Democrats have a hell of a challenge

[Gimmesometruth]

I'm talking about Democratic voters not nominating Bernie.

Oh, and again....you are NOT "blaming" them for this either....right?

Good grief.

 

[Craig234]

Oh, and again....you are NOT "blaming" them for this either....right?

Good grief.

I was about to try to figure out what you are trying to say again.

Then your tone ended my interest.

 

[Guyzilla]

I was about to try to figure out what you are trying to say again.

Then your tone ended my interest.

There is a little Bernie in all of us now.

 

[Craig234]

There is a little Bernie in all of us now.

Just not enough unfortunately. Can you imagine the country had he been president in 2016?

 

[Gimmesometruth]

I was about to try to figure out what you are trying to say again.

Then your tone ended my interest.

Oh, my "tone" upsets you! Not the fact that you ARE trying to blame Dems for poor 'governing" during the last 4 years when they had little effect at the national level.....nor are you blaming them for Bernie NOT getting enough votes....when he couldn't be bothered to actually be a Democratic party member.

Get some smelling salts and find a sofa.....my tone....poor thing.

 

[Craig234]

Oh, my "tone" upsets you! Not the fact that you ARE trying to blame Dems for poor 'governing" during the last 4 years

Stop lying about my comments and I'm not bothering to read past the above.

 

[Guyzilla]

Just not enough unfortunately. Can you imagine the country had he been president in 2016?

He will be our Mitt Romney.

 

[SimpleTom]

Just not enough unfortunately. Can you imagine the country had he been president in 2016?

We would be getting a Republican President to go along with the Republican Senate and Republican House that we got two years ago.

 

[Metric Mouse]

I can't even tell what point you are trying to make, other than seeing misrepresentation straw men, and that you are saying it doesn't matter who controls Congress. And I'm getting tired of saying 'not worth trying to respond'. You are just jabbering about things having nothing to do with my comments.

Oh, you're one of those.

Thank you for the discussion.

 

[Gimmesometruth]

Stop lying about my comments and I'm not bothering to read past the above.

Got it, yer out of salts and the dog is on the sofa. I suggest laying on the floor until you get some color back.

 

[NWRatCon]

Joe isn't even officially president elect, and people are already making excuses for why he won't accomplish anything in his term as president. Wow.

No, my friend, they are anticipating the new reality. Mitch McConnell will continue his obstreperous, obstructive ways.

It's odd that the Democrats are the ones having to do the soul-searching, while Republicans will travel on oblivious to the four flat tires they are running on. If the Dems really get the recruitment train underway, they can crush this, but I don't see that happening until they figure out where they are going.

 

[calamity]

The concern about 'spending' in the presidential election didn't seem to matter when it was thought that Dems would sweep bigly.
When that didn't happen, suddenly money in politics becomes a concern.

Trump expanded the GOP base with blacks, Hispanics and women. He lost ground, amusingly, with white men.

The only challenge will be deciding which Trump to indict first.

Donald
Ivanka
Junior

Hell, the only one truly safe is that tall kid with the noble name. And, that's assuming we don't deport his mama.

 

[Metric Mouse]

No, my friend, they are anticipating the new reality. Mitch McConnell will continue his obstreperous, obstructive ways.

It's odd that the Democrats are the ones having to do the soul-searching, while Republicans will travel on oblivious to the four flat tires they are running on. If the Dems really get the recruitment train underway, they can crush this, but I don't see that happening until they figure out where they are going.

Why is that odd? If Republicans continue to win elections and Democrats don't, why would they not search their souls to find more popular positions and better candidates?

Biden will have to deal with Congress, and there are two parties there. Why would that doom his presidency? It didn't doom anyone else's. Dealing with both parties is a basic tenet of the job; if he's unable to handle that, he needs a different line of work.

 

[Gimmesometruth]

No, my friend, they are anticipating the new reality. Mitch McConnell will continue his obstreperous, obstructive ways.

It's odd that the Democrats are the ones having to do the soul-searching, while Republicans will travel on oblivious to the four flat tires they are running on. If the Dems really get the recruitment train underway, they can crush this, but I don't see that happening until they figure out where they are going.

I completely disagree, when a person continually votes for a party that does not WORK in their self interest, votes for a POTUS literally spreading a deadly virus personally and by his actions affecting his own supporters, I don't believe these people can be brought to vote Dem. They have become hard core right wingers. The only game anymore is securing Ind voters, but apparently a whole lot of them went with the super-spreader too.

 

[SimpleTom]

Why is that odd? If Republicans continue to win elections and Democrats don't, why would they not search their souls to find more popular positions and better candidates?

Except Democrats have won the last 4 elections now. It is true that the Democrats haven't won the last four presidencies, because winning elections is not what is required to become President. However, you could just as easily say that the Democrats need to do a better job of gerrymandering so that there election wins always end up with Presidencies.

 

[Craig234]

Got it

Wrong, but that's as far as I read. Not reading you further here.

 

[Athanasius68]

No, my friend, they are anticipating the new reality. Mitch McConnell will continue his obstreperous, obstructive ways.

It's odd that the Democrats are the ones having to do the soul-searching, while Republicans will travel on oblivious to the four flat tires they are running on. If the Dems really get the recruitment train underway, they can crush this, but I don't see that happening until they figure out where they are going.

We kept hearing about blue waves.
There was nothing.
The Dems lost seats in the House.
They are not taking the Senate.
They did not flip a single state legislature and indeed lost some.
The GOP gained in all voter groups (except, apparently and ironically, white men).
Should Biden win, he will have barely done so.
Within the House, Democrats are already squabbling amongst themselves as to who should be blamed for the catastrophe.

There will not be an end to the filibuster.
There will be no courtpacking.
There will be no admission of DC or Puerto Rico as a state.

Perhaps the Dems should be examining their own tires.

 

[Craig234]

We would be getting a Republican President to go along with the Republican Senate and Republican House that we got two years ago.

Ya, just like electing FDR caused an all Republican government by the next election. America HATED him, too.

 

[Craig234]

He will be our Mitt Romney.

That's hugely insulting to Bernie. Romney is a corrupt worm.

 

[Gimmesometruth]

Wrong, but that's as far as I read. Not reading you further here.

You are repeating yourself....as you continue to edit and quote me.

My responses were on point, your inability to comprehend them and then this silly "I can't hear you" set of responses shows how infantile your ability to argue is.

 

[Athanasius68]

That's hugely insulting to Bernie. Romney is a corrupt worm.

I wonder from which of his country estates the good socialist Senator watched the election returns.

 

[Metric Mouse]

Except Democrats have won the last 4 elections now. It is true that the Democrats haven't won the last four presidencies, because winning elections is not what is required to become President. However, you could just as easily say that the Democrats need to do a better job of gerrymandering so that there election wins always end up with Presidencies.

Presidential elections are not the only elections that matter. As far as winning presidential elections, no where else in our Democracy does more people voting against something than voting for something mean that bill/candidate/measure etc. should pass. I'm not sure why people keep arguing that should be the case in presidential elections.

 

[NWRatCon]

Why is that odd? If Republicans continue to win elections and Democrats don't, why would they not search their souls to find more popular positions and better candidates?.

Here's the reality: The representative system in the United States is not representative. The skew of representation means that Democrats need to win by 4% or MORE, just to break even. I can take you through the math, if you want, but the problem has existed since the beginning of the nation, and has been significantly exacerbated by the Reapportionment Act of 1929. In the Senate:

Back in 1790, about 748,000 people — nearly 40 percent of whom were enslaved — lived in Virginia. The smallest state, Delaware, had 59,000 residents, of whom about 3 percent were enslaved.

The largest state, in other words, was about 12.6 times as big as the smallest state, and the ratio was even lower among free people.

Today, the smallest state is Wyoming, and the state of Washington has about 12.6 times as many people. Of course, Washington isn’t the largest state. Indeed, it’s not even particularly close — 12 states are bigger. Illinois has 22 times Wyoming’s population. Texas is nearly 50 times as big (and growing fast). And California is a stunning 68 times as large.

These are enormous disparities to live with as essentially a matter of historical happenstance. Not only was the Connecticut Compromise defining Senate representation a hard-nosed plan that didn’t reflect any clear larger principle, the boundaries of the states themselves were not drawn the way they are today for any particularly far-sighted reason.

If California had been carved up into Massachusetts-sized states, it could be easily 15 or 16 separate entities — each with about four times the population of Wyoming — rather than the current mismatch. When currently big states like Texas, Illinois, Florida, and California were admitted to the Union, their populations were not particularly large, and there was no specific intention to downweight their residents.

American democracy’s Senate problem, explained (Vox). In the House, gerrymandering and geography also come into play (as well as apportionment). The Congressional Map Has A Record-Setting Bias Against Democrats (FiveThirtyEight):

In the last few decades, Democrats have expanded their advantages in California and New York — states with huge urban centers that combined to give Clinton a 6 million vote edge, more than twice her national margin. But those two states elect only 4 percent of the Senate. Meanwhile, Republicans have made huge advances in small rural states — think Arkansas, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana and West Virginia — that wield disproportionate power in the upper chamber compared to their populations.

We can quantify the partisan bias of Congress over time by measuring the distance between each national presidential result and each year’s presidential result in the median House and Senate seats. So in 2008, for example, Barack Obama won the popular vote by 7.3 percentage points, but Democrats won the median House seat by 4.4 points — a pro-GOP bias of 2.9 points.

Today, the pro-GOP biases in both chambers are at historic highs[.]

 

[SimpleTom]

Presidential elections are not the only elections that matter. As far as winning presidential elections, no where else in our Democracy does more people voting against something than voting for something mean that bill/candidate/measure etc. should pass. I'm not sure why people keep arguing that should be the case in presidential elections.

I didn't say anything about how we elect Presidents or vote for things. However, the fact that the Democrats have received more votes than the Republicans in the last four elections is a solid counter argument to your statement that, "If Republicans continue to win elections and Democrats don't, why would they not search their souls to find more popular positions and better candidates?" Democratic candidates and positions are more popular than Republican positions and candidates so the idea that they need to find a way to be more popular than Republicans is flawed. Certainly, you might state that Democrats need to learn to convert their popularity into Presidencies but it is disingenuous to pretend that Republican positions are more popular.

As for the straw man, I lost my decoder ring, but... There are plenty of places in our Democracy where a plurality of votes is sufficient to pass laws/candidates/measures, where a plurality of votes is insufficient to pass laws/candidates/measures, where a majority of votes is sufficient to pass laws/candidates/measures, and where a majority of votes is insufficient to pass laws/candidates/measures. Stating that it doesn't appear anywhere else in our Democracy is completely false, it is all over the place in our Democracy.

 

[Metric Mouse]

I didn't say anything about how we elect Presidents or vote for things. However, the fact that the Democrats have received more votes than the Republicans in the last four elections is a solid counter argument to your statement that, "If Republicans continue to win elections and Democrats don't, why would they not search their souls to find more popular positions and better candidates?" Democratic candidates and positions are more popular than Republican positions and candidates so the idea that they need to find a way to be more popular than Republicans is flawed. Certainly, you might state that Democrats need to learn to convert their popularity into Presidencies but it is disingenuous to pretend that Republican positions are more popular.

As for the straw man, I lost my decoder ring, but... There are plenty of places in our Democracy where a plurality of votes is sufficient to pass laws/candidates/measures, where a plurality of votes is insufficient to pass laws/candidates/measures, where a majority of votes is sufficient to pass laws/candidates/measures, and where a majority of votes is insufficient to pass laws/candidates/measures. Stating that it doesn't appear anywhere else in our Democracy is completely false, it is all over the place in our Democracy.

Where else in the United States democracy (especially at the federal level) is a plurality enough to pass a measure? My ignorance is on full display, (perhaps more than normal?) because I can't think of one.

Also i was not arguing that Republican positions were more popular, just that they are popular enough to continue to win elections and if that is confusing to another party or candidates, then perhaps some soul searching is indeed in order.