What do American *Democrats stand for*?

[Jolly_Penguin]

One side wants to amplify and play to it, and the other wants to amplify and play against it. Neither wants to decrease or eliminate it.

Bullshit.

Hillary Clinton just ran and presidential campaign based almost entirely on pointing at everybody who was against her as a "basket of deplorables", implying that you are racist or sexist if you don't support her, or a "Bernie Bro", implying you are sexist if you don't support her. She ran an "I'm with her" (rather than she's with us) campaign focused on her being the candidate with a vagina. You're not going to vote against the first female president, are you, you sexist? She made almost no effort to push for liberal or progressive policies, which was a stark contrast to Bernie. And even Bernie, and he was my guy in this election, couldn't get through a speech without listing off a bunch of racial categories for no apparent reason.

This is a contrast to just 8 years ago when Obama first ran. He faced a lot of Republican efforts to ramp up racism against him (which failed spectacularly as he left with a very high approval rating - showing racism isn't nearly as potent and widespread as politicians want it to be), but he didn't run on an "I'm Black, so vote for me or you are a racist" ticket like Hillary ran on her vagina. The Democratic Party has moved further into identity politics and it is starting to eat itself and starting to drive out true liberals.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

What else is part of their platform?

Getting reelected...

That's literally it. I mean, I could nail down a handful of things many democrats show a tendency to campaign on during an election year, but their public platform can be summarized as: "We're not as bad as the Republicans. Please elect us!"

Other than that, though, they don't actually push FOR any coherent platform. It feels like they spend most of their time triangulating local districts and trying to figure out what they can do or say that will offend their constituents the least and then very carefully being photographed trying ineffectually to do those things.

It's like going to community theater and watching a neurotic clown flail around the stage cowering in fear from an alarm clock that somehow represents his nagging father (or something). You know you're supposed to root for him, because that's the whole point of the show... but the only thing you can feel good about is the fact that the tickets only cost you $5 and it's better than being bored.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

And even Bernie, and he was my guy in this election, couldn't get through a speech without listing off a bunch of racial categories for no apparent reason.

This is probably a rhetorical question, but why is it so difficult for white people to comprehend the fact that non-white people actually exist?

The Democratic Party has moved further into identity politics and it is starting to eat itself and starting to drive out true liberals.

"Starting to?" It's been that way for YEARS. That's basically why they continue to lose elections all across the country in all the local and gubernatorial races. Obama's two victories notwithstanding, liberals have been dropping out of the Democratic Party since at least the Clinton years.

Why do you think there are so many "independent" voters in this country? They're not conservatives; the conservative mindset is a black-and-white view of the world that sees "good guys" and "everyone else" and has no room for ambiguity between the two of them. To a conservative, "good guys" means "Republicans." Liberals, on the other hand, don't want to be tied to something that doesn't represent them and doesn't do anything for them and so they don't call themselves Democrats OR Republicans because neither party stands for anything they care about.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Bullshit.

Hillary Clinton just ran and presidential campaign based almost entirely on pointing at everybody who was against her as a "basket of deplorables", implying that you are racist or sexist if you don't support her, or a "Bernie Bro", implying you are sexist if you don't support her.

No, but thanks for playing our game.

She ran an "I'm with her" (rather than she's with us) campaign focused on her being the candidate with a vagina. You're not going to vote against the first female president, are you, you sexist?

And that is how you saw it, not what she ran. That speaks more to how you view the world than the actual Presidential campaign.

She made almost no effort to push for liberal or progressive policies, which was a stark contrast to Bernie. And even Bernie, and he was my guy in this election, couldn't get through a speech without listing off a bunch of racial categories for no apparent reason.

Uh huh.

This is a contrast to just 8 years ago when Obama first ran. He faced a lot of Republican efforts to ramp up racism against him (which failed spectacularly as he left with a very high approval rating - showing racism isn't nearly as potent and widespread as politicians want it to be), but he didn't run on an "I'm Black, so vote for me or you are a racist" ticket like Hillary ran on her vagina. The Democratic Party has moved further into identity politics and it is starting to eat itself and starting to drive out true liberals.

Uh huh.

 

[zorq]

I agree with Jimmy, I didn't see Hillary's campaign at all the way Jolly Penguin saw it. At all.

I really have to wonder what lens Jolly Penguin glimpses the world through. Because I'm pretty sure that's not the way Hillary wanted her campaign to be seen, and that's not how I saw it, so there must be some interference somewhere that other people are picking up.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I really have to wonder what lens Jolly Penguin glimpses the world through. Because I'm pretty sure that's not the way Hillary wanted her campaign to be seen, and that's not how I saw it, so there must be some interference somewhere that other people are picking up.

It wasn't Hilary's message, but all during the Hillary Campaign there was a (hired?) army of shills that pushed that kind of shit pretty aggressively across most social media platforms. It's generally assumed that most of these were paid trolls pushing a message from a media/advertising/marketing company or three, because their talking points tended to be pretty similar over stretches of time. The most memorable example was the sudden flood of commenters, opinion posters, letters in local newspapers and speakers at public events who said Bernie Sanders calling Hilary "unqualified" was "Dangerous and irresponsible" and that his statements could be used by Republicans as ammunition against her and that his failure to realize this showed that he didn't understand how politics worked, or something. It was such a consistent and specific message -- and even the same key phrases over and over again: "That is dangerous and irresponsible!" or "Hilary Clinton is the most qualified candidate in history!" -- that people figured out pretty quick that it was more paid marketing than it was actual supporters.

Those same hired shills were also behind a lot of the "Vote for Hilary or you're sexist!" rhetoric. There was a two-week period where anyone who could clearly articulate the reasons they supported Bernie over Hilary (which, if I think about it, includes basically everyone who DID support Bernie at the time) was told "The mansplainers are out in force today!" (Yes, that exact phrase) followed by the suggestion that they should "Admit it: it's time for a woman president!"

If you could call it "interference," it's the fact that most people tended to associate the marketing campaign with Hilary Clinton's campaign, whether it is fair or not. I think a lot of people assumed that she or her office or Debbie Shultz or someone else close to her was personally directing the Shills and helping to organize their marketing push. It's more likely that some company somewhere was hired by a Super PAC to push pro-Hilary messages and simply didn't do enough of the research to figure out how negatively their campaign was being received by just about everyone who didn't already support her.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I agree with Jimmy, I didn't see Hillary's campaign at all the way Jolly Penguin saw it. At all.

I really have to wonder what lens Jolly Penguin glimpses the world through. Because I'm pretty sure that's not the way Hillary wanted her campaign to be seen, and that's not how I saw it, so there must be some interference somewhere that other people are picking up.

Well, a lot of that does have to do with the US media. Hillary could talk for half an hour about jobs programs and the only coverage she got was the one line where she mentioned the NC bathroom law. When you combine that with her needing to compete with wall-to-wall coverage of whatever idiot thing Trump was doing that day, it's not a surprise that very few people had any idea what her campaign was about.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

This is probably a rhetorical question, but why is it so difficult for white people to comprehend the fact that non-white people actually exist?

I'm not white, so I don't know, and I'm pretty sure I exist. What does that have to do with listing off a bunch of racial categories for no apparent reason?

The Democratic Party has moved further into identity politics and it is starting to eat itself and starting to drive out true liberals.

"Starting to?" It's been that way for YEARS.

Maybe so, but I hadn't noticed it until the run up to this past election. And I don't recall a lot of this with Obama. He actually ran a fairly inclusive campaign uniting rather than dividing like Hillary. Even Hillary herself back in Obama's first run didn't do the "Obama Bro" thing like she did with Bernie, did she? Or push that if you oppose her you are against women? Maybe she did and I have forgotten. I got the sense that that was new with her this time around.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I really have to wonder what lens Jolly Penguin glimpses the world through. Because I'm pretty sure that's not the way Hillary wanted her campaign to be seen, and that's not how I saw it, so there must be some interference somewhere that other people are picking up.

It wasn't Hilary's message, but all during the Hillary Campaign there was a (hired?) army of shills that pushed that kind of shit pretty aggressively across most social media platforms. It's generally assumed that most of these were paid trolls pushing a message from a media/advertising/marketing company or three, because their talking points tended to be pretty similar over stretches of time. The most memorable example was the sudden flood of commenters, opinion posters, letters in local newspapers and speakers at public events who said Bernie Sanders calling Hilary "unqualified" was "Dangerous and irresponsible" and that his statements could be used by Republicans as ammunition against her and that his failure to realize this showed that he didn't understand how politics worked, or something. It was such a consistent and specific message -- and even the same key phrases over and over again: "That is dangerous and irresponsible!" or "Hilary Clinton is the most qualified candidate in history!" -- that people figured out pretty quick that it was more paid marketing than it was actual supporters.

Those same hired shills were also behind a lot of the "Vote for Hilary or you're sexist!" rhetoric. There was a two-week period where anyone who could clearly articulate the reasons they supported Bernie over Hilary (which, if I think about it, includes basically everyone who DID support Bernie at the time) was told "The mansplainers are out in force today!" (Yes, that exact phrase) followed by the suggestion that they should "Admit it: it's time for a woman president!"

If you could call it "interference," it's the fact that most people tended to associate the marketing campaign with Hilary Clinton's campaign, whether it is fair or not. I think a lot of people assumed that she or her office or Debbie Shultz or someone else close to her was personally directing the Shills and helping to organize their marketing push. It's more likely that some company somewhere was hired by a Super PAC to push pro-Hilary messages and simply didn't do enough of the research to figure out how negatively their campaign was being received by just about everyone who didn't already support her.

I think if Hillary truly didn't want to be seen as the "Vote for me or you are sexist/racist" candidate, she could have taken some steps to downplay it rather than feed into it. She didn't have to use the slogan "I'm with her". It made her sound both self-entitled and pushing her gender, as the emphasis was usually on the last syllable and often followed by the "its about time for a woman president" line by those you speak of. They really should have pushed "She's with you" or something like that.

Anybody remember that one debate where Bernie told Hillary to wait her turn after she interrupted him and we then heard accusations of him being "disrespectful to women" and the Bernie Bro nonsense? And when Madeleine Albright introduced Hillary at a Hillary event saying there is a special place in hell for women who don't support Hillary? Is that now so forgotten?

She also could have pushed for truly progressive policy as Bernie did and could have pushed a message of unison rather than division, as Obama did before her. Remember Obama's "Yes We Can" and "There is no Red America or Blue America. There is no Black America or White America. There is the United States of America"? Hillary instead came across as the status quo "No, We Can't" candidate and we were constantly hearing about the "black vote" and "latino vote" and "women vote" etc as if these groups of people are monoliths. And it certainly didn't help that she was running against Trump with his own pushing of identity politics (creating an other to fear). The identity politics in this election really was stark, and was pushed by both the Republicans and Democrats for different reasons and from different angles.

 

[J842P]

This is probably a rhetorical question, but why is it so difficult for white people to comprehend the fact that non-white people actually exist?

What? You realize you are asking a non-white person this, right?

 

[J842P]

It wasn't Hilary's message, but all during the Hillary Campaign there was a (hired?) army of shills that pushed that kind of shit pretty aggressively across most social media platforms. It's generally assumed that most of these were paid trolls pushing a message from a media/advertising/marketing company or three, because their talking points tended to be pretty similar over stretches of time. The most memorable example was the sudden flood of commenters, opinion posters, letters in local newspapers and speakers at public events who said Bernie Sanders calling Hilary "unqualified" was "Dangerous and irresponsible" and that his statements could be used by Republicans as ammunition against her and that his failure to realize this showed that he didn't understand how politics worked, or something. It was such a consistent and specific message -- and even the same key phrases over and over again: "That is dangerous and irresponsible!" or "Hilary Clinton is the most qualified candidate in history!" -- that people figured out pretty quick that it was more paid marketing than it was actual supporters.

Those same hired shills were also behind a lot of the "Vote for Hilary or you're sexist!" rhetoric. There was a two-week period where anyone who could clearly articulate the reasons they supported Bernie over Hilary (which, if I think about it, includes basically everyone who DID support Bernie at the time) was told "The mansplainers are out in force today!" (Yes, that exact phrase) followed by the suggestion that they should "Admit it: it's time for a woman president!"

If you could call it "interference," it's the fact that most people tended to associate the marketing campaign with Hilary Clinton's campaign, whether it is fair or not. I think a lot of people assumed that she or her office or Debbie Shultz or someone else close to her was personally directing the Shills and helping to organize their marketing push. It's more likely that some company somewhere was hired by a Super PAC to push pro-Hilary messages and simply didn't do enough of the research to figure out how negatively their campaign was being received by just about everyone who didn't already support her.

I think if Hillary truly didn't want to be seen as the "Vote for me or you are sexist/racist" candidate, she could have taken some steps to downplay it rather than feed into it. She didn't have to use the slogan "I'm with her". It made her sound both self-entitled and pushing her gender, as the emphasis was usually on the last syllable and often followed by the "its about time for a woman president" line by those you speak of. They really should have pushed "She's with you" or something like that.

Anybody remember that one debate where Bernie told Hillary to wait her turn after she interrupted him and we then heard accusations of him being "disrespectful to women" and the Bernie Bro nonsense? And when Madeleine Albright introduced Hillary at a Hillary event saying there is a special place in hell for women who don't support Hillary? Is that now so forgotten?

She also could have pushed for truly progressive policy as Bernie did and could have pushed a message of unison rather than division, as Obama did before her. Remember Obama's "Yes We Can" and "There is no Red America or Blue America. There is no Black America or White America. There is the United States of America"? Hillary instead came across as the status quo "No, We Can't" candidate and we were constantly hearing about the "black vote" and "latino vote" and "women vote" etc as if these groups of people are monoliths. And it certainly didn't help that she was running against Trump with his own pushing of identity politics (creating an other to fear). The identity politics in this election really was stark, and was pushed by both the Republicans and Democrats for different reasons and from different angles.

Yeah, it wasn't just Albright but also Gloria Steinem:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...s-much-to-be-proud-of/?utm_term=.923191de21d3

Honestly, I was surprised by Albright being so politically tone-deaf. Although I'm not the greatest fan of hers, she always struck me as shrewd and aware.

Steinem has never really been a person of much substance, so I wasn't surprised she said something so silly.

 

[ksen]

I agree with Jimmy, I didn't see Hillary's campaign at all the way Jolly Penguin saw it. At all.

I really have to wonder what lens Jolly Penguin glimpses the world through. Because I'm pretty sure that's not the way Hillary wanted her campaign to be seen, and that's not how I saw it, so there must be some interference somewhere that other people are picking up.

Well, a lot of that does have to do with the US media. Hillary could talk for half an hour about jobs programs and the only coverage she got was the one line where she mentioned the NC bathroom law. When you combine that with her needing to compete with wall-to-wall coverage of whatever idiot thing Trump was doing that day, it's not a surprise that very few people had any idea what her campaign was about.

TBF I recently read a Vox or Atlantic article that said Hillary's ad campaign was the lightest on policy and heaviest on personal attacks seen in years.

So if people had a hard time understanding her positions look no further than her ad buys.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

So if people had a hard time understanding her positions look no further than her ad buys.

Hard to believe, but she actually had a much more attack heavy add campaign than Trump did, and he actually had more policy in his adds than she did. And this is Trump we are talking about. Her campaign boiled down to "I'm not him, and he's a racist/misogynist", and she expected to win based on that alone, implying that anybody who voted against her was a racist / misogynist. And after she lost we've heard this again and again. Gasp! I didn't realize the country was so racist/sexist!!... As if that was the only reason people would vote for him and against her.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Well, a lot of that does have to do with the US media. Hillary could talk for half an hour about jobs programs and the only coverage she got was the one line where she mentioned the NC bathroom law. When you combine that with her needing to compete with wall-to-wall coverage of whatever idiot thing Trump was doing that day, it's not a surprise that very few people had any idea what her campaign was about.

TBF I recently read a Vox or Atlantic article that said Hillary's ad campaign was the lightest on policy and heaviest on personal attacks seen in years.

So if people had a hard time understanding her positions look no further than her ad buys.

That's true. She did pretty much base her campaign on the message that Trump is an unqualified idiot who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office. I guess she can be happy that she was proven right.

 

[dismal]

TBF I recently read a Vox or Atlantic article that said Hillary's ad campaign was the lightest on policy and heaviest on personal attacks seen in years.

So if people had a hard time understanding her positions look no further than her ad buys.

That's true. She did pretty much base her campaign on the message that Trump is an unqualified idiot who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office. I guess she can be happy that she was proven right.

No, the genius of her campaign was saying how horrible it would be if kids had to hear the sorts of things Trump says by relentlessly playing Trump saying things when children were watching.

 

[Terrell]

TBF I recently read a Vox or Atlantic article that said Hillary's ad campaign was the lightest on policy and heaviest on personal attacks seen in years.

So if people had a hard time understanding her positions look no further than her ad buys.

That's true. She did pretty much base her campaign on the message that Trump is an unqualified idiot who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office. I guess she can be happy that she was proven right.

Yeah, she went way overboard on that one. I live in Central Florida, and saw tons of political ads before the election, hers, Trumps, and so called "independent" groups. She never bothered to use this against him.



It may have actually been effective, compared to Trump's statements she chose to use in her ads.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I'm not white, so I don't know, and I'm pretty sure I exist. What does that have to do with listing off a bunch of racial categories for no apparent reason?

Because most of the "categories" Sanders tended to refer to are people who have a very real reason to expect American politicians to deliberately ignore them or else completely forget about them altogether. Calling them out by name is the bare minimum of "engagement." Pretending not to remember that they even exist is... well, not disengagement, exactly. It's just "normal."

I don't recall a lot of this with Obama. He actually ran a fairly inclusive campaign uniting rather than dividing like Hillary.

OBAMA did, sure.

But in the 8 years since he first got elected, the Democrats went on to receive an unbroken series of crushing electoral defeats. They lost state legislatures in half the country, governors, city councils, school boards. They lost control of districts and areas that were solidly democratic, they got DESTROYED in places that overwhelmingly supported Obama. This is, again, because the democratic leadership -- of which Barrack Obama has never, repeat, NEVER been a member -- spent all of their time triangulating on the least offensive stances they could possibly manage, backtracking from any statement, policy or agenda at the first suggestion by anyone that it was a "liberal" idea. They eventually got to the point that even the POSSIBILITY of being called "liberal" was something they went out of their way to avoid.

So when they were greasing themselves up to get butt-raped a few years ago, I had that very interesting conversation with a Democratic fundraiser who called me on the phone insisting that it was SOOOO important to the Country and to the State that we donate what we could to help defeat Bruce Rauner. I told him "You, Sir, will have my vote. You have my vote because the people you are running against are a bunch of psychopaths who have nothing but antipathy for people like me. You have my vote, but I am not sending you so much as a dime. I think 'I'm better than the other guy' is a good reason to vote for someone, but it is NOT a good reason to fund someone."

His reply was one I will never forget: "All of those things, those are great ideas. We can think about adding them to the platform IF we win. But with a Republican governor, none of that can be an option." And there it was, plain as day: Your causes might be important to us some day, but right now we just want to win.

These days, I have it on a notecard. I read it every time they call me and ask for donations: "I will happily donate to the political party that believes healthcare is a civil right, that believes that the War on Drugs is an unnecessary and unhelpful moral crusade that punishes but does not heal addicts or their families, and that a strong, well-funded education system is a society's way of investing in its own future. Those are the principals most important to me in politics, and until I see that those principals are important to YOUR party, I am not sending you a dime."

 

[Crazy Eddie]

That's true. She did pretty much base her campaign on the message that Trump is an unqualified idiot who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office. I guess she can be happy that she was proven right.

Yeah, she went way overboard on that one. I live in Central Florida, and saw tons of political ads before the election, hers, Trumps, and so called "independent" groups. She never bothered to use this against him.



It may have actually been effective, compared to Trump's statements she chose to use in her ads.

Thing is, hitting Trump on that one exposes her to implying that your wages are NOT HIGH ENOUGH, and then she's getting called a liberal for wanting to raise the minimum wage. Can't go letting people think you're a liberal during an election year, can you?

 

[Harry Bosch]

Because most of the "categories" Sanders tended to refer to are people who have a very real reason to expect American politicians to deliberately ignore them or else completely forget about them altogether. Calling them out by name is the bare minimum of "engagement." Pretending not to remember that they even exist is... well, not disengagement, exactly. It's just "normal."

I don't recall a lot of this with Obama. He actually ran a fairly inclusive campaign uniting rather than dividing like Hillary.

OBAMA did, sure.

But in the 8 years since he first got elected, the Democrats went on to receive an unbroken series of crushing electoral defeats. They lost state legislatures in half the country, governors, city councils, school boards. They lost control of districts and areas that were solidly democratic, they got DESTROYED in places that overwhelmingly supported Obama. This is, again, because the democratic leadership -- of which Barrack Obama has never, repeat, NEVER been a member -- spent all of their time triangulating on the least offensive stances they could possibly manage, backtracking from any statement, policy or agenda at the first suggestion by anyone that it was a "liberal" idea. They eventually got to the point that even the POSSIBILITY of being called "liberal" was something they went out of their way to avoid.

So when they were greasing themselves up to get butt-raped a few years ago, I had that very interesting conversation with a Democratic fundraiser who called me on the phone insisting that it was SOOOO important to the Country and to the State that we donate what we could to help defeat Bruce Rauner. I told him "You, Sir, will have my vote. You have my vote because the people you are running against are a bunch of psychopaths who have nothing but antipathy for people like me. You have my vote, but I am not sending you so much as a dime. I think 'I'm better than the other guy' is a good reason to vote for someone, but it is NOT a good reason to fund someone."

His reply was one I will never forget: "All of those things, those are great ideas. We can think about adding them to the platform IF we win. But with a Republican governor, none of that can be an option." And there it was, plain as day: Your causes might be important to us some day, but right now we just want to win.

These days, I have it on a notecard. I read it every time they call me and ask for donations: "I will happily donate to the political party that believes healthcare is a civil right, that believes that the War on Drugs is an unnecessary and unhelpful moral crusade that punishes but does not heal addicts or their families, and that a strong, well-funded education system is a society's way of investing in its own future. Those are the principals most important to me in politics, and until I see that those principals are important to YOUR party, I am not sending you a dime."

The problem is that liberals and young people just don't vote consistently enough to win. The Clinton's tried to implement universal health care, came up a little short. Then they were rewarded by the liberals by not showing up and then getting their assed kicked in 1994. Gore came out with a pretty liberal agenda that included protecting the environment (which in mind is the most important issue today), wanting to move towards better health care, more affordable college, and then the liberals either didn't vote or voted Nader! I'm sorry but democrats want to win. The only way that we can take the country back from Trump is to win the most votes. And that means targeting voters that will vote and act flacky on election day.

 

[untermensche]

Thing is, hitting Trump on that one exposes her to implying that your wages are NOT HIGH ENOUGH, and then she's getting called a liberal for wanting to raise the minimum wage. Can't go letting people think you're a liberal during an election year, can you?

She ain't no liberal. Her husband was no liberal.

Obama was no liberal.

Bernie is a liberal.

It is a shame Democrats supported Hillary instead of a liberal.