On Progressive Politics: Its the Strategy, Stupid

[JHan]

On the eve of the Electoral College Vote when, for all my criticisms of the Electoral College , I hope the Electors remember their duty and responsibilities as *originally* conceived, I thought about how the Conservative agenda continues to survive in spite of most Americans preferring and depending upon policies that have been the hallmark of the Democratic agenda over the last 60 years.

So why hasn't conservatism been dumped into the bin of History as it should be?

Let's admit that on the left we have always "made perfect the enemy of good", shunning our allies who don't past the "political purity" test, and losing ground as a result. We cannibalized ourselves in 2000. We cannibalized ourselves again this year where the stakes were higher. The GOP must be laughing at just how easy it is to get the Left to turn on itself. Some have bought hook, line and sinker the canard that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are both the same - well now they'll see what "being the same" looks like with a GOP controlled congress and President.

This doesn't mean I can't criticize Hillary or the Democratic Party, I can do so easily, but the stakes were high this time around. So I don't blame Hillary - Hillary's agenda was the most progressive of any Democratic President ever. However purposefully crapping on a supposedly imperfect candidate had its effect. The false equivocation with her and Donald Trump had its effect. Congrats Progressives who made this happen, pat yourselves on the back. So many got distracted with #JillNotHill ( How did that work out ??) Undermining the eventual nominee , hitting at an incumbent establishment - well let's all enjoy the new establishment and all the pain it will wrought..because it was all worth it! After all the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are BOTH THE SAME/ sarcasm

We fail because our strategy fails over and over again and we should feel bad. That should be the lesson this year. But it won't be , because already the DNC Chair fight is shaping up to be - once again - all about purity politics, another opportunity to name-call and cast doubt on those who have worked hard for our causes instead of insisting that the two men in the running lay out their plan for us to retake congress. But by all means, let's keep learning all the wrong lessons by tearing each other down!

So I'll leave it to this writer to put in words all the rage I feel, what I see as some bitter truths we need to confront:

"The second CNN and FOX News called the election for Donald Trump, the engines that power the cottage industry of political second-guessing were fired up. Within minutes, a steady stream of simplistic hot takes began flying off the assembly line. This was especially true in the progressive areas of politics and punditry. Headlines like, “What The Democrats Got Wrong,” and “Progressives Need To Completely Reevaluate” were put together like a game of Mad Libs. Not wanting to be left out of the buzz of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, many elected Democratic officials jumped in and manned a station hoping to be promoted to pundit manager when the dust settled from the inevitable finger pointing and layoffs. The most common response from these opportunistic progressives has been, “Democrats need to learn how to talk to and attract working white class voters.” Senator Bernie Sanders has been one of the most adamant proponents of this strategy. He and every single progressive taking this tack are pushing a defective product. Don’t buy it! The problem is not the product or the message. The problem is too many progressives are complete idiots when it comes to politics and political strategy."

"If you win enough, then, and only then, can you begin to change the system and rules. To whine about the system not being fair when you don’t have the base and ability to change it will get you nowhere fast and keeps conservatives in power. This isn’t smart. In fact, it is outright stupid".

"“Progressives have no one to blame but themselves for the lack of a progressive government and policies. No one. They bitch and moan about not having FDR-like progress but refuse to give Democratic Presidents FDR-like majorities in Congress. They bitch and moan about the government failing them but they don’t do anything about making sure the party that hates and wants the government to fail from getting and wielding power. They pursue idealistic policy ideas without building the political infrastructure necessary to implement them. [bToo many have a fucked up political and moral calculus where they think a candidate who supports their causes 75% of the time is the same as one who supports them 0% of the time. Most of all, too damn many progressives refuse to acknowledge their role in all of this and make any changes. If you claim to be a progressive and your top priority isn’t keeping conservatives out of government, then you are as much the problem as conservatives for the government we have.”]

The point is to keep Conservatives out of Government. (Repeat 100x)

[vi5]

1. Here is what strategy was bad....

The strategy of putting money and time and effort and resources into states like Arizona and Iowa and Georgia, or even solidly blue states like my own state of New Jersey. Resources that could have been better spent in "swing" states that we lost by razor thin margins.

That is it. That is the beginning and the end of what went wrong this election. In short, assumptions and hubris did us in.

We won the popular vote by a lot.

We only lost those "must win" states by a ridiculously small margin. A margin small enough that some really solid GOTV could have shifted things in the opposite direction.

That was the only strategy that was bad this election. And like it or not that responsibility falls firmly within the Clinton camp. Not her directly as I would assume that is not something she herself would be in charge of, but still the responsibility of her staff and the people she hired and the people she charged with one job and one job only, and that is winning the election.

Everything else, every other discussion is nothing more than small details around the margins.

We don't need a major overhaul. We don't need to discuss purity or compromise. We need to discuss the proper allocation of resources and the need to do a full court press every election in every location. That is it. That is the area that we failed on.

There's the other issue of how complacent and lazy we get in between presidential campaigns and the fact that we focus myopically on the White House at the expense of everything else, but that is for a different discussion.

[JHan]

2. I agree that the pop vote lead proves that most people agree with the liberal platform..

I like that the writer I linked goes in on why even some who voted republican rejected the liberal agenda even * though they benefit from it - maybe if Obamacare wasn't called "Obamacare" and called something else less associated with a Democratic president.

Definitely hubris hurt us this year, without a doubt.

But I'm still smarting from a year long smear campaign against a woman who would have furthered the progressive cause, even if she had to contend with a GOP congress.

If I could see it, and millions of others could see it, there are no legit excuses for others not seeing it...

[vi5]

5. Obama needed to be a better salesman....

Great politician. Great policy wonk. Brilliant statesman. But he too often operated on very outdated, very wrong assumptions. The key ones being that 1) Republicans would operate and act in good faith and 2) If he played to pleasing the media/political class in DC that they would help sell the benefits of his policies around the rest of the country.

Both were, needless to say very, very wrong.

And the only area I disagree with was that it wasn't a year long smear campaign against SOS Clinton it was a decades long smear campaign. People have for well more than the past year known how they feel about her and nothing was going to change that. That was the issue that many people (myself included) had with her. Yes, on paper and in theory she is by all accounts and amazing woman and a great politician. But she has been since day one of Bill's first term had a massive target on her back that just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And many of us knew that was going to be extremely difficult to overcome. The people that didn't vote for her had that decided well before last year. If anything there were more people who came around to her side during the campaign than did not. More people that even voted for her against their own opinions and judgement simply because she was running against Trump. I absolutely do not believe for one minute that she lost more votes than she gained over the past year of campaign.

All any of us have is our own anecdotal evidence but I know a ton of people who before last year would never have voted for Hillary who did end up voting for her both because they legitimately came to like her and also simply because they hated Trump. I don't know a single person who before last year would have voted for her but changed their mind within the past 12-16 months. Not a one.

But at this point anything Hillary related is in the rear view mirror and we just have to keep moving forward. I honestly don't care what the DNC chairs beliefs are other than "Do they want to get all Democrats elected in every election in every location. If the DNC chair doesn't insist that candidates share their own beliefs or impose a purity test as far as fielding candidates then I won't support imposing one on them.

[Fast Walker 52]

4. but in fact her 50 state strategy was in part to expand the base and was planned

Remember-- to get Congress flipped too.

I thought that was a good thing.

I think the biggest mistake the Clinton team made was in believing the polls and not believing how many people could vote for Trump.

Overall, she was screwed by a number of factors and essentially was robbed by the media, Russian hacking, voter suppression.

[vi5]

6. Well obviously that didn't happen either...

Congress didn't flip and we lost the presidency.

Even if they believed the polls, the fact is that in most polls those swing states were showing too tight to take for granted. Definitely too tight to be putting resources into some of those other states that we were either going to win already or ones that we were never going to win.

[Fast Walker 52]

7. Fair enough. But did you read the piece?

Do you agree with it or not?

[vi5]

8. I more or less agree with it....

The thing is, I don't think anyone on the "lefter" end of the spectrum is saying we need to worry about the "white working class". The only place I really hear that coming from is the media or people toward the center who want us to be more socially conservative or reserved on identity issues.

I think Bernie in particular (and for the record I was not a Bernie supporter) was and is saying that we need to speak to the working class in general which encompasses all races, genders, and groups, and whose impact affects everyone. That's what the article is saying but it also seems to be implying that the more progressive end of the spectrum is calling for an appeal to the "white working class" when in reality all anyone is saying is that we need to better sell our economic policies, assuming that our candidates actually agree with them.

The issue I've had with the party in general the past decade or so is too many candidates willing to just say "Well yeah, I support that it's in the platform...." as far as economic issues but without actually selling those policies. Without pointing to the mountains of data and numbers that show that progressive policies work. I feel that's one thing that Clinton did wrong. I think it's really the one big thing Obama did wrong. I know that there's a lot of stuff that is too deep to go into without people's eyes glazing over. But the thing is.....it's not my job to come up with those things. The problem I have and that many have is that we have tons, TONS of highly paid people who are supposed to be experts on this stuff who seem to fail upward within the party and those are the ones we need to get rid of and start hiring people who can sell this stuff. I don't even expect candidates to come up with this on their own. But I expect them to hire and listen to the right people that have proven track records of good communication and not just loyalists who tell them what they want to hear.

Also, that article had waaaay too many typos and grammatical errors, but that's another issue entirely.

[oberliner]

14. She spent a lot of time and resources in Pennsylvania

As well as Florida and Ohio.

She outspent Trump by significant amounts in all three of those states.

[Fast Walker 52]

3. this piece actually is the perfect encapsulization of what I've been arguing for months

not only here, but on Facebook, endlessly.... so tired of arguing with stupid "progressives"....

[JHan]

9. I've no problem calling it out as stupid as well..

because it is,

it is forever stupid.

When I saw some of these same progressives sharing right wing talking points and memes and LOLing I knew we were up shit creek.

[JCanete]

10. The article sets up a straw-man by suggesting that Sanders thinks we should refocus

our efforts on the white working class. He has never propagated a notion that we should downplay our efforts for social justice and equality, and there is nothing in his rhetoric that points to what this person is saying. Not to mention, that’s pretty damn apparent in his actual policy positions. Sanders, in-spite of being the first candidate to first say “Black Lives Matter,” in-spite of being the candidate who wants to decriminalize drug use and rid ourselves of the for-profit prison system and overhaul our justice system, DID IN FACT pull white voters, not by compromising at all…simply by speaking truth to the things that actually ail them.

This person is also making the astonishingly harmful claim that people can’t be won over, that their own social consciousness can’t change. “Full Stop. Period.” Well there you go. He has established a barrier based on some intrinsic quality of a voter base, and now there’s no point in actually trying to scientifically get to the bottom of what makes them think or vote the way they do; that is just who they are. To adopt this kind of thinking is not only to misdiagnose a condition based upon rigid, un-inquisitive “common sense” thinking, but then to try to build a political strategy on-top of those faulty premises, and then boldly, blindly, to claim “It’s the Strategy Stupid.”

If Martin Luther King had thought this way, there would have been no reason to march. Civil disobedience would have been absurd in the face of that “reality.” But the truth is, people do change. We are very influenced by our cultures and our bubbles, but those can be burst. Our human history is a testament to the evolution of social mores and changing mindsets. Think about how we have evolved on homosexuality in our own lifetimes. This writer has simply drawn an arbitrary line and basically said that “those people” aren’t capable of change.

So…lets go on shall we?

Do you know what an impractical strategy is? Its one where you put all of your energy and effort into being the understudy for the part in some sociopath’s warped play. I do not give a crap how palatable the democratic message is to the power-brokers who will ultimately either fund their campaigns, or pour millions of dollars into the campaigns of their opponents to defeat them. Because being moderate for the sake of working within this system rather than working to change it does not equate to making things possible.

I would contend, and we have 20 years of evidence to support this, that it does the opposite. We are destined to forever by the minority party in Washington, because that is the role that we’ve always auditioned for, we just don’t know it. We play nice with corporations and they support us to an extent, and then they use their media arm to destroy us…to make it such an uphill battle that only the most charismatic human beings with the luckiest timing playing a perfect political game can thread the needle.

What’s the game here? Why it’s Democracy! You can’t have one if you only have a single ruling party. Its good for us to have a “choice.”

It does not matter how moderate our message is if we never have the levers of power in our hands anyway, and this election cycle and the media’s role in it should be pretty compelling evidence that at the end of the day, it has the biggest hand in deciding who the leaders of our free world will be.

And yet, we think we can play nice. And yet, we think we can court them and coax them with encouragements to throw the people a bone. THIS is the fantasy.

Either we take on the media that is destroying our democracy, or we keep understudying for a part in the sociopath’s play.

PS-Hillary Clinton running on the most progressive Democratic Platform we've seen didn't happen without Sanders and the left pushing our party in that direction. In fact, it never happens without somebody pushing for it. FDR famously said "make me" for a reason. People on the inside track need actual cover if not outright pressure to be progressive.

[JHan]

11. It doesn't matter who or how or what brought her more to the left, she was on the left.

Historically she has been on the left; If she wasn't sufficiently to the left at some other point in history it matters not:

The major truth of the article is that we are clueless.

We needed to not play cute and focus on winning and prioritizing what is important for us, not something a candidate said a zillion years ago, or something her husband did, or all the other trite nonsense some progressives served up in a year like this. It is up to us to make the right choices, not fling mud at allies whose positions are generally similar to our aims and goals.

"If Martin Luther King had thought this way, there would have been no reason to march. Civil disobedience would have been absurd in the face of that “reality.” But the truth is, people do change. " - Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement was based on good ole liberal values. I will fight for every American to get decent healthcare and while I understand the pitfalls of racism and why people think the way they do I cannot empathize with those who vote for man whose policies will throw people under the bus. I am not interested in empathizing with someone who scapegoats immigrants and demonizes them, even while I vote to make sure policies get passed which will improve their lives and mine. At some point voters have to own their BS.

P.S And the reference to Sanders in the piece dealt specifically with the reaction to the loss when Democrats and progressives lost their heads and without any evidence helped spread the damaging myth that we had no economic message.

This was false, this was a lie. And any progressive saying it deserves serious side eye.

[JCanete]

12. The article proves that we are clueless. Take on the fucking media already. Some small percentage of

progressives sitting out in the election is NOTHING compared to the influence that American Corporate Media had on determining the winner in this election, and NOTHING compared to its degenerative impact on the "informed voter" over the last 30 years. It is destroying our democracy. Just devastating it.

That you can't find empathy for people who do harm to others is fair. I think it's exactly the place that we need to find empathy because this is where it is hardest, and I think Dr. King had empathy for these very people. I also think that when you stop having it you start to think of them as monsters or other-than. You have put up a wall. Yes, the same kind of wall they put up. They can't find empathy for people that they already "know" are what's wrong with society; that they already "know" are bad people with bad designs. They know them by their works too. Just because their evidence is wronger than your evidence, doesn't mean that it is better when we do this.

the point is we start using our opinions of people as filters for our evidence.

[JHan]

13. I prove I have empathy by voting to help pass policies that benefit them...

I think about others when I vote. why can't they return the favor? What message will be perfect for these folks to understand?

They need their own epiphany. Maybe losing their medicare will do it, unfortunately that means millions of others will also suffer this fate. Gingrich has already promised that the GOP intends to undo FDR's policies. Perfect year to do it too - the historical significance is not lost on me - how could it escape millions of other Americans?

The media is corporatist - progressives already knew this and yet millions lapped up every bit of anti-Clinton anti-Obama propaganda they could find ,- this was their choice, many knew the options and the peril we faced and *Still* voted to harm our collective self interests, or decided not to vote or piled on the hate towards our candidate.

Instead of seeing ourselves as positive agents for change through political involvement ( which goes beyond voting for a President) we dehumanize our politicians and denigrate the whole process, without realizing that the less involved we are, the stronger the influence of special interests and power players.

We just lost the plot this year , like we did in 2010, and 2012, and 2014..

[JCanete]

15. No, the people don't know the media is corporatist. We don't tell them. They think the media has

a liberal bias, ironically, because the media has been telling them this for 30 years. They have manufactured this fact. If there is any sense that the media IS corporate in the public, that only serves their poor understanding of what liberal stands for. WE as a party, have abdicated the responsibility of educating people on this, and I'm sorry, that's not because we couldn't make a compelling case, its because it has been inconvenient for our party to point to the money for a very long time.

The whole process IS FUCKED. What about our politics today makes you think otherwise? Cynicism does decrease voting, you're right. Why don't we give people something to be optimistic about already, because trying to convince them that things aren't fucked is a lie, and a losing battle anyway. It just makes us look like part of the problem. The system is rigged against people, marginalized groups to the extreme, but everybody who isn't in the top 1% and we can't convince them that we are doing something for them when we are telling them that we are going to work with those very people who are screwing us to screw us less. You know who else they can't convince? Those very people they are going to work with to screw us less. We are a nice back-up plan should their a-team of hacks overreach. Then they have their second-string to give the people some modicum sense of change and amelioration of their suffering. Rinse, repeat.

[JHan]

16. I don't know how to counter the misinformation:

Last edited Sun Dec 18, 2016, 04:58 PM - Edit history (1)

But it has done its job which is foster distrust of Government, and Conservatives dislike Government. To destroy institutions, target people's faith in those institutions. The focus should be to get rid of* what ails us, fix what needs to be improved and fortify what already works.

I've accepted that moneyed interests and the 1% will want to involve themselves and exert influence, I expect them to. Rich people are citizens too, but the problem is when we, average citizens, opt out of the conversation and the grab for power by not showing up. Or when we quarrel and treat our allies as enemies because any plutocrat - depending on ideology- can take advantage of these divides. Imagine if we had a 100% voter turn out, there would be an immediate effect on all branches of government. So our grassroots activism has to deal with the civic ignorance that abounds and how opting out of political involvement contributes to "learned helplessness" . Citizens have to do their bit - we must always remember we have power, voting matters, despite what George Carlin says in a joke routine or anybody else.

If BOBusters think they had it rough this year, PUMA08 had even more legitimate complaints - I don't want to rehash bad blood and spill more milk, but the Dems need to rethink how nominees are selected - anything which reeks of selection by leadership ( and for me personally - caucuses) will leave a bad taste in the mouth ( to HRC's credit she again won the popular vote in the Primaries this year) So there are legitimate changes we can ask for at the operational level and in the hierarchy of the democratic party. But nothing supersedes the importance of acting cohesively to get our priorities on the agenda when the choices are so stark and the possibilities so perilous.

[JCanete]

17. There is nothing I disagree with really about what you just said. The very sad fact about

people understanding that our system is rigged is that cynicism sets in, and opting out reinforces that fact instead of redressing it. But when our leadership tells us that nothing is wrong with the system, that doesn't exactly promote trust or enthusiasm.

And when the leadership tries to shut the doors on that debate, and actually protect the status quo by doing so, it also starts to make people wonder whether or not they are being taken for a ride by a two-party system, both of which are too cozy( to different extents), with big money.

The "trust us" mentality does not work if we aren't given reason to trust. They tell us to make sure we get those blue dogs into office, and then the blue dogs become a problem, not a solution. They "cave" and support republican principles when we need the very solidified front you're speaking of, and they become hold-outs on policy that we are actually trying to pass, forcing us to water them down or add loopholes or conditions that may poison the legislation's function. Our party tells us to vote for them, and then on these boards and elsewhere, these very people become the cover for why we couldn't do better and for why we had to cede more ground to corporate interests.

And don't take that as me saying I am in favor of the perfect over the good. I'm not. I'm in favor of policy that doesn't keep us impotent as second fiddle in Washington. Incrementalism isn't actually a thing if you don't have the power to take those baby steps. I'm in favor of going after the corporations and their media, because anything else leads us back to the same place anyway. If we don't identify our actual common enemy, the media will just keep dividing us and conquering us on whatever grounds works. The solidarity you are asking for is impossible if we don't clip its wings...if we don't start showing people who's side it is actually on. That does kind of mean we have to be entirely on the other side.