I'm pretty tired of the idea that there are no standards to being a Dem politician besides local electability. It's stretching the well-flogged "lesser of two evils" gambit to its breaking point. A line has to be drawn where we realize that compromising ideals means alienating those who really believe in them.

I'm not sure why but I can never make my thoughts match what I type. I'm sick of compromising our party in the name of electability. Personally I believe if a Democrat came out and ran on true Democratic values we could win anywhere because those values are things that resonate with every working class person out there

I was beat by a staunch republican. I heard a lot of support, but then when it came time to vote, either they didn't vote, or didn't vote for me. So, I've come to the conclusion that it is only lip service and they really want this shit.

We in the midwest, or the south, don't need people from California, New York or Massachusetts, or even Minnesota, looking down their noses and saying "you are compromising our ideals" when they do something that makes local voters happy. We elect those people to represent OUR values, not necessarily yours.

Sometimes it seems the idealists are looking for a battle at every turn, and screaming heresy at the slightest deviation.

Finding common ground, and promoting your ideals might be more productive instead of all the witch hunts and purges.

These right leaning candidates are turning people off. A lot of young people see the government taking their future. Making education too expensive and out of reach, the alternative working at Walmart living on public assistance. I can't say I blame them.
If supposed dem candidates run away from the Democratic platform, they have NO business running.

If you want someone worth voting for you must first work for them within the party.

It is free or easy. It is not the case that the Dem party is simply going to provide you with the best possible choice. Sitting back and then complaining about the choices seems pretty close to passive aggressive, or just ignorance.

We do voter drives year around. I volunteer time at the county fair to register voters at our committee table. I also drive voters on election days.
Please stop acting like we all sit around and do nothing but complain. My state is BLUE, and I'm sick of being ruled by red states chalked full of dumb ass voters and people who can't be bothered.
In any case you should probably stop assuming we all complain but are not active in our communities.

meant democrats kept control of the senate which means democrats had control of things like committees .

On things like the environment she broke with us. The people of the state wanted someone more to the right to represent them. Again like I said it sucks we lost a seat but how much do we have to compromise our values as a party how far right wing of a candidate do we have to run before calling ourselves Democrats becomes pointless.

Jerry Brown who won big in California without campaigning would do a lot worse than landrieu did in lousiana.

yes, the people of the state want someone conservative but this includes racism. Obama being President has turned more people in certain areas less likely to vote for certain dems .

Until people wake up and actually see that all they do is look out for their own butts, and until our own Party stops trying to appease them and "Be Nice" trying not to upset them. The biggest problem I have with my President is his lack of aggression against the extreme right wing fanatics and trying to be politically correct all the time. There is a time when diplomacy has to be set aside.

There would also be a certain crowd on DU who would demand total loyalty to him too. It has gotten THAT awful.

The too left to win meme is a very convenient one for the 10% and their devotees to sell and sell hard and consistently, but that doesn't make it true.

Look around. The reality is, the further right the Party has gone, the more ground it has lost. If the Party really put forward its most electible candidates in 2010 and 2012 and each of them campaigned as well as they could, and the Republicans swept Congress and the states the way they did anyway, what the hell?

"I've seen it happen time after time. When the Democratic candidate allows himself to be put on the defensive and starts apologizing for the New Deal and the fair Deal, and says he really doesn't believe in them, he is sure to lose. The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don't want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign."

...

"But when a Democratic candidate goes out and explains what the New Deal and fair Deal really are--when he stands up like a man and puts the issues before the people--then Democrats can win, even in places where they have never won before. It has been proven time and again."

...

"And I am here to say to you that when a man in politics, if he is a leader. has the right ideas, the people are willing to listen to what he has to say. It is a matter of salesmanship.

Make them have to defend their want not to have a living wage make them defend their sick and twisted fuck the poor record

It may make clearer the reasons Landrieu lost.

Makes it hard to believe she was an effective candidate.

And here we are.

Those who are saying we have to compromise and move left for electability or risk losing. Well it seems to me we ran a Republican light and lost if we are gonna lose either way why not take the chance and run someone who is more liberal

at keeping their seats. It's the Third-Way crowd that's getting cooked.

Can you please at least acknowledge that fact?

Liberal Democrats are great at holding liberal districts. And that's not most districts.

Seriously, Manny, that's the most dishonest argument people make on here.

"Liberal Democrats are great at holding liberal districts. And that's not most districts." Is a lie?

Oh?

Tell that to Barbara Boxer, Russ Feingold, Elizabeth Warren and Tom Harkin. So Alan Grayson doesn't actually exist? Ever hear of Henry Waxman? How is what Manny said dishonest? I'd like to see some data about your claim.

But your claim is not factual and you know this. What about the people I listed? How have they managed to keep their seats then?

Meanwhile, 2 conservatives beat Republican incumbents as opposed to 0 liberals.

How can you possibly seriously say that conservative Democrats are the problem here?

Instead of appealing to their moderate blue color base? How is that so hard to see and what about the long time officials I listed - how have they managed to stay in office? A fluke?

The only one who doesn't is Grayson, and he's lost his seat as often as he's defended it.

His claim stands, go read it again you just said so.

EDIT - wait you made the claim in bold, which you just proved to yourself.

their seats as opposed to 3 conservatives (and that's only if you count Rahall as a "conservative" even though he pretty clearly lost for being too far left on coal).

'Liberal Democrats are great at holding liberal districts. And that's not most districts.'

Is true. The people I listed are proof of that.

as liberal candidates as we can in those. But those elections won't get us either chamber of Congress. We need people like Gene Taylor and Ike Skelton who can carry conservative-leaning districts again. Or, to move things back into this decade, more people like Graham and Ashford.

I am not saying don't run conservative reps in Red States (personally I would rather see moderates run in all campaigns). By all means do, just make sure they appeal to their blue color voters FIRST, then worry about picking up the independent and republican vote later. IF we should have learned anything from the midterms it is that white dem voting numbers are plummeting in the south. I guess we need our own version of hate radio, since it seems to have worked perfectly for the GOP.

We can say conservative Democrats are the problem all we want, because this is a liberal site.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=aboutus
From DU's Mission Statement (with emphasis bolded by me):

However, Americans are not always great at spotting phonies, or at least spotting them in time. We've bought our share of snake oil, literally and figuratively.

put a lot of Blue Dogs in. While I do think the dems need to be every damn place there is a vote for grabs, the mistake was not makign damned sure whoever got that D had to GET IN LINE.

states.

Remarkably, Obama did carry Indiana in 2008, though not in 2012, and he was no more right in Indiana than he was in Massachusetts.

And went back to the usual in 2012.

But in pratice, it has become the excuse to keep peoplelike Landrieu who hamstring us and backstab us.

work like hell toward 2020, so we get to re-district after the census.

A place to start might be top down organizing of a systematic, nationwide voter registration project, as the Teabaggers have been doing.

Another is a youth initiative. The Scouts and church youth groups tend to be rightist. The right even puts out a bunch of books for tots. We need a counterbalance.

We also need a balance to churches for adults. With the church network, they can organize around almost anything in a couple of weeks. What is our equivalent?

And so on.

Go further right and berate voters for low turnout is not the answer to every Democratic loss.

and indeed, to oturight steal teabaggers tacttics, as they were tactics used by others on the left in the FDR days.

However, there realy is no equal for the churches. The best we can do is focus on the leftward churches, such as Unitarians. The atheists are having a debate on whether or not they even should try to make an equivalent, which is fine, but in the meantime we need something to counteract the Christian Church mafia in america.

also, we can and should talk baout ways to get new voters (if nothign else, rides to get those blasted ids and charities to pay fpor them so that the right wing cannot simply use them to get rid of poor voters) but when you have a turnout as low as we had, yes, shame is needed. There is no excuse to not at least do a lahlfhearted attempt to alleviate the evil, if if that is all you can do.

candidates who are pro-choice is more powerful than anything humans can offer. However, you can create other kinds of networking opportunities in the secular realm. The Party doesn't even try to do that.

when you have a turnout as low as we had, yes, shame is needed.

"That's what they said about torture: really necessary. Same problem with both: neither actually works and may well be counter productive."

With all due respect, there is a major difference between voting, which, at least on paper, is the basis of a dempocracy, the sort of thing that we supposedly fought for the right to do, and torture, something ni regime admits to doing, because it is against not just one nation's laws, but against all international law. Attempting to tar people who are demanding that people do what they supposedly fought to get with crimes against humanity is a bit sneaky, like folks who say "Nazi Nazi Nazi" all the time.

"In any case, blaming voters has been done over and over and it hasn't reduced evil or increased turnout. Time to try something besides guaranteed fail. "

Well, with all due respect, we know one thing that has been a failiure: attemtping to sell a sort of republican lite so that the rich people will not vomit tons of weaponized cash against us, and that the ever so coveted "Reagan Democrats" will like us. That has been a failure.

I am with you in terms of making secualr help for people. It is no accident that ACORN was targeted from the egt go, as are Unions, because both were places the Democrats could have offered help. I will especially agree with bad networking, but, to speak about why I think the Blue Dogs need to stop holding the wheel, there are few networkers worse than the conservative Democrats, because they already starting muffling their message before they even leave the gate. Alison grimes best weapon against Mitch was the ACA, as their democrtaioc Governor made it work well, but becayse she, like Mary L, felt she had to distance themselves from you know who in 1600 pennsylvania Avenue, she hamstriung herself, just as Mary L did when she held the Budget hostage for the folks who had already caused suffering for her state.

"The Party has to generate more excitement among voters and, IMO, you do that by how you perform in office, by registering more voters, etc. "

and that is EXACTLY why I belive the Blue Dogs are a part of the problem, they are NOT interested in being judge on how they actually PERFORM. Seriously, who have been the people speaking out against the slew of Voter limits passed? It has not been the Blue Dogs, even though their states have targets that could be lined up like the canned hunts Dick Cheney went on. In florida, even though there were voter hijinks, and even though the margin of vioctory was thin, Charlie Crist conceded in tiem to have a midnight snack, whereas we KNOW that if the vote totals were reversed, the courts woudl still be fighting this.

As far as pratical solutions, we need to form PACS. The only way we can compete with billionaires is to remind them that their billiosn are nothing more than our pennies. We need to use pacs to make the insituions that do confer advanatge, which is a nice way of saying we need Lawyers guns and money, min us the guns, but with extra money. We need to help the Unions, but we need the pacs that are seprate from them because they cannot do their job alone anymore. If nothign else, once we make an idea work, the GOP will try to kill it, and the onyl way for them to stop us from making pacs is to kill their precious baby, Citizens United, and you and I know short of a full blown constituional amendment, that will not happen.

I compared it with Democrats blaming voters for Democratic losses because you said blaming voters was necessary. And, as I think must have been obvious to any fair reader, I did so only to the limited extent that both were described as necessary, although neither was effective. Let's not pretend I equated the two for all purposes or that I see no differences betweeen them, okay?

Is it "right" or "left" to oppose the drug war, police violence, warmongering foreign policy, and corporate ownership of America?

Plenty of people who are allegedly "left" who oppose none of those things.

Hint: that's where the electoral majority is for a future, successful Democratic Party - if there is to be one.

Guide us!



Looks like you boys are gonna be looking for another job.

And I mean literally.

Because a conservative shithead who caucuses with us is infinitely better than an even more conservative shithead who doesn't. If you don't see why I don't even know where to begin.

claim to know how to campaign in states halfway across the country, but don't talk too much about their own.

Yet, Idaho has changed 180º ever since Frank Church was in the Senate.
He was tossed out of the Senate the same year that Ronnie Reagan was elected, 1980.

I spent quite a few hours listening to some Democrats talk at a bull session last month discussing what is wrong with Idaho.
Things are so much out of whack that not 1 single Democrat won a state-wide election this year.
If he/she wasn't already in the state legislature, they weren't going to let them get in, either.

The Democrats couldn't even win in the 2 open seats that were in the state government.

Two reasons emerged from their bull session that helped explain the reasons for that :
1. The President passed the ACA, and then the mainstream media spent the next 2 years trashing Obamacare so bad that many of the Republicans that live here thought they would have to run down and visit a Doctor to get a vaccine to protect themselves from getting it!!
2. Then there was the fear that a lot of Republicans have that they will all turn gay now, after Idaho's gay marriage ban was struck down by the federal appeals court.

So, they went to the polls and voted out of anger.
And they voted for the least qualified, least experienced, most dumbass candidates on the ballot, as long as they were a member of the Republican party!
Even in the 2 open seats in the state government, the Republican candidates won!!

The Democrat that ran and lost for the State's School Superintendent gave an interview 2 weeks after the election, and she said that she didn't think ANY Democrat could have been elected in the harsh atmosphere that is present now in the state.
The amount of complaining about President Obama, Harry Reid, and the Democrats for passing the ACA had reached a fever pitch sometime just before the mid-term elections, as reported and repeated dutifully for days on end by the local mainstream media in Idaho.
Along with almost every other news story designed to induce fear, uncertainty, or doubt about the government, like the speculative reports about Ebola, or Benghazi, accompanied by the ludicrous comments made by the 4 members in the US Congress from Idaho today on every single issue or topic of the day.

The conditions here were not nearly balanced, or even remotely fair enough for her to even have a fighting chance of winning a state-wide election.
Not this year, anyway.

But, what is even more interesting to me now . . is the fact that Republican US Senator Crapo announced his intention to run for re-election in 2016 clear back during the summer, in August.
I may be wrong, but I think that was the earliest announcement ever for a politician, announcing that he was going to run for re-election, in the history of the state.
Certainly in the last 50 years, at least.

What that tells me is . . Crapo is running scared.
From the Tea Party coalition that has formed such a large cult-like following here in Idaho over the last 2 years.

I already saw a Cadillac Escalade going down the road with a "Crapo for Senate 2016" re-election bumper sticker in its back window just a few days before Halloween.
Hmmm, Crapo has been busy distributing bumper stickers already.
And yet it wasn't even Halloween yet!!

Hell, the GOP primary is still 18 months away!

And Hillary is, you know, inevitable.

Maybe running as a fake republican isn't the way for Democrats to win in red states. Didn't work out so well for the woman who ran against turtle man. Looks like it didn't work for Landrieu either.

And it won't work for Clinton. No matter how many embarrassing and patronizing country music videos she makes. She's gonna get her ass kicked unless she starts acting like a Democrat.

doing just that?

... we didn't realize the damage Bill Clinton was doing would be so extreme.

and now we're tearing ourselves apart over what a horrible disappointment Obama has been.

... never fell for the shrub, but most of us did believe in Obama. At one time.

doesn't he get at least a little support for trying?

No President will ever please any of us all of the time. But a guy who actually gets a few things done in the second term with Congress dead set against him should get at least a little respect.

We should never have stopped that Republican train wreck she kept promoting even as thousands died and the middle class was torn to shreds?
I know many Warren supporters were what they called 'Reagan Democrats' but it is surprising that they were also Bush Republicans.
I'm very glad George Bush lost to Bill Clinton. I voted for Bill Clinton. Because I was smart enough not to vote for George fucking Bush.

.. could not have done a better job than Clinton did of handing the country over to the bankers.

So congrats on that.

Clinton was a master bullshitter and besides he looked good by comparison when he ran against Daddy Bush. Even then he never would have won had Perot not sucked up a lot of republican votes. By the time he ran for a second term a lot of people including me voted for him as the lesser of two evils. When he left office I was happy to see him go. In retrospect he was basically a business friendly republican.

Hillary is pushing the same tired republican policies but she lacks the charisma and gregariousness of her husband. Let's face it she doesn't have a lot of personality. So people aren't going to cut her the same slack as trey did for him.

I'm sick of being told Democrats must be Republicans with a D behind their name. It is insulting to a person's intelligence to tell them they have a choice, when clearly, the choices are Republican and Republican Lite. Either way, you get Republican bullshit and that is not really a choice.

... there is no point at all to electing right wing Democrats. They won't stick with the party on crucial votes and they damage the Democratic brand by making Democrats look like Republican-lite.

If the people of Bumfuck USA want a Republican let them have one and let the Republicans govern like Republicans and it will be a self limiting process.

But ONLY if Democrats are a true alternative to Republcans and not just watered down versions thereof.

.... appeal to that half of the electorate who didn't bother to vote.

That's where the potential votes are.

And they didn't get many votes.

Party leadership since they are part of the pRoblem with not being liberal enough.

But why didn't liberals vote in the primary for the more liberal candidate ?

People complain more people don't vote, but the half the electorate that doesn't vote, doesn't vote because it's all right wing or more right wing. They want better.

It's our vote, our voice. Fuck voting for someone that doesn't represent your values.

for her. Maybe it's the right leaning part that is losing all these seats occupied by Right Leaning Dems??

It seems impossible to get Reagan Democrats to listen to anything, but what they want to hear. It's as if they are channeling the words from a libertarian think tank full of investment bankers.

Of course we know that can't be true - they hate libertarians uh huh uh huh...

swing to the right on almost all issues, except the ones they need to pretend to be Democrats, isn't going to give up on stuffing the Dem Party with Corporate Dems rather than Progressive Dems no matter what the facts really are.

Were there lots of left leaning Dems who supported her but didn't support Obama?

Don't think so.

The goal was to kick out Repubs, end all of Bush's policies and the only way to do that was to get a majority. Times are different now. What voters thought would happen didn't, we are still at war, no war criminals have been held accountable, torturers are being excused and explained and protected, SS has been put on a deficit table it had nothing to do with, for the first time, by a Democrat.

I could go on, Wall St Crooks bailed out rather than prosecuted etc.

So by 2010 considering the failure to do any of the things we worked so hard for, the blame being placed then on Blue Dogs, before that Republicans, voters began getting rid of what they were told was the problem, Then they BLAMED THE VOTERS.

The fear of Bush/Cheney, the hope they would be prosecuted drove voters to elect anyone BUT a Republican if they could.

Watching the war criminals and war criminals not only walk, but thrive eg, I guess they never realized how important an issue that was.

He was running to replace a repub and he clearly was perceived as more left leaning than she was. But he was clobbered and she won. The reason: it takes more than left leaning votes for a Democrat to win in Louisiana. It takes moderates and even some conservative minded Democrats and Independents.

She wasn't able to attract that sort of coalition this year. In particular, the younger voters -- the ones that are most left leaning -- didn't show up. Voters from 18-29 made up 22 percent of the voters in 2008. This year, they represented only 12 percent. Voters from 30-44 represented 26 percent in 2008 but only 22 percent this year.

Not showing up is why elections are lost. It is why someone more conservative than the person being "punished" by non-support gets elected.

a person to pull it leftward, does it? Losing is losing. What battles are you planning to invest in without having people in place to implement them.

And sorry to some here, NO, a moderate is not the evil centrists we keep talking about. Moderates still want social security and fair trade.

Left leaning Dems don't do it nearly as well.

Therefore, we must do exactly what the Third Way tells us day after day, 24/7/365, and continue to run right leaning candidates, in order to continue to lose sensibly.

Just examine the evidence. 6 years ago, we had huge majorities in the House and Senate. But by constantly shifting to the right, promoting Third Way corporatist policies, and promoting Third Way corporatist candidates, we've managed to lose our large majorities in the House and Senate, so that Republicans could enjoy these types of burdensome majorities.

Left leaning Democrats could never have lost these seats in such a sensible manner; therefore, the sensible things to do are to abandon our genuine Democratic party values, principles, our personal integrity, and continue to run Right leaning corporatist candidates so that we can lose sensibly.

It's just Third Way common sense. Like how losing at Third Way 11 dimensional chess is really winning.

Exactly. You nailed it.

it goes back to before bush, 911 etc so you get a clear picture of how simple the nuts/bolts of the entire thing (winning elections) is...Basically, 1/3rd voters vote rightwing, 1/3rd vote leftwing so the fascasti aim at the last 1/3rd- meaning they win with only 15% plus one, of total! Even a dead guy man can do that, and well there's all the trickery the rightwing news media uses, for ex. during Carter era Dem Convention, the US media live broadcasts focused on a small group of black delegates -they were almost the only ones in the hall! When CNN panned the crowd sometime later, noting the misleading effect of most of this type coverage had, the blatant racism was obvious- though it was white voters who were victimised! Even then, Carter came close in 1980 (after all, only 6 years earlier nixon had been impeached for tricking electorate!)
A nixon era political thug once said winning US elections was like taking candy from a sleeping baby (or something)

We should be better than some of the remarks made. It sounds like a cheering section for a hard far left, Ted Cruz RW TP candidate who was a sponsor to okay the KXL of which many was so against Landrieu was supporting. The candidate elected WILL NOT CATER to those who does not want KXL.

Elections are zero sum. If you don't support our candidate then the effect is that you are supporting a worse candidate.

I know that saying this is going to upset some folks, but its simply the truth.

I am an ardent environmentalist (married to someone who works for an environmental non-profit). But when I was asked to give to Landrieu's run-off campaign, and even though I was fairly certain she had no chance to win, I opened my wallet. Because trying to get her reelected was a better choice than, by my inaction, helping to get a worse candidate elected.

we frogs should just STFU and enjoy the nice warm jacuzzi in which we are being boiled.

Therefore we are never entitled or allowed to complain about anything.