Democrats draw plan to shatter the GOP

[Kablooie]

Democrats are drawing blueprints for stealing GOP moderates from a rightward-driving Republican Party, saying the heist is key to scoring a White House win in November.

Democracy Corps’ Stan Greenberg, a prominent national Democratic pollster, released data Monday morning that suggest moderate Republicans — nearly a third of the GOP base — are being ignored by their presidential candidates. These Republicans don’t revile Planned Parenthood — in fact, many prefer the women’s health group to pro-life groups and candidates who take hard-line stances on abortion. They’re supportive of same-sex marriage. They’re not enamored of the NRA. They have less rigid attitudes about sex. They accept climate science.

But while the GOP moderates may feel a break from their party, they're also hostile to Democrats, meaning that bringing them over would require a total rebranding of the Democratic Party in their eyes. In an online poll of 800 likely Republican primary voters, conducted from Feb. 11 to Feb. 16, Democracy Corp found that anti-Democrat attitudes are the most potent driver of Republican primary voters — and their antipathy for Hillary Clinton outweighs even their dislike for President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party as a whole, a feeling that cuts across ideology.

Still, the poll shows that GOP moderates may be pliable — and that Democratic efforts to corral GOP votes shouldn’t end with just looking for moderates. The results show that Catholic Republicans are similarly out of step with the Republican base. They’re less hostile to government regulation and generally agree that those making more than $250,000 a year should pay “a lot” more in taxes.

These tactics could be even more potent if Donald Trump is the nominee. The winning arguments, Greenberg says his research shows, include convincing these Republicans that Trump is an egomaniac, that he’s disrespectful to women, that he can’t be trusted with the nation’s nuclear arsenal, that he has no clean energy agenda and that he’s hostile to global trade.

While Democrats plot to take advantage of the GOP's internal tensions, Republicans are looking to do much the same, hoping that they can increasingly bring blue-collar, more conservative Democrats into their coalition by painting the party as lurching left and leaving traditional values behind.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/democrats-2016-strategy-gop-219957

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Um... but doesn't this mean that the Democratic party will have to move even more to the right so they essentially become the new Republican party? And won't that leave liberals who are lurching left in the lurch?

[1StrongBlackMan]

1. No, It doesn't ...

From your excerpted section:

Still, the poll shows that GOP moderates may be pliable — and that Democratic efforts to corral GOP votes shouldn’t end with just looking for moderates. The results show that Catholic Republicans are similarly out of step with the Republican base. They’re less hostile to government regulation and generally agree that those making more than $250,000 a year should pay “a lot” more in taxes.

These tactics could be even more potent if Donald Trump is the nominee. The winning arguments, Greenberg says his research shows, include convincing these Republicans that Trump is an egomaniac, that he’s disrespectful to women, that he can’t be trusted with the nation’s nuclear arsenal, that he has no clean energy agenda and that he’s hostile to global trade.

[Control-Z]

2. No. n/t

[elleng]

3. 'Democracy Corp found that anti-Democrat attitudes are the most potent driver of Republican primary

voters — and their antipathy for Hillary Clinton outweighs even their dislike for President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party as a whole, a feeling that cuts across ideology.'

Got it? 'If we are going to nominate someone who 50% of our people can't stand,

we are going to lose.'

Marco Rubio

Goes for BOTH parties.

[Kablooie]

4. I'm actually glad to hear that everyone disagrees with me.

[Warpy]

5. I suggest they not be too eager

because all the neoliberal dead wood in that party will simply shift over to ours, bolstering the DLC, New Democrats, Third Way, and all the other little groups so inimical to anyone even slightly left of center.

[bemildred]

6. This seems like a foolish strategy.

If the Republicans are divided, they won't get out their vote, so what we need to do is move to the center of the Democtatic Party and get out our vote, not try to steal voters from them, we will get them anyway when the Republicans are shattered.

[tazkcmo]

10. Not enough profit.

You are right of course. But then that means the real government (Corporations) wouldn't make as many billions as they do now and will with a right wing body of sales persons in Congress.

[bemildred]

12. Plenty of profit for the public, fuck the corporations, they exist to serve us. nt

[Doctor_J]

7. They won't have to, but they will

They'll be getting more money from traditional republican donors (filthy rich, anti-tax anti labor oligarchs who don't want a loose cannon like trump or Cruz in the white house). So I look for Big Insurance, the prison industry, the Pentagon, the for profit education industry, and of course wall street, to get an even bigger piece of the pie with a turd way dem in the white house.

[MBS]

8. Don't have to move right, just present Dems as the adult, sane party

Barney Frank's suggested Democratic motto (from 2008? 2012?) still seems apt:

"We're not perfect, but they're nuts".

[tazkcmo]

11. And that's another reason not vote Clinton.

That's a pretty low bar and it's depressing to think that's the best we can do.

[tazkcmo]

9. Yes

The Democratic Party is shrinking and the Movers And Shakers see more profit on the Right.

[KPN]

13. Yup!

The goal is to get elected -- not necessarily to govern according to a fundamental set of principles. This is what's wrong with the DNC.

[Populist_Prole]

15. Bingo! n/t

[yurbud]

14. this sounds like the "plan" the DLC/New Dems/whatevers have been running for 30 years

That pisses on the Democratic Party base, depresses turnout, and makes me feel like half an idiot every time I vote for Democrat who I know will not stand up for progressive values.

[Chan790]

16. Exactly.

I fear the national Democratic party is going to learn the same lesson inner-city Democrats here in CT learned in the 1990s.

Faced with a Democratic party that was not the least bit interested in the problems of the inner-city because addressing root-causes of poverty, drugs, crime, gang-violence and the educational-gap hurt them with the more-affluent suburban Democrats in the ring-suburbs, inner-city minorities rallied around what were initially protest candidates (for example, Libby Horton-Sheff of the CT Green Party, already well-known in CT for her successful lawsuit which alleged that the state was creating a de-facto segregation of the schools by not identifying and addressing root-causes of ghettoization resulting in racially-segregated classrooms by cause of racially and economically-segregated neighborhoods and school districts.) until they realized they could get those protest candidates elected...and once elected, Democrats would be forced to coalition with them to maintain control...or risk being marginalized despite having the majority between the Republican minority and the extreme-left minority.

Those lessons should have been "We need to move back towards our base and embrace our previous focus on the root-causes of problems in order to recapture the ground we're losing" but this was the era of the Bill Clinton presidency and instead they learned "we need to protect ourselves from the base by moving towards the middle and trying to in-source unhappy Republicans" and Hartford and New Haven suffered for years under poor administration and demagogues who thought they needed to kiss the ass of Republican governors. Nothing got better as far as the root-causes of the problems were concerned...why would they when voters had a choice between the "fuck the poor" Republicans and "fuck the poor" Democrats styling themselves after Bill Clinton.

As a result, Democrats have had to learn that the support of traditional constituencies are not a given. There is a threat to them from the left and from moderates in neglected constituencies; not just from the right and that moderates are no solution. "Democrats that get things done" by borrowing rightward...get nothing done worth doing. When you stop representing the issues of your base...they have no reason to support you, even if it hands control to conservatives, because it makes no difference between the Democrat who wants to fuck you over and the Republican that wants to fuck you over if you're going to get fucked-over either way.

There are no degrees of fucked-over-ness. There is just fucked-over and represented. In a race between a DLC corporatist and a anti-establishment fascist...whose interests are represented? Not ours! We need to be through supporting our oppressors running on fucking us over when they lie and say "those guys want to fuck you over more!"

[yurbud]

17. New Dems WOULD be interested in helping poor IF...

The could privatize the effort, collect campaign donations from contractors now, and jobs as CEO's, lobbyists, do nothing board members from those companies when they leave office.