• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Should we fear the Democratic Party?

Segnosaur said:
Yet Hillary Clinton (representitive of the status quo/elite) beat Sanders in the 2016 primaries. Sounds like there are quite a few of the voting base that don't mind things the way they are.
Click to expand...

It's not 2016 now, though. There's an adage about how generals are always fighting the previous war rather than the current one. 2020 Sanders is different than 2016 Sanders, and Biden is no Hillary Clinton.
 
Segnosaur said:
Yet Hillary Clinton (representitive of the status quo/elite) beat Sanders in the 2016 primaries. Sounds like there are quite a few of the voting base that don't mind things the way they are.
Click to expand...

The voters liked Hillary right up until she lost to Trump.
 
theprestige said:
I trace it back further than that, all the way back to the emergence of the Tea Party movement. For years, voters on the left and the right have been demanding relief from establishment politics. The Tea Party movement on the right was a manifestation of this. Likewise the election of Donald Trump. On the left, it manifests in Bernie Sanders' strong showing in 2016, and his strong showing again in 2020.

Defeating Trump is pointless if it just means a return to establishment politics and another generation of moderate Democrats selling out progressive ideals for corrupt political advantage. The goal isn't to defeat Trump; the goal is to defeat establishment Democrats. (See also: The Rise of AOC.)

- American Progressives, apparently
Click to expand...

Yeah, it goes back further than that I. I oversimplified.

The failure of the HRC and the resulting Trump administration has added a lot of fuel to the progressive fire.

Biden's message largely seems to be a return to pre-Trump civility. A return to Obama style centrist government. I fail to find that very inspiring as Trump was a direct reaction to this kind of politics. The party is risking a lot by ignoring the very real populist grievances that are raging across the country.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
The voters liked Hillary right up until she lost to Trump.
Click to expand...

Did they like her, or tolerate her? I voted for her but I'd hardly consider that liking her, she was merely the lesser evil. Like getting genital herpes instead of AIDS. One would prefer getting neither but if you have to get one of those two...
 
TragicMonkey said:
Did they like her, or tolerate her? I voted for her but I'd hardly consider that liking her, she was merely the lesser evil. Like getting genital herpes instead of AIDS. One would prefer getting neither but if you have to get one of those two...
Click to expand...

Sure, they tolerated her. Unenthusiastic support is still support. I'm sure there were plenty of people who were swayed by the "we need an electable candidate" argument. Her loss does a lot to undercut that argument now.

Who knows if Bernie would have beat Trump in 2016. It's pure speculation. But we know that Hillary lost.
 
Segnosaur said:
Yet Hillary Clinton (representitive of the status quo/elite) beat Sanders in the 2016 primaries. Sounds like there are quite a few of the voting base that don't mind things the way they are.
Click to expand...


How'd that work out for them?
 
Belz... said:
I'm sure that helps them sleep at night.
Click to expand...

The fact that the US democratic system is seriously messed up?
No, that should not make it easier for anyone to sleep.

But the belief that Sanders could have won 2016 when Clinton could not is not substantiated by anything.
 
Hillary didn't win the popular vote.

"Didn't Bother to Vote" won the popular vote.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Has that ever not been the case in a US election?
Click to expand...

No, at least in modern history. You start comparing numbers with times before various suffrages and, obviously I like to think, the comparison starts to weaken.

My point was Hillary Clinton lost "the system's vote" and only won the "popular vote" if you chose a very arbitrary and self serving place to start counting from.
 
Last edited:
JoeMorgue said:
Hillary didn't win the popular vote.

"Didn't Bother to Vote" won the popular vote.
Click to expand...
Hillary, directly or indirectly (aka decades of anti-Clinton propaganda), was one of the reasons behind "didn't bother to vote". Biden is poised to accomplish the same thing.
 
Last edited:
Hillary won among voters whose votes she didn't strictly need, but could count on. Hillary lost among voters whose votes she did strictly need, and couldn't count on.

---

The real problem is that the election was too close to actually resolve any differences. Trump won it within the variance between the popular vote and the EC. That's far too close a margin to change anything.

Americans were deeply divided before the election. Hillary "winning the popular vote" by such a small margin doesn't erase those divisions. Even if she'd won, half the country, to within a margin of error, would still have hated her and opposed everything she did. Just like half the country hates Trump and opposes everything he does, even though he legit won the actual election.

Everybody wants to pretend that a president who wins by a tiny margin has the same claim to the nation's support as a president who wins in a landslide, but this simply isn't true.

Look how hard Obama had to work to push through the ACA. Look how contentious and bitter and shaky it is, even today. And Obama had way more of a mandate than Hillary's "popular vote" entitles her to.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
They won the popular vote.
Are you from a parallel universe where Sanders got nominated and beat Trump in 2016?
Click to expand...


No, I'm from the same universe you are where we are both currently watching the Democratic party make the same mistake they made in 2016.

Shame on me for pointing that out, I guess. I should keep my mouth shut when I see others making mistakes, I suppose.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
The fact that the US democratic system is seriously messed up?
No, that should not make it easier for anyone to sleep.

But the belief that Sanders could have won 2016 when Clinton could not is not substantiated by anything.
Click to expand...



....nor is the belief that Sanders would have lost to Trump.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom