you always have profound posts which I truly agree with.

Thank you for getting this out there, Nance!

The most progressive platform ever.. I'm sick of those trying to revise history.

And, I'm not reaching out to these stupid racist-ass voters.

A sense of responsibility.

their ethics down the shitter! My sympathy lies not with Trump voters that'll get shafted by their Lord and Master but with those who made the right vote but got "shafted" by this Elector system.

(including Pennsylvania, normally a safely blue state)) that those jobs weren't coming back. Th majority of those voters stopped listening when she outlined plans to revitalize those areas with alternative energy and other options. They preferred the wishful thinking of believing Trump's lies of bringing those jobs back. Realistically those voters knew better. Go figure.

...without undermining our support for underprivileged groups or groups in need.

I think we can do better starting with having our candidate campaign more in close states that we lost this time around.

I agree completely, aikoaiko. I live just up the street from some Trump voters who happen to be very good people and good neighbors. I think a more charismatic candidate, a better campaign, and a step away from some of the consistently losing issues that protect no one (e.g.- new gun control restrictions on things that look scary) could have swayed them. But there are even more 'low hanging fruit' being left on the vine.

Trump received just under 20% of the adult public's votes. Clinton received just under 20% of the adult public's votes. Yet around 30% of the adult public did not bother to vote!!! Why are we not reaching them? Again, I think a more charismatic candidate, a better campaign, and a step away from those consistently losing issues that protect no one WOULD have swayed many of them.

We also could be more ardent and proactive about restoring voting rights to a good portion of the remaining ~30% of the adult public presently unable to vote due to felony convictions or other criminal justice and poverty-related issues. Once a debt to society has been paid, why should citizens not vote?

On this last issue of course, Democrats have been clear leaders, especially compared to Republicans who seem to only want to select their voters. But more can always be done...

-app

Even now they could be trying to get clarity for people who didn't know that ACA = Obamacare and might have fierce regrets if they voted Trump.

Meanwhile McConnell and Co. are out with a huge ad buy to sell their shit insurance plan.

WHERE are the Democrats right now - we still have to fight for what Obama implemented!

... are we safe in assuming that the average voter is adult enough to do their own investigation of the facts?

Exactly when can we stop trying to "educate" the proudly stupid?

When will we reach that moment when the facts speak for themselves, and don't require being spelled-out in one-syllable words for the intellectually impaired?

The Democrats ARE fighting for what Obama implemented - but we're fighting against people who have their fingers firmly planted in their ears.

In most cases, you can't.

I have a friend who had to cut her family completely OFF from her. They're in Ohio. Another friend who had to cut her family off in West Virginia. I feel for her auntie who isn't racist at all but disabled and goes along to get along and she has to live with her stupid son and racist daughter-in-law who calls hispanics "pepper guts" and African-Americans dumb-ass Ni@@ers. Funny though is that there are NO blacks or hispanics living in their neck of the woods in WV.

You have to admit that that sounds somewhat ridiculous. Just look to our recent history in California on gay marriage. People do change their minds within their life-time, and even at times, within a couple of years.

And throughout history, you can see over and over that culture, especially when there is top-down influence as our media and money provides here, creates its bubbles of reality. Yes, the people in it will defend that bubble, but it is permeable. Get the right thing through and some of them on the inside may stop trying to sustain it. Eventually it will burst.

You refine your message and strategy until you win more votes. What's the alternative??

in explaining all the benefits of the ACA/Obamacare - especially early on in the process when all the Koch funded rage was brewing.

It took too long for them to showcase people that lost their health insurance because of pre-existing conditions - the 6 month old that was denied insurance because he or she was too heavy at 6 f-ing months old!; the cancer patients who are already over their lifetime coverage limit in their teens or 20s; the people that had a great business idea, but couldn't leave their corporate job because of health insurance; etc, etc That did not come out until a few years into the process after Democrats had tanked in 2010 in historic fashion

Obamacare in his state and that they love Obamacare.

The Dems needed to be very clear much sooner

Even Obama himself says that the signature legislation was not promoted well enough.

Take one example - the regulation specifying that 80 percent of premium payments must be used for medical care and not overhead. This was a great cost containment measure. Who knew about it, beyond the most dedicated news junkies? By 2010, many Dems were already running away from the ACA and there was no national effort that I could see to get momentum and define the issue to the benefit of Democrats

Beyond Hope and Change that was simple enough to be meme-friendly and suggestive enough to motivate a lot of voters, the messaging in the national campaigns has been consistently substandard. Why not go to a few campuses and have a logo contest and use the winning logo in your campaign? The Sanders campaign had way more appealing messaging - even Feel the Bern - which is an additional reason why they made a big noise in the nominating season despite a late start. I hope the new DNC takes the challenge of effective messaging seriously.

some decent candidates and start discussing solutions to issues that have to be resolved. Don't expect, but I like to start each day off with a bit of optimism.

Great post, as usual

They said hell no. Not worth our time. They would turn around tomorrow and vote for tRump again knowing full well that he just screwed them out of their safety nets.

... get that message understood by enough of the voters, especially (most obviously) in key "battleground" states. Maybe more visits, more ads were needed? But sooooo many of them didn't want to hear (and still don't), and tooooo many of them simply didn't like the messenger (for whatever reasons), and sooooo much of the media was otherwise occu... ooh, shiny!!

===================

Hillary had it right, they are deplorables. You cannot talk, debate or reason with them. Our education system has done a piss poor job of teaching civics, logic and critical thinking skills. You cannot win Them over. There must be an epiphany, like having no health care when a family member gets sick and getting a pile of bills that will wipe out your savings and home equity. Then they might change their minds.

Super great essay nance.

I'd have far more uglier words to call them, but as they said on Animal House, my words would be "so profound and disgusting that the decorum prohibits me from listing them here".

both of our democracy and, on a more basic level, of ourselves. I fight for things that don't just help some poor laid off coal miners family in Kentucky, I need those things as well. Even where I have definite privileges, as is the case regarding the race I was born into, my world is so much richer, and ultimately safer for me as well, when multiculturalism is embraced, and when all who surround me are given every opportunity to fulfill their full potential as fellow citizens, regardless of race, gender, orientation, class, religion or lack of same, national origin etc.

These things are all of fundamental importance. These things must all be secured, they can not be stripped away from us as a nation without it negatively effecting me as an individual. Many of the crucial battles in this regard are waged in the political arena, where if the wrong people are allowed to gain and retain power virtually all can be lost. There are many factors that help determine the outcome of elections, but the outcome of elections determine so much of what is essential to "us", and yes to me.

We have to win more elections. We have to do what needs to be done to do so. Because the result of those elections are that important. I do take some solace in going down fighting for principles that I believe in, but not very much. The consequences of defeat are too severe.

On a practical level, not only do we need to retake both Houses of Congress as well as the Presidency, in this era of ho holds barred partisan conflict we also need to regain a veto proof majority inside the U.S. Senate. Given the Constitution we have been left with, that gives equal representation in the Senate to a state like Idaho as it gives to a state like California, that is not a goal that can easily be reached, or reached by only rallying those who at this moment see the world much as I do alone. Not only do we need to regain one Senate seat in Wisconsin and defend the other, we ultimately have to win in more states like Arizona and Nebraska. And we can't afford to lose seats in states like Indiana and Missouri.

No I do not advocate abandoning our fundamental values and principles in order to win hollow electoral victories. But I don't have a whit of hesitation about searching for ways to break through with our message and agenda with those who have recently voted against it, be it from stupidity or brainwashing or anything else one might call it. Once Unions not only were not fully integrated (and some even now fall short there) once Unions were easily and widely manipulated into pitting one race or nationality against another. And management depended on that to run roughshod over them. Solidarity Forever, and all that is meant beneath that simple slogan, became an organizing imperative to communicate, to teach, to model, to achieve. It didn't involve an unholy compromise to embrace that massage in face to face organizing drives with people who, one might say, did not naturally take to it at first, second or third blush. But ultimately victory depended on progress made in that regard.

So I am not about blaming past Democratic leaders, or current voters who voted against their own self interest, I don't see either as particularly helpful right now. But I unabashedly support efforts being made by leaders like Bernie Sanders to carry true anti-racist and egalitarian Democratic ideals into territory that Democrats have had difficulty winning in recent years, in an attempt to open enough eyes and ears to give us the margin needed for enough victories in enough places for Democrats to once again guide the future of our nation, in seats of power, to a more just and humane society.

I agree 100%. Great policies and principles are great. Going forward, the Democrats also need to get more votes. Let's all work on that goal together, or else our policies will never get implemented.

I do think Hillary talked about a lot of things that would help the working class. And the media defintely helped Trump with their coverage. There were things that could have been better though. Go to Wisconsin for one. Speak to votes in rural PA and not just in places like Philly. She had a more progressive Dem platform, but I didn't feel the enthusiasm for it. Perhaps she was just not the best messenger. And I feel she made a gaffe about coal miners. She should have maybe talked more about what a con-man Trump is on economics. Still though, it is correct that the media did hinder us and that she did talk about things that should appeal to the working class - child care was a big theme.

What I've heard the criticism is that the Democratic politicians failed to look after the MIDDLE class, particularly their jobs.

The middle class (mainly white, but I assume all races) working in industrial places, where their areas were devastated by companies leaving for Mexico - they weren't concerned about LGBT, women's rights, minimum wage, and the other things in your list. They were specifically concerned about the jobs issues.

They were distressed about the ongoing effects of NAFTA and other trade deals being made. Global trade deals with China and other countries. Export/import unfairness.

Then, too, many of the middle class were slammed hard by Obamacare. If the Democrats had tried to make it better, maybe that would have worked. But all the politicians would say is...well, those people over there have insurance for the first time in a long time. It seemed as if that the Democrats had intentionally sacrificed the middle class group for the poorer constituents, or just didn't care about them. They didn't even acknowledge the problems with the ACA, that I saw, much less try to fix them.

That's what I've read and seen on tv. That they then voted for jobs and health care. Which unfortunately for all of us, got us where we are today.

... because they were concerned about their jobs?

How is it they didn't notice that Trump has outsourced the manufacture of all of his brand-name merchandise, and every stick of furniture, every bedsheet, every towel, every tablecloth in his hotels to low-wage countries?

I have no sympathy for the willfully ignorant.

Willfully stupid.

The Trumpers were trumped. Not to mention that he's just unfit for office.

But the JOBS thing and the TRADE DEALS is what caused so many middle class to vote for Trump. That's why Michael Moore predicted a Trump win, because the Democratic Party politicians weren't speaking to this group of Americans. Not that he thought Trump was the answer, but Moore saw that that group was angry and not going to vote for Clinton, and Trump was a "change vote."

I also think that the Obamacare anger was high on the list, too, but not sure how much it caused Trump votes, since some of them were Trump voters from the start, compared to the jobs & trade deal things. Obamacare was imploding, and almost no Democratic politicians acknowledged that or suggested tweaking it to help solve the problems that were causing big problems.

I think that unless we hear the politicians start being concerned about this group of middle class, they are looking at more difficulty winning elections nationally or in certain areas.

You list the ACA as one of the things that the Dems did right. But it is just the opposite, as far as this group of middle class people goes. It was a nightmare for many, and they blamed the Dems, of course. I think if the Dem politicians had acknowledged the problems and tried to work on them, even if not fixed, the angry middle class might have been more tolerant.

As for the jobs, we all know that the world has changed. Coal mining is not coming back to the grand old days, and the industries are losing jobs due to automation and progress. I remember that there used to be lots of typists, for example. Rooms full of 'em. They typed all day, typing using carbon paper making triplicates. All those jobs are gone. The small pc came along, and one or two people could do what a room full of people used to do. Progress can't be stopped.

I was raised in an industrial union city. I saw how narrow minded it was of those workers to put all their eggs in the basket of those few industries. If a layoff happened, as it did, they weren't very skilled at doing much of anything else, and there were no other businesses in town who would pay those high wages. It's risky.

In the case of Obama, his support of the most recent proposed deal was mystifying and politically tone deaf. Even Hillary Clinton figured out that this new deal was not worth supporting in public.

Hopefully as all of us are faced with the policies of a madman and his ilk your comments will no longer fall on as many deaf ears!

We filled every media source with our message over and over again. We had the most qualified candidate ever to run for President.

It's time to take the war to them, instead of taking it to ourselves.

The constant screaming of how horrible the Democrats policies is drowning out the Dems true message.
These people are constantly being tricked to vote against their own interests but they can't see it.

My aunt is a custodian at an elementary school. She voted for Hillary. WORKING CLASS
My best friend's mother works at a Burger King two blocks from her section 8 house. She voted for Hillary. WORKING CLASS
I got a wonderful gift from a woman in my church who works at a Head Start. She voted for Hillary. WORKING CLASS
I have a classmate who works part time at a Walmart in my home town. She voted for Hillary. WORKING CLASS.
There are others...bus drivers, paraprofessionals, unemployed, even who voted for Hillary. WORKING CLASS.

Black women voted at a higher level since 2008 than any other demographic in the country; however, their race and gender foster and environment for exclusion and political discrimination. Even the wonderful post like the thread starter's erases them. Yea, I'm sure people will say, "Well, you understood what she meant." Well, no I don't.

Not only is this a time when we should look at what we did correctly, but this also may be a time where we can look at our own issues and see what we are doing wrong.

Well said.

the media didn't give her much coverage, while constantly covering trump.

and did not mention all the good things she'd done. I went to read about her and was impressed, but the media was all emails, Benghazi and Bill.

Broadcast media were all Dolt45 obsessed, meaning if Clinton was ever mentioned, you can bet "email" or "Benghazi" was also part of the story. Dolt45 got all the free air time he could handle. Clinton had to pay through the nose for commercials that signaled it was time to grab another beer.

The message wasn't the problem, but the medium might have been. Our party has long been grassroots up and perhaps the insiders need to start brainstorming how that can happen again. Yes, it's messy and time consuming, but with all the anger out there and people determined to resist, now is the time to start organizing.

In spades!

I have most on my Ignore List already ... and will continue to add.

We were running against Donald Trump. Who offered a simple a consistent message to voters. We did not.

We clearly are not prepared to lie our way back into power. But we need to recognize that Republicans use short, simple messages because they work. It's true that an issue like health care is complex; that doesn't mean voters are willing to sit through a complex explanation.

Trump CONSISTENT? He changed his position whenever it was convenient. The Deplorables did not care.

The ONLY thing they cared about was his consistent hate for anyone with brown skin.

The majority of voters said yes, but the election was thrown.

overcome the brainwashing Trump voters have undergone. Fox News et al are a clear and present danger to the nation.

and political power. It's not a slam against the party's policies, but a wish that they would be marketed and sold more effectively.

It's no good having a great platform if no one votes for it.

The GOP is better at bullshit, propaganda, and lying. The Democrats need to get better at selling the truth.

That's a grown up assessment of the party. Grown ups can handle criticism.

is something a bona fide Democrat might just say.

I am so tired of this - just another way to blame Democrats for everything Rs do.

Now we're back to the "why aren't the Dems doing anything!!11" themes around here. Some things never change.

The ability to present/project the message may have been an issue, not sure, though it's also possible the haters would not hear the message anyway due to being blinded by hatred. This is something worth discussing IMO as there are different levels of stupid and we can't assume that all of these voters will never vote for Democrats again.

a "SUPER REC" option. This post definitely qualifies. Thanks Nance!

... I do have one quibble: The Democrats did not stand up for health care for all. They buckled before even negotiating. They didn't stand up for single-payer, taking that off the table from the start, and then they scrapped the Public Option. I have a hard time accepting that the Democrats stood up for health care for all, when they rolled out what is essentially the conservative position which didn't provide health care for all. I'm not debating the merits of the ACA. I've heard it helped a lot of people, which is a good thing. But that did not provide, nor did the Democrats stand for, health care for all.

Other than that, good post.

Obviously, something is not working. It's easy to point out where we stood on issues but that did not translate into electing Dems.

To repeat, what are your ideas for Dems to win elections?

Thank you!!

School board, congressman, ANYthing. Just run. We the people need you.

to white conservatives. We want to reach them with powerful messaging that is or could easily become, universal.

You and many others seem determined to make conservatives or republicans an entirely different breed of people who don't operate according to the same needs that the rest of us do. You seem determined to discount the effectiveness of long-promoted, insidious propaganda and for whom it exists.

Yes we had a fairly progressive platform, that in all dimensions would have been better than their Republican alternatives, but we have failed to seize the messaging that puts us squarely in the corner of working class Americans and the poor. Yes we are for civil rights most of the time, which is why we have working class people of color on our side, but it wasn't our economic message that was the appeal here*. It was the drastic contrast on civil rights.

*Yes, I know our economic message owns Republicans, it's just not very inspiring in itself, and it IS NOT paradigm shifting. It doesn't shake the foundations or inspire with possibility. It only seeks to play arbitrator between corporate greed and public needs, and that isn't enough.

We need to never subsume our message of civil rights and inclusivity in the American dream, but we need to marry it to a galvanizing class warfare resistance BECAUSE when we put the middle class and the poor and people of color and whites on the same side of an issue, their racism stops being a function of loss avoidance. They think we are coming for their stuff, even the poor fools who don't have any stuff, because we don't give them a better narrative. We should use that loss avoidance and point to the money--the buck does not stop at the GOP--as the ones coming to take their shit...as the ones with all the shit. We should use strong populist language that shows in no uncertain terms that we are going to take it back, and how we are going to make lives demonstrably, dramatically better...plans that say stick it to "political realities" and pay attention only to actual feasibility...pipe-dreams made real. That is kind of how political realities change.

The issue isn't that they are just shitty people, the issue is that they are just people; granted, ignorant people, who have long been indoctrinated. You don't simply pose an alternative to somebody who has been brain-washed and the go, "welp....the idiot said no." You figure out effective counter-messaging that short-circuits that brainwashing...that causes cognitive dissonance. Of course calling them names doesn't have that effect, and it shouldn't be a surprise that fighting racism in a vacuum without being mindful of all the reasons that these people are wrapping themselves in that racism, which is often a reaction to fear, is not coming at the issue from a place that is non-threatening and can be heard. We need to tie racism not around these poor shlep's necks, but around the necks of the big money that keeps it thriving, so that when we go to battle with racism, they don't think we're going to battle with them, in-fact, we're inviting them to join us in a fight against those who have been dividing and conquering since the dawn of politics.

A few percentage points off the top is a huge start. It's all we need to start swinging the nation correctly. First and foremost, that next generation of would-be conservatives can be reached. And if we do it right, they will do the work of reaching others in their circles. That is how it goes. We can't be content as a party to let this divide-and-conquer continue. We certainly should not be feeding the beast.

… a well-thought out reply.

I only have one problem with it: it has nothing to do with my OP.

I wrote this OP in response to the “we Dems don’t have the right message” crowd. My point is that we DO have the right message, and it’s a message that makes clear that we have not ignored the working-class, nor failed to recognize their issues.

The fact remains, however, that millions of people said NO to what we offered, which included affordable healthcare for all, more affordable college education, a raise in the minimum wage, inclusion rather than exclusion based on race, religion, ethnicity, etc.

I’ve been angered and frustrated by those who are persistent in their claims that Democrats had a faulty message that didn’t appeal to the masses.

Imagine the last election was literally a horserace. Someone in the stands throws rocks at the horse in the lead, causing him to stumble. Someone in the stands then lobs a canister of pepper-spray, blinding the horse. Someone in the stands then uses a rifle to shoot the horse in the head. Is it then appropriate to say, “This is the jockey’s fault,” or, “Let’s find out what the trainer did wrong to cause our horse to lose?”

We know that despite the MSM screaming Emails! 24/7 while giving Trump thousands of hours of positive coverage, despite the GOP suppressing the votes of demographics that vote Democrat, despite the media never covering the stories about Trump cheating people out of their pay for services rendered or using his “charitable” foundation to pay personal debts, etc., HRC was STILL poised to win. It wasn’t until Comey’s rifle-shot to the head that the numbers turned around and led to a loss.

And YET, despite all of the aforementioned, Hillary still won the popular vote – which means that the majority of voters said YES! to the Dem’s message.

Does that mean the Dems have never faltered and have run perfect campaigns? No, it doesn’t. But what it does mean, IMHO, is that throwing the baby out with the bathwater – which some people seem to be advocating – isn’t the cure for what ails us, any more it would be productive to blame the jockey for that dead horse on the track.

and I thought I was discussing that in my post.

It is very important--I think we both agree--that if our messaging is righteous, we do not abandon it to appeal to those who can't see it.
On the other hand, if our messaging could be better...could be more righteous...then it should be. Just as we should never erode it, we should never refuse to make it better for the sake of the same kind of pandering to political realities. Second, if there are ways that we could be getting through that bubble with that righteous message, and we aren't using them, then this has to be questioned.

And if the people in the stands are being encouraged to be shitty....the masses....by paid agitators, yes, we can continue to blame them, and we can continue to shoot a little higher at the agitators, but we have to fucking call out the people at the top making it happen. Otherwise, the agitators(read GOP leaders or media personalities) can go down or not, and if they do, they'll just be replaced. The citizens will shift their allegiances and become inured to some frequencies and then some other dog whistle will set them to violence. Why? Because the people at the top never lose. They never even get fought, except for by proxy. They can always buy a new team. We need to quit putting our bodies on the line in their proxy war. We need to stop pretending that the game isn't rigged, even as we get on that horse in a stadium owned and operated by the same people paying the agitators. We need to stop letting them sponsor us to take the fall.

And Comey and the Emails is a perfect example of it coming from on high. That isn't the people in the stands clamoring for the red meat of an esoteric email story. That is the media making content. Shit like Flynt doesn't get covered by the likes of "our guys"...like Chris Hayes...but we see emails for 2 weeks before the election. We need to stop acting like it was Comey or the Russians that stole this from us. That is so missing the forest for the trees.

... to try and improve our messaging?

"We need to stop acting like it was Comey or the Russians that stole this from us."

I think we need to stop ignoring the obvious. Comey fired a rifle shot directly into the head of our horse - who was in the lead before that shot was fired - eleven days before the election.

Our "message" went out the window the minute people were basically told by Comey that an "investigation had been reopened", and "new evidence" might prove that our candidate was indeed guilty of the wrongdoing the GOP had relentlessly accused her of all along.

Again it's a matter of "let's ignore that, and figure out why our horse didn't make it to the finish line despite that fatal bullet being lodged in its head".

the rifle.


As to refusing to improve our messaging, we talk about political realities all the time. What is or isn't possible in Washington is how we shut down ideas and proposals in their infancy.

... to argue the fact that the MSM bears much of the blame for Trump's election, you're not going to get that argument from me.

Comey fired the shot, the media covered it - pushed it, promoted it, babbled on and on about it.

But Comey fired the shot - and did so knowing the MSM would show the instant replay over and over.

influence it is because the media wanted him to have it. How it covers something is as important as whether it covers something, and in this case, it did an unsurprisingly shitty job.

My argument was that we were being myopic to focus on "if only not Comey" when if only not Comey, it would have almost certainly been something else, spun to the same effect, and it will happen again too. Why? I don't actually think anybody thought Clinton was going to lose. But she was starting to lead by a whole stride. That isn't simply bad for ratings. It's bad for big business when a Democrat swoops in with coat-tails. It's much better to erode the mandate and ensure that down ticket races don't swing too heavily or at all, towards the Democrats. The take-down was a given. The means of that take-down was just a matter of convenience.

So back to the big picture, if we are not just acknowledging when pressed, that the press sucks, and if our party leadership is not making a hard left turn away from the corporations that own that media, then we have a fundamental problem with the way we are trying to win future elections. we are certainly ignoring the reasons why "THEY SAID NO."

... they said NO are abundantly clear.

They've been told that "illegals" are stealing all the good-paying jobs. So they voted for the guy who said he'd get rid of illegals. They've been told that all Muslims are terrorists, so they voted for the guy who said he'd keep the Muslims out of the country. And on it goes.

How do we "make a hard left turn away from the corporations that own that media" when the average voter doesn't even know that they do?

How do you explain to the average voter that FOX-News is fake news, when their comeback is "but what Hannity or O'Reilly says must be true, or they wouldn't be allowed to say it on TV"?

We are fighting on two fronts here: the ignorant and the stupid. The ignorant can be educated; the stupid can't.
And the political strategy of the GOP has always been to appeal to BOTH groups.

THAT is what we're up against. It's not a matter of our "message" being faulty or unclear - it's a matter of their message appealing to the stupid and the ignorant - no actual facts required, no complicated math equations involved, no salesperson will call.

"they've been told." We can't lose sight of the ways in which these faulty realities are constructed, and who benefits and promotes them. We can't focus our fight on the wrong thing and expect things to actually improve.

The problem is we've made the mistake of trying to tell people FOX News is fake. At least FOX news isn't subtle. We need to tell people "YES, CNN and MSNBC are lousy too, just as you say." But the next logical step is to ask them why it makes sense to them that multi-billion dollar corporations would be trying to ram a liberal agenda down their throats. The point is we are acknowledging a reality that they've already arrived at...they've just arrived there for the entirely wrong reasons. We shouldn't be defending the News organizations that make it their mission to destroy democrats, we should be judo-ing anti-media sentiment towards informing people about WHY they shouldn't trust the media wholesale.

The problem is that we allow the media to help to propagate the mythology that it is liberal. I've heard it far far far too many times from the likes of CNN and even on NPR. This has profound consequences. This is why when conservatively tilted bullshit is said on TV it swallowed whole, while any facts or philosophies that are liberal in their association are immediately discounted as propaganda or fake. That's because in a librul media, if it sounds conservative it must just be so damn incontrovertible, that even those commies have to cover it.

The problem, it has to be remembered, isn't just that the GOP and the rich who fund them(and us to a lesser extent) are appealing to the ignorant and stupid. That's only the half of it. The other half of the problem is that they are actually nurturing ignorant and stupid in the nation. It isn't that these people don't have more capacity, it is that that capacity is being intentionally suppressed and squandered.

If we are pretending that the media is our friend as it stands, or that it is the friend to truth and facts, we are not helping our message to penetrate these bubbles. We're relying on the media to do a job that we know it isn't going to do, and that is going to turn out the way it keeps turning out for us.

Can we take a hard left turn away from corporations and survive? Well, first, we can't make that left turn because the political will isn't there to demand it, so that's where we must start. But assuming we managed to do so as a party--and I believe we have to--could we survive? Would some other "alternative" to the GOP not just spring up in our place and would we not be financially starved into invisibility? It's a compelling question, but its not actually a gamble to try since what we are doing isn't working. Our politicians have to almost transcend humanity to survive the political battleground we engage on...ideas be damned. We need to choose the terrain to fight, where ideas matter, and we need to quit fighting on the corporation's home turf(corporate media) unless we are going to remind people every time we do so that they are themselves an interested party.

Access is a draw for the public, and in this day and age, it is possible to organically circumvent the traditional channels of truth filtering and truth manufacturing, if we wanted to try. It is certainly declaring war and money doesn't fight fair, but that's better than erosion through appeasement.

Two words come to mind:

Bernie Sanders

Even though Hillary had a great message, too many thought of her as a business as usual member of the Dem party machine.

Bernie was like a fireworks display going off in the night. But that was then...

... didn't resonate with the majority of Dems.

Fireworks are nice, big rallies are nice - but only votes count, and Bernie didn't have them.

that was certainly due to his political history and choices. If he'd had the machine he'd be a different kind of politician who wouldn't have had the groundswell support that he had instead, so I'm not saying he tied his hands, but to say he was rejected or that his message didn't resonate is not being entirely honest about how much reach his message had, especially later on in the campaign. That it started to grow in spite of his lack of big money support or establishment backing, and in-spite of his early deficit that was being pronounced as insurmountable by the media already, is a testament to something. That his campaign was financed by an average 27 dollar donation and that it generated as much spending capital as it did, is a testament to something.

To myself be fair,

That Clinton had so much establishment support says something as well. She has been quite a force in politics. She has played and shaped the game, and she has survived in a world that is unfair to women and demonizing of Democrats, and in-spite of being made public enemy number one for the last 15 or 20 years, has risen to the top of one of the two primary parties...and that is a hell of a lot more challenging in the Democratic Party than it is in the Republican Party. She had coalitions. She had inroads, all presumably in the service of doing good. Whether or not I think that approach was ultimately good for us cannot take away from just how impressive the achievement is, or how beloved Clinton is by her colleagues and by a huge base of the Democratic party, and yes, she absolutely, not surprisingly in the least, won the primary.

That means a lot. When money is in the picture though, it doesn't tell the whole story to take that result out of context.

Bernie's primary performance was indeed impressive - very much so. However, the rallies and the $27 donations never translated into actual votes, at least not enough votes to land him the nomination. Them's the facts.

I'll leave at that. I am not about to be barred from my own thread for "refighting the primaries" - an alert which, for some inexplicable reason, always seems to be successful in getting a Hillary supporter a "hide".

So I'm not going there.

experience. I've been banned from a thread 4 times. I have NEVER alerted someone.

... at least not since the days when we had Mods, and I alerted on obvious RW trolls.

I wasn't suggesting that YOU would alert. But there are those here who comb through threads in hopes of finding something to alert on - especially anything that even remotely touches on Bernie.

reached a lot of voters.

I don't really see how Bernie was beaten by a party machine.

He lost because HRC clobbered him with minority voters. And he couldn't offset that with a higher percentage of white voters because many were hesitant to vote for someone who identified as a Democratic Socialist.

Elizabeth Warren probably would have won the nomination had she been the one to run.

narrative machine run by Brock pays off too. Well positioned people were posting outright lies about how Sanders wasn't in civil rights pictures, simply to preemptively undercut any traction he might get with his civil rights record. Hell I don't personally have time to run down every politician I see on the TV. I never looked into Carson or Cruz. I was pretty certain they weren't my speed. I took for granted, the tidbits I heard in the ether. If I were a black voter who had never heard of an old white guy by the name of Sanders and these were the ways I was being introduced to him, I might not give him a second glance either.

And then there's just the fact that, as you say, a Democratic Socialist. You don't need friends in the media for that to be undermined in the context of either a primary or GE.

But yes, to the rest of it, I want to be clear that I have no illusions that things would have gone differently in the primary under different conditions. I do think Clinton had it locked up...I thought Sanders made a hell of a second place run that was entirely unexpected to me, but I never thought he was going to win.

Clinton was chosen. With that I have no beef. Sanders being " rejected" is a far less foregone conclusion to draw. Yes, he had the money, but its not like he had a war-chest from day one or knew how much he could count on. It was a steady stream that built over time, and early states were voting before he even had that name recognition. The point is the campaigns were not on equal footing. That is to take away nothing from Clinton, who has spent her career establishing that advantage. She has worked specifically towards developing those coalitions and in-roads. She earned all of that. But for all of those reasons, Sanders was a far over-performing underdog.

He had the votes in Colorado, but same old, same old - the electoral college NOT the people, decided. But post mortems of this subject are mostly pointless. Hillary and the Dem's had/have a great message. Now how can we find a way to better convey it - especially with the midterms coming?

Thank you

One can over focus on the last election. The real pattern here is a long term decline in the democratic party over a couple of decades. This is especially true at the state level. There are a multitude of reasons that we've gotten where we are, but messaging is surely among the many reasons. And really, the people that have been leading the party for the last couple of decades have to take some of the burden of responsibilities.

And it also must be acknowledged that it is mostly regional in nature. The GOP would just be minor party if it wasn't for the constitutional structure of the legislatures and congress, not to mention the EC.

When I think of how hard Democratic activists actually work--to see them tossed under that bus again and again was disheartening to say the least.

What are your ideas for Dems to win more elections?

Is it that you have absolutely no clue and instead just complain?

and ill-informed, brainwashed and racist people made us lose all the governorships, state legislatures, US Senate and House, and the presidency.

So there's no need to revise the messaging? All is good?

I'm surprised that so many people believe that and even more surprised that believing all this makes people feel better, even in the face of getting our clocks cleaned across most of the country, other than New England, the West coast, and a few outlying states in the middle.

Funny, I can remember when Dems were competitive in IA, WI, IN, NC, etc. As recently as 2008. Are people that much dumber and more racist now, but they weren't then? Or are we that helpless against Fox News and the rest and therefore no need to change for the benefit of stupid people?

OK.

"We Democrats have a message that not only recognized the concerns of the many, but addressed those concerns by continuing our unwavering support of the programs and initiatives that directly assist them."

You hit another one outta the ballpark, Nance.