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PUmatty
Joined: 10 Nov 2004
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 Posted: 01/22/17 9:41 pm ::: |
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This is where the Democratic slaughter in state offices under Obama's leadership becomes a real problem. It's cliche to say, but the Democrats do not have a deep bench. The GOP showed that quantity is not the same a quality, but there are very few legitimate options who are not Senators. And in case anyone has forgotten, Barack Obama notwithstanding, it is quite unusual for Senators to win.
There are virtually no governors to prove from, and not a single Democratic governor with national recognition. Most of the few governors there are are too old to fit the mold in four years. Mark Dayton, Jay Inslee, John Hickenlooper and the like will all be close to 70 in 2020. The younger set are basically complete unknowns. Whoever ends up leading the party should make serious efforts to get the likes of Gina Raimondo, Steve Bullock, and John Bel Edwards into the national spotlight. They might not catch on as candidates, but you have to do something.
Jason Kander isn't an office holder, but he is someone else I would love to see the Democrats figure out how to get into the spotlight.
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Howee
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mercfan3
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PUmatty
Joined: 10 Nov 2004
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| Posted: 01/23/17 10:47 am ::: |
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| PUmatty wrote: |
This is where the Democratic slaughter in state offices under Obama's leadership becomes a real problem. It's cliche to say, but the Democrats do not have a deep bench. The GOP showed that quantity is not the same a quality, but there are very few legitimate options who are not Senators. And in case anyone has forgotten, Barack Obama notwithstanding, it is quite unusual for Senators to win.
There are virtually no governors to prove from, and not a single Democratic governor with national recognition. Most of the few governors there are are too old to fit the mold in four years. Mark Dayton, Jay Inslee, John Hickenlooper and the like will all be close to 70 in 2020. The younger set are basically complete unknowns. Whoever ends up leading the party should make serious efforts to get the likes of Gina Raimondo, Steve Bullock, and John Bel Edwards into the national spotlight. They might not catch on as candidates, but you have to do something.
Jason Kander isn't an office holder, but he is someone else I would love to see the Democrats figure out how to get into the spotlight. |
I'd add Maggie Hassan as someone with good potential who has governorship experience as well. I am less enamored with Mark Warner, but he is another.
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ArtBest23
Joined: 02 Jul 2013
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| Posted: 01/23/17 12:35 pm ::: |
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| PUmatty wrote: |
| PUmatty wrote: |
This is where the Democratic slaughter in state offices under Obama's leadership becomes a real problem. It's cliche to say, but the Democrats do not have a deep bench. The GOP showed that quantity is not the same a quality, but there are very few legitimate options who are not Senators. And in case anyone has forgotten, Barack Obama notwithstanding, it is quite unusual for Senators to win.
There are virtually no governors to prove from, and not a single Democratic governor with national recognition. Most of the few governors there are are too old to fit the mold in four years. Mark Dayton, Jay Inslee, John Hickenlooper and the like will all be close to 70 in 2020. The younger set are basically complete unknowns. Whoever ends up leading the party should make serious efforts to get the likes of Gina Raimondo, Steve Bullock, and John Bel Edwards into the national spotlight. They might not catch on as candidates, but you have to do something.
Jason Kander isn't an office holder, but he is someone else I would love to see the Democrats figure out how to get into the spotlight. |
I'd add Maggie Hassan as someone with good potential who has governorship experience as well. I am less enamored with Mark Warner, but he is another. |
The absence of Mark Warner from these lists exemplifies how screwed up our process has become. He is an extremely smart, charismatic, electable, former governor, current senator, business executive, who has demonstrated the ability to be elected by and work with a politically divided state. His only problem is that he's sensibly moderate, and not some radical leftist bombthrower, so he's "off the list" for the Democratic party. The "list" being offered here is just the mirror image of the right wing extremists who ran for the GOP nomination this time.
That anyone would consider Cory Booker or Elizabeth Warren as remotely as suitable as Mark Warren to be President is no different than anyone thinking Rick Perry and Ted Cruz are as suitable.
Our system has become so screwed up that evidently only extremists need apply.
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tfan
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: 01/23/17 12:56 pm ::: |
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| ArtBest23 wrote: |
| PUmatty wrote: |
| PUmatty wrote: |
This is where the Democratic slaughter in state offices under Obama's leadership becomes a real problem. It's cliche to say, but the Democrats do not have a deep bench. The GOP showed that quantity is not the same a quality, but there are very few legitimate options who are not Senators. And in case anyone has forgotten, Barack Obama notwithstanding, it is quite unusual for Senators to win.
There are virtually no governors to prove from, and not a single Democratic governor with national recognition. Most of the few governors there are are too old to fit the mold in four years. Mark Dayton, Jay Inslee, John Hickenlooper and the like will all be close to 70 in 2020. The younger set are basically complete unknowns. Whoever ends up leading the party should make serious efforts to get the likes of Gina Raimondo, Steve Bullock, and John Bel Edwards into the national spotlight. They might not catch on as candidates, but you have to do something.
Jason Kander isn't an office holder, but he is someone else I would love to see the Democrats figure out how to get into the spotlight. |
I'd add Maggie Hassan as someone with good potential who has governorship experience as well. I am less enamored with Mark Warner, but he is another. |
The absence of Mark Warner from these lists exemplifies how screwed up our process has become. He is an extremely smart, charismatic, electable, former governor, current senator, business executive, who has demonstrated the ability to be elected by and work with a politically divided state. His only problem is that he's sensibly moderate, and not some radical leftist bombthrower, so he's "off the list" for the Democratic party. The "list" being offered here is just the mirror image of the right wing extremists who ran for the GOP nomination this time.
That anyone would consider Cory Booker or Elizabeth Warren as remotely as suitable as Mark Warren to be President is no different than anyone thinking Rick Perry and Ted Cruz are as suitable.
Our system has become so screwed up that evidently only extremists need apply. |
Hillary Clinton was not a radical leftist bomb thrower. In her own words "I occupy from the center right to the center left" So Warner's negative is probably that he is a white male.
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ArtBest23
Joined: 02 Jul 2013
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| Posted: 01/23/17 1:24 pm ::: |
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| tfan wrote: |
| ArtBest23 wrote: |
| PUmatty wrote: |
| PUmatty wrote: |
This is where the Democratic slaughter in state offices under Obama's leadership becomes a real problem. It's cliche to say, but the Democrats do not have a deep bench. The GOP showed that quantity is not the same a quality, but there are very few legitimate options who are not Senators. And in case anyone has forgotten, Barack Obama notwithstanding, it is quite unusual for Senators to win.
There are virtually no governors to prove from, and not a single Democratic governor with national recognition. Most of the few governors there are are too old to fit the mold in four years. Mark Dayton, Jay Inslee, John Hickenlooper and the like will all be close to 70 in 2020. The younger set are basically complete unknowns. Whoever ends up leading the party should make serious efforts to get the likes of Gina Raimondo, Steve Bullock, and John Bel Edwards into the national spotlight. They might not catch on as candidates, but you have to do something.
Jason Kander isn't an office holder, but he is someone else I would love to see the Democrats figure out how to get into the spotlight. |
I'd add Maggie Hassan as someone with good potential who has governorship experience as well. I am less enamored with Mark Warner, but he is another. |
The absence of Mark Warner from these lists exemplifies how screwed up our process has become. He is an extremely smart, charismatic, electable, former governor, current senator, business executive, who has demonstrated the ability to be elected by and work with a politically divided state. His only problem is that he's sensibly moderate, and not some radical leftist bombthrower, so he's "off the list" for the Democratic party. The "list" being offered here is just the mirror image of the right wing extremists who ran for the GOP nomination this time.
That anyone would consider Cory Booker or Elizabeth Warren as remotely as suitable as Mark Warren to be President is no different than anyone thinking Rick Perry and Ted Cruz are as suitable.
Our system has become so screwed up that evidently only extremists need apply. |
Hillary Clinton was not a radical leftist bomb thrower. In her own words "I occupy from the center right to the center left" So Warner's negative is probably that he is a white male. |
No, Clinton was the "it's my turn" Democratic Party candidate. It's the other way the Dems tend to shoot themselves in the foot. And regardless of what she said, she proceeded to run farther and farther to the left in order to stave off Sanders.
There's no obvious "my turn" candidate this time unless Biden or Schumer decides to run. Which leaves the "you have to be left of Karl Marx" litmus test for the party nomination.
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norwester
Joined: 14 Jun 2006
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| Posted: 01/23/17 2:13 pm ::: |
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That seems like hyperbole, Art.
Hillary was (has always had to be) pretty centrist. Really, taken without party affiliation, most of US voters agree with the majority of the Democratic platform more than the GOP one...they just don't realize it, and get caught up in extraneous things that have little to do with "issues", like .
The truth is, Bernie on the campaign trail is Hillary in office. There's no clear path to revolution in a bureaucratic system with built in checks and balances (though those balances can be temporarily skewed like we're seeing now, and perhaps last saw in 1994?).
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ArtBest23
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Hawkeye
Joined: 10 Aug 2010
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| Posted: 01/23/17 2:31 pm ::: |
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| justintyme wrote: |
| ArtBest23 wrote: |
Booker and Warren?
Do the Democrats really have a death wish?
Oh well, if they can't pick a candidate capable of beating Donald Trump, why should I be surprised if they pick another sure loser.  |
Klobuchar would be a solid choice. She has the progressive cred without being seen as an ideologue. |
Klobuchar won't be winning, based on my own hypothesis that the name is very important. Her's doesn't look easy to pronounce...the ones who have won the presidency have had names easy to pronounce. Obama, Bush, Trump, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Kennedy, Nixon, Adams, Lincoln, Taft, Roosevelt (one the hardest of the 45)....ya see where I'm going? It's by no means a scientific idea, but just an observation. That said, Sanders, Booker, Warren, etc would have a decent chance.
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justintyme
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norwester
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| Posted: 01/23/17 3:08 pm ::: |
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Did I not say "when you strip the party affiliation". It's based on surveys when people are asked about individual "issues", not about party affiliation.
Plus, a vast part of Republican voters vote that way because it's part of their identity (based on my reading of election results and interviews). They don't even know what the Republican platform is, many of them. Or in the case of my relatives, they don't associate local R leaders with the national platform. They just know Republican: good (business! taxes! fiscally conservative!), Democrat: bad (spendthrifts, onerous regulation, anti-business). Even if their "definitions" are antiquated or completely false in practice.
Part of that may be the fractured identity of the Democratic party (i.e. "down with Identity Politics!"). But I think there are ways to get cohesive messages out about it. Not that it matters. Because D=bad and R=good. It doesn't have to do with platform, candidate, perception of leaders...because it's part of identity. And if there's confusion, they go "home" to R.
Liberal platforms would likely do better with them if there were no parties, but there's always that swath of people who want an authority to tell them what to do and think (whether they'll acknowledge that or not).
Yes, but also gerrymandering and voter suppression. Give me a break, Art. Surely you can do better than that with your rebuttals.
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ArtBest23
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| Posted: 01/23/17 3:22 pm ::: |
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| justintyme wrote: |
| ArtBest23 wrote: |
| norwester wrote: |
| most of US voters agree with the majority of the Democratic platform more than the GOP one |
That must explain why the Democrats completely dominate governorship and statehouse elections.
Alternative facts. |
That has more to do with the fact that the dem voters are centralized in certain areas where repub ones are spread out. Remember who won the popular vote. This also makes it easier to gerrymander them out. Remember, the Democrats actually won 55% of the total available votes for the House this past election...
Secondly is the dems problem of actually getting their supporters out to vote. 538 blog had an awesome interactive back during the election where they added sliders to demonstrate the effect of voter turnout. If you slid all the sliders to 100% the entire map turned blue.
And also due to problems with getting their message across. Poll after poll shows that people actually support the items on the dem platform. But the Republicans are the kings of spin. Just look at the difference between how many people supported the ACA and all it entailed, and how many people supported "Obamacare".
This is why after the last election there was a call for the dems to stop playing "identity politics" as their message is being diluted. Republicans are spinning the dem message to be about only helping minority voters and not caring about the working class. And the dem's message feeds into that narrative. |
It's not "spin." That IS the Dems narrative and message. And it's not a winner.
And gerrymandering has absolutely nothing to do with the Dems losing governorships and state legislatures in droves. State legislatures are nearly, if not entirely, elected by county, not by manipulated districts. And those elections are not driven by big ideas like Obamacare.
Republicans control both chambers in 32 states, including 17 with veto-proof majorities. Those 32 states cover 61 percent of the U.S. population. Democrats, meanwhile, control the legislature in just 13 states, amounting to 28 percent of the country’s population; only four of those chambers have veto-proof majorities.
These state elections are largely free from all the national spin and personality distortions. They are far more reflective of the actual leanings of the population. And at the state level, the Democratic party philosophy is being rejected on a massive scale. Even in a state with an overwhelming registration advantage like Maryland, the voters, including huge numbers of democrats, rejected the liberal Democratic machine politician and elected a Republican businessman as governor. And that was in 2014, free of presidential election politics.
The Democrats don't seem to be able to recognize or accept their own shortcomings. Your excuses and insistence that despite the overwhelming election results the voting public actually prefers the Democratic Party's views and vision seems to me emblematic of that blindness. "Most people actually support us" seems to be the continuing refrain, and the left evidently believes that fervently, but it's wishful thinking. If it was true, the Democrats wouldn't be out of power nearly everywhere at every level of government. It's just another alternative fact.
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ArtBest23
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| Posted: 01/23/17 3:30 pm ::: |
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| norwester wrote: |
Plus, a vast part of Republican voters vote that way because it's part of their identity (based on my reading of election results and interviews). They don't even know what the Republican platform is, many of them. Or in the case of my relatives, they don't associate local R leaders with the national platform. They just know Republican: good (business! taxes! fiscally conservative!), Democrat: bad (spendthrifts, onerous regulation, anti-business). Even if their "definitions" are antiquated or completely false in practice.
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There are at least as many Democratic voters who would vote for Sadaam Hussein if he was the Democratic candidate as GOP voters who would, and given the Democratic registration advantage, if lockstep party-line voting was what drove elections, the Democrats would control most everything.
That's just another excuse. And not even a factually logical one.
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justintyme
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| Posted: 01/23/17 3:41 pm ::: |
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Except it is based upon actual polls asking about specific policy questions. They get overwhelming support on a national level. As I pointed out, the dems actually have more votes total. You are breaking it down by state, where we are talking "majority".
As I said, dem voters group up in smaller areas where repub voters are more spread out.
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pilight
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PUmatty
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| Posted: 01/23/17 3:56 pm ::: |
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| ArtBest23 wrote: |
| State legislatures are nearly, if not entirely, elected by county, not by manipulated districts. |
I have lived in three states, and that is not remotely true in any of them.
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ArtBest23
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| Posted: 01/23/17 4:03 pm ::: |
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| justintyme wrote: |
Except it is based upon actual polls asking about specific policy questions. They get overwhelming support on a national level. As I pointed out, the dems actually have more votes total. You are breaking it down by state, where we are talking "majority".
As I said, dem voters group up in smaller areas where repub voters are more spread out. |
The numbers don't lie.
But if we didn't know it before we should have learned in 2016 that polls certainly do.
And before you suggest again that the GOP only controls low-population, "spread out" areas, among the states with both a GOP Governor and legislature are Texas, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona. The GOP also controls at least one house or the governorship in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Illinois, North Carolina, Colorado and Washington.
California is the only big state where the Dems control the entire state government.
The GOP domination of state capitals is actually unprecedented.
According to the Washington Post on November 12:
"Results are still trickling in, but it looks like Republicans will still control an all-time high 69 of 99 state legislative chambers. They'll hold at least 33 governorships, tying a 94-year-old record.
That means that come 2017, they'll have total control of government in at least 25 states, and partial control in 20 states. According to population calculations by the conservative group Americans for Tax Reform, that translates to roughly 80 percent of the population living in a state either all or partially controlled by Republicans."
And that's not even counting GOP control of the White House and both houses of Congress.
In the face of these hard facts, the notion that most people actually support the Democratic Party is an alternative fact of which Kellyanne Conway would be proud.
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justintyme
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| Posted: 01/23/17 4:19 pm ::: |
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What about the "hard fact" that 3 million more people voted for HC than Trump. Or the "hard fact" that the dems got 55% of the available votes for the house.
Or the fact that this happens with low dem turnout and if every single person that could vote, did vote, the entire country would be blue.
There is a huge difference between "winning elections" and what policies people support are.
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ArtBest23
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| Posted: 01/23/17 4:25 pm ::: |
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| justintyme wrote: |
What about the "hard fact" that 3 million more people voted for HC than Trump. Or the "hard fact" that the dems got 55% of the available voted for the house.
Or the fact that this happens with low dem turnout and if every single person that could vote, did vote, the entire country would be blue.
There is a huge difference between "winning elections" and what policies people support are. |
As I said above, I find local elections a far better barometer. Much more diffuse, and far less affected by ads, hype, money, spin and personalities than Presidential elections.
And the fact remains that Clinton won California by 4.3 Million votes. Which means that Trump won the other 49 states and DC together by over a million votes. Which seems consistent with the fact of California being the one and only large state where the Dems control both the governors mansion and statehouse.
So congratulations. The Democrat's vision is selling well in California. In the rest of the country it's a dismal failure.
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ArtBest23
Joined: 02 Jul 2013
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| Posted: 01/23/17 4:37 pm ::: |
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| justintyme wrote: |
Or the fact that this happens with low dem turnout and if every single person that could vote, did vote, the entire country would be blue.
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Of course you assume that every person who votes, votes according to their party registration. Which of course they don't.
See Governor Larry Hogan as a good example.
How many terms did Pataki recently serve as Governor of New York? Three?
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justintyme
Joined: 08 Jul 2012
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| Posted: 01/23/17 4:42 pm ::: |
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| ArtBest23 wrote: |
| justintyme wrote: |
Or the fact that this happens with low dem turnout and if every single person that could vote, did vote, the entire country would be blue.
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Of course you assume that every person who votes, votes according to their party registration. Which of course they don't.
See Governor Larry Hogan as a good example.
How many terms did Pataki recently serve as Governor of New York? Three? |
That has nothing to do with party registration. It has to do with who they would vote for.
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ArtBest23
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| Posted: 01/23/17 5:02 pm ::: |
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| Huh? Supposed problem with " low dem turnout" has "nothing to do with party registration"?
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justintyme
Joined: 08 Jul 2012
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| Posted: 01/23/17 5:07 pm ::: |
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| ArtBest23 wrote: |
| Huh? Supposed problem with " low dem turnout" has "nothing to do with party registration"? |
It is based upon polling data.
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ArtBest23
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| Posted: 01/23/17 5:13 pm ::: |
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| justintyme wrote: |
| ArtBest23 wrote: |
| Huh? Supposed problem with " low dem turnout" has "nothing to do with party registration"? |
It is based upon polling data. |
Same polls that said Trump would lose?
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