Some tangible reasons we lost and other random musings on a not very good morning.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

I am in a meta state of mind so I will share my thoughts with you.

-We lost control of the narrative. While things aren't great in this country the stock market is up, the GDP is up, employment is up, and the price of gas is down. How we didn't get any credit for that is beyond me?

-The election was largely fought on Republicant turf. Not all of the hotly contested elections were in red states but a lot of them were.

-It's been a truism for years that mid terms favor the Republicasnts because of the nature of their constituencies. They tend to be older, more white, and more affluent. They are just the type of folks who show up for mid term elections. Many of our constituents only come out for presidential elections.

- Candidates ran away from the president. Even if the president was a drag a Democratic candidate looked like an idiot when he or she couldn't even say he or she supports him, the leader of his or her party. There had to be a more artful way of dealing it.

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-Of course big money taints the process but let's not cry we didn't have money... We have plenty of sugar daddies or rich patrons too...

- I still think we have a strong demographic wind at our back in 2016. It's hard to lose a national election where "everybody" votes when you are winning >90% of the African American vote, >65% of the Latino vote, and 75% of the Asian vote. Because of demographic shifts Willard Romney won nearly the same percentage of the white vote as Ronald Reagan did in his 1984 landslide but he still lost because there are a lot less of them as a total percentage of the popular vote voting.

-Elections aren't nearly as much about persuading folks to vote for you as they are about persuading folks who are inclined to vote for you to get out and vote.

Thank you for allowing me to vent and ruminate.

[upaloopa]

1. I am hearing threats from Hispanics and African Americans

saying if their issues are not dealt with they will turn on the Dems.
I think the only sound thing for us to do is to push as much progressive thought out there as possible for two years.
We have everything to gain and little more to lose!

[cprise]

2. I don't know about that...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025767499

[Man from Pickens]

3. Reality check

>While things aren't great in this country the stock market is up, the GDP is up, employment is up, and the price of gas is down. How we didn't get any credit for that is beyond me?

The stock market is up because the Federal Reserve has been pouring trillions into it for years with the explicit purpose of propping up asset values. As the market is 2/3rds owned by the 1%, if this has any impact, it's millions of voters wondering why the market is doing so well when their own families aren't.

GDP is such a rigged figure that it is virtually meaningless in its current form. Massive amounts of new debt (not just public debt, but private debt like student loans) increase GDP but are horrible for the actual performance of the economy as it pertains to real people.

Employment is not up. Labor force participation rates are at historic lows. Unemployment is down, which goes back to what I said about the stock market. If unemployment is really 5.9%, why can't 90 million people find jobs? It wasn't all that long ago that the popular belief among economists was that unemployment couldn't go below 6%, and that that figure represented "full employment". Now we are told it is less than that, yet people aren't finding jobs, or if they are finding them, they are low-paid, unskilled jobs. The real indicator of healthy employment levels is wages going up, and in real terms we haven't seen that in over a decade.

The price of gas is down because the economy is in the dumps. It is not down because we've managed to figure out a way to make energy cheaper. And it's only been down recently; before the past few months it was consistently high for a long time, a major squeeze on the working class.

"It's the economy, stupid."

It really is. Stop pretending things are OK - if you are not a 1%er things are NOT OK AT ALL.