General Discussion

But basically, no national Dems in the past 50 years have been in a system where politics was "the art of the possible". Clinton had a little of that. Obama had a little of that. But they both dealt with Congresses where the possibilities simply weren't a consideration. It all became process. And the Republicans have been a lot better at process than we have been.

The Republicans identified some "red meat" issues that the top 0.1% didn't really care about (abortion, immigration, guns, replacing public schools with Christian madrasas, etc.) They made those issues the battleground, when in fact, their real goal was to serve the corporations and billionaires. That put Dems in a position of opposing on abortion, immigration, guns, replacing public schools with Christian madrasas, while we were not in a position to do much for the people with the big bucks.

It has been a long, slow 60-year slide, punctuated by occasional victories here and there to give the party enough false hope so that we never really changed strategies. And even now, there is great resistance to the necessary changes.