2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumPeople Afraid To Vote For Sanders Because Mondale Lost to Reagan Need to Accept That Things Change.
Last edited Tue Feb 16, 2016, 02:51 PM - Edit history (4)
All of you "Hillary is more electable" apologists live in a bizarre world in which personalities have no effect on voting. For some bizarre reason, it does not matter to you that well over 50% of voters dislike Clinton, nor does it matter to you that well over 75% of voters think Clinton is untrustworthy.
To you, the only thing that affects voters is where a candidate lies on some bullshit 30-year-old corporate media and conservative think tank left-right spectrum. To you, if a candidate is too far left on this bullshit linear continuum, he or she is simply unelectable.
Taxes were once a dirty word no matter who they were applied to. But now the vast majority of Americans agrees the rich pay too far little in taxes.
Single payer healthcare was once a nonstarter, but now the vast majority of Americans knows healthcare costs are out of control and almost everybody feels the pain of the current system.
Keeping our military "strong" was once the number one national priority. But after Iraq, more and more people have come to realize what a complete counterproductive scam our constant and unending military misadventurism is.
Free trade was once all the rage. But income inequality has gotten so bad that even Thomas Friedman is now afraid to go to bat for the TPP in print.
The easiest way to get voters used to be to promise to put everyone in jail and throw away the key. But the pendulum has now swung so far in the direction of a police state that putting kids in jail for pot possession scares us more than Willie Horton does.
The current political climate in nothing like it was when a bland establishment liberal ran against a personally popular establishment conservative some 32 years ago.
Do you realize that things change? Do you understand that the pendulum swings left whenever it has gone so far right that this threatens to destroy our whole demand based economy? Have you even looked the voting preferences of those under 40? Has this made any impression on you whatsoever?
To elect Sanders in a landslide, all we have to do convince a few more people over 40 what almost everybody under 40 already knows. Enough is enough!
6chars
(3,967 posts)which people over 40 know.
grossproffit
(5,591 posts)I'm 37 and knew it was Reagan. I must be special.
mhatrw
(10,786 posts)NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)And Mondale has nothing to do with my support for a better option than Sanders.
grossproffit
(5,591 posts)Who knew?
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)Hard for me to keep up.
mhatrw
(10,786 posts)Last edited Tue Feb 16, 2016, 01:29 PM - Edit history (1)
Sorry, but they all fade into one when it comes to the destruction of the US middle class.
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)It's good to be historically accurate.
demwing
(16,916 posts)off to the greatest page!
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)It's clear he is hugely popular among a large segment of liberals, but can he go higher than that?
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)besides move to the right to "get things done?"
Basic LA
(2,047 posts)In the GE, the Repugnants will rebrand him as the biggest Commie Jew since Karl Marx. They'll wonder why he honeymooned in the Soviet Union & if that's when he became a sleeper agent. They'll play up his visits to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua & his resolve, as con. objector in Vietnam, to lead the military. Then they'll roll in with lies. We have to prepare for this. The AmeriKKKan right wing will not be as kind as Democratic primary voters. They won't put a commie in the White House. And by then, that's what he'll be to the general public.
mhatrw
(10,786 posts)Proud Liberal Dem
(24,437 posts)A majority of states currently have right-wing Republican governors and majorities in statehouses that we can't seem to get rid of despite all of the crazy things they are doing. I would like to think that either Bernie or Hillary would basically be favored to win against whatever Republican wins their nomination but we should take nothing for granted when it comes to the electorate (that votes, anyway).
mhatrw
(10,786 posts)actually STRONGLY ADVOCATED for our country to shift to the left since the Third Waywards took over the Democratic party?
Proud Liberal Dem
(24,437 posts)I thought that Barack Obama was pretty inspirational about embracing progressive policies at the national level back in 2008 and won the election rather handily. Where did all of the committed progressive activists that supported him in 2008 go after that?
mhatrw
(10,786 posts)now they all seem to be here:
Proud Liberal Dem
(24,437 posts)It's probably only fair to warn them that Bernie will be similarly constrained as POTUS- and they will be similarly disappointed and just give up on him too, I suppose?
mhatrw
(10,786 posts)True, Democrats have won the White House twice. Bill Clinton did thanks to Ross Perot and then retained it against feeble opposition. In the process, he moved progressively to the Right in policy and philosophy ("the era of Big Government is over" . Republican ascendancy followed. Only the Bush era collapse into disaster abroad and at home made possible Barack Obama - who presented himself not as the embodiment of Democratic values but as a transcendent bipartisan healer- with just a few vermilion strokes. A prophet without message or mission. Whatever liberal ideas he had sounded were swiftly abandoned in what is surely the most shameless bait-and-switch in American political history.
This was predictable. After all, he thrice cited Ronald Reagan as the man who most influenced his view of the Presidency.
His administrations arguably were oriented to the Right of Richard Nixon -- on civil liberties as well as on economic and social programs. Look it up. His White House actually took delight in maligning "Progressives" -- as made manifest in Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's cursing out of their representatives personally within its walls. That was the administration of which Hillary Clinton, the born-again 'progressive,' was a mainstay.
The cause already was abandoned in his first months in office when the Democrats held majorities in both houses of Congress. Indeed, Obama's embrace of the Wall Street barons was what allowed the Tea Party to channel popular anger and fear into a well-financed anti-government, know-nothing movement which nowadays dominates the political landscape. Hence, Obama drove the final nails into the coffin of the old Democratic Party.