A disturbing look at today's Democrats
The NY Times had a good article about the state of today's Democratic base, and it explains a lot.
Even as recently as 1976, according to data from American National Election Studies, the most affluent voters, the top 5 percent, were solidly in the Republican camp, 77-23. Those in the bottom third of the income distribution were solidly Democratic, 64-36.In other words, 41 years ago, the year Jimmy Carter won the presidency, the Sanders proposal would have made political sense.
But what about now?
In the 2016 election, the economic elite was essentially half Democratic, according to exit polls: Those in the top 10 percent of the income distribution voted 47 percent for Clinton and 46 percent for Trump. Half the voters Sanders would hit hardest are members of the party from which he sought the nomination.
The problem for the Democratic Party is that “them” has become “us.”
In the past, Democrats could support progressive, redistributive policies knowing that the costs would fall largely on Republicans. That is no longer the case.
You want to know why the Democratic Party has no economically progressive message?
It isn't just because they are corrupt (although that is part of it).
It's because the base they represent is now the same as the Republican base. Their policies reflect their voters.
That explains why reforming the Democratic Party is such a monumentally difficult task.
It also means that a vast majority of the public has been entirely left behind by both parties.
And if that wasn't clear enough for you, check out today's Politico article.
But the tunnel-vision focus on these Obama-Trump voters as the only path forward for the Democratic Party ignores a major opportunity. In the six months since the election, we’ve obsessed about Obama-Trump voters but completely ignored their inverse: the Romney-Clinton voters.
Who are they? Romney-Clinton voters are, generally speaking, college-educated suburban professionals: lawyers, doctors and businesspeople. They voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, but switched to Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The dark and dismal future of the Democratic Party is the Republican Party circa 2012.
On a related note, Elizabeth Warren's interview on TYT was enlightening.
Elizabeth Warren was asked in a TYT Interviews segment what the Democratic priorities are for the 2018 midterm elections. Her answer was not jobs, housing, a 15 dollar minimum wage and a right to form a union, clean drinking water, raising the corporate tax rate, or anything else we might expect from a “progressive” politician. Rather, the very first thing out of Warren’s mouth was, “The Russia thing!”
Warren spouts off the standard Democratic Party nonsense about Russia “hacking into American systems” to steal the election for Trump. She spends the remainder of the answer talking about why the Democrats are better than the Republicans. No vision or tangible policy position for the working class, the poor, or the marginalized is offered.
Warren also declined to endorse Bernie Sanders if he runs for president in 2020.
Warren is just one step removed from being yet another corporate Democrat.
On a lighter note, Hillary is having a sad.
Hillary Clinton’s inner circle is concerned that the “resistance” that cropped up in the wake of President Donald Trump’s electoral win isn’t embracing the failed Democratic Presidential candidate as their de facto leader...
But according to sources close to Clinton’s inner circle, she’s yet again failing in her quest to win over motivated Democrats. POLITICO reports that her top aides are getting frustrated that they simply can’t force progressives to adopt Clinton as their leader.
ROTFL!
The response to her efforts to internalize the “resistance” language and appropriate their mission has been almost wholly negative. Everyone from mainstream media figures to superstar political strategists felt she struck a wrong note in failing to take responsibility for her loss, alienating her supporters and driving progressive Democrats further away than they’d been in the last months of the election.
Comments
Could easily be a prospectus
for a certain orange cesspit.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Warren not only drank a glassful of the koolaide
I think she drank the whole damn pitcher-full. The more this woman sticks around and opens her mouth in public lately, the less I think of her. I used to think she was intelligent. She talks like she's high on cocaine in this video.
She wants to be President
in the worst way - by turning into a CorpDem.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
Good grief! Liz needs to lay off the pep pills.
native
Thanks for linking it but i didn't make it through,
my God, and she's one of the "good ones?" The Republicans, the Republicans, the Republicans - almost as bad as Russia, Russia, Russia. She's an idiot. Maybe all that hand waving is her testing out how she'll "position" herself for 2020, eh? Sure, she's passionate, and she really CARES about all the people those evil, evil, evil Rooskie loving Republicans are busy shitting on. Can't quite even bring herself to utter Medicare for All, although maybe I missed that.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Elizabeth
JaneElizabeth, you ignorant €#%¥!.I hate to bring this to your attention, but if you were sincere about foreign countries interfering with our elections, then you need to address your remarks to Israel. If anyone running for congress doesn't tow Israel's line, they don't get to win. Period.
As a disabled, poor person, I'm very aware of what the republicans want to do in regards to the social programs that I'm on. But, I want to know what the democrats have even tried to do when they were the majority to put back the money into these programs after they were first raided by Bill Clinton's crime bill, as well as his gutting of welfare.
As for Hillary,
She did take responsibility for her loss, BUT she quantified it with a BUT
Putin isn’t going to make you homeless or kill you or deny you health care.
Your government will allow it to happen though.
Wow. The Resistance is eschewing Hillary?
That's fucking hilarious, no pun intended.
"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
LOL
Even the McResistance doesn't want Hillary.
That's just one step too far for the faux movement.
It's like the Tea Party circa 2010. It has to keep up appearances.
I think the numbers show that the rich elites own both
the parties, basically.
The very rich are crazy and the upper-middles are deluded--a match made in hell.
"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
That's it in a nutshell.
"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"
Warren is letting her inner Republican show.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020
"Even as recently as 1976..."
LOL. That was over forty years ago.
For even octegenarians, that's half a lifetime.
And the NYT is just now figuring out that the Dems have become the (second) party of capital?
Maybe by 2056 the NYT will realize that in 2016, Sanders proposal STILL made political sense - just not for most NYT readers, who also happen to be in the top 10%.
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?
The 99% isn't really the Times core audience
if you think about it.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
@Steven D Who the hell is? I
Who the hell is? I guess the upper middle class. Which would be me, (I'm at the very bottom of it), but it's not working on me. Huh.
Maybe if they stopped spewing such utter bullshit for two seconds...
"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
But the...
But the 99% (maybe the 90%) are their target. That consent ain't gonna manufacture itself!
Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.
Even as recently as 1976 ...
I was a democrat, looking forward to a govenment populated with competent people. A future I had only read about in science fiction novels seemed possible within my lifetime ...
Have you ever heard of a sea anchor. A sea anchor makes it impossible for a sailing ship to function properly in fair weather or sailing in light winds. Our federal ship of state is not functioning properly. The captain should order the crew to loose the sea anchor.
Aye Mate, but unfortunately the captain, the senior officers, and most of the crew are the sea anchor.
Anchor Baby...
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?
@Not Henry Kissinger Wow.
Wow.
"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
Possibly the most helpful thing
Hillary could do for the Democratic Party, is to STFU. Doesn't look like that's ever gonna happen though.
native
No one lives forever
not even Hillary. Wait she can't live forever can she?
I've been waiting impatiently
for ever so long, for John McCain to die -- but he seems adamantly disinclined to do it.
native
The 25 reasons Hillary lost
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Definitive_list_of_25_excuses_Hillary_Cli...
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
blah, blah, blah misogyny. Wait, what? No seriously, how does your sentence end with misogyny?
"I won 3 million more votes than the other guy"
Oh my dear Hillary, that doesn't matter if you didn't win those votes in states that Trump won. Most of those votes were in California, right?
Okay, let's go back 8 years and regurgitate the other election I lost. Barack Obama is very attractive, good looking man.
Then more blah, blah, blah, blah!
Has she lost Andrea Mitchell? Hard to tell. She's in a different video. But I can only hear her voice for a short time.
Putin isn’t going to make you homeless or kill you or deny you health care.
Your government will allow it to happen though.
Hillary's popular vote win margin from 3 states
CA, NY, and MA where she even beat Obama's numbers and gave her the popular vote margin. In the remaining 47 states taken as a whole, Trump won them by 4 million votes. Apparently Putin knew about the Electoral College and she didn't.
No, Hillary,
at no point does it "sort of bleed over into misogyny."
It's the corruption and the dishonesty.
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
Of course, the reason the phrase “foreign influence” stands for
“Russia, Russia, Russia” and not the obvious and vastly more appropriate “Israel, Israel, Israel” is because the latter would cause a Clintonian chorus to burst forth — asserting anything said by anyone as “sort of bleeding over into” anti-Semitism. That’s just how the theatrics of the powerful pleading the victim role work.
Heard NPR today, (Not by choice had to take a cab)
Topic of today?
Russia, Russia, Russia, and Hacked, hacked HACKED emails...
That apparently are completely meaningless and it's ludicrous that Republicans ascribe any value to the emails...
Except they are incredibly valuable and cost the election...
Another Schrodinger's item: Schrodinger's Emails:
These emails have simultaneously absolute value or NO value. It all depends which part of Hillary the observer is trying to cover. The "NEVER committed a Crime" or the "Didn't Lose the Election".
Apparently MSM figures have solved the quantum state problem. They can alter their perception of reality based off of the narrative they want to push.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
"Schrodinger's Emails." OMG! I love it!
"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"
Hilarious comment from Caitlin Johnstone's recent article
I just read this comment on Caitlin's new article over on Medium, and it's so true. I love it.
I finally finished the book Shattered about her campaign yesterday (a bit of a slog, but at least it has a happy ending). The book leaves no doubt. Despite the authors' efforts to portray her as a good person and create a sympathetic character, they couldn't hide her core problem.
She absolutely believed she was entitled to the presidency, and she absolutely believed it was other people's responsibility and job to make sure she got what she wanted. Never mind her multitude of horrible decisions, terrible judgment, and stupid comments. She surrounds herself with sycophants and has no ability whatsoever to take responsibility for her own mistakes, lies, and bad decisions. She's just an awful leader with no self-awareness and even less awareness of anyone else.
She was denied her prize, and apparently has become completely unhinged in the aftermath.
I would hazard a guess
That the root issue is that Hillary Clinton is really a rather unpleasant, incompetent individual.
Sort of like King John. But at least we got Magna Carta via John and his loser nature.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
she flunked the DC bar exam.
blotted her copybook. she would never be "smart" in DC.
took 2nd best- went to Arkansas to hook up with Bill.
you know the rest.
TOP rushes to Hillary's defense
No big surprise. From the wreck'd list:
Rant: Telling HRC to “go away” is an ignorant strategy propagated by the easily duped.
Hillary Clinton Must Not Be Silent
More honest titles:
Pointing Out Logical Flaws is Only Perpetrated by meanie Racist BernieBro Poopie Heads.
Hillary Clinton Can not Physically be Silent. She should see a doctor about that.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
@detroitmechworks You got me. I'm
You got me. I'm helpless with laughter over here. AND I'm choking down a vile home remedy made by my partner at the same time, so you might be responsible for some serious unpleasantness on my keyboard!
"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
Ack... sorry about that...
Just finished making a Payday Special. As in I have the money but no energy to go to the store right now...
Sloppy joes with Italian Breakfast Sausage and Enchilada Sauce... Surprisingly tastier than I thought it would be.
But yeah, TOP is now doing laps, jumping the shark every few minutes to ensure that as many people as possible see the Incredible Insight of said shark...
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
@detroitmechworks Hillary Clinton Cannot
Hillary Clinton Cannot Physically Be Silent.
Still LMAO.
"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 read that too
I got a kick out of how Gore and Kerry should have kept speaking out after their elections were stolen from them. First by the Supreme Court and by election fraud in Ohio. Silly, men, they should have blamed it on Russia.
And this site got a few mentions
Putin isn’t going to make you homeless or kill you or deny you health care.
Your government will allow it to happen though.
Let's see...
Mentioning c99...
If the usual flagging rules are in place, the ones that mention us that haven't been flagged into oblivion are probably...
1. Calls for any and all obvious trolls to go back to here. (Because clearly we enjoy just driving them insane over there.)
2. The "All White Crowd" screaming.
3. We ran off (INSERT REFORMED TOP HERO) when we refused to acquiesce to their extremely reasonable demands that merely would have required us all to police the speech of others and properly disown all knowledge of them if they didn't conform to the rapidly shifting speech codes of the DNC.
4. We're rude and mean and hate everybody.
5. But surprisingly no mention of PUMAs. (Since they own TOP now, that particular meme is SO 5 years ago.)
Not going to bother going over there to check. The comments are always the same, always bullshit, and always boring.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
I've visited the Orange Stain for a few laughs now and then.
They still pull Her's carcass out and set it up on the couch and discuss what went wrong with the election. Kinda reminds me of "Weekend at Hillary's". The damn carcass is starting to stink but they still drag it out and prop it up. I think they believe it will suddenly stand up and start dancing with them.
lol (+++)
chainsaw massacre revisited.
really funny! add (+)
I have no interest in the comments
On the rare occasions I go over to TOP it's just to look a the headlines to measure the temperature of the crazy.
The temperature is the same
as it was during the election, that of half-baked pie.
The quality of the discussions here resonate at a much higher level, I think c99 has mastered the quality vs. quantity equation.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Hmmm
Let's recap.
The year is 2000. Gore has obviously had the election stolen from him. People are up in arms and plead for him to fight. Silence (for the most part).
The year is now 2004. Kerry has obviously had the election stolen from him. People plead for him to fight (too tired to be up in arms this go round). Silence.
The year is now 2017. In November 2016, Clinton lost the election. There is absolutely no evidence that it was stolen. She lost. Crazed Dems are up in arms and Clinton is leading the charge. She won't STFU!
Wow. Just wow.
Yaldabaoth, Saklas I'm calling you. Samael. You're not alone. I said, you're not alone, in your darkness. You're not alone, baby. You're not alone. "Original Sinsuality" Tori Amos
Clinton's arrogance and self-indulgence hurt dems even more.
She already is turning on the hired help.