Mad_Machine76
Mad_Machine76's JournalHillary talked about it a bit during the campaign
Having the President behind her a little more might have helped but I think that they thought they were ok going into the election and that It wouldn't really matter much once Trump was vanquished.
He was already becoming increasingly popular among Republicans in recent years
I *suspect* that they are jealous that he is doing things over there in Russia that they wish that they could do over here.
This isn't the first time they've had all three branches
and George W. Bush got burnt when he tried to privatize Social Security in 2005. Them going after Medicare and even repealing ACA is looking increasingly perilous as well. Not that I'm discouraging Republican overreach that will only burn them in 2018 and 2020.
I'm here with you
All we are pretty much left with to mitigate the oncoming disaster for at least the next two years as I see it is lots of grassroots activism, lawsuits, pushing whatever Democratic/progressive representation we have left in Congress to fight the worst instincts and excesses of Trump/GOP in Congress and in the states and hope that progressives can mobilize sufficiently to win seats in 2018 and TKO Trump in 2020 so that we can start trying to push the liberal agenda forward again. There is no way that Trump/GOP won't be a disaster and, at some point, their policies/actions are going to hit enough people hard enough to where it can't simply be ignored or spun away.
I'm definitely concerned about it/not dismissive of it in the least
Just not sure what we can/should do about it. Obviously, the dissemination of the Wikileaks DNC e-mails was damaging to her campaign, but there were a lot of other factors that, unfortunately, hurt Hillary and we can rail at Russia all we want in terms of what they did or didn't do to help support Trump's election, but, at the end of the day, we lack any real power to punish Russia for what they did (and Trump certainly won't) and absent proof of hacking/manipulation of actual votes by Russia, there doesn't seem to be a strong enough basis for voiding the election results. With a solidly Republican Congress, there is no apparent remedy for this situation that will put Hillary Clinton into the WH (I'm not even sure if she would want to be President that way). The whole situation sucks with her winning the PV but not getting the EC vote, but there just doesn't seem to be any meaningful response.
IOW
Some people just seem to float through life thinking that everything magically and randomly happens without any thought as to the possible causes and effects of pretty much anything. Add to that, far too many people are woefully ignorant about how government works and to the extent that they hear anything about politics, tend to dismiss it as a "hobby" that they may or may not be interested in, except maybe when Presidential elections come around every four years and usually only then on a surface level, hearing Trump spew "Make America Great Again" and "Crooked Hillary" and voting for him because, hey, he's a "Businessman" and "Why don't we give him a chance running America like a business to see if that helps?"
How DO we get people to connect their struggles with the need to care about/engage in the political process?
It's interesting
how so many people simultaneously take Trump seriously (because he "tells it like it is"
and yet think that he's just all bluster and BS.
Did obstructionism hurt the GOP?
and their obstructionism wasn't really even based (mostly) on rational concerns but rather out of a desire to prevent Obama from doing anything. There are serious concerns about almost all of Trump's nominees for perfectly legitimate reasons. Almost none of them should get a quick confirmation and should be scrutinized and potentially filibustered if warranted. We don't want Trump to be able to stock every major department with patently unqualified persons and/or persons violently opposed to the agency they are responsible for.
The Democratic Party has issues but it's not widely unpopular
But we suffer from a lot of structural issues and disadvantages that we need to correct such as voter apathy (why can't our voters get out and vote in every single election when Republican voters do?), Gerrymandering, and voter suppression. HRC- flawed though she might have been- won the PV by a commanding lead but lost the WH by enough of a margin in the key Electoral states. Democrats did pick up Senate and House seats. No, not enough to make a majority but we still came away in a (slightly) better position. Democratic policies are more widely popular than Republican ones (to the extent that Republicans have anything remotely resembling "policies" . There are lessons to be learned from every election but there is also the danger of learning the wrong ones too. For instance, if we decide that we didn't appeal enough to WWC and turn around and do things that we think that might appeal more to them during the next election and but instead alienates women and POC, then we are shooting ourselves in the foot. While we try to fix what's broken, let's be careful to not fix what isn't broken either.
No
It's what he *should* be saying IMHO. Republicans are looking for cover from Dems because they know that repealing ACA will be a clusterf**k but are still intent on doing it anyway. Dems don't have much power to stop it, esp if Republicans use reconciliation, but at least Dems can refuse to provide Republicans with a helping hand in sharing the blame for the resulting tragedy.
Profile Information
Name: Mara Alis ButlerGender: Female
Hometown: Indianapolis, Indiana
Home country: USA
Current location: Indianapolis, Indiana
Member since: Sat Feb 28, 2004, 01:13 AM
Number of posts: 24,406
