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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

On the national stage, Democrats have to run someone who can appeal to people in Mississippi as well as New York.

The more important thing is why this article is about a city in the suburbs of New York City. The Westchester County Board of Legislators has 16 Democrats and 1 Republican. Why can’t Democrats make any progress even in places where they have total control and don’t need to compromise? Westchester County can’t change federal drug laws, but they have total control over their own police force and how they’re trained and what they focus their efforts on.

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> Democrats have to run someone who can appeal to people in Mississippi as well as New York.

No, they don't.

Even when they win national campaigns, Democrats don't win Mississippi, so they manifestly don't need to run a national ticket that appeals to Mississippi.

EDIT: The primary process the Democrats have chosen may encourage this, but that doesn't mean it's necessary or that that process is well chosen.

> Why can’t Democrats make any progress even in places where they have total control and don’t need to compromise?

Because American political parties are what would be broad coalitions in a system with multiple competitive parties, and it's only a significant faction (but not, in many places, the strongest faction) within the Democratic Party that actually wants to make progress on this point. That's more than the Republicans have, though.

There are many Democrats in Mississippi and as a practical matter no primary system that simply ignored those voters would be viable.

I think that is problem for the Democratic Party.

Most US urban areas, some with the most problems, are completely controlled or mostly controlled by progressives -- some for multiple decades.

Why is there so much fail in the urban cores? Either the progressive policies fail because they don't work. Or, the progressives are not really interested in improving the situation. Or, a combination of both.

Progressives hire the police chiefs, negotiate the police union contracts, set the certification/hiring/training standards for police, make many state and most local laws, and so on.

Yet, police in the urban cores remain a problem? Why is that?

Many people will reasonably come to a conclusion that the progressive Democrats do not really want to improve things, or they are too incompetent to do so.

Twitter thread by a Minneapolis city council member about how they tried to do police reform. He talks about wanting to do changes slowly but was met with resistance by police, including the police delaying responses to call from areas where the members voted against police interests. He is now talking about disbanding the police altogether and starting over.

https://twitter.com/mplsward3/status/1267891869691850754?s=2...

If this is what it takes it must be done. With today's availability of real-time policing metrics it should be clear if police are deliberately thwarting reform initiatives or retaliating.

Police officers have taken an oath to uphold state and federal constitutions and local laws. If they cannot live up to that commitment they need to go.

> Why can’t Democrats make any progress even in places where they have total control and don’t need to compromise?

The obvious answer is that these policies benefit Democrats and therefore they are uninterested in changing them.

You absolutely don't need to appeal to them (unfortunately). You win over the 11 most populous states and the presidency is yours even if not a single person in the other 39 voted for you.

While your statement about the 11 most populous states is correct mathematically, it isn't politically. That group contains states that are quite politically diverse: from Georgia to California.

There is no way that a Presidential candidate would win those 11 and lose the other 39.

Well exactly, so we get the concept of "swing states." For 2020, there's likely to really be just 5-6 of them. The fact remains a candidate has to focus on winning electoral votes, and candidates would campaign drastically differently if they had to win the popular vote.

No. Mississippi will vote Republican and New York will vote Democratic. They need to run someone that can appeal to the swing states: Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio.

Which primary votes do you think gave Biden the nomination? Is the older black base in MS pro-legalization? Did he get any black voter enthusiasm from the under 40s?

Black and Hispanic voters support marijuana legalization at a slightly lower rate than whites. But because black voters are overwhelmingly Democrat, and Hispanic voters are disproportionately so, that means they are far to the right of white democrats on the issue. 78% of democrats as a whole support marijuana legalization, versus 67% of black and 63% of Hispanic people. Because black and Hispanic people comprise roughly 35% of the party, the rest of the party (for the most part, whites) have to support legalization at 85%. So there is roughly 20% gap between white and black and Hispanic Democrats on legalization.

See: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2...

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