The presidency is extremely important, of course. But there are also thousands of critically important offices all the way down the ballot. And the vast majority — 70 percent of state legislatures, more than 60 percent of governors, 55 percent of attorneys general and secretaries of state — are in Republicans hands. And, of course, Republicans control both chambers of Congress. Indeed, even the House infighting reflects, in some ways, the health of the GOP coalition. Republicans are confident they won't lose power in the House and are hungry for a vigorous argument about how best to use the power they have.
[...]
In what Democrats should take as a further bleak sign, four of the 11 states where they control both houses of the state legislature — Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois — have a Republican governor. This leaves just seven states under unified Democratic Party control.
[...]
On the Democratic side, the personal political success of Barack Obama has created an atmosphere of complacency and overconfidence. If a black guy with the middle name Hussein can win the White House, the thinking seems to be, then anything is possible. Consequently, the party is marching steadily to the left on its issue positions — embracing same-sex marriage, rediscovering enthusiasm for gun control, rejecting the January 2013 income tax rate settlement as inadequate, raising its minimum wage aspirations to the $12-to-$15 range, abandoning the quest for a grand bargain on balancing the budget while proposing new entitlements for child care and parental leave — even though existing issue positions seem incompatible with a House majority or any meaningful degree of success in state politics.
Whatever you make of this agenda substantively, there's no way to actually enact it without first achieving a considerably higher level of down-ballot electoral success than Democrats currently enjoy.
But instead of a dialogue about how to obtain that success, Democrats are currently engaged in a slightly bizarre bidding war between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to see whether Congress in 2017 will reject a legislative agenda that is somewhat to the left of Obama's or drastically to its left.
This has perplexed me for a long time. Why is it that Democrats are pushing ever more extreme, far left liberal positions ("Rights for trans women of color! $15 minimum wage! Gun confiscation!") when their existing positions seem to be losing them every election held in a place that's not dominated by a dense, liberal urban area like NYC or Chicago or Seattle? The Democrats' base has always been smaller than the Republicans' base; pandering to it while ignoring the moderates and the middle seems like it's proving to be a near-fatal strategy for Democrats.
Last edited by Pointedstick on Wed Oct 21, 2015 10:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Places that are "...dense, liberal urban..." control a bunch of electoral college votes.
So if the presidency is the ultimate prize, that is the market you pander to.
Simonjester wrote:
WildAboutHarry wrote:
Places that are "...dense, liberal (but i repeat myself) urban..." control a bunch of electoral college votes.
So if the presidency is the ultimate prize, that is the market you pander to.
FTFY
It is the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute. The United States, while they wish for war with no nation, will buy peace with none"James Madison
Winning a presidential election would give Republicans the overwhelming preponderance of political power in the United States — a level of dominance not achieved since the Democrats during the Great Depression, but with a much more ideologically coherent coalition. Nothing lasts forever in American politics, but a hyper-empowered conservative movement would have a significant ability to entrench its position by passing a national right-to-work law and further altering campaign finance rules beyond the Citizens United status quo.
It's just time. The socialists had a good run.
Last edited by MachineGhost on Wed Oct 21, 2015 12:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain." -- Thomas Hobbes
Disclaimer: I am not a broker, dealer, investment advisor, physician, theologian or prophet. I should not be considered as legally permitted to render such advice!
Pointedstick wrote:
This has perplexed me for a long time. Why is it that Democrats are pushing ever more extreme, far left liberal positions ("Rights for trans women of color! $15 minimum wage! Gun confiscation!") when their existing positions seem to be losing them every election held in a place that's not dominated by a dense, liberal urban area like NYC or Chicago or Seattle? The Democrats' base has always been smaller than the Republicans' base; pandering to it while ignoring the moderates and the middle seems like it's proving to be a near-fatal strategy for Democrats.
I think they are stuck in an elitist ideological bubble where they don't perceive reality accurately and honor the desires of the majority of voters.
But these election margins are always much slimmer than the hyperbole of journalists or historical revisionism. A very small minority of swing voters determines elections, not the rank-and-file ideologues. Also, voters tend to vote Republican locally and Democrat nationally to keep "the bastards" in check.
Come to think of it, politics is probably all about ideology and very little to do with real world, practical experience and common sense. At least in Congress I can see that. At the state level, its much more empirical driven since they're not currency issuers. The core problem is we need to implement legal restrictions on how much the Feds can borrow as a percent of GDP so they get their heads out of the clouds.
Last edited by MachineGhost on Wed Oct 21, 2015 12:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain." -- Thomas Hobbes
Disclaimer: I am not a broker, dealer, investment advisor, physician, theologian or prophet. I should not be considered as legally permitted to render such advice!
I think that the rest of the world has probably long been baffled that we persisted as long as we did with a two party system.
The key was that one of the two parties was always able to assimilate any new group of voters that came into the electorate.
The problem we are seeing now, I think, is that this ability to assimilate new groups is breaking down on both ends of the political spectrum.
The Republicans are having trouble assimilating the Tea Party types, and the Democrats are having trouble assimilating everyone while still maintaining a coherent message.
One shift that is pretty shocking is how conservative southern Democrats have all but disappeared. I understand why this has happened, but I'm just surprised that the Democrats let it happen. In Texas, for example, it's almost impossible for a Democrat to get elected to anything above the level of city and county government and the House districts into which the state legislature has herded liberal populations during recent redistricting efforts.
Q: “Do you have funny shaped balloons?”
A: “Not unless round is funny.”
