[Discussion] What comes next? Liber-all

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American liberals and progressives now face their biggest challenge in a generation: What do we do with 4 years of a trump presidency, a republican congress, a likely conservative supreme court and most states under complete republican control?

This thread is not meant as a forum for discussing HOW or WHY democrats got destroyed in the 2016 election. It's meant for finding a way forward.

I took Wednesday off both to think and to try and distract myself.

I'm not sure what to do, honestly. I ran around and checked every election headquarters in the area, all closed. Naturally.

What do I do with these feelings of frustration and impotence? This fear that I feel? This worry that I've failed my daughters?

I ended up deciding that I need to volunteer more. I think I'm going to get into politics.

I believe the democrats lost because of a few reasons:

1.) Their bench sucks. Few people at the state and local level. That needs fixed and built back up.

2.) I don't think their messaging was good. I don't think #strongertogether came across like how they wanted it to. I don't think it sounded authentic enough and it sure as hell didn't get people out to vote. Part of that was the candidate but part of it is, I believe an attitude problem with US liberals.

The democratic party has a lot of bugs to work out but I think it's still the best way forward for change. I'll be officially changing my party from I (well, technically R right now but that's a long story) to D soon.

I DO NOT APOLOGIZE FOR MY PUN even if this is for more than just liberals.

Sorry, had to.

I, too, stayed home Wednesday, having been up most of the night. (Trying to sleep wasn't working, either.) Wanting to veg-out and forget all about the overnight disappointment, I settled down to watch some movies that I hadn't seen for a while. My first choice was Die Hard 3 (the one mostly in NYC with Samuel Jackson).

Fail.

Throw away joke lines included a black female dispatcher/cop saying something like "Right, and I'm Donald Trump's wife", and a separate one about U.S. Presidents and how Hillary Clinton was going to be number forty-something.

At least the old X-Men movies were free of any direct references.

Aww I posted kind of an identical thread. Guess I took too long working on it

Sorry. Been meaning to make this since Wednesday. I figured with Certis locking election thread, now was the time.

Honestly, I'm not sure it matters what liberals do, at this point. The Republican dominance is so complete that I see no way for them to ever allow liberals back into power. They'll change the laws in any way necessary to keep winning elections. They'll put a hyper-conservative judge on the Court... and, in fact, they could load it up with more justices. There's nothing in the Constitution that says it has to be 9, and when they're in control of all three branches, and so many states, there's not one damn thing the liberals can do to stop them. There's the straw in the wind of a Democratic filibuster in the Senate, and that's not going to last five minutes into the new Congress.

Republicans know that if they ever lose power, demographics will render them obsolete, so they will never again lose power while this government continues as a going concern.

From the thread I made:

Where do we go from here?

Is neoliberalism dead? Is progressivism the way forward, or do we need something new? How can Democrats better appeal to the voters it lost? What can we do to actually help at-risk populations, including minorities and the working class, instead of just paying them lip service?

Here's some of the things I'd like to see:

Democrats emphasizing that social justice is not incompatible with helping the white working class.

A decreased focus on programs that are perceived as "handouts" and an increased focus on labor rights. The social safety net is important but we also need to listen to people when they say they don't want welfare, they want jobs, and they don't just want crap jobs with long hours and little pay, they want good jobs. It's probably not possible to bring manufacturing back to the Rust Belt but I think Democrats need a better plan for training and employing these people. Democrats need to get back to championing workers' rights. Increased wages, better job security, improved benefits, these are things that are broadly popular.

I think Democrats need to focus less on the presidency and federal power and more on state and local races. Even here in liberal Mass, Republicans often get state and local positions because Dems can't get their act together. That's ridiculous. A lot of Trump's rollbacks are going to involve returning federal power to state and local governments in areas such as social liberties, education and environmental protection, and they'll have a lot less bite if those state and local governments are actually reasonable.

That's just it.

We can despair about the federal level all we want but that decision is made. It's done. We lost it.

So we need to start acting locally. Still speak out on national issues but we need to start getting local candidates governing experience and start moving them up the ladder.

oilypenguin wrote:

That's just it.

We can despair about the federal level all we want but that decision is made. It's done. We lost it.

So we need to start acting locally. Still speak out on national issues but we need to start getting local candidates governing experience and start moving them up the ladder.

So much this. Malor's quite right that the Democratic Party as it existed on Monday is dead, dead, dead. But it can be rebuilt from the ground up. The idea behind Sander's candidacy was a good one, but with respect to the Senator and his supporters I don't believe he would have won this election either.

A cohesive, intersectional movement needs to come up through the structures. It will take time, effort, failure and setbacks, but it can, and must, be done.

I think I might try to talk with my conservative co-workers who didn't vote for Trump, and make an appeal for them to consider a shift in their priorities towards being more aware and invested in the civil rights and basic human dignity of vulnerable minorities.

They (and a great many people like them) are good, decent people who care about the well being of the people around them, and generally have good intentions, despite the fact that parts of their belief systems lead them to often take actions that do grave harm to the less privileged. Under normal circumstances, trying to shift their opinions is a near insurmountable challenge, but I wonder if they might be uniquely primed to hear and consider and potentially even champion the perspectives of those in the direct crosshairs of the Trump/Pence administration given just how much the foundations of their political orthodoxy have been shaken, and just how clearly abhorrent Trump is to them.

It might be a futile effort, and even if it does move the needle with them, it's probably just an insignificant drop in the bucket. But, it's one of the few things I can genuinely do, aside from continuing to be ready and available to help my own friends and family should they need it. And, who knows, they could potentially take the thought back to their communities, and even if it makes just a small shift in their willingness to act (or not act, in some cases) as things move forward, maybe it will be worth something.

Honestly, as someone who started working in local government a few months ago, there is a LOT that the average citizen can accomplish at the county/state level. Remember that states can impose more social and environmental protections than the federal government, local school boards will theoretically have more control of what curriculum they teach, and it's the locally elected sheriff and prosecutor who makes the call about actively pursuing hate crimes (or not).

I agree with JD. What it takes, of course, is to admit that the problem is not *government*, but *policies*.

I am...still not a Democrat. That won't stop me from being involved in the places where I have the energy/time to deal with it, but I can't sign on to the label. The national party needs a shakeup. While there's something to be said for the fact that this election was lost by inches, the very fact that it came that close at all should be a massive wakeup call.

I sincerely hope that the Democratic party figures out what they are. This country runs much better when we have two functioning parties, despite the drawbacks of the system.

And it's not like people didn't see this coming. Here's Keith Ellison in July 2015:

There's a reason why Bernie is lobbying for him to be the next DNC chair.

zeroKFE wrote:

They (and a great many people like them) are good, decent people who care about the well being of the people around them, and generally have good intentions, despite the fact that parts of their belief systems lead them to often take actions that do grave harm to the less privileged.

But that's the thing. If they take actions that do grave harm to other people then are they actually good, decent people who care about the wellbeing of people around them?

At best they are people who selfishly only care about their own well being and, perhaps, the small group of people they feel are like them. At worst they are part of the deplorables.

And which group they belong to doesn't really matter to the person they are harming.

zeroKFE wrote:

Under normal circumstances, trying to shift their opinions is a near insurmountable challenge, but I wonder if they might be uniquely primed to hear and consider and potentially even champion the perspectives of those in the direct crosshairs of the Trump/Pence administration given just how much the foundations of their political orthodoxy have been shaken, and just how clearly abhorrent Trump is to them.

This isn't a question of politics. It's a question of human nature. If someone is capable of having empathy for their fellow humans (specifically their fellow humans who aren't exactly like them) then there's a possibility of changing their minds.

But even having empathy isn't enough because they also have to realize that they've personally been the baddie at some point in their lives. And a lot of people would rather take the express bus to denialsville than admit they've harmed someone through their actions or inactions.

There was a This American Life episode from a few weeks ago that kinda covered this (and there was a brief discussion about it somewhere here). It was about a small Minnesotan town's reaction to an influx of Somali immigrants. In it you get to hear the equivalent of someone's kindly old grandmother trying to rationalize blaming the Somalis for, well, everything: crime, changing the town, making her feel uncomfortable, using her taxes, etc.

It's a valid question as to whether or not that little old grandmother (and everyone else in the episode) was actually a good person or not.

As someone outside the Democratic party, my thinking on how the DNC can appeal to people outside of the party (which it desperately needs to do) is to let Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (but especially Bernie) rebuild its leadership from the top down.

Now I fully understand why some dems would be appalled by this. Bernie's arguably not a Democrat. And just handing over the keys to 2 people seems pretty undemocratic. Desperate times though. The DNC is currently viewed from the outside as corrupt and true or not, perception is reality in politics. People really like, and trust, Bernie. They'll trust him to do the house-cleaning the DNC needs to do.

Plus, OMG, they need to get the best IT security company they can find and lock down every f*cking thing, even if it means old farts can't use their Blackberries to do email.

And finally, cut Hillary loose completely. She doesn't completely deserve it, but she's the party's albatross.

I don't know if Trump supporters are good people. All of them, some of them, none of them, I don't know. I can't know. I'm sure some of them are. I spent a lot of time during this election talking to trump supporters, trying to understand. I saw a LOT of ugliness. A willful disregard for others. I had a woman scream at me that trans* folks are, "gross monsters" that needed "rounded up for psychological help." That's in quotes because it was a quote. I will never forget that conversation, I have been angry for literally weeks. That said, small sample size.

I HAVE to believe that the majority of the people that voted for Trump, Johnson, Stein, or flat out didn't vote (a majority of our country) are good people. I have to believe that. Why? Because otherwise there's no way forward. There's no conversation, only horse trading. But we can't bargain with these people for a number of reasons:

1.) If the trump campaign has taught us anything, it's that the facts don't matter. We officially live in a post-factual democracy so....

2.) Decision making on a national scale is done with emotion fundamentally.

If that's the case, then literally all we can do is start locally and take control on a city/county/state level. All we can do is start talking to people and start changing minds.

If you're angry, be angry. Scream. Cry. Fight.

But when that's done, we have to live with these people. Our best chance for the future involves swallowing our indignation and talking to them. I am not tone policing here. We still have to fight for people, now more than ever, but we can't all give in to the temptation to punch someone in the nose. Some of us will need to bite it back and be politicians about this and appear reasonable even when we're seething. I can't see any other way forward. We need to find what fuels this hate that's gotten this guy elected and we need to stop it.

Also, I agree with every point QS just made.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

As someone outside the Democratic party, my thinking on how the DNC can appeal to people outside of the party (which it desperately needs to do) is to let Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (but especially Bernie) rebuild its leadership from the top down.

Which people outside the party should the DNC try to appeal to?

As another outsider chiming in, I'd love to see the DNC solidify a vision for their party moving forward. I'd love to see a list of things they want to accomplish, and an order of priority level for the items on that list. I feel like I know a few of the bigger hot button issues(abortion rights, LGBTQ protections) but this election seemed to be so much of a bare-knuckle brawl that the issues were lost in the mudslinging(deserved or not).

EDIT: Replying to OG_Slinger here, but the thread moved quickly.

I don't disagree with you at all, except in that I think it's perfectly possible for people to be both inherently good and well intentioned and selfish and myopic and harmful to vulnerable people.

Also, I'm actually literally talking about a specific set of people, not about a general group (in general, the thing I'm considering doing does feel like an even more naive effort). I'm talking about specific people I've sat next to and worked with for years (in one case, over a decade), whose decency and good will I know and have witnessed countless times -- and again, these are religious conservatives who were appalled by Trump from the word go. I still am not especially optimistic that I can change their minds even under the current extreme circumstances, but, you know, it's something to do that's not arguing on the internet, right?

I guess that's the only real point to my post -- other than subscribing to a thread I want to follow -- that maybe there are a small handful of people each of us know who ARE specific, real individuals to us, who we see as generally part of the problem but who maybe there is value in talking to. Maybe. Because I want to do something other than waiting and worrying for something to happen to the people I care about who overnight have been forced into world that is even more dangerous and less accommodating to them than it was before.

OG_slinger wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

As someone outside the Democratic party, my thinking on how the DNC can appeal to people outside of the party (which it desperately needs to do) is to let Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (but especially Bernie) rebuild its leadership from the top down.

Which people outside the party should the DNC try to appeal to?

There's a hundred million people who didn't or couldn't vote this election. That seems like a good place to start. You don't start by trying to convert your -5s, you start with your +5s and work your way down.

Some places they could start:
- People concerned about the security state and surveillance (which Clinton was in the bag for)
- Address the economic/class concerns. It's not just the far right that had economic insecurity.
- Take the issues that African Americans and other minorities are protesting about seriously; many of them already felt betrayed by Obama's relative inaction post-Ferguson and this didn't help.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

As someone outside the Democratic party, my thinking on how the DNC can appeal to people outside of the party (which it desperately needs to do) is to let Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (but especially Bernie) rebuild its leadership from the top down.

Now I fully understand why some dems would be appalled by this. Bernie's arguably not a Democrat. And just handing over the keys to 2 people seems pretty undemocratic. Desperate times though. The DNC is currently viewed from the outside as corrupt and true or not, perception is reality in politics. People really like, and trust, Bernie. They'll trust him to do the house-cleaning the DNC needs to do.

Plus, OMG, they need to get the best IT security company they can find and lock down every f*cking thing, even if it means old farts can't use their Blackberries to do email.

And finally, cut Hillary loose completely. She doesn't completely deserve it, but she's the party's albatross.

I can't like this post enough, so I'm requoting it too! I was considering changing my party affiliation to Democrat as a possible way of being able to be of more help, but I didn't do it. I'm not sure that I can do it at this point even though I plan to continue supporting and helping the local Democratic group here. I'm really not happy with the DNC at all and I want to see where all this goes.

I also agree that it's time to cut Hillary loose now that the election is over. No, she doesn't entirely deserve it, and I came to respect and admire her more as a person over the course of the election. I really wanted her to win. I hate that such a positive and intelligent woman had to suffer a 30+ year witch hunt only to suffer yet more humiliation. It's not fair and it sucks.

However, she didn't win and things need to move forward in order to remove the corruption within the DNC and also to fight against the evil that has taken control of our country. Hillary just can't represent the face of the "new DNC" and inspire people to think anything other than "more of the same" within that organization.

I feel that the neo-liberalism has done a lot of harm to the Democratic party and I'd personally like to see it given the boot. We need to put people over profit.

Uh. I found goal #1 for us: OK WE NEED TO STOP THIS RIGHT NOW.

That article is from June. We need to stay vigilant though.

oilypenguin wrote:

Uh. I found goal #1 for us: OK WE NEED TO STOP THIS RIGHT NOW.

That's from June, but it doesn't mean it isn't still relevant.

There's a lot that needs to be stood up to. The last Republican dominated government was pro-torture. The free press is already jeopardized. And then there's the danger of Muslim registry. The fact that it only takes one successful terrorist attack for Trump to make the Executive branch even stronger. The nuclear codes are in his hands.

There's so many #1 issues.

OG_slinger wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

As someone outside the Democratic party, my thinking on how the DNC can appeal to people outside of the party (which it desperately needs to do) is to let Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (but especially Bernie) rebuild its leadership from the top down.

Which people outside the party should the DNC try to appeal to?

IMAGE(https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3408/4618971518_f727b665c3_o.gif)

From inside the party, it's easy to overlook how much all this email nonsense (both the FBI investigation and the wikileaks) has affected public perception. So when the nation's morons manage to convince themselves that Trump is more trustworthy than Hillary, it's time to sit up and say, "Holy f*ck, we have the mother of all perception problems."

A version of what I said in the other now redundant thread.

I think neoliberalism is dead. I've hated neoliberalism for a long time. Ever since Bill Clinton its focus on college for everyone and pushing the entire labor force into knowledge jobs has been questionable. Now I think it's ruinous. People were always going to get left behind. Not everyone can be a doctor, programmer or executive. We need trades and we need robust, well-compensated trades.

I think that strategy has played out and it failed both as policy and it failed as a political strategy. It pushed a record number of kids into college, causing student debt to balloon. Worse, it helped accelerate the urban / rural divide, in my opinion. Kids like me literally had 1 valid choice in our parents' eyes. Go to college and become someone or stay home and die out like the town you grew up in. This was a lot of pressure on those of us who left and a pretty sh*tty thing to do to those who stayed behind, whether by choice or because they didn't have the option.

On top of that neoliberalism didn't do anything to address war. Guantanamo Bay stayed open under Obama. Domestic surveillance continued under Obama. War shifted from boots on the ground to drone strikes, but the wars never really ended.

I think it's safe to say neoliberalism as currently practiced is a dead-end philosophy. And what has to replace it from the left is a comprehensive strategy that values all kind of work and craft and labor and promises to compensate people for their time and not just their fortune of going to college or falling into the right career. This could be a good thing.

For a long time the left has been infatuated almost solely with the presidency. "Camelot" was fetishized, the fake Bartlett administration became a standard-bearer for liberals everywhere and I fear the same thing is going to happen to the Obama administration. The Obama presidency was consequential and steady and important from a policy perspective, but it wasn't perfect. We shouldn't seal it in amber as if it was flawless, to admire for always.

There's important work to do and that work doesn't require winning the presidency. People could organize unions from the grass roots. They could rededicate themselves to issues like good pay and standard work weeks, healthcare, etc. I think the left fell to in love with the idea of top-down remedies. There's no option now except bottom-up remedies. This election was a disaster, but maybe that's something good that could come of it.

Podesta is officially blaming Comey for the loss.

I think, sure, probably a factor. But when you think about the person who won, it shouldn't have been close enough for Comey's idiocy to have factored in. I know how cathartic it can be to just lay the blame elsewhere but I don't think 100% of it goes on Comey and the press.

croaker wrote:

I, too, stayed home Wednesday, having been up most of the night. (Trying to sleep wasn't working, either.) Wanting to veg-out and forget all about the overnight disappointment, I settled down to watch some movies that I hadn't seen for a while. My first choice was Die Hard 3 (the one mostly in NYC with Samuel Jackson).

Fail.

Throw away joke lines included a black female dispatcher/cop saying something like "Right, and I'm Donald Trump's wife", and a separate one about U.S. Presidents and how Hillary Clinton was going to be number forty-something.

To me it's not even direct references. My in-laws were watching "Designated Survivor" last night and I had to leave the room. A drama about terrorist attacks just seems pretty f*cking tone deaf right now. Regardless of when it was written or filmed. Actually, most TV that isn't a cooking show or kittens frolicking seems pretty tone deaf right now.

I heartily recommend Great British Bakeoff.

I think plithy slogans are annoying but I do admit this rung true for me.

IMAGE(https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/15056387_10154801220954274_146379549520139314_n.jpg?oh=6a94c2cbf86a5dfebe3ebfc4e0ceefbb&oe=588ADA0D)

Quintin_Stone wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

As someone outside the Democratic party, my thinking on how the DNC can appeal to people outside of the party (which it desperately needs to do) is to let Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (but especially Bernie) rebuild its leadership from the top down.

Which people outside the party should the DNC try to appeal to?

IMAGE(https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3408/4618971518_f727b665c3_o.gif)

Everyone? Come on now, Q. The Democrats *are* the big tent party.

Trump, on the other hand, continued the fine Republican tradition of having more than nine out of ten of his votes coming from only white people (with a heavy emphasis on non-college educated, Christian white male people).

So the "everyone" you mention is really white people. White people who apparently bought into Trump's xenophobic rhetoric, believed that a billionaire with a history of f*cking people like them over and exporting jobs overseas would improve their financial outlook, or who lapped up the conservative media portrayal that Clinton was the most distrustful and corrupt politician in the history of the world.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

From inside the party, it's easy to overlook how much all this email nonsense (both the FBI investigation and the wikileaks) has affected public perception. So when the nation's morons manage to convince themselves that Trump is more trustworthy than Hillary, it's time to sit up and say, "Holy f*ck, we have the mother of all perception problems."

That perception problem is the product of a vast network of conservative think tanks, pundits, and media that can create highly partisan and, in virtually every case, patently untrue stories which are repeated word-for-word on every conservative TV show, blog, radio program, social media outlet, etc. which, in turn, warps mainstream media coverage.

Short of f*cking with First Amendment and getting ride of technology there's not a whole lot than can be done to stop this.

And I know first hand that patiently debunking right wing stories has very little, if any, impact. People will believe what they want to believe regardless of facts.

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