I don't think I'll be taking moral advice from Savage, who proselytized for the Iraq War (using Muslim scapegoating no less) that resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. I'll empathize with who I want. Maybe Queen Hillary shouldn't have run ads that were 90% policy free.

From the hardcore Trumpists that I've talked to, they seem to still believe that we're about to enter some golden age where all the rural ills will be solved by Trump personally. These cuts to their programs are merely the growing pains associated with bringing on this new age. They still think that the jobs are going to be there in a few months so they won't need their own insurance or any other social safety net programs. Obviously delusional, but what can you do when someone is convinced in a cultlike way that government is not just the problem but the only problem.

Yeah, but how do we rouse the apathetic assholes who are just as guilty of precipitating this shitshow?

The trick is for the Democrats to be ready in 2/4 years with a truly populus platform and a direction to lead us out of the inevitable mess we are descending into.

"I never thought the leopards would eat MY face!" sobs a woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.

Shorter Dan: "Feeling smug and condescending? Go right ahead!"

Twitler supporters voted for a vile, sexist, racist, lying, bullying, xenophobic, rapist lunatic to lynch us all last November. They attacked us, make no mistake. Twitler and the sadistic, racist, hate and greed-crazed RepubliKKKan Party are the greatest threat this nation has ever faced.

To quote Rep. Maxine Waters: “These people are all scumbags.”

The unescapable fact still remains. If we only want 4 years instead of 8 Trump years, we have to care about Trump supporters. An army of committed patriots needs to be going throughout Trumpland, knocking on doors, going to local cafes and creating dialog.

It's time for libs to put bleeding hearts where their mouths are.

My dream is that we take back the house in 2018, then impeach Trump and Pence. Hello, President Pelosi.

Dan and Frank Rich are wrong, wrong, wrong.

Trump & GOP will take away affordable healthcare from the middle class in urban areas, erode gay rights, block trans rights, prosecute marijuana retailers in blue states / block its legalization elsewhere.

They will start wars and destabilize the global economy just like George W. Bush did.

The only way to end the madness is to have charismatic candidates with populist messages that gets through to the stupid white rural racists to vote Democrat. Obama did this in 2008! Obama! All 3 branches of federal govt. went blue, briefly, he got enough votes even in "red" counties to turn the federal govt. blue.

So did Bill Clinton in 1992.

Next, Democrats have to figure out how to HOLD ON TO congress next time we win it, which history suggests won't be till after the GOP screws up so badly the country swings back to Democrat, like it did in '92 and '08. All it takes is a charismatic presidential candidate, we need a young Bernie Sanders or a young Elizabeth Warren, or another Bill Clinton in '92 (young, southern drawl, folksy), or another Obama circa 2008 (who, as you may remember, ran on a more progressive agenda than Hilary in '08).

@9,
No, republican voters vote republican no matter who the candidate is (as was demonstrated last Nov). They can't be reasoned with, they can't be bargained with. They are hopelessly lost. They should just be forgotten. The notion that Obama voters switched and voted for Trump this time is incorrect. Very few people switched. The same people who always vote republican came out and voted republican again this time. The people who voted for Obama before simply stayed home this time (or were shut out by disenfranchising republican voting laws).

What liberals need to do is get other liberals to vote, and get redistricting laws changed, and get voting laws changed. Mail in voting for everyone. None of this "must vote in a booth on Tuesday after showing a driver's license." That's bullshit.

What do you want to bet the 45 voters on assistance programs also bitch about "moochers" taking their taxes? I know all of my relatives on assistance do. They haven't figured out that THEY are the "takers" that right wing politicians are talking about. They think they are talking about (black), urban, welfare queens with 8 kids who drive escalades, or illegal immigrants (of color) who come here and never work again.

They cheer the idea of scrapping entitlement programs but are then shocked they might lose their medicare or LIHEAP.

Whether you feel sympathy or not is up to you, but we MUST be thinking strategically about the next election. Shaming them does nothing but ensure that we'll be screwed again in the next election by the division Trump and the GOP has caused between us. This is really short sighted, and I'm kind of surprised that you would post it. These people have realized (yes, too late) that Trump and his cabinet are horrible. But they have already shown us that they vote. And they will vote again. This is an opportunity.

But it is nice to see the Leftist "Elite" Echo Chamber still cranked up to maximum reverberation.
Unless they have had brain transplants in the past four months why would anyone care what the crowd that pawned Hillary off on the nation think?

They got conned. Because they are rubes.

@17: Hey, did you ever finish that list of "100 things that are more important than treason"? If you need some help, I can give you a head start based on your comments: one of the items will include Hillary Rodham Clinton.

@16 Clinton 2020 (or one of her acolytes) will lead to Trump being a two-termer.

But, sure, carry on with your toeing the Democratic Party line by using their cliches and rhetoric.

If the city people unite and vote, instead of splintering into interest groups with purity tests, the country folk don't matter. (They don't matter anyway, but they come in handy when it's time to elect someone who will work against their best interest)

@20: I disagree. I think there's someone out there who could be a spectacular foil for Trump and defeat him in a 2018 landslide. It's still early enough for she or he to emerge and take off.

Yeah, I'm fantasizing. But it's less stressful than pouting.

Thank you @12! I just don't understand why people still insist on this voting booth bullshit. (Yes, I understand mail-in balloting avoids the disenfranchisement we all know and love, but how do you spin that?)

Mail in! Mail in! Mail in! No time off work to vote needed! No lines! No ID problems! How do we push this nation wide?

So a huge chunk of our population, most of whom are under-educated and misinformed, are just past redemption and awful?

I find this idea as offensive as much of the right-wing propaganda. We can and should be upset by the ideas and policy being supported by Trump and supporters, but anytime you put a group of people in an "other" or "sub-human" category it is problematic. If this keeps being an us vs. them battle we all loose.

As I don't live in the Rust Belt, I can't make a judgement call there. However *all* of the twitler supporters I know personally, (in the Southeast), *all* have pretty comfy lifestyles. While most are not lavish, they all own homes, boats, motorcycles, full sized 4x4 trucks, etc. Many even have college degrees. When I hear/read about reaching out to repub twitler voters, I just snicker.

Well Dan, you did wish all the Republicans were dead.

@25, best argument on this thread and a good insight as to why the Dems lost in November and are on the way to losing yet again in 2018.

https://newrepublic.com/minutes/141451/d…

"Perhaps this is why Rich fundamentally misunderstands the argument for a more populist Democratic Party. It’s not about “feeling sympathy” for poor whites. Emotion is not a substitute for politics. You do not have to feel a certain way toward a certain population to promote policies that will benefit them. Those policies aren’t about them, per se. Poor whites are part of the progressive political project because they are part of society; they matter no more and no less than anyone else in it."

@25

"So our outreach strategy is to ratchet up the hatred? Then what, start shooting at each other? "

I'm afraid that is where things are headed and there really isn't any way to stop it.

The right has been fed a steady diet of hate since around 1994 first by Rush, then by Fox, and now by Breitbart, World News Daily, etc.

If we wanted to stop it we would have to first go back to around 1995.

The people we are talking about haven't wanted to hear anything we have to say since around midway through the second Bush administration. We are all "libtards" and "cucks" now and if we said the sky was blue they'd scream and shot it was red just to see if they could make us cry.

I'm afraid you don't seem to understand. We aren't going to have a civil war. It started quite some time ago. It just has more in common with the cold war than the first civil war. There is nothing we can say and nothing we can do to change it and, even worse, there isn't even a way for one side or the other to win outside of the other side 100% dying out such that they can't even have kids to perpetuate the conflict.

It may take a few years but our Republic is already dead. It just doesn't fully realize it yet.

@12

"The same people who always vote republican came out and voted republican again this time."

Except Trump got about 6 million more votes than Romney. Had only the same people voted for Romney voted for Trump, he would've lost.

@ raindrop - You live in Seattle, right? Have you ever lived in a red state?

@22 How about a powerful black woman who tells it like it is? I know the PUMAS won't be happy because they specifically want a white woman (If you want a white female president, you have better chances accomplishing that in the GOP. They love white blonde women.) but at least the rest of us will be happy.

@23,
The republicans have too much on the line to ever go along with more voting freedom. When it's easier to vote, democrats get more victories, that's a historical fact. That's why republicans enact more and more draconian voting restrictions.

To get nationwide mail in voting probably isn't impossible, but it'd be a frontal assault directly against the republican's most powerful weapon (disenfranchisement), so it'd be a tough battle.

@20 Actually, you're a part of the problem. You have no reservations about taking a shit on HRC when she was the only thing that could keep us from this current show. Yeah, it is sad that you didn't get your candidate to the general, but you didn't. Why doesn't really matter at that point (although I dispute that the DNC was able to cook it for HRC). And yet you persisted in telling us how corrupt everything is (no shit). Get a clue, you have to form a majority at some point, tearing down those who may not be as pure as you but none-the-less are more aligned than what we have is shortsighted.

My moral instincts and Dan's tend to be very closely parallel, but I have to disagree in this case. I don't think we need to feel any way about the credulous hateful racists who put Trump in office (and make no mistake, that's exactly the animating ethos behind the voting of core Trump voters). In the same way deprivation of any sort warps cognition, these folks have been warped by their environment. If they were a different colour or a minority gender/sexuality, we'd make excuses for why they've become so hate-filled. So as abhorrent and frankly evil as I find their views, the only way to view them is a) as humans and b) strategically. This means that we should want to find ways to make sure they don't harm themselves or other people and we should figure out whether we need them electorally. I would suggest that we don't. If all the Democrats and Democratic-leaning people actually voted, we'd win every national election in a landslide. So we need to tackle two things: voter apathy and voter suppression. That's where we should be focusing our efforts and how we feel about the white nationalists, Russodupes and the people without the ability to spot a common con man is entirely beside the point. They make up about 35% of the national population, a number that will decrease as time goes on, and we should be able to slaughter them electorally. But in addition to strategy (turnout and suppression), we need to actually do something about the broken system. The thing is, both Trump supporters and Bernie supporters (as well as a lot of Clinton supporters) knew that the system of electoral patronage where money animates the actions of the legislative and executive branches but Hillary wasn't rhetorically or historically in a position to articulate that message. So, Dan, you're one of my favourite people but I think you got this one kind of wrong. We don't need to feel bad for these people, but we need to figure out a way around them and vilifying them doesn't strike me as the best place to start.

I know I sound crazy, but a lot of people have been manipulated and have been on the receiving end of disinformation and misinformation. Rather thank being a condescending twat, why not try to reach out and find common ground. It could lead to crazy stuff like election victories and cleaning up the corruption in government.

29
Your analysis may be flawed but your conclusion is correct.

@29:

Oh, it goes farther back than that, I would say at least to the early 1960's and the rise of so-called "Goldwater Republicanism", with it's blatant appeal to racism and social libertarianism. Nixon followed up with his "Southern Strategy" in the late 1960's by siphoning off conservative/racist "blue dog" Democrats and folding them into the GOP, and then Reagan solidified things by courting the "moral majority" evangelical Christians in the 1980's.

It's been gestating for a very long time, and now we're finally seeing the bitter fruit of what has been sown: a politically, culturally, and economically divided nation almost equally split between those who pine for some sort of idealized "golden age" from the past, often expressed as a melange of wild-west era "frontier individualism" combined with post WW-II "age of conformity" suburbanism, but firmly rooted in a White/Patriarchal/Christian hierarchical social structure; versus the rest of us would prefer something decidedly more inclusive, diverse, and forward-looking. Half us us are clinging to hold onto a past that never really existed and only benefited a few, but to which they nevertheless feel would have included themselves; the other half of us are reaching out to grasp a future that may never exist all, but, if attained might benefit all.

The inherent problem is that the former see it as a zero-sum game: if someone else wins, they must by necessity be losing; whereas the latter envision everyone winning something, but nobody getting to take home the Big Prize all for their own. Competition versus Cooperation. "Dog-eat-dog" versus "we're all in this together" - pick your metaphor, but that's what it all boils down to in the end. Which brings us back to the original question: how do you convince someone who thinks they're losing something they believe belongs to them by-right and the Grace Of God - and at someone else's benefit - that they'd be better off in the long run joining forces to get SOME benefit for everyone, even if that means they don't get everything to which they personally think they're entitled?

@31: Yep, but and raised the red states of Texas, Kansas, and (purple) New Mexico. I think I know why you're asking and it really isn't an excuse.

@35: I wanted to read more of what you had to say, but your one-paragraph attitude turned me off.

@34 I was part of the problem. And I can be part of the solution.

Here's the thing: I was never, ever, going to vote for HRC. Before Bernie came on the scene, if Hillary was the nominee, I was gonna vote Green. I voted Green in 2000 and 2012. And Bernie would have brought me back to the Dems.

So, yeah. Fuck Hillary. Fuck Bill. Fuck Chelsea and her investment banker husband. Fuck the people who think they had the right ideas, fuck the party that thrust them upon us, and fuck the people who voted for Hillary in the primaries. They're idiots who chose wrong. They were suckered in by the Democratic Party controlled media, and they never let go of their prejudices. They're never going to go for a reasonably leftist candidate without having been sucker punched in the face. Why should I cater to them? Why shouldn't they be catering to me?

@43: Yeah, it must have felt empowering last Nov 8th as you stood your ground and didn't vote for the Clinton machine for the reasons (justifiable and otherwise) you enumerated. Yes, you didn't cater to them.

I would have enjoyed that as well but I saw the dark clouds that were approaching. Nate Silver was sounding anxious. Even Bill Clinton himself. It was too risky to take a chance. Countless editorials pointed that out, to not take comfort in the polls. Of course much depended on the state you lived in, but even in a blue a remote Trump victory was intolerable.

At least you didn't vote for Trump out of a crazy sense of spite.

We might be able to talk to the group of people who voted for Trump because they were desperate to have the well-paying manufacturing jobs back, once it is clear to them that this administration is never going to do that. But the people who voted for him because he promised to kick out the brown people, and oppress anyone who's not white and male again, those people we cannot reach. The GOP has spent 4 decades convincing them that the Dems only care about minorities and women, and just want to take power from white males to give to blacks, gays, women and other minorities. Those people will never vote for Democrats.

We have to get rid of the gerrymandering, stop the vile, racist, unconstitutional voting laws, and get.people.to.vote! We need to start now, and help as many people to get IDs as possible, just in case the GOP manages to pass their Voter ID laws.

@12- It isn't getting committed liberal to vote. Most of them did, for Hillary even.

It's getting the apathetic independents to vote.

@44 You're absolutely right; There is a difference between the parties. It just wasn't wide enough for me to care. Though we agreed on some issues (mostly social justice), we differed on almost all the things I most cared about this year - trade policies, single-payer health care, DAPL, KXL, privacy/spying, and drug legalization.

No candidate will be perfect, but you're gonna have to get a helluva lot closer than her to get my vote.

@47, your first paragraphs are great, lots of realistic pragmatism. But your last paragraph goes back to the tired old "We have to do this/do that/do the other thing", without any recognition of how impossible it will be to do those now that the horrible assholes are in power. The same horrible assholes that we allowed into power BECAUSE we were saying "we have to do this/do that" global shit. Infinite loops never get you anywhere.

@49 you are evil if you voted Green in a swing state in the presidential election. No difference on what matters? Is that what you thought about Bush / Gore? Ask the 100,000 dead Iraqis. I hope you're a Russian bot because if you're a progressive human, you have a lot to answer for.

some of these comments are just dumb - how do you explain minority voters or dem's that voted for Trump, or the whitest of white collar whites. Or that gay white guy from the Valley with lot's of money. hate 'em, call 'em names, pretend they don't exist. Yeah, that'll show 'em...

Jeez Dan, you have forgotten your Catholic Teachings.
" Forgive them Father , they know not what they do."

Interesting how the third way neoliberal types who still think they're the crème de la crème of the Democratic party are more interested in breaking bread with racist rednecks than coming to terms with the progressive left. How might this end? Past is prologue.

@51 I would strongly suggest that bringing up the Iraq War is not exactly in your best interest when we're talking about Hillary Clinton (or John Kerry for that matter), who voted to give Bush a blank check and then went for the PATRIOT Act on multiple occasions.

You can't say my voting for Nader in 2000 is bad because Iraq War in one breath and then bitch because I didn't vote for somebody who supported the Iraq War in the next.

For a decade FOX News has been telling them the U.S. government is their enemy and using coded language to blame everything on a rotating cast of boogeyman, from "thugs=black" , to "illegals=brown" to "the left=worst of all". These people's bigotry and hatred of "others" is more important to them apparently than even their own lives.
They are at the point where they would vote for something that hurts themselves as long as they think it will hurt "the others" or "The others" would be mad if it passes. They are basically lost to a derangement syndrome. The media needs to stop telling liberals that these people are all salt of the earth and just need to be understood. A lot of liberals grew up in those towns and left. They DO understand those people. That's WHY they left.

It's funny when the Trump trolls come on here pretending to be liberal voters. You can spot them because they will do anything to change the topic. Usually by trying to rant about Clinton.

56
And yet it was the Democraps who wrote off a quarter of the country as Irredeemable Deplorables.
It amazes how tenaciously you kids refuse to recognize that Trump won because Hillary was such a repulsive candidate.
Your apparently congenital willful ignorance and arrogance bodes well for America for many elections to come.

@55 I'm engaging with you because you seem to understand the issues, as do many Nader / Stein / Green party voters (unlike Trump supporters), yet you come to a radical and dangerous conclusion.

I do not think Hilary would have started the Iraq war had she been President way back then -- she was a senator without access to the level of intelligence info a president has. We know from her pick in 2016 of a running mate that she would not, for example, have had a war monger like Cheney as her VP.

I agree with you, Hilary had flaws, and vote for who you like in the primary, but if you live in a swing state and vote 3rd party in any presidential election, you are willfully responsible for contributing to a very dangerous outcome. There are enormous policy differences between democrat and republican at the presidential level regardless of candidate, and that's been true for decades. And on every issue a Green party voter cares about, (D) is far better than (R) -- that's also true at the state and local level. (At the local level, elections are close enough one can make a case to vote third party regardless. But given reality, and supposedly Greens care about reality, once you get to the national level, no way.)

@59 You're the one who brought up the war as a major issue, not me. I merely told you why your bringing it up was faulty and illogical. We're talking about a woman who touted Henry Kissinger as a mentor (incidentally, Kissinger also sponsored Trump's current SoS Rex Tillerson).

Listen, I'm not going to vote for a candidate who doesn't stand with what I consider important. Many liberals and progressives vote Democrat for lack of a better party. The Democratic Party SUCKS. Because they like to consider themselves "big tent," they're ideologically inconsistent. Let's look at how they act in WA when they're in power: they give huge tax cuts to Boeing, cut unemployment benefits to cut taxes for businesses, pass irresponsibly regressive tax increases and then blame the Republicans for it all.

If the Dems keep acting like Republicans with a Conscience, they're going to keep losing seat after seat after seat. This election pointed out how inconsistent the Democratic Party is between their message and their governance, and they're still planning on doubling down in 2018 of not 2020.

In short: Fuck your awful candidates at the local level, at the state level, and at the national level. The answer isn't to bully us into voting Dem no matter what (incidentally, this is a Republican way of thinking), but to fix the goddamned party so that we're enthused about the candidates and rally support for them ourselves.

@58 Theophilus - "And yet it was the Democraps who wrote off a quarter of the country as Irredeemable Deplorables."

Yep, Hillary said that. And I fully acknowledge that the biggest reason Trump won is because the Democrat Party arrogantly thought they could make history again by having the first woman president. But do you really want to go the route of "well SHE said..." when anyone who knows how to use Google can bring up dozens of quotes and incidents in which Trump insulted or ridiculed women, Hispanics, blacks, Asians, Muslims, people with disabilities, veterans, and just about every other minority and protected class out there? Cuz I'm sure all those people would add up to a lot more than a "quarter of the country."

It's also amazing how tenaciously people cling to the "but Hillary!" argument when Hillary is, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant now. Her opinions and actions matter about as much as my cat's. How about we talk about what the actual current president, whose words and actions DO matter, is doing?

61
Yes, that is true.

The point we were after
is that The Left claims conservatives/Trump voters
are haters/bigots/racists/etc/etc
but The Left harbors an enormous amount of hate and contempt as well,
they just think it is OK because the people they hate are
Trump voters/haters/bigots/racists/etc/etc.

Unfortunately there is a lot of hate and contempt from all sides floating around in this toxic brew that our society has become.

@61 Hillary isn't out of politics. She's coming back out of the woods, making speeches, influencing the Democratic Party, and, rumor has it, gearing up for either Hillary 2020 or Chelsea 2020. Her acolytes, including Tom Perez, still poison the party.

The reason I brought up Hillary is that the thrust of Dan's post isn't "Trump is awful." Instead, it's "Trump's voters are awful and the Democratic Party shouldn't change to appeal to them." Mush Brains is operating from the idea that the Democratic Party adheres to a solid, ideologically consistent, message and all of its politicians promote policies that benefit humanity. His post is about the future of the Democratic Party, and, with Hillary's reemergence, we have to take a stand against faux liberal assholes like him and his husband

@ raindrop - I asked because you said "an army of committed patriots needs to be going throughout Trumpland, knocking on doors, going to local cafes and creating dialog."

I wanted to know if you've ever had any success with that in a red state. And if you have, I want to know what you said that changed their minds. What do you say to someone who says, in all seriousness, that "Obama is the leader of ISIS" to make him stop believing that?

I've tried, and I've gotten nowhere.

@ 58 - "Trump won because Hillary was such a repulsive candidate"

Trump was a much more repulsive candidate, in case you didn't notice. To anyone with brains, that is.

65

Sadly for The Left more Americans in places where it counted found Hillary more repulsive.
The Democraps actually pulled off a pretty amazing feat,
nominating someone (perhaps the only person in public life)
more repulsive than Trump.
That really took brains.

On behalf of America; Thank You.

@12 dead-on as usual

@62 Theophilus - I wrote out a lengthy response, then noticed that you used "we" to refer to yourself and realized who you were, which is why I'm going to stop responding now.

@63 TheMisanthrope - she may be inching her way back into the spotlight, but that doesn't mean her opinion or actions will be heavily influential or shape policy, especially with the current administration in place. I personally think it's very unlikely that she would run for president again. If nothing else, she now has a track record of losing first to a little-known junior senator, and then losing again to the most unelectable person in history. Not exactly an encouraging sign. And other than a few tweets commenting on current social issues, I've seen nothing to indicate that Chelsea is looking to get into politics. I'd be very surprised if either of them ran for anything in 2020.

@ 66 - "someone... more repulsive than Trump"

To total morons, yes.

Anyone who voted for Trump is stupid beyond words. There are no acceptable excuses.

@69
Really?
Why?

@70
Your brilliantly reasoned articulately expressed analysis neatly sums up why The Left lost.
And are losers.
Perhaps you could call those you disagree with doodoo-heads next.
Just to mix it up.