the Lefts/Democrats functional disconnect

[Exile_In_SJ]

Ever since the Republicans took control of the House and then the Senate and then won the Presidency back the Democrats keep asking what's wrong with the American people?

Why don't the people see things their way? Look at how the Left/Democrat Elite ask why are the American people so dumb? How can they possibly vote Republican?

Why is everyone else wrong? Why can't the people see that the Left/Democrats know better?

What's the disconnect here? why have the people gone Republican in Congressional voting? Why have the people gone Republican in State Governorships? Why do Republicans hold most of the States Legislatures? Why did the people go Republican in the Presidential Election?

-------------------------------------------------------------

Personally I hope they never ever do get a clue and keep drifting ever leftward. Screw the middle and the American people. If they're too dumb to know that the Left/Democrats know what's best for them, if they don't want our (the left/democrat) enlightened leadership, screw them (I've been visiting democratic underground, can you tell?)

I hope the Democrats never figure out that they have to change and appeal to the middle more. I hope that they figure everyone else is wrong and that the people need to change. Keep it up, pick Hillary Clinton as your 08 candidate. You guys really did lose because you didn't move far enough to the left. I saw some genius over at some site called the daily kos call for Howard Dean to become the head of the DNC. by all means... Please.

don't get a clue. Continue blaming others for your losses these last few election cycles. The people are too dumb... keep thinking that.

[TexanBob]

They were able to convince Osama bin Laden. He sounded like Michael Moore in his last video, complete with the "seven minutes" non-issue.

So, I guess their message DOES resonate with some - the ones with an animus towards America.

[bendog]

I agree there's a disconnect. While they try to appeal to the common man economically, and do so more than bushanomics which is a scam for the 1%, their cave ins to their subgroups on abortion, race, prayer in school, gay, etc dooms them to speaking from an elitist position.

In 00, you can't cliam much for the gop, as gore not only got more of the vote but would've won fla if votes were counted as voters intended them to be cast. But 04 has to be a wakeup call for the dems. BushII is the only guy to ever be reelected with both a net loss of jobs and approval under 50%. If the Dems couldn't beat him, who can they beat.

[Exile_In_SJ]

In 00 it wasn't so much the country going for Bush, but the further entrenchment of the GOP in power in the other areas, Governorships and Congress

This election saw the strengthening of the positions of the GOP in every sense.

There's a reason for it, and it's not because the GOP voters are dumb, or racist or homophobic or any other trite simplification. IMO its a disconnect with the Left/Democrat with the common man and their pandering to and focus on limited special interests, especially when compared to the whole. Bill Clinton was right in his asking kerry to support some localized Gay Marriage statutes, it might have helped.

But the left/Democrats continue to denigrate the ideas and desires of the common people at their own peril and risk.

[Exile_In_SJ]

Plus it also illustrates that it's not enough to hate someone and think that everyone else does and will vote to get rid of him because you and everyone in your circle hates him and wants him out. You have to field candidates that a for something and not just against someone.

The whole democratic primary season was a litany of who could hate Bush more , not an effort to pick someone with better ideas who could convince the common people it was better to elect one of them.

[Exile_In_SJ]

http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php?id=5195

interesting observations

A catastrophic night for the Democrats
New Hampshire
Thank you, Lady Antonia Fraser! In 2000, Clark County, Ohio went to Al Gore. This time round, after the local citizenry were targeted by the Guardian to be the beneficiaries of Lady Antonia’s voting advice, and John le Carré’s and Richard Dawkins’s and many others, Clark County went to ...George W. Bush!
How about that? Alas for the Republican party, Lady Antonia and her chums never got round to writing to New Jerseyites and Pennsylvanians and Oregonians, or we’d be looking at a Bush landslide. Instead, Republicans had to settle for a little less. But, despite the best efforts of the US media, the Guardian, some even phonier than usual ‘exit polls’, Bruce Springsteen and ‘Rock The Vote’, Puff Daddy and the ‘Vote Or Die’ rap-the-vote movement, George Soros and Steve Bing and the million trillion bazillion dollars they poured into Ohio, respected foreign leaders like Yasser Arafat and Kim Jong Il, the Arab street, an attempted ‘October surprise’ by the UN’s Mohammed al-Baradei and the New York Times, and a late intervention by the late Osama bin Laden (which seemed awfully close to ‘Vote Kerry or die’), it was still a Republican night.

You might not have gained that impression from the BBC or even from my friends at the Telegraph, who claimed in Tuesday’s issue to be detecting last-minute swings to John Kerry. But just to run through what happened: in the House of Representatives the Republicans have picked up five seats; in the Senate they’ve picked up at least three, maybe four, including David Vitter winning a Louisiana seat that’s been Democrat since post-Civil War reconstruction; it looks like they’ve knocked off their chief obstructionist in the Democratic caucus.

And, oh yes, the most hated man in the world has become the first President since 1988 to win over 50 per cent of the popular vote.

In other words, it’s the perfect hat trick: a Republican President, a Republican Senate and a Republican House have been re-elected for the first time since President McKinley and the GOP Congress of 1900.

How’d that happen? There was a big increase in turnout, adding something upwards of 15 million people to the polls. We were assured by all the experts that an increase in turnout foreshadowed a Kerry landslide. Why, everyone knows an increase in turnout must be that big youth vote we always hear about, roused by elderly gentlemen like Mr Springsteen playing songs that were hits when their parents were courting into stampeding to the polling booths to vote against a return of the draft and Bush’s intolerance of gay marriage.

But, as noted here last week, the ‘Rock The Vote’ crowd didn’t show up for Howard Dean, and they didn’t show up for John Kerry either. They never show up. Or, to be more precise, if they do show up, they’re not a monolithic voting bloc. The Kerry campaign was fantasising if it thought that ‘young people’ trend Democrat in large enough numbers to compensate for all their fraying demographics — blacks, Hispanics, Catholics, rural whites, women, etc. Even with the collapse of the third-party Ralph Nader vote, Senator Kerry could only hold Al Gore’s states with much smaller margins: Gore won Connecticut by 17 points, Kerry by 10; Gore won New Jersey by 16 points, Kerry by 7. The ‘red’ states — the Bush states — got a little bit redder, the ‘blue’ states — Kerry’s — got a bit redder too.

So the story of the election is yet another catastrophic night for the Democrats. If the Kerry campaign goes into full legal mode sending the chad-chasers into Ohio, it will be doing so from a much wobblier footing than in 2000; this time, their man lost the popular vote decisively, by four million votes. Legally speaking, you can bring the boys in, but, morally and politically, suing your way into victory is a trickier proposition when your guy’s such a clear-cut loser. At 2.30 on Wednesday morning John Edwards came out to address a demoralised crowd in Boston’s Copley Square, pledging ‘to make every vote count’ — which is Dem code-speak for ‘lawyers’. But it sounded kinda lame when, vote-count-wise, George W. Bush is likely to beat Ronald Reagan’s 1984 record and wind up with more votes for President than any man in the history of the republic.

It didn’t look that way at the start of the evening. As is now traditional, election night began with a bunch of bogus ‘exit polls’ that proved to be even junkier than the ones in 2000. The networks refused to call Virginia and the Carolinas because they had exit polls showing Kerry ahead. Had those polls been correct, it would have been a landslide for the Senator. But they weren’t correct: they were bunk, and the only thing stopping me from calling for a fraud investigation is that I’ve begun rather to enjoy it. At 7 p.m. Eastern time the networks come on the air with their big specials, and you can see the anchors and the pundits and the Democratic spinmeisters are all excited because they think things are all going their way and the Republicans are in big trouble, and by 9 p.m. nothing’s gone their way and they’re all discombobulated. They don’t seem to understand the point I’ve been making for years now — that the Democrats and the media reinforce each other’s delusions.
That happened again this time. The notion of a ‘youth vote’ scared up by the Democrats to vote against an entirely mythical draft is essentially a spontaneous invention of the Democrat-media bubble. Out in the real world, meanwhile, 11 states voted for ‘gay marriage’ bans by overwhelming margins. The ‘youth vote’ is largely fictitious, the anti-gay marriage vote is real. That may be unfortunate or in deplorable taste, but, if the national media ignore real constituencies in favour of fake ones, it’s hardly surprising that the Democrats wind up, in the words of CNN’s Candy Crowley, ‘depressed and bewildered’.

The Dems have a long-term problem: their vote is becoming more and more concentrated in a few enclaves on the Pacific coast and the Atlantic north of Washington, even as the population shifts to the south and the mountain states. What have traditionally been Democrat states — Tennessee, West Virginia — and what have traditionally been swing states — such as Missouri — are looking lost to the Democrats in perpetuity. No matter how many movies Michael Moore makes, America is basically a conservative country. If you don’t believe me, look at Tom Daschle, the Democrats’ Senate leader and the first such party leader to be defeated in over half a century. Daschle’s going down to defeat in South Dakota by a big enough margin that even the traditional Democratic trick — finding a few thousand extra ‘late votes’ lying around under an abandoned pick-up on one of the more distant Indian reservations — is unlikely to suffice. Daschle has spent years as a doctrinaire liberal Democrat in Washington while posing as a ‘bipartisan’ ‘moderate’ ‘centrist’ back in his conservative home state. This year it caught up with him.

Look at John Kerry’s campaign, which is — as Democratic national campaigns invariably are these days — deeply evasive: despite a long anti-gun voting record, he fired off guns and shot at animals everywhere he went; despite voting as an abortion absolutist, he insisted that he ‘personally believed’ life begins at conception; despite voting against the Defence of Marriage Act, he declared that he was opposed to gay marriage. And the red states still wouldn’t buy it.
The Democratic party have got themselves out of step with a huge chunk of the population. They’d probably do well in Belgium and much of southern England, but unfortunately neither of those jurisdictions is a US state. And, in the places which are, the party is increasingly uncompetitive. None of its issues resonates with rural America, and most of them — abortion and race-baiting — just sound stale: Selma, Alabam’ is 40 years old, Roe vs Wade is 30 years old, and the scare talk about Bush’s Supreme Court appointees just doesn’t work. The party is intellectually exhausted and short of talent, which is how a vain, mediocre senator ended up with the nomination. There are still enough tribal Democrats to make it impossible for even the worst candidate to fall below 40 per cent, but they’re so concentrated in New England, New York and California that the party can’t break beyond that. Hence, the White House, Senate and House in Republican hands.
I think the party needs to stop suing and go on a long retreat to try and figure out what it means to be a Democrat in the early 21st century.

As for Bush, I’m glad he survived, if only because every anti-American on the planet was looking forward to dancing on his political grave like those nutso Palestinian women in the streets of Ramallah on 9/11. But I’m annoyed that it was this close. Two years ago I wrote that the President had missed an opportunity. In August 2002 I wrote in these pages, ‘President Bush has won the first battle (Afghanistan) but he’s in danger of losing the war. The war isn’t with al-Qa’eda, or Saddam, or the House of Saud. They’re all a bunch of losers.... In a unipolar world, it’s clear that the real enemy in this war is ourselves, and our lemming-like rush to cultural suicide.’ Transformative leaders use turbulent times to reshape the nation, as FDR did with the Depression. Back in his 90 per cent approval-rating days, Bush could have used the new war to shift the culture, to toughen it.

The 43rd President is a radical, at home and abroad: had Kerry been elected, not only would he have abandoned this administration’s broader ambitions in the Middle East, but, unlike Bush, he would have made no serious attempt to reform social security. The Texan moron is, in fact, the kind of leader people always say they want: not poll-driven, with the courage to take the tough decisions, etc. But he’s very poor at selling them to the American people, and what seems obvious to him isn’t necessarily that obvious if you’re in one of the many cities with a reflexively anti-Bush monodaily. It should have been a bigger victory, and Republicans need to examine carefully why it wasn’t.

One constituency that’s more or less dead after this election is the liberal warmongers — the fellows like Andrew Sullivan (of Britain’s Sunday Times) and Thomas Friedman (of the New York Times) and my compatriot Michael Ignatieff. Before the Iraq war, they were some of its biggest boosters. In recent months, they all turned, and most of them persuaded themselves that Kerry was the man to fix the mess in Iraq and see things through. I found this extraordinary. The defeat of Bush would have been seen around the world as a repudiation of his view of the war, and especially the aspect that the moulting hawks were once so keen on: his commitment to bringing liberty to the Middle East. John Kerry couldn’t have been more explicit that that was not his aim. The moulters’ willingness to abandon the long-term goal because of a nickel’n’dime jailhouse scandal and a rate of combat fatalities that any earlier generation of Americans would have regarded as the blessings of a merciful God speaks very poorly for them. Even as an armchair warrior, I wouldn’t want to be in a foxhole with these guys.

In the last few days, John Kerry wore himself hoarse shouting that America was crying out for ‘change’. But Bush is the candidate of change, and Kerry was the one running as the status quo candidate — work through the UN, the IAEA, the EU. Bush is promoting radical change in foreign policy, change in domestic policy, but both consistent with ‘red state’ values, expanding liberty abroad and promoting opportunity at home. As long as the Democrats have nothing to offer and stay on the wrong side of the guns’n’God issues, they will continue to decline.
On a personal note, New Hampshire narrowly went for Kerry. Shame on my wussier Granite State neighbours. The southern third of the state is full of transplants from Taxachusetts who’ve evidently forgotten why they moved up. Personally humiliating for me, and disastrous for the state if it were to succumb to the policies that have enervated the rest of New England. But don’t worry; we’ll claw it back for the Republicans in 2008.

[Raider Bill]

Liberals all flock together at Starbucks and nurse their Late's while pontificating that the rest of us are simpleminded.

[Spider]

Originally Posted by njbil

Liberals all flock together at Starbucks and nurse their Late's while pontificating that the rest of us are simpleminded.

Gee you make it sound so personal

[Exile_In_SJ]

The Left/Democrats don't have any answers so some of them lean on the simplistic solution as to why they didn't win. The people opposing them are ignorant, dumb, racist, etc, any label, simplistic label that actually precludes having to examine why they lost.

It's always easier to examine what others have done when you lost rather than look in the mirror.

the Left/Democrats think they have an automatic connection with the common folk, yet they Republicans won 51% of the vote. 51 % of the people can't be the rich.... Obviously the GOP reached out to the common people and convinced them tha it was better to vote for them, and have been doing it for quite some time, as evidenced by the control of the Governorships, the Congress, most of the state legislatures, and now the presidency.

I think the Left/Democrats now represent the fringe and need to figure out how to reach out to the common person.

I want a viable Democratic part, I've voted Democrat often and it's good for the country to have a strong democratic party. They've been hijacked by the far left/hate bush/ radical leftie wing as shown by Michael Moore getting such special treatment at the DNC. That in itself was a disaster for the Democrats. Most people in the country feel that Michael Moore and his ilk do not represent the country.

The Moderate democrats need to take their party back before they can think of 'taking' their country back.

Just as in that article I posted, the Democrats are being concentrated in the highly dense urban areas, and everywhere else belongs to the GOP.

[Spider]

Originally Posted by Exile_In_SJ

The Left/Democrats don't have any answers so some of them lean on the simplistic solution as to why they didn't win. The people opposing them are ignorant, dumb, racist, etc, any label, simplistic label that actually precludes having to examine why they lost.

It's always easier to examine what others have done when you lost rather than look in the mirror.

the Left/Democrats think they have an automatic connection with the common folk, yet they Republicans won 51% of the vote. %1 % of the people can't be the rich.... Obviously the GOP reached out to the common people and convinced them tha it was better to vote for them, and have been doing it for quite some time, as evidenced by the control of the Governorships, the Congress, most of the state legislatures, and now the presidency.

I think the Left/Democrats now represent the fringe and need to figure out how to reach out to the common person.

I want a viable Democratic part, I've voted Democrat often and it's good for the country to have a strong democratic party. They've been hijacked by the far left/hate bush/ radical leftie wing as shown by Michael Moore getting such special treatment at the DNC. That in itself was a disaster for the Democrats. Most people in the country feel that Michael Moore and his ilk do not represent the country.

The Moderate democrats need to take their party back before they can think of 'taking' their country back.

Just as in that article I posted, the Democrats are being concentrated in the highly dense urban areas, and everywhere else belongs to the GOP.

you could realy use some therapy .........

[Exile_In_SJ]

lol, this is therapy.... plus maybe someone in the democratic party will see and learn.

Listen, the democrats can continue to call their opponents names and continue to lose... They keep losing and losing, yet many of the left blame the people they need to convince to vote for them and continue to call them names. And then they wonder why they are losing.

well like I said in another thread, Bush's victory is a gift that keeps on giving.

[Spider]

Originally Posted by Exile_In_SJ

lol, this is therapy.... plus maybe someone in the democratic party will see and learn.

Listen, the democrats can continue to call their opponents names and continue to lose... They keep losing and losing, yet many of the left blame the people they need to convince to vote for them and continue to call them names. And then they wonder why they are losing.

well like I said in another thread, Bush's victory is a gift that keeps on giving.

I wasnt clear , my bad , I wasnt talking about crawling into a bottle and ranting type of therapy , was talking real help ..........

[TomServo]

the more i see the losing party on tv the more i see a declining dem. party.

it was homophobes. it was damn extreme christians. it was uneducated hicks. it was our nominee. it was his strategy. Nothing but lame excuses.

a billion $s in ads, michael moores movie, the boss, a war going bad (according to the dems) a depression (according to the dems) and still "dumbya" won.
keep making excuses instead of reconnecting with the pple in "flyovercountry." fine by me

[enjolras]

It's awfully hard to say the democrats don't appeal to 'the common man', after all roughly half of voting Americans are on their side. Among the eligible, but non-voting public, polls indicate that they likely hold a clear majority among all Americans (neither here nor there if they choose not to vote, however).

I think that's the real lesson of the last few election cycles. The Republican party is simply more focused. They have a few polarizing issues that allows them to get their people out to vote... the democrats struggle immensely to even get their registered voters to the polls. I beleive this IS because of their message. The literally can't demonstrate to their own voters that they are capable of making a difference in their daily lives. The Republicans have poll captains and teams that are incredibly effective at convincing their voters to get out and pull a lever. Even with the high turnout there was still something like 40% of eligible voters who didn't bother to vote... the democrats need to adopt a republican strategy that allows them to start breaking into that number. Until then, the military precision of the Republican voter turn-out campaigns is going to continue to prevent them from winning much of anything.

[TomServo]

as far as i can tell all the dems need is a regular guy to run. Clinton was a fraud to me but he connected. that damn hick actually owned an el camino .

still music to my ears to hear nothing but excuses

[Crushaholic]

Originally Posted by TomServo

as far as i can tell all the dems need is a regular guy to run. Clinton was a fraud to me but he connected. that damn hick actually owned an el camino .

still music to my ears to hear nothing but excuses

You mean John "I actually voted for Iraq before I voted against it" Kerry and John "I'll sue over anything" Edwards didn't resonate with the average Americans? I'm shocked... rofl

[Exile_In_SJ]

The Dems attract the urban poor and the urban elites.. beyond that they don't attract the average american outside of the major urban area. Look at the couties map. The democrats need to attract people in those locales to win. The common people. They currently don't. That's where the electoral votes are.

[TheDave]

Damn the way Exile talks you would think the GOP just put a 90% to 10% ass kicking on the Democrats.... i believe the final tally was 48% to 51%. Relax, the next election will be another near 50/50 split. I know there was alot of venom in this election but give it a rest exile, i don't think the world is quite as lopsised as you wish it was.

[Spider]

Originally Posted by TheDave

Damn the way Exile talks you would think the GOP just put a 90% to 10% ass kicking on the Democrats.... i believe the final tally was 48% to 51%. Relax, the next election will be another near 50/50 split. I know there was alot of venom in this election but give it a rest exile, i don't think the world is quite as lopsised as you wish it was.

I know ...... but I realy think exile needs therapy ...... Even told him so ......
LABF struck alot of nerves in here , the reason why is some wanted to spew hatred uncontested ........ LABF brought it hard

[TheDave]

Originally Posted by §Pide®

I know ...... but I realy think exile needs therapy ...... Even told him so ......
LABF struck alot of nerves in here , the reason why is some wanted to spew hatred uncontested ........ LABF brought it hard

Honestly i think anyone on the far left or far right needs therapy... I just get a kick out of these post election threads...

democrats functional disconect
liberals spewing more hate
liberals don't talk to average americans
Democrats mad at Clinton...

My favorite is that map above showing clearly that the massive mid west plains where some 12 people live are all for Bush and only that sliver of coast line on the east and west vote democratic....

ATTENTION ORANGE MANE POSTERS - Thats where the majority of people live - on the coasts.

In any event i just get a laugh from all this disconect talk... currently the Dems are speaking well to 48% of the population... I just don't see the massive disconnect there.

[TomServo]

im still loving all this.

when a person lives in a democratic republic such as ours, 52% means that party has most of the lawmakers and controls all the commitees.

plus gets to pick and approve (the filibuster was never intended to block judicial nominees) the supremes.
when a nominee gets 47% of the vote but the opponent gets 52% the 47% is 47% of nothing.

just keep on thinking that nothing is wrong w/the dem party still fine by me.

[Exile_In_SJ]

Here's another form of the disconnect the Left/Democrats have...

from John Leo in US News and world report...http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/0...n/15john_2.htm

John Leo has some advice for the Democrats.
Democrats might want to tone down the contempt for evangelicals in particular and religious people in general that increasingly flows through their secular-dominated party. This is a very religious nation. If the Democrats aspire to become the majority party, why do they tolerate so much antireligious behavior and expression? They also might have a word with out-of-control adjuncts of the party like People for the American Way, whose mission is apparently to hammer away at religious conservatives, and the American Civil Liberties Union, which is always ready to descend on every 6-year-old who writes a school essay on Jesus or who says, "God bless you" after a sneeze. Do they think religious voters fail to notice?
It's a good idea not to have such open contempt for those whose votes you're seeking. And as long as you're seen as the party of Hollywood and Rock 'n Roll, you'll be at a deficit trying to do that.

---------------------------------------

I'm not particularily religious myself, but i never did understand to open contempt the Democrats have for religious people, especially in a contry where the vast majority is religious. You don't have to be supportive of religious people, but it would seem smarter to not be openly contemptuous, especially if you are seeking votes.