What Should Both Parties Have Learned in 2016?

I'd love for someone to start a book club. Dead serious. Would love it.

I'm midway through "The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House" now, and have "Team of Rivals: Lincoln's Cabinet" (as recommended by Card & others) on deck, thereafter, but am happy to add another, or change the lineup entirely.

You're the guy to do it - start a thread, pick the book and count me in.

 

I'm not sure that anyone does - and they are probably better for it, Un.

But we enjoy it, and it's always good to debate and discuss, just the same.

 

Absolutely agreed.

 

This is where I am am at as well.

 

I read them.

 

I'd be in, as well, and think Team of Rivals would be a great kick starter.

 

Had you grown a beard by the time you were done?

 

My wife was a Johnson before marriage, so she is an expert on all things johnson.

 

I learned


For a party that appeals to a lot of young people, they sure have a lot of dinosaurs leading it. The democrats need some fresh faces. Pelosi, Reid, Schumer, you're time is (should be) over.

Like changing a timing belt on a Honda, the people can only handle about 8 years of one party running the White House. Never assume another party is toast.

 

The dems need new leadership blood badly. Even the liberal wing is old as hell. Warren is hinting at running in 2020 and it's like.... Okay but why not before, and why not groom someone less than 60 instead?

It's perplexing, and reeks of ego that they seem to anoint toadies who fade away after a few years rather than groom another generation. ****ing baby boomers.

 

I agree and Warren's appeal in 2020 will probably be limited. I think the next crop of Democrats in 2020 must come from a group like Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Julian Castro or the like. I don't see anyone as skilled as politically skilled as Obama in 2020, but there are some likely much more desirable than Hillary.

 

Definitely can't run a white man.

 

Sure they can.

 

Cory booker could have some potential.

 

Eh. It's about individuals and personality.

 

White gay man. #AC

 

GCB 2020
Gonna Glitter This Country Up!

 

Close. Maybe white gay man that overcame dyslexia and converted to Islam.

 

All of this. I actually try to be mindful of it, and still catch myself slipping into it, if not careful.

Every General Election, the winners will never be stopped or even rivaled, again, and the losers Party is in absolute disarray, and is about to completely fall off a cliff. It never works, and it never happens, for anyone, ever.

Trump and the GOP are no more immune to it than any other winning Party has been.

 

I respectfully, but strongly, disagree.

It's about message. There is no suitable substitute for it, whatsoever. It can overcome any deficit, and can turn any advantage into a landslide. When one politician is on the right message, and is on point, there is no direct defense of it - you can only largely go along with it (i.e. saying "Me, too!), and then trying to sift through the ashes to substantively differentiate yourself down the line, and which is damned near impossible, in this era of polarizing politics.

I am not pushing my Kennedy schtick, but if you have the time, go back and watch the first Kennedy - Nixon debate.......it is absolutely unrecognizable to today's debate / election cycle. Absolutely a different animal, altogether, as there are several times when you'll hear either candidate imply and outright state that they largely agree with the other, and that there is only a difference as to how to address / achieve that end. I'm not trying to pile on Hillary, or to act like I know more than my ass from a hole in the ground, but I thought that the most damning thing that she could have done to Trump, on some point along the way, was to simply agree with him that some of the problems that he was pointing out did actually exist, and were actually problems. It would have greatly helped her to express to people that she "gets it", which she never seemed able to do, outside of her most loyal followers. When people realize she "gets it", then you're deciding on which of the two are best to deal with it - and that is a very strong position for her to be in, given her comparitively overwhelming experience and command of policy. So, why didn't she do that, or perhaps better, why couldn't she do that? I have no idea, but suspect that in her zeal to truly, sincerely and thoroughly demonize him, she painted herself into a very tight corner, where she became obligated to oppose anything and everything that he said - and she mistakenly intertwined the credibility of some of his positions with that of his personal candidacy, when really, they are completely two separate things. Simply, to say that Trump might be right in saying that unchecked illegal immigration was bad, that we should properly vet immigrants, that NAFTA and TPP would kill more jobs, etc., flew directly in the face of what became almost the entirety of her campaign from the first debate onward, which was that Trump was essentially an illegitimate candidate, unworthy of consideration, and essentially, being incapable of being taken very seriously, if even at all. To say that he was right on some things being problems (not saying his solutions were best, or even right) would have greatly hindered her dismissal of him. But in so doing, she also appeared to be dismissing the thoughts of millions of Americans who did feel that he was right to point out some of the problems. She came off as "not getting it", and left Trump alone and unscathed on that high ground, as the only one who did "get it". And as long as she was unwilling to call it a problem at all, why would anyone have had any faith in her to do anything about it? I think much of this drove Trump's latter campaign - where he incessantly hammered the point that neither she nor President Obama were willing to even utter the words "Radical Islam", to make her admit that NAFTA cost millions of jobs in the Rust Belt, to admit that Obamacare was irrevocably broken and must be greatly overhauled. Much of that was a simple political hack trick, but it also was savvy (intentional or not), because even if she had realized that she had alienated voters* (particularly in the Rust Belt) in not admitting the problems were real, and tried to make a dash for it even in the final days, she still couldn't have done so, as that option had been constantly removed, leaving her without ground to retreat.

That was her undoing, IMO.

*I think even Un would agree that the modern era would struggle to find a candidate who ran a more inexcusably lazy or tone deaf campaign, from start to finish, than Clinton ran in 2016.