Yes.
Outer Sparta wrote:Ngelmish wrote:
Which only works if we keep his successor in office. And her successor, most likely.
Like, I sympathize with idea that Democrats don't do enough (they never have), but that's what it takes. You don't refuse to put Al Gore in office because Clinton sucked, you do it anyway because there's a framework already in place that he can build on. Or you the give the right 4 to 8 to 12 years to just blow things up and the next time you have your 8 years, you, maybe, have just barely gotten a functional structure back together again. Stepping stones require multiple steps, and the worst thing about the Democratic coalition is their tendency to plunge into the water because they didn't like the last stone.
Democrats shouldn't have to be afraid to jump up to the next stone or push for nation-changing ideas and policy. Being timid and not bold is a disaster in politics in general.
Well, that's where, as is sometimes the case, Trump is oddly revealing -- "Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated." In general the Democrats' problem isn't timidity (perennial reminder that the evil neoliberal Clinton's tried to pass Nixon's, which is to say Bismarck's, universal health insurance policy), it's that their voters don't accept the long game. It creates a feedback loop where Democratic politicians are more hesitant to push nation-changing policies -- because even though their base say they want it, they don't show up consistently for it.
Of course, my friends to the left of me and my friends who say they're to the left of me would suggest that's because the Democrats don't actually push those policies, but I would suggest that they equally ignore improvements designed to grease the skids for the policies that they'd prefer and so we achieve carnivorous deadlock.
