JMO, but I think your last paragraph sums it up nicely. I personally don’t think the great middle American electorate wants to see one of its two major political parties seeming to care more about ensuring an abortion at any stage of pregnancy, or making sure that little Johnny can play on little Mary’s softball team and then use the same locker room, than they do about sky rocketing grocery prices and interest rates making it impossible to buy a home. How else do you explain losing so badly to one of the most unlikeable candidates in American political history?
The Democratic Party is at a Crossroads
- Thread starter 81usaf92
- Start date
I’ll do one of my theses later, but:
1) the Democrats will not learn anything at all because they’re likely to be back in charge of at least one house in just two years.
2) the Republicans won’t learn anything at all, either, because they will misread their mandate as approval of a bunch of things that weren’t even mentioned during the campaign. (What lesson can anyone argue the modern Republican party learned from the Breach in 2021?)
For the record, I questionthe notion that the national Democratic Party necessarily has to change too awful much. A bit, yes, most notably and extreme arrogance exhibited in the “ hey wives, you can vote differently than your husband, and then lie to his faceâ€Â, demonstrating precisely how poorly they understand marriage, even in modern America.
In the end, however, they are the only alternative to when the Republicans are determined again to be to blame for everything, which will be probably two years from this week.
1) the Democrats will not learn anything at all because they’re likely to be back in charge of at least one house in just two years.
2) the Republicans won’t learn anything at all, either, because they will misread their mandate as approval of a bunch of things that weren’t even mentioned during the campaign. (What lesson can anyone argue the modern Republican party learned from the Breach in 2021?)
For the record, I questionthe notion that the national Democratic Party necessarily has to change too awful much. A bit, yes, most notably and extreme arrogance exhibited in the “ hey wives, you can vote differently than your husband, and then lie to his faceâ€Â, demonstrating precisely how poorly they understand marriage, even in modern America.
In the end, however, they are the only alternative to when the Republicans are determined again to be to blame for everything, which will be probably two years from this week.
Maybe, for some, but apparently not the majority. IMHO it just demonstrates how out of touch with the majority of the American electorate that the Dems apparently were/ are. Will they alter course and risk alienating the AOCs, Bernie Sanders, and those of their ilk on the far and progressive left?
Lots of talk about what Kamala got tagged with over which she really had no control. That’s wasted breath.Factually, a lot of that may be true but it’s also a fact of life that when you’re as high up the food chain as she has been, you’re going to get linked with whatever happens on your watch. Anybody that’s ever been a CEO or in senior management of any company or organization knows that.
There will be no more elections. The Chosen "Republicans" will win everything and if they don't, their opponents will be executed. If I'm wrong I'll gladly buy the drinks! Gladly!!!
Clipped and saved for posterity. I do love a single-malt scotch.
I just like sitting down with friends and having a drink or two. Brand is secondary
If my budget can afford it, haha! If I'm wrong, the dollar will still be worth something. Can we say up to $1000?
In 1984, a segment of the religious right tried to strongarm the Reagan campaign with some harsher anti-abortion demands at the Dallas Convention. The liaisons meeting with them listened, nodded ("yes sir, yes sir, three bags full"), and when they walked out of the room, one mused to the other, "Screw (harsher word) them, they're not voting for Mondale. We know it - and they know it."
You just tell Ponytail Guevarra she's more replaceable than a Dixie cup and Waldorf the Muppet that he's old and ain't gonna be around much longer anyway, one way or the other. And both can be in a position to help or baggage that gets thrown overboard. (Big deal - she has a huge Twitter following. That might matter if Twitter reflected real life). The idea that Latinos are gonna rush to her aid kinda just went by the wayside.
Until the litmus testing of "even if you're with us on 99% of the issues, we will primary you if you oppose trans in women's sports" goes away (and you can use abortion on the right for the same thing), problems will continue.]
that being said, I still don't think in the largest picture that this is a five-alarm fire, either. This is the old pundits overlooking a flaw in a college football team, the team gets smashed on the field, and all of a sudden the very pundits who overrated them adopt the third person, "they turned out to be overrated."
It's still a flip of votes in the center that can change overnight.
This is a good discussion to have, and I'm glad you brought it up because it's worthy of contemplating.
Yeah, the winning party declares the death of the losing party when a seeming surprise result appears. But it's almost impossible for a party to flat out die when there's only two of them, too. The third party almost always takes far more support from one party than the other, making it a risky venture that will put the "more undesirable" of the two parties in power for a long time. In 2004, Zell Miller wrote a book entitled, "A National Party No More." Two years later, the Dems took both houses and two years after that, they had 59 Senate seats and were on the verge of the filibuster proof majority when Teddy Kennedy died.
The GOP was pronounced dead in 1936, 1964, 1976, and 2012 while the Democrats were pronounced dead in 1984, 2004 and - like a 20-year cycle on a clock - 2024. (They were probably pronounced dead before that, like when the GOP held the Presidency for all but 8 years between 1868 and 1912, but I wasn't old enough to read the papers yet).
I would be more worried about this if Trump was an organized politician with a briefcase of plans. But as Covid made crystal clear, this guy is worse than second-term Reagan at paying attention to much of anything for more than ten seconds. I'm not saying he cannot do bad stuff, but his rally attendance is down, he failed to pardon the 1/6ers before leaving office, and my suspicion is he just wants the immunity the office gives him.
But we'll see.
This is actually spot-on and something Republican consultant after Republican consultant and also Carville have been pointing out for years: without a superstar candidate (Bill Clinton, Obama) or the worst health crisis in world history, they are completely lost. As much as I didn't like the guy, I have to admit Bill Clinton knew how to talk to the electorate, how to push the right buttons (but only for himself, never for other candidates he advised). He could walk into Michigan and tell a group of whites and then a group of blacks that we shouldn't be looking at each other across a racial divide and then point out common things like housing, healthcare, grocery bills, etc.
But when much of your vote as well as your financial support is Boston-to-DC and the Left Coast with little in between, you play to that base.
Yes, but....would they have done so if Bush doesn't have a 91% approval rating coming off the Gulf War that scared the liberal heavyweights in the party like Mario Cuomo and Bill Bradley and Jay Rockefeller plus frightened the moderate-to-conservative wing of Sam Nunn and Lloyd Bentsen and Al Gore (who was more well-known than Clinton in 1991)?
Bill Clinton got away with some shady things (from the liberal vantage point) that they tolerated because they didn't have a lot of choice. He approved the execution of a lobotomized black man (Rickey Ray Rector), he made sure to time his appearances before majority black audiences so they wouldn't be the 630pm news story (that era is gone now - the campaign called it "counter scheduling", it would be called racist today), he was spotty on the environment and gun control for the hard left, and he was in favor of a bunch of things like demanding work for welfare that only survived the platform meetings because they were stuck with him. Believe me, from February to June 1992, Clinton looked like an absolute goner, especially when Perot was saying (at the time) fiscal conservative and social liberal stuff every day that was pulling supporters from each side.
If anyone thinks the party REALLY changed in 1992 (when Clinton got the 40% of the vote a Democrat usually gets even in a wipeout and finished with 3% above that)...why did they get one of the most one-sided shellackings in political history just two years later? Well, because Clinton transformed into Bernie Sanders between Election Day and Inauguration. He raised taxes, he passed gun control, and he tried to ram the equivalent of socialized medicine through a 57-43 Senate, only to wind up delaying a healthcare bill for another 15 years. He ran as a moderate and then raced hard left. His win in 1996 was because he triangulated and took the best ideas of the GOP and took credit for them.
Probably. We're about two weeks from hearing, "Well, the Republicans have lost the popular vote in 7 of the past 9 elections so therefore....."
Remember: every time the Democrats lose at the Presidential level they blame the same culprits, either racism or stolen elections or both.
1968 - Nixon racist strategy (probably Vietnam)
1972 - crooked Nixon spied on us
1980 - racist strategy, October surprise
1984 - sexism (Ferraro)
1988 - racist strategy
2000 - stole the election
2004 - stole the election
2016 - Russian interference (which means stole the election)
I don't concede those points because a simple read of the news AT THE TIME (without the later spin) shows that none of those excuses holds up. (The GOP, of course, still insists they win in 92 "but Perot," but I don't agree).
If the Republican Party would quit nominating flat out kook candidates like Kari Lake, Sharon Angle, Christine O'Donnell, Roy Moore, Dr Oz, the late Todd Akin, and Herschel Walker (I only have so much bandwith), the Democrats would REALLY be in trouble. That's SIX separate Senate seats that might have gained them control several times over more than they've had. And had they just picked a responsible candidate, they might still hold those seats.
Yeah, the winning party declares the death of the losing party when a seeming surprise result appears. But it's almost impossible for a party to flat out die when there's only two of them, too. The third party almost always takes far more support from one party than the other, making it a risky venture that will put the "more undesirable" of the two parties in power for a long time. In 2004, Zell Miller wrote a book entitled, "A National Party No More." Two years later, the Dems took both houses and two years after that, they had 59 Senate seats and were on the verge of the filibuster proof majority when Teddy Kennedy died.
The GOP was pronounced dead in 1936, 1964, 1976, and 2012 while the Democrats were pronounced dead in 1984, 2004 and - like a 20-year cycle on a clock - 2024. (They were probably pronounced dead before that, like when the GOP held the Presidency for all but 8 years between 1868 and 1912, but I wasn't old enough to read the papers yet).
I would be more worried about this if Trump was an organized politician with a briefcase of plans. But as Covid made crystal clear, this guy is worse than second-term Reagan at paying attention to much of anything for more than ten seconds. I'm not saying he cannot do bad stuff, but his rally attendance is down, he failed to pardon the 1/6ers before leaving office, and my suspicion is he just wants the immunity the office gives him.
But we'll see.
This is actually spot-on and something Republican consultant after Republican consultant and also Carville have been pointing out for years: without a superstar candidate (Bill Clinton, Obama) or the worst health crisis in world history, they are completely lost. As much as I didn't like the guy, I have to admit Bill Clinton knew how to talk to the electorate, how to push the right buttons (but only for himself, never for other candidates he advised). He could walk into Michigan and tell a group of whites and then a group of blacks that we shouldn't be looking at each other across a racial divide and then point out common things like housing, healthcare, grocery bills, etc.
But when much of your vote as well as your financial support is Boston-to-DC and the Left Coast with little in between, you play to that base.
Yes, but....would they have done so if Bush doesn't have a 91% approval rating coming off the Gulf War that scared the liberal heavyweights in the party like Mario Cuomo and Bill Bradley and Jay Rockefeller plus frightened the moderate-to-conservative wing of Sam Nunn and Lloyd Bentsen and Al Gore (who was more well-known than Clinton in 1991)?
Bill Clinton got away with some shady things (from the liberal vantage point) that they tolerated because they didn't have a lot of choice. He approved the execution of a lobotomized black man (Rickey Ray Rector), he made sure to time his appearances before majority black audiences so they wouldn't be the 630pm news story (that era is gone now - the campaign called it "counter scheduling", it would be called racist today), he was spotty on the environment and gun control for the hard left, and he was in favor of a bunch of things like demanding work for welfare that only survived the platform meetings because they were stuck with him. Believe me, from February to June 1992, Clinton looked like an absolute goner, especially when Perot was saying (at the time) fiscal conservative and social liberal stuff every day that was pulling supporters from each side.
If anyone thinks the party REALLY changed in 1992 (when Clinton got the 40% of the vote a Democrat usually gets even in a wipeout and finished with 3% above that)...why did they get one of the most one-sided shellackings in political history just two years later? Well, because Clinton transformed into Bernie Sanders between Election Day and Inauguration. He raised taxes, he passed gun control, and he tried to ram the equivalent of socialized medicine through a 57-43 Senate, only to wind up delaying a healthcare bill for another 15 years. He ran as a moderate and then raced hard left. His win in 1996 was because he triangulated and took the best ideas of the GOP and took credit for them.
Probably. We're about two weeks from hearing, "Well, the Republicans have lost the popular vote in 7 of the past 9 elections so therefore....."
Remember: every time the Democrats lose at the Presidential level they blame the same culprits, either racism or stolen elections or both.
1968 - Nixon racist strategy (probably Vietnam)
1972 - crooked Nixon spied on us
1980 - racist strategy, October surprise
1984 - sexism (Ferraro)
1988 - racist strategy
2000 - stole the election
2004 - stole the election
2016 - Russian interference (which means stole the election)
I don't concede those points because a simple read of the news AT THE TIME (without the later spin) shows that none of those excuses holds up. (The GOP, of course, still insists they win in 92 "but Perot," but I don't agree).
If the Republican Party would quit nominating flat out kook candidates like Kari Lake, Sharon Angle, Christine O'Donnell, Roy Moore, Dr Oz, the late Todd Akin, and Herschel Walker (I only have so much bandwith), the Democrats would REALLY be in trouble. That's SIX separate Senate seats that might have gained them control several times over more than they've had. And had they just picked a responsible candidate, they might still hold those seats.
Barring a calamity, the terrain is not favorable for the Democrats in 2026 as far as the US Senate goes. The Republicans will be defending 20 Senate seats in 2026, the Democrats, 13. It appears right now that the GOP will win the PA seat and the Dems the AZ seat, making the Senate, 53-47, meaning the Dems will have to flip four seats in 2026 to gain control.
Barring something unusual, the following seats are PROBABLY safe:
Republican (16)
Alabama (Tubs)
Alaska
Arkansas
Idaho
Iowa
Kansas
Louisiana
Mississippi
Nebraska
Oklahoma
S Carolina (Lindsey Graham)
S Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
WVA
Wyoming
Democrat (10)
Colorado
Delaware
Illinois
Massachusetts
Minnesota
Jersey
New Mexico
Oregon
Rhode Island
Virginia
Seats That May Flip Held By Republican
Kentucky (McConnell likely to retire assuming he's alive)
Maine (Collins will be 73)
North Carolina
Ohio (whoever replaces Vance)
Seats That May Flip Held By Democrat
Georgia (Ossoff)
Michigan (Peters won with less than 50% of the vote)
New Hampshire
Kentucky is a wildcard because Beshear could probably win the seat so long as he's not racing McConnell (he might even then if Mitch has some more spells). And given the circumstances necessary for Ossoff to prevail in 2020 - and what has happened since then - that's probably a seat that can be considered lost already.
Iowa is also a wildcard because if the Trump Tariffs tear into the farmers, Ernst may be hit by the shrapnel. The point, though, is they have to flip four seats - three in states Trump won - and hold onto the two in states Trump also won.
I don't think that points to a national strategy for the Democrats, though; I think it's just the reality that it's going to be very difficult to flip enough Senate seats to gain control. North Carolina is one of the more bipartisan at the state level states in the US (they once had liberal John Edwards and hard right firebrand Jesse Helms as Senators at the same time), and the GOP has censured their own candidate for (God forbid) supporting bipartisan gun control and gay marriage.
My point?
We're going to get a bunch of stories over the next four years about how the Democrats can't appeal nationally unless they take the House.
Barring something unusual, the following seats are PROBABLY safe:
Republican (16)
Alabama (Tubs)
Alaska
Arkansas
Idaho
Iowa
Kansas
Louisiana
Mississippi
Nebraska
Oklahoma
S Carolina (Lindsey Graham)
S Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
WVA
Wyoming
Democrat (10)
Colorado
Delaware
Illinois
Massachusetts
Minnesota
Jersey
New Mexico
Oregon
Rhode Island
Virginia
Seats That May Flip Held By Republican
Kentucky (McConnell likely to retire assuming he's alive)
Maine (Collins will be 73)
North Carolina
Ohio (whoever replaces Vance)
Seats That May Flip Held By Democrat
Georgia (Ossoff)
Michigan (Peters won with less than 50% of the vote)
New Hampshire
Kentucky is a wildcard because Beshear could probably win the seat so long as he's not racing McConnell (he might even then if Mitch has some more spells). And given the circumstances necessary for Ossoff to prevail in 2020 - and what has happened since then - that's probably a seat that can be considered lost already.
Iowa is also a wildcard because if the Trump Tariffs tear into the farmers, Ernst may be hit by the shrapnel. The point, though, is they have to flip four seats - three in states Trump won - and hold onto the two in states Trump also won.
I don't think that points to a national strategy for the Democrats, though; I think it's just the reality that it's going to be very difficult to flip enough Senate seats to gain control. North Carolina is one of the more bipartisan at the state level states in the US (they once had liberal John Edwards and hard right firebrand Jesse Helms as Senators at the same time), and the GOP has censured their own candidate for (God forbid) supporting bipartisan gun control and gay marriage.
My point?
We're going to get a bunch of stories over the next four years about how the Democrats can't appeal nationally unless they take the House.
As a reminder, I said “ barring a calamity.â€Â
remember, who will be in the White House…
remember, who will be in the White House…
Just so I’m clear, you HONESTLY believe that this presidential election signals the end of our constitutional republic and that political opponents will actually be killed and in four years time we will be the equivalent of Russia, or Cuba, or Venezuela? OR, is this just an expression of hurt feelings over an election that didn’t go the way you wanted?
In regards to the senate, I've heard that Mitch is almost certainly hanging up the cleats in two years.
I suppose things could change, but he will be 84 and with health issues possibly burgeoning, I would hope he has the cognition to realize it is time and the wish to not be another Senator Feinstein.
Edit:
Looked around and stepping down as majority leader in November:
apnews.com
I suppose things could change, but he will be 84 and with health issues possibly burgeoning, I would hope he has the cognition to realize it is time and the wish to not be another Senator Feinstein.
Edit:
Looked around and stepping down as majority leader in November:
McConnell will step down as the Senate Republican leader in November after a record run in the job
Mitch McConnell says he'll step down as Senate Republican leader in November.
apnews.com
BREAKING: Nicole Hart, a physician’s assistant in an OBGYN office in Pennsylvania has reportedly been fired after writing she hopes the daughters of Trump suppprters have ectopic pregnancies.
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