Duckworth 2020.

11/10/2016 10:23:50 PM

Go Bernie Go!

11/10/2016 10:25:30 PM

I've said it before and I will be saying it over and over: Warren/Booker. I know some of you have Booker reservations, but he's a great compliment for VP.

11/10/2016 10:27:01 PM

No legacy politicians, no one with any serious baggage that doesn't involve women (between Bill and Trump, it's clear the electorate gives no fucks about that), and someone with serious charisma. If Jason Kander won in Missouri, he'd be perfect, but he got rolled by the Trump train. Now, I really have no idea. The Democratic bench isn't just thin, it's non-existent. The only thing we've had going for us for the last 8 years is Obama, and he's gone. Kamala Harris maybe, but I'd be hesitant about trying another woman for a while.

11/10/2016 10:41:35 PM

Warren/Ellison

11/10/2016 10:42:03 PM

Franken

11/10/2016 10:44:21 PM

You know what, fuck it, maybe he can win Claire McCaskill's seat in 2018.

http://themissouritimes.com/35621/message-jason-kander-thank/

Kander 2020!

As a reminder, he was the D running for Senate in Missouri who cut this sweet ad,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wqOApBLPio

11/10/2016 11:19:15 PM

goddammit, stay away from those totally loony-left types. i don't think that's where the Dem party is headed, and shit, I'd like to finally get to cast a vote someday that isn't just a protest vote.

11/10/2016 11:19:16 PM

Its going to be Michelle

11/10/2016 11:20:54 PM

^^
Who in this thread do you consider "looney-left"?

[Edited on November 10, 2016 at 11:23 PM. Reason : .]

11/10/2016 11:21:16 PM

^Bernie is one!

11/10/2016 11:34:59 PM

If he was smart and had smart people working for him, Biden would take a stand against Trump and run for President.

He'd get a lottttt of interest, he's a name and a face, and the debates would be wonderful.

11/10/2016 11:37:08 PM

^^^ Uhh, Warren is like the archetype. Also, Sanders.

Booker is more moderate. Don't know enough about the rest.

11/10/2016 11:45:24 PM

Quote :

"goddammit, stay away from those totally loony-left types"

Said loony Bernie Sanders would have had a great chance at beating Trump, given his income inequality arguments. He would have performed better in the rust belt than HRC.

Quote :

"I'd like to finally get to cast a vote someday that isn't just a protest vote."

So you're a wanna-be Democrat?

Quote :

"If he was smart and had smart people working for him, Biden would take a stand against Trump and run for President."

77 year old Joe Biden should run for President?

[Edited on November 10, 2016 at 11:52 PM. Reason : lol at the idea that Joe Biden ain't smart]

11/10/2016 11:47:34 PM

Duke, if I'm not mistaken, fancies himself a libertarian leaning moderate who usually votes Republican.


So I'm not really sure why he thinks he would have any influence over the direction of the Democratic Party.

11/11/2016 12:20:15 AM

^^ I'm a wanna-be represented by fucking SOMEBODY.

I've said for a while that policy-wise, I'm maybe about evenly split, (D) vs (R). My overall worldview and the way my brain works is by FAR more (D). My priorities are fiscal (R), privacy (wash), and limited government (wash, but at least recognized by the Rs). The Rs have long made me more angry, though.

Like, however much I disagree with Dems, the Repubs provoke more "Fuck you, you fucking half-witted, dickheaded dipshit" moments for me.

I'm somewhere between PJ O'Rourke's "Republican Reptile" and a limousine liberal. My rural farm-kid background is, nowadays, more (R)...but culturally, I'm all (D), except I'm a pro-business capitalist, and stay out of my wallet, and fuck all your pussy safe-spaces and microaggressions.

...but the GOP is not only long gone, but now charging away from the station. I ultimately think that, if we do see a full party realignment, that yes, the Dems will be much closer to my views...but there is not room for both Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders and me in the same tent.

^ I'd say I'm a libertarian-leaning moderate, but I wouldn't say I usually vote GOP. I vote mostly (L) or abstain/write in "none of the above." In fact, I voted (D) for Congressman this time, and I don't think I voted (R) for anything except county commissioner, who was opposed by an independent candidate who was a full-retard Trumpkin.

[Edited on November 11, 2016 at 12:25 AM. Reason : i prob voted about half (R) maybe a dozen years ago. last few times, not so much.]

11/11/2016 12:20:50 AM

Look, you can have my old Democratic Party, provided that you help me lift up a viable Third Progressive Party.

I'd take that deal in a heartbeat

11/11/2016 12:23:41 AM

so basically obama

11/11/2016 12:24:28 AM

I like Obama in a lot of ways. I'm much more fiscally conservative and limited gov't than he is. I would have taken a 3rd Obama term ecstatically this time, had that been an option.

11/11/2016 12:27:12 AM

Quote :

"No legacy politicians, no one with any serious baggage that doesn't involve women (between Bill and Trump, it's clear the electorate gives no fucks about that), and someone with serious charisma."

Man, it's so fucking frustrating watching you tap-dance around the obvious, and it really makes me worry about the health of your party. You sound like Karl Rove right now, trying to craft an image of a candidate that the electorate would "want to have a beer with" rather than re-considering your platform.

It's NOT THE MESSENGER. It's the message.

INCOME INEQUALITY. INCOME INEQUALITY. INCOME INEQUALITY.

Get that through your head! If this election hasn't humbled you, or if you're still pointing the finger at everyone outside of the Democratic establishment, then I don't know what to tell you.


Clinton just lost the rust belt. Let that sink in. Donald goddamn motherfucking Trump just reshaped the political map. Democrats have refused to go populist, even though that was the clear path to victory and would have secured traditional union populated states.

Honestly, if Democrats can't recapture organized labor, then I don't see a path forward for the party, and it doesn't matter if the Dos XX guy runs on the ticket. That is a bitter reality that needs to be addressed now.

It's the economy, stupid. It's not the lack of charisma. Voters don't give a shit about a candidates moral compass or their fucking charisma when they are unsure of their own financial well being.

And they sure as shit aren't interested in hearing some college educated liberal tell them the intricacies of an incremental platform that will bump minimum wage just a smidge or open up community colleges while maintaining trade policies that have helped to decimate their manufacturing bases. You might as well just hand them all bootstraps, if that's all you're going to offer them.

[Edited on November 11, 2016 at 2:04 AM. Reason : ]

11/11/2016 1:55:12 AM

Quote :

"Its going to be Michelle"

Given what just fucking happened, I think that's a terrible idea.

11/11/2016 2:45:02 AM

Nominate someone as socialist as possible. Dig up the corpse of goddamn Leon Trotsky.

Trying to find another center right moderate like Clinton would be the DUMBEST IDEA EVER. So would Michelle Obama, I mean are you goddamm kidding me

[Edited on November 11, 2016 at 6:21 AM. Reason : .]

11/11/2016 6:18:57 AM

I can't believe I'm copy/pasting this but it's 100% correct imo:

Quote :

"Man, it's so fucking frustrating watching you tap-dance around the obvious, and it really makes me worry about the health of your party. You sound like Karl Rove right now, trying to craft an image of a candidate that the electorate would "want to have a beer with" rather than re-considering your platform. It's NOT THE MESSENGER. It's the message. INCOME INEQUALITY. INCOME INEQUALITY. INCOME INEQUALITY. Get that through your head! If this election hasn't humbled you, or if you're still pointing the finger at everyone outside of the Democratic establishment, then I don't know what to tell you. Clinton just lost the rust belt. Let that sink in. Donald goddamn motherfucking Trump just reshaped the political map. Democrats have refused to go populist, even though that was the clear path to victory and would have secured traditional union populated states. Honestly, if Democrats can't recapture organized labor, then I don't see a path forward for the party, and it doesn't matter if the Dos XX guy runs on the ticket. That is a bitter reality that needs to be addressed now. It's the economy, stupid. It's not the lack of charisma. Voters don't give a shit about a candidates moral compass or their fucking charisma when they are unsure of their own financial well being. And they sure as shit aren't interested in hearing some college educated liberal tell them the intricacies of an incremental platform that will bump minimum wage just a smidge or open up community colleges while maintaining trade policies that have helped to decimate their manufacturing bases. You might as well just hand them all bootstraps, if that's all you're going to offer them."

11/11/2016 7:35:48 AM

I honestly believe the lower middle class will not have a great 4 years, so I'm confused who'll they blame since they can't blame Obama anymore.

11/11/2016 7:39:48 AM

Quote :

"Man, it's so fucking frustrating watching you tap-dance around the obvious, and it really makes me worry about the health of your party. You sound like Karl Rove right now, trying to craft an image of a candidate that the electorate would "want to have a beer with" rather than re-considering your platform."

You mean this platform?

https://www.demconvention.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Democratic-Party-Platform-7.21.16-no-lines.pdf

Quote :

"Democrats believe that today’s extreme levels of income and wealth inequality are bad for our people, bad for our businesses, and bad for our economy. Our country depends on a thriving middle class to drive economic growth, but the middle class is shrinking. Meanwhile, the top one-tenth of one percent of Americans now own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent combined. These trends create problems beyond insulting our sense of basic fairness. Social mobility is far lower than most believe it to be. Children who are born to families in the lowest fifth of earnings are more than 10 times more likely to remain there as adults than they are to earn as much as those in the top fifth. Unless we invest in building a level playing field, we all lose. "

Again, these same people turned out and voted for Obama 4 years ago, why is that? We're still the only party with an actual plan to address income inequality, not fantasies about renegotiating trade deals, bringing back jobs replaced by robots, and starting a trade war with China. There are no quick fixes.

11/11/2016 8:35:28 AM

^ the message coming from hillary's camp was dull. They didn't hammer income inequality as hard as they should have. It seems like they felt this was too close to Trump's message and tried to differentiate in other ways, and it didn't work.

I kept waiting for a youtube video or sound bite or something from her campaign tying together income inequality, compensation and wages, tax policy and jobs, so I could share it on social media, but nothing ever came.

11/11/2016 8:41:55 AM

Quote :

"And they sure as shit aren't interested in hearing some college educated liberal tell them the intricacies of an incremental platform that will bump minimum wage just a smidge or open up community colleges while maintaining trade policies that have helped to decimate their manufacturing bases. You might as well just hand them all bootstraps, if that's all you're going to offer them.""

So I'm absolutely on board the income inequality arguments, but I'm still going to play a bit of a contrarian here:

Isn't there a flip side to this quote? Yea liberal elites are in a bubble, everyone agrees. But aren't also rural working class white people also in a bubble? Bootstrap arguments worked just fine for them when it was black and brown people crying out for jobs. Manufacturing isn't coming back to previous levels no matter how hard Trump fights. The days of barely passing high school and then waltzing into an $18/hr factory job are over. Automation is real and you aren't going to be able to out compete it. Your small town? It's probably gonna die soon. Your Union? It's probably gonna die soon. The idea that a vast majority of people in the US look, talk, and think like you was never true to begin with.


I wanna help these people as much as the next guy, and income inequality seems like a much better route compared to promising to bring manufacturing back, but don't these people also need to kinda wake up and face the music?

[Edited on November 11, 2016 at 8:50 AM. Reason : Too slow]

11/11/2016 8:50:02 AM

^^ Her campaign was too busy picking out the drapes of the Oval Office to do that...

[Edited on November 11, 2016 at 8:51 AM. Reason : a]

11/11/2016 8:50:44 AM

I also have to commend Trump's team for livestreaming all his rallies on Facebook, never once did I see a hillary rally live stream pop up.

11/11/2016 8:55:26 AM

who is goaliexlax going to support now that he realizes Bernie would have had a better chance against Trump than his darling Clinton?

I think any Democrat picked should be fairly young.

Trump is going to be 74...ooooooold.

11/11/2016 8:58:08 AM

Quote :

"It's NOT THE MESSENGER. It's the message."

Pretty sure the candidate being Hillary had a HUGE impact. Republicans were taught to hate her, so even if they hated Trump, they had a strong reason to continue to come out. She also just did not inspire Democrats in general, particularly moderate, middle-ground voters. I have at least 5 friends who voted for every liberal candidate on the NC ballot except for Hillary.

11/11/2016 11:21:23 AM

and her message was simple:

He's a bad person.

She (and her media surrogates) failed to actually listen to the voters in MI, WI, OH, PA, while Trump was speaking directly to them.

11/11/2016 11:30:32 AM

Quote :

"I wanna help these people as much as the next guy, and income inequality seems like a much better route compared to promising to bring manufacturing back, but don't these people also need to kinda wake up and face the music?"

Of course they do, but that's not how politics works. It much easier to pander to a disenfranchised group's sense of nostalgia for better times than it is to get them to self-reflect and make changes in their own lives.

11/11/2016 11:31:38 AM

its not about telling them you are going to be bringing back manufacturing, its about showing that you understand they are struggling, that you don't think they are all racist white trash, and that you will start policies that will help them. even just a message of "change" or holding wall street or k street accountable would have helped.

clinton's campaign was not about change though, they positioned her squarely as the established candidate and basically had a campaign based on how terrible trump was. obama and sanders both had inspirational campaigns calling for change, her campaign did not push that kind of message.

11/11/2016 11:48:21 AM

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/

outstanding read, even if it's before the election.

11/11/2016 12:07:15 PM

Again, populism isn't some silver bullet, at least not for Democrats. Russ Feingold is a populist who got SMASHED in Wisconsin, by a larger margin than Hillary, to a guy who said Social Security is Ponzi Scheme. Why? Because he wasn't likeable. That shit absolutely matters.

[Edited on November 11, 2016 at 12:24 PM. Reason : .]

11/11/2016 12:23:58 PM

the top of the ticket impacts the rest of it

11/11/2016 12:27:03 PM

Quote :

" Why? Because he wasn't likeable. That shit absolutely matters."

You are hopeless, man.


Clinton wasn't "likeable" because she didn't communicate income inequality. She didn't do that, because she's a center-right moderate who is funded by wall street. People listen to her and see a phony. They KNOW she's financed by banks. They correctly see that as a problem. Clinton has to resort to meandering logical solutions to avoid this conflict and it muffles and kills her message. That's why her message is a wall of text rather than a coherent, three word phrase: "Tax the rich"



By the way, for those of you Progressives who think that the Democratic Party can be reformed, just take a look at Shrike in this very thread to see an example of why it can't be done, and why you should organize a third party. Democrats like him control the party. They are all sitting around right now, even after this humiliating loss, refusing to address the obvious. They are instead trying to figure out how to groom Cory Booker or some other "charismatic" person to continue the same dull message and hoping that they can frame the next election around social issues instead of economic. There's no hope for them. Time to move on.

11/11/2016 12:49:06 PM

they are also talking about how racist sexist and homophobic everyone who didn't vote for hillary is

11/11/2016 12:57:57 PM

"The heroin epidemic was clearly addressed in the 60 page PDF. It's not my fault those junkies in Ohio didn't read it."

11/11/2016 12:59:16 PM

What pisses me off about greens and libertarians is not their ideologies. They both some reasonable strategies to change the status quo. What pisses me off is they do jack shit in local elections when they could invigorate voters through grassroots movements, but instead, they only bother to show up during national elections when they know they have zero chance to win. That strategy is fucking useless. Those of you Bernie Bros or Johnson supporters crowing right now need to shut the fuck up and actually do something on the local level instead of coming out of the woodwork every four years.

11/11/2016 1:18:15 PM

thats just an outright lie. at least when it comes to greens, we have been invested in local elections for a long time.

11/11/2016 1:19:55 PM

Ok, so why have essentially none of them won a congressional seat? If the message and actions are working, why can't it take it to the next level.

11/11/2016 1:21:35 PM

Because they don't have the same financial backing to get their message out. C'mon, man, you knew that already.

11/11/2016 1:23:41 PM

Quote :

"By the way, for those of you Progressives who think that the Democratic Party can be reformed, just take a look at Shrike in this very thread to see an example of why it can't be done, and why you should organize a third party."

Being an ideologue is easy, having to actually moderate your views to fit a diverse electorate is hard. Pillory me all you want, but I reserve my ire for people I actually disagree with on matters of substance. The Democrats have lost elections before, and will lose elections in the future. They aren't going anywhere as a party and are still the best way forward for people who share your views. This election hurts, and as I've said, I have to question everything I believed going into it, but ignoring reality does nobody any good.

(PS. I've explicitly said I don't want Cory Booker anywhere near a Presidential ticket)

11/11/2016 1:40:03 PM

The only hope for the left is replicating the trump model. Someone with the ideology similar to bernie, fame of michael moore, but their own billions to beat out the wall street money. That type of person doesn't exist but maybe the next 4 years will create one.

11/11/2016 1:42:06 PM

Quote :

"Because they don't have the same financial backing to get their message out. C'mon, man, you knew that already."

Bernie is essentially a Green Party candidate who prefers to label himself Independent. He seemed to do pretty well with funding during his grass-roots Democratic party run with zero establishment support.

The Green Party is just absolutely terrible in its current form and should just be burnt down so it can be rebuilt.

11/11/2016 1:47:37 PM

bernie is not green he is somewhere between. His foreign policy is much more hawkish.

the green party can't take off because a lot of the supporters get cold feet in the voting booth and vote democrat. Green party candidates always underperform polls. Theres a ton of people who align with the platform and the values but they are usually guilted into voting against themselves at the last minute.

[Edited on November 11, 2016 at 1:50 PM. Reason : k]

11/11/2016 1:49:37 PM

I really don't think the Green Party is gonna lead the working class revolution -- too associated with hippie nonsense. I can't see any truck drivers voting for Jill Stein and the guy with the name from Street Fighter.

Neither will anything with "socialist" in the name of it.

It has to be the Democrats or else we are in for a long long nightmare while they slowly die.

11/11/2016 1:54:51 PM

Totally separate of any platform problems, the Green Party needs to organize local efforts before anyone will take them seriously. They can't even get enough signatures to be a party or get on the ballot in every state.

[Edited on November 11, 2016 at 2:01 PM. Reason : and Sanders has plenty of platform differences from Green Party]

11/11/2016 2:00:52 PM