So...a lot of democrats still don't get it. Every time I see a discussion about the problems with the democratic party, I see two camps emerge. There's the camp that the party is a bunch of wishy washy centrists who don't support real solutions and tried to strongarm us into settling for a lesser of two evils...and then there's the camp that thinks that the first camp is a bunch of whiny ingrates who put their "purity tests" ahead of country and how we would've won if only we fell in line. As you guys know, I'm firmly in the first camp, and do not believe that the democrats really have a good economic platform. I'm sorry, but Obamacare and other wishy washy solutions aren't good enough. Our economic system is fundamentally broken and needs to be fixed, and the dems have run so far to the right since Reagan that they're now occupying a similar ideological slot as the pre Reagan republican party.
Many of us want significant change, real change. We don't think the Obama years were great. A lot of centrists are now telling me how awesome the Obama years were....you mean those years where unemployment was sky high and came down because of a 4 point drop in labor force participation? Those years where you can graduate college and have trouble finding a job at McDonalds? Those years? Obama did some decent things, but let's not romanticize the guy or act like he did the best that anyone can do. He was a competent leader, but competence is a BASELINE for governance, not a feature. The dems seem to think merely having someone competent is good enough because the republicans are so far off the rails that they can't elect anyone who isn't either an ideologue with terrible policies or an idiot. That's what we're being told about Clinton now too, that at least if we didn't have Clinton we would have competent leadership, yeah, but again, competence is a baseline. It should be a minimum requirement for the job, not a freaking feature. How much does our political system sucks merely being competent becomes the key reason we should support someone?
As for purity tests...we "Bernie Bros" did not become this alienated and pissed off with the democrats overnight. Unlike what people are saying, we actually aren't throwing a tantrum because we couldn't get everything we wanted. I mean, even Bernie is a compromise for me, he isn't for basic income and crap. But you know what? He's a step in the right direction and I'll support him for that. Clinton? Again, the key problem is it seems like the dems tried to ensure no one else but Clinton could be the nominee, and then they tried to do damage control to force the hold outs to vote for her. As I've echoed since this blog started, I felt like we were being bullied and strong armed. And under such circumstances, the only move we have left IS to refuse to support her. Her election depends on us playing along with being bullied? Fine, we'll throw the election on her to teach the dems not to pull this crap on us again. And it worked. Trump is in office. I don't like Trump at all, but I don't regret him being there as it was a necessary evil. The point is, the dems pissed us off so bad, that we left the dems, stayed home or voted for Stein....and now we got an orange oompa loompa. Not thrilled with that, but given what the dems tried to do, it's an acceptable outcome to me.
Now, the onus is on the dems to understand why we got that pissed off and rectify the problem. We didn't do this in a vacuum. We're not being childish. We just resent being bullied and strong armed into supporting a crappy candidate. I didn't vote for Trump. I went third party. I signaled to the democrats that I don't like Trump either...if I did, I would support thim. Instead, I supported their closest ideological alternative that is more in line with my politics, basically telling them they need to change.
If the dems want to win elections, they need to stop bullying their voters. They need to stop taking us for granted, talking down to us, condescending to us, and telling us we better get with the program or we get something worse. We called you on that, and now we got the oompa loompa. Now do we wanna work on fixing our problems and getting back to winning and having good progressive policies or what? No more centrist crap, no more lesser of two evils. Don't run an explicit lesser of two evils campaign. Evil is still evil. At least try to appeal to us. We don't have to get everything we want right away, but we need to be assured that you will TRY. There is a huge difference between single payer and obamacare. True free college and hillary's original plan with income limits and work requirements. Basic income and welfare. One solution is universal and fixes systemic issues we face once and for all. The other is a band aid. And I'm sick of mediocre band aids. I respect candidates who try and fail more than ones who don't try at all. I'd rather see Bernie try to pass single payer and fail than Clinton just do nothing and kill the debate for good.
That said, dems...take a good, hard look at yourselves. We didn't get so pissed off at you we effectively left the party and supported a third party or stayed home because we were being spoiled brats. We did it because you effectively cornered us with ultimatums and threats and we called you on it. And now we're all living with the consequences. If you want to avoid a repeat, learn to appeal to your voter base rather than alienating them. We don't owe you a vote. You need to earn it. Kay. Thanks. Bye.
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