2016 elections - because it's never too early

[FunkMonk]

I have a hard time believing Jeb! would have fired up the base as much as Trump did but I take your point

[alfred russel]

I think Sanders would have won.

[Barrister]

Remember those Podesta email leaks that basically said they were hoping Trump would win the Republican nomination so Hillary could stomp him in the general? Fucking looooooool

Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

Republicans did the same thing.  Remember how nobody would criticize him during the early debates?

[Berkut]

I think what sucks more than Sanders is that the Dems didn't have an actual Democratic candidate to run other than Clinton.

That was it? That was the only option? How did the Democratic party end up in 2016 with only one actual viable candidate?

[Neil]

I heard that Russ Feingold was defeated, and I thought of Languish.  Poor Count must be heartbroken.

Who the fuck are you?

Just a man who doesn't come around much anymore.

[Neil]

I think what sucks more than Sanders is that the Dems didn't have an actual Democratic candidate to run other than Clinton.

That was it? That was the only option? How did the Democratic party end up in 2016 with only one actual viable candidate?

O'Malley probably would have won as well.

[derspiess]

I think Sanders would have won.

I think he'd have gotten torn to pieces in the general, unless he somehow repudiated socialism.

[Grey Fox]

I think Sanders would have won.

I think he'd have gotten torn to pieces in the general, unless he somehow repudiated socialism.

Why? Rust Belt would have voted for him like they did for Obama. For the same reasons they voted for Trump.

[Barrister]

I think Sanders would have won.

I think he'd have gotten torn to pieces in the general, unless he somehow repudiated socialism.

Why? Rust Belt would have voted for him like they did for Obama. For the same reasons they voted for Trump.

Sanders as nominee is an interesting counter-factual.  His support was primarily among young people (where Hillary did poorly), but he struggled to connect with minorities (where Hillary did well).  His whole "the system is corrupt" message may have eaten into some of Trump's support, but he probably would not have done as well amongst other groups as Hillary.

[Berkut]

Yeah, I am not convinced that Sanders would have done better than Trump.

He isn't even a democrat.

[Valmy]

Well the Sanders types are going to be dominating the Democratic Party soon so we may soon find out.

[FunkMonk]

Remember those Podesta email leaks that basically said they were hoping Trump would win the Republican nomination so Hillary could stomp him in the general? Fucking looooooool

Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

Republicans did the same thing.  Remember how nobody would criticize him during the early debates?

Yup. Now they've all been humbled.

The moral of the story is: Don't fucking underestimate Donald Fucking Trump.

[Admiral Yi]

At the very least a Sanders/Trump contest would have helped determine if white boneheads prefer to chase their protectionism with mud people bashing or fat cat bashing.

[Martinus]

So where did the Democratic Party go wrong, and more importantly, where do they go from here?
It's beyond Hillary: the Dems simply can't win at any level.

The Urban/Suburban divide is real. The left spends too much time on Bullshit talking points (Safe spaces, gender issues, etc) and almost no time on effects of free trade agreements, wages gaps and healthcare reform. Too much social progress not enough Economic progress.

I think ultimately, in democracy, in order to be a mass-appeal party you need to have some sort of populist element. Traditionally, the left was providing economic/social populism, and the right was providing cultural/religious populism. The left has been taken over by cultural and religious anti-populists who thought the economic/social populism is no longer fashionable - hence the current state of affairs.

[Martinus]

At the end of the day if you take a look at the presumably blue states that Trump won (Michigan, Iowa, Pennsilvania...), the main issue is, as Bubba himself said, "the economy, stupid". It's like Brexit mark II, disenfranchised white working class voters giving the power to the populist that speaks to them instead of the ivory tower type that doesn't seem to understand them. Everything else seems to be window dressing.

But it is much more than the disenfranchised white working class.  Trump and cump managed to convince even well-off voters that the country was "headed in the wrong direction," that the lives of these middle class voters did, in fact, suck even though the voters didn't realize it until Trump told them, and the preached that a trump presidency was the only way to restore the prosperous to prosperity.

I think a fair amount of the "headed in the wrong direction" feeling was engendered by things like the way gay marriage came out of the courts and not the legislatures.  Even some people who didn't really oppose gay marriage were offended by the way it became law.  "They" got to push their agenda again.

Trump's whole campaign was vague but bombastic assertions that only he could protect the people against Them.  Clinton didn't even realize that They existed, unless she was secretly one of Them.

To be honest, I don't think gay marriage played a big part in it - Trump didn't really campaign on it and in fact has let out some vague pro-gay grunts here and there (possibly the first Republican nominee to get a standing ovation when referring protecting gay people during his nomination speech). I think immigration and (linked to it) Muslim terrorism played a much bigger part.