Democrats and liberals in general need to stop with civility politics

[This is Eharding, guys]

The notion the Democrats have suffered from excessive civility is a bizarre one. Archie Parnell did not get so close to defeating a Ted Cruz-endorsed Teapublican by being uncivil. Collin Peterson did not continue winning his McCain district even to this day by being uncivil. The main focus of the Democratic Party should be showing its policy positions match those of the people it is trying to reach. The GOP anti-Cleland ad cited by Wolverine was not uncivil at all. It was a pure policy ad, which exposed Max Cleland as not being as supportive of President Bush's "homeland security" measures as the majority of the residents of Georgia were. Almost no political ad aired today is more civil. In any case, Cleland was likely to go down in 2002, GOP ads or not. He only won by less than two points in 1996, when Bill Clinton was re-elected nationwide by a large margin. Even a minor improvement in national environment for the Republican Party would have forced him out of office.

[This is Eharding, guys]

Democrats have to stop shying away from progressive values. Economic regulation is absolutely necessary in order to develop a thriving country. Welfare is a good thing, it is not an entitlement, and we will expand it. We support a nationalized healthcare system. We support a minimum wage that is above the poverty line.

http://www.coloradoindependent.com/162305/coloradocare-amendment-69

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The last Democratic nominee to win by over eight points was Bill Clinton. Obama couldn't even replicate that even though the Democrats won the House popular vote by double digits in 2008, rather than tying it as in 1996. Why? Because Obama was viewed by too many Americans as extreme. Admit it: centrism wins. McGovernism can't win the country, no matter how much its proponents want it to.

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The only Tea Party House members from Hillary Clinton districts were Pete Sessions, Ed Royce, Dana Rohrabacher (I count him as Tea Party even though he's not in the Tea Party caucus), and John Culberson, all of whose districts went for Romney overwhelmingly. Tea Party Republicans did not win the nation as a whole. They were just the majority of the majority in 2010.

[This is Eharding, guys]

Both Carter and Clinton beat incumbents due to their moderate positions. Vice presidential picks don't affect votes much. When Mondale ran on his own, he suffered the same fate as McGovern. Clinton was beating Bush in the polls even during the time Perot dropped out.

Gore and Hillary both won the popular vote, it's just that they wrongly thought their votes would be as well distributed as Carter's, a very easy mistake to make when looking at polls. They were both running after two terms of a presidency of the same party as them, and it is very difficult to win the popular vote in such conditions, especially in the presence of left wing third party spoilers.

[This is Eharding, guys]

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Most Dem losses down ballot have been in the South. Bernie didn't do well there in the primary, and would not have done well there in the general election.

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This was due to the hostage crisis.

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I think it depends on the candidate.

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FDR won the first time as a moderate. 1940 and 1944 were due to Hitler. FDR still always won the entirety of the Deep South, which shows he was not thought to be a left-wing extremist on social issues then. FDR's 1932 and 1936 bases were very similar, so people at the time didn't really consciously vote on the basis of FDR's changes to the Democratic party. FDR massively changed the party for the better, but people did not really understand this at the time. Of course, 1936 does show the value of concerted government action in improving people's lives, but the small government v. big government distinction was barely a partisan issue back then. Had people taken time to fully realize what FDR's transformation of the Democratic party would lead to, upstate New York in 1936 would have been far less Republican, and the Deep South far less Democrat. 1936 was a referendum on the Roosevelt administration's ability to improve people's lives, not on the Democratic Party's future.

Reagan only won re-election because, unlike FDR and Johnson, he didn't force through a right-wing agenda, except on tax cuts, the military, and air traffic controller unions. Spending wasn't cut, the budget wasn't balanced, Social Security was not eliminated. Meanwhile, Mondale was a weak candidate.

Trump's appeal was a lot more complicated than Cruz's. Trump didn't fully promise a straightforward right-wing agenda, as he promised to not cut Social Security and Medicare. He also portrayed himself as a friend of the LGBT community and the inner cities. He was extremely vague as to where he would cut spending. He supported right to work, but this was little noted during the campaign. The 2016 campaign wasn't very ideological, it was more based on education lines and tolerance v. intolerance.

The idea going moderate now alienates Berniecrats is nonsense. Maybe in 1976, when McGovern voted for Ford. But in 2016, Vermont and WI-02 voted overwhelmingly for Clinton. There is hardly any correlation between Sanders primary vote share by county and swing to Trump. There is a strong correlation between Trump primary vote share by county and swing to Trump.

Reagan's base in 1980 was a great deal more similar to Ford's than Goldwater's, so he wasn't seen as anywhere near as extreme as the latter, though he was obviously understood to be to the right of Ford (thus Reagan's losses in Chittenden and Washtenaw counties).

Maybe personality matters, but Romney still lost Loudoun and DuPage counties. Why? Because the median voter there isn't all that far to the right on the issues.

[This is Eharding, guys]

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Most Dem losses have been in the South. Bernie didn't do well there in the primary, and would not have done well there in the general election.

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This was due to the hostage crisis.

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I think it depends on the candidate.

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FDR won the first time as a moderate. 1940 and 1944 were due to Hitler. FDR still always won the entirety of the Deep South, which shows he was not thought to be a left-wing extremist on social issues then. FDR's 1932 and 1936 bases were very similar, so people at the time didn't really consciously vote on the basis of FDR's changes to the Democratic party. FDR massively changed the party for the better, but people did not really understand this at the time. Of course, 1936 does show the value of concerted government action in improving people's lives, but the small government v. big government distinction was barely a partisan issue back then. Had people taken time to fully realize what FDR's transformation of the Democratic party would lead to, upstate New York in 1936 would have been far less Republican, and the Deep South far less Democrat. 1936 was a referendum on the Roosevelt administration's ability to improve people's lives, not on the Democratic Party's future.

Reagan only won re-election because, unlike FDR and Johnson, he didn't force through a right-wing agenda, except on tax cuts, the military, and air traffic controller unions. Spending wasn't cut, the budget wasn't balanced, Social Security was not eliminated. Meanwhile, Mondale was a weak candidate.

Trump's appeal was a lot more complicated than Cruz's. Trump didn't fully promise a straightforward right-wing agenda, as he promised to not cut Social Security and Medicare. He also portrayed himself as a friend of the LGBT community and the inner cities. He was extremely vague as to where he would cut spending. He supported right to work, but this was little noted during the campaign. The 2016 campaign wasn't very ideological, it was more based on education lines and tolerance v. intolerance.

The idea going moderate now alienates Berniecrats is nonsense. Maybe in 1976, when McGovern voted for Ford. But in 2016, Vermont and WI-02 voted overwhelmingly for Clinton. There is hardly any correlation between Sanders primary vote share by county and swing to Trump. There is a strong correlation between Trump primary vote share by county and swing to Trump.

Reagan's base in 1980 was a great deal more similar to Ford's than Goldwater's, so he wasn't seen as anywhere near as extreme as the latter, though he was obviously understood to be to the right of Ford (thus Reagan's losses in Chittenden and Washtenaw counties).

Maybe personality matters, but Romney still lost Loudoun and DuPage counties. Why? Because the median voter there isn't all that far to the right on the issues.

I was 14 in 1984 (13 for most of the year, I believe I turned 14 on election day.)  I wasn't sophisticated in my understanding of politics back then (if I'm sophisticated now is not for me to judge) but I followed the events very closely even at that age.  This is revisionist history.

Ronald Reagan did not cut the deficit because he dramatically increased military spending (which you mentioned).  He may not have slashed social programs as much as some claim, but he slashed them enough that, for one famous example, in order to meet the requirement on vegetables in school lunch programs, his administration declared that pizza sauce was a vegetable.  The increase in the deficit was largely a result of his tax cuts and lower receipts to the government due to the recession.

His income tax cuts and subsequent increases in payroll taxes was also a redistribution of taxation from the upper income bracket to the middle income bracket (though this was offset for many in the lower middle class by the increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit.)

He also slashed regulations on labor protections and the environment. His foreign policy was more aggressive than any prior President (at least until Gorbachev who came after 1984) and his economic policy also included privatization of many government owned companies and a monetary policy of fighting inflation. I personally think Reagan was totally vindicated on those last two, but especially the anti inflationary monetary policy was radical and extremely controversial at the time.

Walter Mondale was actually a reasonably strong candidate as evidenced by his take-down of Gary Hart in the primaries.  Reagan won because the economy was booming: "it's morning again in America."  Even Gary Hart campaign insiders (and Gary Hart probably would have been the stronger general election candidate than Mondale) acknowledge that he would have lost by at least 10% to Reagan and would have won no more than about 10 states.

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I think Trump won by promising all things to all his supporters, and in this he was mainly providing his supporters a rationale to vote for him.  To his wealthy supporters, he promised tax cuts for them, and to his working class supporters he promised a tax cut to them, and to both he seperately told them that they didn't have to worry about increasing the deficit because his tax cuts would be only for them.

I don't think too many people voted for Trump on the basis of his promises as much as some of his supporters may protest.  I think his supporters fit into three groups:
1.Regular Republicans

2.Nihilists who wanted him to become President so that he would 'blow the system up.'  (Just like Steve Bannon promised.)

3.Redneck Justice Warriors (most of his working class base) who, whatever else they may claim, did not want a woman to become President.

Ted Cruz would have been good at blowing the system up. I do not think he would have flipped Matt Cartwright's district.

The idea there is a mass base of electorally significant pure sexism or racism in America is nonsense. There were many, many counties in which Hillary Clinton got more votes in 2008 than she did in November 2016, and in which female candidates for Senate got a substantially higher percentage of the vote than did Hillary Clinton in 2016. It's the message that matters, not the sex of the candidate. Look at Tim Scott. Look at Nikki Haley. Look at Connie Johnson, a Black woman who overperformed Obama's 2008 (and obviously Hillary's 2016) performance in many rural Oklahoma counties in 2014, of all years.

Yes, the economy did help Reagan in 1984.

Reagan's erosion of labor and environmental protections was real, but not something a typical voter would be significantly affected by.

I saw the Reagan-Mondale debates on YouTube. Mondale was horrendously dull as a speaker, and was widely understood at the time to be substantially to the left of Carter.

People voted for Trump on the basis of his promises on the economy and immigration. The polling is clear here.

A sufficiently moderate candidate who focused on a few wedge issues on which Reagan made an unpopular move could probably have won well over ten states in 1984.

Ketchup/vegetable controversy ended in 1981. They would have worsened Reagan's popularity had they remained in place into 1984.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchup_as_a_vegetable

[This is Eharding, guys]

Timmy, you're not adjusting for changing demographics between 1996 and 2008. That alone would have added a few points to the Democratic nominee in 2008 relative to 1996. And, yes, being Black absolutely helped Obama, at least, in 2012. Look at the dropoff of Black votes from 2012 to 2016 everywhere in the country for evidence of this.

If people really wanted Bill Clinton to be defeated in 1996, they would have voted Dole. That's why I look at margin. Adam T, you are entirely correct in your response to Timmy.

[This is Eharding, guys]

Being black was a net negative for a presidential candidate. There's a reason why it took decades before a black person could finally become the nominee of either Party.

The 21st century is not decades ago. No, being Black is not a net negative at all for a candidate. Take a look at the 2014 Oklahoma Senate races if you don't believe me.