16th November 2016, 12:07 AM
We just lost. We lost because just barely too few midwesterners voted for Hillary, while also she failed to win many of the other battleground states. Her margin of victory in the popular vote keeps growing -- it's over 800,000 now apparently, with millions of votes still left to count in California -- but sadly that doesn't matter much.
So, how do you turn that around? Yes, invigorating the left is good, but you can't win without appealing to people who voted for Trump too. Write all of them off as "deplorables" or something (however accurate that term is, and it sure is accurate!) and try to win with only liberals and and we quite likely lose again. Maybe it'd be another loss with a majority of the popular vote again, but you need to be actual President, of course. And to do that you need to attract in people who voted for the previous party last time.
As for issues, though, no, I am not saying that issues-wise we should move to the center. I don't think I've ever said that! The Democrats are too far to the right as it is, moving right would be a bad idea. You don't need to move right to win over some people who voted for Trump. After all, particularly in the Midwest, many voted for him for economic reasons. We have better actual economic policy positions, we just need to get better at advocating for them, obviously. Standing up for what we believe in, instead of constantly giving in, will help as well of course, but I'm not too hopeful there sadly. Now, you do need to be running on values people support, which is why I've always been skeptical of Bernie's chances; running moderate or conservative Democrats in some seats is sometimes necessary. Still, some down-ballot races have shown that a real liberal can win in some tough races if they run the right kind of race and are the right candidate, and that Bernie had the level of success he did does show that.
On the other hand though, we are seeing now Senate races are tied closer than ever to Presidential races -- that old adage that "all politics are local" is less true than it used to be. So, this year, the three close Senate seats the Dems won are in states Hillary won (Nevada, Illinois, New Hampshire), while losing all the close or once-thought-to-be-close races in states Trump won. Things definitely did not used to be that clear-cut. Senators still need to run a good race to win, don't get me wrong, and some will run above or below their president, but they are less separated than they used to be.
So, how do you turn that around? Yes, invigorating the left is good, but you can't win without appealing to people who voted for Trump too. Write all of them off as "deplorables" or something (however accurate that term is, and it sure is accurate!) and try to win with only liberals and and we quite likely lose again. Maybe it'd be another loss with a majority of the popular vote again, but you need to be actual President, of course. And to do that you need to attract in people who voted for the previous party last time.
As for issues, though, no, I am not saying that issues-wise we should move to the center. I don't think I've ever said that! The Democrats are too far to the right as it is, moving right would be a bad idea. You don't need to move right to win over some people who voted for Trump. After all, particularly in the Midwest, many voted for him for economic reasons. We have better actual economic policy positions, we just need to get better at advocating for them, obviously. Standing up for what we believe in, instead of constantly giving in, will help as well of course, but I'm not too hopeful there sadly. Now, you do need to be running on values people support, which is why I've always been skeptical of Bernie's chances; running moderate or conservative Democrats in some seats is sometimes necessary. Still, some down-ballot races have shown that a real liberal can win in some tough races if they run the right kind of race and are the right candidate, and that Bernie had the level of success he did does show that.
On the other hand though, we are seeing now Senate races are tied closer than ever to Presidential races -- that old adage that "all politics are local" is less true than it used to be. So, this year, the three close Senate seats the Dems won are in states Hillary won (Nevada, Illinois, New Hampshire), while losing all the close or once-thought-to-be-close races in states Trump won. Things definitely did not used to be that clear-cut. Senators still need to run a good race to win, don't get me wrong, and some will run above or below their president, but they are less separated than they used to be.
Quote:Get some plans together for saving rural America. That's how you do it.Indeed, one analysis I've seen for one of the reasons why Hillary lost the Midwest was that she focused too much on pushing up the margins in urban areas, and not enough in trying to get out what Democratic vote remains in rural areas. I know rural areas are heavily Republican, but you need SOME votes there to win. That was surely important to the Dem victories in most states in that region in the '92 to '12 elections. So yeah, we need to do this. Of course, the Republicans should help us with this, as their policies inevitably fail to help and hopefully we can convince people to give our (better) ideas a try instead, as I said earlier.