the dem party is in big trouble.

But "the Party" does not see that as a problem, as long as the Top Dogs get their $$.

and, how do you even knock that theory down? where i live the state party pulled support from a D mayoral candidate because the R that is in office, they said, "is a Republican we can work with." just so happens she's now privatizing EVERY goddamned constitutional office she can get her grubby little hands on.

we could have won that seat. but no. they pulled the candidate out of the race. the party did --> let me repeat --> BECAUSE THERE'S A REPUBLICAN IN OFFICE THEY CAN WORK WITH (privatizing government).

in a county with 2 to 1 Dems to Repubs, we have a R Mayor and all-R council except for ONE totally corrupt/inept D.

and btw...i don't live in nashville anymore they have an AWESOME mayor...total mayor envy.

We have a good senator seat available in MO. Blunt's seat is up.
Lots of R seats available this year. We sure don't need DWS in charge.

Hope the DNC will decide to help here, but have seen NOTHING yet.
Lot's of Blunt, though.

This state has been gerrymandered into a red state. Dem Governor and most times at least one Dem senator. The state is mostly blue but vote can't reflect it.

Hope Blunt loses, Claire is going to be hard to support.

Sad, but true. It was like a gut punch seeing him so cozy with Goldman's lobbyist.

too bad. I was referring to his 50 state strategy that actually worked.
When Obama took office we had a real chance to change things, because of Dean, IMHO.

That was blown pretty early, thanks in no small part to Rahm and DWS.

he needs corporate money more than integrity.

what's with this thrown under the bus meme???

dean makes his own bed to sleep in: this night he was "sleeping with" a goldman-sachs lobbyist.

thrown under the bus? hardly... we're just tearing the comforter off his damned bed!

... Even if he's a bit young and not as experienced as I'd hoped someone like Pete DeFazio would be as a challenger.

If Kevin Stine could win and be a part of the symbolism for a new revolution of people in congress not beholden to the corporate dollar, then I'm all for it.

sell out and sitting with the Goldman Clinton campaign fundraising lobbyist at that Dem. Debate. I want my 25 bucks back from the local Dem. Party for the event I attended in 2007 where he spoke.

in Chicago. Union busting, privatizing, selling off city revenues. Right out of the Republican play book. But you know, shut up and get in line peon.

More like Sanders is trying to save the Democratic Party, than Hillary trying to destroy it. He's the only person actually reaching out to the base since LBJ, or maybe Carter. At least as far as people who've won.

Maybe he has since become more liberal, but he wasn't back when he was president.

All this deregulation nonsense was started by Jimmy Carter.

He wasn't just fiscally conservative. He was socially conservative. VERY!

He may be more liberal now, but he certainly wasn't back then. The Bernie fanatics would have thrown him under the bus back then, too.

And yes...I'm old!

b/c there really none, unless you go back to FDR.

Why am I not surprised at your statement?

Debbie Wasserman Schultz's fault. She is head of the DLC, and has shown no leadership qualities. She had decided to run middle of the road candidates time after time who lose all the time, when left leaning proposals on the same ballot win. She has not changed her mind to help run more left leaning candidates.
The RepubliCONs on the other hand, have been running more right wing candidates and have been winning. It seems to me that people would rather vote for the extremes than someone who is wishy-washy middle of the road.

then someone who dishonestly honest.

I apologize.
And I never mentioned the turd way DINOs anyway.

He made a mistake. He should correct it while he can.

Do you have any theories?

Dems leadership tends be middle of the road, conciliatory and more politically correct than the loudmouthed, aggressive bullies on the other side of the aisle..

politics is a fight and the nerd seldom wins these days

While Dems dither and dance as to what folks might think, they get their asses kicked by tough-talking phonies from the Right. And HOW SATISFYING to know that we slipped below the waves while holding our heads high!

it's as simple as that.

--and cut benefits by imposing chained CPI. That was when Social Security Works mobilized a coalition to fight back, which was successful.

Unfortunately, every hour I spent at an SSW meeting was an hour I didn't have to phonebank and doorknock for Dem candidates.

Yes, Republicans were using unreasonable campaign tactics against him, but he hasn't really had the good judgement at times to know where to draw the line to not give in to pressure to screw the 99% of us like he did on that bill.

that's one of Sanders' biggest strengths is that he isn't directly tied to the party.

No one here is blaming Obama.

let's examine what Obama did to elect dems. any ideas?

fired Howard Dead. hired Debbie Wasserman Schultz. care to add to the list?

Not related to my point though.

works for the Oligarchy.

no favors with the divisive racial dog whistles. it was precisely the reason i switched my support from her to him.

We can criticize Pres. Obama.

Frankly, he hasn't done a very good job of leading the party.
DWS is the DNC chair because of him ... she has done a lousy job and I blame Obama for not caring enough about the party to ask her to resign.

So, yes, not all, but a lot of the decline in the fortunes of the Democratic Party since 2008 are Obama's fault; the buck stops at his desk.

And the Party is in big trouble -- no majorities in the U.S. House, U.S. Senate, governorships or state legislatures -- despite the fact that Democrats lead in voter registration numbers all over the place.

So, maybe the rightward shift of the Democratic Party really has had a deleterious effect?
Maybe the Party doesn't stand for working folks anymore like it used to?
So, let's double down on that with the corporate bankster Hillary Clinton?

Left leaners do not vote in midterm elections. Repubs never fail to vote. Wake up.

that's a loser's lament.

Nashville, get a grip.

much room for error going forward.

whose fault? well, wouldn't have hurt to keep the 50-state strategy in place, but Obama/Emanuel fired Howard Dean first thing after HD helped elect him. so, go figure.

maybe there's some other folks who need to find something to grip.

Obama took office in Jan. 2009. After the census the following year, repuke legislatures ruthlessly gerrymandered their states to the point where Dems don't stand a chance.

we must get control back for 2020.

strategy question: is the best way to do that to have another Third Way Dem putting up Republican-lite candidates thru the DCCC and DSCC, during a time of capitulation? think back to the complete ass-shaving we took during Bill Clinton's first term.

my point? we put another Clinton in the White House and we might never get the House or Senate back.

That's not his fault.

people of all races/ethnicities would like to see progressive policies move forward. i don't trust HRC to do that b/c she's consistently been to the right of Obama, and is overtly running as someone who will *hold the line* on progressive policy.

as relates to racial issues, I will take the social justice warrior who put his body on the line, and suffered arrest and dropped out of college to fight injustice, over a Goldwater Girl. I was there in the 90s and remember all this in the video below. do you?

of Democratic Party seats. My response to this is that he has no control over racism which he has faced incessantly for 8 years. It's like how pundits were criticizing him because he couldn't capture the white working class voters. DUH! Of course he couldn't. They're a bunch of fucking racists who even admitted to pollsters that they'd vote for Hillary before supporting a black man.

It's been co-opted by people who used to be moderate to conservative
Republicans. Even Hillary Clinton used to be a Republican.

Sanders represents what the Democratic party used to be. He's getting
no help from the current DNC or from the party's apparatus.

That's NOT how it should be. We need a leader to take us forward by
bringing the Democratic party back to its roots: pro people, pro
environment, and anti corporation and anti big banks. We also need
to bring back strong regulatory policies and break up monopolies and
corporate conglomerates.

I've been a Democrat for over 30 years (since I turned 18) and I'm trying to remember this uptopian Democratic party you seemt o be recalling.

Let me point out what President Obama has accomplished and what he has tried to accomplish:

The first major change to health care in this country since Medicare.

Presiding over the recovery of an economy that was in the worst shape since the great depression

Stopping two major wars (we aren't quite out of that quagmire, but has gone a long way to fixing the mess that Dubya left us)

Nuclear Treaty with Iran

Paris climate accord (and, course, attempts to regulate grreen-house gasses... thwarted at every step by the GOP)

The idea that the Democratic party is some Republican-lite hell is nonsense.

The problem in this country has occurred almost entirely on the OTHER side of the aisle. There used to be moderate Republicans that we could work with on at least some issues. No longer, apparently.

The democrats stand for things that would have been unthinkable when I was a young critter. Thy are avoiding things they would felt a sense of urgency about back in the day.

They have jettisoned clearcut liberalism in favor of a nebulous message and set of principles of Corporate Conservatism that would have shamed most moderate Democrats back then.

I grew up in Maryland and at least from my point of view, the Democratic party has ALWAYS been a mix of left, center-left, and even center-right people. Heck, where I grew up, many Democrats were quite conservative.

In fact, in my experience, the Democratic party has been moving LEFT over the years.

See this:

http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/section-1-growing-ideological-consistency/

But the overall tone and direction on issues of wealth and power and providing a social safety net was much further to the left of today. I say that with full awareness of the good, the bad and the ugly of back then....and recognition that much proghress has been hard fought.

But can you imaging what the response would be today to proposals like Medicare or SS or Public Schools?

"Unnnhhhhhhhh. We can't do that. it's too hard. The GOP will never let us do it, and the people don't want it."

that sounds like you came of age (of interest in politics) during the Golden Age of Reagan, so you've known nothing better than the triangulators. That could explain a lot.

LBJ, for example, gave us the Great Society. But he also got us deeper into Viet Nam.

JFK, beloved in Liberal memory, did the Bay of Pigs.

But yeah, Reagan did pull the conversation to the right. We are still living with that (see: Republican-controlled Congress). But the idea that the Democratic party is somehow far less liberal than it was is false, IMO.

I'm a student of history myself, is why I ask.

I'm an engineer by training and profession, but I read lots of history.

Assuming from your math, the Democratic party WE WERE in, is the one that preceded you.
The one you apparently don't know anything about, judging from your response to ananda.
There WAS a Democratic party that was grounded in FDR democracy.
It wasn't perfect, for anyone not white, male, but it was a start. And FDR sought to take it further, laying out an economic Bill of Rights, and Bernie Sanders seeks to TAKE BACK all the ground that the Republican extremists have stripped away since Reagan took office and decimated this country. And many of Bernie Sanders' ideas are humane and logical extensions of FDR's legacy.

Just because you don't have any experience with pre-Reagan America, doesn't mean it didn't exist.



Now get off my lawn!!! /snark, for the snark-impaired

That even FDR was ideological mix. While he advanced the New Deal, he also was perfectly willing to inter AMERICAN CITIZENS of Japanese descent. I can;t imagine a Democrat today supporting such a heinous position.

You can harken to the good without recalling the bad.

but let's not construct a false narrative of past that never actually existed.

has never been ideologically pure in a liberal sense. It has had to compromise--the greatest example being with Southern Democrats--on all ends.

Now, the diversity of the party has been both good and bad.

The good aspect is that all voices are allowed in.
The bad aspect is that all voices are allowed in.

No one even suggested that such reprehensible policies be enacted today, except for some extremists.

My point is that that the narrartive that the party has somehow moved consistently right is a false one.

I won't deny that there have been some "failures" in my view (support of welfare reform, NAFTA, etc.), but I think the constructed narrative otherwise is demonstrably FALSE. And for all his failures, Bill Clinton DID reverse some of the damage done by Reagan-Bush before Dubya managed to ruin that too.

...because my experience pre-dates Clinton ( and many presidents before him. ) The Democratic party may mouth some of the FDR principles, but they allowed the Republicans to continue to pull America to the right, without aggressively countering it.

The Clintons followed and helped found the New Democratic party/Third Way, which has been heavily documented in DU. I don't have time to do all the work to hunt it down, and relink to the documentation. ( Hafta run, here. ) But this narrative popping up lately in DU that things have never been much better than now, or people are remembering the past in a golden haze is an arrogant and a false narrative. Things WERE much better ( for middle-class white folks, anyway ) because of many factors, not the least of which were strong regulations, less greed, a much stronger sense that we were all in the American experiment together, etc.

The Clintons weren't all evil, and some of their advisors and Cabinet members worked hard to follow democratic principles, but by following Republican Lite policies, the CLintons did more damage than some people are willing to admit.


Edited to change a period to a comma. OCD!!!!

The DP has lurched wildly to the right on all the big economic and geopolitical/military issues, as well as fully supporting the growing prison-industrial complex and various other civil rights outrages. Failing grade on all that, along with a solid C-minus on racial and women's issues, and other odds and ends. DP politicians are almost entirely right-wingers, in the thrall of the neocons and the corporations.

I remember the shift, too. At some point the Democrats became resigned to the fact that the Repubs could consistently out-fundraise and out spend them every election cycle, before labor had much money, and before there were very many left-leaning millionaires ( billionaires were very rare then. ) It became a case of, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" and the slide has been downhill ever since.

And just plain opportunism ( some call it greed ) took it's toll too; so rules were relaxed to allow the revolving door from Congress/government to the corporate/lobbying world.

Very unfortunate.

kind of didn't include PoC, either.

And that's necessarily to denigrate FDR. He was a man of his time. But let's not forget his weaknesses when constructing this narrative of a fallen party.

He is calling the working class to remember the good old 40s and 50s, when unions and wages were strong ... when government programs meant a family's needs got met.

However, that is not/was not Black folks' experience with the 40s or 50s; but, neither was it the experience of any other "other", including the poor of every stripe.

From FDR and his successor Harry Truman, to Bill Clinton, we had exactly three Democratic presidents, none of which got a second term. I suppose that you might make a case for Johnson having a second term, but that's really not valid. Bill Clinton was the first Dem to win a second election since FDR. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have been much more successful Democrats than any other during the time you're talking about, yet you bash them every chance you get. Without them, what would our Supreme Court look like today and how much worse would this country be?

Of course, LBJ was great as far as domestic issues go, but he escalated Vietnam into the stratosphere and that was why he was essentially denied a second term by his own party.

We're supposed to be a big tent party, encompassing a variety of people with differing opinions. We should not become a party that goes the way of having only a microcosm of the electorate. It's the path to George McGovern all over again.

BTW, I go back way farther than Reagan.

We have more than enough wealth in this country to make life better for all, and to improve the future for those that follow us.
We CAN have nice things!!!

Agreed that Dems need to work harder, but until we make the election process transparent and verifiable, I'm not willing to agree that we didn't elect more Democrats. Dubya was appointed by a right wing court, and Kerry won Ohio by all exit polls, etc. etc. etc.

But you must have me confused with someone else: I'm not "bashing" former President Clinton, though his record is fair game, and he signed and promoted legislation that has been VERY bad for much of America's citizens, and I am actually VERY proud of President Obama for all he has done with UNPRECEDENTED opposition ( some from his own party, but most from the RepubliKlans. )

I never meant to imply that you personally had bashed President Clinton, that was a generalized "you." It's simply something I've seen a lot of here in the last few months.

Everyone's record is fair game but it should be put in the correct context.

I try also to look at a candidate's record in context, in it's entirety, and in it's historical context, too.

I understand all too well how much ground we have lost through the years. It's time to correct that shift to the right and go back to our original principles.

GO BERNIE!

The party you remember is the one taken over by the third way. Either pick up a book and read into the great society and the New Deal, or simply ask those older than you.

FDR was perfectly willing to inter Japanese-Americans. And, of course, left the Army segregated.

Lets not talk about LGBTQ issues. Let's just ignore the LESS progressive aspects of our past.


Also, this link again....

http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/section-1-growing-ideological-consistency/

Which was the point of my post. And was hated by corporatists alike.

FDR would not be allowed to run for mayor in the current Democratic Party you love, let alone president. But that explains it. You love the third way. Well as a political observer this battle for the soul of the Democratic Party will not be over, and I will be blunt, for the sake of the country, and the planet, I hope your side loses in the end.

That thing about the arc of history.

Just because we want to see FDR Democrats doesn't mean we want to relive the 1940s to 1960s. We may not say it enough because it's so obvious to us, but us Bernie supporters are for both New Deal economics and modern civil rights.


I get why people of color may not look back fondly on the New Deal the way many white people do. They were largely left out of it (or their parents were). It was just one more economic principle that screwed them over, just like modern day capitalism screws them over. Regardless of the system in place they get screwed.


But just because it was once that way doesn't mean it still has to be that way. Higher minimum wages are not mutually exclusive with applying to everyone. Strong unions are not mutually exclusive with applying to everyone. Giving small businesses a chance to compete with large corporations doesn't have to mean for white people only. All of these things can work for everyone. And that's what we want, FDR economics combined with civil rights.


We want health care for everyone AND we want people to be unafraid to walk down the street regardless of the color of their skin.

We want guaranteed higher education for everyone who wants it AND we want LGBTQ people to have the same freedoms everyone else has.

We want elections free from corruption and influence AND we want entire communities to not lose their voices due to disenfranchisement.

We want higher minimum wages AND we want people to not be mass incarcerated for drug use.

We want strong unions and a strong middle class AND we want it for everyone regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation.

We want strong investments in our infrastructure AND we want to see inner cities get their fair share of it.

We want to see New Deal economics return AND we want to see civil rights expanded beyond anything we have ever had in this country.



Sometimes we don't articulate what we want well enough and it leaves too much room to interpretation.

You and I are roughly the same age and you do not remember the economy being different? You don't remember most families having one breadwinner? You don't remember bumper stickers warning us about buying imports? You do not remember there actually being a manufacturing base? If not, I would truly have to question your memory. Given a choice to vote for a real republican and a democrat who acts like one, people are going to choose the republican. Why? Authenticity. They hold their core beliefs, we sell ours out to win presidential elections but get destroyed otherwise. A moderate dem is about the equivalent of a Rockefeller republican, so when calling ourselves progressive a large portion have actually been taking us backwards. We have made huge advances socially only to destroy ourselves economically by getting into bed with business. My opinion.

He was not a democrat.

So I alluded to this some time ago: When Bernie loses the nomination, what to do? My preference is write-in. Yeah, it risks losing the WH to Republicans, but hey if Hillary wins it the Republicans win by default. Yes, I just called Hillary a Republican. Or maybe a Dempublican. In any event a Bernie write-in is a win, the "downside" is that the Dem establishment gets a kick in the balls for the way it manipulated the primaries. Go ahead, try to convince me that, if she wins, Hillary will bother to change the fascist trajectory of the Supreme Court.

because if so sums up why you say the things you do.

for what she has done and all the corruption financing her.

I'm shocked by Hillary supporters. I mean, I can't stand the republican candidates but I can't find blood on their hands. When ARE you hillary supporters going to answer to the Honduras Coup she helped orchestrate that destabilized that country, the Plan Columbia failed drug war plan that destabilized that country, the personal financial gain she is said to have gotten from South American Ogliarchs who wanted those countries destablized (Heck she sacked a left wing president), and what about how the UN is claiming she is a major cause of the bloodshed in Syria and how she destablized the chance of stopping it, by repeatedly undermining a peace treaty to keep that place from falling into the humanitarian crisis it is now. Your WAR HAWK and WAR PROFITEER makes the dem party and the people supporting her, on PAR with her. You Hillary supporters need to start ANSWERING for the blood on Hillarys hands. So far all I've seen is you guys running every time someone brings up facts and you guys trying to bury the facts.