Re: 2016 Election
 

I know, but the popular vote doesn't count, so that's moot.

Takis are vastly superior, of course.

I never said that he would. I may have said earlier in the post that he might have won. I just think that for me, Sanders is the face of the direction the Democrats should start to move in.

I still don't think that a) Sanders is actually a socialist and b) that 'small s' socialism is really necessarily such a bad thing. Certainly, the brand of social democracy that Sanders represents is the kind of thing I support anyway.

I didn't hate Clinton or anything, and I voted for her. I just aligned better with Sanders, that's all.

Unfortunately, though, he did win, so here we are.

It's a shame he didn't want to, though I can understand why he didn't. I'd have been happy to get behind him.

Whatever else anybody might say though, I'm going to miss Barry and Diamond Joe next year.

Re: 2016 Election
 

Actually I think Sanders should be the leader. He appears honest and whether one agrees or not with his policies , he has a bold and direct vison for voters to consider.

Re: 2016 Election
 

I'm sure that would be a disaster for the Democrats by playing to stereotypes that cast them as the Tax-and-Spend Party. Americans want to vote for either the Free Stuff Party or else the Free-Stuff-For-White-People-and-Hate-Minorities Party.


Sanders is really a bog standard social democrat; if he was in the UK, he would be a Labour MP who would barely get a second glance. But you're one of those foreign commies who are cool with Marxists, unlike proud Americans who reach for their guns when they hear that a socialist is approaching.

I'm merely pointing out that Trump's coming-in-second win is not an indication that he won a mandate or represents a new movement. The real issue is that a few more Democrats needed to show up.

Re: 2016 Election
 

I think Joe Biden would have beat Trump to a pulp in a debate,

Your post about what Trump offered is indicative of the soul-searching the Democrat party needs to do. In the area I lived few people I heard were voting for Trump because of xenophobia or no tax increases. Their main motivation was declining economic standards in some case to levels of desperation, and to roll the dice on Trump. It wasn't what he said , but the attitude he showed to the status quo and the elite of politicians, media, academia and Clinton's Wall Street supporters.

Ignoring the reality of the working class and lower income sectors of the country will hardly get the votes back, but maybe the Democrats feel favorable demographic projections will render those votes unnecessary at some point.

Re: 2016 Election
 

I think that I figured out that this was your position some weeks ago, when you had said it for the 932nd time.

What you don't seem to get is that Trump had fewer votes than Clinton AND fewer votes than Romney AND tripled the Libertarian vote.

Trump didn't gain votes for the GOP. He lost them.

Trump did not win. Clinton lost, and not by much. A more effective Democrat would have won, and even Clinton could have won had it not been for tactical errors.

Re: 2016 Election
 

Maybe it would, maybe not. One would think they would want to brand themselves as progressives, rather than turning into some sort of centre-right GOP-lite.

Meh, I'm mostly just thinking out loud at this point.

I know you're joking there, but isn't it sad how you're not even that far off the mark with that one?

I get it, I was only saying 'it is what it is'.

That was the biggest mistake the Democrats made. They should be the party that represents the working class and the poor, but instead they lost some of those votes to a billionaire running as a Republican.

Re: 2016 Election
 

Fine, but that involves lying through ones teeth to that segment of the electorate.

Trump wrote a bunch of checks (sorry, cheques) that he won't be able to cash. I would agree that Clinton should have done the same.

For example, perhaps she should have gone to the old GM plant in Janesville and announced to the voters that she would make damned sure that there would be another good ol' fashioned factory there again, and that it would produce cool stuff like pickup trucks instead of goofy things such as solar panels. Make cheeseheads great again!

But that would have been a bald faced lie. We can't complain about lying politicians when they're forced to make promises that they can't possibly keep just to appease dumb white voters who don't know better.

Re: 2016 Election
 

Or, and I know this is a mind bogglingly radical idea, they could just make realistic promises they can keep, instead of being a bunch of useless, self-serving shits.

Re: 2016 Election
 

This remark is directly contradicted by this one:

The voters can't handle the truth. The voters want to be lied to.

An honest politician would go to these burned out towns in the Rust Belt and tell those people that they have no future there and need to get the hell out. A sensible politician would cut off their subsidies and use those monies instead to build up better towns with new businesses and to relocate those people there.

These are narcissistic voters who think that a world that has left them behind is obliged to fix them without any inconvenience to themselves. Telling them the truth is a sure ticket to complete defeat. They do not want to hear that they are uncompetitive and that they need to do something about it for themselves.

Re: 2016 Election
 

The problem with the "dumb white bit" is that for years those DWs have been living in rust belt towns with closed factories stripped of machinery and equipment, shipped south of the border. Detroit is a disaster. It seems that the Dems just didn't know or care that these disenfranchised workers existed. The leadership enclosed itself in a bubble of PC liberal agendas that had no connection to what should have been it's priority, Job training for the unemployed in skills currently in demand would have been one of them, working to help college students pay for tuition and ease the crippling repayments on student loans would have been another but the years just went by and the Obama administration contented itself with being satisfied with the rise in the stock market and a sizeable drop in unemployment but employment statistics mean nothing if jobs that are being created hardly pay decent salaries.

Trump was clever. He tapped into a very large segment of the population which feels that it's been left out of the world of the global market with all the prosperity it's brought to some but not to others.

The Dems need new blood. We don't need to hear Nancy Pelosi's tired old rhetoric. She had her chance for years as House Speaker, Senate Majority Leader and lately Senate Minority Leader.

It's only the Democrat Party's failure to deliver for years that caused people struggling to make ends meet believe in a new Messiah like Trump who of course may or may not be able to deliver but for the moment he has his chance

Re: 2016 Election
 

Short version: Lie to dumb white people and promise them free ponies, because that's what they deserve.

Re: 2016 Election
 

It may get worse before it gets better ...
Reeling Democrats confront brutal 2018 Senate map - POLITICO

Re: 2016 Election
 

There are people who live in those towns whose families go back generations. it's not so simple to pack up and leave, move to other parts of the US in hopes of better prospects. Perhaps if the politicians who govern these rusty States got their asses moving and did their jobs by working full blast to attract investment from businesses all over the world then this would be a better solution. Half the jobs in the auto industry now come from Toyota, Honda and Hyundai who opened assembly plants in towns that were in the economic doldrums

Re: 2016 Election
 

I also think Pelosi has to go. She's a terrible 'visual' for the party; she represents old entrenched power politics. If they can't get rid of her, they can't save themselves.

Re: 2016 Election
 

It might be better to be told an uncomfortable truth than get sold a bunch of lies that 'things are going to get better', which never come to pass and they all end up screwed anyway.