Why I left the Democratic Party

Well, the dems themselves disagree with you. It was not clear to me either what it was that Clinton wanted to change.

Oh but wait... this is irrelevant to "Why I left the Democratic party". Bring it to another thread.


(giggles)

There really aren't any other Hillary types. She had flaws that were unique to her. They'll win with others that you consider to be too moderate though, because the vast majority of the country are not hard-left 'progressives'. That group can only hope to influence, never control the country.

And that's great news to me. As much as I think the Republicans have it wrong and are failing the country, I think the far left has some positions that are equally as wrong.

You mean the center-left, i think. There's not much of a far left in America.

I mean the American far left...I do understand how that differs from the European far left (or even left).

The problem with hard-left progressives isn't their goals, per se, which are largely noble and intended to help their fellow man to the greatest extent possible. The problem is instead two-fold:

First, their ideas are mostly half-baked and rely upon a bunch of assumptions to prop them up. I don't necessarily even disagree with their assumptions, but that's a bad way to make policy and do business in general.

Second, they simply wave away the massive political and social issues that would be created by an attempt to move from our current societal and economic structure to the one that they propose. It's not good enough to have noble plans, you need plans that can pass Congress and that's extremely hard to do when what you propose really upends the current order. Those who would otherwise be their allies are alienated by this lack of caring about process and this dooms most of their plans to simply wishes and dreams.

I agree with you that the next Dem president will be a moderate, there's no base of support for the far-left in Congress and most of their economic and social plans aren't ready to see the light of day. And I say that as someone who agrees with their overall goals. So the idea that the DNC needs to 'learn' from the 2016 election and take a hard left turn is a very stupid idea. They would be crushed in the next general election, and badly, if they did so.

Cycloptichorn

We call someone like Bernie a social-democrat. That means someone who fights for the middle class and the poor, within a democratic system ie excluding revolution. Somebody like FD Roosevelt

I agree. I agree with a lot of what the hard-left wants to. Like you I'm just not willing to lose every election being a pureist and I think the best way to implement many of these changes is incrementally. I think it's best for the goals themselves and honestly best for the country as a whole. We're too big a country to have dramatic political revolutions...not to mention that our entire system of government pretty much makes that impossible.

That's what I would say most of the democrats in our system fight for too.

All you establishment Democrats who are so down on progressives (personally I am proud to call myself an FDR liberal) are the ones who presided over the party for enough years to lose, almost every year, ground against the right wing. Under your umbrella, the entire nation, including state local and federal levels, has steadily become far right and controlled by oligarchy. You don't even realize that the trend would have continued under Hillary, as it did under Obama. You are the ones who drove the people into Republican control.

That sounds nice, and I understand the sentiment, but it isn't a replacement for workable plans and goals. You understand that, right?

Let's take a popular example, Universal Health Care / Medicare for all. I agree that it would be great to have it, but how do you think a plan that is going to literally put millions of people out of work is going to pass Congress? Every single state would see job losses and companies closed if we upended the current system of medical insurance. How are you projecting this is going to pass Congress? How many House members are going to vote for thousands of lost jobs in their district?

You're uninterested in Process discussions because they aren't fun and because they don't speak well to the goals of the Progressive movement being achieved. But while you're busy crowing about your purity, us Moderate Dems have actually, yaknow, passed bills and got stuff done. I don't think there's much of a comparison in terms of which wing of the party has actually enacted more legislation that actually helps people. So maybe instead of knocking us, you should team up with us. Half a cup is far better than the absolute none that your side is offering voters at the moment.

As for 'losing ground' to the Republicans, I wonder what the Progressive wing would point to as a single accomplishment in that area. What have they done to 'gain ground?' They can't get into leadership because not enough of them are in office, because not enough citizens agree with them! The current crop of leadership is in charge directly due to the causes I listed earlier, and that's not their fault: it's yours.

Cycloptichorn

I have a vague sense that a looming silence is on the horizon.

You asked too many tough questions at once. Bad Cyclops.

I think what a lot of these people don't realize is that guys like me are as Progressive as they are, but have actually put more time and effort into thinking about how to achieve the goals than they have. Also have studied more American history and seen the power of Incremental change, and the repeated failure of attempts at drastic change.

Cycloptichorn

All you people offer is "increments" while qailing before the bad Republicans. You offer nothing for the common person, except in rhetoric only. What big money tells your representatives to do is what gets done. You can paint FDR style governing as unrealistic if you want. You can call yourself progressive if you want. You don't seem to understand that ushering the nation into the hands of right wing rule is not doing workable programs.

Take a stab at answering Cyclop's question while you're here.

Or are you content with just attacking the messenger like you chided us for doing yesterday?

Oh really? So, the Consumer Financial Protection Buereau, which actually goes after companies that scam people? That's nothing for the common person? The SCHIP program, that provided health care for poor kids in America - that's nothing? I PERSONALLY know people whose families were saved from destitution by this.

How about winning elections and putting liberals on the SC? That does nothing for the common person? Cutting middle-class taxes while retaining them on the wealthy (which Obama did) - that does nothing?

Get outta here with this bullshit. We've done plenty for the 'common man' of this country.



I hear a lot of anger here, and see a lot of finger-pointing. But zero discussion of the procedure and policy problems offered by the Progressive wing. Exactly as predicted. Are you willing to even discuss the fact that Congress supports practically nothing that you do, and because of this, passing ANY of Bernie's priorities in the near-term is pretty much an impossibility?

Cycloptichorn

http://billmoyers.com/story/killed-the-democratic-party/

This “Autopsy,” in other words, is a text for rebellion and a rough suggestion of what a born-again Democratic Party might look like. This is the heart of its indictment: “The mainstream Democratic storyline of victims without victimizers lacks both plausibility and passion. The idea that the Democrats can somehow convince Wall Street to work on behalf of Main Street through mild chiding, rather than acting as Main Street’s champion against the wealthy, no longer resonates. We live in a time of unrest and justified cynicism toward those in power; Democrats will not win if they continue to bring a wonk knife to a populist gun fight.”
The authors are clearly seeking a straightforward repudiation of the governing strategy on economic issues by the last two Democratic presidents. Neither Bill Clinton nor Barack Obama attempted to challenge corporate and financial interests, and neither did nearly enough to address the lost jobs and wages that led to deteriorating affluence and fed popular cynicism and distrust. Obama, for example, gratuitously appointed General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to the White House Jobs Council — an odd choice, given that Immelt’s company was a notorious pioneer in offshoring American jobs to foreign nations. Immelt subsequently admitted that he was motivated by GE’s bottom line: American wages were too high, he explained, so he intended to lower them. He succeeded.
The mainstream Democratic story line of victims without victimizers lacks both plausibility and passion.
— 'Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis'
In this context, blue-collar workers were not mistaken when they blamed the Democrats. During the campaign, Hillary Clinton was virtually silent on the party’s complicity. The Democratic nominee couldn’t very well quarrel with the party’s embrace of Republican dogma on free trade and financial deregulation, since it would have meant quarreling with her husband. On the central domestic issue of our time, she had nothing convincing to say. Clinton belatedly announced her opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal championed by President Obama, but at that point it was already dead. The party platform paid the usual respect to liberal economic causes, but who could believe her? Clinton lacked authenticity.
A revealing example cited in “Autopsy” of the Democratic Party’s self-congratulatory mentality (and its cluelessness) is the fund-raising mailer it sent to donors in the summer of 2017 — eight months after its spectacular wipeout. The mailer was “designed to look like collection letters to its supporters,” the critique notes. “The DNC team scrawled ‘FINAL NOTICE’ across the envelopes and put ‘Finance Department’ as the return address. The message it conveyed, intentionally or not, was: you owe us.” The upstart critics observe: “That, not coincidentally, is a message the party leadership has been sending to core constituencies through its policies and campaign spending priorities.”
RELATED: Democracy & Government

Everything That’s Wrong with the Democratic ‘Reboot’ in One Lousy Op-Ed
BY Ian Haney López | July 24, 2017
The condescending approach of party wise guys may seem a trivial matter in the era of high-tech modern elections, but politics is still personal. The failure to sustain the attachments of shared experience and kindred loyalties can be fatal. Rep. Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, the Democratic House speaker during the Reagan era, used to tell this story about himself: In his first run for Congress, a family friend and neighbor, Mrs. O’Brien, told O’Neill that she would vote for him even though he had failed to ask for her vote. O’Neill was astonished. He hadn’t thought it necessary, since they were such close friends. “Tom, let me tell you something,” Mrs. O’Brien said. “People like to be asked.”
That kernel of political wisdom is what the Democratic Party has forgotten. All politics is local, as O’Neill taught. But the party moved uptown, so to speak, and lost touch with the old neighborhood. The party of working people failed to rally the stalwart regulars it could usually count on, and those folks failed to turn out in the usual numbers.
In essence, this is the core accusation leveled in “Autopsy”: that the Democratic Party neglected its most loyal voters. It not only forgot to ask for their votes; it ignored the general distress of working people (white, black, and brown). Furthermore, the party didn’t have much to offer those folks in the form of concrete proposals to improve their lives. That’s a controversial claim, but the authors of “Autopsy” offer damning evidence to support it.
For every blue-collar Democrat we lose…we will pick up two moderate Republicans.
In midsummer 2016, working-class enthusiasm for Trump was the hot political story, but Sen. Chuck Schumer, the soon-to-be Democratic leader in the upper chamber, assured party colleagues that they needn’t worry. “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia,” Schumer predicted. “And you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”
At the time, Schumer sounded as though he was just blowing smoke to motivate donors. But in hindsight, this may actually have been the party’s strategy: Bet on middle-class suburbanites offended by the vile Trump to vote Democratic or stay home, which would offset the loss of working-class voters attracted to him. If this was, in fact, the strategy, the party bet wrong on every point.
What’s more, this approach may have encouraged Democratic operatives to shortchange black and Latino voters — two faithful groups that had powerful reasons to vote against Trump. The turnout for both was depressed compared to previous presidential elections.
RELATED: Democracy & Government

Why We Need a New Democratic Party
BY Robert Reich | November 10, 2016
According to the authors of “Autopsy,” the Democrats withheld funding for grassroots canvassing and failed to challenge outrageous Republican schemes to suppress the minority vote. Albert Morales, then the Democratic National Committee’s director of engagement for Latino voters, originally proposed a $3 million budget to increase turnout in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Florida, Nevada and Texas. He ended up with $300,000. “It was just pitiful,” Morales said.
“Autopsy” warns that “what ought to deeply worry Democrats moving forward … is the massive swing of white working-class voters from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 and the depressed turnout of black and Latino voters for Clinton relative to 2012 Obama…. To put it in marketing terms: the Democratic Party is failing, on a systemic level, to inspire, bring out, and get a sufficient majority of the votes of the working class.”
“As a result of these failures,” the report continues, “Democrats saw dips in voter turnout and voter support among people of color — dips that were disastrously concentrated in swing states. In short, these missteps likely cost the party the presidential election.”
Once again, people like to be asked. There is one more bloc of potential voters that the Democratic Party failed to ask — young people — and its failure here is ominous for the future. This new generation is far to the left of the current party, not to mention stone-age Republicans. Bernie Sanders was their man in 2016, and he will continue to be an influential leader in reshaping politics and the governing of the nation.
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Many young people are even to the left of Bernie. A YouGov poll in January 2016 found that 43 percent of people under the age of 30 had a favorable opinion of socialism, versus just 26 percent unfavorable. A recent poll of 18-to-29-year-olds by Harvard University found that a majority of the respondents did not “support capitalism.” This was too much for Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader. At a postelection town hall, she bolted out of her seat to declare: “I have to say, we’re capitalists — that’s just the way it is.” Maybe it’s time for the Democrats to start a conversation with these young lefties.
The Clinton partisans who remain in charge of the party machinery will no doubt reject the conclusions of “Autopsy.” The report suggests that the Clinton-Obama crowd tilted the action away from the party’s core voter blocs—labor, people of color and young people — in order to court suburban voters and maintain the party’s alliances with high finance and multinational corporations. This might also explain why the DNC decided not to undertake its own postelection review. Suspicions are already circulating:
As Politico reported, “Party officials involved in fund-raising say donors repeatedly turn them away with a ‘try again next year,’ especially since it became clear there won’t be an official party autopsy from 2016.”
That donor-centric strategy was highly valuable when it came to raising money for Clinton’s campaign. It turned out to be not so good for winning her the election.

Just for once I'd love to read a response in your own words...but alas.

So in summary, it's not the ideas of political positions of the democratic party, but they need a more engaging candidate with an ability to sell the message to more voters?

THAT is the response we've been waiting for? I hope whomever funded this report didn't waste too much money on it.


If they are saying that Clinton lost because she didn't inspire enough people, fair enough. Regarding the voters who stayed home or voted 3rd party, I say that it's a little childish of them to expect/require that they are inspired to court their vote. The whole world knew there were two options a year ago. If you weren't mature enough to get out and make sure the worst candidate wasn't elected then that's primarily on you as a voter.

I don't feel the need to be inspired by my doctor to go get my annual checkup every year. I don't need to be inspired by my dentist to get my teeth cleaned or floss. I shouldn't need to be inspired by my politicians to vote every 2 years and to vote for the person who has the best chance to represents my interests the closest

This is funny, because I know Ian Haney-Lopez really well. Have talked politics with him over coffee more than once in the last several years, and I guarantee you he's closer to me politically than you.

Cycloptichorn

If that was the truth, Clinton would have won the election...