The Democratic Party is for social AND economic justice. It isn't an "either/or" situation!

[RBInMaine]

Enough of this nonsense about claiming the Democratic Party is wrongly shifting away from social justice in favor of economic justice everywhere (including the industrial Midwest). No one, I repeat, no one is saying that Democrats should "abandon" urban concerns or should in any way, shape, or form "abandon" fighting for full inclusion or fighting against racism or sexism or discrimination against ANYONE.

You know, it is actually possible to have a strong, compelling, MORAL, populist economic message for EVERY area of the country and to respect ALL cultures in the country while still standing up for the civil rights of all Americans. How anyone could possibly think this is some kind of "either/or" proposition is ludicrous.

A national party needs a big tent and can have messages that unite all parts of the party. People of ALL races need an economy that works for them. Social and economic justice go absolutely hand in hand. Economic disparities cut across racial and geographic lines. Unemployment rates among urban minorities and rural white folks are BOTH much too high and BOTH are disgraceful and must be addressed.

So we can fight for the civil rights and human dignity of ALL people which goes hand in hand with fighting the corporate oligarchy and for economic justice and improvement for all people everywhere. We MUST do BOTH, and we can!

[ucrdem]

1. There was nothing wrong with the message, platform, campaign or candidate.

The contested primary didn't help but never mind, it wasn't fatal. Now the task is counting the votes. It isn't going to be easy.

p.s. IMHO, YMMV

[RBInMaine]

3. Well, there were some real problems. Here they are:

* Clinton's economic message wasn't sharp enough in the rural and small town areas. Serious disconnect.

* Way too much money was spent on polls and consulting instead of grassroots organizing especially in the rural areas.

* Not enough campaigning was done in the rural areas that were lost.

* Not enough organizing and campaigning were done in Midwestern urban areas where turnout was lower than needed.

We need to be HONEST. Real mistakes were made, and we havr to learn from them and CHANGE right now. We need to fight for civil rights and WILL, but we also need to have a clearer and more compelling economic justice message. The party needs to get FOCUSED and it needs to get rid of every single bit of corporatism. We need to be the party of the people, period.

[ucrdem]

4. Those are myths. She won bigly. Mistakes were made but in the voting rights department.

It needed some work. We actually didn't need an interminable primary, but that's what we decided to spend our time and money on, so here we are.

[BlueMTexpat]

5. a million!

Also with some attention to the X-check voting purges in key states!

[ucrdem]

7. Absolutely.

Sigh. . .

[Else You Are Mad]

13. But, that is our democracy.

Every four to eight years, people run against each other for the nomination to run for the president. There is no need for scape goats here. We need that otherwise we just have the rich and powerful select for us who we will vote for. Bernie did not run a dirty campaign and did not tarnish Hillary.

The problem was that the media did not give Hillary enough attention to her economic plans and, instead, opted to only focus on the email and other scandals. Had the media done it's job, middle America would have heard of her economic plans to help them and would have been more apt to vote Democratic -- like they did eight and four years ago.

[KPN]

19. Not entirely correct in my view. Hillary herself ...

didn't give enough attention to her economic plans. Instead, she went "all in" on Trump's personal deplorables, calculating wrongly that Americans would do the sensible thing. In so doing, she underestimated, as did the DNC, her own deficiencies.

The media played a role, but they didn't trumpet Hillary's economic plans in part because Hillary herself did not. Had she weighted her speeches far less heavily on anti-Trumpism (and far more on her economic vision and ideas to achieve them), the media attention to economic plans would likely have followed. Scapegoating the media isn't in itself the answer. We've got to be more open minded about this if we hope to turn the tide in the future.

Hillary also had the problem of not being highly inspiring in her discussing her economic goals and vision. While reasonable and realistic, "incrementalism" -- a term she herself used to describe her preferred approach to economic policy -- does not inspire a following. You didn't see Trump talking about doing things along the margins. Who won that debate?

[KPN]

18. Sounds like a lot of denial to me.

[paleotn]

27. A lot of that going around lately. n/t

[emulatorloo]

51. Perhaps, but the Wagging finger smilie probably won't help your case.

[KPN]

57. You are right -- it was a reaction to a couple of other folks' emojis that ...

didn't help their case with me. Guess a lot of us can get a little childish/simple minded at times.

[emulatorloo]

59. We're only human.

Stressful times.

[paleotn]

26. Obviously, Midwestern states were taken for granted....

...but then again, they've been reliable in the past with respect to national elections. 20/20 hindsight maybe, but the only major critique I have is writing off the white, working class, particularly in the burbs and rural areas. That's not just on Clinton's 2016 campaign. Our party has been doing that for some time now. That demo isn't growing much compared to others, but it's still sizable. Big enough to swing an election, given the right circumstances.

Also, I think she won bigly (popular vote) due to the fact that the Rethuglican's settled on possibly the worst candidate....ever. Just saying.

[BlueMTexpat]

6. Sorry, RB, Hillary could

personally have held hands, hugged and spoken with every single one of those rural voters and the results would likely have been the same.

I was born and raised in one of these areas. Too many who live there live in their own separate realities, reinforced by their fundamentalist religious beliefs.

This article hits the nail on the head: http://forsetti.tumblr.com/post/153181757500/on-rural-america-understanding-isnt-the-problem

Read it and weep!

[mountain grammy]

11. Yes, read it and weep.

one of the best analysis I've read on this debacle.

[BumRushDaShow]

17. OMG THAT IS EXCELLENT!

Folks should read the whole thing. It's long but it is so engaging that it keeps you reading right through to the end.



The RW bloviators became a virus that inserted themselves into their belief systems some 30+ years ago and infected the hell out of them. IMHO, if one wants to use a scientific analogy like this, it is possible for the left to do the same. Many fundamentalists cherry-pick the various religious writings and if one wants to insert the better perspective into their system, they would want to start quoting some different passages. It would probably take as many decades to get an impact, but that is probably the only way.

[KPN]

24. Good article, but ...

it doesn't explain why Obama won two elections convincingly while Hillary did not. In my mind, it comes down to Hillary just had too much baggage (some warranted some not -- but all a result of being a politician in the public's eye for decades) and didn't come across as genuine to too many people. She had the economic message, but not the cred.

I have to say that she won me over during the convention, but until that point, I never saw her as genuine. Had she the ability to appear more genuine, would she have won? Hard to say for sure. But there's no question many if not most Americans are tired of the same old politicians. And that's what we -- the Democratic Party -- gave them.

Fundamental Christians are a problem for the Democratic Party, but they are not in themselves the reason we lost this election.

[paleotn]

31. I agree with the alternate reality based on fundigelical religion....

...I see it most every day (rural, Appalachian area.) Damn good, polite, wonderful people, but it would be so much better if they dump that damn fire and brimstone religion crap.

Nevertheless, RB makes a good point. You don't need all of them. Not even a slim majority. Just an extra 4, 5 or 6% switching Trump to Clinton or not voting at all. If in NC we'd turned some rural / ex-burb counties from 70% / 30% or 60 / 40 Trump to just 65 / 35 or 55 / 45 Trump, Clinton would have won NC. Gaston county, NC is a prime example. Not the hinterlands, really. It's right next to Charlotte. I'd guess MI, WI and PA would be similar. The 50 state strategy is not just all the metro areas in 50 states. It's everywhere.

[gollygee]

52. Yep, the rural rust belt will never vote for Democratic presidential candidates

There is no way to change that. That is not a group of people to waste time trying to sway. I live among and I am related to these people. They hate Democrats and are largely at least passively racist, if not actively. People need to read the book Sundown Towns to understand the rural upper midwest.

[realmirage]

60. Lol the rust belt states were blue

for a long time and they flipped red and you don't care to find out why, so I guess we can put 2016 as the democratic party's date of death

[gollygee]

62. The states are generally blue but NOT because of rural areas!

Rural areas are red and will always be red. It's urban areas and college towns that cause Michigan to generally go blue, and those are the only areas that ever have.

[Dustlawyer]

10. Agreed.

I don't think there is an issue of whether we can have both social and economic justice, we can. The problem is our Democratic politicians commitment to economic justice. Too many Democrats rely on corporate money to get elected and then have to pay the Piper at our expense.

[KPN]

23. Agreed! Although ...

I don't know think it's just having to pay the piper, it's personal greed and, frankly, immorality on their part as well.

[KPN]

25. Yup! We need to ignore the naysayers and work to make this happen ourselves.

[vi5]

30. The campaign gambled, and the campaign lost....

I don't believe that SOS Clinton was the one making these decisions, but she empowered and hired the people that did. Spending money and time in solidly red states or solidly blue states that could have been better spent in important, must win swing states.

As I stated in another thread, I am in deep, deep blue NJ and I saw ad after ad after ad, and had my door knocked on countless times and received countless phone calls. My parents are Dems in PA and they received next to none of it (although there were some last minute ad buys that were decent but I think by then it was too late).

The campaign made too big an assumption that she was going to win many of the former swing states that Obama won, despite it being a different time, a different political environment, and against a radically different opponent.

My biggest fear with the Clinton campaign was not the candidate herself. It was her history of empowering and hiring the wrong people. People who themselves seem to live in a bubble and try to draw the candidate herself into that bubble. People afraid to tell Ms. Clinton what she needs to hear even if it's uncomfortable. And I'm afraid that is what happened. They believed their own hype. And now we are all paying the price for it.

[radius777]

45. I can agree with this, I posted several rants against Podesta et al

who were awful in how they ran the campaign, more like a 90's style "school lunches" campaign instead of hammering on major issues of the economy, healthcare, terrorism, etc.

Also, they should have been far more being more aggressive with Trump, should've slimed him with his many scandals more than they did. They seemed to only focus on his women/groping issues more than anything else, aside from in the first debate, where she was excellent in focusing on his financial issues and foreign policy craziness.

She kicked off the general election campaign with a very good foreign policy speech in San Diego, that was hard hitting and showed off her policy chops and gravitas.

With all that said, every candidate is flawed, and she won all three debates and had large and steady leads with 11 days to go, until Comey/FBI/Rudy illegally interfered with the election, throwing the election to Trump/GOP (senate was lost also).

[TubbersUK]

2. K & R n/t

[baldguy]

8. The loudest people shouting to change the Democratic Party have never supported the Democratic Party

The majority of voters have rejected them.

[BlueMTexpat]

48. a million! eom

[pnwmom]

9. Hillary DID have a strong message for both social and economic justice.

She supported the $15 wage, unions, social security, medicare, medicaid, free college tuition, creating jobs, especially through investments in infrastructure, protecting the environment and investing in related jobs . . . in addition to "social justice."

And yet who won? The man whose party is against the minimum wage, against unions, against free college tuition, and wants to decimate social security, medicare, and medicaid.

Sorry, I don't buy it. If these voters, whose median income was higher than HRC supporters (despite living in lower cost areas), really were driven by economic anxiety, then they wouldn't have supported the guy whose policies will financially kick them in the teeth.

I think that they were identifying, consciously or not, with his blatant portrayal of white supremacy; or they saw him as a vehicle to achieve their conservative libertarian aims and didn't care that he based his campaign on racism, sexism, and homophobia.

[mountain grammy]

12. Sadly I agree.

It was like that from day one, his "build the wall" announcement and hours of free media. And, just when it looked like America wasn't buying, bam, Comey, which, in my opinion, only served to add another layer of confusion to an already rigged election. We've been had.

[Else You Are Mad]

15. Don't forget...

Most of the media's coverage of Hillary was her email and other so-called scandals while ignoring her economic policies. Had they focused their attention on her platform, middle America would have seen how she was going to help them and would have voted Democratic.

[KPN]

22. Hillary did have a relatively strong economic message.

But it never appeared genuine for the folks in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and other swing States where economic anxiety is high. People in those States who supported Trump do not have higher median incomes than typical Hillary supporters. She just didn't connect with those folks -- it's partly that simple.

[pnwmom]

42. She didn't connect and yet his racist, sexist message wasn't a problem.

That tells us something.

[KPN]

56. Yes, it tells us what was more important for some people.

[Garrett78]

40. Bingo! As I've written in this thread and elsewhere...

...a substantial portion of the electorate cannot be reached by the Democratic Party. People who think it's just a matter of educating folks, of presenting facts to the average Trump supporter, clearly do not grasp reality or how humans work. Facts backfire.

[pnwmom]

41. That's a really interesting, if depressing, piece. Thanks! n/t

[Garrett78]

43. Sure thing.

For the life of me, I don't understand why some can't accept that a sizable portion of the electorate simply cannot be reached by the Democratic Party. I figured that was as obvious as water being wet.

[JTFrog]

55. Yes, she had both while someone else kept saying that the social issues weren't important.

It was not Hillary that was off message. It was those attacking her non-stop that didn't want people to realize that she was offering exactly what we needed.

[whathehell]

14. Thank you.

Tired of the 'either/or nonsense.

[KPN]

21. Perfect!

[UCmeNdc]

16. These are all side issues..... The real problem is voting machines being hacked

These machines leave no factual records on how actual voters voted. They contain numbers that cannot be traced back to the original voter's preference.

That is a huge problem. So no matter what a candidate does or how you actually vote, someone else can pick who they want to fill the elected position.

This has to be fixed 1st.

[KPN]

20. Kudos for pointing out what should be obvious ...

especially to Democrats.

I get the grieving, but time to move on and stop scapegoating, folks. Critical self-assessment is the emotionally intelligent approach to analyzing our failures, not looking for and hanging our hats on excuses. The voter suppression, potential shenanigans are a problem, yes, but this election should have been a slam dunk ... and it wasn't. It's now time to get realistic ... including about the past 30+ years of relative failure on the economic front.

[vi5]

28. Obama managed to balance both messages just fine...

...and won a fair amount of rural, white voters in the process.

[Yo_Mama]

34. Yes, but in this election that did not happen, and now in dealing with the aftermath,

the OP is trying to address the argument that seems to be developing (on DU, of all places!) that it's one or the other.

Traditionally, the Dems have been for both. There is no reason why that shouldn't continue.

[vi5]

36. No, I agree completely....

..I was agreeing with OP in pointing out that it can be done, and in fact has been done in very recent elections. It's not that complicated. And definitely not so complicated that a national campaign by a seasoned candidate (who we were told time and again "has got this...don't worry) should not have been able to do it.

[radius777]

46. 2012 was a different universe

and even then Obama lost considerable wwc support from 2008.

the past 5 years or so have been some of the most racially divisive in the past 30 years or so, with many police shootings of unarmed PoC, the black lives matter movement in response, gay marriage approved in all 50 states, women in higher profile positions in business, academia and politics -

I agree with Van Jones that this was "white-lash" and had everythign to do with white nationalism as it had to do with the economic issues.

The same Trump voters who said their vote was about populism and anti-establishment still voted for establishment GOP senate candidates across the country, most of who are the typical anti-populist Reagan/tea party Repubs.

[Beearewhyain]

29. I absolutely agree

In fact, rather than being an either/or situation I would assert that they are mutually dependent. For what good is a right if you don't have the resources to exercise or defend that right?

[Yo_Mama]

32. It definitely is not. Thank you for posting this.

Economic justice and social justice are interlinked. We have a problem in this country - the powerful and the wealthy have too much power/money, and are gaining more. The weak and the lower income have too little power/money, and are losing power/money.

Things have not been going in the right direction, and our social problems are not quietly resolving on their own.

[Jersey Devil]

33. I think North Carolina proved you need both social and eco justice

Voters came out strongly against Gov Bathroom even though the same voters approved Trump's eco message over Hillary's. It should be noted that gov-elect Cooper also had a strong eco message that was lacking from Hillary's campaign.

[many a good man]

35. Democrats writing off half the electorate

A majority of white voters are hostile to social justice issues but Democrats must never abandon these causes for the sake of humanity.

But remember there was a time after the New Deal where these people voted Democratic. They voted Dem because of policies that showed a real improvement in their lives and their economic situations.

Dems lost white voters over social justice issues and then adopted more and more conservative economic policies. Now economic growth is centered in a handful of big cities while the rest of the country is left to rot. Many white voters are fed up over both parties because neither are helping them. Since neither side helps them economically they vote for the one who lowers their taxes and mirrors their cultural views.

Restore jobs and dignity to the people in these vast areas of the country and they will vote for you.

[pnwmom]

44. Trump won't be lowering their taxes. He's going to be slashing the taxes

of the 1%. And cutting into the safety net that is important to all working people.

[radius777]

47. working whites voted Dem back then because the party turned a blind eye

to civil rights, and put the focus of the white working class at the center of the party's identity, that stood in opposition to the party of Lincoln who freed the slaves.

When Dems turned left on social justice in the 60's white working class abandoned the party in droves, finally in the arms of the union-busting/free trading Reagan.

The Dem part then suffered landslide losses in the 80's, and was left in shambles, and so had to move on assemble a new coalition who would vote for social justice - women, PoC, gays, metro areas, young people, urban liberals, suburban soccer moms, pro-business moderates, etc.

The white working class abandoned Dems, not the other way around.

The Clinton/Obama coalition, which is city/metro centric, is the modern Democratic party, which has won 4 of the past 7 national elections, and 6 of 7 popular votes.

[Dems to Win]

37. We've got a ways to go before we can claim to respect ALL cultures

As a white person, I was pretty offended by a lot of Democratic squabbling over the past couple of years. Calling Bernie supporters white privileged, mocking my concerns as mere 'white people's problems,' POC writing articles about the 'white entitlement' of Bernie supporters, black activists posting pics of themselves drinking white tears, and of course, my 'white fragility' would be laughed at if I complained about any of it.

If we want to win in the future, we'll have to convince people we respect white rural hunting culture as much as we respect immigrant Muslim culture, for example.

[randome]

38. It's the messenger, not the message. Look at Trump for proof of that.

We need to clear the decks of septuagenarians from our ranks. The Millennials came out to support Obama, who had youth and dynamism.

The oldsters need to step aside so the new generation can take over. We have been fighting fire with fire, which makes it a toss-up as to who wins. It's time to up our game.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Stop looking for heroes. BE one.[/center][/font][hr]

[bravenak]

49. Yes

[Garrett78]

39. A substantial portion of (mostly white) America cannot be reached by the Democratic Party.

Precisely because of the Democratic Party's stance on social justice and economic justice issues. The Democratic Party will never achieve 100% support. There are millions of people living in an alternate reality; people who subscribe wholeheartedly to patently false beliefs. I'm talking at least 25% of the electorate. Have you ever watched videos from Tea Party rallies, for instance? Dems are not going to win over those folks.

[TheKentuckian]

61. True but that isn't an excuse to stop contesting for the ones you can even if they look like the

ones you can't.

Especially the ones who just voted for you the last go around.

[TheFrenchRazor]

50. correct. it is not either/or or us vs. them. nt

[CrispyQ]

53. Personally, I think they've focused on social issues more than economic ones,

and that's why they lost.

[PufPuf23]

54. Thank you RBInMaine for the positive and correct message. nt/kr

[mtnsnake]

58. Makes perfect sense

It's hard to believe that anyone would even have to point that out on a progressive forum, but apparently it does. Thank you for doing it!