The State of the Democratic Party Post-2016

[Corrian]

I like at least a few of these people.

And I'm over here having no idea who most of them are.

There is a reason I said "these people".

[Ngelmish]

Buttiegig and Perez are excellent, I like Harrison personally but consider him a bad fit, and Buckley's a bit lower-wattage, but would probably be very good. Ellison would probably be good too, but at this point I just really don't want him. The others probably shouldn't be in the room.

Although I've been partial to Perez, he can't be a neutral choice after the way his accomplishments and record have been relentlessly smeared by the pro-Sanders elements of the pro-Ellison movement, so I'm leaning more towards Buttiegig at this point.

[Corrian]

Buttiegig and Perez are excellent, I like Harrison personally but consider him a bad fit, and Buckley's a bit lower-wattage, but would probably be very good. Ellison would probably be good too, but at this point I just really don't want him. The others probably shouldn't be in the room.

Although I've been partial to Perez, he can't be a neutral choice after the way his accomplishments and record have been relentlessly smeared by the pro-Sanders elements of the pro-Ellison movement, so I'm leaning more towards Buttiegig at this point.

I hear good from most of them to be honest. I think we need whoever wins, to take a bit from all of them. And we definitely need the 50 State Strategy back.

[Collatis]

At the moment I am leaning towards Buttigieg. I already liked him, and this debate is making me even more endeared to him. Buckley and Harrison seem good as well. I like both Perez and Ellison, but I suspect that either one's victory would be too divisive.

[Ngelmish]

At the moment I am leaning towards Buttigieg. I already liked him, and this debate is making me even more endeared to him. Buckley and Harrison seem good as well. I like both Perez and Ellison, but I suspect that either one's victory would be too divisive.

As an Indiana Democrat, I also like the idea of Buttigieg for purely parochial reasons.

[Corrian]

I like Keith's comment to this question, where he pretty much said "That part isn't my job, my job is to work towards getting people elected"

[San Lumen]

I just hope whoever becomes DNC chair works on building the party in every state and every county.

[Blakk Metal]

I just hope whoever becomes DNC chair works on building the party in every state and every county.

They won't succeed in that if you call them stupid and gloat about how soon their votes won't matter when you replace them with hordes of foreigners.

[San Lumen]

I just hope whoever becomes DNC chair works on building the party in every state and every county.

They won't succeed in that if you call them stupid and gloat about how soon their votes won't matter when you replace them with hordes of foreigners.

I never said anything of the kind.

[Blakk Metal]

They won't succeed in that if you call them stupid and gloat about how soon their votes won't matter when you replace them with hordes of foreigners.

I never said anything of the kind.

HE was talking about the computers and you know it.

I don't miss the thinking of rural areas one bit. The resentment rural people have for me I have for them. if this country still exists in 2020 we will come out in force and vote out Trump and and 2024 will be an utter catastrophe for one side when the transition to majority minority country starts. But one side will likely do everything it can to make sure my vote gets marginalized further.

All those middle eastern countries are the same silly.



I can see why they're afraid of it, your city and it's "progressive future" on a national level sounds fucking atrocious tbh.

well by 2024 if elections haven't been rigged so the GOP cannot lose it or the country hasn't been destroyed it will be impossible for the Republicans to win due to demographic changes and it won't matter what your lilly white county thinks. As America will look like my city.

That has the potential to destroy the very country you claim you love.

When, in Truth, youre just being spiteful and would rather see it destroyed.

and how exactly would it destroy the country by saving the people from themselves?

No, no you don't. You're arguing for government officials to commit fraud and change the results of an election because someone you don't like won. For someone who likes to rant about the integrity of our elections being gone you sure seem eager to make it worse.

I would rather see a constitutional crisis then see Trump take office and since the electoral college failed to stop trump Id cause one on purpose. How would i be making it worse? Id be saving the people from themselves and protecting the republic and potentially the world from a madman who would launch nukes because someone insulted him. But the nuclear experts know nothing right? They just call themselves experts because they feel like it.

[Hexgard]

The Democrats, in their current form, hopefully will never win anything again.

There are some thing that we have to face here. The Democrats will alienate all the moderate, civilized people, as more and more of the modern pseudoliberals become vocal.
Who is the modern pseudoliberal you might ask? Mainly a millenial, but not necessary, who preaches liberalism, "fights" racism and sexism, but in truth is just an shallow farce without integrity.
I am no fan of liberalism, but there are and always were liberals who actually had sense, who stood for what they believe in.
But that is not the case here, you have this growing subculture of people who will go on to call pro-Trump Mexicans "race traitors", who will call black Republican senators even worse slurs, who will bully a transgender person for being a conservative, who will be actually aggressive but call "Safe space" the moment you as much as counter argument them, who will think that demanding voter IDs is racist because they pretty much believe that black people are too dumb for it, who have been making a joke of people who did not "accept" Obama as their president, but they themselves will go great lenghts to protest president Donald Trump, and so on and on.
And these are not some theoretical happenings which I conjured up, but things in the news.

Now that I do mention news, let us also see how this little group has degraded journalism. Surely, sensationalism wasn't bad enough, now we got writing based on pure emotion. We got to the point where the media will quote eachother on falsehoods, you can see several media sources calling someone a "white nationalist" or even worse, a "neo-nazi" all tho they simply ain't. It goes even further, I have recently read the writing of a pseudojournalist who "revoked" the gay status of a speaker he does not like.

This is where we get to entitlement and simply this dogma that these people have an exclusive right on all minorities. It would be nice to address the biggest minority group and their issues, the black community.
This now isn't just an issue of these pseudoliberals, but of much of the Democratic establishment. What does the Democrat establishment actually do for the black community? As we know, the worst off and most criminal cities are usually under Democrat control. Surely, under Obama more of them got employed, but the rise of poverty in the black community also came to be. So, why do the Democrats keep claiming that they are the ones saving the black people, and implying that something bad will happen if the Republicans take over?

The black community is keep getting polarised by force through the media, where some outlets will go so far as to, in the cases of an officer shooting a black person and when they knew the officer wasn't white, they would leave out the fact about his race, and even make a vague hint that the officer could be white. It is pure and utter sensationalism.
No one seems to care that, when it comes to crimes between white and black Americans, it is usally a criminal who happens to be black that is the one that caused it. No one seems to care that blacks are more often the targest of these same black criminals. But can't people see the connection? Both blacks and whites are targets of mainly black criminals, a criminal subculture which developed from the poverty and ghettoisation of the blacks. There is no such thing as institutional racism, there isn't some racist campaign of the police force, no, it is all a farce, which keeps the good, decent and hardworking blacks and whites of the USA to work together and solve their problems.

All in all, while I might have degressed, it all boils down to this point: the Democrats today let too many toxic elements, not just exist, but grow. Sooner or later, more and more regular Democrats will abandon ship, especially with a moderate Republican in office.
You really have a similar situation in Germany, where the current CDU leadership has abandoned some core principles of their party, they are gaining discontent int their own ranks, their sister party is becoming less friendly, and they have a projected loss of 10% in voters country-wide. Not to forget, they also got pseudoliberal media smearing the main proper oppossition party, you get that the president of the same party had her car burner (if I recal correctly) and even found problems with renting spaces. But, hey, the pseudoliberal's life motto is "It ain't chauvinism as long as we do it".

[USS Monitor]

All in all, while I might have degressed, it all boils down to this point: the Democrats today let too many toxic elements, not just exist, but grow. Sooner or later, more and more regular Democrats will abandon ship, especially with a moderate Republican in office.

"With a moderate Republican in office"... So, this isn't something we need to worry about any time soon.

[Farnhamia]

All in all, while I might have degressed, it all boils down to this point: the Democrats today let too many toxic elements, not just exist, but grow. Sooner or later, more and more regular Democrats will abandon ship, especially with a moderate Republican in office.

"With a moderate Republican in office"... So, this isn't something we need to worry about any time soon.

I thought Moderate Republicans were mythological, the same as Liberal Republicans.

[USS Monitor]

"With a moderate Republican in office"... So, this isn't something we need to worry about any time soon.

I thought Moderate Republicans were mythological, the same as Liberal Republicans.

No, they're just an endangered species. We still have them in New England, but their numbers are dwindling due to the influx of invasive political species such as Democrats, Libertarians, and Bernie Sanders.

[Corrian]

Bernie delegates win the majority of delegates in California

[The Black Forrest]

I thought Moderate Republicans were mythological, the same as Liberal Republicans.

No, they're just an endangered species. We still have them in New England, but their numbers are dwindling due to the influx of invasive political species such as Democrats, Libertarians, and Bernie Sanders.

That still sounds like bigfoot!

Do you have photographic evidence?

[USS Monitor]

No, they're just an endangered species. We still have them in New England, but their numbers are dwindling due to the influx of invasive political species such as Democrats, Libertarians, and Bernie Sanders.

That still sounds like bigfoot!

Do you have photographic evidence?

[NeoLiberia]

I am no fan of liberalism, but there are and always were liberals who actually had sense, who stood for what they believe in.
But that is not the case here, you have this growing subculture of people who will go on to call pro-Trump Mexicans "race traitors", who will call black Republican senators even worse slurs, who will bully a transgender person for being a conservative, who will be actually aggressive but call "Safe space" the moment you as much as counter argument them, who will think that demanding voter IDs is racist because they pretty much believe that black people are too dumb for it, who have been making a joke of people who did not "accept" Obama as their president, but they themselves will go great lenghts to protest president Donald Trump, and so on and on.
And these are not some theoretical happenings which I conjured up, but things in the news.

Yes yes, but do these people actually exist? I live in an extremely liberal area of a considerably liberal state and have never seen one of these people in real life.

[Arkinesia]

Unless the Democratic Party starts working on winning statewide races they are done for in the long term.

It's very clear the “let's do things like the Libertarian Party and focus on winning the Presidency” schtick isn't working very well.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Unless the Democratic Party starts working on winning statewide races they are done for in the long term.

It's very clear the “let's do things like the Libertarian Party and focus on winning the Presidency” schtick isn't working very well.

I'll have you know we actually focus quite a bit on other races. We don't have a whole ton of success but we're still trying dammit.

[The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp]

Bernie delegates win the majority of delegates in California

Hindsight is 2020.

[Uiiop]

I am no fan of liberalism, but there are and always were liberals who actually had sense, who stood for what they believe in.
But that is not the case here, you have this growing subculture of people who will go on to call pro-Trump Mexicans "race traitors", who will call black Republican senators even worse slurs, who will bully a transgender person for being a conservative, who will be actually aggressive but call "Safe space" the moment you as much as counter argument them, who will think that demanding voter IDs is racist because they pretty much believe that black people are too dumb for it, who have been making a joke of people who did not "accept" Obama as their president, but they themselves will go great lenghts to protest president Donald Trump, and so on and on.
And these are not some theoretical happenings which I conjured up, but things in the news.

Yes yes, but do these people actually exist? I live in an extremely liberal area of a considerably liberal state and have never seen one of these people in real life.

What you see in your life doesn't matter.
It's what stupid people are posted on the internet that really matter.

[Valrifell]

Unless the Democratic Party starts working on winning statewide races they are done for in the long term.

It's very clear the “let's do things like the Libertarian Party and focus on winning the Presidency” schtick isn't working very well.

That's an issue with Democratic voters more than anything else, methinks. Though it does seem that Sanders was aiming to correct that by encouraging his supporters to vote Democratic locally.

[USS Monitor]

Unless the Democratic Party starts working on winning statewide races they are done for in the long term.

It's very clear the “let's do things like the Libertarian Party and focus on winning the Presidency” schtick isn't working very well.

That's an issue with Democratic voters more than anything else, methinks. Though it does seem that Sanders was aiming to correct that by encouraging his supporters to vote Democratic locally.

In Massachusetts, it's an issue with Martha Coakley. She keeps running for office and losing.

But also, I don't think it matters so much which party governors are from, as long as they're not pushing shitty policies at the state level. It's not like Congress where the party gains advantages from having the majority and there's more pressure to vote along party lines. Baker, Romney, and Weld all refused to support Trump and stuck to that until election day.

[Eol Sha]

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks announced during his show's livestream that he, Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk, and some ex-Sanders campaign officials launched the "Justice Democrats" today. Their goal, as I understand it, is to provide infrastructure for the nomination and election of progressive Democrats. Judging by one of their website's pages, Justice Democrats are "selfless leaders from all walks of life and all areas of our economy and society, representing every community". From WaPo:

Cenk Uygur, founder of the Young Turks video network that has become virally popular among progressive voters, is launching a project called Justice Democrats to defeat members of the Democratic Party who have cast votes seen as unacceptable.

“The aim in 2018 is to put a significant number of Justice Democrats in the Congress. The aim for 2020 is to more significantly take over the Democratic Party,” Uygur said. “If they're going to continue to be corporate Democrats, that's doomed for failure for the rest of time.”

Justice Democrats cohered after the 2016 election, when Uygur began talking to veterans of the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) about ways to challenge Democrats from the left. The Justice Democrats project counts Saikat Chakrabarti and Zack Exley, two tech veterans of the Sanders campaign, among its founders; their first goal was to provide the infrastructure and resources for progressives who wanted to challenge “corporate Democrats.”

In the near term, that meant finding people who could run against the 13 Democratic senators who opposed a Sanders-backed measure to make it easier to import prescription drugs from Canada.

“Some members of the party that are already in the Progressive Caucus, we're unlikely to primary. We want to focus on getting strong progressives into Congress,” Uygur said. “What's the point of primarying Representative Raúl Grijalva [D-Ariz.] if you want to do that? There will be a small number of people who ran once before, and we can look at them again. But do we want to challenge Senator Cory Booker [D-N.J.]? That's a no-brainer.”

The Justice Democrats platform mirrors much of what Sanders ran on, some of which had been adopted into the 2016 Democratic platform. Where Sanders called for renegotiating trade deals, the platform doubles down. Democrats have called for infrastructure spending; the platform calls for the party to “invest billions in rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, schools, levees, airports etc.” It goes even further than Sanders, however, in asking candidates to ban foreign aid to human rights violators.

All of that builds on what had been a time of expansion for the Young Turks. After the election, the site crowdfunded nearly $1 million to expand its team and roster of contributors. The Justice Democrats would follow the same model.

“I was hoping someone else would do this, but when no one else was,” Uygur said, “somebody had to do it.”

Personally, I'm supportive of the goals and platform of this new group. And I agree with Cenk's rhetoric that the buddy-buddy relationship between the Democratic Party and Big Business and corporations is a major factor in Clinton's loss last November. It's one of the reasons why I supported Sanders in the primary. That said, my biggest concern is that this movement will be needlessly divisive. I fully support promoting progressive candidates gaining power and influence in the Democratic Party. I just don't want the process to be incendiary, destructive, and divisive.

All that said, I hope they do well and are able to get more progressives into political office.