Independents abandoning the Democratic Party
Submitted by gjohnsit on Mon, 04/24/2017 - 1:18pm
Bernie Sanders has warned the Democratic Party that they need to reach out to independents. Based on a recent PEW survey, it's become critical.
Seven-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (70%) now express a favorable view of the Democratic Party. However, these ratings of the party among its backers are now lower than at any point since December 2014, after the Democrats’ midterm election loss. As recently as January, 82% of Democrats and leaners held a positive view of the Democratic Party, and fully 87% did so in October.This decline is most pronounced among Democratic leaners. In January, about seven-in-ten (73%) Democratic leaners said they viewed the Democratic Party favorably; that share has fallen 18 points to just 55% today, one of the lowest ratings the party has received from its leaners over the last two decades.
That's just in 2017!
The Dems rejection of Sanders and a real progressive agenda could end up meaning a complete wipe-out in 2018. Combine this with the WashPo survey that the Dems are out of touch.
Only a progressive insurgency can save the Dems now.
Comments
They can continue to keep digging or come to eureka.
But even with a Come-to-Jesus moment now, they have so squandered trust that it may take several (losing) cycles still. I have no trust in DNC, Perez, Cuomo in NY. Tainted, all. With money-bag dye.
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.
The Dems not only need a progressive insurgency
but the overthrow of the establishment has to be very public, i.e. the exact opposite of what you will read on TOP.
Don't write off the Dems yet. Remember the GOP is still likely to grasp defeat from the jaws of victory.
WE need a progressive insurgency.
I'm not sure Democratic politicians do.
No, scratch that. We need a liberal insurgency.
No, scratch that. The country needs liberal outcomes.
While I sympathize with your intent
I'm going to have to take exception with conflating liberal with progressive. I really think new definitions are needed re: these two labels.
To me liberal is TOP.
It is the DNC, Third way DCCC, establishment Democrats. Of which I am no longer a member.
Progressive is the Sanders wing of the left.
The Green Party
The Social Democratic wing.
Even the Socialists.
The people on the right see no difference between liberals and progressives, or the left generally.
We must counter this perception. It is like the left viewing the right as homogenous, no difference between the Teapartiers and Establishment Republicans or even Libertarians.
There is way to much confusion and it is dividing all of us in subtle ways that is a roadblock to joining together to fight a common a d powerful enemy. Great wealth.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
I don't usually conflate.
The post of mine to which you replied clearly recognized that "liberal" and "progressive" were different words whose respective meanings were different and distinct from each other. That's the direct opposite of conflating those two words.
As for the respective meanings of "liberal" and "progressive:"
https://caucus99percent.com/content/liberals-must-not-say-liberal-left-p...
https://caucus99percent.com/comment/260113#comment-260113
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liberal, including https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liberalism
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/progressive
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/whats-the-difference-betw_b_9...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism--all of it, but especially:
The Democratic Leadership Council think tank was "progressive." Its very first offshoot is called the Progressive Policy Institute. http://www.progressivepolicy.org/issues/
Another of its offshoots is called Third Way. http://www.thirdway.org/
@HenryAWallace No outcomes without
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I did not say the country would get the outcomes it needs.
I said only that it needs them.
As you and I discussed a couple of times before, I think it may be too late, even for insurgency. Emphasis on may, but I see no signs of a population ready to wield pitchforks over liberal outcomes. BLM, maybe. If I had to educate my son about how to behave to a cop who stops him for speeding or running a red light lest I receive him in a body bag, I would rise up over that. Economic stuff doesn't seem to be moving anyone to buy bulletproof vests and gas masks, though.
That would, I think, take some combination of the Sixties music/show business effort and Thomas Paine and the Forties war films and a fourth factor I can't identify yet. Then, maybe people would rise up? Good luck putting that together. And even then, we'd have to figure out how to escape detection in the fundraising, planning and recruitment stages. Yeaaahhhh. I'm not holding my breath.
establishment overthrow
And that overthrow of the establishment, Turd Way and all, must include TOP, in my humble opinion.
(I realize I'll probably see pigs fly first....)
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
When pigs fly
.
Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.
ROTFLMAO!!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
But how do you overthrow conformity
when machine-like private and public conformity is the great prize, the acme of achievement?
According to the Dem PTB, they've been reaching
out since at least 1991, to independents--all of whom Democrats they imagine to lean heavily right--to Republicans and, above all, to big donors.
The most iconically blue state after going for McGovern in 1972 was Massachusetts. I believe, though I have not checked recently, that the largest group of registered voters in Massachusetts is registered "unenrolled," which is the Massachusetts version of "independent," or "not a member of any political party."
In any event, the large number of unenrolled registrants in Massachusetts, which has gone blue in Presidentials for decades, except for Eisenhower and Reagan, should be proof positive that not all indies lean right. Many of them are leftists who are just too disgusted with New Democrats to be able to register Democratic anymore. But, the Dem PTB know that as well as I do, or better. They don't care. They want neocon policies in this country, even if they lose elections.
A false paradigm
All presumptions by the Dems start with the assumption that 1) Dems occupy The Left, and 2) the Repubs occupy The Right.
So therefore any indi/swing vote must be to the Dems right.
The idea that the Dems have moved too far to the right and left their base abandoned is not even considered because (see Rule #1 above).
It's circular logic, greased with corporate money.
I wrote a diary on Kos 9 years ago or so about how
There is more space to the left of it than there is to the right.
@LaFeminista Correct, but the
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
What they say does not reflect what they know.
I think they know exactly what is going on, and probably know a lot more than we do.
@HenryAWallace Both you and gjohnsit
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
The Democratic Party's problems do not concern me
I'm for an alternative, I cannot any longer believe anything that comes out of that neo-liberal infested rats nest.
A new consensus
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Brand New Congress isn't enough
They aren't really free of the Dem Establishment, and the DE is still fighting their little difference.
We need a lot more than the BNC is offering.
@divineorder Not all that new; it's
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
The national Dem apparatus stands for nothing,
except maintaining their phony baloney jobs (h/t Mel Brooks). They loathe the left. They would burn down the party before they allow the left to have a meaningful seat at the table, let alone run the show.
Forty five years later, the national Democratic party still cannot shake the notion that a more liberal approach will equate to a Nixon vs. McGovern result a'la 1972.
When Charles "Chucky" "Chuck-Chuck" "Chuckles" Schumer said that Hillary will pick up 2 moderate Philly Repub votes for every steelworker's vote she loses in Pittsburgh, he was simply parroting the "conventional wisdom" that is actually believed at the DNC. They still think that if they just lean a little further to the right, they'll pick off enough Rethugs to win.
They are so full of shit, it makes me want to puke. They'll never get it. Which self-preserving genius is going to have an epiphany? Tom Perez? Donna Brazile? Howard Dean? Nancy Pelosi? Chelsea Clinton? A party that has nothing to do with the Dems is the only way. Is there enough time? Enough interest? Beats me, but I'm for the kind of change that cannot and will not come from the 2017 version of my grandfather's once beloved Democratic party. Sad, but true.
"Just call me Hillbilly Dem(exit)."
-H/T to Wavey Davey
Speaking of McGovern. My first vote for president.
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001705.html
The democratic party as a progressive New Deal institution was mortally wounded in 1972. Not unexpected that later much of this base that destroyed McGovern then voted for Reagan--known as (edited) the "Reagan Democrats".
Upton Sinclair & EPIC
Same shit.
Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.
I worked with a guy who was (D) precint captain in Chicago back
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
oh man I remember those cards.
I remember reading about some of the shit McGovern got. One was that he was one of thee most pro-union democrats. And the major unions back stabbed him.
Yupz.
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Harry Truman
While Harry Truman's truism keeps on keepin' on: given a choice between a pseudo-GOPper running as a "Democrat" and a genuine GOPper running as such, Americans will always choose the latter! From Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump, Truman's truism has held fast every time. It's why Perpetual Goldwater Girl Hillary Clinton wasn't elected in 2016.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
I don't believe that they think that. I believe they want
the nation to be neocon because that enriches them. The McGovern thing is a story they tell Democratic voters, many of whom sadly believe it. When I first broached Sanders to a friend during the primary, she replied, "I love Bernie Sanders. I just don't want another McGovern in the general election." She had never heard of the Democratic Leadership Council.
I sent her some links and managed to persuade her not only to vote for Sanders in the primary but to work for him. But....the rest is history. One of the links I sent her: https://www.democraticunderground.com/12778825
Both the thread starter and the replies are good, I think.
Sorry, but looks like Clintons/Obama gave party a permanent STD.
Democrats since the loss of the election are re-playing Clinton's tactics and methods (RussiaRusiaRussia). Obama, stay with the cool rich people with Perez. Like with the convention platform committee, stack the unit commission so the Clinton wing wins everything due to their numerical advantage (forget about superdelegates going away). The rejection of single payer and Medicare-for-all. Clinton's communication director saying the protests are definitely not about $15/hr min. wage (hear that SEIU which continues to worship at the altar of Hillary). The STD looks to be permanent.
OT but Obama the war criminal is back, can't stay away for even
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
The Community Organizer who sat on the board of
Annenberg and the "Constitutional law" lecturer who signed the bill de-funding ACORN that almost landed in the Supreme Court of the United States. The same ACORN that he worked with to help get himself elected.
Please.
Doesn't that violate the Act that they say Trump violated?
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Sorry, reports say both will attend same event.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/328220-obama-to-join-ge...
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Just reading the "Obama" Foundation, gives me the willies.
Especially after having seen the influence-peddling and money-laundering operations of the last Democratic president's actions out of office.
What exactly is, or more to the point I guess, who exactly are the Obama Foundation folks, in terms of funding and their "board"? Think this is the first I'm seeing that name in print.
And, one is also forced to wonder, how much will the Obamas take in, since the Clintons used their position to boondoggle tens of millions? What a disgrace. Compare the Clintons to the Carters, if you really want to get angry.
Sadly, serving the people while in Office or Congress has become only, don't disrupt the status quo and you'll be able to cash in big-time when you come greased back through the Revolving Door as a lobbyist or "consultant".
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
That's the idea! A parallel presidency!
You don't even have to be elected. Just wear a suit and follow the script. You already know the door they slide the talking points under, and this time there's no term limit.
Let them die like the Whig Party!
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
I'm stunned that it's that high.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver