Where do we go from here?

[Paine]

Is Bernie a Democrat in the US Senate?

No. He’s an Independent.

If he wants to run for the Democratic nomination for a political office, he needs to be a Democrat.

Vermont voters elect him in the state’s Democratic primary every cycle and then he runs as an independent in the general.

Seems weird to have a problem with it when the Democratic Party of Vermont doesn’t.

 

[farce©]

He registered as a Democrat to run in the primary. Republicans just elected a man, for the second time, who wasn’t a Republican until fairly recently.

Reagan was famously a Democrat before his corporate turn.

Bernie’s policies represent the core of the Democratic Party’s ethos more than any Democratic candidate since Harry Truman.

Bernie can register as a Democrat to run for President the same way I registered as a Republican to vote in the Republican primary in Ohio in 2016. Bernie is not and never has been a dues-paying member of the Democratic Party. They are never and were never going to nominate him.

 

[wmheel1287]

You, and so many others, have been manipulated into believing so many things that are simply not true by a party, aided and abetted by the liberal media, who desperately wanted to stay in power. After 4 more years of another Trump presidency have passed and none of the dire consequences the left has warned you about actually happen, you need to ask yourself why you were so easily manipulated and after doing so, maybe get a little pissed off about it.

Donald Trump colluded with Russia, Jussie Smollett was attacked by two Trump supporters, Trump called White Supremacists good people, Hunter's laptop was Russian disinformation, Border Patrol was whipping migrants, the border is secure while millions of illegals walk across it and also while many more were being flown into cities all across this nation, Joe Biden is running circles around everybody behind the scenes....all lies. Were you convinced to believe any of it?

You want to know who is responsible for creating the vast majority of the division created over the last 8 years? The Democratic Party and the liberal media. The Democrats could have simply acknowledged that Trump beat Hillary, moved on and tried to find common ground. But no, they declared war on Trump and tried to win by any means necessary all the while trying to convince their supporters to hate Trump enough to play along. And in far too many cases it worked.

The nation has moved on from that BS. And if there are any people who still believe all the propaganda, spread across all the years, in an effort to convince you to hate Donald Trump....you are now in the minority. This election proves it.

I dont hate Donald Trump for any of those reasons. I hated Donald Trump the minute he put himself into politics. He is an absolutely detestable human with no redeeming qualities so far as I can tell. I dont base that determination on any reporting or any filters. I base it on what I see and hear from the man himself. I see him insult and mock the disabled. I see him cheat on every version of a family he's ever had. I see him denigrate group after group and fan flames of anger and hatred. I see him flaunt the rule of law and openly state that he's above it completely. None of that is spin or propaganda. Thats all Trump himself.

And i do not have a solitary thing in common with anyone who cant see those things about Donald Trump.

 

[LosPollosHermanos]

You, and so many others, have been manipulated into believing so many things that are simply not true by a party, aided and abetted by the liberal media, who desperately wanted to stay in power. After 4 more years of another Trump presidency have passed and none of the dire consequences the left has warned you about actually happen, you need to ask yourself why you were so easily manipulated and after doing so, maybe get a little pissed off about it.

Donald Trump colluded with Russia, Jussie Smollett was attacked by two Trump supporters, Trump called White Supremacists good people, Hunter's laptop was Russian disinformation, Border Patrol was whipping migrants, the border is secure while millions of illegals walk across it and also while many more were being flown into cities all across this nation, Joe Biden is running circles around everybody behind the scenes....all lies. Were you convinced to believe any of it?

You want to know who is responsible for creating the vast majority of the division created over the last 8 years? The Democratic Party and the liberal media. The Democrats could have simply acknowledged that Trump beat Hillary, moved on and tried to find common ground. But no, they declared war on Trump and tried to win by any means necessary all the while trying to convince their supporters to hate Trump enough to play along. And in far too many cases it worked.

The nation has moved on from that BS. And if there are any people who still believe all the propaganda, spread across all the years, in an effort to convince you to hate Donald Trump....you are now in the minority. This election proves it.

I mean you make some decent points and we're definitely doing some things very wrong but you're also ignoring a lot of stuff here. "Stand back and stand by", wearing proud boy colors, and having a blatantly racist comedian open your rally doesn't specifically say white supremacists are "good" people, but it says you're "with" them. I never believed the border was secure and frankly I don't care, but I know most of you will blame dems when an apple costs $5 because we donlt have anyone to pick them. What I do believe - I believe Trump slept with a porn star while his wife was pregnant. I believe Trump said it's OK to grab women by the pussy and meant it. I believe he has abolutely zero religious inclination whatsover but sells autographed Bibles for profit. I believe he's the only person I've ever seen run multiple casinos into bankruptcy and that he wouldn't have been shit as a businessman without being born on third base. I believe he's the only politician in history that has had multiple groups of people FROM HIS OWN PARTY start coalitions to prevent him from getting elected. I believe 80% of his cabinet and nearly everyone he works with in any capacity quits mid-job and tells the truth about him after while remaining Republican. I believe he's a convicted felon and deserves to be because he broke the law, even if his inflamatory and unnecessary bravado also played a role in his getting charged. So if the media fabricated or exaggerated a few things, it doesn't change my opinion of him. He's a truly loathesome indvidual and just a horrible person. That's not a media creation and if you think he's even a remotely decent person you're just gullible as can be.

But I don't believe you lose an election this badly to this level of creep without missing a lot of things yourself and making major, major errors. And after this curb stomping I don't believe that every person who voted for him is a grand wizard either. What does this demographic find so loathesome about the dems that they would vote for this guy over us? We're not going to win the presidency back by just calling them idiots, especially if we don't get the benefit of a mishandled pandemic or a historic financial meltdown like W delivered to us on a silver platter.

I've also thought about my own redneck town upbringing and where I might be if I wasn't blessed with an upper middle class family and the brains to get into a good school where I changed a lot of the ideas I had coming in. You can say these people are dogshit humans and maybe a lot of them are, but unless you've lived in these places you don't understand what they are born into. Libs will make excuses all day for a minority born in a high rise but a white man born into racism, hate and borderline poverty is supposed to just see the light. That's not reality.

So yeah we've made a lot of mistakes, but if you think I was brainwashed into thinking Donald Trump is a vile piece of shit, bless your'e heart. We don't need to reach all 75 million of the people that voted for him. Just five or ten is probably enough, and we can do that, but not by calling the whole lot of them morons. But I think you're probably like a human Wyoming. Probably don't need to be focusing too much on reaching you.

 

[rodoheel]

Your characterization of people on the left sharpening knives behind their backs is juvenile. Everyone left of center wanted to win this election. Everyone is mad that we didn’t. Bernie Sanders has a right to blame whoever the hell he wants. He’s taken enough false blame for the outcome of 2016. There is blame being cast at everyone in the party right now.

If you’ve read any of my other posts today, my argument about why I think Bernie would’ve won is implicit. I’ve attached multiple articles that have laid out the case in more detail.

The point about Sanders losing Mondale style sounds like something Chris Matthew spewed out in 2015 and every MSNBC viewer ran with it.

What you’re saying is equivalent to Republicans not wanting Democrats to talk about gun control after a school shooting.

I didn't say that Bernie would have lost Mondale style. Don't attribute other peoples' posts to me. I said anybody who thinks they know what would have happened is a fool. I read the article you linked. It's all argument and grievance and conjecture, not anything approaching evidence. Because no one can have evidence either way. It's why counterfactuals are pointless and ultimately lazy arguments - they're impossible to realistically test and disprove.

The quote about sharpening knives is because of the fact that it took less than 24 hours for Bernie, among others, to go from endorsing the Dem nominee to openly and unequivocally calling Dems traitors to the working class. That was not the tone or content of a post from someone who seems to have any intention of working with Dems moving forward. Anyone who thinks quotes like that can't and won't be spun to openly court disaffected progressives to the conservative coalition is fooling themselves. And it's especially dumb to blame the election on Dems not pushing economic policies that would help the working class when working class voters just fled to a candidate who not only is not offering any economic policies that would help the working class, but openly supported policies that would hurt the working class and help the rich.

Progressives love to accuse the Dems of preferring Republicans to progressives because we're all part of the same neoliberal order or whatever. Is that honestly what you want to accuse us of? That we'd prefer Trump to Sanders? Is that the sentiment you think is being expressed here? Why is it so hard for progressives to acknowledge that the Democratic Party is full of people who generally agree with progressive policy proposals, but disagree about strategy and approach, the better off we'll all be. From some of the things progressives say I honestly get the feeling you prefer to see Dems as enemies rather than allies.

 

[gregh1]

I've also thought about my own redneck town upbringing and where I might be if I wasn't blessed with an upper middle class family and the brains to get into a good school where I changed a lot of the ideas I had coming in. You can say these people are dogshit humans and maybe a lot of them are, but unless you've lived in these places you don't understand what they are born into. Libs will make excuses all day for a minority born in a high rise but a white man born into racism, hate and borderline poverty is supposed to just see the light. That's not reality.

I have kin who are good-hearted people in eastern NC who are maga. I don't consider them dogshit, but polarization tilted them red, then tribalism, confirmation-bias and misinfo/disinfo nailed the coffin.

Confirmation-bias will always be a thing. Tribalism too. So I don't see how you solve any of this given the misinfo/disinfo problems stemming from the Rush Limbaugh/Rogan/TPUsa approach.

 

[gregh1]

So, a couple things first:

--I don't want this to be a blame thread. There are plenty of threads for that. I'd like to focus the conversation on at least semi-constructive, forward-looking dialogue.

--I don't want this to be a "fear of what the Trump admin will do" thread. There are also plenty of threads about that.

OK, with that out of the way, what do you guys think is the way to get the country back on the right track? We've now had about a decade of reactionary backlash against what had been steady, if not perfect, progress on many social and economic issues. We have a Supreme Court that will soon have 1-2 more young conservative appointees and an untouchable conservative majority for 20 years, barring court expansion. We have a gerrymandered congressional landscape where Republicans hold a major advantage in numerous states, which matters at both the state level and federal level. We have a something like half the population that has made clear that it's OK with at least a little bit of old-fashioned authoritarianism if they think it means lower taxes and/or more money for them.

So how do liberals get the train back on the track? By which I mean continue to strengthen (or repair, if it's dismantled) the social safety net; resuming progress on climate change and the environment that is going to be rolled back by Republican de-regulation; and maintaining and continuing progress on social issues (gay marriage, trans marriage, abortion/gender equality, racial equality), and generally reversing the slow but deliberate drift of the country towards authoritarianism (and really this has been happening throughout the world).

Here are my big-picture thoughts:

1. Find a new approach/paradigm for mainstream media. This election made clear to me, once and for all, that traditional media is dead and beyond saving. I'm not interested in debating the reasons or pointing fingers, but the old model of journalism has become economically infeasible and has proven completely ineffective at combating the rise of social media, and "new" media more broadly. Major newspapers are almost all gone, and the ones that are left either have zero reach/influence whatsoever with the working class (NYT) or have become so watered-down in content, due to economic pressures and/or the pursuit of "both sidesing" (USA Today, for example) that they are effectively useless. Cable networks are falling victim to the same pressures and are increasingly incentivized to offer "infotainment" over straight news. The major news networks are somewhere in the middle, but generally so bland on news coverage that they're no one's first choice and have basically become irrelevant. There is no Dan Rather or Walter Cronkite that the country flocks to. And into the role these media entities once filled have stepped social media and new media, companies that have now captured bigger market shares and a more direct line to people's eyeballs and brains. If you asked a random sample of Americans who they trust more to deliver accurate news, a majority of Americans would likely choose Joe Rogan over any traditional network you can think of. Not only career media people like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens and Megyn Kelly, but also people with no journalistic background like Theo Von and Alex Cooper, are becoming trusted news sources for many Americans. This is reality, and we're not going back. The internet has made media sources too diverse for there to be any broad cultural consensus about objective facts. So how do we deal with that? How do we deal with a media environment that disincentivizes careful research and sober reflection and instead incentivizes chaos, misinformation, and extremism? Outside of the wonky Pod Save American, mainstream liberal journalists have largely stayed out of the fray, but I don't think that's an option anymore. How do you do journalism - real journalism with discretion and judgment and researching and writing - in the next 20 years? Or is it simply not possible? The phrase that comes to my mind about the current online media atmosphere is "water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink." We are drowning in information in today's society, able to find information more easily and quickly than ever before, but the vast majority of that information is useless, and it will only get worse because disinformation is winning everywhere, not just in the US. I mean for pete's sake, we found out weeks out that several influential conservative streamers were directly or indirectly being paid to spread Russian propaganda, and it did nothing to shake their influence or popularity. Because the reporting on it was coming from the government and mainstream media, and the people who like those conservative streamers are already conditioned to disbelieve everything that comes from those sources.
   1. I don't have a lot of answers here, but we have to find some way to (i) build another social network that can rival and ultimately eclipse Musk's Twitter, and (ii) reach young males with messages less toxic and insidious than the ones they currently get. Make Social Media Fun Again, or Make Social Media Healthy Again, or something.

[continued in part 2]

Regarding #1, i just saw this

 

[Paine]

Progressives love to accuse the Dems of preferring Republicans to progressives because we're all part of the same neoliberal order or whatever. Is that honestly what you want to accuse us of? That we'd prefer Trump to Sanders? Is that the sentiment you think is being expressed here? Why is it so hard for progressives to acknowledge that the Democratic Party is full of people who generally agree with progressive policy proposals, but disagree about strategy and approach, the better off we'll all be. From some of the things progressives say I honestly get the feeling you prefer to see Dems as enemies rather than allies.

I don’t believe that in terms of the average Democratic voter, no. I’m sorry if I insinuated that.

I think it often seems, from the POV of a progressive Democrat, that the party has been more willing to embrace conservatives and centrist talking points over progressive messaging for some time. And it has cost the party greatly. In our view, we’re reaping the effects of it now.

I do think there is a portion of the elite Democratic donor class/political class that is more comfortable dealing with the right than the left.

 

[Gmonet]

You, and so many others, have been manipulated into believing so many things that are simply not true by a party, aided and abetted by the liberal media, who desperately wanted to stay in power. After 4 more years of another Trump presidency have passed and none of the dire consequences the left has warned you about actually happen, you need to ask yourself why you were so easily manipulated and after doing so, maybe get a little pissed off about it.

Donald Trump colluded with Russia, Jussie Smollett was attacked by two Trump supporters, Trump called White Supremacists good people, Hunter's laptop was Russian disinformation, Border Patrol was whipping migrants, the border is secure while millions of illegals walk across it and also while many more were being flown into cities all across this nation, Joe Biden is running circles around everybody behind the scenes....all lies. Were you convinced to believe any of it?

You want to know who is responsible for creating the vast majority of the division created over the last 8 years? The Democratic Party and the liberal media. The Democrats could have simply acknowledged that Trump beat Hillary, moved on and tried to find common ground. But no, they declared war on Trump and tried to win by any means necessary all the while trying to convince their supporters to hate Trump enough to play along. And in far too many cases it worked.

The nation has moved on from that BS. And if there are any people who still believe all the propaganda, spread across all the years, in an effort to convince you to hate Donald Trump....you are now in the minority. This election proves it.

I've hated Donald Trump since I first saw him interviewed. Larry King asked him what he thought of Tom Wolfe's new bestseller and he replied 'It's great, just read it' or something to that effect. King then asked something like, 'so do you agree with the condemnation of Wall Street excess in Bonfires of the Vanities?'. He had no clue what King was asking because he had no idea 'Bonfire of the Vanities' was the same thing as 'Tom Wolfe's new bestseller'. Because, of course, he's never read a fucking book in his life. His effortless ability to lie is staggering, and is without question his one true superpower. It is heartbreaking to me that so many people seem to either be unaware of this, or think it's a positive thing. And yes, everyone lies, politicians more than most, but he is several orders of magnitude worse/better at it than anyone I've ever seen.

 

[Paine]

Regarding #1, i just saw this

The posters here would hate Hasan, unfortunately.

 

[Peppers49]

I count myself among many on this board who grew up in rural towns, among rural whites.

I have 5 uncles and several cousins who are rural, blue collar folks—mechanics, farmers, volunteer firefighters, cops, etc.

All of them have been hardcore rightwingers for decades—the types who listened to Rush Limbaugh on AM radio back in the 80s/90s.

I went to HS in a rural white community, where most folks went to the same church.

My relatives and the folks in my community made fun of anyone who went to college. “Poindexters, liberals, and fags” go to college, they’d say. When I went to grad school for a grad degree in English, some of them snickered and muttered “***.” They still make homophobic jokes to this day—the fact that im a single 50-yr old guy, never married, no kids, is cause for their ire.

They called all the Hispanic immigrants who came through town for seasonal work on farms by the same name. “Jose’s” they’d call em. As in “Did ya see that truck full of Jose’s out yonder?”

They’d rail against black welfare queens and bitch and moan about the liberals taking god out of schools.

I see their seething hatred in every Trump rally. I hear it in the rants about childless cat women. I hear it cloaked in every interview with every white rural asshole who claims they really didn’t want to vote for Trump, but liberals forced them to because gas costs too much.

It has taken root over 40 years in rural communities. It’s the same as it ever was.

So you can miss me with this bullshit.

Yeah, what an absolutely ridiculous view by that poster. It’s not on the average Joe democratic voter to do some weird self reflection about how to better individually evangelize their cause with conservatives lol. The irony to say that liberals all project arrogance, when the entire premise of his post is arrogant and condescending, and simultaneously lets conservatives off the hook for having shitty views.

Also, plenty of republicans are arrogant twats themselves. I’ve seen countless of them come out of the woodwork with snarky gloating in the aftermath of their big Super Bowl win last night, including on this board.

 

[rodoheel]

The posters here would hate Hasan, unfortunately.

I sometimes agree with hasan. For example, I've seen this video before and very much agree with what he says about engaging young voters on new media platforms. I said something similar in my opening post in this thread.

I do not, however, agree with hasan that the Harris campaign lost the election because they would not be more aggressively pro-Gaza and anti-Israel.

 

[LosPollosHermanos]

Bullshit.

Dems consistently lay out plans to help rural WWC people. Kamala talked about going after price gougers, had plans for $25k subsidies for first-time homebuyers and tax breaks for construction companies. Liz Warren had myriad plans. Hillary noted the need to fund re-training programs and vo-tech programs for those in rural/depressed areas.

No rural white folks gave a fuck about any of those plans.

That’s why your whole idea rings false. They’re not looking for real solutions. They’re not interested in policy positions and in government officials who provide well-researched and informed answers to difficult problems.

They’re motivated by hate and rage. Racial, socioeconomic, gender-based hate and rage. And Trump is the human manifestation of all of that rage.

Yeah before you paint 75 million Trump voters with that broad of a brush you might wanna consider the fact that Joe Biden got 81 million votes 4 years ago and Kamala is sitting at 67 or so now. That means many millions of those Trump voters this year weren't motivated by "racial, socioeconomic, gender-based hate and rage" just a few years ago. And this is exactly what I've been saying over and over here. If you call them all idiots, you can be damn sure none of them come back. But nobody wants to ask what the hell did we do wrong to lose 14 million voters either to apathy or to a makeup wearing phony? Some of you really need to consider the possibility that you're blinded by the same visceral vitriol that many of the people you criticize on the other side are. Common sense dictates that there is a way to get a lot of these people back but most of this board would rather throw the baby out with the bathwater than admit there's a massive disconnect going on here.

 

[JCTarheel82]

The posters here would hate Hasan, unfortunately.

I have no idea who Hasan is nor do I know his politics, but what he says in that video is 100% accurate.

 

[Paine]

I sometimes agree with hasan. For example, I've seen this video before and very much agree with what he says about engaging young voters on new media platforms. I said something similar in my opening post in this thread.

I do not, however, agree with hasan that the Harris campaign lost the election because they would not be more aggressively pro-Gaza and anti-Israel.

Huh. I’ve not heard him say she lost the campaign because of that. He said today that he thought it contributed, but it was one item in a laundry list. Don’t think that’s controversial considering Trump won Dearborn.

 

[Paine]

I have no idea who Hasan is nor do I know his politics, but what he says in that video is 100% accurate.

Hasan Piker - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

He’s a Twitch streamer who talks leftist politics.

 

[LosPollosHermanos]

You are literally posting on a thread that is for us to "start thinking about what the fuck just happened" and not "pretending that 75 million people are all just raging foaming at the mouth lunatics." This is from the second part of my initial two-part post starting the thread:

"Dems have no path forward unless they can rebuild their relationship with working-class populations. Messaging has to be crafted to appeal to them. We have to meet them where they are. They want messaging that appeals to them emotionally, not rationally. Not just economic messaging, but cultural messaging. Too many of them were convinced by the Pied Pipers of Trump, Fox News, et al that liberals hate them and look down on them, and in our frustration about them fleeing to Trump we made that easy to believe. And we can't just blame racism or culture-war grievances, because working-class minorities fled to Trump too. How do we message to them in a way that is coherent without alienating the more progressive parts of the liberal coalition? Not a dilemma I'd want to solve."

Stop lecturing us like you're the only person here who knows a Republican and/or understands that Democrats have lost working class voters and need to appeal to them better. It is no more productive to say that the only reason working class people vote for Trump is that college-educated liberals talk down to them than it is to say that the only reason people vote for Trump is that they're "raging foaming at the mouth lunatics." Of course 75 million people aren't raging foaming at the mouth lunatics. But placing the lion's share of the blame for Trump's success on the idea that liberals refuse to talk to or try to understand Trump voters is asinine. For Christ's sake, between 2016 and now we must have had 15,000 versions of the New York Times article "I met with Trump voters in a small-town diner to talk with them and try to understand them better." Are Fox News and Tucker Carlson doing pieces like that to try to help their viewers understand where liberals and progressives are coming from? Hell no; it's a lot easier to just paint us all as trans commie soy boys who want to impose mandatory sensitivity training for anyone who doesn't live within five minutes of a Starbucks.

We definitely have a big problem in this country with voters from different backgrounds not knowing or understanding each other, but that's a problem that cuts across all demographics in all directions. I'm fairly confident that liberals have done more to try to understand MAGA voters than the other way around, even if most of us still haven't done enough.

The only people I am lecturing are the ones labeling every single Trump voter as unreachable and stupid. We cannot reach every one of them but we don't need to. I think there is a tendency on this board, and really from the entire demographic that makes up the majority of this board, to be very dismissive of anyone who doesn't despise Trump with every fiber of their being. I don't think that approach has any hope at all now.

 

[Lando]

Yeah before you paint 75 million Trump voters with that broad of a brush you might wanna consider the fact that Joe Biden got 81 million votes 4 years ago and Kamala is sitting at 67 or so now. That means many millions of those Trump voters this year weren't motivated by "racial, socioeconomic, gender-based hate and rage" just a few years ago. And this is exactly what I've been saying over and over here. If you call them all idiots, you can be damn sure none of them come back. But nobody wants to ask what the hell did we do wrong to lose 14 million voters either to apathy or to a makeup wearing phony? Some of you really need to consider the possibility that you're blinded by the same visceral vitriol that many of the people you criticize on the other side are. Common sense dictates that there is a way to get a lot of these people back but most of this board would rather throw the baby out with the bathwater than admit there's a massive disconnect going on here.

Doesn’t the fact that the problem is more disappearing Democratic voters than people flipping to Republicans indicate that leaning more into understanding the Republican base isn’t the solution ?

 

[HeelingAg]

The posters here would hate Hasan, unfortunately.

What? You posted videos of him weeks ago and several folks, myself included, responded positively. At least that's my distinct recollection.

 

[Paine]

What? You posted videos of him weeks ago and several folks, myself included, responded positively. At least that's my distinct recollection.

I’ve no doubt y’all would like some of the arguments he makes. I get plenty of likes on this platform from people who disagree with me on a litany of issues.

Specifically in the context of this thread, if y’all think my criticisms of the Democratic Party and the Harris campaign are off base, then I don’t think many of you would like Hasan’s commentary.