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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
@Monsieur: What voting block are you trying to appeal to by suggesting a shift to the right on economics? Educated middle-upper class whites, aka the establishment Republican voters?
That only works if you can start flipping southern states, none of which were even close. In the mean time, promising to eliminate the welfare state and cut taxes on the rich further alienates minority voters and today's young voters (many of whom will be in the core voter age range 8 years from now), and they will either not vote or get outflanked by a GOP nominee who appeals to them.
The demographic that cost Clinton the rust belt were in many cases people who had previously voted for Obama, many of them Union workers or former Union workers. You aren't going to get those people on your sides running on a union busting platform.
edited 21st Nov '16 11:41:52 AM by CaptainCapsase
@Dhraginazzo You say that like those are two opposite things.
And you know, the Republicans tightening their hold doesn't rule out Trump getting laughed out of office. I feel like that situation would be a lot like "Well at least he's not Trump" in regards to that.
edited 21st Nov '16 11:36:08 AM by AceofSpades
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Yes, but becoming establishment Republicans and/or falling back on neoliberalism isn't going to make the democrats more electorally competitive. If anything, it'll create an even bigger split in the popular vote and electoral vote because of gains in safe states and red states, and further exasperate the polarization that's tearing this country apart.
edited 21st Nov '16 11:40:15 AM by CaptainCapsase
What exasperates me is the degree to which the media have been complicit in obfuscating economic truths to the general public. Simply explaining how the national debt works is a Herculean task, never mind anything so complex as energy prices.
edited 21st Nov '16 11:44:49 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I was trying to say this in nice words but I couldn't find them so I'll just say it: This is obviously, for a lot of you, your first transition. The states is pretty odd in that you basically flip every 8 years. One term presidents or parties with three terms are rare. A disaffected group tilting things is the norm. I'm not saying Trump will be good or that the dems are in a good place for 2018 but the idea that the left is dead and will be dead forever is laughable.
I mean for christsake people look at the numbers, clinton lost the important races by less then 100K votes. You think that deficit will be worse come 2018? The dems will be putting all their effort into grabbing back the disaffected white vote and when trump fails them they will turn on him.
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?There does seem to be a real risk of Democrats "over-correcting" after this election. They need to make it clear that the race was much closer then the EC makes it appear and that the Republicans do not have as much of a mandate as they think.
It will be necessary to adopt a somewhat different message with a little bit more "universal" themes like the economic security, but the Republicans may end up helping them on that front if they are indeed going after Medicare and Medicaid like they seem to be indicating.
The problem is the fact that gerrymandering means losses like those can hurt the Democratic party more than they should, Thatguy. Also, I point you to the first Bush, who wasn't that long ago. And he lost the second one by going against his "no more taxes" promise.
Hmmm... wondering what Trump could screw up on that would get him knocked out a second time, given that almost no one who supported him appeared to take him literally.
Anyway I don't think we can claim the Democrats are overcorrecting until we actually see them do something.
edited 21st Nov '16 11:57:38 AM by AceofSpades
Mhm. Really, the fact that this election was so close is a sign that either the republicans did something really wrong or the democrats did something really right.
I favour the first option, really.
Bush Sr. was the first time since the 50s that the same party has controlled the white house for more than 8 years.
edited 21st Nov '16 12:02:49 PM by Gilphon
@thatguy: Voter suppression could be much worse come 2018, and the senatorial race looks grim for the democrats. The gubernatorial race is much sunnier, but democrats have a built in disadvantage in those races because of their concentration in urban centers, IIRC.
Beyond that, do you really think it's business as usual right now in American politics? This was not a normal election, Trump was not a normal candidate, and we must resist our natural inclination to normalize Trump if we want to continue having free and open elections in the future.
The fundamentals model 538 put forward in advance of the election suggested an extremely narrow Republican victory. That's what happened, though the way in which it happened wasn't what that model expected.
Incidentally, 538 on which Republican senators are most likely to oppose Trump.
edited 21st Nov '16 12:09:22 PM by CaptainCapsase
None of them will truly oppose Trump, the Republicans always fall in line when they are in power. Maybe a few good eggs like Mc Cain will take stands on personal issues (like torture in his case) but that's it.
I'm not willing to write off the Democratic party after one election, especially when it was a narrow loss and their base is still intact. It is very difficult to truly destroy an established major party. 2018 might suck for them, but the GOP has a terrible map ahead in 2020.
And besides, everything that goes wrong in now Trump's fault. The incumbent party's popularity typically tanks when they hold the WH, even when the president is popular (and Trump will struggle to break 50% approval if he doesn't smarten up and pull off an economic miracle).
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.Actually, he said, "Read my lips: No new taxes." And to his credit, there weren't any "new" taxes imposed. They just raised the already-existing taxes.
However, that's merely a matter of quibbling over details. The people still took it as a broken promise, and voted him out.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.Sanders spoke to a crowd of more than 1,000 mostly young people at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston, according to a report from WBUR.
"The working class of this country is being decimated — that's why Donald Trump won," Sanders said, according to the same report. "And what we need now are candidates who stand with those working people, who understand that real median family income has gone down."
Boston Magazine reported that an audience member told Sanders that she wanted to become the second Latina elected to the U.S. Senate and asked for his advice. Sanders responded by urging the crowd to move the Democratic Party away from what he called “identity politics.”
"It is not good enough for somebody to say, 'I'm a woman, vote for me.' That is not good enough," he said, according to WBUR. "What we need is a woman who has the guts to stand up to Wall Street, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, to the fossil fuel industries."
Sanders also addressed what he called “the racist background of Mr. Trump,” according to the student-run Daily Free Press, and mocked the idea that Trump ran against the establishment.
“The idea that somebody like a Donald Trump could pose as the anti-establishment candidate, could pose as the candidate of change, would be laughable if the consequences were not so dire,” he said.
Wow.
WOOOOOW.
You can get fucked, Bernard.
New Survey coming this weekend!@captain: After much thought I'd put forth that this was a far more normal election then previously thought in that the underlying trends of american politics played out despite all the craziness. Yanks are big on change and parties rarely control much for too long.
I'll be honest I'm not too up on gerrymandering but if the dems win big in 2020 don't they get control of redistricting?
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

A lot can happen in 4 years, remember. The GOP has a lot of options to tighten their hold on the establishment but they also have a lot of opportunities to completely fuck over everyone.