but maybe it's because Trump is so extreme that we're floundering to find a way to forgive the Trump voters who we love (family and close friends)?

Trump takes "deplorable" to a whole new level that Bush and the others could never quite attain.

They didn't have a politician telling them how important Bush and Reagan voters were.

I'm guessing many of those same family members voted for other Republicans as well.

Snifler hadn't even taken office yet. He's a bully blowhard. The fact so many are quaking in their boots over this guy is starting to make me sick.

Or for those that did not vote for him. I am more inclined to feel sympathy for everyone else because we have to live with their stupidity.

My friends and family need to hear from people they know. Fox, Rush is all they hear.

If we break off communications we can't speak truth to them. Will they listen? I don't know.

We finally realized there's a problem. We've been losing white voters for years. Popular Democrats like Obama only masked the problem. Maybe if we really understood the Reagan Democrats, we wouldn't be living the nightmare today.

Hint. Google the Civil Rights movement.

Because no Democratic candidate for POTUS has won the white vote since before the Civil Rights Act was passed.

Screw the base. Let's out-Republican the Republicans.

There may be some that can be reached, as some did vote for Obama, but to those that want the right wing policies, and want the idea that everyone submits to them because they are white, there is no reach, only a chance to shame them when they get stuck in a ditch and the people that charmed them tell them to go to hell.

I dont have all the hard answers, but many of them see modern Democrats as elitists who are too far removed from the issues of working people.

Fucking fairies who bring them egalitarian economic measures in the night?

Good grief.

"Fucking none", or very few. And no, I dont buy that they're all "racist", because I live among many of them.

I know its a quant notion nowadays, and I may be alone in this, but I think working people should be voting for Democrats.

NOTE: I dont intepret "Reagen Democratic" in the literal sense (most of them are dead). I take this to mean midwestern working class people who mostly voted for Obama.

God forbid you call them out on it though. One is "race realist". And none would have voted for a Democrat anyway. Fuck 'em.

The vast majority of Trump supporters are Birthers, so to suggest that only a fraction of his supporters are racist (or sexist or xenophobic) is beyond absurd.

But we're the ones who are lazy in stating they're racist? You choose to side with them when they claim they think Dems are the ones who are the elites and out of touch. But WE are the ones who are lazy?

Okay then

Our big mistake was abandoning the states election-wise...this allowed a gerrymander...also trade is a big issue...the GOP and the Dems were sort of in cahoots with this one...but I always knew (live in Ohio) that the first party that said they would fix trade would win...now Trump has lied and will no doubt pay a price for this lie...but we need to concentrate on states ahead of the next census...which will keep the gerrymander for ten years people if we don't.

They have to play this game called "struggling to understand".

And then there's the sad fact that most Americans have more tolerance for racists than they do people who call out racism. We still see that at work here too. People are making up "Hillary didn't _______" stories every day that are completely untrue.

Pretending the TPP and campaign finance were huge issues Is completely dishonest but you see it here everyday. And PC- it's about oligarchs now, dontcha know? Nothing to do with POC or women at all.

It's a white wash.

not as a student at the University of Chicago, where he faced the Chicago police demonstrating for equal rights ... not as Mayor of Burlington, not as a Congressman or Senator.

The simple fact is that Brock used swiftboat tactics against Bernie - trying to preempt his using his very real protesting in the 1960s. It was asinine to argue - he was not the man in the picture, or to argue that it did not count because it was in Chicago, not the South. Here's a hint - Chicago in the 1960s was racist! In fact, the Clinton people started the he has no connections to POC as soon as he announced in Burlington. Several simultaneous - all related to Clinton - people made the point - VT is mostly white, why did he choose such a non diverse place to announce. (Even though from photos, there were not that many more POC at HRC's Roosevelt Island announcement. ) The fact that he represents VT, lives here and was mayor here explain why he announced there!

I disagree with Bernie AND Hillary Clinton on TPP, but I think it is a huge issue. Campaign Finance reform is very important and money is one reason that we are where we are. It is not just Bernie who has spoken of these problems - two people who were most eloquent and had one of the strongest solutions were Senators Wellstone and Kerry back in the 1990s!

How about when he was dismissing the voters in Southern states who just happened to be majority people of color: in South Carolina, blacks were 61 percent of all voters; Alabama, they were 54 percent; Georgia, 51 percent; Mississippi, 71 percent.

The fact is Sanders, in the House, was part of the mostly POC progressive caucus.

Sanders' dismal performance with minorities.

that it wasn't Bernie's policy to dismiss their value to the party.

If Obama had lost Iowa in the 2008 primary, those states would have probably gone for Hillary.

is totally beside the point. He said that these states with majority black voters "distorted reality" but he didn't say that about the overwhelmingly white states of Iowa and NH who voted first. Fifty-eight percent of all black people live in the south, and they are the most reliable democratic voting bloc. He was totally dismissive and disrespectful of these liberal voters while he crowed about his wins in undemocratic and unrepresentative caucuses in "red" states. Do Utah and Idaho represent "reality" for the democratic party? Kansas? Oklahoma? The best that can be said is that he is totally tone deaf.

“Well, you know,” Sanders said, “people say, ‘Why does Iowa go first, why does New Hampshire go first,’ but I think that having so many Southern states go first kind of distorts reality as well.”

why he was so dismissive of the democratic voters, primarily AAs, in the largest region of the country.

And his vote regarding the Minutemen.

With Kerry as your avatar?

It's disgusting.

Sanders didn't have any black people on his team, until he had to.

He got someone to do outreach and then threw him under the bus.

Oh, and we can follow up Sanders sad, sorry performance with PoC with his latest Town Hall where he redefines the term "Political Correctness".

It was the closest thing I have seen to what was done to Kerry - and it is painful ir was done by a Democrat. Both tried to distort part of a candidate"s history. In both cases, the motivation was to prevent him from using that history to gain credibility on an issue the opposing candidate wanted to as theirs alone.

I do not like it when a former Republican slime monster returns to those measures - even if he supported a Democrat.

about appealing to the white working class are what caused him to stumble hard with the base. Sanders' own words. In fact, people got posts hidden here for directly quoting Sanders.

It's really kind of scary to think this type of hostile explanation is acceptable to malign other Democrats who merely listened to Bernie's own words and formed an impression of his priorities from what he said. How downright creepy you would ever call it swiftboating. Completely out of touch.

PS, he just rudely blasted a Latina woman last month about identity politics. It was posted here for several days. You are completely off base.

I am speaking of what David Brock did in 2015 - you are speaking of comments, intentionally misinterpreted after the election. Even had Bernie said something you disagreed with in 2015, it does not justify the lies and distortions that tried to erase the fact that Sanders was there - out in the streets for civil rights in the 1960s. Brock did not say that Bernie 2015/2016 did not live up to the Bernie of the 1960s - he questioned Sanders' 1960 activism.

Note the ONLY person I criticized is David Brock -- and I stand by that. It was disgraceful and not that far from the creepy slimy things he did against the Clinton's. What seems clear is he changed who he was loyal to -- not his methods.

As to Bernie, what you are responding to are comments post mortem. I did not see the Latina incident that you are referring to, but I did see Bernie speaking to a 200 plus group of Vermont seniors - answering their questions politely and helpfully - often pointing to specific staff people they should speak to. Being Vermont, they were mostly white, but he was warmly greeted by the few POC there. These are people who know him -- some having been guests at his holiday dinner for more than a decade. This was this month. There is a reason Sanders has the highest approval rating of any Senator -- he earns it.

I KNOW post mortems are hard when your hopes and dreams were with the nominee who lost, especially if you did not see her (or him) as a once in a life time candidate. Sanders is not the enemy. Sanders and EVERY Democrat is needed to fight Trump. Just as I have to stop myself from saying what I think of Schumer on several issues because there are many issues we need to be united on, I think the Clinton supporters have to stop their attacks on Sanders. Sanders was a very good advocate for Clinton. He was every bit as supportive to her as she was to Obama. (I personally saw both HRC and Bernie as flawed candidates.)

2016 was a close election - as 2000 and 2004 were. That makes it harder as any small gaffe, action, event could be said to have swung the small number of people that made the difference between winning and losing. I needed the JK group after 2004 because Democrats - all the way up to Bill Clinton were far harsher on Kerry than Sanders or any public figure is on Clinton -- when he lost in a year that no one in 2003 expected us to win. That every 2008 Democrat ran on platforms very close to Kerry's 2004 platform with Iraq changed to essentially be a variation of Kerry/Feingold indicates that the party knew that time passing was essentially all that was needed to win 2008 - as Bush soon sak from around 50% approval to the low 30s.

For 2016, some of the analyses written by Democrats from Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania suggest are worth looking at -- and I suspect that political scientists will design studies that will try to identify why we lost those states. Was it that it was harder for many to vote given the voter id/voter suppression laws? Was it that there were enough people, unhappy and frustrated with their own lives that they were vulnerable to a campaign based on hate? (Note Brexit, which was pushed by the British nationalists, and Netanyahu's election, where he was likely to lose until he spoke of hordes of Israeli Arabs being brought out to vote against him. )

Was it that the coastal discussion of "white privilege" which is absolutely needed to understand systemic injustice was seen as the liberals, Democrats not caring for underprivileged whites, who absolutely had to be startled to hear they are privileged ? In those states, you have counties full of people who know that they can not get jobs paying what a middle class life - that their parents and grandparents had. How do you speak of BOTH systemic injustice that means you are immediately a suspect if you are black, AND speak to economic injustice to change the current system where almost all the economic gains of this century went to a very small percent of people?

Trump managed to gain poor whites by making them think their enemies were the immigrants, the Mexicans, the blacks and the liberal elite - who Trump would fight on their behalf. Needless to say, he won't. Look at his nominees for Labor or any Financial post. We lost the argument that electing a Democrat would lead to less economic injustice. This is an argument that we should have won hands down based on facts (no matter which Democrat was the nominee) -- and we need to regain the perception that we are better for poor people - no matter what color.

I think that it was a huge error to have cast social injustice as competing against economic injustice, when we desperately need to address BOTH. It is not a rejection of HRC to say this. In fact, saying that the problem could be something like this is way better than if people were saying that we as a party had the right message, a very bad candidate who could not articulate it well or excite people to come out to vote. We also need to try to understand what happened to have any clue at all to changing it going forward.

It was Bernie's own words about focusing on the white working class, and it wasn't intentionally misinterpreted. It was what Bernie said. Just because people picked up on Bernie's polarizing statements doesn't mean they were wrong or need to be scolded or called liars, corpodems, third wayers or whatever other divisive and alienating names his side was tossing out to voters who weren't on Bernie's bandwagon. Bernie is very divisive. He has divided Democrats.

As to the whites Bernie was targeting, Donald Trump told them they were going to get their grandfather's jobs back. That was in addition to whatever open bigotry he promoted. Donald also stole Bernie's smears against Democrats to manipulate those voters. As we see now, approximately 80,000 people decided this election. Most of your comments are again trying to gloss over the simple fact that Bernie made Democrats and Hillary Clinton the enemy, and Trump saw a chance to further divide those voters by using Bernie's own divisive rhetoric with the added promise of bringing grandpa's job back. There is no doubt that Bernie primed the pump for Donald to manipulate this election. Donald is a con man, and he saw a divisive attack that would work to his advantage by watching Democrats fighting amongst themselves based on Bernie's divisive attacks. It was all to Donald's benefit. Donald even thanked Bernie for the ammo. That's the number one reason not to have divisive and prolonged primaries.

Bernie seems to be very self-interested and interested in his image. He is accusatory but very superficial, enough so that it just alienates people. I expect him to make statements that further advance his limited Powerpoint talking points and not much else. Sure, he'll be out there now trying to be Democrat's savior, but
in some circles he is heading into persona non grata territory because of his divisiveness.

And every election should be evaluated. That is political science and it doesn't take a loser or winner to continue that tradition. If you didn't win 100% of the vote, then analyzing where you can do better next time is expected. What's strange is seeing Bernie supporters who lost over 6 months ago telling people how to handle a loss when they can't seem to grasp that they should take their own advice about that.

I think you are referring to comments said after the election. These are two different things. I was saying that Brock's tactics offended me because they are sleazy.

You are entitled to your perception of Sanders. You are also free to think that, if not for Bernie, Trump would not have used the SAME MESSAGE HE USED WHEN HE ANNOUNCED to entice the frustrated, unhappy Reagan Democrats. You can go on, thinking HRC ran a completely flawless campaign - which NO ONE has done. As to a general election opponent using a criticism from the primaries - please give me a link to even one thread that Gore "lost" because of Bradley tying him to Bill Clinton - as Bush did; or the Kerry lost because Dean called him a flip flopper; or Obama not winning bigger due to Clinton saying that unlike her and McCain, he was not ready for the 3 am call. (In fact the Clinton attack is worse than anything Bernie, Howard, or Bill said of their primary opponents. Bernie, in the primary, in one of the debates very positively compared Clinton to all the Republicans.)

HRC made a huge error that I still do not understand in giving all the Goldman/Saks etc speeches. She did not need the money and did not use it to fund her campaigns. She KNEW she was very likely running for President. Sanders, as an opponent, mentioning that did not "give" Trump anything. Trump was clearly going to use it - because he was using the anger that no bankers were tried for the 2008 collapse they caused even in his announcement. In fact, one thing that did hurt HRC was that she took a strong stand against TPP, but spoke positively about it on one of the leaked tapes. I would imagine that if Sanders did not run and if O'Malley generated as little support as he did, HRC would not have taken a clear position against the TPP.

Let's speculate how that would have played out. HRC would either have come into the GE with the comments against it she made or she might have ignored TPP. Trump would have come in ranting against it and all other trade deals. You still end up with Trump blaming all jobs lost on trade deals - something that many here on DU believe - ignoring that many jobs left the rust belt for the non union South first and that globalization, with or without trade deals exasperated this. It also ignores that technology has eliminated many jobs.

Here I disagree with BOTH Sanders and HRC -- and of course, Trump, and see that trade deals could be the only solution if coupled with legislation that helps the "losers" from some of the profit of the "winners" of the deals. Needless to say my opinion is a VERY minority position on DU. If you want to see why this was a valuable to Trump, consider that many, less politically involved or aware people, shared the DU condemnation of all trade deals. Trump, who had no real record for anything, called them all bad deals, that he would tear up and he would put up 35% tariffs! Against that demagoguery, Trump spoke of Bill Clinton signing NAFTA into existence and noted that HRC said that said TPP was the Gold Standard - ignoring the actual words HRC said when the TPP was not even completely negotiated.

As to Bernie, Bernie advocated for things he has advocated for for 30 years - it is projection to say he was superficial and that he was interested in his image. This was not something given to him by a focus group! His economic injustice was not just something focus groups suggested could counter the issue of systemic social injustice that organizations like Black Lives Matter managed to actually get people to think about. For one, it is a false choice that you speaking of one meant you were not concerned about the other.


You ignore that HRC's team made the decision that to win the best path was to disqualify a man, who should have already been disqualified. You can ignore that some on HRC's team had planned to end with a few weeks of uplifting, positive messages. In retrospect, they did something very unusual, they made HRC into an attack dog in the debates. I admit, that like everyone here, I thought HRC won as she slammed Trump.

In retrospect, after someone mentioned it to me and I had time to reflect on it, I do not think that was a good strategy. HRC had a problem with likability - as did Trump. Both, in the debates got in slams that their team cheered - and the other side hated. Making her an attack dog does not make her more likable to people on the fence. An alternative would have been the 2008 HRC of the first few debates, when she was 100% comfortable. She was then the HRC that many here saw - very smart, knowledgeable, somewhat witty and human. That Hillary might have changed minds on whether she was likable enough.

Bernie did not cause HRC's favorable numbers to fall - he entered the race in May 2015, her numbers started collapsing in March 2015 when the email stories came out and for many reawakened negative characteristics that she was seen to have in the 1990s. Obviously, her inner circle did not see those negatives as suggesting she needed to avoid anything that aggravated that and that she needed to really do something big to change that perception.

Your continued manipulations and browbeating are just more example of the divisiveness that seems to foment from that side on a nonstop basis. No candidate is perfect. No campaign is perfect. That's not what I was talking about. I was talking about a divisive and prolonged primary that gave a con man like Trump the ability to continue the divisiveness to his advantage.

You can tell how Donald totally played the Bernie supporters and how he conned them. Look what he has done. He has completely humiliated Bernie's supporters by doing the exact opposite of everything Bernie campaigned on. He has appointed nothing but Wall Street billionaires, one of them being the largest benefactor from the mortgage crises. He only needed enough Berners to put him over the top, and judging from the Bernie or Bust and Bern it Down aggravators, they were more than happy to vote against the Democrat . The rest of Donald's agenda seems to be specifically to give the middle finger to Bernie. That just shows how much Bernie's rhetoric was empty and manipulative. A con man picked it up and shaped it to his own benefit. He stole Bernie's playbook and is now shoving it back in your face. He used Bernie's own words and Bernie's own divisive rhetoric and smears against Hillary and Democrats.

In short, you are blaming Bernie because the Reagan Democrats deserted HRC. You are fixated on an idea that Bernie supporters gave the election to Trump. Bill Clinton himself says the campaign did not do enough to reach those people.

I absolutely disagree. Consider that Bernie won two groups of people in the primary - Democrats who prefered him to Clinton AND many people he brought in who were libertarians, people who never voted or Republicans who preferred him over their choice. When HRC won, she got the Democrats who had preferred Sanders and Sanders and his supporters worked hard to win some of the latter group, who likely would not have voted for HRC if there had been no primary. There were people that Bernie pulled away from Trump in NH in the primaries -- and these were people that Sanders tried to win for HRC in the general election.

Sanders himself made the case you are making here -- as did many of his ardent supporters - against Trump.

As to the primary it was repeatedly noted during the primary how polite it was vs the Republican primary where all 17 called each other names and made accusations. As to prolonged, I would ask -- what about 2008. Bernie was not technically eliminated from winning the most pledged delegates until California voted. Hillary conceded a few days after all the primaries were over. She argued the tough primary made Obama tougher. Not to mention, you still have not identified anything where Bernie said that TRUMP was better on a key issue as she did in crediting that she and McCain were ready for the 3 am call. That primary fight was FAR nastier than 2016.

It wasn't Bernie's team who argued that "Hillary was not the person in a picture" used by her team ---- when it fact it was! As favored as she was, her team was out smearing Bernie's choice of where to announce - rather uncontroversially in a beautiful city park in his home town where he had been mayor - as a sign that he did not care enough about POC. These were all early things - so if the primary got negative, HRC's team can be said to have started it.

past March when it was mathematically impossible for him to win was because they were hoping the FBI would indict Hillary. So it was obvious to any astute observer who wasn't on his bandwagon that he had motives beyond the goodly pureness of his contrived message. He was an opportunist who used divisive tactics to gain an edge over a candidate who could not compete with his endless personal smears so as not to alienate his supporters. It was so ridiculous that any time she dared to defend herself, there were even more accusations against her that were really just too dumb and conspiratorial for words.

Neither you nor I can interview those 80,000 or so people who decided this election, but you can look at the voting margins and see that virtually ALL of those 3rd party/Independent margins would have put Hillary over the edge. So it wasn't just the Reagan Democrats. There were organized movements from the Bernie diehards who convinced people to vote against the Democrat. It was and still is a very divisive campaign and "movement". Now look what we have.

He was all about the banks...I thought he was weak on women's issues like abortion and contraception as well. He attacked the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton non-stop for months...he was not swift-boated. In fact, Sanders should not have been permitted to run as a Democrat in my opinion. It probably cost us the election.

You can not ignore that he was most often with the Black Caucus in the House on votes and that he was willing to protest in the streets of Chicago in the late 1960s for Civil Rights and was arrested. on women's rights. he scored 100% from NOW - (2007/2008) https://votesmart.org/interest-group/1475/rating/4275?p=2&of=#.WGfj0_krI54 ) and Naral (2015) http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/assets/download-files/2015-congressional-record.pdf These were the ones found by google.

I have seen NO analysis that has indicated that anyone who would have come out to vote for HRC in the rust belt did not vote or voted for Trump because of anything Sanders did. He was no tougher on her than Clinton and Edwards were on Obama. Imagine that Obama would have lost in 2008 in the general election, I assume that many might have cited her comments that she and McCain were ready for a 3 am call and he wasn't or that he was just inspiring words. BOTH of those are tougher than anything that Sanders said and they were said by a powerful politician and repeated by a former President!

In any election, you will find that some charges made in the primaries resurface in the general election. It would be silly to argue that Dean calling Kerry a flip flopper (bringing giant posters of flip flops out in the primaries) led to Kerry's close lose in 2004. (It incidentally is a very common charge against a legislator when a governor runs) In 1998, it was AL Gore who first brought up Willie Horton against Dukakis.

In fact, the main things Trump used against Clinton were things Bernie Sanders did not make issues. He famously dismissed that anyone should speak of her "damned emails" and he never called her untrustworthy or dishonest. She actually shifted to many of his positions. He did point out that she had spoken well of TPP and - in fact - as the core of her shift to Asia, it was in reality, what she could have called one of her strongest State Department accomplishments. That issue - and the Goldman/Saks speeches were the ONLY common charges that I heard from both Sanders and Trump. Trump further was able to use the purported leaks of some Goldman/Saks speeches to make her sound like her shift on TPP was political and not honest.

HRC ran a close election -- and she lost. Like any candidate, there were errors she made and post mortems that try to explain the result will (painfully) focus on them and ignore any flaws of the winner.

he also attacked the Democratic Party relentlessly and did not join the party. I just want to fix this party and win...I remain unconvinced that Bernie's ideas can accomplish this.

Consistently pivots to economics to such a ridiculous extent that now he's saying PC talk has to do with our corrupt economic system.

Which should be a clue, no?

that bernie is a racism supporter, just looks rrally small...

only just redefined "political correctness" on tv during the Town Hall with Chris Hayes.

Do I need to find a clip to prove it?

If you want to split hairs and say that wasn't an accusation of him supporting racism, fine, but that is splitting hairs.

Even PC is not about women or POC in his world. That's how much he's tried to avoid it.

cpuld...

Not in practice.

I'm a fan of Howard Dean. Don't get me wrong. But the Democrats have not run a national campaign in 50 states in a very long time. Nor have Republicans.

Candidates in all 50 states that they bankroll and support, from dogcatcher to school board all the way up to national office. Dems are top heavy and always looking for the next star senator or presidential lock, while those bastards are locking up huge swaths of elected office.

But he ran a traditonal campaign with minimum pussy grabbing.

or maggot supporters?
Bush's were stupid
maggots are deplorable.

Do you agree that it might be a good idea to try and win over more voters in 2 years, or 4? Seeing as we not only lost the EC, we also control a record low number of statehouses, etc.

Here's another couple questions:

We write off the Trump voters as irredeemable fuckhats, fine-- so looking at the electorate this year, who is left? After Hillary and Trump, who got the next-largest percentage of votes? Should we try and appeal to that slice of the voting populace?

Hmmmm. Any ideas how we might do so? Specifically.

I have some ideas, but every time I mention them it seems to infuriate someone, so I'll leave it at that.

To fight against voter disenfranchisement in order to enable more people to vote. I understand some politicians benefit from a whiter and more affluent electorate and have an interest in making it more so, but I believe it important to stand for equal rights rather than to cater to those who oppose them.

There has been little attention to widespread voter disenfranchisement in the past election period other than by Tom Perez.

I'm also confused how working class has come to be defined as white men making over $100k a year while the less affluent voters, women and people of color, who make up the lion's share of the workforce of those earning less than $75k a year, are somehow not working class.

That some politicians choose to focus on conservative white voters over the disenfranchised is a reflection of their own values. I do not happen to share the view that white male votes are more important than the millions of Hispanics and African Americans purged from voting lists.

If Republicans decide they no longer want a white supremacist government, I welcome their support. They, however, did chose to vote for Trump, and the assertion that they didn't know what they were supporting is condescending. If there is one issue Trump was clear about, it was hostility toward anyone who wasn't white, male and Christian. Supporters at his rallies made themselves clear by shouting racial and gendered epithets, including JewSA. I see no reason not to take them at their word.

You did not address my question. Presumably Democrats thought it a good idea to win more votes after defeats to Bush and Reagan, yet we didn't hear those voters championed. The only difference I can see is they didn't have Bernie telling them what to think.

And I do recall quite a bit of talk of "Reagan Democrats". Fuck, even Neil Young voted for Reagan in '80 IIRC, although he apologized later.

Like you, I think voter disenfranchisement is a huge issue. However, like these other issues, it's pretty fucking tough to do anything about if we neither control the DOJ at the Federal level or the State governments where the disenfranchisement is taking place.

You didn't address my point, either, so we're even I guess.

i am so frustrated that this party did not stand up en masse against disenfranchisement.
i feel like the party sees them as votes, and decides if they need them to win or not, instead of seeing them as citizens robbed of their most basic right. just makes me wanna puke.

value Democratic Principles.

I don't believe in writing off anybody, and that includes the Democratic base.
What I don't believe in is repeating a meme circulated by the media and a politician, particularly when exit poll data and post-election surveys directly contradict their claims.

The clear message is that white male Republicans are more important. The fact there has been zero attention to anyone else demonstrates as much. I cant get on board with that. What disturbs me is how they are going to seek to change the party to appeal to white male entitlement.
I've already seen a couple of posts suggesting abortion rights be abandoned as " too divisive." And the attacks on identity politics reveal a determination to abandon the concerns of women and people of color--the great majority of the population.

I'm all for stronger worker friendly policies, but pretending the working class is white and rural ignores economic reality in favor of a 1950s type nostalgia.

And the message I see repeated over and over again is, screw anyone who voted for Trump, and certainly dont waste any time trying to win their votes.

So, fine. Okay, Great. And there's no point in trying to win over people like you or I, who already vote for the damn Democrat come hell or high water.

So after us Hillary voters, and screw the Trump voters, what was the next biggest slice in the presidential voting electorate?

...

And do you have any idea how we might reenergize our message - because clearly, there is room for improvement, like I said before even with disenfranchisement, we need to win some elections just to be able to address it- while keeping it in line with what I am sure we all agree are important progressive values, to appeal to those voters, instead of the Trump ones?



In that vein, If there is one consistent thread through my years of posting on this site, it is that goverment should generally not be in the business of legislating the personal choices of citizens, most crucially when it comes to their own bodily autonomy. Under no fucking circumstances should reproductive freedom or choice be "negotiable".

Or that the party doesn't need to make changes. What I asked is why people have decided that the white male Trump voters require special consideration that wasn't evident in previous losses.

And we don't need to win elections to challenge voter disenfranchisement. That is done through the courts. Additionally, control over elections happens at the state level. I believe focus on state elections, as opposed to an obsession with the presidency to the exclusion of everything else, is key to strengthening the Democratic Party.

Now the irony is that some the same people (not you) arguing that white male voters require particular attention are also announcing that those Jewish Americans who have trouble with Ellison as DNC chair should just leave the party. So what is that about? Is it that the concern is Bernie and promoting him and whatever he determines? Or is it that white Christian male voters who showed a willingness to vote for a White Supremacist administration are somehow preferable to Jews or disenfranchised people of color?

We can challenge disenfranchisement through the courts, and we should. Unfortunately we both know where the new judges are going to be coming from over the next few years

Clearly we need to win elections at the state level. At this risk of repeating myself, I think one good way to do that would be to remind everyone that real progressives support the bill of rights, personal freedom, choice, autonomy, and the like. Because frankly, we've been doing a piss-poor job of that, from my perspective.

AND because we know from experience that once they get any sort of power, the GOP knee-jerks towards authoritarianism. So yeah, I see an opening with an electorate that, like it or not, increasingly skews small-l libertarian on issues of getting the government out of their personal business.

I'm a Jewish American, and I don't have a problem with Ellison as head of the party. One big reason is, Ellison is sane and forward-looking on the question of cannabis legalization, whereas DWS decided to go to the times in the middle of the previous election season, and double down on "reefer madness". This, in a year when over 70% of Florida voted in favor of medical marijuana reform. Marijuana was far more popular than Trump OR Clinton, in Florida. Do you think DWS's intransigence on the issue hurt us with those 29 electoral college votes? Probably not surprising, but-- I do.

Yeah, I know, there are such bigger fish to fry. How dare I even bring it up. And yet, weed was quite possibly the most popular thing on the ballot this year. Like it or not, care or not, roll your eyes or not, it's time to pay attention.

See- we have been damaged, in my mind, by the perception that "liberals" and the Democratic Party do not stand against authoritarianism, nanny-statism, and the like. When memes are put out there that the left doesn't support free speech, for example, that hurts us. 1st Amendment threads on DU can be depressing - witness all the people who don't understand why "blasphemous cartoons" are protected speech - We ought to be seen as the party that supports the 1st Amendment, even if that means allowing people to say or publish or look at things we may personally deem offensive, "problematic", etc. etc.

There's a thread about Milo Yiannanopolous's book deal- it's a perfect example. The ONLY appeal that dude has to these college students who pack his appearances, is that "liberals" are constantly trying to shut him up. So he says he's gonna speak at a college campus, and the usual assortment of groups try to stop him, and what happens? His appearance is packed. And why? Because people want to find out what they've been told they're not allowed to hear. By trying to silence him, they're putting money straight into his wallet.

And these aren't cigar-chomping bald old white dudes in brooks brothers suits, these are 20 year olds, who believe that the right wing is "edgy" because it is forbidden.

It's real fuckin' simple, but we - or some of us have- lost it. I'm not saying try and appeal to "white male Trump voters". I'm saying go where the votes and the electorate is trending, and that is in the direction of strong advocacy for personal freedom and and "eff you" to anyone who would try and tell people what they're allowed to say, for instance, or read or think or watch on cable or do with their own bodies.



None of this, to my mind, is incompatible with social justice or improving the lives of the disenfranchised. But it's an area where our messaging has been muddled, or worse.

I realize this isn't your area of interest here with this thread. I know, Bernie Bernie Bernie. But... Bernie's not running in 2020, and neither is Hillary. It's time to look forward. And that should mean looking to where the votes are.

What I do know is that he seems determined to influence the direction of the party and his supporters are dedicated to enforcing his desires.

As for your being Jewish and not objecting to Ellison: I'm a white woman who didn't vote for Trump. That doesn't mean that other white women didn't. In fact, we know 52% did.

I like Ellison. He's my congressman. I've also been notified that if he is elected chair, I will be called to vote on the nomination of his successor since I was a CD 5 delegate. I'm not keen on losing him as a congressman, particularly when there are other good candidates for DNC chair. I don't care about that old stuff with Farrakhan either. I am drawn to Perez's concerns about disenfranchisement, and he was the one who led efforts to combat it in DOJ. Regardless of whom is chosen to head the DNC, I hope they take advantage of his expertise and commitment to the issue.

I get the oppressive nature of college campus life in terms of dissenting views. I can completely understand how that would be off putting. That, however, is beyond the scope of the federal government or the party. It's university administration and faulty who need to take a stand on that.

isn't that "the direction of the party" as well?

Your thread is about sympathy for Trump voters, which doesn't have a whole lot to do with Federal legislation, either. Rather, it's more a subjective question of tone and direction and who "we", collectively, are going to pursue or not in any theoretical quest for more votes.

Which was my point as well.

that some of that cultural stuff hasn't gotten out of hand. I don't know how much those kids represent "us" or the Democratic Party, though.

so in some regards, time will probably correct some of it naturally.

I think that is key. I have more sympathy for them as third party voters than the older folks who should know better.

We don't control the House, the Senate, or the presidency at the federal level. We've lost hundreds of local and state races. Do you think what we've been doing is working? I don't.

Part of it is partisan gerrymandering, but a big part of it is that we haven't won enough races that we could have won. Appealing to more voters is a means to that end.

Meanwhile, scant attention is paid to widespread voter disenfranchisement.

Why is it that white male Republucan voters a greater concern than ensuring the millions of disenfranchised can vote? And why was there not this outpouring of empathy toward Bush and Reagan voters?

How should the party transform itself to appeal to the over $100k a year white male Republucan voter? Is defining the grmajority of middle and lower income workers out of the working class due to their lower incomes, race or gender part of the effort to appeal to white male entitlement?

I worked with a couple guys who were reasonable about most things, but they flabbergasted me in 2000 by saying they were voting for Dumbya.

It was in a thread about gun control. Both of those co-workers stated they were voting for Bush because Bill Clinton signed a gun control bill and Hillary Clinton made public statements in support of it. They assumed that Gore would continue that agenda.

They even admitted that Dumbya was a moron! They didn't care!

I suspect that a lot of people are single-issue voters and are willing to overlook all of the things that they dislike about the Republicans because they agree with them on gun control or abortion or some other issue that swamps all of their other concerns.

I'm upset that many people voted for Trump, seemingly ignoring his racist comments... among other things that should have disqualified him!

It wouldn't surprise me if some Trump voters disliked his racist comments, but they voted for him anyway for other reasons. The values/priorities of some people are screwed up in my mind, but I haven't been very successful at changing them in the past.

Other people might think my priorities are screwy too. There was someone here that posted a judgemental reply to me several weeks ago about the vehicle that I now drive. That person probably has environmental concerns as a top priority for him/her. It's not like I'm driving a massive gas-guzzler now, but I don't drive a Prius anymore. I leased it and couldn't afford to buy it, so I bought a very cheap used car instead. I apparently wasn't "trying hard enough" according to that person.

I have a friend who usually votes for the Democrats but voted for Trump because he liked his opposition to the TPP. For him trade was the biggest issue and he was willing to overlook Trump's negatives.

Regarding your story about the car, I sometimes get responses like that from other Catholics. I am a Catholic and I consider myself to be pro-life but I don't see the Republicans as fully supportive of human life and dignity and I think that many liberal values are more consistent with a pro-life ethic. But many Catholics strongly disagree with me and believe that I am not pro-life because I don't make overturning Roe v. Wade my top priority but instead think that fighting poverty and supporting universal healthcare are better ways to support women and children and hopefully reduce the number of abortions, which to me is more important and practical than having a singular focus on the Supreme Court.

I agree with you about the abortion issue.

It's not like I take pleasure in abortions happening, and I don't think there's many people who do! Most women who go through it surely don't think it's pleasant either!

people are very different in their basic desires in life. Dr Steven Reiss has identified 16 of them (supposedly), and they're listed here: http://www.reissprofile.eu/basicdesire

Power
Independence
Curiosity
Acceptance
Order
Saving
Honor
Idealism
Social Contact
Family
Status
Vengeance
Romance
Eating
Physical Activity
Tranquility

If true, some of them make me ill! Vengeance, for example. Power irks me too.

Curiosity is at the top for me. Independence, tranquility and honor would be pretty high too.

I've been single for a long time, partly because I'm extremely leery of romance/family desires affecting more important values... my independence and tranquility, for starters!

By the way, I think vengeance has a place for me somewhat because I'd really like to hurt this Trump transition team member for his low curiosity!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017417099

One of the interesting ones is family because that can translate into either liberal or conservative values. For example, you might support liberal values like universal healthcare, more protections for workers, a higher minimum wage, etc., if you believe that those things will help your family. But for other people lowering taxes is seen as the most important issue to help their family. I think this is where we get into the tricky area of economic class that many Americans don't like talking about.

Another aspect is how having a family can influence people politically.

Married people more often vote for Republicans. I suspect it's because having a spouse is another kind of "safety net" for people.

I'll be legally blind eventually (already blind in one eye), so it would be beneficial to have a spouse to help me. I just can't help but feel that I'd be a "bum deal" for a future wife! (Plus there's trust issues since my older brother's long-time wife left him after he started going blind and he could no longer work as an engineer.)

Anyway, here's the exit poll results for married/unmarried:
http://edition.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls
Married (59%): Trump 59%, Clinton 44%
Unmarried (41%): Clinton 55%, Trump 37%

Supposedly, the group that votes most strongly Republican are married, white evangelical Christians. I read an article a few years ago that they vote Republican about 95% of the time! Maybe they feel that they also get "support" from the church too? I'm sure that the abortion issue is a bigger part of it, though. (At least now. It wasn't in 1976 when they voted for Carter!)

EDIT: By the way, if none of the white evangelicals had voted, Clinton would have won the majority of the white vote too!

In Texas, it is all about guns and abortion. The Repubs have masterfully used those two hot button topics to scare the heck out of some willfully ignorant voters.

I have no use for willful ignorance. It's not like these people are willing to listen to facts. If the Dems change their platform to try to reach these types, then the Democrat's platform is going to have to mirror the Republican platform.

Who in the hell wants that? I'm a Democrat because I'm different than those types.

I don't think there are as many genuinely single-issue voters as some believe. Actually, I think there are very few.

How many of those guns and abortion voters are also opposed to LGBTQ rights? How many support a ban on Muslims? How many have anti-government views and support privatization? And so on. The vast majority I would guess.

ugliest predator select.

First off, it's not about "sympathy" it's about winning elections.

Secondly, we don't have to budge one inch on our progressive values or throw POC or anyone else under the bus.

What we need are policies that are unmistakably in the interests of the vast majority of the people, a consistent forceful message hammering home that fact, and candidates who will inspire people to come to the polls and vote. And YES -- this includes fighting disenfranchisement tooth and nail. GOTV is essential.

Democrats lose elections because we lose the battle of public perception. Right or wrong, far too many voters lump Democratic politicians in with a Washington establishment that has ignored the economic interests of the working class. A major factor in this election was a backslash against the establishment. Millions of voters in the so-called blue wall fell for the lies of a con man.

And YES -' millions of racists and other deplorables saw Trump for what he is and embraced the racism. We can never reach those people. Nor should we try.

We already have that. But a ratings-focused mainstream media is obsessed with spectacle and creating false equivalencies, while refusing to do the job of fact-checking. And the Saturday Night Live opening from right before the election was pretty spot-on.

"... and candidates who will inspire people to come to the polls and vote."

In spite of voter suppression (thanks a lot, Shelby County v. Holder decision of 2013), Clinton received about as many votes as Obama received in 2012 (but the electoral college, a vestige of slavery, made Trump the president-elect).

She also probably inspired the opposition to an extent. "The deep disgust for Hillary Clinton that drives so many..." A different Democratic candidate using the same exact message and strategy likely would have won (which is not to say there aren't things that should be done a bit differently). For one thing, there wouldn't have been an email/FBI story, which dominated media coverage. But Biden didn't run and nobody else who did run for the nomination would have done as well as Clinton (sorry, Bernie, but the opposition research would have been devastating).

"A major factor in this election was a backslash against the establishment."

And yet the re-election rate of incumbents was even higher than normal. That includes major proponents of the TPP (in Rust Belt states to boot) who won more easily than Trump. Meanwhile, those backed most strongly by Sanders did much worse than Clinton.

But my main point is we lost the battle of public perception. Our D Party is partly to blame and the media overwhelming so, but the media is what it is and we have to navigate that better.

GOTV was a huge key, and it's better when people are inspired to vote FOR rather than AGAINST a candidate. I have some liberal friends who very reluctantly voted for Hillary Clinton. I couldn't support her in the primary but didn't hesitate to vote straight D in the general.

More importantly, this is about what we do going forward. I responded to the OP because BB did indeed ask the wrong question. Democrats need to do a better job of truly representing the people's interests and making that apparent to more voters.

or that Obama didn't do the same with BushII voters? Or that the 'pukes don't do the same with trying to get traditionally Democratic voters?

It's not about "sympathy", it's about the reality of how the game of politics is played. As a party, we should be going after the political figures, and not the voters. I know that it "feels good" to demonize voters, but doing so is suicide as a political party.

We need to get that white identity and a penchant for nonsensical beliefs are major factors behind Republican support (not just Trump support).

actually finding out about them as individuals, or distinct subgroups in our society, and not turning them into a monolith, a caricature, or a set of simplistic labels.

We should also not underestimate the impact of a huge RW propaganda machine that has been working on these people's minds for decades. As others have pointed out, this is something that Dems have ignored, and even abetted (Telecommunications Bill) to their peril.

What I think does not help is simplistic reductionism and stereotyping. When we do that, we're falling into the same trap as people who vote Repub, IMO.

...the "Clinton didn't speak enough about economics and spoke too much about transgender bathrooms" narrative or the "anti-establishment" narrative or the "only a fraction of Trump supporters are bigots" narrative.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2015/08/trump-supporters-think-obama-is-a-muslim-born-in-another-country.html

https://extranewsfeed.com/4-completely-wrong-post-election-things-democrats-are-fighting-about-92f0a4540c27#.26giutmpk

http://www.salon.com/2016/12/21/drain-the-swamp-of-all-those-p-c-liberals-turns-out-trumpers-dont-care-about-lobbyists-or-plutocrats/

https://www.salon.com/2016/12/23/conservatism-turned-toxic-donald-trumps-fanbase-has-no-actual-ideology-just-a-nihilistic-hatred-of-liberals/

Desperate (when stats don't bear that out) and they are leaning heavy on that because they don't want to discuss the very racist campaign and the parts of it - the "Wall" and kicking out "muslims" that was overwhelmingly popular with these folks. Pretending it is all about their economic problems is a lie, and frankly it's an insulting one. It's like pretending PC is all about the oligarchs? What the fuck did that even mean?
A responsible media would examine the immigration issues and what's behind this anxiety and HA tread toward POC and women and what it really means

He's one of those saying the deplorable alt-right fascists aren't as deplorable as they're made out to be.

It's terrifying.

We like to think of the German Nazi's as an aberration of history - monsters from a long distant fairy tale. And despite our differences with so-called modern "conservatives", we don't want to think they are capable of the atrocities that other reactionary groups wrought in the 20th century.

Hell, we don't even want to think they are capable of the beatings and lynchings that went on in our own country.

But they are. Some of them at least.

It did not seem like people who voted for Bill Clinton would switch to Bush - nobody attributed the loss of 2000 to something like that. Now we see it alleged significant numbers of Obama's voters went to Trump, which is very odd.

OR people who didn't vote.

We're in this weird bizarro world where being called racist is a million times worse than actual racism...

No justice, no peace!