Republican Congress forever!

[JackRiddler]

No chance of returning to the New Deal! Ever! Stop dreaming!

The banks and megacorps rule, and that's that! Also, it's none of your business. Are you qualified to run this economy? No, so shut up.

Nothing new is affordable. Many old things are probably affordable, but don't voice your expectations too loudly or it will be your fault when Republicans win.

Within that framework, important symbolic gestures will be delivered for those voting clienteles who remain loyal to the party chieftains. You know who you are. Don't fuck it up, like all these upstart young fools just did. Oh, they are going to get it something bad!

That's "realism."

It's also a kind of honesty, I suppose.

[Bohemianwriter]

1. Repeal Citizen's United...

And start primary any corporate democrat as well as vote out corporate republicans on a local level...

[MohRokTah]

2. Until 2022 at least

We get a shot at taking back some state houses in 2020, a presidential election year, at which point redistricting could work in our favor again for the 2022 elections.

In more than three decades as a participating Democrat, I've learned it is all about the long game.

[JackRiddler]

3. Thanks for showing why it's not satire.

This is seriously the Clinton platform.

[MohRokTah]

4. It's nobody's platform

It is basic math and reality.

[JackRiddler]

5. It is resignation and defeatism.

And it has become the Clinton platform. It is the basis for claiming that a return to New Deal politics though popular is impossible and should therefore be precluded from the start. From one of the politicians who helped deep-six the New Deal in the first place, it is disingenuous.

[MohRokTah]

6. It is BASIC MATH

After the extremist leftists sat out the 2010 election, the Republicans took over multiple blue states. During the redistricting after the 2010 election, Republicans drew districts with 70-90% Democratic votes while drawing even more Republican districts with 55-60% Republican votes.

There is no way to take back the House prior to redistricting after the 2020 census, and only then if we take back state legislatures between now and 2020.

That is the harsh reality.

[JackRiddler]

7. It is defeatism and resignation.

"Republicans" and "Democrats" are not essential identity categories. People can and do change how they vote, non-voters turn into voters and vice-versa, and new voters grow up (or become citizens) all the time, demographics of districts change constantly.

Of course, gaining votes requires actually being interested in appealing to voters. A strategy that announces "not before 2020, maybe not before 2030," has already surrendered.

The Clintonian contempt for new voters and for the surge of interest brought on by Sanders is pretty obvious. Of course this strategy may work out as if it were "math." "Math" becomes the excuse for open hostility to vision and imagination, for a refusal to have any program other than clinging to the status quo because any change would be worse.

The cautious strategy if allowed to go forward will be a losing one, and it will take its loss as a confirmation rather than a rebuke.

[MohRokTah]

8. Denying the reality is fantasy and naivty.

[JackRiddler]

11. You are inventing this "reality."

You have decided that the numbers will not move and therefore want to guarantee it by doing nothing to make them move. Why should they move in 2020 either? What does Clinton have to offer to anyone that's different?

[MohRokTah]

12. I didn't invent this reality, the REpublicans who won in 2010 did.

They knew how to draw the districts to favor them even with a minority of votes in any given state, and they did it.

That you fail to recognize reality is very telling.

[JackRiddler]

14. Defeatism and clinging to an unsustainable status quo

confused with "realism." Also, ha ha, confused with "reality" and "truth" in themselves. Look at all your absolutist categories brought to bear on total phantoms of politics: math, truth, reality. Jesus!

[MohRokTah]

16. You really need to learn the facts.

I suggest you crack open a Civics book. Maybe then you'll learn how Republicans can hold a 59 seat majority while getting 4,000,000 fewer votes than Democrats in Congressional elections.

[JackRiddler]

9. Also, stop lying.

2010 was Obama's own fuck-up, it had nothing to do with the "extremist leftists." Of course these are always taken as a non-existent minority, until time comes for assigning the blame for the inevitable self-destruction of the dishonest, bean-counting triangulation strategy.

[MohRokTah]

10. Now you call me a liar.

I posted truth. That you fail to accept truth is more telling of your character than mine.

[JackRiddler]

13. I don't really care what you think.

People can read what we each wrote. It's obvious enough which analysis is shallow and reluctant to consider anything other than cliches and platitudes.

Also, I didn't call you a liar. That's a character judgement. Don't know you and don't particularly care to know you. I said you were lying. Sorry about that. You may actually believe the falsehoods you are spreading.

[MohRokTah]

15. You don't care because you refuse to accept reality.

The Republicans have a 59 seat majority in the House, but garnered 4,000,000 fewer votes nationwide in House elections.

That is simply because of the way they drew the districts in 2011 after the 2010 election.

We hold a census every ten years and the results of that census dictate reapportionment. Every ten years, Congressional districts get redrawn. In most states the redrawing is at the behest of the majority party in the state.

That is simple fact on how the system functions.

I suggest you take a basic Civics course because you are woefully lacking in this knowledge.

[JackRiddler]

17. God, such pedantry.

As if I don't know how U.S. elections work. Do not talk down to me, sir/madam!

So work to win even more votes, obviously.

You are not interested in that. You prefer to say that what happened last time is "reality," "truth" and "math." Absolutist terms to defend inconstant things. Complete distinterest in motion. The world is in constant motion - that's reality.

[MohRokTah]

18. You obviously do not understand how the system functions.

IF you honestly believe you can get enough new voters to turn this around, you would have to break every record set in the 2008 election.

We've already proved THAT IS NOT HAPPENING IN 2016. Democrats are UNDERPERFORMING 2008 by a long shot.

It's basic math. I understand it and you do not. It sure as hell isn't rocket science.

[JackRiddler]

19. Speak for yourself.

You, you, not "we." I do not belong to the defeatist "we" that falsely dresses itself in "realism" and claims to be "math" and now even "rocket science." These are your excuses for not trying and for recommending that the rest of us eat another shit sandwich.

Rocket science says nothing about democracy, by the way. That is data fetish. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure I understand high-speed physics a lot better than you do - it makes no difference. Your mistake is in thinking this is in any way related to "rocket science." It's politics, and you clearly have no clue and no interest in it. That's why you've got the logo urging that we move to the right. Without irony.