How Did We Get Here, and What Do We Do Now?

[4Q Basket Case]

he would have still been light years better that what we’re seeing now. we are going to be digging out of this hole for a really long time

Yes he would have. And yes we will. Those points are true but irrelevant. See below for expansion on that concept.

Yes. 100% agreement there. Status quo and mediocrity >>>>> the current disaster.

Here's the deal: A candidate can't win simply by simply beating the drum about how bad Trump is and how you're so much better. Even if that's true -- and it probably is. Been tried twice and failed twice.

You can't win by trying to outflank him to the left. Also been tried twice and failed twice.

Trump opposition wins by offering saner conduct and saner ideas and saner policies (given the bar to chin, none of which are hard to do) and a candidate that (1) can coherently articulate the superior alternatives and (2) the true political middle can get behind.

The last two parts are where the Democrats face-planted in 2016 and 2024.

They lost in 2016 because Hillary was a fatally flawed candidate. Eminently qualified, and she honestly believed that her technical expertise would get her into the Oval Office. But she absolutely could not conceal her disdain for at least three-quarters of the people she wanted to govern -- all of the Republicans and half of the Democrats. That came through clear as the Baccarat crystal from which she sips her drinks, and she lost.

The Dems won in 2020 because they ran to the middle, casting a wide net. Yet they learned nothing from the contrast between their performance in 2016 vs. 2020. Because....

They lost in 2024 because (1) they governed far to the left of where they ran in 2020 (IOW, they squandered credibility), and (2) they coalesced behind an obviously eroding candidate far beyond the time when they could remedy the mistake and field a credible option.

I have no love for Donald Trump. That doesn't mean I give the Democrats a free pass for neither being him nor beating him. They wasted the opportunity of a several economic cycles because they couldn't get out of their own way, preferring instead to insult and denigrate a significant portion of the population.

Surprise, surprise, surprise.....people don't respond well to being called stupid bigots, and they vote accordingly.

 

[Bamaro]

I think we still would have had to navigate 9/11 with Gore but we probably could have just focused on Afghanistan from the beginning and maybe caught Bin Laden sooner.

The dotcom crash would still have happened in early 2000.

The sub-prime mortgage cookies were already in the oven in 1999 and would burst anyway. And we still hadnt felt the full effect of repealing Glass-Stegall Act.

We likely still had to deal with Newt Gingrich.

And probably more certainly had to deal with a likely a Hillary Clinton presidency because you can bet Gore would have been under a strong quid pro quo to promote Hillary as his successor.

Bill Clinton likely not resigning saved us from a Hillary presidency and that awful laugh, Obama would have been delayed likely running against Trump with Trump getting elected anyway.

I think we would have ended up with Trump either way but with probably a $20T national debt rather than $35T.

There was Clinton Derangement Syndrome well before TDS. And it infected us well before we got exposed to TDS.

Maybe. The information was out there and we may have been to put all the pieces together in time to successfully thwart the plan if we would have tried rather than listening to the neocons. If I remember correctly Joe Wilson, a holdover from Clinton, tried to warn Bush but was ignored.

 

[92tide]

Yes he would have. And yes we will. Those points are true but irrelevant. See below for expansion on that concept.


Here's the deal: A candidate can't win simply by simply beating the drum about how bad Trump is and how you're so much better. Even if that's true -- and it probably is. Been tried twice and failed twice.

You can't win by trying to outflank him to the left. Also been tried twice and failed twice.

Trump opposition wins by offering saner conduct and saner ideas and saner policies (given the bar to chin, none of which are hard to do) and a candidate that (1) can coherently articulate the superior alternatives and (2) the true political middle can get behind.

The last two parts are where the Democrats face-planted in 2016 and 2024.

They lost in 2016 because Hillary was a fatally flawed candidate. Eminently qualified, and she honestly believed that her technical expertise would get her into the Oval Office. But she absolutely could not conceal her disdain for at least three-quarters of the people she wanted to govern -- all of the Republicans and half of the Democrats. That came through clear as the Baccarat crystal from which she sips her drinks, and she lost.

The Dems won in 2020 because they ran to the middle, casting a wide net. Yet they learned nothing from the contrast between their performance in 2016 vs. 2020. Because....

They lost in 2024 because (1) they governed far to the left of where they ran in 2020 (IOW, they squandered credibility), and (2) they coalesced behind an obviously eroding candidate far beyond the time when they could remedy the mistake and field a credible option.

I have no love for Donald Trump. That doesn't mean I give the Democrats a free pass for neither being him nor beating him. They wasted the opportunity of a several economic cycles because they couldn't get out of their own way, preferring instead to insult and denigrate a significant portion of the population.

Surprise, surprise, surprise.....people don't respond well to being called stupid bigots, and they vote accordingly.

well, i hope you have contacted your local/state democratic party and are helping shape the narrative going forward

 

[selmaborntidefan]

That's all history and can't be undone. So what do we do now?

What do you think? Aside from howling at the moon about how bad Donald Trump is (and he is that bad), how do you think we as a country should actually address the problem?

I don't think it can be undone.

Let's be honest: the next time the Democrats have the so-called trifecta - which may be as soon as January 20, 2029 - even the narrowest of wins will be presented as a mandate for extreme, radical change. They'll attempt to add a few reliable states (Puerto Rico, Washington DC) to get some Senators, abolish the filibuster, stack the Court, and do you REALLY think the Republican response to that is going to be, "Well, they won, there's nothing we can do?"

Bear in mind, THEY'VE ALREADY BROUGHT THIS UP, so you can hardly say I'm imputing to them motives they haven't enunciated. (Trump disavowed Project 2025, regardless of what he actually does).

Furthermore, every extreme action is going to be defended with "But what about Trump." Yes, the same people who have whined for the last decade, "You have nothing but whataboutism" are going to use the exact same tactic. (My favorite a few years back that was viral on Twitter was, "Well, we have to gerrymander New York because the Republicans gerrymandered other states" from an anti-gerrymandering advocate. In other words, YOU DON'T REALLY GIVE A DAMN about gerrymandering, you only care when it's "not my team").

Now having said that, I can't exactly point a finger of either guilt or innocence to a particular person even though it makes good copy. It's simple human nature to be tribal.


I think it's part of the inevitable move towards a societal collapse, but I do think it's fair to say Trump expedited an always natural process, aided by his sycophants who once upon a time would have held as guardrails even against their own party (remember: there was a Gang of 14 - 7 Republicans, 7 Democrats - who went to Dubya when he was toying with abolishing the filibuster for judicial nominations and basically warned him, "Do you really want Hillary Clinton as President without that restraint?"


Fortunately for Mitch McConell, Harry Reid was a moron.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

I think we still would have had to navigate 9/11 with Gore but we probably could have just focused on Afghanistan from the beginning and maybe caught Bin Laden sooner.

The dotcom crash would still have happened in early 2000.

The sub-prime mortgage cookies were already in the oven in 1999 and would burst anyway. And we still hadnt felt the full effect of repealing Glass-Stegall Act.

We likely still had to deal with Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich was gone in late 1998 so probably not.

The rest of the stuff, true.

And probably more certainly had to deal with a likely a Hillary Clinton presidency because you can bet Gore would have been under a strong quid pro quo to promote Hillary as his successor.

Except Hillary Clinton hadn't held anything but a ceremonial title at that point.

And if I'm Gore, I eliminate the future ascendancy.

Bill Clinton likely not resigning saved us from a Hillary presidency and that awful laugh, Obama would have been delayed likely running against Trump with Trump getting elected anyway.

I don't know that Trump ever runs - or if he does that he's successful - under this scenario.

Liebermann is saddled with the economic crash of 2008 - which still would have happened, it was a bipartisan contribution to collapse - and who gets the Democratic nomination in 2008? Maybe the dazzling Obama, but much of his victory owed as much to the banking collapse as it did to his excitement. In fact, we may well have ended up with President Jeb Bush instead in 2009, we'll never know.

I think we would have ended up with Trump either way but with probably a $20T national debt rather than $35T.

There was Clinton Derangement Syndrome well before TDS. And it infected us well before we got exposed to TDS.

Trump's rise was caused by a perfect storm of factors. Gore taking over and then winning changes the calculus of all of those factors. Again, I'm not saying you're WRONG, I don't know. But one of the things that helped give rise to Trump was the fact the GOP had frittered away their post-2004 election advantage and in the process ticked off donors and mainline conservatives.


There's another problem where it concerns Gore that perhaps undoes all of this: Gore would probably not have gotten quite the same level of support that Bush did on 9/11 because let's face it, he would have been part of the administration that had not paid attention to Osama Bin Laden for the better part of five years at that point. Bush had a cleaner slate on that subject simply because he had not been President. Don't get me wrong, I think the country still rallies to the President in the short-term, but as the warts of "we could have had Bin Laden earlier" come out, they would have spun harder against Gore than against Bush because Gore would have been there the whole time.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

If the Dem party ever falls fully under control of the left-wing extremists, they may never win another election no matter how ridiculous the Republicans get (and trust me, that's another hole with no bottom.)

Gee, where have we heard this one before.....oh yeah........."Shifting demographics mean we may never have another Republican President again"......."once there's enough Hispanics in Texas, it goes blue, and the Republicans will never win again regardless"..........."the Democrats have a blue wall that ensures their perpetual domination of the Oval Office".....

Zell Miller wrote a book in the wake of the 2004 electoral disaster that the Democrats were "a national party no more."

Less than four years after he wrote that book, the Democrats had 257 House seats, 59 Senate seats (they had 60 but Teddy died while the Franken-Coleman recount was ongoing), the White House with the biggest margin since 1988, and a 29-21 advantage in governorships.

The Republicans were dead for good in 1936, 1964, and 1976, too.
The Democrats were never gonna win again after the 1994 midterms.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

anecdotally, i knew a few folks who voted for shrub to “shake things up”

i remember hearing the same sentiment a time or two in 2016

That's how some of the BERNIE voters (Nate Silver estimated it at 11-14%) voted for TRUMP, which is like voting for George McGovern in the primary and Fake Barry Goldwater in the general.

 

[DzynKingRTR]

I think we still would have had to navigate 9/11 with Gore but we probably could have just focused on Afghanistan from the beginning and maybe caught Bin Laden sooner.

The dotcom crash would still have happened in early 2000.

The sub-prime mortgage cookies were already in the oven in 1999 and would burst anyway. And we still hadnt felt the full effect of repealing Glass-Stegall Act.

We likely still had to deal with Newt Gingrich.

And probably more certainly had to deal with a likely a Hillary Clinton presidency because you can bet Gore would have been under a strong quid pro quo to promote Hillary as his successor.

Bill Clinton likely not resigning saved us from a Hillary presidency and that awful laugh, Obama would have been delayed likely running against Trump with Trump getting elected anyway.

I think we would have ended up with Trump either way but with probably a $20T national debt rather than $35T.

There was Clinton Derangement Syndrome well before TDS. And it infected us well before we got exposed to TDS.

The housing market crash was coming anyway, so I doubt we get another democrat after a Gore presidency.

 

[JDCrimson]

Agree, Clinton Derangement Syndrome likely would have foreclosed it.

The housing market crash was coming anyway, so I doubt we get another democrat after a Gore presidency.

 

[arthurdawg]

I don't think it can be undone.

Let's be honest: the next time the Democrats have the so-called trifecta - which may be as soon as January 20, 2029 - even the narrowest of wins will be presented as a mandate for extreme, radical change. They'll attempt to add a few reliable states (Puerto Rico, Washington DC) to get some Senators, abolish the filibuster, stack the Court, and do you REALLY think the Republican response to that is going to be, "Well, they won, there's nothing we can do?"

Bear in mind, THEY'VE ALREADY BROUGHT THIS UP, so you can hardly say I'm imputing to them motives they haven't enunciated. (Trump disavowed Project 2025, regardless of what he actually does).

Furthermore, every extreme action is going to be defended with "But what about Trump." Yes, the same people who have whined for the last decade, "You have nothing but whataboutism" are going to use the exact same tactic. (My favorite a few years back that was viral on Twitter was, "Well, we have to gerrymander New York because the Republicans gerrymandered other states" from an anti-gerrymandering advocate. In other words, YOU DON'T REALLY GIVE A DAMN about gerrymandering, you only care when it's "not my team").

Now having said that, I can't exactly point a finger of either guilt or innocence to a particular person even though it makes good copy. It's simple human nature to be tribal.


I think it's part of the inevitable move towards a societal collapse, but I do think it's fair to say Trump expedited an always natural process, aided by his sycophants who once upon a time would have held as guardrails even against their own party (remember: there was a Gang of 14 - 7 Republicans, 7 Democrats - who went to Dubya when he was toying with abolishing the filibuster for judicial nominations and basically warned him, "Do you really want Hillary Clinton as President without that restraint?"


Fortunately for Mitch McConell, Harry Reid was a moron.

This is the worrisome part... We need stability and moderation. Before the pendulum swung back and forth and nobody did anything stupid.

What we are seeing now... Is just stupid.

 

[Its On A Slab]

That's how some of the BERNIE voters (Nate Silver estimated it at 11-14%) voted for TRUMP, which is like voting for George McGovern in the primary and Fake Barry Goldwater in the general.

I used to get up under Bernie voters' skin with my "Thanks, hippies"....in relation to their being a big reason why Trump won in 2016.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

Here's the deal: A candidate can't win simply by simply beating the drum about how bad Trump is and how you're so much better. Even if that's true -- and it probably is. Been tried twice and failed twice.

What's funny is that this is NOT unique to Trump. I remember thinking in 1994-95 there was NO WAY Bill Clinton could get re-elected after that midterm wipeout. Problem was - and this is something too many people cannot process or admit - JUST BECAUSE YOU PERSONALLY DESPISE A CANDIDATE doesn't mean your view is anywhere close to representing anything but your own......much less that of millions of people.

Too many people think, "Because I hate Candidate X, so does everyone else." It never dawns on them that someone might hate that candidate as badly as you do but might hate the alternative even more.

Surprise, surprise, surprise.....people don't respond well to being called stupid bigots, and they vote accordingly.

What's funny is the cognitive dissonance necessary to do what they did here.

1) This nation is hopelessly sexist and racist.
2) But this hopeless sexist and racist nation WILL VOTE FOR A BLACK WOMAN FOR PRESIDENT!!!!!

 

[Its On A Slab]

What's funny is the cognitive dissonance necessary to do what they did here.

1) This nation is hopelessly sexist and racist.
2) But this hopeless sexist and racist nation WILL VOTE FOR A BLACK WOMAN FOR PRESIDENT!!!!!

I don't see any hope for a woman to ge elected President, especially a black woman.

Misogyny rules in our politics.

 

[JDCrimson]

When it comes to politics there probably is a good bit of racism and misogyny. People vote for who they feel comfortable with leadership. Not excusing it mind you.

But calling it out and expecting voters to suddenly have a Damascus road experience is foolish - not a winning strategy for the political game.

Its better to formulate a strategy that deemphasizing those tendencies rather than gaslighting by antagonizing voters who hold those tendencies.

Democrats have been doing the exact opposite yet can't seem to grasp why they arent winning elections.