Sure, the GOP in D.C. doesn't give two pennies about climate change, more parks, more air, fair treatment, or the rest, but they also are doing nothing different that will substantially help the Atlanta warehouse worker either.
"No, it isn't us, it is all the other people who are taking your American Dream away!"
When you think about it, isn't it remarkable how well this works that a rich billionaire blowhard from New York City convinces the hoi polloi that he is one of them?
As I find myself reiterating every time the subject arises here - it's not possible accurately to understand Trump's electoral victory without reference to the DNC's own internal politics and their gravely suboptimal effect on the party's 2016 nomination. Sanders vs. Trump would've been a much more interesting election, and its outcome much more in doubt, than what we actually got; as things were, the choice came down to more of the neoliberal, globalist, job-exporting same on the one hand, and a wild card who at least gave lip service to working-class folks' problems on the other. Granted, it's becoming increasingly clear that lip service is about all that candidate was prepared to give - but that still puts him ahead of his erstwhile opponent, who couldn't be bothered even with that much, not even when it became obvious that to do so would be tactically wise.
You can blame people, if you like, for going with the sole candidate who at least pretended to give a shit about their problems. But what do you imagine it helps, to do so? Regardless of whether or not any individual finds it personally satisfying to despise people who voted in a way that individual does not like, those people did so vote, and here we all are as a result. Does recrimination really offer the most realistic prospect of a way forward that doesn't continue to steer our country along a course toward disaster?
No, Occam's razor: this is just tribalism. He's convinced them that he is on their side reality be damned. It is too painful and hopeless to countenance the other.
“Continued support”? No, Trump's seen a significant decline in support since taking office.
> He's revealed himself to be that con and yet his voters still enthusiastically support him.
No, again, in fact, the decline in his strong support in polling has been more rapid than the decline in his overall support.
That sounds less like tribalism than like desperation to me. And in any case, what difference does it make? Either way, it boils down to a stark choice: on the one hand, the Democratic Party may work out how to offer a credible alternative to Trump - more accurately, to whoever comes after Trump, and will no doubt be to Trump as Trump to Bush - and on the other hand, the Democratic Party may watch impotently as events continue more or less as they have done.
But yeah, I doubt Hillary would have helped labor to generate the kind of pricing power they need to keep the society from caving in.
Making this your main platform is just a losing strategy.
And I was brought up to think that there is nothing wrong with showing ALL people respect. Women (and minorities included)
Im assuming you may think, or have been brought up different.
Discrimination is alive and well, and thats exactly why people feel strongly about thwarting it. Im not sure if I was looking at a different campaign, but there were many more primary points to her Campaign than "protecting and defending Minorities" as you casually put it. Its easily seen on Google.
I agree, and it continues to perplex me that the Sanders campaign didn't put int he effort to develop a detailed policy agenda in parallel with the noble principles it was articulating.
You can blame people, if you like, for going with the sole candidate who at least pretended to give a shit about their problems
Oh please. I did not find Hillary Clinton a charismatic or especially empathic candidate, and her cautious incrementalism was a timid and unimaginative alternative to Trump's bold and dramatic (albeit shallow and stupid) vision. Clinton would have done far better to announce that her plan was to end poverty in America and establish a colony on Mars by 2030. People would have challenged that as ridiculous and impossible, of course, but it's no more absurd than the idea that we'd build a 20000 mile long wall along one border and get Mexico to pay for it.
What I'm disagreeing with is your suggestion that Clinton did not give a shit. She had a really detailed and well-rounded policy agenda whose primary fault was that it was too pragmatic and boring and cautious. It was not the right agenda for the times, but it's unjust to equate lack of vision with callous indifference. To say that is to accuse Mom of wanting you to starve because she insists you eat your vegetables. Sorry for the crude metaphor but the last election was in many ways a choice between Mom and Dad, and I think it's foolish to ignore the psychological dynamics that were in play.
I think we should also recall that she did manage to get 3 million more votes, but the GOP proved themselves to be superior electoral tacticians, possibly with help from some friends.
Like, the exact same set of policies would have won handily if they had just been offered by somebody else. Martha Stewart for example XD
That's kind of been easier since 1992, since Third Wayism means the Democrats at the Presidential level (which gets outsized media attention and often shapes perception of downballot races) and often (though less consistently) at lower levels aren't even trying to offer a credible alternative for the bulk of the working class on some of the most salient issues.
It's easier to get people to vote against their own interests when no one is offering the clear opportunity to vote for those interests.
My memory of the 1992 election is that Clinton managed to exploit general dissatisfaction with a relatively minor recession and conservative disenchantment (and consequent core voter apathy) with Bush's pragmatic decision to hike taxes, along with the split vote on the right created by Ross Perot's candidacy. Out of pragmatism, Clinton tacitly endorsed the dominant tropes of an authoritarian approach to criminal justice and the unwavering commitment to military supremacy that had culminated in the collapse of the USSR, end of the Cold War, and a quick and decisive victory in Iraq that was thought to be end of the Vietnam Syndrome.
Normally you would think that having the USSR collapse and the Berlin Wall be torn down would have propelled Bush into an easy second victory and had him and/or Reagan added to Mount Rushmore as the triumphant receivers of the Communist surrender. I absolutely understand why the progressive left felt betrayed by the Clinton-Carville machine, but as an outside observer I think the notion that the Democrats would have got anywhere with a Eugene Debs style democratic socialist in 1992 (or any of many similar pipe dreams) is delusional. Delusional. Clinton only got in because of the ideological hubris that brought Ross Perot into the race.
Please understand that I'm not casting aspersions on the ideological alternatives to the dominant economic paradigms of the time. I'm saying that there could not have been a credible alternative democratic candidate promoting sensible sustainable policies that supported working-class and other interests because most people are not rational voters. Stupidity and pervisity are facts of sociopolitical life and this isn't something that can be overcome in any single electoral campaign.
Sure, it made some sense in “I want my party to have this office today” terms, it just was tremendously destructive to the long-term prospects of the party and it's relationship to the grassroots base, and to the key policy interest that distinguished the party from the other major party.
> My memory of the 1992 election is that Clinton managed to exploit general dissatisfaction with a relatively minor recession and conservative disenchantment (and consequent core voter apathy) with Bush's pragmatic decision to hike taxes, along with the split vote on the right created by Ross Perot's candidacy.
Perot's candidacy was almost entirely anti-NAFTA, split the anti-Bush vote, and was fueled by the major-party candidate consensus on NAFTA. With an anti-globalist Democratic candidate, there would have been be no substantial Perot support. Clinton didn't leverage Perot splitting conservative votes, he fueled Perot taking anti-NAFTA votes that had no major party candidate to go to.
> I absolutely understand why the progressive left felt betrayed by the Clinton-Carville machine, but as an outside observer I think the notion that the Democrats would have got anywhere with a Eugene Debs style democratic socialist in 1992 (or any of many similar pipe dreams) is delusional.
The alternatives to Clinton in 1992 weren't Debs-style socialist, they were pre-Third Way pro-labor welfare state Democrats like the vast majority of the party's then-current Congressional delegation.
Maybe so, but then the Bush argument would have been 'did I not just defeat Communism and win a great victory in Iraq? Your labor provincialism would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.'
Being a resident of California I think the country would have been better off with Jerry Brown, but his expression of support for Jesse Jackson at the wrong time put paid to that.
I've got to say as a Euro that while I support that sort of pro-labor welfare state agenda on a policy level, I feel Democrats in the have a bad habit of overestimating its popularity at the strategic level where elections are won. There large currents of irrationality and historical animus at play in the American electorate that the Republicans have been better at leveraging into electoral results even though those same factors are a disadvantage in governance.
This discussion is sort of getting into the weeds and I have other stuff I want to do today, but I'd be delighted to follow up if you wanted to drop me a note via gmail.
I don't disagree with either part of that (heck, I voted for Brown in the primary), but really the Democratic candidate pool was really weak in 1992 because Bush seemed strong until too late for anyone to credibly enter the primary race; Clinton managed not to lose while fumbling on Bush's biggest weakness, but he crippled the Democratic Party nationally for at least a generation in the process.
> I've got to say as a Euro that while I support that sort of pro-labor welfare state agenda on a policy level, I feel Democrats in the have a bad habit of overestimating its popularity at the strategic level where elections are won.
I don't think they are; quite the opposite, they usually fail to campaign on it, and when they push it in policy they fatally compromise it out of the gate (not as part of a negotiation to win votes from the other side) to serve corporate and moneyed interests, both of which are signs that they don't trust it electorally. This is even the case for things like public-paid universal healthcare, which had majority support in polling for years before Clinton was elected (and much of the time after, including through the passage of the ACA, though not always recently), where both Clinton and Obama pushed for complex, private-insurer-dependent programs that were harder for people to understand and much easier political targets for opponents.
The Third Way has been bad for Democrats as a party in government (whatever short term electoral benefit it can be argued, IMO unconvincingly, to have had in 1992 specifically) and worse for the policy interests Democrats (before and after it) claim to support, because it radically shifted the Overton window to the right.