to the economy in their wallet. Democrats must embrace the working class. States, even conservative ones, are passing increases in minimum wage. We need Democrats to fight for a living wage. And I don't care what anybody says in public everybody, even the conservatives, want their Social Security checks. Speak to the people directly and they will stop listening to the people who are brain washing them and vote with their wallet and their ballot. We need a real populist movement, not Democrats who claim to be populist and then vote in favor of Corporations rather than the people. The people can feel the pinch in their wallet and when that happens they are vulnerable to the brain washing from the conservatives.

who do not represent the people can't win, and I can't imagine anyone is still in denial about that anymore.

First of all, political labels are often too narrow and sometimes arbitrary.

Second, this is is a midterm election cycle and turnout is always low. Presidential races get a better sample of the electorate.

Third, a lost election is a lost election. "At least I stood for something!" is good for back-patting but it doesn't get policy made.

Which brings me to this:

We can't always tell the long-term consequences of an election. In this case, we do get a larger GOP majority in the Senate, but it's not clear yet how that will play out come January and moreover we don't know how the public will react either, or what new issues we might be facing as a nation or a world.

I'm disgusted to see Cassidy win, but I've learned my lesson about expending energy on predicting the future.

reestablish the Democratic party.

Considering this, we've got a helluva job ahead of us, but our democracy depends on it.

Energy Firms in Secretive Alliance With Attorneys General.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/us/politics/energy-firms-in-secretive-alliance-with-attorneys-general.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

be kicked to the curb.

Progress is about boldly embracing better things, even when they lead to failure.

Regards,

TWM

except where it meant recruiting Blue Dogs. I'd rather our party stood for Something Completely Different than the opposition; we've been trying the third way and look where we are.

that 'we can't pass Progressive Legislation EVEN THOUGH WE WON, because of the BLUE DOGS. Or DLC/Third Way Dems. We had a majority in both houses and the WH but then the excuse became 'The Blue Dogs'. Before that it was THE REPUBLICANS. People worked hard to get that majority, people spent money they didn't have. We were ELATED in Nov 2008! What a victory!! But then, 'sorry, we need more than a majority. We can't do what you want us to do!

So the voters responded, they kicked them out in 2010.

The Party Leadership who were responsible for literally TELLING voters who was responsible, responded by BLAMING THE VOTERS.

Remember, Progressive Dems HELD THEIR SEATS in 2010 except for one that I recall. It was the Blue Dogs who lost.

Again in 2014, after hearing over and over again that even when we WIN we DON'T win, because of the 'conservative dems'. So once again, the voters responded.

And once again the Party Leadership turns a deaf ear and BLAMES THE VOTERS.

I don't believe that we cannot get a Progressive Dem elected in Southern States. I think we've been sold a lie. It is ludicrous to believe that people will vote against their own interests when they have a choice not to do so.

I think it suits Corporate Interests to place DlC/Third Way candidates in the Dem Party so they have one party totally on their side, and HALF the other party.

It is insulting to those states to simply say 'we can't get a good Democrat elected there so we have to 'settle'. Nonsense. I don't believe it.

But watch them once again 'BLAME THE VOTERS' who are only reacting to THEIR excuses for failing to use the power of WINNING.

So I don't expect them to learn anything from this, it isn't in their interests to do so.

But we will see OPs and comments here once again BLAMING THE VOTERS and I for one, will totally reject that. People are figuring it all out and that is why these Corporate Dems are losing while Progressive Dems are holding their seats for the most part.

A whole lot of Republicans love him because he is for the Fossil Fuel Industry. I live in NY and Dems are very unhappy with him. He is PROUD of how well he gets along with Republicans here.

Many Dems held their noses very hard here in order to vote for him, same as Dems did for so long regarding the Blue Dogs and then finally had enough.

And we didn't have a Progressive non-corporate candidate to choose so he won by default. He is now going to push for anti-environmental policies. Already Upstate NY is going to end the policy of being able to sell back energy saved by turning to Alternative Energy (big in this area) because Cuomo and his corporate buddies are going to use upstate NY for fracking.

So it was a choice between two pro-fossil fuel candidates one of whom will throw some crumbs to us, the other who won't. We went of the crumbs THIS TIME.

Next time he won't be so lucky. People are sick and tired of holding their noses. We are just a little behind the growing trend as seen with the Blue Dogs, here in NY to simply say 'no more'.

but the primary ?

based on what NYC used to be. He won because the other guy was so bad not even Republicans could support him. There were corruption issues, and of course Cuomo had loads of Corporate money.

As I said, I wanted him gone, he is way too Corporate friendly and supports the dangerous fracking industry. He was smart enough not to talk about Fracking during the campaign.

When voters are faced with two awful candidates, they have little choice but to go for the 'lesser evil'. His opponents in the primary lacked the money to beat him. This time.

He won by default. Now we get to watch him show his real colors. Had the party been willing to finance and support a better candidate, he would have lost. But as we know, the party always supports Corporate Candidates.

support so you are wrong about republicans not supporting him and thinking they mostly voted for cuomo.

and you are now saying that New York is not liberal which is tototally opposite of the point you were earlier trying to make.

and as i said, cuomo won in the primary . if democrats didn't like him it's strange that they voted for him in the primary . and you bring up money but Jerry Brown in California didn't spend much money or even campaign and he won against a candidate that spend money against him and attacked him .

so are democrats in new york just mostly uninformed ?

should be happy with a Candidate only Republicans could love? Do you SEE the problem with this at all? Dems in NY held their noses and voted for a Candidate that Republicans love. Had he run as a Republican, he would have won with a landslide, that is how right leaning he is.

Now we have to do something to end this charade we are presented with here in NY. Corporate candidates loaded with Corporate money which they are now beholden to.

When Republicans love someone, should we not be a bit suspicious about that?

NYC turned right during the Bloomberg years when Corporate money drove the working class out of a city they can no longer afford. Giuliani began the process, making NYC 'safe' for the Wealthy. And not all of the wealthy in NYC are Republicans, I know, I worked for some of them. Moving the homeless and other 'undesirables' out of the city was the goal of both Giuliani and Bloomberg. It now belongs to the wealthy, both Dems and Repubs.

Staten Island is Republican, Nassau and Suffolk cos on LI mostly Republican. Upstate NY is also Conservative. Brooklyn and Queens are probably still Democratic. But NYC is now a place only the wealthy can afford which was intentional.

The fact that Dem candidate appeals to Republicans is not something to be proud of. But it seems our Dem candidates work harder to attract Republican voters than they do Democratic voters.

And guess what, if they want to appeal to Republicans, then they better not complain when Dems leave them to those voters, as in the many recent cases of the Blue Dogs. Enough is enough is what the Dem voters are saying. They can listen, or rely on their Republican 'base'.

cuomo won because of republicans.

cuomo won because he got mostly democratic support. the republican also won more independents than cuomo.

That was the case for a long time in the southern states, but as we have seen in the last two midterms, the people will no longer hold their noses for right leaning, corporate dems.

NY isn't quite at that point yet, but I can tell you for a fact that nor one Dem I know across the state, wanted Cuomo as a candidate and they only voted for him because his opponent was so bad. That is not called 'winning', and voters won't do it much longer.

Here in NY Dems are organizing locally to start building up from the bottom again, real Dems who are not Corporate owned, not anti-environment, not funded by Wall St so they can choose and support their own candidates, first locally, then statewide and finally nationally. I don't know a Dem who is happy with the current Party's right leaning trend, not one.

At least one good result from being forced into voting for a Corporate candidate, once again, is that Dems are more motivated than ever to get rid of these DLCers and not let Corporate entities continue to choose their candidates for them.

They shouldn't have voted for him in the primary.

You are fighting hard to keep these losing tactics in place.

It infuriates me to think that Dems had it all and thanks to the leadership, have literally thrown it away.

I blame people who are refusing again to get the message from the voters for those losses, sorry but voters TRIED to tell the party to stop forcing Corporate owned Candidates on them in 2010.

And this argument you are still clinging to, is what they got in return, so again in 2014 they voted for ISSUES, Progressive Issues, and once again refused to elect candidates who represent Wall St rather the people who elect them.

Progressive platform and end these right leaning policies that are causing Dems to lose election after election.

He was reelected

wasn't democratic to debate. He

He also made deals with LI Republicans - he wouldn't campaign in LI or support candidates there if key statements were made by Reps in LI.

He lied to the Working Families party -- badly. Even started a counter group, WEP.

Cuomo won because he is corrupt and rigged it.


How Zephyr Teachout Taught Democrats a Lesson in Democracy
http://www.thenation.com/article/181565/how-zephyr-teachout-taught-democrats-lesson-democracy

Teachout didn't beat the incumbent governor with the $35 million war chest, but she took nearly 35 percent of the vote Tuesday night, enough to leave a sizable gash in his left flank and do some permanent damage to his hopes of running for national office one day. She won nearly the entire Hudson Valley, a swath of the middle of the state, and even got 54 percent of the vote in far north St. Lawrence County, according to The New York Times’s election results maps. She took over 10,000 votes in the state’s capital, Albany County, compared to just over 6,000 for the governor. The 62.1 percent of the vote Cuomo garnered is among the poorer performances by an incumbent governor running for re-election in primaries since 2002—a figure that hovers somewhere between the tenth and fifteenth percentile of victory margins, according to FiveThirtyEight. That's pretty bad—the median percentage by which a governor won re-nomination was over 90 percent.

IMO the way the feds threw the Gulf Coast under the bus during the BP disaster is still reaping consequences.

DiFI, Bill Nelson, John Tester, Clair McCaskill, Cory Booker, Heidi Heitkamp, Tim Kaine, Joe Manchin

All of those are probably considered DLC of varying shades.

I have this thing about the political process. I kind of think that CANDIDATES should decide to run. When you say "should Democrats run something totally different" you make the whole candidate selection process into something very undemocratic.

Which, of course, it very often is. A group of party elites and people with deep pockets find somebody, usually with deep pockets of their own - to run for the office.

I will say it again. If we want a candidate more liberal than Landrieu, then let that candidate run in the primary and beat Landrieu. If they cannot do that, then what chance do they have to win the general election? For myself, yes, I would rather win with a Landrieu than to lose with a Kucinich. I'd rather have 60 Democrats in the Senate, even if 10 of them are DINOs than to replace those DINOs with a bunch of conservative Republicans. And realisitically, sometimes you can elect a George McGovern in a place like South Dakota, but more often you will get a Tim Johnson, Tom Daschle or Stephanie Herseth.

But I'd love to have Johnson, Daschle and Herseth rather than Rounds, Thune and Noem.

They managed to hand the governorship to a REPUBLICAN in a Blue STate by refusing to help their OWN Progressive Candidate who had a great chance of defeating Christie at that time as he was very vulnerable due to his mishandling of Sandy.

But they pretended he could not be beaten so it wasn't worth the effort and over 60 DEMS IN A BLUE STATE ignored their own candidate, BETRAYED HER and ENDORSED the Republican.

How bad do you have to be to literally HAND OVER a Blue State to a right wing Republican?

I remember how they loved Christie though. 'He's so moderate'!! and Dems didn't know what to do, if their own party is pushing the Republican, in a state where a majority of voters are Democrats?

That race alone told me all I need to know about the current leadership of our party.

Think of every larger than life politician of the last few decades who won major victories by pulling in votes even from those who don't agree with their policies. Clinton, Reagan, even Bush all got 'crossover' votes. Not based on 'policy', but on 'image'. On 'optics'.

We shouldn't 'give up' because we're 'not conservative enough'. For many voters, voting has nothing to do with 'conservatism' or 'liberalism'. It's about who can present themselves as the person who you feel best about - are they pleasant, are they honest, are they firm of resolve? What their policy beliefs are actually doesn't matter to many voters.

that we don't have a vote recording/counting problem here in America today