We don't need the votes of bigots and xenophobes...we need the votes of the alienated.

[Ken Burch]

If we do try to flip any votes from the other side(and it will be a long time before we get to working on that), we don't need to appease white backlash types.

The people we should find the way to target are the people who hated the backlash rhetoric and agreed with us that it was terrible, but who voted against us on "shake up the system" grounds. That's also why some people DIDN'T vote. I don't DEFEND their decision. But we need to work out a way to get them to make a different choice next time.

By 2018, most of those voters will have seen that what they voted for this year, or the choice they made not


Getting their votes doesn't mean, as some have claimed, arguing that class was the ONLY thing that matters(an argument no one actually made during our primaries) and that anti-oppression campaigning must be abandoned.

It means finding the way to say, as we speak out against social oppression, that hard times and fear of hard times matter, too. That fear of falling into want matters, too.

We can do that without selling out ANY of the communities that we speak out in defense of. It's about finding the way to send THIS message:

"We need something better. So do you. We won't walk behind you, and we won't make you feel you need to walk behind us. If you will stand with us, WE WILL STAND WITH YOU. And together, we will ALL win".

No one who ran this year will seek the presidency again. This isn't about attacking anyone who did. It's about making sure whoever we nominate next time will be able to carry the states we need to carry and then have the ability to do the things ALL of us on this site and in this party want done.

We have all spent the last week-and-a-half grieving. We can grow from this, we can learn from this. We can bring the nightmare to an end. That's all I'm trying to help us do.



If we had found the way to say that this year, whoever our nominee had been, we would have taken the Upper Midwest.

[frazzled]

1. It's about the people who didn't vote (or voted third party)

There was nothing wrong with our message or outreach. Honest, there wasn't. It's just that anyone who didn't come out to vote against Trump, even if they didn't feel they liked or found Hillary inspiring enough (really, folks, grow up), bear the brunt of the blame for this debacle. The message was fine, and spoke to every segment of America. If America doesn't listen, there's nothing to be done about it.

I don't ask myself for a minute what we did wrong. I ask instead how could all these people--how could even a small minority of these people--vote for the vulgar, hate-filled, angry, bigoted, lying other guy and his message, which was 90% deplorable.

It's useless to keep hashing over the what-we-should-do-next scenarios. Next won't be like last (it never is in elections). Let's put all our energies into pushing back on the Trump agenda that is soon to come instead of self-blaming for things that are past or planning for some unpredictable future.

[Ken Burch]

2. It's useless to say "people should just have voted-we don't need to examine or change anything".

We will never nominate our 2016 nominee again. She will never try to get elected president again.

The duty of a party that didn't win in the Electoral College is to take an honest look at what worked and what didn't.

And we will never win people over by denouncing them. On a basic psychological level, nobody ever gets persuaded that way.

[frazzled]

6. The corollary to your argument would be

that the winning party did everything right. No.they.did.not. They were horrible. They won by playing on people's anger and fears and bigotry. By using falsehoods and lies. By promising things they could never in a million years deliver. By bullying. By being mean. They were disorganized and sloppy. They did zero outreach beyond anyone in their hateful minions.

If that is the message and the methodology that sells, then count me (and millions of others) out altogether. If what we did was wrong, then by extension you are saying they did things very right. Yay, you want the Democrats to be the party of meanness, self-interest, bigotry, and lies. Because that is what won.

[Ken Burch]

7. I wasn't arguing our campaign did everything wrong or that theirs did everything right.

I agree that the other side did what they did and that it was horrific.

And I would never argue for us using Trump's tactics. They wouldn't work for us.

What I'm talking about are simply things we can do better in the future.

Does it do any harm to try to come up with something better?

I've said nothing derogatory or disrespectful about our nominee and would not do so.

And our nominee isn't going to run again, nor is it likely that anybody else would run in the exact same campaign we ran this time.

[Demsrule86]

8. You are arranging the chairs on Titanic I fear.

I know you don't want to hear this, but the divisive primary split the party...the pure want a purge...they are so certain their ideas are the best...I am not so sure. We remain in my viewpoint a center-left country. I don't know how you fix this. I don't know if you can. Some democrats and avowed leftists voted for a racist piece of shit as a protest vote...there are no words. I think we stop obsessing about this and work on the midterm...let it go. There is little we can do in terms of outreach until we put the party back together. Bernie Sanders did not just run down Hillary, he ran down the party. And there are those that now hate the Democratic Party. I don't know how you fix that and still win.

[Ken Burch]

3. And as for "hashing away" This is the "2016 Postmortem" forum.

Hashing away is the whole point of any thread here.

[seaglass]

9. I agree with you frazzled. I think there were 107K votes that made the difference between winning

the EC or not. And Hillary won the popular vote by over a million. Next election - if there is one - will be a completely different environment so changing our strategy now seems premature. Plus we need to stick with our most loyal base and WWC is not it.

[gulliver]

4. We need to sell better.

We had the right product. It would have been a major change for the better for everyone.

Everyone has a Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde side. Most people want to be good, but they make political buying decisions for both "good" and "evil" reasons. We let Trump outsell us. He had major assists from the steady squeeze of modern civilization on human beings, but he also outsold us.

[Ken Burch]

5. That's a good analysis.

n/t.