2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumThere ARE no "moderate Republicans"-if there had been, we'd have won their votes this year.
Our whole presentation in the fall was about reassuring the mythical "moderate Republicans" that nothing threatening would happen if we held the White House.
We did everything we could to appeal to them. It didn't work. There is no place further right we can go without ceasing to be a different party(as we essentially did presidentially in '96-other than choice and a few national parks, we promised nothing in that platform that Thurston Howell III would ever have objected to).
We must find a way(and I don't care who we nominate when I say this)of being genuine, down to Earth, and sounding practical-but we can do that without watering ourselves down to nothing.
And we have to find that way-because looking safe and careful is what killed us in the states we had to win.
Cobalt Violet
(9,905 posts)I have no faith left.
gollygee
(22,336 posts)And I have since the defense of marriage act. Supposedly moderate Republicans voted for that, and therefore obviously weren't moderate. That was nothing but a hate bill.
randome
(34,845 posts)Unwilling to buck the party line like good little robots.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]
Demsrule86
(68,710 posts)again. They stick together. Sure, they have the rabid right and some who probably detest Trump...but all vote GOP consistently. Democrats are losing policy and power because we don't do that. During this election, people who claim to be so so liberal stayed home with a butthurt because they didn't like Hillary or they just loved loved Bernie ...whatever. The courts were at stake, but they stuck their noses in the air and demonstrated their purity by helping elect a fascist who is now talking about internment camps. And by stacking the courts, he will get them most likely. We will lose every piece of policy we fought for since Roosevelt...but the pure among us don't care yet...they will. We won't be able to get some of what we lose back and that is a damn shame and self inflicted. Now, the Republicans who didn't like Trump still voted for him. And their agenda will continue indefinitely since they will have the courts. Until Democrats learn to stick together, we won't win. But we can be pure and have great hypotheitical discussions about how the banks need to broken up or single payer or emails...while people's lives are being destroyed by those that some of us helped elect.