with emphasis on the boring, middle of the road, same old same old. Progress should always be the driving goal.

So let’s just drop that pretense right there.

many of us are now looking for boring!

I never found Joe Biden boring, but I do think he is experienced and stable, which is what I'm looking for.

Bush didn't exactly win because he was less boring middle of the road same old than Kerry.

Obama won because he was middle of the road. And he certainly was same-old and establishment when he ran for the second term.

In fact, I would argue that of the last ten presidents, six became presidents BECAUSE they were boring middle of the road etc, etc.

When some on the left applied purity tests and refused to get off the high horse of their principles to support the nominee.

Bush won in 2000 and created a mess that had to be cleaned up. Trump won in 2016 and we are in that nightmare as I write. But people like AOC, Sanders, Cornell West, Susan Sarandon don't see the reality, and I wonder why.

That is what the people who aren't' voting are saying.

There is no one reason trump won or that Clinton lost. But one big factor was all the people who simply didn't vote. They don't' think it matters. And the people who didn't' vote far outnumber the one who switched votes or went third party.

Just to remind you all, more Clinton supporters went for John McCain in 2008. It didn't matter because Obama got so many people to vote.

Yes, we can go "OMGddss look at how Bad trump is!" but that isn't' motivating anyone. Didn't' work for Bush either. It doesn't' even matter that the other guy is worse. It simply does not work.

So who can get people enthusiastic even if Trump wasn't in the race? Who can get nonvoters to go out and vote?
Don't worry about who I think can do that. Ask yourselves if and how YOUR candidate can do that.

It is ridiculous, and a little dangerous IMO, to pretend otherwise.

and at least one primary candidate who dragged out the nomination for as long as possible, etc., etc., etc.

He dominated that race from start to finish.

2008 than Bernie voters went for Trump in 2016. You should just retire that falsehood.

Maybe the people that didn't vote because they didn't think it mattered heard the Susan Sarandons and Cornell Wests of the world loudly making that claim after Sanders was not nominated.

This year "social media" runs everything including, yes, the debate participants.

And no one can be compared to the current occupant who turned everything, changed every "common wisdom."

Throughout the campaign most of the Republican party hated him. They just could not decide who they despised more, Trump or Cruz.

Once he took over, the party has toed the line. Not a single opponent. Only the women - Murkowski and Collins have shown some backbone.

Nixon resigned after prominent leaders, like Goldwater, told him it was over. Where is this century Goldwater?

SUPPORT THE NOMINEE. No matter who it is. Or whether you consider them "boring", or too centrist or too progressive.

This is where Democrats continually snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Once a nominee is chosen, UNITY - absolutely unanimous support MUST be demonstrated. And VOTE. Whether your favorite candidate's name is on the ballot or NOT.

This is what Republicans do. They have absolute UNITY behind their nominee - even asshole Trump.

THAT is the ticket.

... that so many people saw "no difference" between Hillary Clinton and Trump.

Hillary and Trump? No difference? Really???

But anyway, I also don't understand how people who simply "couldn't trust" Hillary decided Yrump, of all people, was worth a try.

My point is, vote for the Democratic nominee no matter who it is, even if you must hold your nose, even if it's someone you could in no way support during the primaries -- because you KNOW, at the end of the day, even that candidate will be a far better President than Trump, and the country will be far better off for it.

(And really, all those people in 2016 should intuitively have known Hillary would have been a better President, whether they "trusted" her or not -- especially since it was so blatantly obvious Trump could not be trusted at all.)

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We shouldn't use Trump as our baseline. For anything. Ever.

1) There's no evidence that any of the other Democrats would have fared better against Bush in 2004. In fact, polling prior to Kerry winning the nomination suggests they would not have as a) every one of 'em lost to Bush and b) Kerry continually out-polled his Democratic rivals. You assume that had the party nominated, say, Dennis Kucinich instead of John Kerry that the outcome would have been more favorable - I don't see any evidence for that and since there's little evidence to any of it, we can only go on what we know and what we know is that Kerry still did better nationally, head-to-head, against Bush than Howard Dean, despite, at times, Dean being the front-runner for the nomination. 2004 was always going to be a stacked election for the Democrats. The fact is, Bush was generally in positive territory in his approval for much of the year, and the economy saw its best year of growth of his presidency during that time. There was also the Iraq War, which, in 2004, was still fairly popular.

2) Your Lesson 2 goes for just about every candidate. Is the party going to unite more behind a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren than Joe Biden? I don't see any evidence to that. If this is the case, are you basically conceding defeat no matter who we nominate?

1. By calling this "anecdotal", you are implying that I'm overlooking other data. Tell me please: Which other recent presidential elections did I not take into account?



2. There was a TV-segment (CNBC?) where some Wall Street big-wigs freaked out at the prospect of Elizabeth Warren becoming President, because of the regulations and tax-policies she would implement.

Some Bernie-Bros took offense and took it on themselves to explain to other people on Twitter that even though the corporatists explicitly had said that they were afraid of Warren, what they really meant was that they were afraid of Bernie Sanders.

And who can forget how well the democratic party united behind the democratic candidate in 2016?

The Special Elections of 2017 were left out. The 2018 election was left out. In BOTH cases, left-center candidates built a powerful and compelling case for why democrats should lead, people like Ubderwood, Luria, Spanberger, Katie Porter and others that won very difficult races, there were an vast number of that type versus people like AOC, the other three Squad members, where the democratic nominee was almost a leadpipe-cinch to win.

is the exact opposite of what these elections actually showed us. In each election, the candidate seen as closest to the middle has won. That included Trump. Look back at the polling headed up to election day, people were saying Trump was the more moderate candidate. Obama beat McCain because he painted him as a 3rd term for Bush and Bush was historically unpopular by that point, his approval was something like 20%.

We beat Romney because we painted him as an elitist who lived in an ivory tower and ate $500 an ounce caviar and wiped his ass with $100 bills.

Bush beat Kerry because he painted him as an uber-liberal who would "make all the sacrifices of our troops for naught."

Elections in this country aren't decided by base turnout, they are decided by who can claim effectively claim the middle.