General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: How many DUers are old enough to have experienced our bad losses? [View all]davidpdx
(22,000 posts)I was born in the early 70's, so I remember the 80, 84, and 88 elections pretty well (72 and 76 I would have been too young). I became a Democrat long before I was old enough to vote. Of course in 2000 and 2004 I was old enough to vote.
I disagree that we have to compromise with a centrist candidate to win. Carter had a lot of things working against him, but he was still an awesome president. In terms of Mondale and Dukakis neither were good candidates. Gore had a couple of things working against him: 1) Not having Bill Clinton out there campaigning for him was a mistake; 2) Not being more enthusiastic; and 3) Karl Rove and his thugs rigging the election in Ohio and Florida. Of those four Gore should have won.
The problem is having someone who is charismatic and who brings excitement to the ticket. That is exactly what Obama did and he by the way IS a liberal.
People think Hillary Clinton is going to generate all this excitement the second time around, that it's going to be an easy landslide, and we are going to take a bunch of red states. That isn't what is going to happen. She ran a flawed campaign in 2008 and has been in politics for decades. Among Democrats (outside the DU fishbowl) there is not much excitement for her to run.
I'm as glad as anyone about marriage equality, but I also want to point out that Obama was not a "compromise candidate" he was an underdog running against a well-known entity. It was people like myself that busted their ass in the primary that got Obama as our nominee and eventually president.