2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumDemocrats have to advance young leaders and go back to working-class roots
What Democrats Need: Something Old and Something NewTo rebuild its winning coalition, a Rust Belt writer argues, the opposition party has to advance younger leaders and go back to its working-class roots
SEAN POSEY
BillMoyers.com
“We’ve disconnected ourselves from those working-class people,” Rep. Tim Ryan told MSNBC. “They left us in droves all throughout the industrial Midwest and the country, and now here we are — a coastal party.”
That would be the post-New Deal Democratic Party, heralded by Bill Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council’s rise to prominence during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The so-called New Democrats’ “third way” politics combined aspects of liberalism and conservatism with an emphasis on, as the DLC put it in its 2001 “New Democratic Credo,” “technological innovation, competitive enterprise and education rather than top- down redistribution or laissez faire.”
The next Democratic president after Clinton followed a similar path. Despite being the candidate of “change” in 2008, Obama adopted much of the Clintonian political outlook. He filled top administration positions with Wall Street-friendly financial advisers such as Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers. While voters lost their homes, bankers kept their bonuses. Clintonian third-way politics prevailed again. Again, Democrats lost the initiative (and the House) to the Tea Party.
Too many Democrats are looking for villains — from James Comey to Jill Stein — to blame for the party’s disastrous loss. This has to stop. Efforts to pass a constitutional amendment to eliminate the Electoral College represent a similar dead end. The longer it takes for the party to wrestle with its shift away from working people and toward Wall Street, Silicon Valley and special interests, the less likely it is that it will ever happen. If no common agreement can be reached over the causes of the party’s decline at the state level or its loss of the White House, moving forward could prove impossible.
Yep.
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NoGoodNamesLeft
(2,056 posts)There will probably be several posts made before I even his "Post my reply!"
dsc
(52,162 posts)plain and simple. Barring us throwing every non white, not straight, voter under the bus and running them over for good measure, we weren't going to win this election. There is literally no evidence at all that the voters of Ohio, Wisconsin, or PA voted on trade. In all three states Senators who were pro free trade for their entire careers won reelection handedly while Trump in two cases barely carried their state and in the third the Senator out performed Trump by 10 points despite having been a trade representative for Bush and running against a man who for his entire political career was against free trade. This election was about race, gender, and education level.
portlander23
(2,078 posts)dsc
(52,162 posts)Strickland not only lost, but he got massacred. So how did this happen? You can't argue they supported trade agreements in the past (neither one voted for a single solitary agreement, neither one voted to ever give authority to negotiate one) and both ran against opponents who did (in Strickland's case his opponent negotiated two different agreements that both passed without Hillary's vote and with Johnson's it should be noted)
portlander23
(2,078 posts)Coattails go both ways.
Also, a bad campaign.
Clinton World dumbfounded by Hillary’s election defeat
AMIE PARNES
The Hill
Other aides and surrogates pointed to an arrogance that came from the top.
“Russ Feingold sent a flare up and said ‘I need help,’ ” Manley said, but it went largely ignored.
Feingold, a former Democratic senator from Wisconsin, had long been favored to win his race against Sen. Ron Johnson. He ended up losing to the Republican incumbent, as Clinton’s collapse contributed to the downfall of Democratic Senate candidates.
dsc
(52,162 posts)in Strickland's case he got about 10% less than her, Feingold was closer than that but she lost by less than 1, he lost by (I think) 5. So again, if this was about the evils of trade as opposed to a bunch of racists and other haters, then how did these people do worse than Clinton did?
portlander23
(2,078 posts)We have one faction on the left that thinks the demise of the party is around policy issues related to failure of the third way, and another faction in the "center" that thinks the policies are fine and it's an issue solely of racism, misogyny etc., and everything is otherwise fine.
Like the author, I dunno how we go forward from here.
dsc
(52,162 posts)that would be a start. The simple fact is the exit polls show her winning (albeit narrowly) voters who cared about the economy. She killed among voters who cared about foreign policy and she lost about voters who cared about immigration (good bye Hispanics) and about terrorism (goodbye Muslims hello perpetual war), and values (goodbye gays). Frankly the people who have the education and wherewithal to leave those states often have leaving a dispropotonate percentage of under educated, older people behind.
portlander23
(2,078 posts)Show her losing all voters across all demographics and genders for lower income earners. They show her losing ground with just about every demographic in the Obama coalition.
dsc
(52,162 posts)She won voters under 50k and under 30k and won all demos within them except white men and white women. You are just making crap up. She didn't lose black men or women in that demo or any demo for that matter. She didn't lose Hispanics in that demo or any demo for that matter. You are just plain making crap up.
Joshua Holland
Rolling Stone
It's true that in 2016, non-college whites swung to the GOP by a 15-point margin relative to 2012. But Clinton underperformed Obama among voters of all races who make less than $30,000 per year by an identical margin. If the pundits were churning out hundreds of columns about how the Dems need to win back low-income voters, it would likely have a more salutary effect on Democratic policy.
This is beside the point. The real question is why is there resistance to adding economic justice to the platform? Why do you think that has to come with racism?
JHan
(10,173 posts)and we'll still hear most people cared about trade.. even though most americans don't even know what the TPP is.
Buckeye_Democrat
(14,853 posts)2016:
http://edition.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls
Clinton 53% Trump 41%
2012:
http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/results/race/president/ (click on exit polls tab)
Obama 60% Romney 38%
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)Now you're just making shit up.
Sid
JI7
(89,249 posts)
radius777
(3,635 posts)all over the country, for senate/congress/local/gov etc, who have the standard right-wing Reaganite position on trade.
Most of these voters have been voting GOP for the past 40 years, well before the Clintons showed up onto the national scene, who merely have a centrist position on trade.
This election was more about white conservative identity more than anything else.
JI7
(89,249 posts)Than ClinTon.
zipplewrath
(16,646 posts)Many folks around here have been pointing this out for years around here. But the response was to create the BOG instead of actually addressing it.
PatsFan87
(368 posts)"I am NOT a Clinton Democrat. I am an FDR New Deal Democrat". There's a winning message.
dsc
(52,162 posts)who FDR interned, for blacks who he largely neglected, and for gays who he bounced out of the navy. Oh, and lets not get started on his foreign policy.
PatsFan87
(368 posts)I was speaking of his New Deal economic policy.
Speaking of social issues though, seems like many didn't take issue with the Clinton history of welfare reform, mass incarceration, and anti-gay marriage (and lying about DOMA). Funny how that works.
dsc
(52,162 posts)and was as popular as it was, precisely because it left out blacks and other minorities. Let's be real here. Obamacare is as unpopular among these people as it is (even as they love them so KYNET) because it is available to the others, the people they don't like. My school has no union almost entirely because the NEA affiliate down here accepted black teachers when schools desegregated here nearly 40 years ago. That is one reason why free college (which is where whites are still over represented) was very popular with this cohort while none of them really cared about helping secondary schools (where minorities combine to be a majority of the students)
portlander23
(2,078 posts)Saying "I'm and FDR Democrat" means I'm for internment camps is simply dishonest argument. The real issue here is there hasn't been a single coherent argument as to why having a platform that includes economic justice implies that racism must come with it.
dsc
(52,162 posts)but I saying it has to have racism to appeal to the voters that voted for Trump. To take one, very discussed example, Clay county Kentucky were some 60-70 percent of voters are on Medicaid via Obamacare. That county, which is 100 percent white or nearly so, voted 88 to 11 in favor of Trump and over 2 to 1 for Bevens both of which promised, explicitly, to end that program. They literally voted to takeaway their healthcare all because they can't stand blacks and gays. When they had the chance to vote for an anti gay candidate who gave them healthcare for governor, they did, but when the pro gay man ran for governor they voted for the man who promised to take it away. Now you tell me, if they literally voted to takeaway their own healthcare, on what planet do you think a slightly higher minimum wage, or being against TPP would make a difference.
portlander23
(2,078 posts)It's not all about racism. There is a class argument to be made here. That's not to say there aren't voters Democrats will never reach, but that doesn't explain Clinton's loss.
PatsFan87
(368 posts)We let Republicans frame the message and win these voters when we don't even attempt to reach these people. The same people who advocate a 50-state strategy are all too quick to write certain people and regions off and give up. When a lot of these rural voters lost their jobs, where were the liberal groups going to talk to them? When Obamacare premiums rose, where were Democratic leaders to listen to them and explain how we need to keep and fix it? Our party often does the work but we don't have effective salespeople.
dsc
(52,162 posts)as did his son. But they both ran anti gay platforms which is why they won. Conway ran as pro gay and lost. The premiums are completely irrelevant since these people were on a premiumless Medicaid and voted to take it away from themselves over hatred of gays. Again, in what universe do you think being against TPP more strongly or consistently would have helped here. There is only
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)
Sid
radius777
(3,635 posts)that centered the concerns of the white working class at the expense of everyone else.
Once Dems started to address other group's concerns (civil rights, feminism etc) during the 60's and 70's, the white working class abandoned the Dem party for Nixon and then Reagan - well before the Clinton era.
hueymahl
(2,496 posts)He was far from perfect in many areas, but his New Deal message had the Democratic Party ascendent for 50 years. Only after 8 (12) years of Reagan followed by 8 years of WJC distancing us from New Deal policies did we implode.
The greatest leader of our lifetime, BHO, briefly saved us from our own destruction. We can't rely on someone like him showing up again in the next election cycle. We must get our polices straight.
Hell to the yes.
WhiteTara
(29,715 posts)and that doesn't mean going to rallies and "getting fired up" Politics are a day in and day out slog. I have been going to committee and club meetings for years and I so rarely see someone without gray hair. I always applaud them and tell them we need them, but they come and go. Only the old ones keep coming back.
kcr
(15,317 posts)And smearing Dem's nose in it, like they're a dog that needs to learn a lesson. We absolutely do have to build a coalition and it will never happen as long as the left keeps banging the Clinton hate drum. That misses the point entirely.
Focus on labor issues. Focus on how unions helped the middle and working classes. Using terms like "going back" with "working class", with or without white signal that you want to leave out minorities and go back to the good old days!
But you know, it's hard for me to take a lot of this seriously because so many of the angry agitators blaming Dems and Hillary will profess their love for Uber, for example. It's clear a lot of people don't actually understand. We have lost our way, and it has nothing to do with the Dem party.
portlander23
(2,078 posts)The critique of Clinton's loss is about third way politics, not about the candidate. Calling progressive racists is not going to help.
On the topic of Uber, Uber is not a technological breakthrough. The only innovation there is how to subvert labor laws.
kcr
(15,317 posts)The progressives that think parroting dog whistles like "white working class" certainly come across as tone deaf. You can defend it as "not racist!" and pat yourself on the back for being text-book accurate. But it doesn't matter. There will still be no coalition, and that is what you need. You can tell yourself you're fighting the good fight against third-way politics. Well, get on with your bad self. Meanwhile, we'll keep losing because we won't have that coalition. The real losers will be the working people and the poor. Just like right now.
hueymahl
(2,496 posts)The working poor of all races, creeds and religions. It is not about race. It is about a flawed message that has abandoned the roots of the Democratic Party.
portlander23
(2,078 posts)Clinton lost ground from Obama with the working poor across all genders and races. The working class isn't white. I understand the phrase has been used as a proxy for white people, but that's not the case here. We can argue the language but that doesn't solve the actual problem of economic justice.
hueymahl
(2,496 posts)People love to raise the race card when they don't like how the argument is going.
portlander23
(2,078 posts)I have to assume that people are arguing in good faith that we ought not forget concerns of race, and frankly the track record in this country isn't great on that. But I do agree that Mr. Sanders and progressives are not saying to ignore racial justice to take up the cause of economic justice.
hueymahl
(2,496 posts)You cannot ignore race. It is woven in to almost every policy discussion we could have. But it is not always about race either.
mcar
(42,331 posts)HRC's policies were very liberal. Can we please drop the old, tired, third way canard?
jfern
(5,204 posts)Supported sending back child refugees to the death in Central America, and privately supported trade agreements. There's nothing liberal about her.
mike_c
(36,281 posts)...advances real alternative visions for American government that foster social and economic justice, rebuild the labor coalition, protect the environment instead of corporate profits, treat health care and education as civil rights, and create a foreign policy that isn't an instrument for fighting wars of aggression to protect corporate profits. That will do for a beginning.
That third way shit is the reason the democratic party is weak throughout most of the country.
LonePirate
(13,424 posts)I don't think going back to working class roots (which is interpreted as blue collar roots) is a viable or advisable strategy for the future.
Me.
(35,454 posts)Another thread telling dems what they did wrong and MUST do. After all, no one else contributed to the loss but that awful woman, too old, too myopic, doesn't understand white people, too rich to commiserate with those who aren't and on and on and on. There's as much an agenda with these post mortems as both Bernie and the Cons had.
Oh & Ps. Let's also discount the fact that she won the popular vote handily....too bad those misguided voters live in the wrong places and therefore the majority vote shouldn't count.
portlander23
(2,078 posts)Me.
(35,454 posts)But leaving out all the other factors that determined this election is misleading and will have us making wrong, one-sided, decisions and assumptions. Economics is only one part of the equation. And let's remember that many of those who are supposedly upset about economics had a median income of $70K per annum and voted in a man who has way more money than Secretary Clinton, a man who is a money grubbing grifter and doesn't give a damn about their situations. In some ways, this turned out to be a self-absorbed grievance election as much as anything else.
And just to say...those who think the propaganda against Clinton was her fault and didn't matter, I point you to the DC pizza parlor that was shot up by a man who believed she was running a sex ring out of there. Lies matter whether told by a Con or another Dem, they are always a factor.
portlander23
(2,078 posts)Is not ignoring that racism or misogyny played a role.
Me.
(35,454 posts)But that is the message I took from your OP. "Too many Democrats are looking for villains — from James Comey to Jill Stein — to blame for the party’s disastrous loss" I feel there were many 'villains' in this election. Ripples from a pond of self-interest.
JHan
(10,173 posts)Depending on how some view Clinton, they'll pick one of the reasons over the other.
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)And then, Democrats told them "America is Greater Than Its Ever Been!"
A lot of angry people couldn't bring themselves to vote for the chosen successor of the President who stood by and watched as they lost everything.
Not that it made any sense to vote for Trump, of course.
Democratic leaders will have to really understand why people are so angry before they can see how they need to re-build the party.
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)The "working class whites/economic messaging" narrative simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny. We've been over this and over this and over this. One last time:
1) Economic justice is already a major component of the Democratic Party platform.
2) Clinton had a far more substantive economic message than Trump did. "We're looking at jobs--big league jobs" is a message that resonates with simpletons.
3) Clinton won among those most hurt by the recession, among those individuals who make $50,000 per year or less, among those who said the economy was the most important issue. She lost among those obsessed with terrorism (i.e., assuming all Muslims are terrorists) and immigration (i.e., assuming all Mexican immigrants, in particular, are rapists and drug dealers).
4) The WCW narrative implies that working class POC must not care about economics, because they voted for Clinton in overwhelming numbers. And many WCW also voted for Clinton, by the way.
5) Major proponents of the TPP, including Rust Belt candidates, won with ease.
And on and on and on. Seriously, the WCW narrative died a long time ago. Bury it already. Or cremate it. Something, anything. Because it's really stinking up the joint.
MaeScott
(878 posts)...like Joe Madison of XM UrbanRadio says, "You have to put it where the goats can get it."
It has to resonate with simpletons. Start at that level in messaging.
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)They feel their and their children's job opportunities and wages are harmed by the federal government's tolerance of illegal immigration, and it's refusal to enforce immigration and labor laws.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/rust-belt-democrats-saw-trump-wave-coming
These Rust Belt Democrats Saw the Trump Wave Coming
And they tried to warn the Clinton campaign.
much snipped...
Like Betras, Taylor doesn't believe his peers and neighbors who supported Trump are racist. But he understands how Trump's talk about immigration appealed to people in the Rust Belt. A few years ago, his union was working on a billion-dollar natural gas processing plant, and the workers noticed that the bulk of the work was being done by Spanish-speaking laborers who arrived each morning on buses. "It brought a lot of resentment to the area because they'd never seen it before," Taylor says. "People see that and then they go tell everybody else, and social media, the way it is, it just runs wild." He believes Trump benefited when the community saw immigrants "taking jobs that Americans think they should be doing."
JHan
(10,173 posts)How does that gel with Democrats not doing anything to "stop illegal immigration"
And "refusal to enforce immigration and labor laws"
How have democrats so easily swallowed Right Wing propaganda about our own record?
Trump's 10 point immigration plan bears little difference to what is currently on the books, he just sprinkles some spicy xenophobic rhetoric on top of it...and he wants a larger deportation force - units in fact - which is an ethical disaster in the making.
We still have to do something about undocumented immigrants because some were here before Obama took office and have families - some-during the Obama presidency - saw their families torn apart because of deportation. So what is the option? Kick everybody out? Or make existing undocumented workers part of the economy - they contribute 11.5 billion in taxes - and keep enforcing our laws.
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)I'm fine with legalizing everyone. Ann Coulter (and Trump, at the start of the campaign, but everything he says is a lie) wants to deport them all. But we must do one or the other.
The DC Establishment, Dems and Reps alike, have allowed the situation to go on for decades. Every Dreamer represents a failure of the government to enforce the immigration laws against a family for 10, 15, 20 years.
California passed Prop 187 in 1994, a primal scream against illegal immigration. I truly believe if the government had responded and gotten control of the immigration system and today we didn't have undocumented workers among us, we wouldn't have a president-elect Trump. Just MHO.
JHan
(10,173 posts)Liberal values are immigration friendly, and democrats need to distinguish ourselves from the language republicans/conservatives use..Conservatives are antagonistic towards internationalism and are typically nativist.
I don't like the term "illegal" in reference to a human being, immigrants come here sincerely wanting a better life and better opportunities.Most "illegals" are visa overstays, ICE has their names, and ICE has been terribly efficient - more immigrants have been deported under Obama than under any other president. In any case, Net immigration from Mexico is also almost at zero because their fertility rates have dropped and some cities have experienced economic growth over the past decade, corruption aside.
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)People cross arbitrary borders in order to survive, just as anyone would do.
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)Tolerating illegal immigration and widespread exploitation of undocumented workers conflicts with the core value of wanting living wage jobs for all Americans.
JHan
(10,173 posts)Instead of demonizing immigration (illegal immigration) as a scapegoat for job losses or loss of wages, recognize perception vs reality.
There's a lot of noise about immigration, fanned by conservatives, but undocumented workers have a small effect on wages. At times they lower wages or raise wages within a 2% range. In a fast moving economy like our that 2% shift isn't extraordinary , sometimes the impact hovers around zero. My source info:
http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/09-013_15702a45-fbc3-44d7-be52-477123ee58d0.pdf
http://davidroodman.com/blog/2014/09/03/the-domestic-economic-impacts-of-immigration/
Some undocumented workers offer their labour at very competitive rates, mainly affecting construction and agriculture: The result - cheaper housing and cheaper produce. Which is why if they've been here for a while, and have a family, best to incorporate them into the economy instead of tearing families apart with deportation.
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" doesn't conflict with the health and prosperity of Americans, especially if an immigrant is here "illegally" out of desperation.
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)JHan
(10,173 posts)I missed those pieces from Vox,
spells it out succinctly and clearly..
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)Uncontrolled undocumented immigration isn't the only reason that half the country is poor or near-poor, but it is a real factor. And people feel that politicians won't listen to them when they pass something like Prop 187, and 'elites' tell them the problems with illegal immigration are just their imagination.
JHan
(10,173 posts)doesn't make what they believe right, it doesn't mean what they believe bears any semblance to what's actually going on.
And if you're told constantly the enemy is the Mexican coming to take your job when other reasons have a greater impact, you'll believe it, and Americans all over are told this everyday.
It was the same with Brexit. It's all blood and soil politics and liberals should have nothing to do with it.
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)Almost immediately.
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)People aren't willing to see their young adult sons sit home unemployed while busloads of Spanish speaking laborers work on construction projects, just to 'support the economy'. And they vote.
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)A lot of young Bernie supporters are very alienated from the Dem leadership, even as the vast majority showed up to vote for Hillary out of fear of Trump. They were disdained and mocked and treated badly at the convention. There's a lot of hurt feelings.
Senate and House Dem elections of Pelosi and Schumer show me that they don't understand this situation, at all.
Lil Missy
(17,865 posts)
OhioBlue
(5,126 posts)Last edited Tue Dec 6, 2016, 12:12 AM - Edit history (1)
The Dem party needs to promote, encourage and train young dems. They should sponsor them to attend progressive leadership institutes and training initiatives like Camp Wellstone. When they run at the local level, they need assistance and financial support. It's fine for them to work their way up the ladder, but we should not expect them to do it with out support and tutelage.
Lil Missy
(17,865 posts)
OhioBlue
(5,126 posts)changed the sentiment that I was trying to get across.
I meant to say we should NOT expect them to do it without support, grooming and tutelage.
Tarheel_Dem
(31,234 posts)
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)that Republicans are going to relegate themselves to a southern party. Ironically, we're the ones who have been relegated to a coastal party.
OhioBlue
(5,126 posts)Adrahil
(13,340 posts)Last edited Tue Dec 6, 2016, 09:25 AM - Edit history (1)
This is a load of bollocks. Democrats are proposing REAL solutions that will help actual working and middle-class people.
Republicans, however are telling them what they want to hear: That the world they knew (both economically and culturally) can come back. It's a lie. Hell, the Republicans actually TELL them they are screwing them, but they are more than happy to vote for the GOP because they ultimately WANT to believe the fantasy. And their social conservatism seals the deal. Frankly, unless we're willing to give up on protecting the rights of immigrants, minorities and LGBT people, we probably don't have a shot at them even IF we are willing to tell them economic fairy tales.
Exilednight
(9,359 posts)If you can't do it, then maybe now you will understand why we are losing elections.