at least SOMEONE gets it…
No more Surprise Party please. We couldn’t survive another one. Do’H!
In mid-term elections like 2018, the traditional fall-off of voters compared to a presidential year is so dramatic that really all Democrats need to do to take back the House and Senate is to get everyone who voted for Hillary in 2016 to actually come out and vote in 2018. Mid-terms are all about reaching out to people who normally vote Democratic in presidential years but not in mid-terms, and say, “See what happens when you don’t vote?”
For 2020, a strategy will be needed.
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Get rid of superdelegates, fight gerrymandering in court to the death, accept small donations only - the Party needs to go honest with the public. Stop taking big money, clean up the voting machines and limits on voting and get rid of anything that looks like manipulating the vote.
“Should they focus more on winning back Obama-Trump voters, or lean hard into traditional Republican voters who went for Clinton last election?”
False binary. It would be absolutely crazy to frame the debate in terms of historic party schisms.
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Several comments above are far more clever than what I can offer, but I seriously don’t get it. Why do we need to choose one and not the other? I understand the importance of allocating staff and financial resources. But it seems to me that the core challenges are inter-related and thus affect the entire country.
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The Bernie Sanders wing of the party wants a much heavier emphasis on a populist economic agenda, and many downscale Democrats agree, with an emphasis on trade and other pocketbook issues and avoiding the hot-button social fault lines that have hurt them in those places for decades.
The Dem Party is being confronted with the reality that populism = racism. Populism is not socialism nor has it ever been. What Rump has done is to make that very clear. If THIS is the route the Party wants to go down, it has to include racism, sexism and homophobia. Threading this needle isn’t going to work.
EDITI TO ADD:
and to develop a strategy to speak for and advance the interests of the 70 or 80 percent of Americans who are getting screwed by Trump and the Republicans.
The reason these shitheads are getting screwed by Rethugs is because they continue to vote Rethug for the past 3 or more decades WITH BAD RESULTS. There are definitely things you can blame Dems for but that’s not one of them. Feingold tried to present reasons to vote for him that were in the interest of Americans and he lost.
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Merlot is so 1990’s. It’s cabernet now.
Ha, yes! My parents live in the “Alabama” part of Pennsylvania, and i saw a Democratic county party event advertised there as a “corn boil.” Now to me, that sounds like a disgusting growth on your foot to be addressed by a medical professional. I mean, i literally want to recoil at reading that phrase. Why on God’s green earth can’t they call it a Harvest Festival and provide balloon animals and maybe school supplies for the kids? Entice people to come out to your events. Oh, and do what the GOP does, and stop being afraid to demonize Mitch McConnell and the GOP congress in your campaign ads.
I’m sure Independent-Party-Of-Himself Sanders and his purity brigade will do everything in their power to drag down the Democrats. The sooner he’s out of the picture, the better. Not that the message is wrong. The messenger is the problem.
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Maybe because that’s what they call it in Pennsylvania backwaters. Oh, and demonizing Trump worked so well the last time.
Donnelly isn’t really a canary in a coal mine. First of all Donnelly isn’t much of a Democrat…more of a DINO. Second, Indiana would elect nearly any gopper just on principle. A gopper has to be certified nuts or a child molester to loose in Indiana. The Democratic power left with the union jobs.
Attacking Rump can work BUT it has to be an attack that understands where Americans will be receptive to the attack.
For ex., calling him a “pussy grabber” and focusing on that will probably end up backfiring.
Calling him incompetant and totally unable to advance any legislation probably will work.
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“Congress” has a lower approval rating that Trump, i believe. Why not run against the GOP-controlled do-nothing congress? The Toomey-McGinty campaign here was literally about nothing in 2016. It should not have been that way. You can’t win with nothing.
Maybe so. But say no more than that, and follow immediately with a list of five major legislative goals that are short, punchy and easy to grasp the direct personal benefit of, like fixing our bridges, water systems and sewers.
I agree that that will convince some part of Americans mostly likely the ones who didn’t vote. The remainder, who did vote for Rump, just won’t be persuaded.
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That is kind of short sighted, since about 13% of 2012 Obama voters voted for Trump in 2016. I would recommend at least something to get them back into the fold.
My largest concern is that the Democratic Party isn’t seen as standing up for “ordinary” people any more. This is especially true in terms of economic issues.
I’ve seen surveys where folks are honestly confused about which party stands up for blue-collar workers and/or the economic “middle class” and which party stands for big money / corporations / Wall St.
That should be a no-brainer. The tone-deaf “Better Deal” slogan is a case in point. What does it mean to folks in the middle-class squeeze, whether urban, suburban, or rural?
Why not “A Fair Deal?” – and make it clear that Democrats represent people who work for their paychecks. If you get a W-2, you should be a Democrat, plain and simple. Nobody is going to confuse D’s for R’s on social justice, guns, etc., so why not push the party planks that folks have forgotten about (and actually follow through with some economic-justice policies, a la Elizabeth Warren?).
Hate to bring this up, and I realize that we don’t have Fox/Rush/Bannon to amplify the message, but – demonizing OUR candidates seems to work pretty well for the R’s, from what I’ve seen. Even otherwise intelligent friends of mine have expressed dismay about Hilary and Benghazi, or the Clinton Foundation. And I seem to recall surveys that showed people believed Trump was more trustworthy than “crooked Hilary” (something that still amazes me).
They’re doing the same thing now with Warren, in case she runs for Prez, and resurrecting the Pelosi-demonization in case Dems gain control of the House. I’d rather stick with positive campaigning, but we’ve kept to the high ground and lost again and again when folks buy the portrayals of our candidates and we don’t say anything about theirs.
If you’re running against a demon, why not demonize him?
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“Pennsyltucky”