What Should Both Parties Have Learned in 2016?

Discussion in 'The Thunderdome' started by Tenacious D, Dec 27, 2016.

  1. Tenacious D

    Tenacious D The law is of supreme importance, or no importance

    Dems, liberals, Berners, GOP, GOPe, conservatives - there are lessons to be learned for each.

    1. What are some of the biggest / most important things they should learn from 2016?
    2. What should they do with this new-found knowledge, once obtained? What should change, and how?
    3. What are the chances that any group has learned anything, at all?
    4. How are they most likely to adapt / change, going forward?
     
  2. JayVols

    JayVols Walleye Catchin' Moderator

    I can only speak for me, but I learned to never dismiss anything. I did this election cycle, and I was dead wrong. I own that. Won't happen again.
     
  3. CardinalVol

    CardinalVol Uncultured, non-diverse mod

    1. Every so often the American public gets fed up with the DC system and politics and votes in an outsider. That was this year. Trump was in the right place at right time with right message. I still have no idea if he actually believes it or knew what the people wanted to hear, but it worked.

    2. Don't take the working class for granted.
     
  4. kmf600

    kmf600 Energy vampire

    They should all stop kicking the people in the balls.
     
  5. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    Say what people want to hear. They'll always believe you, and explain away hypocrisy. In the race to the bottom, there is no bottom.

    2. Promise free stuff and low taxes as often and as loudly as possible. Blame problems on foreigners.

    3. They all learned the lesson well, I am sure.

    4. There seems to be a presupposition that something has changed fundamentally. It hasn't. The game just got a new player who mastered the art of the sale and deal long ago, and the reasons why he wouldn't have been credible no longer apply due to the race to the bottom.
     
  6. Unimane

    Unimane Kill "The Caucasian"

    The parties learned to not present shitty candidates or the election becomes a crapshoot. Either party produces a decent candidate and they blow the other side away. The Democrats run Obama again and he wins in a landslide. The Republicans nominate, well, most anyone, Bush the Junior, Dole, McCain, hell, even Romney, and they probably beat Clinton fairly easily. In either scenario for the two sides, I think they get a minimum of 330 electoral votes, regardless of party. Instead, Trump unconvincingly wins this roundly despised election because of the way our system is set up, but gets much less people to vote for him than the other candidate. As such, I think the lesson given, especially to the Dems since they are on the short end of the stick, is not have such a shitty candidate and, perhaps, not let the power structure have so much of a heavy hand in determining the nominee.

    Now, I think some may try to extrapolate a greater message about demographics and certain types of messages, but, in the end, you have two candidates most Americans did not like. So, it's hard to take a "winning" or demonstrative substantive message or idea from an election like this other than find someone whom more people like than the one you just put out there.
     
    Last edited: Dec 27, 2016
  7. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    If the dems learned what you claimed, why is Pelosi still in charge, the very person who shoved Clinton through?
     
  8. Unimane

    Unimane Kill "The Caucasian"

    Aren't you thinking of Wasserman-Schultz? Pelosi supporting Clinton isn't what I was getting at, having the DNC Chair actively working against a candidate behind the scene is, though.
     
  9. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    Pelosi sent letters to people telling them how disappointed she was in them supporting sanders, and that their reelection would not be funded. She was the muscle behind wasserman-Schultz. Remember, a woman voting for anyone but Clinton is a traiter to her gender.
     
  10. Unimane

    Unimane Kill "The Caucasian"

    She said that they wouldn't be funded because they wouldn't support Clinton and did support Bernie? I've not heard of this. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I just haven't heard of it. I do know that Pelosi stated that Bernie supporters had a "legitimate complaint" against Wasserman-Schultz and defended Bernie on a number of occasions from criticism he was recieving. Pelosi, as I understand it, as well, was not the long time Hillary supporter that Wasserman-Schultz was, either, to the point that Hillary was getting pissed at one point in the campaign that Pelosi hadn't come out to support her candidacy.
     
  11. IP

    IP Super Moderator

    It was sent to the Hindu former army major that was a rep from Hawaii. I'll find a link when I get home
     
  12. NorrisAlan

    NorrisAlan Founder of the Mike Honcho Fan Club

    1. Not
    2. A
    3. Damn
    4. Thing
     
  13. y2korth

    y2korth Contributor

    The monied interests of the status quo were threatened to their core. Ironically, those of the GOP lost their battle and won their war. Those of the dems, vice versa.
    Two weeks out, everyone not named tenny d thought the opposite.

    As for the gop, I suspect trump falls in with the party line and gives reassurance to their machine, tenuous or even false though it may be. They solidify their power and ultimately learn nothing. Trump becomes little more than an interesting chapter in the same old story.

    The dems, not surprisingly, are already showing they've learned nothing. Without a thorough reflection of how eighty-plus years of good intentions and worthy ideals has gone terribly amiss, they will blame the russians, the fbi, the masons, the Episcopalians, the Chicago cubs and the tour guides at Mount Rushmore for all of their problems.

    This year had some real promise to break the cycles of a corrupt system. Trump came through on the right but without someone equally strong on the left, the status quo will survive.

    The king continues to rule with impunity.
     
  14. NYY

    NYY Super Moderator

    They should have learned that the average American is fed the **** up with D.C.
     
  15. Tenacious D

    Tenacious D The law is of supreme importance, or no importance

    You just can't give Trump any credit, without caveats to silliness.

    He beat everyone in front of him, including the deepest and best GOP field in a lifetime, maybe ever, a member of the Clinton machine who had more money than Solomon, the Bushes, the sitting POTUS, the media, Silicon Valley, Wall St., foreign leaders, SCOTUS Justices, leaders of his own Party, and on and on and on and on.

    He took all comers, from every direction, and soundly beat each and every one.

    And yet Dole, who couldn't beat a faltering Bill, Bush Jr., who barely survived John F'ing Kerry and Al F'ing Gore, McCain who couldn't beat a then one-term Senator from Illinois, and then Romney, who couldn't beat what was obviously and clearly one of the worst POTUS' in the history of the US....one of these schleps was going to knock of Trump?

    Please. That's silliness. Dum-dum talk, even for you.

    The only one who doesn't get any larger meaning from this election are the strictest of demagogues from either side, such as yourself. You're not going to be any better at the cold, pragmatic clinical analysis of retrospection than you were at predictive analysis, at this rate.

    You're not dumb. You just choose to say really, really dumb things, and this is a corner tile in the rich mosaic of dumb things you've ever said.

    It's going to be a long 8 years for you, Un, and the clock has yet to even start.
     
  16. Tenacious D

    Tenacious D The law is of supreme importance, or no importance

    Honestly, my Trump loyalty and partisanship aside, please tell me how in the hell they re-elected Pelosi.

    Are they crazy up there? Are they crazy? I wouldn't trust them to run a cathouse. Silly bastards.
     
  17. kmf600

    kmf600 Energy vampire

    Yeah, but he lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million
     
  18. Tenacious D

    Tenacious D The law is of supreme importance, or no importance

    He lost California by 4M.

    All these hippies crying about free college....no one thanks Trump for giving them all free PhD's in the Electoral College.
     
  19. kmf600

    kmf600 Energy vampire

    I can't wait until California falls off into the ocean, no offense Droski
     
  20. Tenacious D

    Tenacious D The law is of supreme importance, or no importance

    **** Droski.

    He'll be living in TN long before then.
     

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