Why Do Democrats Freak Out Whenever They Lose An Election?

[Yavin4]

And the response is always that the Dems must be even more conservative. Why? When the Republicans lose elections, they go harder right and have a major impact on policy.

Say the Dems lose control of the Senate this year. Is that the end of the world? Instead of freaking out and running harder to the right, wouldn't the Dems be better off fine tuning and updating their message in order to get ready for 2016 and beyond.

It's more important to have an identity than it is to win an election.

[RKP5637]

1. That, to me, is the core problem with democrats, lost identity, and constantly

tracking to the right to be like republicans. One state I lived in the democrats were more RW than many of the republicans. I like democrats like Alan Grayson, not afraid of their shadow.

[unblock]

2. you have to look past the formal institutions of power

and look at the power behind the scenes.

the ever-increasing power of rich people and corporations, the availability of cheaper resources (labor in particular) overseas, and the complete disregard for any social contract among those powerful people.

that's the power landscape behind the scenes.
that's the reality that politicians face if they want to get into office and keep their jobs or move up the ladder.

republicans move further to the right because they can, democrats move further to the right because they have to.

unless and until, somehow, this concentration of power and influence is substantively broken, politics will continue to move to the right to cater to this increasingly concentrated power structure at the expense of the country and its people.


eventually, historically, such concentrations of power lead inevitably to unacceptable excess and collapse. only then can the left rise again. think the great contraction and fdr, although history certainly provides bloodier examples.

as i see it, we our formal institutions lost the power decades ago to stand up to the concentration of wealth and power behind the scenes.

[jambo101]

3. If any one is freaking out its the righties

Last edited Tue Aug 19, 2014, 01:19 PM - Edit history (1)

Ever since Obama became President the righties have gone ballistic to the point of literally tearing the country apart on an ideological level, In My 66 years i've never seen such hate venom and vitriol directed toward a duly elected President and those who voted to put him there.
Lefties are still coherent to me and are generally making much more sense than the righties who seem to have all gone mad.

[CrispyQ]

4. You can't serve two masters and that's what the dems have been trying to do for the past 30 years.

They backed away from the word liberal when a two bit actor poked fun at it & they've been backing away from liberal policies ever since. They saw the corporate cash that was there for the taking & they hopped on the gravy train. Sure, they throw us a few more crumbs than the repubs, but they are on the frickin' train & it's still barreling down the same frickin' track.

They've been doing this shit for 30 years: