How is it that such an incompetent Party controls all the branches of government?

[kentuck]

And they do not know how to govern in any of them.

How could the American people be hoodwinked to such a degree?

Will we ever rid ourselves of these dangerous, incompetent politicians?

[dalton99a]

1. They used all means necessary and accepted help from our enemy

[CurtEastPoint]

2. 'all means necessary...' legal and illegal

[YCHDT]

9. K&R

[GeoWilliam750]

54. Perhaps a significant one

Is the reach of Fox News. In a recent NYT article, they discuss the fact that Fox News viewers will believe anything they see on Fox News. No Republican politician is able to survive Fox turning against them.

It also seems that Fox plays along well with Putin's plans. The question is it is deliberate or coincidental.

[beachbum bob]

3. easy, splinter democrats, create voter apathy, and throw hurdles to voting

all are correctable by each one of us being involved in the process.

conservatives win because they know how to win....

[TreasonousBastard]

4. Even more incompetent voters.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

6. Because Americans get a government as good as its people.

[kennetha]

7. An extremely flawed constitution that:

(a) allows 8% of the American people can elect 50% of the Senate.
(b) allows the electoral college to override the collective will of the people as expressed in the national popular vote.
(c) allows members of the House to be elected in highly gerrymandered districts.
(d) states to erect barriers to broad participation.
(e) fails to foster an ethos of broad participation
(f) monied interests to dominate politics.


Should I go on?

[Eliot Rosewater]

31. We finally did it to ourselves because of your excellent recitation of our predicament.

We are now owned by Putin and friends.

BTW, if you own land, you dont really own it.

What the idiots will soon find out is the ONLY thing that maintains their ownership is our INSTITUTIONS which Trump, Bannon and Putin are on record saying they want to dismantle.

So your land is gone, whether you can live in your home built on your land will depend on if you are going to have to double up, triple up with neighbors.

This is what is ACTUALLY going to happen, now, because of 3rd party voters and idiot rednecks.

Oh, and SS, Medicare?

[mitch96]

48. People just did not care and did not vote.

In this last election less than 25% of the people in this country voted in this asshole.... Besides all the other shenanigans going on.. Obama had a large turnout. This time? not so much.
Drives me nutz...
m

[lunamagica]

50. But the majority voted for Hillary. If not for the EC, she'd be president now

[lunamagica]

49. Spot on. This deserves its own thread

[MGKrebs]

8. Just watch Idiocracy

if you haven't. Again if you have.
It's become too accurate to be funny.

[Aristus]

10. It was never funny.

I was in a depression for days after watching it...

[CentralMass]

11. An article on President Obama's take on why we lost.

http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-why-hillary-clinton-democrats-lost-2016-12
"President Barack Obama on Monday offered one of the most blunt assessments of the Democratic party's failure to win the White House in 2016, arguing that the party needs to reframe its debates for suburban and rural voters.

In an interview on NPR posted Monday morning, the outgoing president chalked up Hillary Clinton's popular vote win, but failure to woo voters in more rural states like Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan, to structural hurdles based on where Democrats live, as well as the party's failure to frame the debate for voters.

"We have a scrambled political landscape right now. There are some things that we know are a challenge for Democrats - structural problems. For example, population distribution, oftentimes younger voters, minority voters, Democratic voters, are clustered in urban areas," Obama said.

The president continued: "As a consequence, you've got a situation where there are not only entire states but also big chunks of states where, if we're not showing up, if we're not in there making an argument, then we're going to lose. And we can lose badly, and that's what happened in this election."

While he denied that there was anything wrong with the "core argument" of the Democratic message around issues like raising the minimum wage, he admitted that there were "failures on our part to give people in rural areas or in exurban areas, a sense day-to-day that we're fighting for them or connected to them." "

[CrispyQ]

32. A day late and a dollar short.

Actually, six years late.




New Congressional districts will be set soon & if this is the condition of our state governments, the dems will lose the House for another decade.

[CentralMass]

34. +1

[certainot]

43. that's because dems ignore talk radio, which is coordinated at local level

and while most liberals are on computer most of 40 states with 80 senators is dominated by the fake news buzz of 1000 radio stations.

worse than that we let 88 major universities broadcast sports on and basically endorse the global warming denial, racism, sexism, anti- public ed propaganda, and trump excuses on 257 limbaugh stations.

that is why. and dems don't even poll for it.

money, GOTV, voter suppression, appeal to 'white working class' are all symptoms of continuing to give the republican right a free speech free ride to blast the country with coordinated lying and swiftboating in what putin would call a classic military style psyops.

see below.

[certainot]

41. dem pundits ignore the big problem - talk radio. dems have to go on the offensive

this country has been awash in fake news — from 1000 coordinated radio stations. it has a hugeinfluence on the MSM media which are much less effective as propaganda operations because they are still somewht democratic — with alternatives. in most part of the us there are no free easy alts for politics than this:

at a cheap $1000/hr x 15hrs/day x 5 = $75,000/wk x 1200 stations rw talk radio is worth $18MIL/day or 390MIL$ /month or 4.68 BIL$/ year FREE for coordinated global warming denial, pro republican free market deregulation and wall st think tank propaganda, swiftboating, and the hate and fear used to get people to vote republican.

trump studied it before his campaign. putin’s best trolling piggybacked it. but dems don’t poll for it and it gets a free speech free ride from those it attacks.

the planet can’t wait for liberal billionaires to buy radio stations. it’s too late to compete and ineffective anyway, as they have a 95% monopoly and they protect it.

to start, dems have to poll trump support for it — too much analysis ignores the fact that this is actually the talk radio president and most of putin’s trolling piggybacked it. maybe when it shows as the closest association outside of ‘white’. as long as limbaugh and sons continue to make excuses for trump he will keep a lot of the base, the real base.

monitor it — should be easier to automate that now so people can search and study the patterns and repetition. if all of a sudden there’s a spike in, say the word “iran” or “mueller” “deep state” etc, it probably means something. knowing about it before  it becomes reality means not always having to play catch up

credit it — trump needs a RUSH tattoo on his forehead, as do all republican pols and media hacks — they all ride the talk radio bandwagon and feed from the daily smorgasbord of talking points and excuses. preface answers to republican media hacks and politicians with “that’s what limbaugh says but...”

[img][/img]

investigate it — how long has putin been using it? trump studied it - who told him that was a good idea? did they find a way to feed limbaugh and coordinate with him and others? are any of them being paid  freelance money? exposing the talk radio gods as tools, especially russian tools, would help.

thank all local businesses that advertise on RW radio stations — thank them for trump, trumpcare, global warming, privatization of public education, voter suppression, deregulation, tax breaks for billionaires, etc. it’s easy and fun to listen to a few minutes here and there and get a few  email addresses for thank-you notes that can get to the boss/owners.
include the radio stations in any progressive protest — they may  be better places to protest than capitols — republicans will notice.

to combine a few of those, push the 88 universities that endorse 257 limbaugh stations to stop crapping on their mission statements and start  looking for apolitical alternatives to broadcast sports on — maybe their political science faculties and students can start studying the most dominant political factor in the US the last 30 years.
and these 88 universities are good places to protest global warming, Trump, everything…


[heaven05]

12. progressive/liberal voter apathy plus a rabid

racist cultural core group that did vote...voila!!!!! A racist, idiot cretin as potus. And please do not forget ALL MSM media played up this cretins campaign for potus as something positive because the racists disguised their hate with words like WHITE race economic anxiety ect and covered for the racism and sexism of the man/child himself in his run for the office he has diminished so horribly.

Amerikan racists has always been waiting for the left to slip up so horribly....and here we are. At the base of a mountain, in a valley so deep that we finally realize we got to start climbing before america is the white supremacist haven that bannon, miller, alec jones et al. desire and is lost to the rest of us forever. And we will only, as the left wing political group of a seriously fractured culture, have ourselves to blame if we end up in camps, deported or shot down like is happening with more regularity of AA now, it seems..

[CentralMass]

13. A few more opinions..IMO worth the read

How did democrats lose in 2016? Let us count the ways
http://www.thegazette.com/subject/opinion/guest-columnists/how-did-democrats-lost-2016-let-us-count-the-ways-20161114

This one has some brutal assesments of the state of the party.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/442474/democratic-party-lost-governors-state-legislature-seats-2016-election

Barack Obama Won The White House, But Democrats Lost The Country

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/barack-obama-won-the-white-house-but-democrats-lost-the-country/

[doc03]

14. Also over 30 states? nt

[KingCharlemagne]

15. The American electorate is, to put it bluntly, FUCKING STUPID - nt

[smirkymonkey]

22. That, and complete corporate ownership of the media.

But I suppose you have to be fucking stupid to buy into it in the first place.

[KingCharlemagne]

23. We live, for better or worse, in a capitalist eonomy, so of ourse media are

going to be privately owned and controlled (in this case, by corporations). But no one forces the stupid electorate to believe the media -- they do that all on their own.

[Jim Beard]

29. There are many voters that I really can't describe. They are the ones that voted for Trump because

they saw him on TV. Personally, I never watched his program.

Examples of Texas voting is, the winning of Pappy W. Lee O'Daniel who won the Governorship with his musical band,

The best example is a man Named Jessie James who won the office of Texas State Treasure for many elections. There some people who just like to vote for clowns.

[eppur_se_muova]

16. They got elected by PROMISING their idiots they'd break the gov't ...

... and idiots constitute a large enough voting bloc to put them in office.

[Eliot Rosewater]

35. You win something for this response.

Working people, who live paycheck to paycheck, have been convinced that Walmart and Wall Street are not the problem, working immigrants and minimum wage laws are (i.e. just having a MW is wrong in their tiny minds)

That protecting the environment is too costly to them.

I think in all sincerity climate change is going to CORRECT the human errors simply by wiping most of us out. We are too dumb to be in charge of this unusual and fantastic planet.

[WinkyDink]

17. Because Democrats are DARK-SIDED!

(tm Marguerite of "Wife Swap&quot

[ZX86]

18. Follow the money.

Where ever it goes.

[mopinko]

19. they cheat. voter suppression.

and a healthy does of psyops.

[rock]

20. Cheating

I'm surprised I have to say on this board.

[oberliner]

21. Your question is also your answer

If you know what I mean.

[Nevernose]

24. FWIW

"Will we ever rid ourselves of..." is code for "murder."

See: Henry II, trials of various mob noses.

And no, we won't be rid of them until we start winning elections. I believe this starts by winning elections at the lowest level. Not a base of activists -- we've got that -- but a base of politicians.

[First Speaker]

25. Because enough of the American people are as dumb as dog shit...

...and they're the ones who tend to vote.

[malaise]

26. Not if our major worry is not fat-shaming crooked, racist, women hating scumbags

Dems will have to learn that playing nice and believing others won't break every rule and loot all of government is not a winning strategy.

Dems will also have to learn to LOCK THEM UP.

[Not Ruth]

27. 47% of voters are unaffiliated with a major party

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_voter

[ananda]

28. They're not incompetent, that's why!

They have co-opted the elections process and the courts
to manage a corporate, anti-people agenda.

This means that they have to destroy everying in America
that puts people and the environment first, instead of
corporate and personal greed and power.

That kind of destruction does not take any particular level
of intelligence or competence; but keeping power and position
does, and they have all that corporate power, money, and
wealth-driven institutions behind them, including the media
and all the positions bought and paid for in bastions like
universities and local and state government.

They have succeeded enormously in many red states, and formerly
blue states that have been turned red.

They have also succeeded in the national arena in ways that sort of
get hidden under the table since the media keeps us so distracted
with single hot button issues most of the time.

[Soxfan58]

30. 37 years

Of GOP cuts to education. And a reality show mentality

[NotASurfer]

33. In America, even stupid people have an absolute right to representation

There is no competency test for voting (in fact I'd say it's unconstitutional). And we have a goal of making sure everyone votes. I'd say the Electoral College is actually a good idea if the electors only did their job & refused to elect a person who won a majority of the clueless. Until then, if people vote stupid, stupid gets elected

[usaf-vet]

36. STOLEN Elections

Using every tool they could dig up.

[kristopher]

37. How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the 1 Percent

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016188707

Feel free to compare and contrast.

[INdemo]

38. questionable results in 2012,2014,2016 especially 2014

and 2016.It was just too damn easy for the Republicans to retain control of the Senate

[world wide wally]

39. Americans have become stupid and weak

[Binkie The Clown]

40. Two words: "Incompetent voters". n/t

[SpankMe]

42. How is it, you ask?

It all boils down to voter turnout, really. Left-leaners and independents don't vote in sufficient numbers to keep things safe and sane. So, the extremist, crazy right - which votes with almost 100% turnout - overwhelms the tepid "things-will-take-care-of-themselves" non-voter.

One thing the Dems need to undertake as part of any comeback they fantasize about is a relentless campaign of "non-vote" shaming. If done right, it will make more people vote rather than alienate them.

[alfredo]

44. They have no interest in governing a democratic republic.

They yearn for a aristocratic state like the antibellum south. They have created a bond with the poor whites through race. The poor whites see the aristocratic whites as guardians of white supremacy

[workinclasszero]

45. Racism, Fox news and Hate radio propaganda

IMO.

Plus many Americans seem to love idiocy and bluster.

That's why a sexual pervert and a born liar is now shitting all over our White House.

Easiest place to be a successful con man has got to be the USA.

We are full to the brim with fools.

[hatrack]

46. 30 years of blaring, bogus brainwashing from every corner of the broadcast spectrum

Non-stop paranoid bullshit, aimed at morons and self-righteous Thumpers and people who want easy answers to everything.

[raccoon]

47. Gerrymandering and voter suppression had a lot to do with it.

Including voter ID laws.

[KG]

51. incompetent dem party leadership.

party needs to look in the mirror. DWS was a joke. the dems lost hundreds of seat on her watch. but she kept her job for years.

[D_Master81]

52. Because

Because they have a message that resonates in wide swaths of the country. Many people in rural america distrust government and that message they provide is an easy sell

[Roland99]

53. Gerrymandering, voter roll purges, and Citizens United

[Kablooie]

55. and Fox News, AM Radio, Breitbart, etc.

They've managed to rig the government and have massive propaganda outlets.

Dems have played by the rules and have real news but that doesn't work when the opposition is so dirty.

[moondust]

56. Greed & bigotry. n/t