[Discussion] What comes next? Liber-all

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.

Well I mean not evil, we can't get better than that.

Who? Biden looks ready to run. Are we going to trash his record, too?

boogle wrote:

Well I mean not evil, we can't get better than that.

Our recent history has shown that, no, we literally can't get better than that.

Jayhawker wrote:

Who? Biden looks ready to run. Are we going to trash his record, too?

Biden's a man, so no.

OG_slinger wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

Who? Biden looks ready to run. Are we going to trash his record, too?

Biden's a man, so no.

If you like this post are you a sexist who hates women or agreeing with the hypocrisy?

We will never know.

Jayhawker wrote:

That welfare reform, while easy to spot as a mistake now, was supported by everyone at the time, like the crime bill.

Yes. It was supported widely. But the continued support, refusal to backtrack, and(most importantly) a lack of action as a senator is a problem. And before anyone says anything, Sanders has the exact same problem, despite his rhetoric.

Again, she's not evil. She's just center right. And that's fine. She is who she is. But she's not someone I'd ever enthusiastically vote for.

She's not center right, and would have been a progressive president.

I think the issue with some progressives is that they have the same flawed views of politics as Trump, that it's a zero sum game. Bills and policies are compromises. They don't happen in a vacuum. In a democracy, strong politicians work with other democratically elected politicians to pass bills together.

HRC would have been a fantastic president, not just better than we have. Healthcare reform would have moved forward. The minimum wage would have moved forward. We would have a better SC nominee. We would be a climate change leader.

Depending on who Americans elected to congress would affect all of this, but she would have been the best progressive to deal with a Republican legislature.

The purity test progressives have is the futile philosophy in politics right now. It completely ignores reality and leads to sh*t like Trump as president.

Agreed.

"This hawkish status quo candidate would totally have turned progressive if we had just put them in office, trust me."

Don't get me wrong, she's definitely a better option than what we got, I voted for her, but seriously. C'mon.

Jayhawker wrote:

I think the issue with some progressives is that they have the same flawed views of politics as Trump, that it's a zero sum game. Bills and policies are compromises. They don't happen in a vacuum. In a democracy, strong politicians work with other democratically elected politicians to pass bills together.

Third way politics mean that you're losing before you get to the negotiation table.

Look at the $15/$12 minimum wage discussion. The initial push was for $15. Clinton proposing $12 makes sense from a negotiation perspective... but her "opponents" in this case(unions, progressives and economic liberals) aren't trying to lower it. They're trying to raise it to $15.

You're absolutely right, it's not a zero sum game. But a bill getting watered down as a it goes through the process is politics as usual. It's another thing to water it down before it's even proposed, and that's where it's a losing proposition.

Are you telling me that HRC would not sign a $15 minimum wage bill pushed through congress with Bernie's and Warren's leadership?

As for her hawkishness. America's willingness to elect a Democrat that does not promote America's strength militarily died with Carter's four year term. And also, I don't think she would have been as hawkish as president. I also think her history would have given her more leverage going forward without having to prove herself.

I'm saying that the $15 bill wouldn't have even gotten to her desk because she set the ceiling as $12 before her own party wrote anything. It wouldn't have gotten to her desk with $15 or even $12. As you said, bills are compromises. The result of compromises would have gotten it to even less than $12, because that's where the president was on record for starting.

Yeah, glad we dodged that bullet.

I turn my back for a day or two doing other things and a whole new Hillary argument starts up without me!

Now I kind of feel like making a "Bernie would have won" post just to get in on the action.

Ah well!

(For the record, I hope she doesn't run again.)

I don't want her to run again, either.

In fact, I think she would be well served to to step away for awhile, and stop trying to analyze the election. It never makes her look good. It's no different than the campaign. She should never have uttered Trump's name.

If you look at Rachel Maddow's show, the best thing she has done is refusing to treat Trump's tweets as news. Concentrate on the real sh*t being done and ignore the distraction. Follow the money, and all will be revealed.

On that note, the real reason we need Trump out of office is that I don't think our nation can handle the sh*tstorm of a Trump re-election campaign.

You just made me optimistic. What with your talk of there being elections in the future.

Jayhawker wrote:

On that note, the real reason we need Trump out of office is that I don't think our nation can handle the sh*tstorm of a Trump re-election campaign.

Considering that he hasn't actually stopped campaigning to begin with.

DSGamer wrote:

You just made me optimistic. What with your talk of there being elections in the future.

Even the worst autocracies usually have elections. It's just that the outcome is pre-ordained.

The Democracy Fund, a bipartisan foundation established by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, just published a series of papers that analyzed the data from the YouGov VOTER survey, a massive 8,000 respondent panel survey that asked Americans a wealth of questions about their political beliefs, their economic and social concerns and status, and more during the 2012 and 2016 elections.

One of those papers examined examined the tensions within and between the two political parties. Contrary to this thread, it painted a picture of a much less divided Democratic Party.

Political Divisions in 2016 and Beyond wrote:

Let’s start with Democrats. Although there was a bitter fight between Sanders and Clinton, it turns out that their voters are not all that different on most issues.

There are three notable points of difference. Sanders supporters were notably less enthusiastic about trade deals. This was a point of contention between Clinton and Sanders, so the difference we see here makes sense. Sanders supporters were also a little less enthusiastic about America and its history, and they evinced more pessimism about people like them. Yet, they are indistinguishable from Clinton supporters on concern for inequality and value of government activism. On the social and identity issues, they are also largely indistinguishable from Clinton supporters.

Thus, to the extent that the Democratic Party is divided, these divisions are more about faith in the political system and general disaffection than they are about issue positions.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/aOPRAHp.png)

Political Divisions in 2016 and Beyond wrote:

Looking at the correlates of candidate favorability, we can more clearly see the potential divide in the Democratic Party. Again, it is more about disaffection than issue positions. The strongest predictor of Sanders support (holding all else constant) is a sense that the system is rigged. Clinton’s biggest boosters, by contrast, are more comfortable with the system as is, are less likely to see things getting worse, and are generally prouder about America. They are also more supportive of free trade. Interestingly, support for Muslims is noticeably more highly correlated with support for Clinton than for Sanders. This is somewhat surprising.

Still, the data suggest that the main divide within the Democratic Party electorate is about attitudes toward the establishment and the existing order than it is about specific issue positions (with the exception of trade policy). Democrats are also quite unified on social/identity issues.

Could these divides grow? Certainly, they might, especially if the central question among Democrats becomes how much to swing right on economic issues in hopes of capturing the limited number of socially liberal, economically conservative Republicans. Still, to the extent that many of these divisions are establishment/antiestablishment divisions, they are somewhat muted by Democrats now being the opposition party.

The same paper describes the Republican Party as being much more fractured, with significant differences between the party's various sub-groups.

What does that mean for the future of the Democratic Party? I think it paints a picture that if we could ease up on the infighting we'd have a pretty good chance.

Another paper, though, points out the broader reality for Democrats. The Democratic Party has effectively become the political party for minorities and a subset of whites with college degrees. The Republican Party has effectively become the party of whites, with a heavy emphasis on whites without a college degree.

That subgroup--whites without college degrees--are who ran away from the Democratic Party.

Race, Religion, and Immigration in 2016 wrote:

White people who did not attend college were evenly split between the two parties from 1992 to 2008. By 2015, white voters who had a high school degree or less were 24 percentage points more Republican than Democratic (57 percent to 33 percent). Meanwhile, college-educated white people moved toward the Democratic Party. This is the “diploma divide.”

If you're sensing a trend, you'd be right.

Race, Religion, and Immigration in 2016 wrote:

A key reason for these trends is racial attitudes. The shifts among white people overall and white people without a college degree occurred mostly among white people with less favorable attitudes toward black people. No other factor predicted changes in white partisanship during Obama’s presidency as powerfully and as consistently as racial attitudes.

This alignment between partisanship and racial attitudes involved more than attitudes toward black people. By 2012, white Democrats and white Republicans diverged over whether they evaluated Muslims favorably and whether immigration should be restricted. Depending on the specific survey question, this divergence consists of Democrats moving toward more favorable attitudes, Republicans moving toward less favorable attitudes, or both. Some Americans may have even changed their partisanship based on their views of immigration.

Regardless, the result is the same: Democrats and Republicans in the electorate became more polarized in their views of immigrants and Muslims—again, before the 2016 campaign.

What that means for Democrats is that we have to be extremely cautious about running future campaigns with the eye towards to winning back white people. Especially because one of the primary reasons those white people voted Republican is that they don't like the people who voted Democrat.

OG_slinger wrote:

What does that mean for the future of the Democratic Party? I think it paints a picture that if we could ease up on the infighting we'd have a pretty good chance.

OG_slinger wrote:

What that means for Democrats is that we have to be extremely cautious about running future campaigns with the eye towards to winning back white people.

These two statements might not be entirely contradictory, but they are a concise summary of just how hard the coming tasks will be.

Isn't the task targeting non voters, not current Dem or Gop voters, since non voters are the largest group?
(I'm honestly asking because I have not had time to read all of the linked article or the survey methodology)
*EDIT*
It's 8k previous survey answerers so I guess maybe is the answer.

. For the study, YouGov polled 8,000 adults—all of whom had participated in similar surveys in mid-2016, 2012 and 2011, which allowed for a unique longitudinal data set and deep exploration into many hotly-debated subjects of the election.

I hate that graph. It's just colored lines without any actual information.

California Democratic Speaker killed his own party’s plan for single-payer healthcare

The current Democratic establishment can go kiss my ass right now. They don't get it do they. Or maybe they just don't care? Until the votes continue to fail to materialise that is and they will again flounder around wondering why.

Sounds like the bill just wasn't ready.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-p...

“SB 562 was sent to the Assembly woefully incomplete,” Rendon said in a statement. “Even senators who voted for SB 562 noted there are potentially fatal flaws in the bill, including the fact it does not address many serious issues, such as financing, delivery of care, cost controls, or the realities of needed action by the Trump administration and voters to make SB 562 a genuine piece of legislation.”
Several key details were unresolved in the measure — most significantly how to pay for it. The program, which carried an estimated price tag of $330 billion to $400 billion, would have required new taxes to pay for it, but no sources of tax revenue were specified in the legislation.
Privately, many Assembly Democrats said they dreaded having to vote on the bill, fearful of backing a proposal — with no financing behind it or politically risky tax hikes — with an “aye” vote, or alienating their energized base with a “no.”

The push for single-payer healthcare in California is unlikely to disappear completely. Rendon noted that proponents of the system would probably pursue a ballot initiative to win voter approval.

strangederby wrote:

California Democratic Speaker killed his own party’s plan for single-payer healthcare

The current Democratic establishment can go kiss my ass right now. They don't get it do they. Or maybe they just don't care? Until the votes continue to fail to materialise that is and they will again flounder around wondering why.

I'm wondering why you're sh*tting on the group when most of them helped write it and only one person shanked it.

Demosthenes wrote:
strangederby wrote:

California Democratic Speaker killed his own party’s plan for single-payer healthcare

The current Democratic establishment can go kiss my ass right now. They don't get it do they. Or maybe they just don't care? Until the votes continue to fail to materialise that is and they will again flounder around wondering why.

I'm wondering why you're sh*tting on the group when most of them helped write it and only one person shanked it. :?

Let's clear that up for you: He's not. He's sh*tting on the guy who used his higher seat of power (generally who you refer to when talking about "the establishment") to kill the bill that was written by his party's more progressive members.

Which, for a massively expensive bill that has no source of funding, was exactly what he should have done. That's not an adult solution, that's a bunch of kids crossing their fingers and wishing real hard.

Stengah wrote:

He's sh*tting on the guy who used his higher seat of power (generally who you refer to when talking about "the establishment") to kill the bill that was written by his party's more progressive members.

A bill that stood absolutely zero chance of being passed, let alone being taken seriously, because it didn't include a way to pay for the benefit. The more progressive members could have at least made a half-assed attempted to fund the legislation, even if it meant creating a new tax or raising existing taxes.

But they didn't. Because they really weren't serious about it. Just like every knuckle-dragging conservative state legislator that proposes a bill about an issue SCOTUS has already ruled unconstitutional. It's red meat for the base.

A serious attempt at universal healthcare by progressive legislators would account for the fact that the state is projecting deficits of $2+ billion, that it has $200+ billion in debt/obligations from previous legislation that chose to fund things by raising bonds rather than taxes, and that the bill's $400 billion price tag would swamp the state's current $120 billion budget.

If we ever want to see universal healthcare then people need to start figuring out how it's going to be paid for or show a lot of very convincing research that it's ultimately cheaper for taxpayers than our current arrangement.

I was responding to Demo's misunderstanding of who strangederby was upset with, not the appropriateness of killing the bill. Personally I think indicating that he had at least some regret at killing it and a promise that he was going to work with them to make sure the bill was better-crafted when it's re-submitted would have been a far more appropriate response. Announcing he was unilaterally killing it at 5pm on a Friday gives the impression he only supports a single payer system at on a theoretical level; that he's more interested in saying he supports one (so people who want one will vote for him) than he is in actually working to get one.

Stengah wrote:

I was responding to Demo's misunderstanding of who strangederby was upset with, not the appropriateness of killing the bill. Personally I think indicating that he had at least some regret at killing it and a promise that he was going to work with them to make sure the bill was better-crafted when it's re-submitted would have been a far more appropriate response. Announcing he was unilaterally killing it at 5pm on a Friday gives the impression he only supports a single payer system at on a theoretical level; that he's more interested in saying he supports one (so people who want one will vote for him) than he is in actually working to get one.

And I can get that frustration... but as noted above, there's a lot of problems that the bill didn't even try to overcome which are not exactly small (and would require a LOT of time and effor)... and a singular person killing the bill sucks, but Establishment Democrats are not a singular person and blaming all of them for the actions of one less idealistic Democrat who sees a DOA bill, cool as its idea is, and stops it from exploding in their face doesn't strike me as something to write off hundreds of other established and long-serving Democrats for.