Appeal to everyone a lot. That’s the ticket.
I disagree with so much of this post it’s not even worth divvying up into sections for separate responses
Forget the term base. It’s just a euphemism for popular opinion within the party. How did Trump cut through the Republican primaries like a hot knife thru butter and come to lord over the GOP? It sure wasn’t by appealing to mainstream Republican values. He managed to win the hearts and minds of enough white racist nationalists who were also fed up with the status quo.
The Dems also have a very large sect that is sick of the status quo too. And they ain’t centrists! Take a look around this forum and see how many are supporters of Biden, Harris, Mayor Pete, or Beto there are. All these candidates would lose the election if it were held among forum members and the majority (at least in my opinion) already lean too far towards center
Trump beat an infinitely more qualified, more presidential, level headed, and well mannered centrist by being a populist. Why? Because even Dems are sick of centrist establishment types. Our numbers are much larger than Trumps, but the only way we’re going to crush at the polls is recognize that centrism is dead. Populism over centrism needs to be our strategy. The Dem nominee has to represent the popular agenda of the left. Not the centrist establishment’s agenda or we’re going to lose again. And if by some chance we don’t lose, it will just be another 8 more years of Obama-like lip service without fully executing the leftist agenda. The left wants to drain the swamp too and we figure to get a lot of crossover from registered Republicans who now realize how hard Trump has failed on that campaign promise
Cliffs: Fuck centrists!
Cliffs: 40 percent, how you gonna beat that by blowing everything up? I’m waiting.
There’s no such thing as a centrist. Well maybe there’s like 20 of them but most people hold insane wildly divergent views. You’ll get people who say I think we should cut all tax on corporations, balance the budget, give free university to everyone, tax the rich and bring back hanging. I’m a moderate. People respond to confidence and what they see as integrity which is basically never changing your mind. Is there anyone who is turned on politically by means tested tax credits? I’m afraid not.
It’s what the PEOPLE want nunnehi. The younger people in this country have woken up and they’re sick of having their future sold out by a bunch of entrenched establishment types who cater to moderates. Show me a moderate under the age of 30
We want fucking change! And if you run a centrist moderate again you’re going to lose. The GOP is catering to popular opinion. That’s the reason Trump has such a stronghold on the GOP and Republican senators are debasing themselves on a daily basis because they’re afraid of “the base”. This is what the Dems need to do on the other side. Make it so that the HRCs and Bidens of the political world are scared to get in the way like Republicans are now scared to death of Trump. Politicians need to start listening to the people. Not the other way around. We’ve already had this convo in the other forum (yes, I’m the same Cactus). What may have surprised you is that I’m pro 2A, but even with that, if the Dems truly listened to popular opinion and what people want, they’d have been able to pass gun legislation a long time ago (when they had majority control in both houses). But they didn’t because the party has too many older white establishment types who only care about lobbying dollars and not at all about popular opinion
Also, I believe your 40% figure is that of people who actually voted. It doesn’t reflect all Americans of voting age. I could be wrong on this because I can’t bring up stats like you can, but I think many Dems and young people didn’t turn out in 2016 because they were repelled by HRC. At the very least, they weren’t excited by her. I imagine at least some votes were lost because of this. It’s why I still think Sanders, a true populist is our best shot. He will create a wave of young and leftist voters. A true political revolution, which is what the majority of people want and need
Of course the 40 percent are GOP voters and not 40 percent of the country. Why are you so completely incapable of listening to what I’m telling you?
How do you beat this 40 percent? This 40 percent is the floor of GOP support (they can get much more support than that with the ‘right’ candidates). The left wing of the Democratic Party/plus far left outsiders does not equal 40 percent. You must have some support of the ‘centrist’ wing of the party to exceed 40 percent if you are the left wing. The ‘centrist’ wing needs some amount of support of support from the left wing/outsiders to exceed 40 percent or they need independent support which these days is made up of a lot of disgruntled former/current GOP members. If there were more than a 40 percent voter bloc inside anything inside the Democratic Party without compromise, this wouldn’t even be a question.
The only question right now that can’t be answered is which of these factions is closest to 40 percent. My whole life since I’ve been of voting age has been on the absolute fringe of the Democratic Party (30 years next year). We were lucky to have 3 or 4 people in Congress who were saying the right things and doing the right things to appeal to people like me, but we never won shit. They were summarily marginalized inside Congress, and had zero power. The allegory you’re looking for is Bobby Rush. No one was giving real power to Bobby Rush. We now might have close to 100 members of the House that are quite good on most issues, and are growing that number.
Your solution is to burn it all down, just like the Tea Party did to the GOP. How’s that working out for them? The way you do this is to win a stream of elections in safe places, and keep winning elections there because of the policies. That’s the easiest way to get to over half the caucus. In places where that’s not possible, you recruit people who can win who won’t screw up the policies the majority of the caucus wants. In the red districts, you get who can win, until that district turns reliably blue. A protest vote is usually good for exactly one cycle. Win 2, then you can start getting more ambitious with what you do.
Cliffs: Burning it all down just leaves a giant gaping vacuum for the GOP to take up all power with a tiny plurality that’s nowhere near 40 percent. That is burning this country down, and destroying any chance of anything you claim you fight for from ever happening. That’s setting a wild fire and having planes dump gasoline instead of water on it. And again, I see zero strategy in your post. All I see is, ‘we got it, people, blah’, but until that translates to the ballot box, it ain’t happening. It for fucking sure ain’t happening in 2020 unless Trump is convicted and removed no matter what the dreamers here think. You should have two singular goals in 2020: beat Trump, keep House. Without the Senate, nothing will happen until at least 2022, and the only way we’re getting the Senate is if they keep committing suicide by banana peel. Until you come up with actual ideas for winning, I’m not going to take you seriously.
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I think the bigger the overall turnout the more likely success for the democrats. I don’t know that they need to worry about targeting centrists. I am pretty much a centrist and the republicans are so off the rails the only centrists and moderates they attract are ones who are mislabeling themselves.
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I agree with you, but depending on turnout is a fool’s errand, as we’ve all learned in such a gerrymandered and apathetic country.
Maybe a stupid question but can we even agree on what the democrat’s base is? Because to be honest I don’t know. White people who don’t hate LGBTs and minorities?
The ‘base’ is whoever most reliably votes for Dems. It’s not about philosophy. If you have ever voted for a Republican, or used a protest vote for someone else, you are not included in the Dem base (still a Democrat but not part of the base, just like that 40 percent GOP base will never vote for a Democrat). No one knows who dominates this ‘base’, but it’s assumed that centrists have more people, because they have much more representation in Congress, and consistently beat far left wing challengers. That is changing.
Increase voter participation by like 1.5% with a candidate who is exciting and constantly talking about things regular people are interested in rather than centrist wonky means tested bullshit that bores the crap out of everyone. If 3 million more people vote regularly democrats win everything forever.
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Yeah, but where are those candidates under the age of 70? And I don’t think that satisfies the idea of what to do about moving the party left overall.
I see it the other way. I think the GOP has created a vacuum that leftists can come in and flood. Trump ran on some good ideas. Ideas I could’ve gotten behind if I didn’t know he was such a racist bumbling buffoon. Draining the swamp, tearing up NAFTA, ending our involvement in unwinnable foreign wars, putting time limits on how soon lobbyists could return to their executive positions in the industry they were lobbying for, etc. If anything, I think he loses a sizable portion of his base that voted for him on these issues, since it’s not obvious he was full of shit and they would defect over to a leftist like Sanders who really will follow through on these ideas
I’ll give you that there are some conservatives who hate Trump, but would never vote for the socialist ideas that come from Sanders or Warren. I just think these people are marginalized. Their old white men and who gives a fuck what they want? Their reign is done. It’s time for the new wave of young leftists to take over. They’ve shown time and time again that they don’t care about our current problems or future. It’s our turn now
Right. Because you thought you were voting for liberals because Dem politicians pay lip service to liberal principles while never actually getting much done when it comes to implementing policy. They only do so when pressured by populism. Hence, the LGBTQ movement, the stronger gun legislation movement, etc. These ideas didn’t come from the supposed liberal Democrats you thought you were voting for. They came from popular opinion and Dem politicians only came on board under immense pressure from the far left leaning people in their party
Yes. Burn it down! How’s it working out for the GOP? Imagine what Trump could be accomplishing for the Republican party if he but two working brain cells. He has marginalized every mainstream Republican from Cruz, to Rubio. The only Republicans still clinging to power are those who have chosen to debase themselves by worshiping at his feet
I agree, but the way you win is through local elections. AOC and the squad didn’t win by playing it safe in hostile districts
The thinking that a leftist agenda is equivalent to burning the country down is sad. We are trying to save the country through a political revolution. I think it is the GOP and centrist Dems who have created the gaping vacuum you’re talking about and it’s an opportunity for leftists to swoop in and fill it
My ideas are pretty simple actually. Cater to popular opinion. Poll after poll shows that the overwhelming majority of the left AND working class Republicans agree with Sanders on just about every policy he espouses. Listen to the what the people want and stop caring about the establishment status quo
They don’t exist right now in politics and those who do, are too young to run for the presidency lol
Fortunately, or unfortunately, we have only one person with a lifetime career in politics who’s been bucking the system his entire life and fighting for what’s right. His name is Bernie Sanders and he happens to be old. But I’ll take him over Mayor Pete, Harris, or Beto any day
They’re nowhere that’s the point. Running super centrist hillary inspired exactly no one. Maybe take your last shot with a guy who seems pretty good at inspiring young people.
You’re hopeless, and this is exactly why I stopped talking to you at exiled. Your head is absolutely filled with concrete once you think you’ve staked out a position you think is correct.
Everything you say is based on how you want things to be and not how they are currently. It will take 10 years+ for the type of change you want, and that’s only if we win in 2020. If we don’t, it’s game over for the AOC wing of the Dem Party. It’s game over for Dems, and it’s game over for anything you want. Think short term, plan long term. That’s how politics works inside the system we have. Blowing it up only benefits the GOP no matter what your concrete filled head on this thinks.
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You’re re-litigating something that happened vs. what is happening. If Bernie’s the guy who inspires the young voters into becoming a new generation of reliable voters, then he will win the nomination. If the country likes his policies enough, he will win the presidency. All signs point to him not inspiring enough people to get the nom, and the vast majority of the party will gleefully vote for Sanders if he wins the nomination as will probably many people outside the party.
To re-iterate, none of the lofty ideals you have mean anything if the Dems don’t win Pres. and especially if they lose the House in 2020. The table can start being set in 2022 if they only don’t win the Senate provided they don’t screw the pooch in the governing part of the program.
I believe that if you can’t win the long-term, then the short-term doesn’t matter.
For example, if I believe that addressing climate change is of paramount concern and that it is impossible to address climate change within the current system, why should I care about working within the system?
I don’t like the current landscape of politics. Therefore, my goal is to spur political realignment, which I wish to be based upon pushing class warfare. I do not see Trump as a singularly bad actor who must be defeated at all costs. I see him as typical of what the Republican Party has become. An attempt to go back to the status quo is a return to what enabled someone like Trump to come to power.
I’d like you to take a step back for a moment. I think my eyes glazed over a bit in your previous debates with Cactus and I skipped over a lot of it. When you say that Cactus wants to burn it down, how would you describe what Cactus wants to someone who is new to the site, in a neutral manner that you think Cactus would agree is a fair summation? I would invite Cactus to try to do something similar in summarizing your POV.
Outside of the courts, we have won long term (that’s effed us for the next 20-30 years minimum unless we somehow get to impeach Kavanaugh due to Trump’s Kennedy son connection). Young voters aren’t going to gravitate to the GOP. Old people will die.
This is about the final battle. 2020 is that battle. If we win there, the war is effectively won, and there won’t be replacements of the massive boomer voting bloc like 2010. If we lose there, they can suppress us into pure subjugation as a minority for probably close to the rest of my life. The short term, right now, matters much more than long term. If we lose in 2020, there will guaranteed be a 7-2 conservative split on the SC by 2024.
You have to realize how crucial 2020 is to win. It’s by far the most important election in my lifetime, and I felt the same way in 2016. I was concerned, but had faith the American people would do the right thing and not put Trump in (even though he really lost). I was wrong, and no longer believe everything will be okay depending on people. 2020 is the end game, and I’m not going to tolerate bomb throwers giving bad advice.
As for your question, I’ve been quite nice about what I said. You come up with a practical plan to continue to beat that 40 percent of the GOP base in 2020 that isn’t ‘blowing it all up’, I’m more than willing to listen. I have seen absolutely zero of that on this site. I’m the only one who’s put out anything resembling a strategy on moving the party hard left, and that plan won’t complete until probably close to 2028 (in a good scenario) under the condition of us winning in 2020.
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I’d like you to define “blowing it up”. I’m not entirely sure if your perception of what other people want is accurate.