Speaking truth to the powerless:
Donna Brazile, the interim leader of the Democratic National Committee, was giving what one attendee described as “a rip-roaring speech” to about 150 employees, about the need to have hope for wins going forward, when a staffer identified only as Zach stood up with a question.
“Why should we trust you as chair to lead us through this?” he asked, according to two people in the room. “You backed a flawed candidate, and your friend [former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz] plotted through this to support your own gain and yourself.”
Some DNC staffers started to boo and some told him to sit down. Brazile began to answer, but Zach had more to say.
“You are part of the problem,” he continued, blaming Brazile for clearing the path for Trump’s victory by siding with Clinton early on. “You and your friends will die of old age and I’m going to die from climate change. You and your friends let this happen, which is going to cut 40 years off my life expectancy.”
Zach gathered his things and began to walk out. When Brazile called after him, asking where he was going, he told her to go outside and “tell people there” why she should be leading the party.
Brazile is probably one of the better denizens of Clintonworld, but they must all go, every last one of them. Clintonworld is over:
The silver lining of this Democratic crap-storm isn’t that Clinton racked up a really big margin in California to put her over the top in a meaningless metric. The silver lining is that, as a leaderless party, it’s free now to debate what it wants to be in the post–financial crisis era just as Republicans did after 2008. This release of suppressed emotions began during the primary between Sanders and Clinton, but the post-primary need to stop Donald Trump bottled them up again, and the fight was never resolved. Should the Democratic Party seek to be the “sane” party that offers modifications to liberal capitalism, or should there be—say—a “political revolution”? Should Democrats try to inch the ball forward on policy goals in the existing paradigm or eschew immediate gains to blow up that paradigm altogether? The fight is going to resume now, and how. The arguments of the primary are going to look like an Up With People halftime show compared with what’s about to go down. It’s going to be messy. People are going to get so pissed. It’s going to be embarrassing. It’s going to be great.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good lord
Lee Hartmann
go, zach, (zach).
says it all.
christ, what an asshole.
debbie
This is what politics is, unfortunately. There is an unestablished, unbroken order and it will be followed. This is why Ohio got Ted Strickland and Ohio is stuck again with Rob Portman.
On the other side, it’s laughable to think there isn’t a single RNC email chain somewhere discussing how to get Trump off of the stage before the next debate.
JordanRules
Here we go.
Cacti
Too right.
Did “Zach” mention whether he voted?
notoriousJRT
Yeah! It is necessary to destroy the village to save it! What a tool.
Davis X. Machina
I think blowing it all up because of winning the popular vote, and losing three key states by a combined margin of roughly one University of Michigan football sell-out is a sane and proportionate response.
Major Major Major Major
Well, whoever ends up with that one, that’s where I’ll be.
ETA: @Davis X. Machina: Right? People are forgetting how this was close enough to steal and possibly stolen.
D. Mason
Zach could have probably beaten Trump.
Cacti
Bernie would have lost, Mixie.
Dexter
So, Dean said today that he likes to a candidate for DNC chairman. He did really good job with the 50 state strategy and 2006 midterm and 2008 general. Not a bad choice but he is not a fresh face. Someone on Twitter said considering Nevada really got its shit together organization wise and it is a diverse state, may be Harry Reid can be persuaded to be the DNC chair.
Keith G
When Clinton began her campaign months ago, I figured she would be an adequate place saver for the next generation to come up and gain some experience to take over the party. I didn’t realize that the change was now. That’s good. Cut away the dead wood. Move on.
mistermix
@Cacti:
Clintonworld must go. Bernie would have lost. I believe both of these things, and I don’t see the contradiction.
debbie
@Davis X. Machina:
I didn’t get the feeling that anyone wanted to blow everything up. But you have to admit, knowing how much the leadership favored one candidate didn’t help unity. The animosity, more than anything else, I think, cost the election.
Davis X. Machina
@mistermix: I’d agree with you if I had any frickin’ idea what ‘Clintonworld’ was, apart from a rhetorical club to beat people with….
Brachiator
The irony continues to unfold. Last week, there were all kinds of predictions here about the fracturing, splintering or demise of the Republican Party. Now, the worm has turned and it’s Democrat eat Democrat.
Hoodie
@Davis X. Machina: The trick is to make it look like you’re blowing it all up, but keep the infrastructure intact. Zach will never know the difference. Bernie is still in the Senate and has a nice lake house.
dr. bloor
So much for abstaining from the circular firing squad.
notoriousJRT
@debbie:
I don’t get why you think the DNC should have shown any fairness to a person who until he wanted to run for president was not part of the party?
The unfairness whining baffles me, frankly.
ETA: Really the DNC’s unfairness to Bernie cost the election? What’s your evidence?
Mary G
There’s a difference between circular firing squad and constructive debate. Zach may be over the line, but he’s not wrong. Also, we need passionate people like Zach and Applejinx. Young people didn’t buy what the party is selling and just dressing the same stuff up won’t work. Acting like the Republicans did won’t either. I know I want to rage and refuse to cooperate with the enemy, but acting like everyone who voted for Trump is the enemy won’t help either.
Going against big corporate takeovers of everything is where I want to go. Even Republicans who voted for Trump hate them. The Rust Belt is empty and dying because of them.
Davis X. Machina
@debbie:
Haven’t been around here much today, I guess.
Baud
@Davis X. Machina: I think it’s that Yul Brenner movie where the robots at a dude ranch go berserk and start killing people.
dr. bloor
The blanket condemnation of “Clintonworld” is deliciously ironic since it would be hard to squeeze two policy papers between “Clintonworld” and “Obamaworld.”
Cacti
I never figured Donna Brazile was more than a placeholder anyway.
les
As long as there are enough racists, bigots, forced birthers and people who think they are/will be rich, it doesn’t matter. To say nothing of the half of the voters who can’t be bothered to get off their asses.
Hoodie
@Baud: Nah, they just send a lot of unsecured emails and dick pics.
Bobby Thomson
Again, all you Bernie Bros please go fuck yourselves. Your savior was MIA when it mattered most.
Francis
It’s all about the House. Until we get the House, we’re left to pin our hopes on keeping the White House in perpetuity. Well, that idea just went to hell.
We don’t need a DNC leading the ship. We desperately need 50 State Democratic parties, each figuring out a way to be competitive in its own state. Building a successful Utah Democratic party may be the work of 25 years, but it has to start today.
Any state that has an initiative process needs to get an initiative requiring federal and state districts to be drawn by a non-partisan commission. California has one way of doing it; there are a couple of different proposals out there.
Disaffected? Depressed? Need something to do? Open an office of Organizing for America, version 2, in your kitchen and start work on the anti-gerrymander initiative.
Steve Crickmore
The differences between Obamaworld and Clintonworld were not in the policy, but the actors and the modus operandi.
les
@debbie:
You mean the animosity of people hearing a guy not in the party all over the news saying they were corrupt? What the fuck do you expect?
mistermix
@Davis X. Machina: Clintonworld is the group of advisors who have been with the Clintons for a long period of time. Donna Brazile was an advisor to both Bill Clinton campaigns, as an example. Lanny Davis, Sidney Blumenthal — even Huma Abedin for God’s sake.
Everyone waxes poetic about loyalty and Clintons but let’s look at Barack Obama for a minute and ask why his administration had zero scandal. The reason is simple: unlike the Clintons, he got rid of anyone who had even a whiff of scandal. Tom Daschle is a great case in point. He would have killed as Secretary of HHS to help push through the ACA. But he had a couple of tax issues, so he was asked to withdraw. This pattern repeated itself constantly in the Obama White House.
The Clintons, however, just keep their hangers on hanging on.
Jeffro
I’m confused – the Democratic Party needs to make major modifications to what it stands for why, exactly?
We appear to have won the popular vote during a typically difficult “3rd term” presidential election with a candidate who while a wonderful person and 110% right on the issues, didn’t motivate some of our base enough (at least, not enough in the right states). The upper midwest shifted just enough to lose four states and there you go.
For this, we blow up the party?? Oh I don’t think so.
Bobby Thomson
@dr. bloor: this. @Cacti: and this.
old_owl
In reality, all this is peripheral. Democrats have no messaging channel to reach their constituency. As long as Dems have to depend on the “liberal” media for their messaging, the Dems will have to kiss up to that media, and the media will dictate the Dem narrative.
Without captive messaging channels to the base, Dems are dead going forward. The base needs to be hooked to the party’s messaging. Where are the equivalent of Limbaugh and the Catholic Bishops and Jerry Falwell for Dems, each with their own messaging networks?
Jeffro
@Francis:
I’m good with this!
Baud
@Brachiator: I congratulate President Trump on his reelection.
Davis X. Machina
@dr. bloor: One’s full of winners, and the other is full of losers. Apparently.
debbie
@Davis X. Machina:
No, just got home actually.
@notoriousJRT:
Because we’re Democrats living in a democracy. I guess I missed the memo where only card-carrying party members were eligible. We can’t be an open, big tent party if there are going to be membership restrictions.
And no, try reading again. I didn’t say Bernie not getting the nomination cost the election. I said that the animosity between Clinton and Sanders supporters led a number of Sanders supporters not to end up supporting Clinton, and that cost the election.
I trust your memory is good enough to remember that many Clinton supporters ended up supporting Obama. It can be done.
Cacti
@mistermix:
But you also have cases like Terry McAuliffe who went from being a hapless DNC chair to fairly effective governor of VA.
mistermix
@Bobby Thomson:
It’s funny how a few commenters here are going to cling to “BernieBro” until hell won’t have it anymore. Bernie Sanders was merely Hillary Clinton’s primary opponent. He ran a constructive, issues-oriented campaign and campaigned for Clinton after he lost. But a few of you just couldn’t let it go. Anyone who had ever supported Bernie in any fashion is a “BernieBro”. It’s absurd and also pointless. C
notoriousJRT
@Jeffro:
It’s the “for which it stands” part, its the party itself. Dead wood! FOBs and FOHs! Purge, purge, purge.
weaselone
So Mistermix, who is this brilliant leader you see leading the DNC through the wilderness?
dm
I got a letter from Jason Kander today. It’s good enough to share. I hope you all won’t mind:
Davis X. Machina
@mistermix: The Obama administration and White House was knee-deep in Clinton people. When you’ve run the last Democratic administration in living political memory, and experience is a desideratum, that’ll happen.
Cacti
@mistermix:
Lolwut?
weaselone
@mistermix:
You must have seen a different campaign than I did.
mistermix
@Cacti:
Yes, he’s done surprisingly well.
mistermix
@weaselone:
I don’t know – let’s find that person. It isn’t Donna Brazile, John Podesta, etc.
MomSense
ok this whole thing about clearing the deck for Clinton. Who was cleared away? If people are going to keep making this claim then at least provide the names of the people who were prevented from running.
LeonS
@Davis X. Machina: You could argue that a party who wins the popular vote and who’s positions consistently poll well, yet now controls 0 levers of federal power, and precious little state power, is in serious need of a leadership overhaul.
Mnemosyne
@mistermix:
Funny how your new hero Zack didn’t talk about how the DNC dropped the ball by allowing voter suppression in MI, WI, PA, and OH go unchecked.
I guess those 300,000 registered voters in Wisconsin who weren’t allowed to vote because they didn’t have the exact right ID just aren’t as sexy as Bernie.
Cacti
@LeonS:
That’s fair. And maybe it’s what MM was angling for.
debbie
@mistermix:
Michelle would be great.
Davis X. Machina
And when you find them it won’t make any difference who they are. The notion that the nation’s present parlous situation can be laid at the feet of Rep. Wasserman-Schultz is risible
mistermix
@weaselone:
Nope. In July 2016, a Pew poll showed that 90% of Sanders supporters would support Clinton. In July 2008, the number of Clinton supporters who would support Obama was 55-60% depending on the poll.
Clinton supporters allowed themselves to be trolled by a small but vocal set of Bernie supporters who were not representative of the whole. A couple of commenters here are very butthurt about what a few BernieBros said on Twitter, but the reality is that most of us who voted for Bernie supported Hillary.
karensky
@Francis: Yes
debbie
@Mnemosyne:
Are there going to be any lawsuits about the suppression?
Davis X. Machina
@LeonS: You could — at the state level.
Patricia Kayden
@Brachiator: Are we eating each other or just trying to figure out how Secretary Clinton lost an election where many polls showed her beating Trump comfortably? Nothing wrong with trying to get it right next time and not repeating mistakes. It’s better than pretending that nothing went wrong.
WarMunchkin
I don’t really see quite eye to eye with this. I mean, yes, the geniuses who ran this show need to be more self-reflective, and I’m a little pissed at how much blatant career jockeying goes on in Dem circles (though nothing like the Republican shitshow).
They’re not the ones responsible for recruiting candidates statewide, at least, in theory. That should be the responsibility of state parties. And there’s nothing wrong with asking the Michigan Democratic Party or the Wisconsin Democratic Party why they think it went wrong. Do we throw out those folks as well? What about blue states that go reliably Blue but have absolute shitgibbons like Andrew Cuomo in charge?
The DNC people put on a great convention, though, I’ll give them that.
Also, while I’m mad at these people, just for the record, Clinton lost by a margin of <100K votes distributed in these states.
Bailey
@Bobby Thomson:
What does this even mean? After an issue-based primary season concluded and Sanders worked with Clinton to get several much-needed planks into the platform, I saw him go all out for her campaigning across the country. In fact, I saw every high profile dem imaginable trying to lift that content-less campaign up and over the finish line. Alas, it was not enough, but this hardly means that the “savior was MIA.”
Beyond that, I’m on #TeamZach. I voted for Bill in the 90s and defended too much of his crap and certainly supported Hillary’s career post-Bill’s presidency, but as a unit and as White House contenders, I’ve long been past them. I actually had trouble understanding why so many were clamoring for their return—I think 2008 showed they were not the electoral geniuses the country needed. Hell, 2016 just doubled down on that horribly.
As for new power at the DNC? That is a hard call. Someone young enough to be energizing, someone old enough to have reach for fundraising. Howard Dean is older now, but he did do a great job and probably plays better to younger people than anyone else his age does. Cory Booker? Can he do that and be a Senator at the same time?
Davis X. Machina
@WarMunchkin:
Nowadays, that’s all they do. The DCCC and DSCC do the legislative-race stuff, and presidential campaigns are now quasi-autonomous billion-dollar operations.
Still, it’s a good excuse for a fight, the DNC chair.
mistermix
@MomSense:
I think the “clear the deck” argument is overstating the case. No Democrat wanted to run against Clinton because it looked like a sure loser, so we got a fringe candidate instead.
That said, super delegates must go. In 2008, when the party was in a place where it will be in 2020 (not looking for a 3rd term of a successful President), Obama was able to convert a number of super delegates to his side. It took a long time and a lot of persuasion. In 2016, the party assumed Hillary was truly invincible, and only a couple supported Sanders. Why not just let the voters decide?
Sinnach
This morning: ‘no circular firing squads, please’.
This afternoon: ‘the circular firing squads are a go’.
GrandJury
Not this Bernistas bullshit again.
This argument that they backed the wrong horse or that it was “her turn” or whatever is nonsense. She was the best candidate. There weren’t 16 or whatever like on the other side. There were only 2 for most of the primary. So if your a Bernista just say it instead of trying to flip it around saying Hillary was the wrong candidate.
notoriousJRT
@debbie:
Hey, you try reading again. I did not say Bernie should run or run as a Democrat (since he would have ZIP ZERO NADA chance as an Independent and Socialist). I asked you why you or the people you are verbally representing don’t understand that a the Democratic party might prefer a long time member, fund raiser, and supporter as its candidate over someone who just parachuted in to use their apparatus (as flawed as it apparently is) to campaign? It is naïve, IMO. Maybe you think that the party has no idea what its interests are. Maybe you think they have no opinion. I don’t. I am not a member of the party, but I respect their right to favor a member over someone who deliberately was not.
Finally, I was going off YOUR assertion that all the hurt fees fees in the Sanders camp was the reason for the Trump victory. Does that mean all the Bernie folks stayed home? I honestly don’t know because I don’t know anyone who thought a possible Trump win was a good trade-off for any disappointment about Bernie’s treatment by the DNC. But, if so I am even more puzzled why you think such fair-weather friends deserve “fair” treatment.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
I expect the media to drop the ball on how voter suppression decided this election and I know the Reoublicans aren’t going to talk about it but when supposed progressives prefer to blame the woman candidate or the DNC and ignore that people had their franchise stolen from them I feel stabby.
Mix doesn’t even have a better DNC chair in mind. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe it’s a thankless job that exposes the person to hostility, threats, and other unpleasantness while offering no real benefit.
Eric U.
shitheads like Zach weren’t around when Clinton saved the party. It was dead, dead dead before the Clintons. So he can go fuck himself, or let his purity pony do it for him.
People like Mix and Zach don’t recognize that the Republicans have spent well over $200 million, and maybe a half billion $ on baseless investigations to slander the Clintons. That kind of cash will keep the noise level high enough for long enough that people start to believe it.
Starfish
@Brachiator: Democrat-eat-Democrat is like peak wingnut. It occurs every new day.
dm
@Bobby Thomson: No, he wasn’t. He was campaigning for Clinton from the end of the connection to election day. Before the convention, he was sending out emails urging his supporters to support down-ballot progressives.
I think he and his surrogates could have skipped a lot of the hurtful rhetoric over the summer, and I agree that a lot of Bernie bros kept that crap up in the general, but it hardly matters in the face off the media’s constant drumbeat of faux scandals.
Oh, and Kos has a number if possible DNC chairs: Keith Ellison is the latest, and sounds pretty good.
MomSense
@mistermix:
I’m asking you for your list of plausible candidates for the Democratic nomination.
PJ
@debbie: No, because it was legal. There was a lawsuit filed, which initially got an injunction preventing the law from being applied, but then was modified to speed up the process and the requirements for the ID. I have not been able to find any statistic about how many people could not vote because they lacked the ID – the 300,000 figure is an estimate from the spring about how many people were registered voters who lacked ID.
Mnemosyne
@Jeffro:
The upper Midwest didn’t mysteriously “shift.” Minority voters were deliberately blocked from voting.
Cookie Monster
I read over at GOS that Rep. Keith Ellison has thrown his hat into the ring for chair of the DNC.
joel hanes
@old_owl:
[ Dems need captive messaging channel ]
Wisest thing I’ve seen since the election.
Do you mind if I steal it, and quote it with attribution in other forums?
Yossarian
It is truly beyond my fucking understanding what people hold the DNC responsible for. This isn’t the 1940’s any more — the organized party committees have little-to-no power. If they did, the RNC never would have nominated Donald Trump!
I worked on Obama’s ’08 campaign, I worked in his administration for a few years, I knew and know people at the DNC, I worked alongside some of their people. They. Have. No. Real. Power. I will repeat this until I am blue in the face — at best they are a helpful adjunct to a presidential campaign, and they have zero downballot influence. They can sometimes raise some money, and try to echo the message of elected leaders, but that is IT. They are utterly incapable of swaying millions of voters or putting real pressure on candidates or even candidate supporters to do much of anything. If anything, I wish they DID have that power, because right now big money is rushing in to fill the vacuum.
If Hillary didn’t face other strong primary challengers–if they were “forced” out, or decided not to run because of “pressure”–it was because they were worried about losing to Hillary’s campaign, not because some amorphous group of party elders threatened or cowed them in some sense. Except I suppose in the sense that these challengers learned that some really smart, powerful people were lining up with Hillary, because they liked her and thought she was the best chance, and that she was racking up endorsements. But this is hardly corruption — this is a sign of political strength on the part of the candidate, just as much as Bernie’s ability to give a speech that draws a big crowd is a sign of his strength.
mistermix
@Mnemosyne:
The DNC has long been knocked because they’ve focused on Federal and Presidential races instead of really focusing on the states. Prime example is how the Republicans were able to dominate the redistricting process in 2010. This is documented in the book Ratfucked (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/ratfcked-the-influence-of-redistricting).
The reason Wisco was able to have their voter suppression is because we lost the statehouse there. Perhaps Zach would have addressed that if he had continued his speech a little longer.
Gin & Tonic
@mistermix: Bernie Sanders wasn’t before, during or after his primary run a Democrat, and I’ll bet my last dollar he won’t run as a Democrat when he’s next up for re-election in VT. He is about only one thing, and that’s Bernie Sanders. He reminds me of nothing so much as every wannabe leader in the post-Soviet world who runs his/her own fucking party because they’re just too good to try to work with an existing one.
notoriousJRT
@mistermix:
I always love this sort of answer.
Baud
@Cookie Monster: I like him. But I don’t want any more sitting office holders in that position.
debbie
@WarMunchkin:
I can tell you why it went wrong in Ohio.
The chairman of the party either died or resigned (can’t remember, sorry). David Pepper was the Establishment choice. Denny Wojtanowski was a well-known party official associated with Sherrod Brown. He is well liked and was also interested.
Leading Dem Party members (like Joyce Beatty) wanted to go with the Establishment. Sherrod Brown supported the other guy. Sherrod lost.
The Establishment leadership then decided up front that Ted Strickland should be next in line for the Senate. They even supported Ted in his refusal to debate the one challenger, PJ Settenfeld, a much younger pol out of Cincinnati, strongly anti-NRA.
Ted got the nod. Period.
(Kay, I’m sure, will point out where I’ve erred. Apologies.)
Mnemosyne
@debbie:
It’s been through the courts. Thanks to the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act, it’s all perfectly legal.
Major Major Major Major
So is ‘issue-based’ the new hip thing to call the primary? Did I miss the newsletter?
mistermix
@MomSense:
Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and Sherrod Brown are 3 who I think could have run successfully in 2016. There are probably a bunch of others.
Baud
@old_owl: This. This. This.
qwerty42
@dr. bloor: The blanket condemnation of “Clintonworld” is deliciously ironic since it would be hard to squeeze two policy papers between “Clintonworld” and “Obamaworld.”
In some quarters, Obama was a dangerous sellout and delayed the revolution that was going to bring everyone unicorns.
Mnemosyne
@mistermix:
Sanders. Got. Fewer. Votes. From. Democratic. Voters.
Not superdelegates. VOTERS.
Kryptik
@Yossarian:
This. Seriously, holy fuck, this. DWS was a disaster as a spokesperson, and for that I can’t forgive her, but trying to lay blame for all the sins of this election at the DNC’s feet as if we were robbed of a real primary is….gah.
Cain
@Mnemosyne:
You aren’t being fair, lawsuits were filed for every one of those and an effort was made to stop them. If I recall the courts didn’t agree. Again it goes back on taking over the state houses of those states. You can stop voter id laws by controlling the state legislature. Oregon has one of the most open voter registration laws. We need to make that a thing everywhere.
I would say that we had a win in North Carolina by removing that odious governor there. Hopefully we can turn that around the next time.
mistermix
@Gin & Tonic:
Yes, as I mentioned above, Bernie was a fringe candidate. However, he was able to run pretty successfully against Hillary, because his message got a lot of traction with the base.
@Major Major Major Major:
That primary was pretty tame, certainly compared to the Republican primary.
Mnemosyne
@mistermix:
You keep telling yourself that, bro.
henqiguai
@debbie(#38): <blockquote.I didn’t say Bernie not getting the nomination cost the election. I said that the animosity between Clinton and Sanders supporters led a number of Sanders supporters not to end up supporting Clinton, and that cost the election.
And as others have been pointing out, ad nauseum all through the campaign, those people were never going to vote Democratic in the first place. And what’s with this constant crap about we (Democrats) have to be nice and reach out to every fucking body who is busy throwing punches in our face?
Cain
@mistermix – btw we are not leaderless. We have a leader. We have Barack Hussein Obama, and sir, that is a lot of firepower right there. I’ll put my faith in that man to lead us out of this. He still has a job to reassure all of us that things are going to get better and he’s going to help organize for America.. again. And maybe once again, it’s time get Fired up, and Ready to Go.
notoriousJRT
@mistermix:
Did any of these folks WISH to be the chair? Do you think being chair would diminish their effectiveness in their primary roles?
goblue72
@mistermix: Precisely.
And for the peanut gallery convinced its right even though it keeps losing, the “Zach” in the article WORKS AT THE DNC. He is clearly identified as a staffer.
From that same article:
And mind you, there are DNC staff people. These are not wild haired hippie activists or Berniebros or whatever other caricature you want to dream up. These are various political professionals. Some may be bright young things, but there are the kind of bright young things who go and get PoliSci degrees and join College Democrats and otherwise your khaki clad Democratic Party strivers.
And they are tired of losing and being told by the leaders in charge of the losing that their criticisms are wrong and they should just do what they’re told.
qwerty42
@Yossarian: … If Hillary didn’t face other strong primary challengers–if they were “forced” out, or decided not to run because of “pressure”–it was because they were worried about losing to Hillary’s campaign, not because some amorphous group of party elders threatened or cowed them in some sense.
Liar! Clearly you are part of the vast conspiracy; a conspiracy so powerful it delivered more so-called “votes” to Hillary, when everyone knew Bernie was the most powerful candidate ever! So – are you with the Illuminati?
debbie
@notoriousJRT:
I started a response, but I’m not in the mood for acrimony. Hopefully, someone will explain it better than I could.
mistermix
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, Sanders lost fair and square. But it’s pretty hard to explain to someone entering the political process for the first time that their candidate is behind 535 delegates on the day they started. And, since Clinton won the VOTERS, why did she need the superdelegates? She didn’t. It’s a stupid construct that should be eliminated.
goblue72
@Cain: He’s the outgoing, lame duck President. He’s not leading anything. He’s going to get a well deserved break and then go work on some issue important to him. Maybe its part of the party building going forward. But he’s not the “leader” of the party anymore. That era is over.
Major Major Major Major
@Yossarian: Oh, howdy there ;)
@mistermix: Certainly, I’ve just noticed the phrase popping up being used to describe the primary recently.
Bobby Thomson
@dm: bullshit. He backed up Trump on the foundation stuff and waited until today to act all butch. If he had withdrawn in March when it was abundantly clear he had lost, we would have picked up those three states easily.
ETA or at least trained his rhetoric and surrogates 100% on Trump.
dm
Part of the reason there’s all this talk about the DNC is what Howard Dean did with his fifty-state strategy: focus on building state parties, local elections, etc. It paved the way for the 2006 midterms and the 2008 campaign.
Part of the reason there’s all this anger at DWS is because she reversed that.
debbie
@Mnemosyne:
Here, there was a lot of back and forth over the length of early voting. Wish there was some way to get states together for a class action lawsuit.
Mnemosyne
@mistermix:
Bernie was winning over THE BASE?
You know what? I can’t even. I am SO FUCKING DONE with smug “liberal” dudes who are 100 percent convinced that they’re the real base of the Democratic Party, and all of the women and minorities who work their asses off every goddamned day are just convenient furniture to be moved around.
Enjoy your new White Dudebro Savior screaming at a Black woman about how he’s the real base of the party. I’m done with this bullshit.
goblue72
@mistermix: You are wasting your time with that one. He/she is clueless and yet convinced they are completely right about the state of affairs, despite being completely wrong about almost everything.
The long string of Democratic losses as counter-evidence to his/her positions means nothing.
notoriousJRT
@debbie:
Then maybe you should cool the “maybe you should read agains” and “I trust you can remembers” if you don’t like acrimony.
qwerty42
@Mnemosyne: Sanders. Got. Fewer. Votes. From. Democratic. Voters.
Not superdelegates. VOTERS.
No. The will of the proletariat is expressed through an elite cadre. These … these “voters” .. cannot be part of that elite.
Davis X. Machina
@Cain:
I have it on excellent authority that he’s just counting the hours until he can cash in, and make bank off of the plutocrats whose heads he so providentially refused to put on plkes. The University of Chicago’s worse than the Mafia.
Central Planning
This was from Rude Pundit’s blog post today
Truth.
debbie
@notoriousJRT:
And maybe you should talk to, instead of at, others.
Cain
@weaselone:
How about we don’t worry about the DNC at all? How about we instead focus on figuring out how we are going to get our local state legislature become more democratic? If you live in a purple or red state, get involved in the state democratic party and figure out a way to bring in new blood.
The mistake here is to try to work this top down. We need to start from the bottom and then maybe someone from one of the state parties will propagate up as a proper DNC share, maybe someone from Nevada for instance. Each of you should be having a conversation with the Democratic party of your state and whatever tertiary allies they have and figure out how to make this happen. Someone will rise to the occasion.
MomSense
@mistermix:
I don’t think Joe actually had the horsepower to run since he was still heavily in mourning. He doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to presidential campaigns either. Elizabeth Warren is beloved by many of us progressives but even in her Senate race she underperformed Obama’s vote totals in Massachusetts. And she would have faced the same misogyny. I love Sherrod Brown (once had a long conversation with him when I was volunteering at a fundraiser) but he is one of the least charismatic people I’ve seen. He has something that works for him in his state and a few other places but I think his appeal is limited.
None of them were discouraged or prevented from running. Also, too Hillary Clinton has received more Democratic votes than even Barack Obama in her career. You may not see it but a lot of us really like her.
Davis X. Machina
@qwerty42: Seriously, the real split in the Democratic Party is vanguard-party v. mass-party, not any of the other x v. y dichotomies on offer here today.
Francis
Organizing for America, v2, task 2 — Identify every person in your community who wanted to vote but couldn’t due to faulty paperwork, and get them the right paperwork.
Need to chase down a birth certificate from another state? If you start now, you’ll have all the time you need before the next election.
mistermix
@Mnemosyne:
The base of the Democratic party votes in primaries. Bernie Sanders won over a good number of those people, white, brown, male female.
And the use of DudeBro and BernieBro a day after the election is pretty clear evidence that you have been effectively trolled by a smalls subset of Sanders supports, who, I repeat, were 90% going to vote for Clinton in July.
Tazj
@Mnemosyne: This.
Mnemosyne
@Cain:
Co-signed.
Felonius Monk
@mistermix:
That tells me you are about as full of shit as your hero Zach.
BTW, in Michigan Trump beat Hillary by 13,325 votes. Jill Stein got over 50,000 votes. I guess that was the fault of Donna Brazile and the DNC.
LeonS
@les: Well on the other side it got that person the presidency…
mistermix
@MomSense: We do have a weak bench at the moment, but the good news is that we have 4 years to develop a few more leaders.
goblue72
@Mnemosyne: You LOST. When you LOSE, and LOSE and LOSE and LOSE – over, and over, and over again, then yes, maybe its time for YOU to eat some crow. And get over yourself. This isn’t about some white “bro” telling a “black lady” what’s what. This is about a staffer at an organization that is supposed to be winning elections being sick of leadership feeding them crap. I don’t think Brazile is the worst of DNC leadership. But she is Clintonista and her track record is mixed. I’m sorry but “I ran Al Gore’s campaign” isn’t exactly awe inspiring.
Party has shat the bed far too many times. When an organization screws up this often, you clean house.
steve herl
Before Zach and his Berniebros purge the party of DWS And Donna, he should find out how they mind controlled a 3 million vote lead in the primaries for HRC…may come in handy in the future. The post election vote analysis isn’t complete, but it appears a lot of Dems that voted in the last election didn’t come out for this one. I’m guessing a sizable portion of that shrinkage was due to the people like Zach that didn’t get their way in the primary.
goblue72
@Felonius Monk: Oh jesus, not this shit again.
Bobby Thomson
@Mnemosyne: This times a thousand.
mistermix
@Felonius Monk:
Note my other post where I mentioned that there are many reasons for Clinton’s loss. The DNC is a minor one. Yet I still believe that a change of leadership there would be a good thing.
SligoRover1973
@Mnemosyne:
Well, you know what then! Why didn’t the Clinton campaign or the DNC make an effort to help these people get the proper ID? I’m not saying that requirement was justified in anyway. It was motivated by race. But for Christ’s sake, we knew about it well in advance and did nothing. THAT is where we should have spent our time and money to GOTV.
Cain
@goblue72:
I guess I don’t see him sitting back idle while Trump stomps all over his legacy.
LeonS
@Jeffro: Not for that, but that and losing control of both houses, at least one of them terminally, and completely losing control in way too many states.
Davis X. Machina
@Cain: We flipped a Maine statehouse seat from R to D in 2010, near the bottom of the recession, and a GOP wave year. It can be done.
mistermix
@goblue72: Indeed.
Archon
The scariest part about all this is if Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania are all trending red then the electoral blue firewall just became the electoral red firewall. It’s really difficult to plot a Democrats path to 270 while losing those states. We would have to win Florida, North Carolina AND either Arizona or Georgia.
If Trumps Presidency is anything other than an unmitigated disaster he could definitely win re-election.
MomSense
@SligoRover1973:
We were but it’s not as easy as you think.
goblue72
@steve herl: Yes, because Bernie supporters are why Democrats have lost so many states and House races over the last 10 years. See, the Berniebros traveled back in time…
Baud
Still say no sitting officeholders for DNC chair.
chopper
@Felonius Monk:
Jesus this is 2000 all over again. dem wins the popular vote, gooper wins the electoral college with a relative handful of votes thanks to minority voter suppression, annoying Green Party candidate hoovering up democratic votes.
this is how the GOP wins. the party’s motto is “by any means necessary”.
The Thin Black Duke
I love it when the white guys who are allegedly on my side who are getting ready to throw me under the bus are telling me it’s for my own good.
karen marie
Why, why, why do Dems keep appointing people currently in office? Drives me nuts! IMO, a big reason for Dean’s success as DNC chair was IT WAS HIS ONLY JOB, he could focus full-time, without distraction.
SFAW
@weaselone:
Lou Gerstner
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@old_owl: +1,000,000 etc.
Joe Bauers
@Davis X. Machina:
We barely lost to a revolting shitlord who any other Democrat would have beaten like a drum because we nominated the one person in our party who any credible Republican other than the revolting shitlord would have beaten like a drum. Also, as has been pointed out a lot in the past few days, our national party is shit and we are not even competitive in far too many races. I’d say blowing it up should at least be up for debate.
Cain
@Mnemosyne:
Actually if you live in a blue state, then figure out how to reach out to some of those rural people, conduct some social experiments. Create a micro-cosm and see what works and see if it can’t be modeled elsewhere. I think that’s what I am going to do. I’ve met the entire Oregon federal democratic legislation team. They are a great bunch of people and they care deeply about their country and their state. In fact, I would say that is the unifying thing about all of us here red or blue, we love this state.
Tripod
LULZ – search your feelings, you know it to be true: Terry Mac will be our candidate in 2020
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@mistermix: Comment does not match headline !
Suffragete City elftx
BULLSHIT..after voting for her, contributing to her campaign, defending her against you name it; now I’m supposed to denigrate it all.
That’s being asked the wrong question to get the answer you want.
Fuck that
SFAW
@The Thin Black Duke:
It’s because it allows you to pull yourself out from under the bus by your own bootstraps, instead of using a government handout.
Aren’t you glad I could whitesplain it to/for you?
WarMunchkin
@Baud: No sitting officeholders for DNC Chair and also someone who knows shit about organizing instead of seeing the position as a career opportunity.
SFAW
@Tripod:
Or maybe Sherrod or Kirsten? (Both are probably too young, would wait for ’24 when the field is cleared.)
ETA: Given the DNC’s keen insight, I’m thinking they’ll push for Martha Coakley.
Cain
@Davis X. Machina:
I have absolutely no doubt of it, it can be done. Let’s do this!
Amaranthine RBG
@Mnemosyne:
You’ve made, what, about 50 or 60 posts in the past couple of days carping about voter suppression?
Here’s a reality check for you:
McCain, Romney, and Trump got 59 or 60 million votes.
Obama got 69 million, then 65 million and Clinton got 59 million.
The ten million people who voted for Obama but not for Clinton weren’t turned away from the polls by voter ID laws. Maybe, MAYBE a couple hundred thousand were. Maybe.
Why don’t you start dealing with reality instead of beating your hobby horse to death?
Davis X. Machina
@Joe Bauers: Was there an R after the revolting shitlord’s name on the ballot? Because all by itself that’s good for 46,5% of the two-party vote.
SuzieC
@Mary G: Totally agree, We need Zach. “I will die of climate change.” How sad,tragic,horrific. My son is about Zach’s age and I will follow any politician or movement who promises to tackle climate change.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
I guess there are people commenting here that either didn’t read this up thread, or didn’t understand it:
Not my comment but bears repeating:
Litany
@Mnemosyne: Who would have guessed that maybe a primary can be gamed when you have supposedly impartial media submitting stories for edits through Clinton’s campaign, a carrot-and-stick approach to down-ticket funding back by literally the most corporate money a candidate has ever had in their war chest, and a superdelegate system which the media blithely reported had Sanders down hundreds of delegates before the first vote was cast? Let’s be realistic here, none of this is illegal, none of this is unexpected, and I wouldn’t even mind this if it delivered us the results we wanted. It did not.
Clintonland is a real thing, and we all have been living there for the past two years. Yes voter suppression is a problem that needs to be fixed, but it doesn’t explain all of what we’ve seen this cycle.
LeonS
@mistermix:
Gosh who was it who was chair of the DNC back then…?
Baud
@SuzieC: That’s any D.
Bobby Thomson
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: a very useful bogey man, though. The Protocols of the Elders of DNC never goes out of style with the usual idiots.
SuzieC
@SFAW: Sherrod Brown looks young but he is 64.
mistermix
@Suffragete City elftx:
You know, one of the things that was tough about Clinton was all the defense that was required to support her as a candidate. I tend to be the person who my non-political friends come to for voting advice, and it was constantly fending off the dozens of charges against Clinton. In 2008, it was explaining why Obama was such a great choice.
So while I did defend Clinton, I still want to the DNC to experience a change in leadership.
Applejinx
@mistermix: I’m with Mistermix. Clintonworld must go, and Bernie would have lost.
I’ll add: if I had to do it over again I would still vote for Clinton, and I wish to hell they’d sent more people out to canvass in Sullivan rather than sitting back comfortably in their goddamn but tasteful jeweled necklaces and canvassing downtown Keene over and over because it’s easier and the right people are there.
There are no do-overs. Trying to do an unfaithful elector thing and flip it to Clinton via defectors in the Electoral College will get us an immediate bloody revolution and the brunt will be borne by women, blacks, Muslim-lookin’ people, Hispanics et al. It will be immediate widespread slaughter backed by about 1/3 of the country’s institutions such as police. Literally the worst possible move, ever.
Clinton could have presided over a transformational term of office with progressive support for anything leftwing she bothered to want to do. I don’t know if she’d have bothered, but she could have, and there would’ve been popular support for it. Up until around Nov. 8.
Clintonism is done. Doesn’t mean Zach, or Bernie, or anybody in particular is next in line. That’s far from a given. I think it would be a very good idea if the political movement that carried the Rust Belt in the primaries and then saw Trump win the election on the back of those same states by parroting pretty much exactly the same rhetoric that won the Dem primaries, got listened to. That does not mean to rerun the same candidate/s from 2016, it means ‘hey, this line of argument worked and should be repeated’.
If I could rewind time I would re-vote for Clinton just as I did before, because that’s what we had.
If anybody tries to keep Clintonism or God help us Clinton, central to the Democratic party, I truly can’t even. It was the Republicans who were supposed to collapse into a smoking heap of slag. You can’t un-collapse the smoking heap of slag. We need younger people. Younger than me, I might add: I’m 48.
Anya
Zack is an asshole and his gripe is bs.
I am mad at the DNC but not because they supported a member of their own party over an outsider who was shitting on them at every opportunity. I am mad at them because they suck. They ignored local elections and gave up on everything else except national elections, and only in select states. I am mad at them because they didn’t fight against voter suppression or even plan to overcome the deficit. My objection to Donna Brazil is not because she supported HRC against independent Sanders. My issue is her dishonesty of pretending she’s independent. She should’ve said: “I support HRC because she’s a long standing member of the Dem Party. She contributed to this party and that’s why I am supporting her.” Instead, she lied and then gave Hillary stupid, basic questions that anyone who pays cursory attention to politics would’ve predicted it was coming.
I just can’t with short sighted idiots like Zack.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
Is Clintonworld the new Neoliberal ? Asking for a friend.
Davis X. Machina
Curious — Clinton outpolled Feingold in WI.
Davis X. Machina
@Anya:
I wonder what the ‘N’ stands for…
Mary G
@The Thin Black Duke: I don’t want you under the bus. I am a stupid privileged white person, and I don’t understand why you feel that way. Can you explain? I know people are sick of explaining, and I would be too, but I want to do better and I can’t unless I know what is wrong.
Baud
We need Baud!World!
dr. bloor
@mistermix:
He ran on nothing but bile after losing Ohio and getting pantsed by the Daily News, and foisted Cornel West on the convention committee just before West decided a Lexington, MA dilettante was more to his liking. He had as much substance as Trump.
MomSense
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap:
Yup and I agree completely with that comment. Their big job is to organize the convention.
Mnemosyne
@goblue72:
This from the guy who thinks that suppression of the minority vote didn’t matter in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania?
If you want to drive the party off a cliff by courting racist whites at the expense of the actual base of the Democratic Party — the ones who weren’t allowed to vote on Tuesday, then have fun with that. I’m sure all those Trump voters will turn to the Democrats as soon as you purge all the nasty women from it.
dm
@Felonius Monk: You know why Jill Stein got 50,000 votes? You know why Trump got fewer votes than Romney, and people didn’t turn out for Hillary? It was because the Republican strategy of tossing Big Lies at Clinton for thirty years worked, and had people staying home because “both sides seemed awful”.
Of course, Bernie would have fared no better — the Big Lies just wouldn’t have been as stale. I really thought Clinton was the better candidate because she’d survived the lies and I thought people were seeing through them. The poll response to Comey’s letter in FiveThirtyEight’s tracking showed that I was wrong about that. She did win the popular vote, though.
The suggestion that we need our own channel is an excellent one. We’re also suffering a “hack gap” — Republicans have a lot of bullshitters who don’t care about the truth who are on the air all the time, while we tend to try to be the reality-based community — but I’m not sure about solving that “problem”. Still, a lie is halfway around the world while the truth is still getting its boots on.
But what we really need is Democrats in local elections.
old_owl
@ joel hanes
Sure – no need to ask.
SFAW
@SuzieC:
Enough of me thought you were joking that I looked it up. Holy shit! No wonder he was able to carry on that affair with that younger newswoman, Connie Something-or-other.
I hope I look that good when I’m 64. (My wife wishes I looked that good right now.)
SligoRover1973
@MomSense:
Part of this has to fall upon the voters themselves. Knowing what the rules are in their given state and making the effort, with help from the Dems or on their own. If a fraction of these voters tried to fulfil these racist, but legally necessary requirements, we would have won. Instead we have president-elect shitgibbon. I refuse to capitalize for that pos.
I’m a Bernie Sanders supporter (a “BernieBro” according to the parlance around these parts). I voted straight ticket Democrat, because, even though she wasn’t my first choice, there is no way I was going to vote for shitgibbon or the Rethuglicans.
HRC didn’t lose PA because of suppressed turnout in Philly. She lost because white women in the surrounding counties did not turn out to vote for her.
What a fucking shitshow this country has become.
Francis
The problem with detailed analyses of blame is that even if we find out who is at fault we have not necessarily prepared ourselves to respond to changing circumstances. The mistakes of the last election will not be the mistakes of the next one. Pruning dead wood can rapidly turn into depriving ourselves of useful wisdom and experience.
Now I assume that many of us are at work goofing off, so it’s not like we can suddenly start doing useful political work instead of bitching at each other.
But it would be neat to identify a bunch of low-intensity, grunt work tasks that need doing over the next year, so that people can engage with politics in a positive way. I came up with gathering signatures for ballot initiatives for non-partisan redistricting and helping people address issues with their voter registration. But since I’m brand-new at this I’m sure that there are some professionals out there who have better ideas.
Mnemosyne
@SligoRover1973:
I totally agree with you, and I am getting increasingly pissed off about it. It was major malpractice on the part of the Democratic Party.
But we’re not going to be able to get people riled up and demanding change if the narrative is, We should have courted more white voters.
Applejinx
@Mary G:
Thanks. It’s been a rough road, fortunately I’m not existentially shocked by hatred and epistemic closure, plus sometimes I have a diplomatic streak ;)
I did get a number of really adamant anti-Clinton people to literally go and vote for her, and people like that are why we did win the popular vote. Without ’em you don’t even have that. I had to make many promises and go out on a limb saying things that were very speculative and based on how smart Clinton was, how sharp her operation was, how they were really making the effort.
I learned afterward that I had been lying to those people, and the Clinton operation was not nearly as sharp as I’d been promising.
I would never, ever, ever be able to go back to those people and sell ’em on another round of Clinton Democrats, and I would not be fool enough to try. No chance. Even if I was willing to outright lie to these people, (a) I don’t think I could do so as convincingly as I did when I believed in the possibilities of Clinton, and (b) they’ll never buy it now. Not in a million years. That name’s now about as popular as Nixon.
dm
@LeonS:
Tim Kaine
Keith P.
Also, take comfort in knowing – knowing – that the scandals will be coming at a frenetic pace. There’s going to be pay-for-play and double-dealing and self-dealing, etc. But also stuff we haven’t had in 20 years – bimbo eruptions! And it’s going to be in a time where everybody is carrying high quality video cameras in their pockets. Should be in interesting 4 years…a more scandalous, colorful version of what W’s administration was turning out to be prior to 9/11.
Citizen_X
Sincerely, mistermix, fuck you for gleefully starting up the circular firing squad bullshit.
There might be some points here, but Zach is an asshole. Yeah, yell questions at the black lady and then don’t let her answer. That’ll work, dude.
Mnemosyne
@Archon:
They’re not “trending red.” They’re specifically preventing non-white voters from voting.
If we mistake what’s going on and ignore the fact that people are being denied the right to vote, we are going to land ourselves in a whole world of shit.
lamh36
@The Thin Black Duke: Right…Donna Brazile the women who took over AFTER DWS was ousted…it’s HER fault..
I see Zach felt real comfortable screaming at the Black woman about this being her fault.
Wonder if Zach has the same screams for the White women who voted for Trump. I doubt it.
smh…if this is what I can expect from BJ for the foreseeable future, I think maybe it’s time to just have a clean fuqn’ break…
Mnemosyne
@The Thin Black Duke:
It’s okay, you’re a man, so you’ll still get to ride at the back of the bus.
It’s black women who will get thrown under the bus.
RareSanity
I don’t see what the big deal is with people wanting a change in the party leadership.
I know there are people are saying that it was only a few hundred thousand votes that was the difference, but I think that is minimizing what really happened. The Democratic campaign this year went from being this unstoppable force, to Karl Rove on Fox News in 2012. That seems to me to be good enough reason to question leadership. Weren’t we saying that Rove should have lost all credibility for being so wrong?
I know there was voter suppression, I know. But that doesn’t explain why the Democrats own internal polling data was completely off in more than just the suppression states. There was depressed overall turnout, and “defections” of groups that were expected to vote for Hillary.
I mean seriously, did everyone see the same map that I saw on election night? It was a sea of red, with a few blue sand barges. That is a problem. I don’t know what the answer is, but I’m a little skeptical that the current leadership that is just as baffled as I am, are the right people to try and lead “the fixing”.
LeonS
@Mnemosyne: It also could have been a source of favorable noise. Every time that process took more than an hour or so you blast it to the news. Eventually it might turn some heads. We really need to learn howl and whine as well the the Repbus do.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@lamh36:
This !
Zach who? Fuck him.
Central Planning
One of my daughter’s friend’s mom voted for Trump, and now she’s petrified because he won. Granted, we’re in New York so in her position of white privilege, it won’t hurt her, or her ex-husband (a doctor). My daughter is beside herself because of that. Her friend is similarly distraught. It sounds a lot like the Brexit vote.
I wish I could believe that if Hillary won, that the losing side would be acting like the Democrats. However, I know that’s not true. It would be turned up to 11.
dr. bloor
@WarMunchkin:
Yeah, this had smoke coming out of my ears as well. Specifically, what the fuck did that campaign think it was doing in fucking Arizona and Georgia? Someone fucked up badly, and it wasn’t just the pollsters.
Mnemosyne
@Litany:
Please explain how the Jewish Socialist beats the openly anti-Semitic white supremacist.
Renie
Am I alone in getting angry at democrats in congress saying they will work with trump? He represents the opposite of all our values! I want them to obstruct everything he tries to do just like they did to President Obama. And where the hell is Schumer and why isn’t he speaking out
notoriousJRT
@goblue72:
Christ on a crutch.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I was just listening to an NPR show about the future of the Democrats and poor old Nina Turner was waxing glory days about the Bernie campaign being the most important movement in the Democratic Party since…. Somebody here said Zephyr Teachout lost, and lost badly. and the closest candidate to Sandersism in terms of policy and sanctimony, Russ Feingold, lost to one the of the dumbest and meanest Tea-Baggers in the country.
@goblue72: Don’t you have a grass roots to activate and Revolution to lead, Dwight?
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@dm:
We really need this for the inevitable GOP flame out. I mean God Lord, a lot of Republicans are just as shocked at Trump’s victory as we are, this isn’t 2001 with the entire GOP matching to a Fox cadence set by Rove, there going to be at each other throats sooner or later.
The thing that struck me was how many times the Conservative Bubble burst this election. Heck, Trump just being there and those voters coming out in droves for him shows something is up there. Also the Libertarians did their best ever this election. Speaking as a former Conservative, Libertarian is what you do when you start thinking for yourself again. Those people are an opportunity and again, speaking as a former Conservative, they will go for a Democrat = good government and seriously thought threw solutions to problems
msdc
@mistermix:
I guess that’s why you post rants from 20-year-old drama kings who blame Donna Brazile for plotting to support the candidate who was chosen by a clear majority of the primary voters.
Corner Stone
@The Thin Black Duke:
What’s the matter? You don’t like it under the bus? So ungrateful!
Corner Stone
ONLY ZACHS CAN SAVE US NOW!!
Mnemosyne
@Anya:
There are totally valid critiques of the DNC. I have several myself (where the fuck were they when Democrats needed voter ID?!?)
Zach’s is not one of them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
WALL STREET SPEECHES! True progressives! Hillary is unqualified. “Conservative” democrats don’t count! Downticket races? “We’ll see”. Comic book guy.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Many of us are in mourning over this election and that should give us a window into what Joe Biden might have been feeling after his son died. I think I’m doing pretty good at this point if I get up, get dressed, eat something and don’t shout at people or cry too much in public. (Though I did cry in public at lunch as I was reading your comment from earlier today.) So I totally get why Joe Biden decided not to run, even though I preferred him to Hillary.
I happen to think that Sherrod Brown does have that certain something that appeals, that could be called charisma. He’s never gonna be the hot, cool guy that Obama is, but I think Sherrod Brown does have his charms.
notoriousJRT
@mistermix:
Milk toasty thoughts in bomb thrower clothing.
Omnes Omnibus
@mistermix:
No, for example, commenter jl was a Bernie supporter and mega-donor but never a BernieBro.
D. Mason
This is disgusting, you are disgusting.
SligoRover1973
@Mnemosyne:
I get what you are saying about the racist whites who threw their lot in with Trump and the Rethuglicans. But what about the 47% who didnt even bother to vote, black, white, Hispanic, whatever? This election was won by about 25% of eligible voters. The Dems need to motivate a few million of those who didn’t vote, including the whites in those counties of the Rust Belt. People here saying that “half” of the electorate doesn’t help anything, because it’s not true. The non-voting half was not inspired to register and vote for either candidate.
In there are the missing votes. They came out for Obama, but not HRC. We need to know why.
gogol's wife
@lamh36:
I’m probably going to take a break for a few days; I think it will settle down. Please don’t leave. This b.s. can’t go on much longer. We have a common enemy to fight.
gogol's wife
@WaterGirl: @D. Mason:
No, D. Mason, you are disgusting.
This tragedy absolutely feels like the sudden death of a loved one. I know from experience.
notoriousJRT
@Litany:
Key word, “supposedly”?
lamh36
@gogol’s wife: I had been avoiding the blog since late last night. I just happened to click over here (it’s actually the 2nd entry on my blogroll) and this bullshit was the first post I see…smh.
Shoulda just stayed on that break…so let me just get to it..
But first, Fuq “Zach”…and fuq…
gogol's wife
@dr. bloor:
I was just thinking, what’s Dr. West up to these days? I wonder if he’s happy with the new prez? Will he be sniping from the sidelines as he did with Obama?
Stillwater
Totally agree, Mistermix. The whole sclerotic, incestuously insidery institutional structure needs to be gutted, all the way down to the planks. Between DWS and Brazille propping up a flawed candidate, to Democratic insiders who fluffed a candidate who not only lost a fair fight 8 years ago, but who inspires an unprecedented level of revulsion not only in conservatives but (apparently, according to the polls) plenty of democrats as well, the whole institutional apparatus needs to burn and be rebuilt.
Maybe then we can win back some recently lost state governorships! (Let’s keep our goals realistic, folks…)
smintheus
Here’s how it will probably work out. All the chattering on the Dem side will come to naught because the swathe of destruction that the Republicans will be creating will force the Democrats into defending the policies and programs the GOP is destroying or trying to destroy.
That will be portrayed as a backward-looking agenda by the media, which will treat every semi-plausible ‘success’ by the trumpies as yet more confirmation that the real adults are finally back in charge in DC and the scare-mongering about Trump was just about nothing in retrospect. The media will probably carry Trump’s water every bit as much as they did for Republicans during the ’80s.
The next 4 years will strongly resemble the maddening first term of Reagan in which none of the stupid things he and his band of idiots did stuck to him. I sincerely hope that the Democrats don’t end up nominating an earnest (boring) old party hack (cough, Kaine) in 4 years time, to be chewed up and spit out as yesterday’s leftovers from the untrendy Democratic menu.
Kay
This is the transition website:
Then they go on to promote the specific properties:
I can’t believe they’re ACTUALLY going to promote this company from the White House. I didn’t think they would do it.
I hope he makes media go to another “press conference” where he promotes his hotel. They’ll just slap a Presidential seal on Trump steaks now, I guess.
notoriousJRT
@Davis X. Machina:
I would say Wisconsin in general is curious.
WaterGirl
Can somebody please wake me when the internal fighting is over? We should take time to figure out what happened, but first I think each of us has to grieve and figure out how to get back on our feet and get ready to fight the enemy. The enemy that is not us. Figure out how to save this democracy.
We need to all be on the same team, not sniping at each other about stuff. The fucking house is on fire and we are arguing about whether it’s an electrical fire or who might have put a lit match in the garbage can with a newspaper. Let’s save what we can and get out of the fucking house before we go up in flames with it, and figure out how we do everything we can to stop the carnage that will be this presidency.
gogol's wife
@lamh36:
Don’t stay away long. We need you.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The “left” had a chance to vote for the only person who had a chance to beat an actual rightwing fascist and they couldn’t be arsed to do it.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@RareSanity</a
The problems is it was everyone who was wrong, even Trump’s own pollster’s throught he would lose. Keep in mind bookies were paying out on a Hillary victory before the election and bookies are supposed to be the test whether your’ prediction is wishful thinking on not.
2012, everything showed Romney losing and Rove ignored it and followed his gut, this time everyone, even the gut showed a Hillary victory. Of course people are pointing out the GOP threw out a lot of Democrat votes, so maybe the polls weren’t the issue…?
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@Kay: ROFL, the inforcomerical continues.
Applejinx
@steve herl:
Because clearly, running against an obscure old Jewish guy from Vermont who talks about nothing but BILLYUNAIRES and income inequality and wants to raise people’s taxes is a REALLY HARD primary challenge. Clearly the old coot who isn’t even a Democrat is a super-dangerous rival who automatically will clobber the heir apparent to the Democrats, and so squeaking out a 3 million vote win in your OWN FUCKING PRIMARY is an impressive accomplishment and evidence of great competence.
Bernie shouldn’t have been the nominee, wasn’t, up until the end he had no intention of being the nominee and nobody expected it. He was a one-issue guy and he was there to steer the platform, nothing more. He won the crap out of the Rust Belt ranting about billionaires and sending jobs to China and the 1%, using completely real demographic information that the Democrats all have access to.
Nearly all the Clintonites are in fact in this 1%, and so is Bernie. (he’s just crazy! Vermont will be keeping him, thanks).
He was not there to be the nominee. He was there to bring your attention to the underlying electoral wave that he kept insisting was there. The economic sheer panic that even afflicts the petit-bourgeois: because their bills are fucking dire and they see themselves slipping, too. Only the 0.01% are not slipping, that’s how the math works.
And both here and presumably in Clintonite headquarters, they actually put quotes around ‘economic insecurity’ like it’s some kind of joke.
And we lost on the back of those same states that originally sent the message through Bernie Sanders, when Donald Trump went there and made the same damn arguments that people put in ‘quotes’ around here. He literally went and said the same things.
And if you want to cite vote suppression: why should it even be that close?
Felonius Monk
@dm:
You are absolutely right about that. On my ballot there were 3 offices that had no Dem running against the R..
Mnemosyne
@SligoRover1973:
Here’s an article about Wisconsin. DMV workers gave the runaround to people who needed voter IDs.
In Pennsylvania, poll workers were demanding ID from voters even though the voter ID law had been put on hold by a judge. It’s in the Washington Post.
RareSanity
@Kay:
I started to laugh at this, because it’s a legitimately funny line.
Then it hit me that I could actually see this happening…now I’m depressed again.
WaterGirl
@Kay: On day one or two, he has outdone himself.
On the other hand, he’s been showing us who he is for over a year and now we see that Trump is still going to be the same person now that he has always been. The man has not one single quality that makes him suited for this role, not one. So this is no surprise to me.
I seriously want to smack the people that say “oh he won’t do that, let’s just wait and see what he will do before we assume it’s going to be terrible”!
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@smintheus: This isn’t God damn Regan, Hillary won the popular vote so cut that out.
Another Scott
@Yossarian: Thank you.
People seem to forget that Hillary had another opponent in the primaries: someone with decades of history in the party, someone who wasn’t afraid to go after her for being tied to the past with too much baggage, someone young who had demonstrated the ability to win in cities and outside them.
Martin O’Malley.
His campaign crashed almost from the moment he announced (A/V technical problems on such an important occasion isn’t a good sign…). And him not having a good answer for his history as Baltimore’s mayor, and an army of surrogates willing to sing his praises, didn’t help.
She beat the people willing to run against her fair and square. As you say, the DNC had nothing to do with it.
Where are Bernie’s tax returns, anyway???… :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
dr. bloor
@Davis X. Machina: All we need to do is get Paul LePage to take over the governors mansions around the country for a few years to soften ’em up.
SligoRover1973
@Mnemosyne: @Mnemosyne:
Emma
OK, super-better-than-the-rest-of-us liberals: put up or shut up. What are you personally going to do about it in your state? I will contribute to your campaign, donate to your group, whatever.
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
It’s no consolation now, but the voter suppression in the “firewall” states was baked in back in 2012. Trump was just the unwitting beneficiary.
Smiling Mortician
@Mary G:
I’m late, as always, so maybe this has been said already.
But anyone, Rust Belt or otherwise, who voted for Trump because they hate corporations killing American jobs is a complete idiot. The Trump Organization himself has killed more than his fair share of American jobs, and he’s proud of it.
Kay
This site is written at such a low level. It reads like a grade school social studies book. It might BE from my actual 3rd grade social studies book :)
He goes on to explain what the Bill of Rights is.
cmorenc
@debbie:
Where is Julian Assange when we need him?
:=)
Taylor
@Applejinx:
I remember a lot of stuff from Bernie about how corrupt Hillary was, how she couldn’t be trusted….
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@WaterGirl:
Back in 2012 I think, someone showed Ryan’s proposed budget cuts to a group of voters and they just wouldn’t believe that anyone would actually propose such policies. People are in for an incredible shock during the first 100 days of the “president trump’s” administration.
Stillwater
Moderation?
I didn’t write any words that include “c.i.a.l.i.s”…
cmorenc
@WaterGirl:
Well, Thomas Jefferson was also a redhead. There’s that at least.
:=)
Mnemosyne
@RareSanity:
You know why Karl Rove looked like a fool to us that year? Because this exact voter suppression scheme had already been put into place and he expected it to work. When it didn’t, they went back, made a few tweaks, and here we are.
Tuesday was not a fluke. It was the Republicans’ plan since 2012 and before, and it worked like a charm.
RareSanity
@Enhanced Voting Techinques:
Fair enough.
I still don’t see what the big deal is with questioning leadership. Was it mistermix’s use of “Clintonworld” that caused the anger? Or was it the implication of “cleaning house”?
I’m asking sincerely, just trying to figure out what seems to have set people off.
Kay
Except for President Trump of course. Who has revealed absolutely nothing and is planning on running the family business out of the White House.
Special snowflakes. The rules don’t apply to the Royal Family. Their whole lives have been like this.
Matt McIrvin
@dr. bloor: Hey, it seems to have got ’em voting system reform.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@WaterGirl: “I seriously want to smack the people that say “oh he won’t do that, let’s just wait and see what he will do before we assume it’s going to be terrible”! ”
Eh, we were assuming it was terrible in the sense of “Kotch brothers fever dream of a return to Dicksonian England workhouses and gallows for the poor” kind of terrible, not “The presidential seal on a gold plated toilet, for sale on e-bay” kind of terrible.
Mnemosyne
@Central Planning:
I keep telling my cousin in Wisconsin, “This is what you voted for. Hillary warned you about the basket of deplorables behind Trump, and you ignored her. You chose this.”
Davis X. Machina
@SligoRover1973: A non-trivial number of them have been told not to vote, that it just encourages them. And that all the cool kids have seen through the charade, that politics is just a shuck. That’s it’s all for show.
And you never, ever hear that message except from right wingers, unless I’m mistaken.
cmorenc
@Kay:
Did I miss it, or did any of the moderators or town-hall members in any of the debates ever ask Trump how much of his outstanding personal or business debt is to foreign banks, particularly either Chinese or Russian banks?
smintheus
@Enhanced Voting Techinques: As far as the media will be concerned, the fact that Trump lost the popular will be irrelevant. Worse than irrelevant; just as with Bush, they’ll feel it necessary to run interference for the president who plainly lacks a mandate (along with any clue about governance). Just watch it unfold.
NobodySpecial
One gets tired of hearing how you have to run to the middle when the President-Elect did exactly the opposite and beat your best candidate heads up. Equally tired of hearing how we have to keep supporting people whose only political talent seems to be losing elections.
Anya
@Davis X. Machina: I love condescension. A national party is nothing without functioning state parties. You can’t win shit if your state parties are in disarray.
enplaned
@Davis X. Machina: Goddamn, that is the soft bigotry of low expectations — we shouldn’t have come close to a loss. Against Trump it should have been a 400+ EC win.
Obama did about 69mm popular vote in 2008. Given population growth, that’s about a 73mm equivalent today. We managed 59mm this year. Sure, there was voter suppression, but there was also the worst GOP candidate possibly ever. There’s no way that we gave up 14mm votes to voter suppression.
We had a poor candidate who ran a mediocre campaign. Yeah, lots of unfair shit happened to Hillary along the way, but anyone running Hillary as their candidate could have expected a ton of unfair shit because she attracts that like flies to honey. Was it fair? NO! Was it to be expected? YES!
p.a.
A bit of hope for the future.
Maybe Panglossian, but I’ll take anything right about now.
Felonius Monk
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
She got her ass kicked as just about anyone who is familiar with the politics in this part of New York State knew she would. I don’t know how much help she really got from the Democratic Organization here. Don’t forget she was on Andy Cuomo’s shit list and probably still is. My guess is that she is done in politics here.
D. Mason
@RareSanity: It seems that no matter how you approach it, trying to name any cause other than “racist white misogynists” is met with immediate bile.
goblue72
@mistermix: I’m gonna disagree with that. Though I agree with most everything else you said.
In 2020 – Warren will be 71. Sherrod Brown will be 68, and Joe Biden will be 77. We aren’t winning anything running the AARP ticket. And I LIKE all 3 of them. Boomer era is over. This was the last Boomer election. Running a Boomer against Dumpster Fire is just…no. By 2020, the oldest Millenials will be hitting their late 30s. Which means Gen Xers will hitting early 50s I guess.
Which is also something I feel like the Democratic Party leadership still hasn’t fully grasped in their gut. Torch needs to be passed. Their kids are now grownups with kids. Frame I use at work is: Google, EBay, Facebook, Uber, AirBnB, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Tesla Motors. You heard of these companies? All of them were founded by Gen X or Millenials. (Assuming you define the BB as 1946-1964). Most the people founding those companies are in their 30s and 40s. If they are old enough to found global brands like that, some of which like Google you use every single day and completely integral to modern life, then they are old enough to run the country.
RareSanity
@Mnemosyne:
OK, I conceded the point about Rove to EnhancedVotingTechniques.
I guess what I’m wondering is if people are having a problem with this Zach guy questioning party leadership, or mistermix’s editorial on that questioning?
I don’t have a problem at all with him questioning Donna Brazile, I think that’s healthy. I don’t think he did it just because she was a woman or black, but I don’t know for sure, so I won’t try and make any definitive statement about that.
SligoRover1973
@Mnemosyne:
I can’t dispute that. I can only speak for PA (suburban Philly, to be exact). Philly proper turned out for HRC as expected. The surrounding suburbs did not. White women apparently stayed home. Not sure why, but their absence meant that their votes weren’t their to cancel out and overcome the racists in upstate PA.
I’m a straight, white, married man in Chester County, PA. We went blue. But it was not enough. I have two interracial children, one of who is a little girl. I vote straight Democratic ticket for many reason, one of which is for their future. I fear tremendously for it now.
Kay
It’s really kind of amazing to read how little Trump ran on. The transition website is basically a bunch of cobbled-together bullshit.
No one knows the first thing about this person and he’s the President of the United States.
That’s actually kinda banana republic stuff too, if we’re honest- the crap shoot President. This election was aggressively anti-informative. I genuinely think I am dumber for having watched it.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@enplaned:
Trump won, perhaps that’s an incorrect thesis? Perhaps it’s, Trump, being a conman, was willing to do something no serious politican is willing to do and just outright lie to the voters.
Felonius Monk
@Kay:
How many times do they use the word “bigly”?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
While little Zack throws a tantrum because Hillatrix LaClinton stole Bernius Dumbledore’s wand and wouldn’t let him cast that Freebus Collegius spell, things like this, and much worse, are happening to people
goblue72
@Applejinx: The crowd here doesn’t want to hear it. They want to hear that they are right, that its all the fault of deplorable, and that if the voters are too stupid to listen to them, then its the voters fault.
Meanwhile, in professional politics land, if you lose and are left blaming the voters, its usually a sign that you really fucked up.
enplaned
@MomSense: Kirsten Gillebrand wanted to run. Whether she’d have got out of the starting blocks, I do not know, but she wrote a book — she clearly wanted to run.
Kay
I think you guys give way too much credit to the DNC as puppet-masters.
On that note, Howard Dean is wildly over-rated. The Fifty State Strategy was basically a power point presentation and bunch of poorly paid organizers who checked in every coupla months. I have no idea how it got this legendary status but really it was not that fabulous.
Amaranthine RBG
@Mnemosyne:
Would you just try to stop being such a dumbass. You’ve made 50 or 60 posts saying this in the past two days
Republican turnout has been in the same ballpark since 2008.
Obama got about 10 million more votes in 2008 and 5 million more than Clinton just did
Blaming voter ID laws is stupid
The question is why did Clinton turn out 10 million fewer voters.
We democrats are not going to fix this and win again as long as idiots keep blaming the wrong causes.
Brachiator
@Patricia Kayden:
So, it may be that Team Clinton was handicapped by basing their strategy on bad data. The LA Times poll, which many derided, showed Trump with a lead through much of the campaign season. So, at worst, Clinton never moved the needle, never changed enough minds to come up with winning numbers.
If this is the case, the Democrats have a lot of work to do.
EBT
@Cain: The wins in NC mean the state will stop defending HB2 correct?
smintheus
@Kay: Trump effectively has created a cult of personality. That’s what his election was about, not about policies that his own supporters don’t entirely believe he’ll even bother with.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oh, Dwight
Amir Khalidey was anything fundamentally wrong in their approach
From out here, I can’t see how Hillary was to blame for this loss. I tend to suspect that Van Jones is right: a good part or it was white backlash against that deeply-tanned liberal showoff Obama and his preferred successor the Witch Queen of Arkansas. In that climate, any candidate Obama endorsed would have lost, and Obama himself wouldn’t be a shoo-in for a third term if it were Constitutionally permitted. Reactionary white people are still a large and powerful part of the American electorate, and they’re not getting outnumbered fast enough.
As for the “Clintonworld must go” meme, I am suspicious. These were the very people who helped bring about the successes of the Clinton and Obama administrations. They weren’t dumb or unrealistic people, and they aren’t. What they are doing is aging out of the cohort that takes on big government jobs: It’s time for a new generation with newer ideas, in other words, but I don’t think there was anything fundamentally wrong about their approach to things.
I don’t believe the Democratic party failed in 2016 because it stuck to its guns. I think it has structural weaknesses, like that at state and local levels, which as many commenters here note remain unaddressed. It’s like a tree with a beautiful canopy but an inadequate root system.
enplaned
@goblue72: Yes. A marketing friend of mine pointed out incongruity of going from Obama (40-something when elected) to Hillary (nearly 70). Ageism? Maybe, but it’s not a great visual.
We should have been looking for another 40/50 year old.
Applejinx
@Smiling Mortician:
Okay. Agreed.
Is it or is it not the job of Hillary Clinton, and the DNC, to convince people both of this, and that the Democratic candidate is much much better and should be voted for?
If there’s a problem where that’s not working, and people are telling you ‘this is not working because X and Y and Z’, is it not your job to learn what the hell is going on and fix the problem rather than calling the person a hater, being really offended, and writing them off as a big meanie deplorable asshole who only wants to pee on your parade?
If your biggest enemy, who’s also a complete mockery of a fool of an asshole and has no business winning anything, is clever enough to go kick up a fuss about X and Y and Z after the problem has long since been brought to your attention, and you lose and you’re still more interested in being mad at the meanie haters, is this not absolute incompetence?
Trump is a shit businessman but there are even shitty businessmen who at least understand you want to hear the bad news first. This Tinkerbell clap-harder bullshit is downright alarming. Next thing you know we’ll be seeing arguments that we should run Clinton again, have her going around endorsing people. Kiss of death. She was already pretty hard to carry, but now it’s totally untenable and the wilful blindness about this is alarming.
Kryptik
@Kay:
But he spoke to the economic anxiety they were all feeling! He spoke truth to power! He promised to Make AMerica Great Again!
Seriously, for all the bullshit about Hillary not putting forward an economic vision (which she did, subsumed under bullshit and innuendo in the media), Trump’s vision was a literal ponzi scheme built on misplaced trust. He conned the entire country with a fucking MLM.
goblue72
@RareSanity: They have a problem with the cognitive dissonance created between them be so completely sure they are right about the Democratic Party and what it should be to win, and get smacked upside the head by reality on Election Day.
Meanwhile those who have been pointing these things out for awhile as to the giant hole in the Democrat’s vision an electoral strategy, are sneered at as “BernieBros” or whatnot, regardless of the fact that Trump – the most unprofessional, god-awful candidate to ever attempt to actually run for President since god knows who – went after those exact same voters in those exact same regions and won.
Liberals like to claim they live in the reality based community. But apparently, the reality they live in is one where they won the Presidency, the Senate, the House and the states and didn’t lose anything. And if they just keep doing the same thing over and over again – but more emphatically – they’ll totally be right.
Meanwhile, Conversion Therapy Mike Pence really is VP-elect.
WaterGirl
Maybe someone could front page this letter from Richard Cohen at the Southern Poverty Law Center?
Applejinx
@Taylor:
You know, there are a lot of people around here who remember a lot of stuff, just like that.
Because it was the only god damn thing he said that they ever heard. They flat out did not hear anything else, it was ‘blah blah Ginger blah blah one percent’ to them.
Felonius Monk
@enplaned:
Is that how you determine that someone wants to run for President? They wrote a book?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Applejinx: because in the long run, you logorrheic crackpot, those were the only things he said that had any real impact on the election. That and a bunch of self-indulgent and irresponsible over-promising to the young and naive.
debbie
@cmorenc:
I really hope there’s an anonymous hacking group somewhere who will uncover not just emails between Trump and Putin but also emails between Trump or the RNC and Comey.
@WaterGirl:
Always the voice of reason! Waiting for the wake-up call!
Kay
@Renie:
I agree with you Renie because the voters made it clear they want a far Right one Party government and Donald Trump as Dear Leader. I think they should get what they voted for.
However. Democrats want an infrastructure bill, badly, so they’re gonna work with President Trump. I’m afraid it’s going to turn into a “whites only need apply” jobs program under Trump and the far Right Congress.
WaterGirl
@WaterGirl: Just wanted to note that he did not say:
I know that everything isn’t about me, but I don’t think I’m the only one here who needs this place to stay sane. We need each other. All of us. (Except the trolls, of course.) Please let’s keep our eyes on the prize.
They say you only get one chance to make a first impression. How about if we try to make our first impression on the guy who will be residing at the white something other than “Progressives in Disarray”. I much prefer “Progressives unite and fight Trump extremism with everything they have.
goblue72
@Kryptik: Hillary didn’t put forth a vision. She put forth a 1,000 position papers and a smorgasbord of choose-your-own-issue in her nomination speech. Which is great if you are a political junkie. Most voters aren’t.
Bill Clinton felt my pain.
Obama convinced me to Hope.
I still have no idea what Hillary was telling me. And I – honest to God – for all my criticisms, personally respect her and her effort a TON. MORE than her husband. She gets the standing O from me.
But that doesn’t change things. If I felt anything from her campaign in terms of meta-themes, it was “It’s time for women to be in charge.” Which, if you are lefty like me, is enough to seal the deal. But most people aren’t hard lefties. And that kind of meta-theme carries tones of excluding half the voters from the team. And the half that it does include, a number of THAT half don’t really like that kind of message. Its not like Obama ever, for one second, gave of the whiff that a meta-theme of his was “time to put the black folks in charge”. Again, for me, I would have said “hell yes”. But again, most of America isn’t a hard leftie. Which is why he so assiduously avoided that kind of thing.
SligoRover1973
@Davis X. Machina:
I’d agree with you but that shit has been going on for decades. MILLIONS of them came out to vote for Obama in 2008 and 2012. Where the fuck did they go? And why?
We answer that question and we have the solution to our future problems.
goblue72
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Given how wrong you’ve been. (Lemme check the election scoreboard – yup, you still are wrong), your criticism are kinda of like a gnat at this point.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@goblue72: some day you’re going to stop being so shy about your real life super successful grass roots activism, aren’t you Dwight?
and your wife, Morgan Fairchild.
Applejinx
@goblue72:
But they hate you because this whole time, you’ve been coming here mocking them and taunting and being a poo-flinging monkey. If I remember correctly. Whig? Koch? Am I misremembering or does this guy come off as paid troll grade obnoxious?
I paid dues by listening and trying to work with ’em wherever possible, and came up with ways to drag disaffected voters into the D column BECAUSE I figured their attitude was sort of ‘back room guy’ insider ‘tude rather than proper diplomacy, marketing, whatever you’d call it. And in so doing, I know that with certain posters here I am on a super short leash because I have to put things a certain way in order to not just be written off immediately. And so, not all the time but sometimes, I do: I moderate the way I’m expressing myself, and I try to work out where they’re coming from and then frame things in a way that they won’t instantly dismiss.
This is how I got through to a few Bernie Or Busters who were stamping their little feet (note! denigrating members of my family, whom I love, in order to get BJ posters to consider the merits of what I’m saying! Just possibly I’m putting that on, and I don’t think my loved family members are really petulant children. But the posters need me to believe my family members are petulant children, so I frame it in a way that is disrespectful to those I love in order to be heard at all around here)
I don’t think you try to do that. I know that sure as fuck, a lot of these posters around here, and a lot of the Clintonite power brokers in the DNC, don’t try to do things like this. But it is basic people-influencing politics, and the lack of it cost us this election and may cost countless lives before we’re done, and possibly the fate of this mad planet.
RareSanity
@goblue72:
I was in the threads last night, and I’m not trying to stir things up. Mnemosyne and lamh36 are usually very level headed and insightful commenters.
Just trying to understand what about this particular subject has them upset.
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
I’ll try to do a mini-version of my usual lecture: those people are panicking for two reasons. One is the economic stress. The other is their loss of social status — they are no longer at the top of the heap by virtue of their skin color.
When those voters are asked to choose between their economic status and their social status, they vote for their social status every. single. time. Look at Kentucky, where the Republican governor ran on a platform of getting rid of their healthcare plan, and he won in a landslide. Because sticking it to the blacks and browns was more important than their own health care.
Trump promised to Make America White Again. That’s what he ran on, and that’s what they voted for. They’re convinced that making America white again will magically solve their economic woes or, at least, give them their social status back even if they starve to death.
Bernie would not have won against Trump because he’s a Jewish Socialist, and Trump ran as an anti-Semitic white supremacist. I think any Democrat would have had a hard time.
Peale
This thread is ridiculous. Yes. The DNC needs to change course. It’s seen by a large swath of democrats as run by corrupt people. That may be unfortunate. That may be untrue. But it seems to be discredited. People don’t want the face of the party on TV to be Donna Brazille. They didn’t want Debbie Wasserman Schultz either. They don’t want a face of the party to be associated with a campaign that lost. I don’t know why people think failing to mobilize enough voters in key states to win an election shouldn’t require some change in leadership and thinking.
Kay
@Applejinx:
I cooled on Bernie when he kept calling her corrupt in the debates and then would get that hurt puppy look when she’d call him out on it. He was calling her corrupt. I’m not clear why he thought she wouldn’t hit back. It’s weak.
He can call her corrupt but she’s allowed to fight back. That’s an insult and she was (rightfully) insulted. Spare me the hurt looks, Bernie.
Omnes Omnibus
Hillary’s candidacy and the way it was run was meant to be a continuation of the Obama administration. That’s over now. We need to be looking for ways to keep the FOP from doing too much damage and getting ready to contest everywhere in 2018, and get control back in 2020. A focus on finding a promoting young (I am 52 and would consider myself too old) and charismatic politicians is key. Also, fuck it, let’s go full on liberal.
Aleta
@WaterGirl: well said.
goblue72
@Applejinx: Welcome to club. There’s a sizable portion of folks here who live in this weird bubble where no matter how often election reality indicate to the contrary, they are totally right and just need to double down. And that its not the candidates fault if they lose, its the voters fault.
Its kinda insane. I see the same think at the local level in Democratic circles. Part of its generational. There’s an old guard that came of age in liberal Democratic politics, much of it protest based, some not – who for a long time were the biggest voice in the room. And who have had a hard time dealing with the passing of the torch. On the plus side, I am also seeing, again in local Dem party circles, that as the younger generation is coming into its own, and growing in size, an increased willingness to push back against the party apparatus and status quo.
Its going to be awkward and challenging, but it a conversation (and an argument) that needs to happen if the party is ever going to get on the right track. Counting on another Great Recession blowback to deliver us to power is not a plan.
Applejinx
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
You see, this is kind of the point I’m making. You say Bernie raved on for months about economic injustice. And then he said some mean things about Hillary Clinton, that she was crooked and the DNC was in the tank for her. And that was the only thing that had any impact on the election.
And the DNC _was_ in the tank for her, because they kinda preferred a Democrat and all, so his claim wasn’t even that off base. And then he turned around and endorsed her for months in the face of all his Bros constantly flaming him for his trouble. Never backed down.
And then Trump goes to the same places that Bernie won, and makes the same arguments that you say had no real impact on the election, unquote, and he WINS.
I think you’re mistaken.
goblue72
@Kay: Agreed. I liked the concept. But the actual infrastructural elements were pretty much “meh”. I also feel that way about Dean for America. More hat than cattle.
Kay
Can you imagine the poor people who have spent their entire careers in this commission?
President Trump is OPPOSED to their…job. I would quit. It’s not worth it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@goblue72: are you gonna do the one where you pretend to be a millennial again?
Aleta
@Omnes Omnibus: well said
Peale
@Kay: he was going to build a super database of 3m devoted democratic small donors. I think he got 10k at most.
matryoshka
@dm: I’m in MO, voted for Kander. What do we do? How do we proceed?
Mnemosyne
@RareSanity:
It was because he asked why the DNC stacked the deck against Bernie Sanders. That’s what his question is.
Peale
@Kay: yep. I’m sure the appointees will let it be known that a few of those things will be removed.
Litany
@Mnemosyne: And how much of Trump’s support do you honestly think came down to his antisemitism? And what reasoning do you use to arrive at the conclusion that being a Jew running against an antisemitic Republican in a somewhat antisemitic country is more of a liability than being a woman running against a misogynistic man in a very misogynistic country?
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but popular satisfaction with *both* political parties and government is at an all-time low. People recognize that the bonds between voters and government have been subverted by other actors (namely, big donors and special interests) who play far more of a role in dictating the direction of politics in America than the average American. If you listen to Trump voters, many of them don’t even believe he’s going to do any of the racist or sexist things he’s promised to, which flies in the face of your assertion that Trump only won because the entire white, working class wing of the Dems was just a bunch of closet Nazis waiting to happen. But they believe that he’s going to tear down this mess of a political infrastructure and disrupt the current system. We know that what he’s going to replace it with is going to suck, but so many liberals thought that business as usual in Washington was fine that they badly misread just how frustrated many voters have become with the rot. We had a chance to run someone who also championed that message, maybe at times running on unrealistic policy proposals, maybe rejecting the politics-as-usual attitude which pervaded inside both parties, and maybe even fundamentally breaking from the normal platform that held sway inside the party and instead running as an outsider. But of course, it’s unthinkable that someone like that could win the presidency…
Anyways, nowhere in anything I’ve written have I said that Bernie would have won, because I study history and I don’t believe in such stupid counterfactuals. All I’ve said is that the Democrats have major systemic problems at the moment preventing them from winning elections, in large part stemming from their inability to break away from the donor class and offer real solutions to the economic issues of our time (especially income inequality). These last two days we’ve heard every explanation for this result from voter fraud and Jill Stein to Jim Comey and the electoral college. All these things played into this outcome, but we also have to accept that the Democratic Party as it currently exists seems incapable of winning an election for town dogcatcher. We won big with Obama, the most gifted politician of my lifetime, and even he began as an outsider who promised reform and change. That the Democratic establishment can’t put up a candidate of choice capable of beating this carnival barker and small-fingered Cheeto known as Trump is an embarrassment. One week ago everyone thought that Clinton had this in the bag, that the RNC was on the verge of collapse and would suffer self-inflicted wounds which would last decades, and that the Democrats would win an overwhelming mandate which would show that their current tactics really worked. That didn’t happen. All I’m saying is that maybe some humility and willingness to adapt with the times may be appropriate for the situation, especially for some of the moderate liberals who have done nothing but hippy-bash for the last 15 months (even though Sanders voters fell in for Clinton far more quickly and completely than Clinton supporters fell in for our candidate of choice 8 years ago).
Kay
@goblue72:
You have a model for what you’re talking about. A social issues and economic issues Democrat in the midwest.
It’s not Howard Dean. Howard Dean is from Vermont. Vermont is not diverse and it’s not representative of the country
The model you’re looking for is used by Sherrod Brown. He wins too. He has absolutely great campaigns. That’s who you-all should be talking to.
enplaned
@Felonius Monk: Yeah, pretty standard thing for a politician to do in the runup to going for the presidency. Seriously.
goblue72
@Peale: Because they were all in “with her” and woke up to find their whole strategy could be beaten by a complete boob.
I don’t even see the DNC as corrupt. There are some Sanders die-hards who may, but most of the folks I know don’t. That’s mostly a fiction spouted off by Clinton die-hards – that DNC critics are out there saying crazy stuff.
Rather, what most Democratic Party critics I know think, is that DNC was just incompetent and wrong. As evidenced by….losing. To a boob. A boob in a toupee.
SligoRover1973
@Mnemosyne:
HRC lost because of an enthusiasm gap. I’m not saying Bernie would necessarily have won, but he had enthusiasm comparable to Trump. That’s what Obama had. And that’s what we didn’t get this year. There are way more people who lean Dem in this country and the HRC campaign failed in getting them up off their asses to get out and vote.
goblue72
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Are you gonna do the one where anyone should take your losing positions seriously again?
Because thats what they are. Losing.
Kay
@Peale:
I kept in touch with our Dean organizer for a while by email because I felt like the local Democrats were mean to him. I felt bad.
Miss Bianca
Oh, yay! Blow everything up because the status quo stinks!
Isn’t that the thinking that brought us Donald Trump?
Christ, what a bunch of assholes. Because first woman President, continuation of Obama’s policies, most liberal Democratic platform isn’t SHINY enough… no, we gotta blow shit up!!
Any of these super-geniuses have anything like, a plan? Or just a whole lot of grievance disguised as “new fresh energy”?
delphinium
@ Kryptik, @Kay
“He conned the entire country with a fucking MLM.”
Sorry, no Trump did not con the entire country-he conned the usual suspects who will continually vote against their self-interest. They are and will continue to be easy pickings for Conservatives for a variety of reasons. He did not con Democrats, he did not con all of the Republicans or independents. He appealed to peoples’ baser instincts-it really is that simple. Again anyone who really wanted “change” would have voted out the house/senate republicans and voted out their local politicians as well. This didn’t happen-wonder why that is?
Applejinx
@Mnemosyne:
I agree with you on every point, Mnemosyne, plus I’m really happy to be talking with you in a more civilized way. I do have one, not correction, so much as addition, which I think is really important.
Trump did indeed say many things that translate to ‘Make America White Again’, on purpose, and ran on that. Yes. Big problem.
But he also, just as much, ran on ‘Make America Rich Again’, with all the subtlety of the MLM promoter which if I remember correctly he has actually been. He explicitly went to Rust Belt states and went out of his way to make that argument and swore he’d hammer car makers with tariffs if they dared move plants to Mexico. He said things that are unthinkable to mainstream Republicans, and beat ’em into the ground.
Bernie wouldn’t have won against him because he’s a Jewish Socialist plus Trump was outright stealing parts of his platform and using them to demagogue with, plus Bernie wanted to raise taxes and wasn’t going to lie about it.
But Trump went far out of his way to promise riches and wealth, just like him, for everybody who followed him. Explicitly. That’s a whole side issue to racism and that makes it impossible to lay his whole victory at the feet of white nationalism. Part of it was extensive lies about how he was going to fix all the economic wrongs. By contrast, Bernie kinda didn’t offer any coherent answers for fixes, because most of the time he was just there to draw attention to the problem. His success totally blindsided him and ruined his judgement.
Peale
@Miss Bianca: honestly I don’t know how appointing a new DNC chair would be blowing things up. There does need to be some serious changes if our voters feel that the primary process isn’t fair. That feeling isn’t going to go away.
RareSanity
@Mnemosyne:
OK, I gotcha.
I don’t think they stacked the deck against him…I think they definitely favored Hillary, but I don’t think that included trying to subvert Bernie’s campaign. Hell, the whole party had a bias toward Hillary at the start of the primaries. I don’t expect the party leaders to have been immune.
Miss Bianca
@debbie:
The prime operative percept I’m getting from this statement is that in both cases, it is Clinton, and Clinton supporters, who were supposed to pivot and accomodate the other candidate. Huh. You don’t say.
goblue72
@Kay: I agree. (Hopefully you got my all hat no cattle meaning). And yes, I am familiar with Brown and what he has done in Ohio. Its a great template. My only disagreement was someone upthread suggesting him for 2020. He’s too old (re-running another Boomer election is going to get us the same result) and that focusing on the next Presidential election is cart before the horse.
We should be taking about state level and House races. Heck, I would fine if the party just focused on starting at the state level. Its how the GOP did it. Those guys started local and built up until blam – Gingrich Revolution.
Democrats love the bright shiny object of the WH to the exclusion of what really matters. Winning and holding legislative chambers. If you consistently hold legislative chambers, you can survive changes in an administration. And administrations are always going to switch at some point, because the general public focuses on the White House. You are eventually going to lose the WH. But if you hold legislative chamber, you can hold that shit for a consistent amount of time. And then when you team gets the executive chamber, you are ready to roll.
We still haven’t recovered from the Bush tax cuts. And we about to get it all over again on steroids.
Taylor
@Kay: I remember when Brown was running for Senate for the first time in 2006. At a time when the country, at least the left, was outraged by the never-ending war in Iraq, he didn’t want to touch it.
There may be good things to learn from him, but he himself will not be the messenger.
debit
@lamh36: Please don’t leave.
goblue72
@Taylor: Which is perfectly fine. I remember that too. And I remember thinking – good. He’s an economic progressive and really supportive of labor. We need more of him. Many more. And running in Ohio means running on coastal liberals issues is just a recipe for losing. Good for him for not taking that bait, even he personally probably hated the war.
Its by the same token if a Democrat in the Mountain West running for Congress carries around an NRA card on a lanyard around his neck, but is otherwise wholly committed to a host of other progressive issue, I am not going to bitch.
dm
@matryoshka: I’m afraid I’m in MA, where all the lines on the ballot, save President and county sheriff, had uncontested Ds. I think you’d be better off asking Kay.
I sent money to Kander, so I get his mail, and gosh, I like that letter. I’ll bet he’ll have a few ideas for what to do in Missouri.
So, I’m hoping that Hillary and, starting Jan 22, Barack, campaign heavily on:
– eliminating the Electoral college (e.g., through that compact where states promise to bind their electors to the victor in the popular vote)
– making voting a right
– gerrymandering reform
Applejinx
@Miss Bianca: Not necessarily, Miss Bianca. Clinton could have won. I was banking on it, and pretty convinced we had it in the bag (though one of my guiding thinkers Mark Blyth believed Trump would win and never departed from that belief, just as he’d thought Britain would Brexit).
The thing is, there are consequences to blowing it this badly. It wasn’t a landslide as we’d hoped. We will never get to see if Hillary would live up to the things so many of you so passionately believed. We simply can’t carry on as if that is proven: she didn’t get the chance to show that quality.
We’re gonna have to come up with other leaders simply because, politically, we just can’t use the Clintons and their people any more. We can’t go back to the well because all the fighting around it damaged the well too badly. Ain’t the well’s fault, maybe. But what is, is.
Also, I don’t have to be super happy with Hillary to still wish this for her: let her stop fighting, and live in peace. It’s just not fair what she’s had to put up with: even if she was the most corporate, neoliberal person in the world, I would think she’s been through such a lot. I don’t believe she can serve politically any more without inciting all this madness all over again: even if every leftwinger fell madly in love with her, the right took it to another level and won’t go back. Let her rest.
Winnief
Whenever I hear that Bernie would have won, I keep thinking how Feingold and Teachout lost. Funny how they never explain why it would have been different for Sanders than any of the other socialist candidates on the ballot.
Well maybe it would have been different for Bernie-but not because of his policies but because he had an Y chromosome.
Miss Bianca
@mistermix: The Republican voters decided on Trump. I bet a few of the party regulars are wishing the Republicans had super-delegates. But sure – just change all the variables. Once you’ve been able to figure out just who should be in charge.
And as for “Bernie Sanders going all out for Hillary Clinton” – sorry, that dog won’t hunt. For months and months he was screaming “corruption” and “rigged elections”, got a lot of his followers all worked up about it, and then never actually walked it back, that I am aware of. Sure, he campaigned for her, but everything I heard was, “well, she’s better than Trump”
Yeah, Senator. She was, is, and always will be. She was also better than you. Your attacks on her were venal and carried on long past the point where they should have ended, and as a consequence, most of the Sanders supporters I knew were still “Bernie-or-Busters” because they couldn’t bring themselves to believe that a politician they thought must fart streams of pure silk was saying a bunch of shit he may not have meant in order to try to get elected. So, even when he was urging people to vote for Clinton, this “Clinton is corrupt” maggot was still infecting their brains.
It’s fine for Bernie Sanders. He’s still get his Senate seat and a nice new lake house. It’s not so fine for millions of other people who now have to live with the prospect of no ACA, rollbacks of government services, climate change recidivism, and all the other horrors Trump presidency will bring. Sorry – people like Zach are the problem, as far as I’m concerned not the solution.
Unless he actually wants to, you know, get up and run things himself? See how easy it is to get people all fired up and organized?
geg6
Whatever side of the great Democratic civil war Zach ends up on, I’ll be on the other. What a dick. Berniebro through and through. Only one step up from Trumpsters.
Dolly Llama
@Peale: Late to this thread, likely when it’s mostly died, but it is ridiculous. God damn, y’all. Mistermix, I like your posts almost always, but this is the sourest note I’ve ever seen you hit here.
geg6
@Davis X. Machina:
This.
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
Funny how the white supremacists know what the election was about while all of the white dudes here are still in denial.
goblue72
@Miss Bianca: If you think Clinton lost because of Sanders, you are fucking deluded. But please, whatever you need to convince yourself that Clinton lost because its somebody else fault, go right ahead. We all do what we gotta do to sleep at night.
AnotherBruce
@old_owl: This is my balliwack. In order to truly organize the Democrats, liberals and even left wing. You need a media that is wholly owned by these entities. Yes, you need a Fox News of the left. It doesn’t mean that you have to make up shit and destroy your integrity. It means you need powerful media platforms that get your message out. The internet is not enough. TV and radio put faces and voice front and center to deliver the message. So in my town of Seattle Washington. We had AM 1090. Full of excellent radio voices. But they suddenly got shut down and became the third sports radio station in the city. What do you think happened there? They got bought out by someone rich and powerful enough to shut it down. The same thing has happened to NPR. The same thing has happened to MSNBC. If people can’t hear your message, they may not think you have one.
Keith G
@Omnes Omnibus: Here, here!
Miss Bianca
@SuzieC: You mean, like…Hillary Clinton?
Kay
I’m still trying to get my head around the fact we’re going from an AA First family to a White House where no African American family will be welcome.
It’s mind-blowing, really. A careening lurch to the Right. A giant step backward. It’s tragic.
People say that though. They say there’s a big step forward and then a stumble back a ways. People who are nicer and much more patient than me say that, anyway :)
Mnemosyne
@SligoRover1973:
If Bernie had had enthusiasm comparable to Trump’s, he would have won the Democratic primary.
He didn’t. He lost. By 3 million votes. He got fewer votes.
geg6
@mistermix:
Yeah, the sexism and privilege of the Berniebros was never an issue. It’s all those stoopid wimmenz bitching about some joking tweets that are the cause of all the animosity.
What the fuck ever, dude.
Miss Bianca
@goblue72: I’m saying Sanders’s contributions to trying to get the Democratic candidate who beat him, fair and square, were too little and too late. Not that Clinton lost because of Sanders. YMMV, because of cours it always does from mine.
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
That’s what he did with Trump University, too, and yet the media couldn’t be arsed to report that it was a scam.
As other people have pointed out, Trump ran the classic fascist playbook: If we oppress the people we all hate, we’ll all be rich! And the Democrats were unable to defend against that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Applejinx: In the spirit of comity, may I make an observation? Some of your run-ins with people on this blog may stem from you not recognizing snark or sarcasm and then responding to the commenter as though the snarky comment was serious. It creates a disconnect. And, when tempers are short, it can provoke strong response. Just an observation.
Also, when people bitch about BernieBros, they don’t mean people like you who supported Bernie and then got behind the nominee. They mean the people who have come around the last few days and done a sick end zone dance.
Miss Bianca
@lamh36: Don’t go!! Please! : (
ETA: And meanwhile, while we’re all over here in this thread yelling at each other like the Socialists and the Communists in Germany in 1932, over in another Adam is documenting the real shit that’s already really going down because of the White Supremacist Kraken that Trump’s election has released. Fuck – I’m done over here.
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: Not fair to say “all the white dudes here” are in denial. Some of them, sure.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Just in case anybody missed it when you said this upthread. Totally agree with you.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: That was one of the reasons I posted my comity comment to Applejinx.
SligoRover1973
@Mnemosyne:
Like I said, maybe he wouldn’t have won. But maybe he should have been on the ticket with HRC instead of Kaine.
I keep having this nagging feeling that an opportunity was missed there.
Litany
@Mnemosyne: Apples and oranges. Trump actually ran against his Republican opponents, instead of tiptoeing around their weaknesses to protect them in the general. He also faced a more divided party establishment that didn’t throw their weight behind any one candidate, and ran inside a party that has done relatively little over the years to prevent populist candidates from gaining traction. By contrast, Sanders stayed far away from the most damaging and compelling arguments against Clinton, ran inside a Democratic Party in which party elites were overwhelmingly united for one candidate, and faced a political infrastructure built specifically to neuter populist candidates.
WaterGirl
Paging John Cole, paging John Cole. Could you please step in and say something like “Jesus Fucking Christ, with everything we are facing, why are we talking about Bernie???”
I would say it, but I really don’t use language like that.
Applejinx
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, they mean me some of the time and they wish me all kinds of ill some of the time and are perfectly serious. I’ve wondered sometimes when I have things like chest pains, or my cat gets ill (down to one cat: cancer, car accidents, cannot replace them as I’m too poor) whether it would be disheartening to even mention it. Sort of ‘WE all come together around our cats and our health, but you should die and so should your cats because you’re bad’.
So I don’t say anything, when I hurt or am in danger or crisis.
Not like I’m great at spotting sarcasm of certain kinds because I have autism. On the other hand, I think I have been pretty good at accepting people who express hatred at me, and sometimes it feels like there’s a kind of connection there. That helps :)
SFAW
@Kay:
And yet, it produced results. Whether it’s a PowerPoint or a 3000-page manifesto with every possible contingency accounted for and addressed is immaterial. Before Dean tried it, the DNC was more than happy to say “Oh, Location X is TOO RED, we’ll never win there,” and so would not even recruit a D candidate. A large part of Dean’s strategy was to actually put up an opponent in those “We’ll never win” areas — and every other area as well. (Also, a LOT of people crapped on the whole 50-state strategy idea.)
Howard Dean was not omnipotent — W being the imbecile he was contributed to things — but he got things going in the right direction, and helped “set the table” (or whatever cliche you want) — and he had a lot to do with the gains in 2006 and 2008. Could his leadership have prevented the 2010 debacle? No idea, doesn’t matter now anyway. But the idea that Dean did nothing (in practical terms) is not realistic.
Smiling Mortician
@The Thin Black Duke: Yes. Again, I’m probably too late for this thread (hey, I had to work on the West Coast all day) but absolutely fucking yes. I can’t even grok what prompts Mistermix to post this bullshit.
qwerty42
@Davis X. Machina:
I tend to agree, and think the self-styled “vanguard” is deluding itself. Because I don’t think they are the vanguard. The future is the Obama coalition, not FDR coalition, and a fair chunk of its leaders will be POC. Not white (male) twenty-somethings.
But, screw it; the party will ultimately come to a decision about where it goes and anonymous internet commenters will not be that influential. I’m just going to batten down the hatches for the coming storm. At least we had a great president for 8 years.
Omnes Omnibus
@Applejinx: Well, when they include you now, they shouldn’t. Don’t worry about sharing. The place is actually full of kind hearted but sharp-tongued people.
Ian
@Dexter:
You could not be more wrong. Nevada should have been a Democratic state since the 1980s, but the D party in Nevada resembles the general D party nationwide.
Except the D party actually pulled off Nevada, that blows my mind. I am happy about that.
Cain
@lamh36:
Who is he supposed to expose his displeasure then about how things were running? Should he have tried to go chase after Debbie? It was Donna’s meeting, she was in charge. Throwing race into is really a low blow and shame on you for doing it. I know you’re frustrated, but you are throwing malfeasance on a person you know nothing about. His first concern was that somebody fucked up in the DNC. Donna is the head of the DNC and so he addressed it to her at a meeting. Should he have gone somewhere else? What is your suggestion then? Where should he have gone to bitch about how the DNC was faring?
Jeezus.
g
@Mnemosyne:
The same way the thrice-married sexual predator got the vote of the Evangelical ‘Christians’.
Ian
@notoriousJRT:
With the election as close as it was, there were forty things that swayed the election. The margin was so close one could blame: Bernie, Emails, Benghazi, Voter Suppression, Black or Latino turnout, the WWC, the inherent advantage given to rural states in the EC, the media, or low voter turnout. Not one of these would be a wrong assessment, but not one covers the whole picture.
agorabum
Fuck Zach. People being too good for politics is what did this. The idea that what Brazile did was a grave injustice is horseshit, and people constantly saying it and focusing on it instead of Trump’s horrible platform is a contributor to what happened. And that includes everyone who railed against the “establishment” as the problem with our government rather than Republicans. Because it all fed into some idea that we have to ‘burn things down’ rather than keep fighting.
Ian
@old_owl:
Not, let us convince the batshit insane to stop watching fox. We must have our fox?
Yes, democracy is dead.
D. Mason
@Applejinx: Yesterday someone told me that me and my mom should die. I guess their tempers were short and I provoked a strong response? lol
SFAW
@Applejinx:
As one of the people who has been pretty much an asshole to you: I apologize, and will try to be a “better citizen” in the future.
[Of course, in six months, I may start (so to speak) being assholic again, but perhaps not. ]
Omnes Omnibus
@D. Mason: Context, you shit.
Betty Cracker
Zach sounds like a dick. Brazille is the interim chair; she hasn’t declared herself chair for life. She doesn’t need to be deposed. Trump is not her fault.
Yes, the party needs to be rebuilt. Yes, we should examine what went wrong. But purges are counterproductive. And so is declaring that anyone associated with the Clintons is persona non grata or that anyone over 50 is a useless old fart who needs to be banished to an ice floe.
Way to strengthen the coalition!
Meg
I do not like Zach, or mistermix.
D. Mason
@Omnes Omnibus: Sure, there’s context in which that kind of behavior is decent.
Amaranthine RBG
@WaterGirl:
Let’s figure out what the problem is before we keep trying the solutions that didn’t work.
Omnes Omnibus
@D. Mason: You know what you have posted. You said that neither you nor your mother voted. People said fuck you and your mother. Did it go further? Are you new here? Elbows are sharp and tongues sharper.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@D. Mason: What conduct? You and your mom bathing together? None of our business. You two soap up and scrub on.
Darkrose
@Mnemosyne:
Right there with you.
Darkrose
Love that the White kid screaming at the Black woman who’s been fighting the good fight for longer than he’s been alive is your new hero, mistermix. He sure put her in her place!
D. Mason
@Omnes Omnibus: did it go further? Yes, like I said someone said they hope we die. I wasn’t precisely offended because I don’t give a shit what a bunch of BJ losers think but the disgusting nature of that statement didn’t escape me either.
amk
Hillary, Donna, Debbie. It’s all wimmin’s fault, right ‘mister’mix?
Gawd, you are a male chauvinist pig of a moronic pos.
Betty Cracker
@D. Mason: You came into a thread where people were grieving a catastrophic event and sharing how it would directly endanger their lives and preened about how you and your mother contributed to it. I don’t condone wishing death on people. But what you did was disgusting too.
D. Mason
@Betty Cracker: My post was in response to the idea that there was low voter turnout because patriarchy. I feel at liberty to respond to such things and I chose to point out that a life long Female Democrat in my life was also uninspired by Hillary. That’s disgusting? So we should die. Gotcha. This place is the Red State of the left. Crawling with wackjobs.
P.S. This election was guaranteed to negatively impact my life, regardless of outcome, and I’ve known it since June. I don’t use that grief as an excuse to wish death on people, even if I feel they played a part in the disaster to come.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: Yep.
Omnes Omnibus
@D. Mason: Please go back and reread your comments. And think that you were talking to people who were grieving. Some of them terrified about their safety. You told them that you didn’t care.
Miss Bianca
@D. Mason: Oooh,you were “uninspired”. So, it’s not enough that anyone who calls herself a Democrat doesn’t have enough empathy or imagination to see what a Trump presidency would do to the nation – nooo, you were “uninspired.”
Goddammit, fuck that shit. A presidential candidate may be “inspiring” or not. But when the choice for the country, as John Cole so eloquently put it a few months ago, is vanilla or ebola, you’re gonna say, “oh, I’m not gonna make a choice because vanilla is so *uninspiring*.”
Great. Go starve. But don’t boast about how superior that makes you to the rest of us, who would have been happy to make do with vanilla as opposed to pestilence.
And if we’re such “losers”, WTF are *you* doing here? Gloating? Piss off. Honestly. I won’t wish death on you – live to see what Trump does to this country, and hug yourself because you and people like you sure showed us with not voting for the “uninspiring” candidate.
Mandalay
@Amaranthine RBG:
Well said.
And for those here who are refuse to blame the DNC for anything, this is what Bernie Sanders told them 15 months ago:
Sanders told them the painful truth. Of course the DNC ignored him, but Trump didn’t.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: Voter ID in WI and MI. Argue that.
You preening shit.D. Mason
Which is it?
Well, originally I came here to get some commentary from the left on the outcome of the election. Once I saw how oblivious people were being by blaming the evil white man for rejecting your inevitable queen I knew I had to join the fray.
Omnes Omnibus
@D. Mason: You are delusional.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
You’re wasting your time. The lack of self-awareness is strong with D.Mason. Probably has a lot of Mumia sweatshirts, too.
SFAW
@D. Mason:
Make up your fucking mind already. Are we “the left”? Or are we Hillbots (which apparently are not “the left” in your mind.)?
That was actually a rhetorical question, so I won’t be offended if you don’t answer.
D. Mason
@Omnes Omnibus:
What were you when you were thinking Hillary had the election in the bag for 6 months?
Mandalay
@D. Mason:
Indeed. Navel gazing for the causes of the election results here are pretty much confined to white racists and voter suppression. These are the only reasons she lost in the minds of the mindless.
Omnes Omnibus
@D. Mason: Following the available data.
D. Mason
@SFAW: I arrived hoping for one and found the other? I thought that was obvious from my statement. I guess Leftists/Hillbots aren’t good with the obvious this week.
Morzer
Eight years too late and we have already paid a brutal price – one which will only get heavier for anyone who isn’t white, male and a very public Christian. Maybe Bernie wasn’t the answer – but we now know just how disastrous the dead-end of crony Clintonism is. Tthe Democratic party as we have known it for the last 20 years needs to die and be replaced by a party that genuinely speaks for all Americans facing the shitstorm of Ryan/Gingrich/Trump. Just carrying on as before isn’t going to cut it.
D. Mason
@Mandalay: She was ordained, how could she lose to the shitgoblin?
Litany
@Omnes Omnibus: Explain how we ever let it get close enough that voter ID made the difference in the first place. It should be assumed that the Republicans are going to ratfvck us at every opportunity, but those states weren’t even supposed to be close. Trump told us his strategy months ago, and Hillary still treated the Rust Belt as if it was politically irrelevant flyover country. Progressives have been saying for years that Hillary was not a viable candidate, and now we see the proof in the pudding. Predictably, we’re already getting scapegoated for it in order to justify a further rightward turn in the party, even though the vast majority of us voted for Hillary in the general.
Such a shame we lost Michigan. If there was only a candidate who energized the very demographic Hillary lost and drastically outperformed polling in that state…
Omnes Omnibus
@D. Mason: You are too stupid to engage.
old_owl
@Ian:
First your constituency has to primed to listen and understand your message. That does not happen if you start doing it when elections come around.
You have to keep your constituency engaged all through the business of democracy. The political aims, how it can be politically achieved, elections, the business of legislating (what, who voted how etc). laws, court challenges. That cannot happen without a dedicated communication channel that constantly engages with them. Dem supporters need such grounding.
Without such grounding, your constituency is easily manipulated by your opponents tricks.
D. Mason
@Omnes Omnibus: Says the person freshly jolted awake from a months long fever dream.
SFAW
@D. Mason:
Oooh, revisionism.
Although I have been fortunate enough not to have followed every single pearl that you have cast before us swine, the earliest stuff I saw was pile-on type stuff, how Hillary was a terrible candidate, etc. Maybe I missed something, and you actually started off by saying “I wonder how it was that Hillary lost? It doesn’t make sense, even considering the BS she had to deal with to get her policy message heard.”
But considering your go-to schtick now is how your sainted Mom found her uninspiring, as did you, I’m guessing that maybe you led off with something slightly different.
As far as “aren’t good with the obvious”: actually, we are — you’re pretty obvious, and your behavior/writings are not, shall we say, in accordance with your sanctimonious pronouncements. Well, I guess they are, but not in a way that accretes credit to you.
Elizabeth
@debbie:
I didn’t vote for Obama because of Obama. I voted for him because Sarah Palin pissed me off with her way of saying if you aren’t a racist jerk you shouldn’t be allowed be American.
SFAW
@D. Mason:
You are absolutely fucking spot-on correct. Because Omnes, for going on a year now, has been saying “Fuck the polls! They’re never right! They’ve never been right! They’re skewed, and rigged.” And that’s why he was optimistic about Hillary’s chances, because he KNEW, he JUST KNEW, that the polls were wrong — all those polls that showed Trump ahead for almost a year.
Omnes Omnibus
@D. Mason: @SFAW: SFAW said it.
D. Mason
No, I think you got the thrust of it. Garbage candidate = lost election was my point. I think it still stands.
SFAW
@D. Mason:
No shit. And yet you profess to have come here just to see what was up with “the left.” (Not that you know what “the left” really is, of course.)
Here’s a hint: sticking with the truth means you don’t have to keep track of what you’ve said, when you’ve said it, and to whom. Might try it at teh next blog you infest.
Omnes Omnibus
@D. Mason: What was your major as an undergrad?
Elizabeth
@SligoRover1973: Why didn’t the state party?
Elizabeth
@Mandalay: And yet, he didn’t get that huge turnout either.
Why is it he gets a pass for losing the primary but Clinton doesn’t for losing the electoral college?
Omnes Omnibus
@SligoRover1973: Do you know what the the DNC does?
liberal
Atrios has a post up making the point very well.
Who’s fault it is is really besides the point. And whether our enemy fought fairly is besides the point.
The Clintonistas had one job to do: win the election. They failed. That means it’s time for them to go.
amk
@Mandalay: yeah, the guy who couldn’t win even the partisan primary, sure would have won the general election by magic.
liberal
@les: but the point of selecting leaders is to pick people who can persuade them to get off their asses and vote for him/her.
It might not apply to someone like me. I’m a dedicated liberal, and I’m also not fucking stupid–while I didn’t like Clinton, and in some ways despised her, I supported her happily, not grudgingly, in the general, and knew that even if HRC might not have made a “good” president, Trump (or any Republican) would be a disaster.
For better or worse, a large fraction of the populace isn’t like that and might need more than that to give their vote.
liberal
@D. Mason: it’s not mutually exclusive.
Look, IMHO HRC wasn’t a good candidate. The Clintons, and their allies in the party infrastructure, have been in control of the party for decades now, except to the extent that Obamas’s people weren’t part of the Clinton machine. And now they’ve failed their duty, and need to go.
That being said, anyone who voted for Trump is either an idiot or a monster. As is, only to a slightly lesser extent, anyone who deliberately sat out the election, which would appear to include you.
So while I agree with elements of your message, you’re the wrong messenger. So fuck off.
liberal
@Mandalay: Agreed.
liberal
@Morzer: agreed. The Clintons and their allies have had their chance and failed. Time for them to go.
Canadian Shield
@WaterGirl: Now that Trump has access to all of the secrets of the government, he should be pushed to answer all of the crap conspiracy stuff. Sandy Hook a false flag government operation? Tell us President Trump, you have the keys to the kingdom. Maybe this situation can be used to kill all of this breibart/alex jones crap.
liberal
@Bobby Thomson: you’re high on crack if you think the extent of Clintons failure is due to the battles of the primary.
That’s not saying it can obviously be laid at Clintons feet. Maybe this was a change election, blah blah blah. But the principle cause of the loss of PA, WI, and MI was Sanders’ actions? That doesn’t even pass the laugh test.
D. Mason
@liberal:
Finally! Someone who understands how I felt about Hillary.
liberal
@Elizabeth: because he polled much, much better than HRC did in hypothetical matchups.
Maybe he would have lost, too, but it’s difficult to make the case he would have done much worse.
In any event, it’s now water under the bridge. The Clintonistas have had their chance, and they failed. Regardless of how fairly the enemy played, it’s time for them to go.
liberal
@D. Mason: you’re a fucking moron. Go die in a fire.
liberal
@D. Mason: while it was certainly the job of Clinton’s data people to have figured out whether the polls could be trusted, and they obviously shouldn’t be helping to run any campaigns going forward, it’s a bit much to expect people without the wherewithal to do so, regardless of how clever they are.
That being said, my impression is that Nate Cohn at the NYT had an inkling of what was going on. (Not that I did.)
D. Mason
@liberal:
As long as you’re pretending your candidate was way different from Trump, you may as well pretend that you’re way different from his deplorables.
Darkrose
So here’s the thing:
The only racial demographic that primarily voted for the orange shitgibbon was White people. A majority of White men and White women voted for him.
88% of eligible Black voters chose Clinton.
94% of Black women voted for Clinton.
Yet here we are, with mistermix cheering for a White guy yelling at a Black woman about how this is her fault, and lots of White guys here explaining why this isn’t about race and it’s just because Hillary was awful and Democrats need to appeal to the poor economically anxious White folks who are letting their pasty racist asses show all over the place right now and terrorizing people of color, women, Muslims, Jews, LGBT+ people, the disabled, and anyone else who isn’t a straight Christian white man.
D. Mason, I don’t wish harm on you or your mother, or anyone, really. But for you to come in here and continue to gloat about how wonderfully right you were, when my wife and I are checking in with each other to make sure we’re still 95% sure we’re not just going to say “fuck it” and take the medicine cabinet, is really, really fucking hurtful. It’s hurtful to read this post about a young White guy screaming at a Black woman who’s old enough to have dealt with some truly unimaginable shit to get where she is, and to keep trying to push things forward, all because she couldn’t wave her Magical Negro wand and make America less racist.
A while back I wrote about a guy in my FFXIV guild who was complaining about Hillary getting the nomination. When I pointed out that 3 million more voters chose her than did Bernie, he said “Then they’re stupid.” The states that really gave Hillary the big early lead were in the South, where Black women came out to vote for her. So basically, when you complain about Hillary being the nominee, what you’re saying is “Those dumb Black women should have been smart enough to vote for Bernie.”
That’s not my revolution.
I don’t have a lot of spoons right now, and spending them here is increasingly seeming like a poor choice. I need to be in spaces where I’m valued, and not where I’m expected to be the goddamned maid and clean up after White folks’ shit.
Jonathan Holland Becnel
Here Here, Mistermix!!!!
Finally a fucking great front page article!!!!
Brazile is the leader of the DNC.
She is corrupt like DWS.
The Podesta emails prove this.
FUCK THE ESTABLISHMENT
#WeToldYouSo
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@Darkrose:
These are the demographics of pretty much every election.
Clinton lost Obama voters to Trump. That’s all there is to it. She was a flawed candidate routed by a Neofascist candidate.
The populist beat the status quo establishment.
Too bad it wasn’t our populist…
socraticsilence
@Cacti
Dude works for the DNC, what did you do to help in the election because I’m pretty sure Zach did more.
liberal
@Darkrose: Just because Brazille is black doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be held accountable for failure.
Darkrose
@liberal: That’s what you took away from that.
Fuck it, I’m done.
Litany
@Darkrose: Reading this I can’t refute any of it. I apologize if I’ve contributed to the hostility you’ve experienced here.
EBT
@Jonathan Holland Becnel: News flash dumb ass. You lost too. Your loser candidate (He was my candidate until January rolled around and it was obvious he was shit) didn’t even get the nomination. Every thing you wanted passed will die. Everything you hate will get stronger. What are you going to do about it. It sure looks like you just care about pretending you were right.
Bailey
@Applejinx:
Appropos of nothing, thanks for the “Far Side” reference. That made me laugh out loud.
socraticsilence
@Bobby Thomson: @Bobby Thomson:
I realize some of you only pay attention to this stuff online or on CNN, but for those of us who actually do the work of campaigns– Sanders was out there- Clinton had him camp out in the Midwest for the last week and a half precisely because they realized late that they might have fucked up (about the same time the emails re-emerged as a BS issue).
Morzer
Guys, we can rehash Clinton/Sanders until the cows come home. Right now what matters is that Trump is preparing for tyranny and the Democrats have no effective leaders, plans, or programs for the future. It isn’t worth fighting over yesterday’s battle – we need to think and rally our strength for the fight before us.
Let’s also be clear that the issues with the DNC go far beyond Donna Brazile. Yes, she was a part of the debacle and needs to be replaced, but there are plenty of other bunglers to share the blame, including Podesta and the other Clinton cronies. This isn’t about blaming someone who happens to be black and be a woman, but more about blaming an entire group that led us to disaster
Betty Cracker
@Darkrose: FWIW, I value your voice here and hope you continue to be a part of this community. We need you.
SFAW
@D. Mason:
Ah, NOW we get to it. You’re a fucking latter-day
saintNaderite. “There’s no difference betweenBushTrump andGoreHillary!”I guess what you are was semi-obvious from the start, or should have been. Maybe Saint Ralph the Pure will invite you and your pure, sainted Mommy over for dinner, thus making your life a heaven-on-earth.
You guys are just too fucking pure to be imagined. Don’t forget to wash your Mumia sweatshirt, fuckwad.
socraticsilence
@dm:
He might, might have won us Virginia but damn, can I point out how unpopular this dude was outside of VA? I ran some advance for HFA (in addition to my actual campaign work) and building a crowd for Kaine was like pulling teeth– literally every other surrogate was more popular- forget topline folks like the Obamas, Bill or even lazy ass spoiled little rich girl Chelsea, Kaine’s was at best 1/10th as popular as Uncle Joe.
Another Note- Watching Hillary and then watching Booker was like watching a 8 year old kids soccer game and then flipping over to Barca.
socraticsilence
@Citizen_X:
Cut him a bit of a break– the power dynamics in question weren’t exactly that here– Zach probably thought he essentially ended a career he’s likely worked for since High School (coming up through Young Dems) by getting up and saying something to help a party he believes in (if he was a careerist the much easier thing to do would have been to shut up).
socraticsilence
@lamh36:
Yeah replacing DWS with an even more compromised Clinton crony probably wasn’t a great call.
socraticsilence
@Mnemosyne:
Fair point- how does the feminist white woman? I guess we should have just folded up shop and gone with a white dude then is what you’re saying?
socraticsilence
@geg6:
Good call– fuck those young voters I’m betting on the old folks home- hey can you run Terry Mac in 2020?
Its not even about Sanders, or only partially (trust me someone who is a DNC staffer likely isn’t Indy-turned-Dem like Sanders) its about younger voices in the party being shouted down so we can go with the losers from the Clinton Administration one more time– they lost in 2000 and then again in 2008 and then in 2016 when they were even older and more out of touch– well, now that was going to be their year.
dww44
@Yossarian: Thanks for the insight. It’s enlightening, helpful, and productive. As an old myself, I’m willing to step aside for the youngs but I hate it that this has become an us versus us circular firing squad.
Davebo
Good Grief!
Can we at least try to avoid devolving into a new episode of The Walton’s Eat Their Young.
And seriously Mistermix? The least prolific of the front pagers here and this is what you’ve spent 72 hours to come up with? Some whiney brat at the DNC that by all inference was (hopefully he’s been canned) a paid employee?
How about because she signs your fucking paycheck you ungrateful little shitgibbon?
Will Rogers was right.
qwerty42
@Cain:… Throwing race into is really a low blow and shame on you for doing it. I know you’re frustrated, but you are throwing malfeasance on a person you know nothing about. His first concern was that somebody fucked up in the DNC….
You recognize there is a lot of anger; it is going to have to be worked out. This is *not* a passing thing. The issue of race and POC setting the direction for the party are going to become major issues immediately. And going forward. This is *not* a constituency that can be ignored. Race is *going* to be an issue! I’d prefer a 50-state policy and hard backing for it, even if it gets us blue dogs (I don’t give a rat’s ass if they don’t agree with us on everything!). We can just say “not one step back”; but we are going to have to make that argument. Fortunately, or not, the GOP seems to want to repeal ACA, Dodd-Frank and the Great Society and the New Deal. I don’t think they can do it, but we need to be alert and hold the f*ing line. We did it under GWB and we can do it again.
Ни шагу назад! / Ni shagu nazad!
qwerty42
@Davebo: Yeah, I found the whole thing stupid and self-indulgent. We are seeing the dregs of absurd white (male) privilege, and there is a wish to see in this a “revolutionary vanguard”. I think it is absurd and humiliating. I mean, JFC, suck it up, there are folks getting it *lots* worse than you. You are not a gd special snowflake.
I am a bit amazed how angry calls to some imaginary privilege make me.