Why did we lose?
We lost because our coalition broke down. It broke down because the Democratic party has abandoned a key constituency, failing to fight for its interests while nominally paying lip service to their concerns.
Union members and other working class people with similar concerns, shifted ever so slightly towards Trump instead of Clinton (when compared with Obama). They did this because they began to see Clinton, and the Democratic party, as a collection of global elites who were unconcerned about their livelihoods.
Trump saw that weakness and exploited it. He had a self-reinforcing explanation for every source of economic resentment there was. For those who wanted to believe immigrants were the problem, he pointed at immigrants. For those who wanted to believe the global bankers were the problem, he pointed at them. Those who knew there was a bi-partisan consensus that playing a global game of Risk to contain China and Russia was more important than ensuring people had jobs? Well he had an answer for them too. And the result:
Union households – long a stronghold of Democratic support – went for Clinton by eight points. That’s a 10-point drop from Obama’s total last time, and the lowest union support for a Democrat in the past 20 years. — Fox News
That is a stunning rejection of Hillary’s flip-flops on trade. Union households who had voted for the black Democratic president, who liked and trusted him, shifted their support to the billionaire charlatan because he said he would protect their livelihoods and they shouldn’t trust us because we were enthralled to Wall Street lobbyists who wined and dined us and hired us as well-paid lobbyists when we lost an election. This is why we lost the industrial mid-west as a whole.
Michigan
Unions: Voters from union households supported Clinton over Trump by a 16 point margin, 53 to 37 percent. That's a decline from previous elections, when margins in favor of Democrats were routinely 20 points or more.
Trade: A majority of Michigan voters said that trade generally takes jobs rather than creates them. Despite Trump's strong anti-trade rhetoric, only 53 percent of these anti-trade voters chose him, with 40 percent instead picking Clinton.
Ohio
Unions: Clinton's struggled with union households, normally a pillar of the Democratic coalition. There was no difference in votes between union and nonunion households today; in 2012, Obama won union households by 23 points.
— ABC News
But this was a symptom, not the cause. The cause of our loss was that the Democratic party has, over the past few decades, abandoned the working classes who looked to it to protect their economic interests. We have failed to protect unions from evisceration. We have failed to ensure industries that provide jobs at all skill levels stay in the US. We have failed to protect the safety nets our own party put in place during the FDR and LBJ administrations.
Union leaders, stuck with us. Why, I don’t know, probably out of institutional loyalty and because they fear the Republicans. For our part, we have done nothing for them for years. We’ve occasionally played defense against the worst anti-union GOP excess, but we have not helped them grow or truly been on their side since the 1990s. We richly deserve this drubbing.
Unless we reform ourselves, this break will become permanent and we will lose union members for good.
“Growing up we were very strong Democrats, but the Democrat party left us,” David Kemper said, standing at the back of a Ted Cruz barbecue near the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last week. He had traveled from Minnesota to the RNC to be with Nicholas, who was an alternate Texas delegate for Trump.
When the Kempers vote for Trump, they’ll be breaking with the leadership of their national unions, which have both endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. “I’m in the CWA, my wife is American Federation of Teachers, but we felt like the unions have left us, too,” said David Kemper.
Keep that last sentence in mind. Our fecklessness is about to undermine union leaders with their own membership. When that happens, there will be no going back. We will have lost the loyalty of organized labor, definitively.
PS. In a companion diary that should be out in a couple of hours, I’ll discuss what I think progressives should do now.
Comments
Nah, it was ALL the fault of the third parties!
The Third Parties made the Democrats lose, and will continue to make them lose until the Democrats kowtow properly.
I know it's true because that's what all the Democrats are saying, and they're never wrong.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
What you mean we . . .
I was not part of the losing side. The losing side abandoned me before the general election.
Who is this "we" you identify with?
It's not me.
Note: I think some of those numbers are suspect.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
Why did you lose?
Because your leadership is in deep, deep denial. The rank-and-file is in deep, deep denial too, because this has been going on for decades now and their misplaced loyalty has made them the sort of people who would vote for Franz von Papen if he had a (D) next to his name (while of course still reviling Hitler for appearances' sake).
Here's some reading while you're waiting in the lobby for the DNC doctor to call you in for your soulectomy:
http://caucus99percent.com/content/democrats-are-so-deeply-denial-they-m...
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-aides-loss-blame-2...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/09/rise-of-the-davos-...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/09/donald-trump-white...
http://www.inquisitr.com/3665286/are-we-seriously-just-going-to-let-debb...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/18/the-democrats-cant-defend-the-cou...
https://cassiodorusblog.wordpress.com/2016/03/23/book-review-selfas-the-...
The nice folks in charge seem perfectly happy with the way things are, and I don't see how you or any coalition behind you has any power to remove them. As long as the money spigots keep flowing they probably don't care if the Republicans control every legislative seat in America and all nine of the Supreme Court judges.
Your party is beyond saving, and the quicker you realize it, the better. Run out of that lobby, screaming with whatever voice you have left!
“When there's no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump's win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.” - Jean-Luc Melanchon
Thanks for sharing this here,
Thanks for sharing this here, Subir. And, though I can't claim to be a Kossack or Democrat any longer, I still appreciate the "we".
Thanks for this, Subir. Now its time for an intervention!
Thank you for posting this Subir. You caused me to go over to 'that place' and copy a diary that I wrote in Feb of 2016...and to address this diary to you. See how inspiring you are?
"http://caucus99percent.com/content/intervention-clinton-supporters-time-..." title="An Intervention for Clinton Supporters: Time for a Political Divorce!"
Sea Turtle
I found it . . . Yes!
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWuMevc6G4w]
E. Nelson Bridwell of Mad Magazine
is credited with writing the original joke in 1958.
The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?
Like you I remember it well ! It became a "meme", remember?
I voted Green. I have nothing to do with why the
Democrats lost this election. They lost millions of us prols BEFORE the election.
They didn't need us, remember? They certainly did need our vote though. Too bad.
I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa
I am with Amanda and demExited in July
and looked hard at the ballot, only voted locally for Democrats, otherwise no D votes above. They failed, good. Time for a takeover? The Party left me, hooking right.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Anybody who has to ask why Democrats lost
... is simply refusing to see the problem. The bunker mentality over at your other blogsite is a screamingly obvious illustration of why Democrats keep losing: their oblivious cluelessness. Their arrogant, rancid, hateful identity politics. Their dependence on cynical social wedge issue pandering rather than redistributionist economic policies in the new Gilded Age. They keep losing because they're not Bernie Sanders, and they beat him down and suborned him when he tried to save them.
Read this: Enough.
Or this: No Scapegoats. Time to Face Facts. (Warning: DKos link)
The first is a roadmap of how 2016 would play out, written just before the Iowa caucuses. The second is a post-mortem of the 2014 loss, which I could have reposted over there yesterday if it were worth the trouble. It's not. The reason Democrats lose is because they never learn anything from their losses, so they keep making the same mistakes over and over again. And they will continue to do so. To borrow a quote from the second link:
Please help support caucus99percent!
And this was 2014!
"The Democratic party will not change until it has absolutely no other choice. The leadership has proven over and over again that it would rather lose to a Republican than permit a progressive Democratic insurgent to win a primary. Losing to a Republican doesn't threaten the leadership's perks and position, for some unfathomable reason."
The Dems lost because they have been kissing the rumps of the
corporations and other wealthy donors. Not just insufficient support of unions, but of people getting beaten up by cops, retired people and the disabled who need more Social Security, the Indians at DAPL, peace in the Middle East, solutions for climate change, etc., etc. Surprise, surprise, if you give people lukewarm support, they give you lukewarm support right back.
Which is not to say that Trump is not also the representative of a very foul streak in America. See Shaun King's Twitter feed, where he is collecting racist/sexist incidents. The country is coming unglued. Children are imitating their elders. This is sickening.
Please check out Pet Vet Help, consider joining us to help pets, and follow me @ElenaCarlena on Twitter! Thank you.
This is not a winning strategy.
If indeed you plan "a companion diary", please notice this
is not a thing that can be fixed by outsiders, id est progressives, et cetera. The ploy of being inclusive so as to welcome us has been worn to death these past decades. Please be aware that many of us have been through this scenario a few cycles and the pure hubris of it all has worn very thin.
The above block quote was selected rather randomly . . . I could have used almost any other line.
roger that.
Basically, you're reiterating Thomas Frank's work...
...from "Listen, Liberal," whether you realize it or not.
Here's UMKC Law Professor Bill Black on Tom Frank/"Listen, Liberal" from late Tuesday night, early Wednesday morning.
(I've received written authorization from Black to reproduce his work, in its entirety, at my discretion.)
"Freedom is something that dies unless it's used." --Hunter S. Thompson
For a while I was thinking that Frank's book
might have made a difference had it come out a year earlier than it did. Then I remembered that Americans don't read books.
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
I'd put it a little differently.
Our elites don't read or see anything that doesn't confirm their belief in their own deity. Thomas Frank and Chris Hedges and Cornell West unload regularly on these elites and thus will never, ever be read by the High and Mighty.
Don't suppose you can get it on Audible. ;)
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
We?
How did I suddenly become part of some amorphous mass that encompasses neoliberal scumbags like Hillary, Donna Brazile, Tim Kaine, Evan Bayh, etc? I've known for literally decades that such people don't represent me, and I certainly don't in any way, shape or form identify myself with them.
And hey, it's not exactly news that the Clintonian "New Democrats" have kissed off the working class vote. Apparently some bean counters at Neolib Central concluded they just weren't necessary any more in order to assemble a winning electoral coalition, so they were flipped into the basket of "disposables." All this has been known for a long time.
Question is, what - if anything - are the Democrats now prepared to do about it? Since the news media is already pimping such reliable corporate tools as Kaine and Corey Booker as potential prez candidates in 2020, my guess is that they'll fall back on the time-honored strategy of finding more effective and convincing con artists, such as was used so effectively with Obama.
Actually trying to advocate for the "little guy" in an honest and effective way would be highly problematic, since it would go against the express wishes of those whose hands are on the money spigots. Which not only fund campaigns, but provide lots of gifts and goodies, jobs for spouses, lucrative post-elective lobbying gigs, and so forth. Today's typical politician is nothing if not an ardent lover of the good life!
People like Cenk Uygur will predictably bleat on about how Democrats have some great moral obligation to re-connect with their populist roots and start advocating for the little guy again, but what changes occur will be half-hearted and mostly symbolic. The system almost requires being on the take in order to be a serious player, and anyone who's on the take can hardly bite the hand that feeds, or do anything to greatly displease their corporate paymasters.
It's almost like we're all stuck in an endless loop inside a Joseph Heller novel - just hope someone can point me to the exit, because I sure as hell don't know where it is.
inactive account
Green Acres is next turn to the left, my friend.
stein - baraka
2020
you just need to row to Sweden....
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
Perfect!
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
There is no "we" in the dem party
They didn't lose because they're out of touch. They lost because racists and misogyny. Haven't you heard? Fuck, they're already floating the idea of Tim Kaine running in 2020. They're fully prepared to lose to Trump a second time by doing the exact same bullshit.
I'm not part of the "we" that lost; I'm not a democrat
and I didn't want Hillary Clinton to win. I was actually sad and depressed at the idea of her winning. I also didn't want Trump winning either. I was prepared to feel despondent, depressed, and hopeless no mater which of them won. And like most I expected it to be the Clintons and I felt resigned to that. I was stunned when we started to see that Trump would actually win. I wondered just how bad it would get with him as president.
But then I made my way over to check out Daily Kos on election night, to watch their reactions as the results came in and they realized they lost. I have to admit that I did smile a little at reading some of names I remember as being especially obnoxious and haughty about Her Ladyship earlier this year, who were flipping out that she was going to lose.
But then I saw people talking about how they were uncontrollably weeping, throwing up, contemplating suicide, raving mad, and simply terrified. They have bought the scary monster Trump campaign theme like it was real and some of them were having complete meltdowns. That just made me feel sad and also angry, at the Clintons and their fear-based messaging.
I thought how awful that the Clintons and democrats ran a scorched-earth campaign of making Trump out to be the new Hitler, and that real people believed them and are now actually so afraid that they are thinking about suicide because she lost.
Then I saw the denial and excuses start rolling, the blaming of everyone except the candidate, the Clintons' policies and history of terrible decisions and bad judgment and dishonesty, and the democratic party for forcing her nomination. Zero recognition that they simply nominated the wrong person.
And I realized that I am actually glad she lost. I don't like Trump or trust him, but I *know* that had the Clintons been validated with a victory in this election, we would be in at least as much trouble and likely more. I want them and the rest of the Clinton dynasty to Go. Away. Forever. They lost for all the reasons we said a year ago she would lose. It's not hard to figure this out. But the democrats are useless and clueless. And so are Hillary apologists on Daily Kos. Just hopeless and dull as dishwater. I have basically no hope they will get better.
Trump's election night speech was weird, but he talked about a few things like massive spending on infrastructure rebuilding across the country. I can't wait to see him ask his republican congress for funding for that! And he didn't invoke God. That was nice to see for a change out of an American president-elect.
So I say, good riddance to the Clintons. They lost because they suck and deserved to lose.
The democratic party can either drastically change, or it will die. I don't much care which anymore, but it appears they are going to choose die. Apparently they hope that Trump will be so bad that they will be able to just run with more of the same in 4 years and beat him then. I don't see them changing, and so they just need to keep losing until they disappear.
That is right! (and well-written to boot)
exactly what I experienced. Probably many others felt the same.
thx .
stein - baraka
2020
The planet needs someone good to win
All the other stuff that trump will do can be undone in time. But we don't have time to fix the climate.
The defeat of Washingtons carbon tax reinforces for me that we can't deal with the climate until we deal with inequality.
In other words, we are completely fucked.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
Friend, your party is a complete fraud.
The Demoncratic Party is like the Republican Party: it is a psychological operation to redirect energy best directed at the oligarchs and their brand of "capitalism".
Trump or Clinton, they always win.
And those with identities will always lose. Because we all have one identity:
we are tools of the elite.
Peace and love be with you, reader.
WTF, Subir?
We didn't lose. Shillary and her Fraudsters lost. Are you one of the Hilbots? Your essay "Hillary is not the enemy" certainly bore the stink of such a position. We lost--the 99ers. Fucking DumbocRATs lost. Trump won. Get a grip. The donkey party is an ass--adapt or die.
Subir, most here are not dems.
It's not our party. The dems lost because they insisted on running a flawed candidate. The dems lost because they refused to run Bernie. The dems will continue to lose because they are tone deaf and don't give a rats ass about the 99%. We thought only the rethugs were that way, but the dems rose up to meet the challenge and now we have President Herr Drumpf.
Try and change your party til the cows come home. A new party is in order, now. A party of, for, and by the people. Until then, get used to living in American hell.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
Hillary lost because she broke the law and pay-to-play
She would have won if she wasn't a criminal and sold out the State Dept to the highest bidder.
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." - Groucho
You are so mean and cruel to Her, it's a sin.
But somehow I am able to forgive you.
stein - baraka
2020
Union members and other working class people
oh really?
reallly.
no fucking shit, really? you're just now figuring this out. that clinton has the populist appeal of a toilet full of bear shit.
WELL DONE SUBIR. CLAPETTY CLAP CLAP.
GIANT ALL-CAPS SIG
I think you underestimate the
I think you underestimate the toilet filled with bear shit. I mean how does one toilet train a bear? How does the bear sit? It raises interesting questions beyond just the initial disgust.
Kinda wondering if bears can be potty trained now.
your best bet, perhaps
is asking the OP. he seems to know many things about bear shit, bullshit, and perpetual nonsense.
GIANT ALL-CAPS SIG
We tried to tell them.
We tried to use the "largest progressive" blog as a tool to warn them not to destroy Bernie. Kos got his money and his marching orders, and he silenced our voices. The Democratic Party and the so called progressives threw us under the bus.
I am so happy Hillary and her bootlickers lost. I am meh that Trump won. I mourn and am fearful of the GOP sweep. I squarely and solely blame the Clintons and the Democratic Party for this catastrophe. They insisted on running the only person in the world disliked more than Trump. The Democratic Party needs to die and be replaced with a Party of and for the 99%. Look at how great their losses beginning with Bubba. They need to be fired. They can't win. We need a whole new party for the working/middle class, and Bernie was it.
I was a Democrat for so long, it is hard to remember that I'm not anymore.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
the only person in the world
yeah. pretty much spot on.
i'm frankly terrified of pence + congress. trump? not so much. i think the general hysterics, while delicious, are pretty well unfounded.
one pundit (don't remember who in the blizzard of politics over the last few days) brought up the point that psychologically, above all else, trump has a deep need to be liked. he's extremely defensive when he's not. i think that's a pretty good argument for why he's going to wind up being a moderate at worst. people need to keep in mind that he was a democrat for many, many years. corporate, yes, but not a scary right-winger like his veep.
and no, i don't buy his campaign rhetoric, don't think he's a psychotic racimisogynist, don't think he's going to nuke anyone. that's clinton campaign/establishment propaganda that we need to flush.
GIANT ALL-CAPS SIG
Dude, why are you here ?
Seriously, you have driven me out of deep lurk state to ask,
really, why are you here? No one gives a hoot what you have to say, and there is no "royal we" here.... you seem infected.
Rant off.
Peace -
Murph
it's a fair question.
stein - baraka
2020
I'm glad Subir posted this here.
Not because I agree with it, but because it is good to have dissent.
Edited - misspelled original posters' name - regrets, Subir.
Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.
Will Markos Be A Pallbearer For The Dem Party Funeral?
Because I really want a pic of that.
And when is the burial? The rotting corpse of the Dem Party is really starting to stink. Hahahha.
Donnie The #ShitHole Douchebag. Fake Friend to the Working Class. Real Asshole.
Why? Dude. You asked for it.
stein - baraka
2020
(Edit)
The lowest moment in the campaign
was Her request for $1.00 contributions. Her party loved that tactic. Using the little people's own tiny dollars to cover up their oligarchical contribution structure.
Nothing illustrates the relationship of the Democratic Party to it's middle class base than their craven request for struggling people to give up a buck, acknowledging that is all they could give.
I will not concern myself about the abusive democratic machine. It needs to be hauled off to the garbage dumpster.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
As others above have asked
Who's this 'we' of which you speak?
Not being a Democrat, and all.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
If you seriously want to understand, subir
why people here don't consider themselves part of this "we" of which you speak, please read this snippet from a long-time Kossack in one of ExpatGirl's purge diaries:
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/11/10/1596053/-WTF-Is-Wrong-With-Yo...
The Coalition of the Ascendant crap that Democrats have been consoling themselves with for 20 years as they shrank and shrank has now so deluded some people that they think they're going to win elections with around 25% of the voting population. They have drunk so deeply of the kool-aid that they think a coalition of AA, Hispanic and Asian voters will put them permanently in power as if those groups were monolithic and all that able to get along with each other in the first place. Since the main spouters of the CoA bromide are elites who congratulate themselves on the diversity of their milieu while laughing at anyone, white, black or brown, who doesn't drive a Tesla, it's clear that the Democratic Party will follow Identity Road all the way to Whigville. They distract from class-based politics because they themselves are quite comfortable occupants of the Valued Servant Class of the 1%.
I know I voted against every Democrat on the ticket, Green where I could and Republican where I couldn't. A stake needs to be put through the heart of that corrupt institution because it currently stands as the biggest impediment to progress in the country if not the world. Once the Dems are done, we can take on the Republicans who have very nearly destroyed themselves in this election.
The Democrats lost because they
ignored, suppressed, and manipulated the results of their own primary. Period.
Dem umbrage, rants, delusion:
WikiLeaks Podesta is featured in Daily Caller article, complaining that MSM treated Hill cruely with bad press, boosting Trump's chances. That along with dastardly James Comey's false FBI threats right before the election, ruined Hill's chances. Also, Donna Brazile gave DNC peptalk yesterday about regrouping for 2020 (I kid you not), when someone named Zach shouted: "That's because you backed a flawed candidate." On another note, Bernie is pushing Keith Ellison to be next DNC head, while corporate sellout, Howard Dean, is pushing himself.
http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/10/top-clinton-aide-loss-most-devastating...
http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/10/dnc-staffer-wails-on-donna-brazile-in-...
So as you can see,
All the damage that Bill Clinton did to the party cannot be repaired. The Democratic Party is now the party of big business and Wall Street. There is general agreement here that the Democratic Party must die and be replaced by a party of and for the 99%.
If there is a force moving to do that, count me in. If it is Howard Dean, the big pharma lobbyist, is selected to run the DNC because once upon a time he had our support, count me out. A conservadem lobbyist and Hillbot is not the face of reform.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Good summation, dkmich.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
A lot of defecting union workers
may also be affected by the Clinton machine's deliberate corruption of union leadership.
The leadership of several unions (NEA to name a big one) deliberately didn't poll their members during the primary ... instead throwing up edicts that Clinton was to be supported and Sanders thrown aside. And this was arranged in back-room deals with the Clinton Squid, raising the specter of purchased endorsements. There is zero doubt that pissed off a large number of union members.
Clinton didn't just damage the Dem party. She damaged unions and other progressives orgs across the country. It will take decades to repair that.
SHE lost. The DEMS lost. YOU lost. Not me. Not we. Not us.
The coalition broke down because the bullshit became patently obvious after eight years of deflections, obfuscation, excuses, and backstabbing. By refusing to hold Obama accountable for his broken promises and betrayals, the Democrats sealed their own fate. By nominating Hillary Clinton, the poster child for corruption, lies, neoliberalism, and the military industrial complex, they showed that they had no interest in safeguarding the future or protecting the people--the working class, the poor, people of color, the LGBT community, the oppressed--that they claimed to care most about. By completely rejecting the desires of the base--young people, liberals, African Americans, Latinos, union members--and catering to the 1% and establishment Republicans, the Democrats undercut their own chances by taking us for granted and thumbing their nose at the voters that they absolutely needed to win over. Hillary lost ground with every single one of those groups, and that is what cost her the presidency. She lost solidly blue states, most of which had not voted Republican for decades.
Even worse, a whole bunch of you who absolutely knew better still fell in line, violated your espoused principles, and voted for her anyway simply because you were scared of the carnival barker. Part of me is actually glad that Trump won, so that now we can get to the real work of creating a real progressive alternative in this country, whether it's in the Democratic Party or not, to Republican insanity. I really hope that you and the others that have chosen to work within the party structure understand that those of us that DemExited are not going to tolerate anymore of this Clintonian, Third Way bullshit. If the Democrats want us to work with them for the greater good, they don't get to rig the process, dictate terms, and make veiled threats about what's going to happen if we don't vote for their preferred candidate.