Honestly, I am more focused on today’s elections, and the municipal elections coming up in my area in March. And to a lesser degree, November elections next year. 2020 is mostly background noise to me at this time, but I do expect there to be a whole bunch of hats thrown in the ring.
And just to be contrarian, I don’t expect either Sanders or Biden to be candidates.
The party has several big choices to make. Some argue for a greater focus on white voters who didn’t graduate from college, a demographic that swung sharply to Trump, especially in the Rust Belt states that handed the president his Electoral College margin of victory. Others contend the party has to reach out to more affluent, college-educated whites who may lean conservative but are disgusted by Trump. Still others call for an intense focus on young, black and Latino voters to turbocharge the base of the party.
And right here is why my Party continues to lose. The focus on pandering to certain groups of voters, with the idea that what appeals to different groups are mutually exclusive. For example, they believe that if we craft a message to appeal to racial minorities, we lose the so-called white working class. If we craft a message that appeals to different gender identities, we lose some of our racial minority voters. If we craft a message to appeal to upper-middle class professionals, we lose voters in the lower classes. If we craft a message that appeals to the so-called white working class, we lose everyone else and are branded racists and sellouts. Our entire strategy starts from a place of divisions. Yes, all of these groups of people have specific issues that drive them politically. All of them have issues that are important, indeed issues of life and death importance. (And I don’t mean at all to minimize them!)
What the Sanders campaign did differently was start from a position that we, despite all of our differences of class, gender, identity, and location share certain fundamental needs and wants as Americans. For the most part, we all need a place to live. We all need a means of income. We all need to provide our children with the best possible education. We all need healthcare. We all need a habitable planet. We all need to feel like our representatives in government have our best interest as Job #1. And we all want a life that is more than just getting by, while bequeathing a better life to our children and grandchildren. ALL of that transcends the things that divide us. So instead of finding the best message that appeals to each division independently, find the best policy that brings those groups together, transcends Party, and awakens the huge, untapped group of non-voters as the starting point.
This is also the key that enables us to then deal with all of the other issues that divide us, and that will allow most citizens the time and space they so desperately need to actually be involved in our currently crumbling system of self-government, instead of ceding that to only those with enough time and money. And for those who think that this is utopian bullshit, I will remind you that we came this close to finding out for sure. And we also know that voters respond to big, bold ideas, whether or not those ideas have fully-fleshed white papers to support them, and whether or not they are actually feasible. (Wall, anyone?)
At 74 and 76, Biden and Sanders are way too old. If they are truly frontrunners, it’s the opposite of moving on. They should be the elder statesmen of bread and butter issue advocacy right now. They should be heralds of the party platform throughout the primary election. During the general election, they should be media advocates and convention speakers for the nominee, who is much younger and was elected without their input.
Me either.
“former Vice President Joe Biden are the two top possible presidential contenders in 2020.”
A bit premature I think to say that.
That’s spin, which ignores what the voters actually thought. Indeed, Bernie and his surrogates showed actual public disdain for voters BASED on their class, gender and race. And when Blacks spoke out in opposition to him, they responded by basically telling Blacks they didn’t know what was good for them.
The overall thrust of your post is basically inline with the repeated calls we have heard from Bernie and his surrogates to do away with identity politics. But the reality is, EVERY politician, including Bernie, plays identity politics. You are merely arguing you want to pander to a different set of identities.
If you really want to get on board with a message that appeals to a big tent, then start with equal opportunity. Voting Rights. Equal access to pay, equal access to education, equal access to healthcare, equal treatment in the judicial system. But, generally speaking, Bernie supporters shy away from those discussions. And instead,they start pushing for more caucuses instead of primaries. Free stuff that will largely go to younger white people. And lets never discuss gun rights.
“If we’re going to win in 2018, we have to get our base out to the polls.”
The base already gets to the polls. They are the ones who vote in every midterm,offyear and POTUS election cycle.
Dems lost to THE WORST human being to EVER run for office; they NEED to take an introspective look at themselves and figure out HOW that happened. They should start by STOP trying to out-Republican the Republicans. The ACA is little more than a shell of what a decent public healthcare plan should look like, and look at how it held up under scrutiny? Imagine how well Dems would have done if the ACA had real universal care in it, or perhaps Medicare for all???
That would’ve been great. Unfortunately, in order to get the supermajority that allowed the ACA to become law in the first place, there were several blue dog Democrats who were staunchly opposed to universal care. It’s fun to imagine what we’d like but we shouldn’t ignore the reality of the situation. The reality is the ACA passed with not a vote to spare. Medicare for all wouldn’t have passed.
Also, if you think there wouldn’t have been much great scrutiny and angst had universal healthcare passed, you’ve got another thing coming. The hundreds of millions who get their healthcare through their employer and are relatively satisfied with that aren’t all going to sing Kumbaya and hold hands when you strike them off their employer plan and put them on a government one.
Thank you for proving my point…
He did, if your point was the exact opposite of the one you were making.
No, he went right to divisions, which is the complete opposite of what I was saying. And he used thoroughly debunked, Grade A Horseshit to do it…
The favored straw man of the far-left purity brigade.
And it’s just piffle.
Hate to break it to you but your reply reflected more biased opinion and spin than his statement. I know you think you’re very clever but all of a sudden you’re an expert on what the Bernie Sanders supporters were all thinking? Really? Have you got irrefutable or solid data to back up your opinions and spin? What studies have you seen that shows what Bernie supporters mostly agreed on? Do you even have any clue why so many black voters did not vote for Hillary as she anticipated?
Your comment is a classic “tu quoque” logical fallacy.
You answer criticism by turning it around and criticizing the critic.
It’s a sign of a lazy thinker and someone who cannot argue a point.
That’s rich coming from you.
There’s no mystery here; Brazile’s book merely confirmed what we all knew to be true. The DNC was fundamentally organized toward HRC in every meaningful way, to the active detriment of other potential nominees.
And in an election that was all about rejecting the Establishment, one party put up a pillar of traditional politics against an accomplished con man who told the people what they wanted to hear, and was far enough outside the ‘mainstream’ to appeal to a desperate, and frankly mostly uneducated electorate.
It should never have even been a contest, but through no fault of her own HRC represented what I think the majority of voters we’re rejecting on an instinctual level. This kind of inside baseball repels Americans on a fundamental level.
I don’t think this forum is for you.
Many of these posts, in my opinion, continually want to replay the past. I agree with the concept that we have to look to the future. Hillary, Bernie and Biden are most certainly not going to be the 2020 candidate. Let’s not spend energy replaying 2016. Let’s focus on what is in front of us, namely 2018 and then 2020. Again, in my opinion, both Hillary and Donna’s books are a distraction and not helpful for the goal of winning 2018 and 2020.
For 2018 we need to remember, as has been said by smarter folks than I am, all politics are local. What happened in 2016 will have little relevance to 2018. Let’s move on and address the issues affecting local races with innovative timely solutIons
well, i’m an old timey DEMOCRAT…I despise politicians like SANDERS…HE was/ is a phoney from the get-go…filling young people’s heads with promises that HE knows he cannot keep…he is such a pile of happy horseshit…he isn’t a DEMOCRAT…never was and never will be…all he wanted was access to DEMOCRAT funds…if you are a SOCIALIST… then run as a SOCIALIST…HILLARYlost because SHE couldn’t beat the GOP, THE FBI and the RUSSIAN MAFIA… the only people who really supported her were socially liberal women, the PANT SUIT NATION. there is no great mystery, here.