FlipYrWhig
It’s just plain obvious that the election will be won or lost due to the fallout from media coverage of the Democratic National Committee chair’s bill about payday lending regulations. I don’t see how this _wouldn’t_ be the killer argument Donald Trump uses for the next 8 months.
magurakurin
@lamh36: Indeed white privilege is real. I hope this doesn’t come across the wrong way, because I in know way feel I can truly understand the daily struggles that black people face day in and day out in America. But I grew my hair out long and had a shaggy ole beard way back in 1980. Now, it wasn’t as bad by then, but having long hair marked you as the enemy among some and I was told my more than a few employers that they wouldn’t hire me because I had long hair. Even one apartment manager said, no, no way, no long hairs. I remember one evening, my partner in crime and fellow long haired freaky person and I were talking about all this and the conclusion we came to was this. We realized that if we really wanted to, we could get a shave and a haircut and walk down to the bank and get a job there next day, no problem, because we were white guys. But damn, how fucked up is it to be a black guy in this fucked up country? Racism is a bigger problem than income inequality, for sure.
Ultraviolet Thunder
My state has an open primary (MI). To get the most value out of my vote, I’d get an R ballot and vote for Cruz, sowing discord among my enemies. But I’m not sure I could bring myself to do it. I wonder if they’ll let the visibly intoxicated cast a ballot.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
SFAW
On the plus side, HIllary’s “Make America Whole Again” is almost as compelling a campaign slogan as “Jeb Can Fix it!” but without the possibility of being mocked.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Mike J
Two candidates running for the Dems. One wants to be an Obama third term, one wants to repeal and replace and destroy everything he did. Pants wetting Hillary hater associates shitting on Obama with Hillary.
Matt McIrvin
The thing about Trump’s inexorable mass-turnout wave of new voters is that if it were a real threat, you’d think it would be a real threat against the other Republican candidates in the primary. And it’s not.
That sounds strange, because Trump is beating all those guys without breaking a sweat. But what we’re talking about is a putative turnout advantage, which would cause him to outperform his polling on election day. He’s not outperforming his polling. He’s actually underperforming his polling, but only by a little bit.
That suggests to me that, yes, Trump’s people are turning out enthusiastically, but Trump’s opponents’ voters are also turning out just as enthusiastically, maybe slightly more so, which cancels out his proportional turnout advantage. You can’t tell me it’s because Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are such inspiring people. It’s because they want to get rid of Donald Trump. This is the effect he has on people.
Now, do you think he enrages Republicans more than he enrages Democrats?
This also suggests that there’s not a huge body of hidden Trump voters who are ashamed of it and lying to pollsters (a Bradley-type effect).
Obviously, it may not be possible to map primaries directly to the general election. But since primaries and especially caucuses are lower-turnout affairs, differential turnout effects ought to be a larger concern there than in the general election.
Democrats are not turning out to quite the same degree in their primaries. But in their primaries, they are not yet voting against Donald Trump.
Anyway, I think Trump will be as least as powerful a GOTV motivator for his opponents as for his fans.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Technocrat: In addition to everything else, Obama has masterful comedic timing and delivery.
Brachiator
Isn’t there a GOP debate tomorrow?
Sit back and watch the GOP lose its shit over Trump’s moderate remarks.
superpredators4hillary
@dedc79:
Sit The Fuck Down. This Is Mine.
elmo
@Peale: Hell no! If part of this country is longing for a Fuehrer, I’m certainly not suggesting that Team Blue run their own, fascist-lite version. If I’m right, there’s really nothing that can be done other than the best and strongest GOTV operation we’ve ever attempted. If we get all of ours to the polls – African-Americans, Latinos, young progressives, all the irregular voters that are part of our coalition – that’s all we can possibly do.
eponymous coward
Right, because if Sanders is the nominee, Trump won’t just go “I’m the moderate, he’s the socialist who said nice things about Fidel Castro, oh, and by the way, he wants to raise almost everyone’s taxes” for about 3 months. He’ll totally shrivel into a ball.
And hey, it’s not like Republicans love races where they can run against people who want to raise your taxes, and have won them time in, time out, year in, year out. This has the actual benefit for the Republicans of pretty much being true- Bernie does want to jack a lot of taxes. Protip: you can’t turn the USA into Denmark with 30%+ percent of GDP spent in government service without everybody chipping in a little. Bernie does want to soak the rich, but everybody ends up chipping in something in his plan.
Give me a break. Just because Socialist Jesus can very legitimately say “I was in favor of throwing the moneychangers out of the temple long ago, and I still am now” doesn’t mean he really has an easy pass to the Presidency that Hillary doesn’t have against Trump. Yes, we know, she sacrifices babies to Goldman Sachs. Yes, we know Trump will be all over her on her vulnerabilities. But the reason why she’s drawn fire for 25+ years and Bernie’s been left alone so far is not because he’s invulnerable in a national election. You can get elected as a self-declared socialist in Vermont. There hasn’t been a self-declared socialist who’s gotten very close in the US overall. The closest was Wallace in 1948, and he managed to get fuck-all in the way of electoral votes.
And I’ll be blunt… if Bernie can’t get past Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Party nominee, I don’t buy he’s more viable as a general election candidate. Fuck “who’s more electable”. You want to show me electable? Win some goddamn elections. Barack Hussein Obama didn’t seem to have a problem beating Hillary. Maybe Bernie’s problem isn’t the Hillbeast or the “establishment”. Maybe it’s parachuting into a party and expecting everyone to join your “political revolution” when the subtext for your campaign is “hey, this black dude you elected, he’s OK, but he and the people who worked for him are really not REAL progressives like me, oh and once I’m in I’ll get all the things done he couldn’t do against ridiculous Republican opposition because argle bargle political revolution fuck yeah!”
So unless you have a time machine that we can use to convince Warren or Biden to jump in, we’ve got the cake we’re going to have to bake in the general election. But don’t try and tell me Bernie would have this any more in the bag than Hillary would.
WarMunchkin
@Kay:
Kay for DNC chair?
But less seriously, I’ve been asking around and talking with some people in higher-up Dem circles and the general consensus is that Sanders’ campaign has been more active in new voter registration slightly, but both fail against Obama 2008 and state parties will, I quote, “probably handle it”. I laughed, then I cried.
FlipYrWhig
@Matt McIrvin: Good point: Trump should be outperforming the sample.
SFAW
@Kay:
Kay, Kay ..(sighs and shakes head sadly) … don’t you know that the “50-State Strategy” did absolutely nothing to improve the Democrats’ position? Don’t you know that having a semi-conserva-Dem like DWS holding the reins is exactly what the Dems need to put a stop to the Republicans being the only party willing to fuck over the poor and middle class? Not to mention the rumors that Hillary is bringing Martha Coakley onboard as a key strategist, which should fix everything.
Just Some Fuckhead
Trump is the perfect candidate to take America through bankruptcy.
Kidding aside, I’m less concerned about his ability to win it all. I think running against someone like Trump would be a once in a lifetime dream. First, he can’t compete on policy at all because he doesn’t know a thing about it. Remember the debate where Rubio taunted him about health insurance policy and forced Trump to keep saying the same nonsensical thing over and over? That’s what his Democratic opponent is going to do on every subject. Second, Trump is his own worst oppo nightmare. Yes, 30% of the electorate won’t care that Trump has been on all three sides of every issue and has 40 years of video footage saying the most awful, cretinous things. They were already going to vote for any Republican. But 70% of the electorate will care, to some degree or other. Third and probably worst for him, his only rationale for running is that he’s a winner. When he’s down in the polls, which he will be, his whole reason for being goes away.
SFAW
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Anymore? Did it start, and I missed it?
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Do Democrats ever win on that? “Be very afraid” just doesn’t seem like something we win on. We couldn’t win on it when people knew Bush was a disaster- when we had an actual example.
Trump’s horribleness as President isn’t real yet.
FlipYrWhig
@eponymous coward: I still don’t think Trump’s success has anything to do with economic insecurity. His shtick is that everyone else is incompetent and he’s the master dealmaker, and everyone else is a politically correct pu$$y but he’s a real man, and that there are too many brown people making trouble. It does him far too much credit to call him an economic populist.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: Ask Sen. Oliver North.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Yeah, in 2006. Not enough people actually agreed that Bush was a disaster in ’04.
Technocrat
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
I’ve always thought the best politicians would be good stand-up comedians. Watch Trump working his rallies – it’s a stand-up routine. He’s good at it. Bill is better – on his best days. But Obama is a master.
chopper
GAME OVER MAN GAME OVER!
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: Uh, the 50 State Strategy was expressly about electing semi-conserva-Dems.
jl
@Kay: I agree with your diagnosis of the problem. And I agree that unfortunately there is not much we can do about it.
There is no reason for complacency at against any GOP candidate, but I don’t think Democrats have reason to panic either. And if HRC is so tone deaf that she cannot adopt some of Sanders progressivism, then we are in real trouble.
In addition to other commenters calmer take on it, in the general election, most voters, even disaffected working and lower middle class white voters, will but putting a credibility factor into evaluating the candidates claims, Certainly far more than GOP primary voters do. Trump will have real problems there. “I will do Great Terrific Deals” may be credible detailed policy proposal for replacing PPACA and helping with student debt in a GOP primary, but not for most general election voters.
And some of Trump is pure distilled old-line GOP plutocrat nonsense, like his tax plan. That alone should get Sanders wandering around the countryside thundering like an Old Testament prophet after he loses the nomination. And HRC should thunder too. Trump’s tax plan is about as Establishment GOP as it gets. The economic populist issue is not a one sided thing that all goes in favor of Trump. Even if the Payday loan BS gets out of the House, the Democrats have people like Reid who can shut it down if it proves politically problematic. It is small bore stuff compared to Trump’s tax plan.
So, no reason for complacency, but no reason for panic either.
Just Some Fuckhead
@FlipYrWhig:
I agree. If there’s an economic argument inside of the Trump phenomenon it’s that Germany is fucked and it’s the Jews fault.
Matt McIrvin
@Matt McIrvin:
Sam Wang says something a little more precise: Cruz, Rubio and Trump actually all exceeded their polling percentages by about the same small amount, which caused Trump to underperform predictions slightly in the delegate count, because the other guys were more likely to cross the minimum threshold.
This pretty much makes my point, though.
Ultraviolet Thunder
A metaphorical nightmare:
I watched a Trump speech before I went to sleep last night. At some time during the night I dreamed that I was at a big sportsball game that had gotten boring because my team was losing. So decided to put underpants on my head to be wacky*
Then the Jumbotron camera was turned on me and everyone was paying attention and encouraging me. So I clowned around to be entertaining.
While that was happening my team scored many points, goals or baskets, something, and came from behind to win.
Underpants Head Guy was heralded as the savior of the game and that was awwsome.
As a consequence I became an unofficial mascot. I was required to attend my sports team’s games, with underpants on my head and do my clowning to ensure my team’s good luck.
And that’s maybe why we still have Trump in the contest. He started out doing it for the attention and got carried away by his success. Like Underpants Head Guy, only more ridiculous.
*Never mind where underpants came from. It was a dream and stuff like that happens.
msdc
Cole, please. This “liberal couple” describes themselves as “socially liberal and fiscally mildly conservative,” i.e. like every other centrist douchebag who reads David Brooks non-ironically and voted for Mitt Romney – with deepest regrets, I’m sure, and with lots of learned references to the sans-culottes (?!?). Also too, they write letters to the Financial Times.
Clinton never had their vote. Stop panicking.
Brachiator
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I also remember that this did not put a dent in Trump’s support. His most devoted followers don’t care about his obvious weaknesses. Rubio’s taunts score, but are not knockout punches.
Things will change, but right now, the Democrats need to concentrate on getting out the vote and looking out for and overcoming attempts at voter suppression.
And Trump may have two hurdles. First he has to win huge in the primaries, and then he is going to have to survive challenges at the GOP convention come July.
Davis X. Machina
There are, what, 320 million Americans?
And half of them are old enough to vote, and eligible (citizenship, etc.).
How many of them think “Debbie Wasserman-Schultz” is a supermodel?
How many of that 160 million don‘t think ‘the DNC’ is a gynecological procedure?
Villago Delenda Est
DWS has got to go. Period. End of discussion.
The vile bitch sides with payday loan parasites. She is not a Democrat.
JPL
Help.. Who is talking to Chris on MSNBC… Trump is losing to the team.. It’s happened before in history that the front runner has lost to the team. It lost to John..John..John..
Oh and Trump lost yesterday.. lol
Kay
@SFAW:
I know you’re being sarcastic but I don’t believe in the 50 state strategy. It may be a fine thing to do but I think 99% of the credit that goes to the “50 state strategy” should instead be credited to a Democratic wave year.
The 50 state strategy would take a long time to work, for one thing, so crediting all wins to that and all losses to that when it was only in place such a short time never made any sense to me. I also saw it up close and honestly it was an incredibly long Power Point presentation delivered by an organizer who we then never saw again. I just think the whole thing has become almost mythic.
I’m also not a big Howard Dean fan.
A hugely over-rated person to go along with a hugely over-rated strategy :)
Villago Delenda Est
@Just Some Fuckhead: An important way to divert attention from the German Banksters’ predations on Germans in general. Blame the Joooooooos!
Ella in New Mexico
@Kay:
I agree wholeheartedly. The very fact that we have posters here commenting callously about how stupid John Cole is to worry about the character and core values of the Party Chair–who is at the same time a de-facto Campaign Chair for our current leading contender–is scary. (so is the fact we have posters here who somehow think it’s cool to personally dis the founder of BJ, but I digress…)
This is where the Republicans began their leap into the Abyss of Craven Greed for Power: wrapping their arms around anyone and everyone, no matter how distasteful, dubious or duplicitous they were, as long as they’d vote Republican. Winning for winning’s sake, whether we stick to anything of value or substance afterwards. Throwing slogans and talking points out to the rubes to make them think they were in their court, tossing them the occasional offerings of poisonous legislation in Congress, no matter how bad it was for the nation.
The DWS payday lender thing should get her FIRED. I don’t care if they’re in her constituency, I don’t care if people should do their homework and avoid those places anyway, I don’t care what kind of tradeoff she’s gonna claim it is. it’s not Democrat. It’s wrong. Hilary should order her to resign or else.
Sorry, folks. It’s not winning for winning sake that distinguishes us from Republicans–it’s that we actually want to govern the way we campaign. We still have values.
And it’s shit like this that is why I’ll vote for Sanders so hard my little black marker pen is gonna break in half in the voting box.
Chyron HR
@SFAW:
Davis X. Machina
@FlipYrWhig: Creat two, three, many Heath Schulers!
Just Some Fuckhead
@Brachiator:
Well, I suppose you have a point if the 30% of Trump’s support in the Republican party applies to the general electorate as a whole, which it doesn’t.
Steve in the ATL
@Mike J: If I may harken back to a previous thread, I’ve heard it said that you’re not a true Memphian unless you’ve had a fake ID confiscated by Rebel at the Antenna Club
Keith P
@Brachiator: Cole was already freaking out over Obama’s reelection this time last cycle, so no surprise. And at the same time the GOP is about to split in two.
Kay
@jl:
I never know what to do with “don’t be complacent”. Okay, I am ALERT! It’s almost superstition, right? That idea people have that if they anticipate bad things it won’t be so terrible if they happen? If there were something specific one could do it would be different, but there hardly ever is so it’s like “knock wood” to me.
Guarding against demons at the door :)
Really?
The Five Stages of Donald Trump
1. Ha Ha Trump
2. Why Trump Can’t Win
3. Explaining Donald Trump
4. We Must Respect Real America
5. Oh God Oh God
Somebody wrote that last year which is something.
Mary G
I had a fit about DWS and that payday loan bill last night. Very bad unforced error. The Democratic party is telling the minority and/or poor people who give us our electoral edge that we value the parasites that charge them 304% interest are more important to us than they are. I want Elizabeth Warren to filibuster the shit out of this law at the top of her lungs.
I repeat myself, DWS must go. Can she be primaried? If the Republicans can do it to Eric Cantor, why can’t we?
JPL
@Really?: Pay back is when you can mention to your repub friend that it’s not just Trump. Isn’t Scalise majority whip? hmmm
Ultraviolet Thunder
In ten years we may look back and ask “What the hell was going on in 2016? Jeepers!”
I hope we’re not looking back and saying “2016 is when this whole mess started.”
FlipYrWhig
@Ella in New Mexico: Shit like this is why you’ll vote for Bernie Sanders? Did you decide who to vote for in the 2004 primaries because of something Terry McAuliffe did?
daverave
I can’t believe that it is March 2nd and I’m already reading this kind of freak out. Where do people get the energy
FlipYrWhig
@Mary G:
Some people need hobbies.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Keith P:
I’ll believe this when I see it. I think a safer bet is to say the Republican Party will lose with Donald Trump and then make the same old tired excuse, “we should have run a real conservative.”
FlipYrWhig
@daverave: BUT INTEREST RATES AT CHECK CASHING PLACES IS WHAT SWINGS ALL ELECTIONS
NR
@msdc: Maybe try reading the article next time? Sands voted for Obama in 2008.
FlipYrWhig
@Just Some Fuckhead: Yup. They’ll say “Trump lost by X million and Y million evangelical Christians didn’t vote, so having a vulgar, libertine nominee cost us the election, and that’s never going to happen again.”
nominus
and everyone trying to tell Cole that he’s worried about nothing are acting like everything is going to be sunshine and rainbows the day after the election.
Please pay attention. He’s not just worried about the general. He (like a lot of other smart people) realizes that Trump’s movement isn’t going to just die quietly the day HRC is sworn in. I think we saw something to that effect in 2009. Yes, a ton of that opposition was due the skin color of our president, but that raging intransigence will easily be transferred to the president’s gender and we will have an emboldened and insufferable red House to deal with.
Brachiator
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Either way, it is too early to declare Trump to be a political superman, and it is too early to predict that he will crumble like a cheap suit. There is simply no data and not much precedent to provide anything more than overconfidence or John Cole’s moment of panic here.
Everyone is surprised that Trump has lasted this long. And I thought he would have imploded early on. We’ve even seen stat man Nate Silver lose his shit and desperately try to regain his mojo after being so wrong about Trump’s staying power.
But (I keep saying) it’s early. I see some signs that Trump is like California Gov Arnold, who kept picking up steam and shrugging off attacks that might have doomed “regular politicians.” But it’s early.
MomSense
There is way too much Trump hype. Because he says such horrible and outrageous things the media have covered him far more than he or his campaign merits. Yesterday he got about 35% of the Republican vote in a year when Republicans are highly motivated to turn out. I figure that the Republican nominee can get about 47% of the vote if they are competent and run a good (for them) campaign. There are more Democrstic voters so it really is a question of our ground game. Can we register enough new voters? Can we protect our voters from the new voter suppression laws? Can we mobilize enough volunteers to do the Identification, persuasion and GOTV voter contacts? I believe the formula is 7-8 contacts per voter. It doesn’t do any good to make Trump yuuuger than he is.
My message is don’t fall for the hype and work hard to win. Same as every other election.
Kay
@Brachiator:
These things are certainly important but you’re really talking about closing a very narrow margin. The candidate really has to do most of the heavy lifting because you have to have people TO turn out.
There’s a reason losing campaigns always say this “if we just get our voters out…” then they lose :)
There needs to be a pull or the last push won’t fix it. No one (of us) has any control over the pull.
NR
@FlipYrWhig: Sigh. You can pretend this shit doesn’t matter until you pass out from yelling. But it does.
At best, it makes working people look at Democrats and decide that they’re just as bad as Republicans. At worst, it lets someone like Trump claim the populist mantle and use it against us.
dslak
Democrats have two obvious strategies for defeating Trump:
1. Run ad after ad of ordinary people he’s ripped off with his shady business practices and bullying.
2. Make sure every black and woman in this country knows about his history of discrimination cases for race and gender discrimination.
Take some Propranalol and have a drink. We have work to do.
FlipYrWhig
@nominus: Republicans… continuing to be assholes… even _after_ the election, you say? Boy, that IS news!
Redshift
Trump is a colossal BS artist, so he will say anything that he thinks will work. That doesn’t mean it will work. The Republican voters who are flocking to him are people who are pissed off because their leadership has told them for years that if they get Republicans elected, they’ll get everything they want, and then they couldn’t deliver (because the promise was delusional.) So they respond by following the guy who tells them that this time, they really will get it all, just because he’s great.
I’m inclined to think that most of the people who will fall for Trump’s con are the same people who fell for the GOP’s con.
And while DWS is an embarrassment and should go, I’m having trouble believing that kind of inside baseball stuff is going to move the needle much with the wider electorate that isn’t politically engaged enough to even vote in primaries. (Inside baseball not because what she’s doing doesn’t affect people’s lives, but because the only reason it’s relevant to the election is because she’s DNC chair.)
DCF
I agree wholeheartedly that this tactic (by Trump) would put a serious hitch in HRC’s giddy up…conversely, given Sanders’ status as a DNC outsider and the fact that he has been saying ‘…that the whole thing is broken…’ for the entirety of his political career (and before), I don’t foresee the same tactic working in any significant way with regard to Bernie….
CNN/ORC Poll Numbers
Dems vs Trump:
Clinton 52 – Trump 44
Sanders 55- Trump 43
Dems vs Rubio:
Clinton 47 – Rubio 50
Sanders 53- Rubio 45
Dems vs Cruz:
Clinton 48 – Cruz 49
Sanders 57- Cruz 40
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/01/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-poll/index.html
Electability is not, IMV, simply a matter of individual perspective. It is also – and more centrally – a matter of fact(s).
And then there’s this…Jeff Sharlet, author of C Street and The Family, has a new book due in May:
Hillary’s Nasty Pastorate
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-ehrenreich/hillarys-nasty-pastorate_b_92361.html
FlipYrWhig
@NR: I know that for you “Democrats” are a blob that all does one thing with one mind, creating a stark choice between collective malevolence and collective bliss at all times. But that’s, you know, peculiar. How many “working people” do you think will follow this pathway from Debbie Wasserman Schultz lobbying some number of Democrats, whether successfully or unsuccessfully, to be representative of all Democrats including Hillary Clinton, leading them to feel disgust, change their minds, and then vote for Donald Trump? How many of them will ever hear this story? Twelve?
Original Lee
Accidentally posted to the wrong thread downstairs. I had briefly hoped that Drumpf disgust would override the Hillary hate with the conservatives I know, but apparently not. Example A from this morning.
They are actually mining liberal media for anti-Hillary things and posting them to each other, in between finding hilarious Drumpf takedown memes.
Brachiator
@Really?:
This is perfect.
I will keep a copy of this.
And (God help us) break it out if appropriate.
msdc
@NR: Maybe try reading the comment next time? Or a calendar.
NR
@FlipYrWhig: We’re not talking about some backbench nobody. DWS is the DNC chair. She’s part of the party leadership.
FlipYrWhig
@Redshift:
The Republican voters who are flocking to him, who aren’t even half of the Republican Party, who are pretty much across the board a party of resentful and terrible people, think that brown people are making trouble and getting away with it, and it has to stop, and that Donald Trump has balls, and he’s rich and he’ll make them rich too.
sigaba
It’s hard to fight demagogues in any sort of reasonable context, because bullshit is already priced into their message. “Everybody lies so who cares if Gantry does too.” They can basically say anything at any time to anybody, and his supporters will just write it off, because they don’t want promises or an agenda, they want the attitude, and the attitude can’t be faked.
It’s also hard to argue with someone who’s convinced that “honesty” amounts to nothing more than “is willing to insult people without apology.” This trope has been with us at least since 2008 though, and Grandpa Walnuts’s impulsiveness and obstinacy being sold to us as his “Straight Talk”.
Wether Trump does well or not is really a test of how cynical people have become. There’s no question in my mind that Republican voters have become deeply cynical– their leaders told them Hillary would be in jail by now, and Obama would be a pitiful one-termer. But American voters at large, I don’t know.
FlipYrWhig
@NR: I know I was always very excited to hear about the behind-the-scenes paper trail of DNC Chairs. Remember how Don Fowler did that thing with that memo that really affected the 1996 election?
Kay
Also, I’m not a political professional but when Trump says Clinton may not be “allowed” to run, it pisses me off.
I mean really. Fuck you, buddy. “Allowed”. Like she needs his permission. Like he’s the permission-granter.
I hope he keeps bellowing that and the loyal scribes keep playing it 24/7.
Brachiator
@DCF:
Aren’t these national numbers?
Don’t mean squat. We don’t elect presidents by national vote. We aggregate state votes.
And it’s too goddam early. We don’t know platforms, running mates, campaigns.
This is an interesting indicator at a particular point in time, but not much more than that.
goblue72
@Kay: Yup. And that is why it is way too premature to be talking about circling the wagons around Hillary. I hope Sanders drags this out as long as possible. The only place that DLC-style platform deserves to be is in a pine box 6 feet under.
Technocrat
@NR:
Seriously man, what fraction of people know (much less care) who the DNC chair is? Would you bother putting out attack ads against Reince Priebus?
This is all Democratic Primary inside baseball.
ETA: I don’t mean to minimize it in the context of the Primary, only in the General.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
Are you saying their numbers and votes won’t count just because they are terrible people?
NR
@FlipYrWhig: Yet again you miss the point. Obviously this one thing, on its own, will not swing the election. But it is one piece of a narrative that Trump and the Republicans will build, of a party whose leadership doesn’t care about working people. That is a narrative that could be extremely damaging in November, and every time a prominent Democrat does something like this, it gets a little bit easier for Trump to build it.
satby
@Betty Cracker: Use the picture of Clinton in sunglasses on her BlackBerry.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
I’m thinking of it less as “don’t be complacent” and more as “wouldn’t it be awesome to run up the score on these Republican jerks?” I’d much rather hand Trump a humiliating defeat than let him come close.
Brachiator
@DCF:
Don’t mean squat. We don’t elect presidents by national vote. We aggregate state votes.
And it’s too goddam early. We don’t know platforms, running mates, campaigns.
This is an interesting indicator at a particular point in time, but not much more than that.
Mnemosyne
@Technocrat:
You know where I hear Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s name most often? Fox News.
Yes, she’s an asshole who needs to go for multiple reasons, but the only people who actually know who she is and give a shit about her are Fox News watchers, and they were never going to vote Democrat anyway.
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: No, what I mean is that Trump is such a jackass that he can’t even win over half of the party primed in advance to lick up everything he’s dishing out. The people who like Trump aren’t even a majority yet of the Asshole Party, and the Asshole Party isn’t even half of the electorate. I don’t know why that’s such cause for alarm.
NR
@Technocrat: You know that the DNC chair’s job is to publicly represent the party, right? Let’s picture an interview during election season:
DWS: Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party care about working Americans. Donald Trump and the Republicans don’t.
Interviewer: But you yourself sided with payday lenders over working Americans earlier this year. Why should we believe you when you say you care about them?
DWS: Uh….
Can you not see how that could be a problem?
Cat48
We’ve got two term presidents & they’re teams. Sanders hasnt earned the minority vote & thinks we are stupid. We need to win . Hillary or Bust. I have a feeling Hillary is not going to respond to Trump’s allegations, no matter what he throws. He has credentialed white supremacists as press & they broadcast live from rallies while crowd abuses any minorities. He is not worthy of being treated like a candidate. Christy is leaving
goblue72
@lamh36: Sure. And in a perfect world, you’d be right. But that ain’t our world. We have the electorate we have. And a strategy primarily focused on brown votes will lose every election. Even if every brown adult voted. Less than 13% of the U.S. population is African-American. 17% are Latino (of which some subset is non-white Hispanic) – and Latino voter turnout rates are significantly less than African-Americans or non-Hispanic whites.
63% of the U.S. population are non-Hispanic whites. And they vote at higher rates than Latinos – and they vote equal to African-Americans in Presidential years, and they vote at higher rates than everyone else in mid-terms. Which ties into not only controlling Congress, but the state legislatures and Governorships as well.
You don’t need all Whites to win – but you certainly need some of them to win. And given that politics is in part identify-based but also part transactional – you need to offer something to them – and to also speak to their motivating impulses. As Democrats, you certainly aren’t going to be speaking to any motivating impulses amongst them that are racially-based. So you are left in large part with speaking to economic motivating impulses – which includes pent up frustrations over downward mobility.
I would also add, that since we are in a Federal system – a lot of the power is in the states. And non-White voters are heavily concentrated within urbanized areas within certain states. Which further exacerbates the challenges for Democrats to the degree that Democratic politicians do not address the economic mobility / stagnation issues.
Brachiator
@Kay:
There is at present no real margin that we are dealing with. This is the only factor that we can identify now.
Others may emerge if Trump actually becomes the candidate.
ETA: We know nothing about Trump’s appeal to Democrats, we don’t know how gender will come into play, we don’t know whether the youth vote will move from Sanders to Clinton. Lots of variables to consider, and specific states.
FlipYrWhig
@NR: Another way Republicans could say that Democrats are bad for working people is to say they love welfare and taxes and coddle lawbreakers. And whaddya know! They’ve been saying that for 50 years! But I’m sure Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s letter to other Democrats about rollbacks of payday lending regulations will be a central argument raised by a guy who’s been in the cas!no business for decades.
Dollared
@Berial: Because Vox would never, ever admit that it might be because Americans are fed up with neoliberal corporate tools that have made the world a more prosperous place (and the Vox kids’ and their parents much richer) by allowing the 1% to crush working Americans and outsource their jobs.
goblue72
@satby: Please don’t. That meme is hella old. And a Blackberry? C’mon.
And shit – last meme we need for any Dem candidate is the image of a globe-trotting coastal elite in oversized fashion shades texting on her phone.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Kay:
I think Clinton is doing a good job transitioning to a populist message.
FlipYrWhig
@NR:
“Payday loans are how people in dire straits have access to quick credit, Interviewer, and my hardworking constituents in Florida tell me they don’t want to see these establishments go out of business. Sometimes they can’t wait for a bank to help them. Sometimes in their neighborhoods there are no banks around. And, Interviewer, the real issue is what Donald Trump’s policies would…”
I think check-cashing places are scourges myself and believe wholeheartedly in regulating everything under the sun within an inch of its life, but this really isn’t hard to do.
SFAW
@FlipYrWhig:
Uh, the 50-State Strategy was expressly about getting a credible D in every race (within reason).
In some cases, that meant a conservaDem, but that was not the express purpose.
Just Some Fuckhead
@FlipYrWhig:
The specter of a Trump nomination threatens to cleave his own party in half and yet Trump is somehow going to unite the other 70% of the electorate against the Democratic nominee because of his magical political abilities.
Brachiator
@FlipYrWhig:
Because Trump should not have even made it this far.
He’s a wild card. Let’s see what the landscape looks like after March 15.
And because a chunk of the electorate seems desperate to look for a Great White Hope to cling to.
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: Fine, not the express purpose, but the express effect. Heath Shuler, f’rinstance.
eemom
@FlipYrWhig: @Just Some Fuckhead:
These.
Fer fuxsake Cole. Calm the fuck down.
Technocrat
@NR:
My point is that it’s politics. You’re thinking of one line of attack because it fits your premises. If you changes the premises, it’s no longer a line of attack.
Daulnay
@p.a.:
Are the IWW still around? Last I heard, they were only unionizing food cooperatives in college towns.
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: Is Donald Trump ’16 more or less popular than Sarah Palin ’08?
Mnemosyne
@goblue72:
You should probably dive into the 2008 and 2012 results sometime. There were I think four (4) states where a majority of whites voted for Obama, and big blue states like California and Massachusetts were NOT among them. Democrats disdain the minority vote at their peril.
FlipYrWhig
@eemom: @Just Some Fuckhead: Don’t we make a lovely trio! :P :D
Technocrat
@FlipYrWhig:
I shake my fist at your faster-than-Technocratic typing!
Chyron HR
@NR:
Oh, gosh, can you imagine a high-profile interview with DWFingS, full of hard-hitting investigative journalism?
You’d better be able to imagine it because it’s never in a million years going to happen.
FlipYrWhig
@Technocrat: It’s my honor to serve.
Just Some Fuckhead
@FlipYrWhig: @eemom: We should form a gang and terrorize the hell out of the Trumpscairts.
SFAW
@Kay:
Kay –
I agree that there was an anti-Bush factor. But the 50-State was not primarily about getting the electorate to understand the Dem “ethos” (so to speak), it was about getting someone on the ballot, everywhere. I seem to recall people making fun of Howard Dean, and how it would never work, etc., etc. But having a credible Dem in every race meant that, when the anti-Bush wave hit, the Dems could take as much advantage of it as possible.
No one I know — myself included — credits every Dem win to the 50-State. But I think it’s reasonably likely that some not-insignificant percentage can be ascribed to it.
Yeah, I get that you don’t like Dean. I’m hardly his biggest fan. But I recognize the success he had, and the paucity of cluefulness that is the hallmark of the current DNC chair.
FlipYrWhig
@Just Some Fuckhead: “Warr-iors, come out to plaay-yay!”
shomi
Wrong way Cole, the same person who told us that Christie was a heck of a guy and who worships the ground that Griftwald walks on…tells us we should fear Trump.
Please continue.
MCA1
@elmo: I’ll believe that when I see tight polling there. For one thing, Clinton’s going to have just as much minority support in each of those states as Obama has enjoyed, and their proportionate share of the electorate has increased over the last 4 years. For another, I’m betting there are just as many people whose economic security has improved since 2008 or 2012 in those states, who aren’t going to be voting out of pure seething rage but instead understand that the Democratic President had their backs while in office, as there are people who didn’t vote for Romney but are now so much more pissed off that they’re swilling Trump’s snake oil, or wouldn’t support EstablishMitt but will follow Moosallini because he’s an outsider.
Trump’s not going to pull in Sanders supporters in Michigan and Ohio and Wisconsin. Sanders is going to be out there trashing the magic false promises of Trump for 6 months. We can worry about Wall Street ties and payday loan bills and all that shit all we want, but the fact of the matter is Clinton’s going to be running to continue the Obama legacy, which as of right now means a soaring stock market, 85 consecutive months or whatever the hell it is of jobs growth, an unemployment rate half what it was 5 years ago, expanded access to medical insurance for people who couldn’t previously afford it, and a macroeconomy that’s crushing the recoveries of every other G8 nation. That’s likely to attract more currently undecided indpendents than we’re giving it credit for.
Angry middle class voters had the opportunity to vent their spleen in 2012, and Obama comfortably won Michigan and Florida and Wisconsin. The only difference on the racism angle between 2012 and 2016 is bigots then had the opportunity to vote against the Democrat out of bigotry, and now they have the opportunity to vote for the Republican out of bigotry. That reads the same on the ballot. These people were all out of touch with reality and fueled by resentment 4 years ago – nothing’s really changed.
Romney took 60% of the white vote, for crying out loud. Clinton’s going to win more of the Latino vote than Obama did against Trump. How’s he going to expand on white voters enough to overcome that? Especially in Florida.
Redshift
@NR:
No, it isn’t. Look it up. The DNC chair’s job is primarily fundraising. When there’s a Democratic president, the president is the public face of the party.
Just Some Fuckhead
Awesome Trump piece from Taibbi
goblue72
@Mnemosyne: Where did I say disdain? I just said you can’t ignore one over the other. And I didn’t say Dems needed a majority of white votes. I just said they need SOME. Which is why a focus on racial equity issues just won’t get you over the finish line. You do indeed need to make some appeals to get some white votes. Not all, but some.
Romney got roughly 60% of the white vote. Which means Obama still got 40%. If Romney had gotten roughly 65% of the white vote, he’d be in the middle of campaigning for his second term. So again, not all. Some.
And as I noted, this isn’t just about Presidential years – though I know a lot of Democrats seem to think elections only happen once every 4 years. This is also about the midterms and who shows up for midterms. Care to dive into composition of voters who voted in the last two midterm cycles? Let me save you the trouble – the nonwhite voters that showed up last two Presidential cycles disappeared during the midterms.
2020 is a midterm election. Its also a decennial census year. Gerrymandering anyone? I don’t want control of just the WH – I want control of every damn House seat and state legislative seat we can gerrymander.
Steve from Antioch
@DCF:
Exactly
It used to be that people trotting out their purity ponies sunk democrats. Now hillarys cheerleaders are pushing the so called pragmatic choice … Except she has less chance of winning. Wtf?
Gooher2b
You can add to the list that HRC’s campaign staff has a history of arrogance and complacency. They expected to walk all over Obama. They expected to run away with this primary. There was a story in the NYTimes two days ago about Cli ton senior staffers joking about destroying Trump. Bill had to snap them back into doing their jobs.
ellennelle
sooooo, what are you suggesting here? that we capitulate now and all fall in the party line?
so sure, yeah, trump will more than likely do all these things you suggest; he’s nothing if not an opportunist. and i’ll just bet he has a heyday too with her damn emails, especially the ones the fbi is so interested in regarding leaving reclassified docs unsecured, and the ones that apparently suggest some loose, erm, arrangements between foreign governments and the clinton foundation. hell, i hate the guy, but have to admit, i would use that stuff too. and add all those weapons sales she arranged to saudi arabia and israel, etc. and the mess in syria and libya, and benghazibenghazibenghazi!
(so you know, i’ve been defending hillary since her husband was governor of that state across the river; no question, most definitely a vast rightwing conspiracy on that count, not to mention an overdose of misogyny. but damn, why do each and both billary keep giving them the damn fodder??)
one could go on. and on and on – gawd knows the GOP has for eons, and nurtured a full generation of folks who loathe her like they loathe dark skin; they’ll crawl over shredded glass to vote against her. trump will simply pick up that torch and run with it.
which returns me to the question; are you suggesting we should lock arms in solidarity around this flawed candidate with so. much. baggage? and let’s not forget about this deeply flawed party too; why exactly should we be rewarding the very behavior you’re saying trump will then bludgeon hillary with?
help me with this; i hope i misunderstood your reasoning here.
ellennelle
@FlipYrWhig:
yeah. and how howard dean did that 50 state thang and took back congress in 06?
yeah; powerless schlubs.
i’m wondering when/if DWS will ever get a GOTV to sign up youth votes. maybe after her ol’ boss takes the baton? that seems about right.
FlipYrWhig
@ellennelle: The Dean strategy was predicated on running conservative Democrats in conservative districts. Not youth votes or liberals. You may be melding the 2004 Dean primary campaign with the 2006 DNC strategy debate.
different-church-lady
HuffPo and The Intercept? Wassamatter, your subscription to the Washington Times lapse or somethin’?
different-church-lady
@FlipYrWhig:
Oh, you mean the very ones “progressives” bitched about endlessly in 2010?
ellennelle
@Technocrat:
she’s getting primaried. and by a truly great progressive with terrific cred.
the loan lobbyists saw her vulnerability and, gosh, made her an offer she can’t refuse? that’s the generous interpretation; less so, she went begging.
she’s beneath a politician; she’s a self-serving sleeze.
Socraticsilence
@jl: Honestly, I think DWS is going to have to [email protected]different-church-lady: The Wasserman Schultz piece is also in any liberal publication you can think of from Charlie Pierce at Esquire, to Think Progress, its not a hit piece she really does back the PayDay Loan industry to the hilt primarily because they give her money.
eemom
@FlipYrWhig:
@Just Some Fuckhead:
At least until mclaren shows up and points out that we’re all just RNC grunts working under Comrade General Omnes in the basement of the NSA or something.
FlipYrWhig
@different-church-lady: It’s almost like for there to be a Democratic majority the Democratic Party has to balance liberals and moderates and then strive to barely hang together in spite of the contradictions and tensions! Nah, that’s not it, it’s probably that someone stabbed the liberals in the back under the bus in the veal pen on a shit sandwich.
ellennelle
@ellennelle:
oh dear; i just saw your twitter feed plea for help setting up the HRC donation button.
sigh; i did not misinterpret.
so sad. so much fear, so little imagination, no vision.
different-church-lady
@Mnemosyne: Au contraire: at the GOS, she’s the RAHM! du jour.
FlipYrWhig
@ellennelle: i want a smug quixotic white REVOLUTION because visionary
different-church-lady
@FlipYrWhig: Those hippies aren’t going to punch themselves.
ellennelle
@FlipYrWhig:
he applied his 04 campaign strategy to the 06 dems campaigns. and if i recall correctly, he ran who/what would win. it was not predicated on all conservatives.
and this did not just win congress; dems gained in all governorships and legislatures across the country. part of that was, admittedly, serious bush fatigue/hatred. but at the very least, dean did not blow it by making stupid, short-sighted, self-serving decisions.
yes DWS; i’m talking to you.
different-church-lady
@ellennelle:
Your alternative is?
ellennelle
@FlipYrWhig:
did you even glance at your own comment? could anything be more smug?
i’m working with these kids, and smug they are most certainly not.
smug is what i find in those who are too comfortable and demand everyone else be patient.
it’s what i find in those who see stability in all those abstract financials, not caring what it means for the rest of us, let alone the planet.
hard to take such smugness seriously when so much is at stake.
Ella in New Mexico
@FlipYrWhig: No, but then, he wasn’t totally rigging the entire Party machine towards one candidate.
AnotherBruce
@Retr237: Minnesota is definitely not going for Trump.
LAC
@eemom
THIS! I am going to get a stick and start swatting some of our early hysterics off the ledges they are on.
ellennelle
ok, so now this:
the justice dept has granted a clinton staffer immunity in their investigation.
tell me again why she’s our only hope against trump, esp. as you so astutely describe his likely scheme? why then we’re supposed to be throwing our weight behind her?
Technocrat
@ellennelle:
Good! Glad to hear it, really. My point wasn’t that she’s not a sleaze (or whatever), my point is that she’s not a talking point.
Omnes Omnibus
@ellennelle: Support the candidate you believe is best.
ETA: I’ll support the candidate I think has the best chance of winning the election and governing well.
Kay
@ellennelle:
I don’t think Democrats want to run states. They’re to the point where they almost avoid it. It’s bizarre. They’re planning on conducting an entire political party, one of only TWO in the country, from DC headquarters.
They didn’t even try in some of these states. They lost the entire tier along the Great Lakes (except Minnesota) and then two years later lost a bunch more. They don’t seem to care.
Technocrat
@ellennelle:
I think the idea is solidarity if she’s the nominee. I don’t think anyone is saying You Must Vote For Hillary In Our Primary.
ellennelle
@different-church-lady:
there is another candidate, doncha know.
ellennelle
@Technocrat:
oh. well, i agree with you in principle, but seriously, that panicked determination was what i read into john’s post. and into his decision to setup an HRC donation button.
i so distrust decisions made in panic.
different-church-lady
@ellennelle: Yeah, well maybe if that other candidate did a better job convincing minorities to vote for him we wouldn’t be having this theoretical conversation.
ellennelle
@Kay:
i might be taking a too generous tack here, but i’m of the opinion the current state layout was a plan, determined by the kochs and their ilk, and of course funded by them. hence we got the scott walkers and snyders and brownback, etc., along with taking over legislatures.
this scheme was orchestrated prior to the ’10 midterms, allowing them them to exploit the census and gerrymander their states to within an inch of all our lives. they now have an absolute vise grip on elections that may not be possible to break even by 2020.
but, y’know, we need to get on that, and pronto. meanwhile, DWS spends her dem time getting money from the predatory loan lobby, and – i dunno – curling her locks.
so, right; states are not a priority. they’re hard, doncha know.
ellennelle
@different-church-lady:
it would also help if the presumed frontrunner did not make such a show of misrepresenting both her record with minority communities, and her opponent’s.
i am still feeling gut-wrenching shame for what they just put john lewis thru; i know he signed on, but why would anyone do that?
ellennelle
@Omnes Omnibus:
most excellent! i’ll take your advice, thanks, and do the same: vote for the candidate who has the best chance of winning in the GE and governing well, honestly, and with principle. without legal woes or decades of baggage.
different-church-lady
@ellennelle: I see. So you’re in the “How could blacks be so stupid?” camp.
Omnes Omnibus
@ellennelle: You’re putting the John Lewis thing on Clinton?
ellennelle
@Omnes Omnibus:
i love john lewis; i cannot begin to tell you.
but that entire scene wreaked of orchestrated pressure, velvet glove style. his wording in that question about sanders – which came oddly on the same day jon capehart published the erroneous photo claims – was so. carefully. phrased. he listed all his own activities with mlk and at sncc in the 60s, and said he never saw sanders; well, duh, his impressive and honorable contributions then did not mean he would encounter every individual also active in the movement. what compelled him to say such a thing?
and then, unbidden, he mentioned he ‘met the clintons.’
ok, all these things are true, but why word them this way? why did he just not say he was one among many activists, and never encountered sanders. the fact is, he did not meet the clintons until the 80s, as he noted in his own bio.
i feel very protective of this great man, so this description pains me terribly; i was crushed to watch it. but yeah, i don’t blame him so much as i smell the inevitable effects of the clinton power structure applying its pressure.
those words as he spoke them, they are nothing like anything i have ever witnessed him say before ever, about anyone. and, he was forced to apologize and retract, just as capehart was.
not honorable stuff. shameful, actually. and lewis is an honorable man. i do feel he was victimized by their pressure, yes, i do. i do not see either bill or hillary as ‘honorable’, esp. bill.
Omnes Omnibus
@ellennelle: I am sorry, but I think Lewis has demonstrated his ability to resist pressure.
ellennelle
@different-church-lady:
how did you leap to that conclusion from what i actually said?
which was putting the onus entirely on clinton for misrepresenting the facts. i’ll not assume anyone is so all-knowing as to be in a position to second guess and double check someone in power in whom they’ve placed their trust. i have a few friends with mensa level IQs who have not questioned those same misrepresentations. all of them women, now that i think of it, and staunch feminists. does that mean i’m assuming they – and all – women and feminists are stupid? it hardly follows. could be a lot of things contributing to their decisions, but the assumption of stupid was your first thought, not mine.
and, for all you know, i AM black, ferchrissake.
Socraticsilence
@FlipYrWhig:
Yes in states and districts where they’re necessary- so you back a Dem who opposes Gun Control in Montana or one who opposes regulating coal in West Virginia or maybe even a bit one in bed with Wall Street in New York– it doesn’t mean you let someone from a +11 Dem district that hasn’t been inside of 24 points in a Presidential election this millennium be represented by someone who has a long history of being one of the few democrats opposed to reining in the kind of blood sucking exploitation of the poor that makes calls for tumbrels not laws understandable .
different-church-lady
@ellennelle: So you’ve got some other explanation for why you think blacks are so easily fooled by Clinton then.
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus: Direct pressure. To his skull, in fact.
ellennelle
@Omnes Omnibus:
he has, yes; he holds a golden record of such.
i do not think this moment in question measures up to that record.
he was forced, after all, to retract and apologize. i have so much respect for him that i cannot believe he would have ever gone there in the first place had there been no pressure to do so.
implicit, mind you, certainly some degree of subtle; but unequivocal nonetheless. this is how that pressure chamber works in high places. it steals your breath, and then your mind, and then your conscience, and before you know it, you’re fighting for your soul. all in service to the powers that be.
the stuff of shakespeare, sadly.
consider this: if you’re not willing to recognize any role of the clinton machinery in this, then your only recourse is that lewis committed this shameful, unnecessary misrepresentation all on his own.
i am simply not willing to either accuse or believe that of him; he presents me with no history or record on which to base such a conclusion.
bill clinton, on the other hand, has a long history and record of being silver-tongued…. i’ll leave it at that.
gwangung
@ellennelle: This is a patronizing arrogant statement.
I wish progressives wouldn’t do that.
Omnes Omnibus
@ellennelle: Bill led John down the garden path? Crikey.
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus: Is it us? It’s her, right?
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: We are living in a po-mo world. It could be all or none of us.
FlipYrWhig
@ellennelle: Remember the part where I said Team Bernie was in love with being smug and quixotic? I think making up a whole story about how poor John Lewis was steamrolled by ruthless Hillary Clinton shows the depths of your disease. Seriously, that is, just, holy fucking hell. You are awful.
ChrisH
@ellennelle: We’re talking about the civil rights leader here right? The one that risked his life for a cause, braved dogs and firehoses and possible lynchings, and now he’s being manipulated by “subtle pressure” from the Clintons?
ellennelle
@different-church-lady:
are you seeing what you write? did i ever say blacks are easily fooled by clinton? that is YOUR assumption, not mine.
all i have asserted is that clinton misrepresents her record with minority communities, and sanders’. you keep presuming this means i think blacks are stupid. that is simply bizarre. and insulting, but i’ll let that fly.
as i said, there could be a lot of things contributing to their decisions. this was wrt my clever feminist friends who have not questioned clinton’s misrepresentations, either, but it applies across the board. i will say this, though: i find it wrenching to make too many if any claims about any populations that are vulnerable in our privileged white culture, including women, blacks, indigenous people, gays…. need i go on? the last claim i would consider making would be stupidity. again, that was your leap, and not my own.
vulnerability does not equate to stupidity. i honestly do not know what to make of a mind that goes there automatically. hence my deep concerns for what i interpret as the clintons’ tendency to misrepresent their own records, and the records of their opponents, to these vulnerable communities. they expose in that very action their own presumption to make that leap from vulnerable to stupid. they, and not their victims, are the target of my disdain.
please be clear about this, and kindly stop projecting your leap onto me.
FlipYrWhig
@ChrisH: Because to Team Bernie, no one in their right mind could ever not love their guy, so if they come across someone who appears not to, it must be that he or she is on the take, or it’s some kind of hostage situation. Good lord. I have to think Bernie Sanders himself would be embarrassed by this shit. Except I think he believes most of it too.
rikyrah
@lamh36:
Tell it, lamh.
different-church-lady
@ellennelle: So you’re saying they’re not stupid, it’s just… inexplicable, somehow.
FlipYrWhig
@ellennelle: I have a deep concern that you are incapable of understanding why lecturing anyone who prefers another candidate that they just haven’t thought about it enough, but eventually they’ll see the light if they examine their liberal soul, if they have one. And I likewise have a deep concern that you don’t recognize that your statements and attitudes are in fact indicative of why I and many others don’t like your candidate’s approach, don’t like your candidate as a human being, and don’t like his supporters.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Kay, as a non- White person, I take Trump very seriously. I know what he says that he wants to do to Muslims would spill over to Black people with a quickness.
White folk might not take what he is saying seriously…but I bet Blacks, Latinos and Muslims are.
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: I take him very seriously – maybe because I am involved with a Latina. Dude’s scary.
ellennelle
@FlipYrWhig:
how many times did you watch that press conference? i mean, really watch it. and watch him.
i lost track. it was devastating; i was left sobbing.
here’s a made-up story: john lewis is such a cardboard symbolic prop that he is impervious to human frailty of any kind. that’s the one you seem to cling to.
sorry; i have too much respect for him to condemn him to that fate.
do forgive me; there is nothing smug about my love for him and his humanity.
what i find smug is your presumption that the clintons are innocent here, and that lewis – in his heroic super-humanity – made that shameful error …all on his own?
you do realize that’s where you end up with this, right? our hero could not possibly be manipulated by the powerful white ruler, therefore… what? and it wasn’t clinton’s guilt either? the corner you’re left in here is that john lewis screwed this up all on his own, and risked the humiliation of being forced to apologize … for what?
again, i just have too much respect for him to dump all that on his shoulders. do you not see how your position leaves you blaming the victim?? there is far too much intrigue going on in the clinton machinery to believe that they are guilt-free. and there is far too much respect and love in my heart for john lewis to blame him for their perverse power plays.
i’m not willing to claim the clintons are evil personified, and actually feel they want to do good things, but also believe they are very blinded by their position of power. no one among us could escape that fate; it’s part of the package you sign up for, and takes super human saintliness to resist it. but you people seem to hold to incredibly one-dimensional perspectives on these people and their motives, especially at such levels of power. seriously; read more shakespeare. and watch that press conference. watch john lewis’s face. let me know how long it takes before you cry.
different-church-lady
Yup. It’s her.
ellennelle
@FlipYrWhig:
how kind of you to be so brutally honest. so superior to my approach, in every way, no?
but i was talking about john lewis and the clintons, not about sanders. yet you translated that as trying to lecture you about sanders?
whatever. as long as we’re being brutally honest, from all i can gather, the feelings moving between the candidates and their supporters are quite mutual, though for extremely different reasons that appear to be fully exposed here. i hold reservations about the clintons based on their record and history, and you …have disdain for sanders and me because we make you feel you’re being lectured to? so you therefore don’t like the candidate as a person because he makes you feel …inferior? – no matter his record of honesty and integrity? yet john lewis can – nay,must! – be a saint (to which i agree, but i’m losing your logic here).
revealing, by your description at any rate, a fairly insurmountable chasm. ironic, given this thread john started was all about the rift in the party.
i appreciate your concerns, and will try not to interpret them as the lecture they are.
mirrors are a bitch, are they not?
Omnes Omnibus
@ellennelle: When you called out Lewis as bowing to “Clinton” pressure, you lost credibility. Sorry.
ellennelle
@different-church-lady:
did you read what i wrote? i referenced every minority’s humanity and vulnerability. how is that inexplicable?
@different-church-lady:
so ok, referencing humanity and vulnerability is …what? uncomfortable? evil? verboten?
wow.
i guess i should thank you and the others here for setting me straight on all this; your lectures and scolding have chastened me. i have clearly been operating in error. such a failed and flawed view of …everything, the campaign, the candidates, the capacity for debate, for vision, for humanity, for the planet, for ..unity?
freed of delusions. how liberating.
metta.
different-church-lady
@ellennelle:
Or you’re just full of shit. It’s hard to say.
ellennelle
@Omnes Omnibus:
ok, so you are saying he made that humiliating error on his own, no pressure at all, for no good reason beyond being forced to apologize?
sorry, but you can’t have it both ways. either the clinton machinery was applying pressure, or he did that on his own. take your pick.
i personally choose to believe it was a complex combination of both, but i most certainly do not believe he is so stupid as to have done this entirely on his own. that choice i make is based on my respect for him. if you choose to believe he made that choice without any influence from the political machinery, then it is you who is stripping him of his dignity.
are you people incapable of granting any of these players, let alone the intense machinery of power politics, any complexities beyond predictable one-dimensional characters?
ellennelle
@different-church-lady:
you guys are not only either comically or depressingly – can’t decide which, but both seems right – constricted.
but disarmingly polite.
different-church-lady
@ellennelle: My pleasure.
moderateindy
There is an obvious point that works in Trump’s favor in the general, that people seem to be missing. Why are Trump, and Sanders doing so well? Because on both sides of the aisle, as well as non partisans there is one commonality; this is a decidedly anti-establishment atmosphere.
And Hillary Clinton is the embodiment of the establishment. Her message is “I’m going to tweak around the edges”, Trump’s message is “I’m gonna burn the Motherf’er down”!
About negatives. Both candidates have huge negatives, but My guess is Trumps negatives are much softer than Hillary’s. He acts like a buffoon, and so a lot of his negatives come from people that vote Republican, and think he is a jerk. When the time comes, those same people will fall in line, and vote Trump, not because they like him, but because they have a white hot hatred for all things Clinton.
Trump engenders disdain, Hillary gets pure hatred. The amount of people motivated to get out to vote against Hillary dwarfs the number that will do so against Trump.
Plus, Dems, way overestimate how much fear there is about a Trump presidency outside their own partisan bubble. Most people don’t really care that he wants to build a wall, or stop Muslims from coming here. If you haven’t noticed we are a really racist country.
What they do hear from Trump is he will keep you safe from terrorists, you won’t lose your job to an illegal, and he’ll bring back jobs that left from bad trade deals. Also, he will be able to hang NAFTA around Clinton’s neck to help prove his point.
There is a virulent anti-establishment mood in this coutry, people that ignore that fact may well end up scratching their heads when their establishment candidate loses to the outsider that’s promising to shake things up.
SFAW
@FlipYrWhig:
And maybe Joe Manchin? But, as the French say, “So what?” It helped give us two years of attempted sanity, except for Ben Nighthorse Nelson, that quasi-Rethuglican fuck.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Does she know you’re a Cheesehead? I certainly won’t tell her, but you may want to have that chat before things get too serious.
Just trying to be helpful.
Keith G
Sitting presidents are the de facto leaders of their party. Their force of personality, fund raising prowess, and ability to selectively and discretely distribute the fruits of power give presidents influence over those who employ the party chairperson.
The Barak Obama presidency seems unique in it’s lack of thoughtful consideration over what is happening over at the headquarters of its party.
And now not only is DWS continuing to be a blight on the DNC and all Democrats, but she is actually taking a hand in attacking policy which makes up part of the Obama legacy. I have seen that there are chickens in Florida. Hopefully they are not coming home to roost in a way that will be overly harmful.
FlipYrWhig
@ellennelle:
You are just terrible. No, some kind of cross between precious and terrible. Precible.
Miss Bianca
As a once and future ESL teacher, may I just say I am ashamed? Honestly, you’d think ANYONE who worked with refugees – hell anyone who had an IQ measurably higher than a humble root vegetable – could not *possibly* convince him/herself to buy Trump’s BS for a nanosecond.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Trump can scream all he wants about fixing things, but for him to win, a majority of voters will actually have to believe the claim that he can, y’know, fix things. Starting with a fortune and going bankrupt 4 times isn’t exactly a strong track record of fixing stuff. The Trump name is splashed on a lot of other fail too (e.g. his “university” and casinos and any number of other investments). All this will be pointed out, repeatedly. In addition he may be convicted of financial fraud thanks to that failed “university” sometime this summer. That would be a hilarious coup de grace to the entire Republican campaign. Vote for the guy in white collar prison!