Debunking the idea that I won't compromise with the democrats

So, a lot of establishment democrats don't seem to understand me very well. Whether this is innocuous or not, who knows (as we all know I don't trust the dems much at all these days), but the fact is whenever I get into debate with the establishment left, the narrative comes up that I and people like me are unwilling to compromise and that we're not worth appealing to as a result.

I just want to say that this is blatantly false. If you read back in my blog here a few months, I grappled with the decision to support the democrats or not, and waffled back and forth between Hillary Clinton and Jill Stein. In my original article about Hillary, I gave my thoughts on Clinton about how she seemed to have this grand strategy to run JUST to the left enough to attempt to placate progressives, while largely ignoring and dismissing their ideas. I pointed out that most of her strategy to win us over was damage control, and an attempt to scare us into voting for the democrats under the impression we had nowhere else to go. Looking at my argument, it seems readily apparent that I did not feel welcome in the party this year. I was expected to vote for her, but my ideas were largely ignored, and the relationship between us was very one sided. It was very clear who was in charge in this relationship, and it wasn't me.

I also expressed reservations with Jill Stein, pointing out her ideas being unworkable and that she was more pie in the sky rather than practical or pragmatic. But I toyed with the idea of supporting her, basically suggesting that moving the democrats to the left was more important.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that Stein was a better candidate for me to support. And I want to post a few quotes from this article suggesting some of my reasoning for this, which really get to the heart of my intentions.

Look, if this primary played out differently and the democratic party didn’t seem so hostile toward Bernie and his ideas and spend so much time specifically trying to rein him and his supporters in without so much as attempting to appeal to us the old fashioned way, maybe things would be different. If Hillary herself started more to the left and displayed some level of consistency in her views, maybe.

 Here, I'm clearly pointing out how if things were different, I would have supported Clinton. If the dems were more welcoming to us to begin with, I would have likely supported them. But they weren't, they ignored us and focused too much on silencing us and doing damage control to bully us into supporting them.

Clinton was also an extremely flawed candidate. She was too inconsistent and trustworthy to be willing to stand up for progressive ideas. Quite frankly, even if she spoke the language, she was too "damaged" as a candidate given her history and the democrats' actions to support.

But the fact is, the democratic party as it exists seems hopelessly out of touch with Bernie supporters like myself and can’t appeal to us to save their life, or their electoral chances. They literally don’t understand how our minds work, and they’ve missed so many chances to appeal to us that it’s pathetic. Between the candidate, their inconsistency, their hostility, condescension, and arrogance, the rift in the party may be damaged beyond repair this election. I can’t speak for everyone here, only myself, but as I’ve said before, this election has been a blow to my faith in the democratic party being an agent of change. At best this comes from an out of touch older generation engaging in group think and simply not being able to appeal to younger folks (hence the condescending tone to “educate” the youngin’s). At worst, it comes from a targeted effort to suppress a movement that threatens the interests of their cronies and donors. So at best, they’re just hopelessly out of touch, and at worst, they’re malicious and subversive.

 The core problem here is that the democrats were out of touch or even subversive. They did little to appeal to us, and I quite frankly felt hostility and ill intentions from the Clinton camp. I felt like the democrats were trying to suppress us and shut us up. That they didn't welcome our views, they just wanted our votes without doing anything in return. I mean, here's a list of things I felt they did wrong in this article:

1) They appeal to party loyalty, without recognizing that we’re not your average rank and file follower you can order around.

2) They tell us our ideas are bad, can’t be implemented, or even appeal to the same kind of national identity crap that you would expect from republicans and their special little snowflake-ism (American Exceptionalism). They lecture us and tell us to settle for less.

3) They accuse opponents of being sexist, making up derogatory terms like “Bernie Bros” to attack us.

4) The media ignores us, the DNC stacks the debate schedule against us, the superdelegates line up behind Hillary, and various primaries had potential voter suppression issues in states in which Hillary had won. It’s almost like they’re trying to shut down our movement. Like they’re part of the problem and their facade of being the “good party” is crumbling.

5) They don’t talk about what they want to do or what vision they want for America, all they talk about is how bad Trump is and how they’re better.

6) When they fail, they blame us. Nothing is ever their fault, it’s always our fault, for not being good little democrats that fall in line.

So, let's go over this. 1. They appealed to party loyalty. They didn't appeal to us. They just told us to vote D above all else and put our squabbles aside. 2. They ran to the right to appeal to republicans, and talked down to us and our ideas. 3. They clearly attacked us and used smears to discredit our movement. 4. The media and the democratic primary structure clearly existed to back candidates like Hillary and suppress candidates like Sanders. I felt that the democrats were trying to shut us down more than anything. 5. They appealed to lesser evilism, not running a positive platform. 6. They blame us when they lose. Just like they're doing now.

Speaking of that last point, these attacks about how we're just uncompromising is basically a combination of 2 and 6. They talked down to us like we're children and then try to revise history to make their losses look like our fault. Now they're suddenly claiming Clinton had the best platform ever and had all this progressive stuff but because we weren't good little rank and file voters, it's our fault they lost. They're trying to make us look bad and uncompromising, when my view of the story clearly has the democrats as the bad guys. They were dismissive, they didn't appeal to us, they didn't give us a seat at the table. They expected us to show up and then get mad when we say no. I mean, this smear that we wouldn't compromise with Hillary seems to have more to do with the DNC and Hillary's behavior than actual policy.

I really want to emphasize what the party looks like, taking all of the above points into consideration. It looks to me like, some deal may have been reached in 2008 to get Hillary to step down and support Obama. A promise of future support or something. So Hillary, like a good little democrat, stepped down and obeyed. After 8 years of Obama, the party promises to give it to Hillary. So, this whole primary process has been about getting Hillary the nomination. So they go on a full on offensive against Bernie, rig the process in many many various subtle ways that they can deny when directly accused, and then corral the Bernie supporters into supporting Hillary because they have nowhere else to go. Again, my big issues with the dems involve these shady attempts at suppression, their obvious attempts to ignore us, and these attempts to make us fall in line. It’s like the democrats think we are stupid and controllable. In this hostile environment, giving them a vote only shows that these tactics work.

Bingo. The core grievance is that the democrats tried too hard to push Hillary down our throats and told us we better fall in line or else. They expected us to cave and vote out of fear, in absence of a positive message from them. If the democrats tried so hard to compromise and appeal to us, why did the Bernie crowd feel so alienated? Why was so much time and effort focused on damage control? Why did so much of their narrative focus around "look, we know you don't like Clinton, so we're gonna try every trick in the book to make you vote for us anyway?" Why the endless appeals to party loyalty? Why call us "Bernie Bros" and call us sexist or privileged if we disagree with her? Why creepy dystopian "I'm with her" tag line? Why the endless reminders that Donald Trump is the alternative? .

So much time and effort was spent not trying to appeal to us, but to subdue us, to beat us into submission, to crush our hopes and dreams and then tell us we can expect no better and we gotta settle for less. And this was the problem, and this was more important than any policy the democrats had. This was about power. The democrats made a power play to silence us and make us submit to them. They didn't give us a seat at the table. They didn't want us at the table. They wanted us to be eating off the floor like the dogs we are to them. Their message is this, "we don't take orders, we give them, so fall in line." If they were really appealing to us, there would be no need for these tactics. The fact is they were only pretending to offer an olive branch, as long as we submitted to them and played their game, and if we didn't surrender, they would come at us via other ways to try to shut us up. The fact that they were ready with these lines of reasoning clearly tells me that they expected fallout from the party for this and were prepared to do damage control.

Further evidence that they expected fallout from their approach to the left comes from Chuck Schumer, who pretty much gave away the whole strategy by saying the following:

“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” 

Let's not pretend that the democrats didn't know what they were doing, they knew exactly what they were doing (love that Rubio line). Their whole strategy all along was to basically ignore the left, try to bully them into submission to minimize the damage, and run to the center. And all of this would result in an electoral victory in which for every democrat they piss off they would pick up 2 moderate republicans who hate Trump. At the convention it couldn't be more obvious too. The whole first night they were booed, and they eventually silenced the the dissent and went on with the show as if nothing was happening. Meanwhile thousands of people were outside protesting the democratic party. They knew what they were doing. They knew people were pissed. They just didn't care. They had their agenda, and their candidate, and we just have to get behind it. Any compromises are minor and were carefully stage managed to give the impression of good will, but for the most part they just swept us under the rug and tried to forget we exist.

And you know what? They lost. Their whole strategy was a failure. We know what happened on election night. Pennsylvania went red for the first time in 2 years. Wisconsin went red for the first time in 32. They also lost Michigan, Ohio, and Iowa. They ALMOST lost freaking Minnesota, which hasn't gone red since since the Nixon administration, and would have been monumentally embarrassing for the democrats to lose.

For them to lose this whole region of the country, they clearly did something wrong. And I think it goes back to triangulation. They pissed off the left. They know they pissed off the left. They didn't care if they pissed off the left, because the way they saw it they would win so many right wingers it wouldn't matter. Well, that strategy backfired. They lost the left and the right supported Trump anyway. And now they have the gall to deflect and blame us and say we're unwilling to compromise.

I have news for you, look at the articles above, look at my statements, it has little to do with actual policy here. If I felt that the dems reached out to me and that this is the best we could realistically do, and that this is what we came to after they listened and we actually united as a party, that's fine. I mean, I'll say it now, Clinton's platform was more reasonable than Stein's in a lot of ways and I had issues with Stein. I voted for her because I was willing to compromise. And honestly, not even Bernie gives me everything I wanted. I compromised by supporting him too. It wasn't about the platform, is was about the democrats and their attitude. It was about forcing a fundamentally flawed, unlikable candidate on us, refusing to listen to us,  and basically pissing us off and alienating us because they had cool republican friends now. It was about, instead of running to the left and pushing an actual progressive platform, they would fake left and go hard center. It was about moving the needle to the right, not to the left. It was about the establishment telling us this is how it's gonna be and we better settle for it or else. All images that gave the pretense of unity and compromise were well scripted publicity events. The reality is the democrats did everything they could to ignore us and piss us off and win over the centrists to the party. And in doing so, they lost both the left and the center.

I don't think they care either, for reference. Schumer just got promoted to Senate Minority Leader with Harry Reid resigning in January. The people in power still maintain power. It's the iron law of institutions. The people in charge would rather the party fail if they keep their cushy positions in it, than to have the organization succeed if it means they cede power. Which was really what this was about. They were scared of the Bernie people I think. They don't want us to take control of the party. It puts them out of the job and pisses off their donors. So they likely suppressed us because they would rather lose and maintain control than win and risk losing it. They don't want us to have a seat at the table, and beating us is clearly more important in their minds than beating the republicans. And now because they lost they're trying to pin the defeat on us and double down on a bad strategy that clearly failed for them, thinking they can win us back just by letting the republicans do their thing. Sickening, just sickening.

On a side note, I will say that appealing to moderate republicans worked in 2012. I was a moderate republican until 2012 who left the tea party because I thought they went crazy and crap. But you know what? They did it not by appealing to my values at the time, but my challenging my views, forcing me to choose between a radical right wing i knew did nothing for me and a left wing that clearly had a positive vision. And after adopting those left wing values I moved to the left ever since. I changed my views completely. The way to win people over isn't to try to run to the center and appeal to the opposition's views. It's to show people the failures in those views' logic and present an alternate vision. And that's what the democrats failed to do. The democrats dont win elections these days by becoming republican, they win by proposing an alternate vision from both the status quo and the opposition that resonates with people.You win the ideological battle by persuading the other side to agree with you, not by adopting their values. The latter is called losing.