2018 Democrats thread

[Dam8610]

1 hour ago, caulfield12 said:

This is where improving education/skills/abilities (especially affordability of community college and vo tech) has to be addressed.  Even if the pay is $12-13 by legislation, 50-75% of those jobs will be wiped out in next 15-25 years anyway.

 

Yes, we also have to get up to par with the rest of the civilized world on higher education and healthcare by treating these things as rights granted to citizens rather than privileges afforded them. This is why I feel economic issues are the most important to prioritize. All three of these items (minimum wage, at a minimum tuition free college, and nationalized healthcare) are economic issues that are going to have a huge impact on large swaths of the population, regardless of age, gender, race, creed, etc. over the next 20 years. Those impacts can be positive or negative for those people and the country as a whole, depending on the policy implemented.

[Reddy]

49 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

Yes, but all those states the campaign took for granted until it was too late...no campaigning in WI, brought the Obamas at the last minute to PA but the tide had already turned there.  Spent resources in states they really had no realistic shot at, but hubris got the best of them.  Uninspired choice of Kaine didn’t help matters much. 

Along with Gore in 2000 and Dukakis is 1988, one of the worst Democratic campaigns (that actually had a good chance to win starting out) I have ever seen, especially in terms of misallocation of resources/wasted spending.  Trump is right about that one thing, at least.

This is a completely different argument from the point to which I was referring. This has nothing to do with people buying into Trump, it has to do with a terribly managed campaign. Those are different things. 

[caulfield12]

Well, the terribly managed campaign is partially what led to “evil of two lessers/lesser of two evils” votes for Trump.  Maybe they were protest votes...in some cases.

[Balta1701]

7 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

Well, the terribly managed campaign is partially what led to “evil of two lessers/lesser of two evils” votes for Trump.  Maybe they were protest votes...in some cases.

Well, that, and Russian Propaganda that was so effective that 2 years later people will still say that it was a terribly managed campaign because the Russians told them so.

[GoSox05]

11 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

Well, that, and Russian Propaganda that was so effective that 2 years later people will still say that it was a terribly managed campaign because the Russians told them so.

Wut?

[Reddy]

16 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

Well, that, and Russian Propaganda that was so effective that 2 years later people will still say that it was a terribly managed campaign because the Russians told them so.

The campaign did make mistakes. But every campaign makes mistakes and half of them win anyway. Trump's campaign made far more fundamental mistakes than the Hillary campaign did. But the combination of campaign missteps, Russian propaganda, Comey, Bernie, stronger Trump messaging, whitelash to a changing country all contributed to that 80,000 vote deficit.

caulfield is wrong when he ascribes Trump's win as any sort of "mandate" from the people wanting change. They were manipulated, and Hillary MOSTLY lost because of voters who stayed home.

[southsider2k5]

11 minutes ago, Reddy said:

The campaign did make mistakes. But every campaign makes mistakes and half of them win anyway. Trump's campaign made far more fundamental mistakes than the Hillary campaign did. But the combination of campaign missteps, Russian propaganda, Comey, Bernie, stronger Trump messaging, whitelash to a changing country all contributed to that 80,000 vote deficit.

caulfield is wrong when he ascribes Trump's win as any sort of "mandate" from the people wanting change. They were manipulated, and Hillary MOSTLY lost because of voters who stayed home.

If the Democrats really believe this, they are going to do the impossible and lose to the worst candidate in modern history not once, but twice.

[StrangeSox]

Happy May Day-International Workers Day

[caulfield12]

29 minutes ago, Reddy said:

The campaign did make mistakes. But every campaign makes mistakes and half of them win anyway. Trump's campaign made far more fundamental mistakes than the Hillary campaign did. But the combination of campaign missteps, Russian propaganda, Comey, Bernie, stronger Trump messaging, whitelash to a changing country all contributed to that 80,000 vote deficit.

caulfield is wrong when he ascribes Trump's win as any sort of "mandate" from the people wanting change. They were manipulated, and Hillary MOSTLY lost because of voters who stayed home.

By this argument, everyone who wanted hope and change was manipulated in 2008.

You can dislike his policies, but Trump has definitely shaken things up as promised.  In some ways, he’s made it more possible for anyone to grow up and become President.   Only history will be able to judge the ramifications of this change.

As for Dems, the middle and lower middle classes shouldn’t be unclear who is actually fighting for them on Main Street versus who’s wining and dining on Wall Street or K Street.  The messaging has been largely ineffective.

[Balta1701]

1 hour ago, southsider2k5 said:

If the Democrats really believe this, they are going to do the impossible and lose to the worst candidate in modern history not once, but twice.

We still darn well might. Not only do we have the disadvantage of a decade of voter suppression that you won't care about actively working do disenfranchise our voters, but we also have a foreign power who is going to again intervene in the election against us. That's a huge headwind even for a good candidate. 

[southsider2k5]

18 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

We still darn well might. Not only do we have the disadvantage of a decade of voter suppression that you won't care about actively working do disenfranchise our voters, but we also have a foreign power who is going to again intervene in the election against us. That's a huge headwind even for a good candidate. 

And they still haven't acknowledged why people would turn to a candidate like Trump in the first place.

[Balta1701]

10 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

And they still haven't acknowledged why people would turn to a candidate like Trump in the first place.

Because people will do almost anything to defend white supremacy. For example, when someone called a person out for saying social issues shouldn't matter, you stepped up to defend that premise, even while claiming you weren't supporting it.  The idea that anyone might have a different perspective about being shot in the street or denied the vote and we should listen to that perspective and not discount it, the idea that other people are human and should be treated that way; you turned into this:

Quote

And this is why the Democratic Party continues to flounder. Your credentials are apparently directly tied to your race.

It was a great example of exactly why Donald Trump took over that party and why he won that election, because this is the issue that defines America.

Quote

Even when controlling for partisanship, ideology, region and a host of other factors, white millennials fit Michael Tesler’s analysis, explored here. As he put it, economic anxiety isn’t driving racial resentment; rather, racial resentment is driving economic anxiety. We found, as he has in a larger population, that racial resentment is the biggest predictor of white vulnerability among white millennials. Economic variables like education, income and employment made a negligible difference.

 

[southsider2k5]

And there you go.  I am sure it is 60 million white supremacists who put Donald Trump into office, and nothing else.  Again, if the party really campaigns on this premise, you will doom us to four more years of Trump.

[Balta1701]

1 minute ago, southsider2k5 said:

And there you go.  I am sure it is 60 million white supremacists who put Donald Trump into office, and nothing else.  Again, if the party really campaigns on this premise, you will doom us to four more years of Trump.

And when the response to people saying "We have to care about social issues and need to put ourselves in the shoes of someone else if we think they're unimportant" is "How dare you suggest that my perspective needs to be checked, mine is the important one", we may just be doomed to that anyway.

[StrangeSox]

22 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

And there you go.  I am sure it is 60 million white supremacists who put Donald Trump into office, and nothing else.  Again, if the party really campaigns on this premise, you will doom us to four more years of Trump.

it can both be true that 60 million people voted for white christian supremacy, something Trump's campaign was fairly explicit about and his administration has been very explicit about, and also that the Democrats can't just rely on pointing that out if they want to win elections.

I'm also gonna say that the blame for the "doom" lays at the feet of the conservative movement who's degraded American society and politics for decades and whose inevitable results were first the likes of Palin and now Trump. Conservatives have almost entirely eagerly gotten behind the Trump administration.

[Reddy]

2 hours ago, southsider2k5 said:

If the Democrats really believe this, they are going to do the impossible and lose to the worst candidate in modern history not once, but twice.

What in what I said do you find false or particularly egregious? 

[Dam8610]

21 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:

And when the response to people saying "We have to care about social issues and need to put ourselves in the shoes of someone else if we think they're unimportant" is "How dare you suggest that my perspective needs to be checked, mine is the important one", we may just be doomed to that anyway.

If you think I think social issues are unimportant, you need to think again. Every issue is important, but since the conservatives will insist on extracting something for every bit of good done, priorities are needed to maximize the good being accomplished in each trade-off. Much like everything else in this country, we're well past the point of diminishing marginal utility on fighting for social issues, and we've practically traded our economy away for them. To maximize the good that can be accomplished, a focus on economic issues is likely the best path forward at this point in time.

[StrangeSox]

 

edit fixed link

Edited May 1, 2018 by StrangeSox

[Balta1701]

1 minute ago, StrangeSox said:

https://twitter.com/jessica_roy/status/991070815876562944

you need to figure out the auto twitter embed thing. Hit a spacebar after pasting the tweet link then wait for a second for it to post, then it'll load the tweet rather than just the text.

[StrangeSox]

yeah I'm not sure what happened there. I pasted it, and normally that works fine, but I edited the post to remove the ref from the twitter link. that seems to have broken it somehow? and then I deleted and reposted with the same effect?

 

fake edit: huh, weird. if you click that link above, even though I edited it, the ref tag still loads for some reason. I had to find the tweet itself without the ref tag and copy-paste that, now it appears to work. must be something with how it converts the link which means you can't go back and edit the url and still have it work, you gotta paste it in correct the first time

 

 

 

Edited May 1, 2018 by StrangeSox

[Jenksismyhero]

24 minutes ago, StrangeSox said:

it can both be true that 60 million people voted for white christian supremacy, something Trump's campaign was fairly explicit about and his administration has been very explicit about, and also that the Democrats can't just rely on pointing that out if they want to win elections.

I'm also gonna say that the blame for the "doom" lays at the feet of the conservative movement who's degraded American society and politics for decades and whose inevitable results were first the likes of Palin and now Trump. Conservatives have almost entirely eagerly gotten behind the Trump administration.

I still think you're mistaking SUPPORTING those views versus simply not prioritizing them compared to other issues. A number of women and minorities did vote for the guy, so clearly not ALL of them voted for him while also supporting white male dominance policies.

I'm exposed to a lot of blue collar Trump supporters as part of my job. A lot of union guys, guys that work on nukes, guys that work for public utilities. Inevitably politics come up and i'd say a good majority of them are Trump supporters for two simple reasons - (1) they've bought into the nonsense that he's changing Washington and (2) they think he (and Republicans generally) do better to protect/increase their income. They all feel Dems are way too concerned with social issues that they're never personally exposed to. Rights of the LGBT, illegal immigrants, etc. Those issues just aren't as important to them. 

 

 

[GoSox05]

Union workers voting for Trump or Republicans in general is something I just don't get.  Even if you think Democrats spend too much time worrying about social issues.  The party you are voting for wants to end unions and work protections.  Seems like a pretty big economic issue.

It also speaks to how much Democrats have lost that vote by not going to bat for them.

[Jenksismyhero]

I think your second line is the key - the Dem Party of 2018 (and really for the last decade +) blames white males for problems more than they promise to protect/benefit them. 

[GoSox05]

I don't think anyone blames "white men" for all problems.  That's alt-right talking point.

 

[Jenksismyhero]

How is that a talking point? It's mostly the truth.