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It's 2016. The DNC leaders should not be Baby Boomers at this point. Their time is done. It's time for them to get out of the way because they don't get the digital world any more than their grandparents got the sexual revolution.
Good luck with this one. The Boomers don't seem to be willing to gracefully leave the stage like other generations. I believe it's because they are bereft of wisdom which usually comes with the years of experience old age brings, and so instead they cling to power and money and the sense of identify these things give them.
If both the general public and the democratic leaders follow these steps, the Democratic Party will emerge stronger after four years of Trump than it has ever been in all of history.
Four years is not a lot of time for the Democrats to overhaul their whole party, even if they were willing to do it. They are more likely to stick band-aids like Sanders and Warren on it to make it look like they've made changes, but in reality the wound festers.
The Boomers don't seem to be willing to gracefully leave the stage like other generations. I believe it's because they are bereft of wisdom which usually comes with the years of experience old age brings, and so instead they cling to power and money and the sense of identify these things give them.
The only wisdom one needs is to not act against their best interest.
I'm a boomer & I have no use for the fuckers that have voted D & R all their lives.
It's so great to know that Gen X & Millennials have jumped in & voted in large numbers to make america great again.
These assholes need to get over their technological egos,although TECH IS GOD!
This election might also be the catalyst to eventually get rid of the electoral college, although that will not happen any time soon.
6 months on, and the Democrats - sadly including TYT, have still not seriously taken steps to confront why the lost. Both the national and California Dem Chairs were won by Clintonistas. The rigging of the nomination for Hillary by the DNC has been ignored, even though the DNC is being sued by Bernie Donors and the DNC Attorneys are claiming "impartiality" in the DNC Bylaws are not enforceable and they could pick the nominee is a smoky room if they like. This is true, but the MSM is studiously ignoring this entire lawsuit, lest voters discover this.
Indeed, there is strong suggestions that the Awan Brothers, in charge of Dem House Members' IT inc. Wasserman-Schultz, are blackmailing Dem members. This is given added weight by Wasserman-Schultz' threat to the DC police to turn over Laptops they seized from the Brothers, who have since fled the country for Pakistan.
6 months on, and the Democrats - sadly including TYT, have still not seriously taken steps to confront why the lost.
Everything you said is true, and that is cause for great concern. Although a few steps have been made in the right direction, largely this great opportunity is being lost. All the angry young people protesting need to direct their anger and protests towards the DNC and the mainstream media. There is no way that any protest is going to convince Trump to resign or the republicans to impeach him. However, constant protests may convince the DNC they need to change their personnel and policies and the mainstream media to change their coverage and editorials.
It's not too late yet, but if they don't start in the next six months, then the midterm elections will be lost. If they don't start in the next two years, the 2020 elections will be lost. Everyone who isn't a tea party fool needs to get their shit together and follow the plan in the original post. If they do, the seventh party system will be great. If they don't, it will be Trump for eight years, and his sons and cronies for 40 years after that.
Now that people had a bit of time to cool off after the election, it's time to discuss what this election really means.
First the bad news. We have a president elect who is an ignorant, arrogant, psychopath with no political or economic skills, no understanding of law or policies or history or diplomacy, and who is delusional about his skills and leadership abilities. It would be surprising if Trump didn't commit at least a dozen impeachable offensives, largely corrupt ones, before the end of his first term. The only question is whether or not the republicans fear an impeachment of a republican president more than they fear and hate Trump.
Now the good news. He's still better, at least in the long run, then the alternative was. A Hillary presidency would have doomed the Democratic Party into being simply a slightly different version of today's Republican Party. Had she been elected, the dem. leaders would have patted themselves on the backs as geniuses and gone back to business as usual confident in the knowledge that the whole Bernie movement is behind them and that the tactic of using fear of batshit crazy republicans would ensure all the votes they ever need to stay in power.
Now, that isn't going to happen. Already we can see current and former democratic voters yelling at their representatives that the reason the democrats lost the White House, the Senate, the House, and governorships was due to the democratic leadership abandoning the middle class, embracing republican policies, playing race and identity politics, giving a big fuck you to white people especially white men, completely ignoring the plight of the blue collar workers in the rust belt, and generally being a bunch of rich douches so far removed from the common man that no one could relate to them.
We've also seen anger, much anger. People protesting, rioting, blockading highways in protest of the Trump presidency even before it has started. This people are pissed. Right now, it's completely worthless and counter-productive undirected anger, but it's still anger. If directed towards the DNC, this anger could propel and ousting of the DNC establishment and the introduction of an entirely new generation of democrats, which is what the party sorely needs.
Now for the great news. This is the perfect opportunity to transform the Democratic Party into a party of the middle class for all Americans. Right now we are in the biggest bear market for democrats, and the buying opportunity has never been bigger. Yes, this is economics.
You don't buy when the market is hot. You buy when everyone is in despair, and that's where we are right now. Just look around. This is what the election really means...
Right now we are right before hope. It's the best time to buy. We've shorted the Democratic Party up the wazoo. Its stock is in the toilet. Now is exactly the time to take advantage of that and to take control of the party. So how do we do that?
There is a clear path to taking control of the seventh party system and establishing it to support the middle class, common sense, and the industrious worker who doesn't want identity politics, a system of open bribery, and the fire sale of American assets. This path is already laid out before us right now.
The dem. leaders are already trying to reform the party after getting their asses royally handed to them in the election. They realize they fucked up big time and now they are scared.
www.dDz1uL_ueko
Cenk Uygur is right on the money on all the points. Most importantly, there is one thing that unites all the people. We all hate the corruption. This is the fundamental reason why Hillary Clinton lost the election. A crazy loose cannon is better than a master of the corrupt establishment.
Furthermore, the dem. leaders need to put Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in leadership positions in order to regain the support of the middle class and all those rust-belt workers and CIS white males and people just tired of the corruption. And dem. leaders like Chuck Schumer now know this precisely because Hillary Clinton lost the election. If they are smart, they will woo Jill Stein as well.
OK, so what does the Democratic Party and those who wish to unite under it need to do?
Step One: Admit that Hillary Clinton sucks.
The worst mistake the democrats can make is to back Hillary again in 2020 and to use the next four years to boost her chances. She's a dead horse. She's the old guard. She needs to go. She's the problem, not the solution. If you can't stand another president having a penis instead of a clitoris, then get a woman who isn't so universally hated, and rightfully so, and so associated with corruption and failed policies. Here are two excellent candidates: Elizabeth Warren and Jill Stein. They both meet my criteria of having brains and hearts, while also meeting your criteria of having clitorises. Better yet, support either of these two women because they are great reformers rather than because they are women, which brings us to...
Step Two: Chuck the identity politics.
Like it or not, straight white men make up a good percentage of the voting population. Stop trying to screw them over, berate them, or ignore their concerns. I would never vote for a person simply because of his or her gender or skin color, but precisely because of that, I find leftist arguments that we need a black/woman/midget/etc. in such-n-such office regardless of anything else as morally repugnant and a huge red flag.
Put simply, you cannot unite a heterogeneous population with identity politics. And quite frankly, most young adults today -- obviously there are some very vocal leftist exceptions -- do not self-identify base on their race, gender, or ethnic background. Most young adults today self-identify based on their values, their peer-groups (clicks), their work, their interests, and their ambitions. For example, I am a white, heterosexual male, but I do not self-identify as white, as male, as heterosexual, or even as a human being. I self-identify as a software engineer. I'd be perfectly ok -- nay, I'd prefer -- to trade my organic body for a nice, shiny, nearly-indestructible T-800 endoskeleton with a virtual neural network I could backup, thus giving me virtual immortality. Why the fuck would anyone prefer flesh over that?
So I don't give a damn about your race, gender, species, or even if you are a life form. All that matters to me is that you are a sentient decision making engine, and it's how you make your decisions that counts. Maybe I'm a bit further along the evolutionary mindset than most of the younger generations, but they aren't that far behind. The typical Millennial voter -- and Millennials now outnumber the Boomers, so take note -- does not care about those stupid culture wars and identity politics. They care about their careers, their financial security, their ability to afford a home, and whether or not they will ever be able to afford having children.
Yes, there are some very loud and obnoxious SJWs particularly on college campuses, but they are rare. We see them all the time in videos, but I have yet to see one in real life in any of the states in which I have lived. They are not the norm. Normal people have much more pressing concerns like how to pay rent.
Do not give into these vocal minorities. They will cost the Democratic Party a far greater unity and the strength of numbers.
Step Three: Realize that Bernie was the right choice and why.
Every single poll indicates that Bernie Sanders would have crushed Trump. Unlike Hillary Clinton, Bernie simply doesn't have thousands of skeletons in the closet -- rightfully or not -- like Hillary does. Hillary was one of the damn few people in Washington that is as hated and vilified as Trump is. In contrast, Bernie Sanders is beloved by many and hated by almost no one. His approval ratings have been consistently high.
Furthermore, this was an anti-establishment election. Bernie Sanders was the one and only sincere anti-establishment candidate. Trump cannot compare. The reason Trump won over Hillary is that she is the quintessential establishment candidate, the democrat equivalent of Jeb Bush, you know, the republican candidate everyone thought would be nominated only to be the very first one crushed by Trump.
I've stated the importance of this election and how the Bernie movement applied to it in two previous threads. Read them if you haven't already.
Why you should vote for someone who will lose this election
An important electoral graph
To summarize here, Trump won the election because the sixth party system is simply no longer sustainable due to changing demographics and the erosion of the middle class. Bernie would have won hands down because he has through his entire long career, championed the exact causes that the seventh party system must serve.
Trump won the rustbelt. That's what pushed him over the edge, and considerably so. And he won the rustbelt because the Democratic Party had become a party of just the two coastlines, and then only the upper-middle class and upper class of the two coastlines. The Democratic Party simply did not advance the interests of the entire middle class, and the failing low-skill or obsolete skill workers that make up most of the rustbelt.
Nor did the Democratic Party protect our civil liberties over the past 16 years. Liberals -- real liberals, not leftist conservatives -- love Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein because they believe in real freedom and equal rights under law. Keeping the U.S. from practicing Soviet-style human rights abuses is still a very important issue to many Americans, especially in an age of constant fear mongering and domestic spying.
Finally, everyone is sick of the grotesque amount of corruption in politics today, which has gotten far worse since Citizen's United. The common citizen wants money out of politics. Bernie Sanders championed this cause and got incredible support and votes in the primary despite the fact that most of his supporters couldn't vote in the primary, and the entire DNC was plotting against him, and that Hillary had huge financial backing from corrupt interests. Despite all that, Hillary could not even win the nomination without the super delegates handing it to her. That alone should prove beyond any doubt that the people who would vote democrat, including many that voted for Trump, are sick of the system of open bribery that is Congress including both parties, and they would have voted for Bernie because of this.
It is important to understand these reasons because they are how we fix the Democratic Party, establish a good seventh party system, and make Trump a one-term president.
Step Four: Make peace with the Bernie or Busters
Do not blame Bernie or Bust for Trump winning the election. The blame lies solely in those primary voters, the DNC insiders, and the media who choose to risk a Trump presidency just to give Hillary Clinton a shot at the presidency. You took a bad gamble, against the advice of all the rational people telling you the risk was too great, and there wouldn't have even been a payoff even if you had won because Sanders would have been a far better president anyway.
You were told point blank by me and many others that Bernie defeats Trump and Hillary does not. You were told that nominating Hillary would cost the democrats both chambers of Congress and governorships because many liberal and many independent Bernie supporters would simply stay home, not only not voting for Hillary, but also then not voting for democrats in other offices.
Despite all this, you gave a big fuck you to all the Bernie supports, and in doing so, you elected Trump. You now have to lie in that bed. The only thing you can do now is reform the Democratic Party so that a democrat -- not Hillary Clinton -- defeats Trump in 2020, and maybe, if you try very hard and do what I outline, you might get the Democratic Party to take back the Senate in 2018, although that is unlikely.
In order to minimize the damage Trump can inflict and to rebuild, you need to accept your mistakes and your responsibility, and then make peace with all the Bernie supporters including hard-core liberals, independents, disenfranchised middle class workers, and yes, even non-transgender white men. None of these groups are the bad guys, and you need all of them to defeat the republicans and Trump's army of deplorables.
So say that you are sorry you voted for Hillary in the primaries and won't ever do it again. Say that you now understand why we wanted Sanders. And work with us to elect someone like him next time. It doesn't have to be Sanders. It could be Jill Stein running as a Democrat, if we reform the party enough to attract her. It could Elizabeth Warren. It could be some unknown 37-year-old with a good, solid background and a strong ethical backbone who embraces the same reforms.
Step Five: Kick out all the old guard.
This is going to be hard, but that's where all that rage comes into play. Instead of rioting and blocking traffic, protestors need to constantly demand that all the old guard of the DNC leaves and new blood takes it place. This is starting already as Sanders and Warren are being considered for more powerful positions.
However, we need to direct all that hatred of Trump to hatred of the old DNC guard, where it rightfully belongs. The mainstream media that had supported Hillary so unquestioningly needs to be constantly pressured by the public and by ratings to demand the replacement of failed DNC leaders who backed Hillary -- and I mean before her nomination -- with democratic reformers.
It's 2016. The DNC leaders should not be Baby Boomers at this point. Their time is done. It's time for them to get out of the way because they don't get the digital world any more than their grandparents got the sexual revolution.
www.D3v_U63uOK0
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
Your old road is rapidly aging
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand
Cause the times they are a-changing
Step Six: Adopt the Green Party Platform
This one is for the new democratic leadership. Literally go to http://www.gp.org/platform and copy and paste the entire Green Party Platform onto the Democratic Party's platform. Plagiarize the fuck out of that shit.
This is no time to quibble over minor details. Adopt the platform as it is now, and then debate the finer points of it.
Then push this platform in the media and in every speech and every policy debate for the next four years. This is the only way to win in 2020. The 2016 election was lost before the campaigns even began. The winner of 2020 will be the party that puts into practice right now a platform the majority of Americans can get behind.
- Political reform including campaign finance reform
- A restoration of civil rights taken for granted in the 1970s
- Universal and efficient health care
- Removal of our dependency on fossil fuels in general and Middle East oil in particular
- An end to wasteful military spending
- Protection of the environment
- Economic support of a strong and large middle class
- Elimination of the national debt
Step Seven: Other reforms
Incorporate Elizabeth Warren's and Bernie Sander's reforms into the Democratic Platform. Push to end the casino nature of our economy and the artificial boom and bust cycles that destroy long-term wealth.
During each of these steps, the Democratic Party should be doing everything it can to distinguish itself from the Republican Party. Right now they seem like two wings of the same party. The Democrats need to be the very embodiment of the opposite of every selfish Republican position. The Republicans don't care that corporations poison you children with pollution. The Democrats will stop them. The Republicans don't care that you work harder and longer for less wages and actively try to diminish your economic bargaining power in the global economy. The Democrats have you back. The Republicans love starting wars and wasting our sons' and daughters' lives for corporate profits. The Democrats are the party of peace and prosperity. Butter, not guns. The Republicans sell off America's infrastructure and outsource our economic production. The Democrats invest in infrastructure and bring jobs and production to America. The Republicans take productive income while leaving rent seeking free. The Democrats leave productive income free and take rent seeking and consumption of limited public resources like land, minerals, geostationary orbits, and the EM spectrum. Republicans are pro-torture. Democrats are anti-torture.
If both the general public and the democratic leaders follow these steps, the Democratic Party will emerge stronger after four years of Trump than it has ever been in all of history. And the seventh party system will be one which serves the entire and growing middle class. And as a bonus, the economy will be far more prosperous and stable since its health is determined by the well-being of the middle class.
#politics #seventhPartySystem