The democratic party has the votes to win every general election, the voters just have to actually show up. That is all the math you really need to know.

Go out an vote next time, you lazy dinks. Also, have a real primary next time, instead of just choosing someone whose "turn" it is.

Well, sorry to say but you clearly can't do the math since Clinton lost in the rust belt due to 30+ years of neoliberal policy by Democrats and Republicans. After 40 years of neoliberal Democrats in charge, liberals have apparently lost all branches of government and 69 out of 99 state assemblies. Your math sucks.

The math is really going to suck on election night 2018: The following states have Democrat incumbents up for reelection in the Senate in states that just went to Trump.

Montana
North Dakota
Pennsylvania
Ohio
Indiana
Florida
Arkansas
Wisconsin
Michigan

And five states where the incumbent is a Republican are states solidly Republican. The left needs to get their head around this quickly because campaigning for those Senate seats is already under way.

An MBA is the participation ribbon of post-grad education.

The fastest expanding group of voters are independents, and progressives (and therefore the Democrats, if they care) need to be reaching those people. They did not in this cycle, and those lost swing states we needed to prevent Trump.

"you can't make change with Jill Stein's numbers."

Guess what? You can't make change with Hillary Clinton's numbers either.

Yes, she had the national popular vote - and I hope she's happy with an astrisk next to her name in the history books. But her vote count was far below Barak Obama's 2012 numbers, and she couldn't motivate base voters in urban areas who are quick to march and shout about 'new urbanism' and 'black lives mattering' but slow to fill out a ballot.

It's not cool to mock this poor man by posting this online. Shame on you, stranger.

We need to make the pitch to white working class voters in the rust belt states. It won't be just about making it easier to join unions, it will require unions to reach out to more women, data entry people, administrative staff, the people that punch a time clock but not for an assembly line.

@7, but The Stranger has already written them off as racist misogynistic assholes. I mean it's like you want to re implement the 50 State Strategy of Howard Dean. You know, the crazy DNC chair who oversaw the Democrats take Congress back in 2006 and was party chair when the US elected that skinny black junior Senator from Illinois to the White House.

@8 Friend, you are confusing slog comment threads with The Democratic Party.

A lot of get-out-the-vote work unions used to do isn't getting done because the unions have been so badly decimated. Over the years, Democrats have been complicit in this erosion but it has been primarily the work of Republicans. Its going to get worse - they will come after public sector unions hard over the next couple years.

I don't know what the Democrats can do about it. But I'm just some guy on the internet who pays too much attention to politics. I can only hope they have smart, dedicated people working on the problem.

@7: In Michigan and Wisconsin, the majority of union families switched from voting Obama in 2012 to Trump this year.

The Democrats need to actually do something to appeal to these people, not just try to expand union membership. Instead of taking them for granted and authoring new trade policies to shift their jobs overseas while enriching themselves and the 1%, maybe they should offer something, any kind of assistance to the working class.

Trump's rhetoric really appealed to them, and while it is unknown if they were voting against Dems for years of undelivered promises and insults, or actually voting for Trump, the fact is clear that Democrats have lost the ability to get out the working class vote everywhere but their coastal enclaves.

@10: "whose email fuck ups got her an investigation by the FBI a week before the election"

You are incredibly easily fooled.

@12

Weren't you peddling some claim the other day that Clinton was going to lose the popular vote? Did you ever follow up on that?

This author's boot-heel tone recalls recent Clinton adamance from some around here: "you all better get in line!" The results are in . . . it didn't work out well for us--nor for you! Instead of telling us what we better do, how about adding courage to your conviction and running for office? If the power of your ideas is sufficiently compelling to support, we'll get a representative for our values, and you'll get a chance to shape as opposed to just shout.

@14: Nope. I said that, at that time, CNN was projecting Trump would win the popular vote.

CNN was projecting that, but apparently they were incorrect.

I would say this differently --

There were two choices this year. Clinton and Trump.

Anything -- ANYTHING -- that was done to disparage Clinton helped Trump win.

She was in a miasma of negativity that affected undecided voters and pushed those Dems into Rs and misled people into thinking their vote didn't matter so they didn't show up.

And the person who quoted the private emails that were hacked without mentioning that Russia was working really hard to undercut and disrupt our election is a tool of the Russians.

Take a page from the Rs. Their people do the most egregious horrible stuff, and yet they get elected/reelected. Vitter and his prostitutes in the bible belt South gets reelected? Anything that came out of Trump's mouth for the past 18 months? But our progressives take Clinton quoting Abraham Lincoln's strategy for getting slavery abolished in the Constitution and act like she is the most corrupt person to ever run for office.

I'm sick to my stomach that all those people voted for Trump.

I'm more sick to my stomach at every Democrat who piled onto Clinton in a nit-picking feeding frenzy WHEN THE OTHER CHOICE WAS TRUMP.

Clinton won the popular vote. How many electoral votes would she have gotten if you had shown some grownup attitude and shored her up instead of tearing her down? How many more people would have voted instead of staying home?

Saying Clinton and Trump were the same is what lost this very close election.

And you guys need to stop blaming Clinton and take full responsibility for your part in this loss.

You did it. You.

Grow up. Be like Republicans and stick up for your person.

The choice was between Trump and Clinton. And now we have lost the Supreme Court for 30 years or so.

Good going. I know you are proud of yourselves for your integrity. You fucked yourselves in the process. Make no mistake about your complicity.

Trump did not ride some giant wave of new Republicans, he got almost exactly the same number of votes as Romney and McCain. Clinton list this election, and lost badly - the Republicans now control the congressional & executive branches, and likely soon the judicial. The Democratic Party f'd us by giving us the wrong candidate and ignoring the voters that they needed - they are out of touch with the electorate, and they were gave us a 20th century politician without recognizing that society has changed.

And who the hell gets to write an anonymous letter to the editor? "I, Anonymous" would've been the place for this 'I'm-a-tell-you-sumpin' little rant. Editor fail.

It's been one week and I'm already seeing over reaching by the Trump/Republican administration.

@17 If democrats were motivated by fear, they'd be republicans. Get over yourself, your way of campaigning loses elections for us.

@17

Wonder why the D's blew it by attempting to cram Clinton down the nations throat?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLG9g7Bc…

"Well, sorry to say but you clearly can't do the math since Clinton lost in the rust belt due to 30+ years of neoliberal policy by Democrats and Republicans." Bingo.

A brave strawman post written by an anonymous writer and posted by an anonymous Stranger staffer. Great work!

@3, it won't take the pitchfork crowd in those states long to round on Trump. He won't be re-opening the coal mines (none of the utilities will be buying the output, as nat gas is too cheap, burns cleaner, and doesn't leave those annoying ash piles to deal with), and any factories he brings back from China will be run mostly by robots.

This sounds exactly like a satirical Onion article: http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/when-wi…

Dear Progressive Who Can Do Math:

Right the fuck on. Damn skippy. Preach!

The Democratic Party didn't realize that this was a "change" election...and thus they didn't detail anything that Hillary would change (or, in things like the TPP, she wasn't trusted to be the change.)

In her advertising, Hillary answered the question "What are you going to do when you're president?" with "Not be Donald Trump." And it turns out that wasn't enough.

I think that Hillary didn't want to focus on her plans or proposals because the Democratic party was thinking that they were winning the election and were concentrating on gathering a bi-partisan mandate--she was trying to be the center-right candidate that could appeal to Republicans that so many progressives were accusing her of being...rather than shoring up and energizing her base. (This is especially harsh in hindsight when so many criticized Trump for doing just that--he never reached out, he never expected to appeal to anyone but those who would like him...and that ended up being enough.)

So, you can blame strategy or tactics...but the ironic thing is that one candidate ran on his personality but won on his (undefined, completely unworkable and often deeply offensive) ideas ("I will bring change, she will be more of the same") when the other candidate had the right ideas but tried to make it about her opponent's personality and lost.

Barely a week after the election and the left-wing circular firing squad is still going full blast. Keep it up! It's like, constructive or something.

@7 No we don't. We just need to wait for their orange fuhrer to fuck everything up, which will surely happen eventually.

@9 It is not just Republicans that have decimated the unions but the actual yahoos in the white working class who once belonged to them. Somewhat ironic that many of the very same people (perhaps mostly in the south rather than the rust belt) who fulminate the most about China and Mexico stealing their jobs were complicit in the previous shift of manufacturing jobs, from the north to the south back in the 70s and 80s. This shift occurred primarily because labor was a lot cheaper in the south. Why was it a lot cheaper? Because the south consists almost entirely of 'right to work' states. Workers in these states were mostly zealously supportive of these anti-union policies when it meant jobs for them.

@26 And if he actually follows through with slapping tariffs on Chinese and Mexican imports the deplorables are going to be gobsmacked by the prices the next day when they wander into their local Wall Mart.

It'd be political suicide for an elected to publicly admit it, and it's not an exciting enough topic for any major news outlets to cover, but the rust belt needs to understand—what gutted all those decent-paying manufacturing jobs isn't some trade agreement or the EPA or any of those easily conjured election-cycle boogymen. Those jobs are gone because of American efficiency.

Automation, software, paying overtime instead of hiring... America is the #2 manufacturing power in the world (per capita), we squeeze every last drop of productivity from our workers. Those jobs aren't coming back and people need to know so we can start working on Plan B to get people back on their feet.

I love the dem hacks closing ranks, chanting shit like "We don't have to appeal to you, your job is to vote for us".

Fuck off. You tried forcing it down our throats during the election, it was resoundingly rejected, it's not going to work now either.

Also fuck every dem calling for us to respect the result. Collaborationist scum trying to preserve their positions. Get a platform that addresses material decline of all people in this country, stop poisoning the environment and start dismantling the system that is making the rich ungodly wealthy. I'm not happy about Trump but I'm glad they took it in the teeth. If people don't get rid of those neoliberal jackals we've got more hurt in store for us.

@34 Forcing it down whose throat? You imagine you have a clue what motivates the deplorables in rural Wisconsin? You sitting in your west coast bubble with your bong?

I know you characters are impermeable to reality but the reality is this: economic insecurity had little to do with the election result. Listen to the shits who voted for Trump. Look at who they are. Most of them have jobs, most of them are well enough off. Health care for all, environmental issues and combating inequality don't mean fuck all to these people.

@35- The deplorables are 25% of the electorate, according to the last nationwide poll conducted by the US government. The 50% who didn't bother registering their opinion are the people we need to motivate.

@36 I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that the non-voters are non-deplorable. Certainly they are even less informed than most of the deplorables. This does not inspire confidence that 'reaching out' to them or 'listening to their concerns' would do a whole hell of a lot of good. So far we have established that they can be roused by economic collapse (some of them). That's about all that can be established. Trump might have something even worse than economic collapse in store so maybe they'll be motivated in 2020.

Yeah, fuck your Democrat capitalist free-market collaborationist jerks.
All economic policies are political.

Redundant Republican-Democrat political centrism and both of their pro-Wall Street economic policies are what got us Trump.

The two-party system is bunkum. Fascism was inevitable.

What a bunch of bull. The Conservatives in Canada tried to get progressives to surrender in Canada, and we removed their party as an effective force.

Are you saying Americans don't have the guts to win when you had a MILLION more VOTES than Comrade Trump did?

Fight! And WIN!

@24, Clinton's hemispheric market would be a good thing for everyone in South and Central America, but it doesn't make her a neo-liberal.

Clinton had no agenda to privatize any part of the government. Not prisons, not social security. Zero privatization in her plan for America.

Clinton had no deregulation agenda. She didn't have an agenda to deregulate Wall Street. She didn't want to deregulate labor. She didn't want to deregulate for-profit "colleges". She wanted to strengthen the EPA. She wanted to expand Wall Street regulations to shadow banking practices.

Clinton had no austerity agenda. She didn't want to reign in government spending. She didn't want to cut taxes. She didn't want to reduce the size of government.

Clinton didn't support market solutions to any of our priorities. She didn't think the market should decide energy policy. She didn't the market would provide universal healthcare. She didn't propose letting the market solve college costs.

Clinton was not/is not a neo-liberal. Anyone who says she was/is is a fucking moron!

P.S. skepticism of free trade is great. But opposition to free trade does not make you "against capitalism." It makes you a participant in mercantile capitalism willing to slap punitive economic sanctions on the world's poorest people.

41
I disagree that opposition to soi-disant "free-trade" capitalism is somehow punitive to the world's poorest.
There is no such thing as "Free-trade". All markets are structured. But US-western "free-trade" deals are in fact markets structured by gov't regulations to benefit Western companies over smaller nations' local priorities & companies. It is the IMF offering rigged 'bail out' loans that require austerity and huge jumps in local interest rates.
(Just imagine if our interest rates went up 30% so that foreign "investors" could reap lovely profits... you would struggle to put food on the table, while suits in offices padded their pocketbooks).

I would humbly recommend checking out some heterodox economic works. These two are good starting points, IMHO:
Ha-Joon Chang's 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, and
Dean Baker's Rigged (pdf download).

@42, all valid criticism of how our trade deals have been written. But when Bernie and Trump bash TTP they aren't talking about giving gifts out to Thailand or recognizing that there's no legit Thai interest in enforcing copy right rules on Michael Bay movies. They are talking about imposing tariffs to disadvantage Thai exporters and disincentivize direct investment in Thailand. Those actions don't get you "out" of capitalism, they make you one of it's most selfish practitioners. It's a different kind of yearning for white power ("those are our jobs by white right") exercised as fake benevolent imperialism.

@37- so you think the Democrats just need to get Bernie Sanders to shut up and kill the Green Party and that is a winning strategy? Seriously?

Um is it just me or did anyone else notice that there is actually no math in the letter?

Party self-identification is the mark of a poor thinker. Don't let a label do your thinking for you.

Given that the anonymous writer here has chosen also to flap that MBA around, certified.

People get MBAs to get ahead in their careers but usually you'll only find it on their LinkedIn page or whatever - people who *flaunt* their MBAs like this are almost always well-spoken dumbasses.

Party allegiance is for politicians, not people. It's a religious excuse to stop thinking and start being told what to think.

You Beltway Elites and MSM are out.

Deal

The current DNC policies would have been a slow screwing of the middle class but at least with some lube.

Trump is gonna just fuck us all hard, no consent, no lube.

LW and those who agree, go read Cornell West. Start here:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre…

Bernie wasn't just white elite's fav. Of course, Cornell West supported Hilary after the nomination (as did I), but if you are still thinking a Hilary-like set of policies is the future of the DNC, we are in for decades of Trumpism, Trump voters stupidly think he'll protect them but they smartly know the DNC neoliberalism isn't working.

It doesn't have to be Bernie's way but we need a coherent, massively progressive agenda from the DNC.

For those who like free trade, fine, but you'd have to couple it with a heavy wealth tax (not just progressive income tax) on the billionaire class who benefit and use it to provide a substantial basic income, and a low-cost non-profit safety net of housing, education and universal health care. That ain't happening, Americans don't like "redistribution."

Without it, free trade just screws the 99%. Hence, Bernie's path of somewhat protectionist policies, free college, and single payer healthcare might at least preserve some future the working and middle class. Unfortunately, I'm only hearing this from Cornell West, Bernie, "outsider" left wing voices.

DNC leaders like Chuck Schumer are basically more of the same DNC that just got defeated where it counts, in the vast rural middle of America that controls the Senate, House, most of the state governments, and due to Electoral College, the presidency.