"Eight Year Itch"

The party holding the WH for 8 years traditionally has a harder time keeping the WH for another 4-8 (last time it happened was in 1988 with GHW Bush following Reagan). Plus, there was a lot of pent-up right-wing rage (8 years) against President Obama, Democrats and Trump was able to successfully tap into it. I think that, aside from some right-wing misogny, intense burning hatred of the Clintons by some, and some of the smears against Clinton, what it really boils down to IMHO is that Republicans wanted a Trump/GOP Presidency more than Democrats and others wanted a Clinton Presidency. Their people showed up to vote for Trump/GOP. Ours stayed home or diverted their votes to other candidates in enough numbers to allow Trump to win the states he needed to assume the Presidency. End of line.

People whom live in such hyper-exaggerated fear of their surroundings

need to have their perceptions challenged once in a while. This is the USA, not Iraq, Somalia, or some war-torn third-world country. We should be so lucky to live in a relatively peaceful, stable country. Yet the NRA puts out this vision of our country as a lawless anarchy with roving gangs and drug dealers threatening a cowed law abiding populace and lawmakers respond to that in several states by continuing to add on to the already quite long list (in some places) that they want to see guns allowed, seemingly to the point that there are virtually no restrictions and guns are allowed everywhere. I mean, what's the logic of allowing people to carry guns in churches? Daycares? I think that advocating for background checks, licensure, etc. are tough sells for the public but I don't want to see us get to the point where a bunch of people show up anywhere and everywhere with guns. I'd also like to ask, when *would* be a good time to address the issue of gun violence in our society? How long do we need to keep our (gun)powder dry?

But they just passed a *great* anti-choice bill into law!

And voted Trump, and just sent Rob Portman back to the US Senate, so evidently they are fine/happy with Republicans for some reason.

I disagree

1. Bernie, a non-member of the Democratic Party, decided to enter the primary in the first place, not because he thought that there was going to be a good chance of him winning (he did better than expected but still lost by a good margin), but for him and his supporters, some of whom weren't members of the Democratic Party either, to "send a message" to the Democratic Party that it's not good enough or pure enough or to the left enough for them. His supporters also explicitly said over and over again that they didn't want there to be a "coronation" for Hillary, so they forced her to expend time, energy, and resources to fight an unnecessary IMHO primary that could have/should have been used in the GE against Donald Trump, who was gradually appearing to be the presumptive GOP nominee.

2. He whipped his supporters up over the Democratic Primary being "rigged" and repeatedly attacked the Democratic Primary process, helping alienate his supporters after he (eventually) conceded. Not saying the DNC is pure as white snow but the DNC DID allow Sanders to run even though he is not even a regular member of the Party and Sanders lost the primaries by a matter of 3 million votes- from the voters. Nothing the DNC did/didn't do caused that to happen. Some of his supporters became so angry towards Hillary and the Democratic Party that they voted third party, voted Trump out of spite, or flat out refused to vote because of either a misunderstanding of Democratic Party rules and the primary process and/or believing that the whole thing was rigged by Hillary and the DNC to keep Bernie from winning.

3. He refused to concede until July (even after it was clear that Trump was going to be the nominee) and some members of his campaign kept teasing the possibility of a convention floor fight, pressuring Super delegates to change their votes (when they weren't attacking the SD system itself). Several of supporters began even harassing some of the Super delegates.

4. When he did concede, his support and enthusiasm for Hillary seemed lukewarm at best, which likely diminished support and enthusiasm for HRC in the general election among his supporters. He didn't seem to support Hillary so much as he opposed Trump and seemed pretty absent out on the campaign trail (from what I could tell). His support also came with a price tag at the DNC, which acceded to his demands even though some of the people he forced them to include in things like drafting the Party platform jumped ship right afterwards to support other candidates (i.e. Cornell West supporting Jill Stein).

By saying all of this, I'm not saying that he is ALL to blame for the campaign or that Hillary didn't share some of the blame for some for what she did/didn't do that contributed to her defeat in the EC, but to say that he doesn't share *any* of the blame is just as bad as saying that Hillary doesn't any of the blame as well.

"Real opportunity" to cut poor people from healthcare

Do these people have souls?

I would agree that we should obstruct as many of Trump's nominees

I would imagine that we could have quite a field day if Trump nominates Patraeus to SOS or Palin to VA. Schumer wants to make Price's nomination a proxy war over Medicare, ACA and Sessions couldn't get confirmed to the Judiciary back in 1986. Why should he be confirmed for AG now?


I also think that Democrats should- as a matter of Principle- declare Donald Trump a "lame duck" President and call for the next President to fill Scalia's seat. After all, that's what the Republicans did to us. Unfortunately, we're probably too high minded for that because we care about having a functional SCOTUS but we really should fight them over the gross perversion of the SCOTUS nomination process that they pulled with President Obama.

I hate the whole "Lesser of Two Evils" schtick

I also never understood why there were so many people whom were so conditioned/propagandized to hate both candidates during this election cycle. Whatever else you might think of her or her "mistakes" ("Trumped up" as they were), we had two major party candidates running for President and Hillary was obviously the more intelligent, coherent, and qualified candidate in the running. There wasn't or shouldn't have been any kind of reasonable equivalence between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. There just wasn't. And for progressives whom hated that she beat Bernie by 3 million votes in the primary, Hillary wouldn't have be nominating a Scalia clone to SCOTUS, nor would she be choosing ANY of the people Trump has been choosing so far for Cabinet posts- but that's exactly what we're going to get now with President Trump. People whom- either through action or inaction- let the Trump Presidency become a reality are REALLY going to regret their decision- and probably sooner rather than later.......

I think that your last part is a good idea for the DNC to look at

I wonder if such a place exists and what that might be able to teach us. Part of the problem too is just that getting a Republican voter to vote Democratic usually takes a disastrous Republican Presidency and/or a seriously unqualified Republican candidacy (though that has somewhat been proven to not always be true this last election) to ignore to build an overwhelming wave against Republicans like 2006 and 2008. But even then, it doesn't seem to take much to turn such people back to voting Republican again if Republicans can gin up enough outrage against Democratic officeholders like with the Republican Tea Party in 2010 and 2014. In recent history, the trend has been for us to have a Democratic President and Democratic Congress for two years before Republicans win back one or both chambers of Congress built on a wave of intense opposition and outrage to Democratic policies (in 1994 it was burning hatred of the Clintons paired with attempted healthcare reform and in 2010 it was burning hatred of President Obama paired with the enacted "Obamacare", Stimulus, Wall-Street bailout- which technically started under Bush II).

What we really need to figure out is how to break this cycle and not only keep Republican converts but convincing regular Democratic voters to come out for midterms. It seems like many Democratic voters, particularly those on the left, also are somewhat fickle if they don't feel like what the Democrats do after being elected is "progressive enough" or if they don't feel like the Democrats have accomplished enough but instead of voting Republican, they simply throw up their hands and stay home, which, of course, ultimately helps the Republicans, whose voters show up election and election no matter how much the Republicans let them down. Republican voters- to our detriment- are clearly focused on "the long game" and protecting what they feel is their interests by voting to keep Republicans in office no matter how bad they seem to be for the state of our country (mostly because the Republicans are good at scapegoating Democrats and progressive policies for the ills of society). We need to figure out how to keep Democratic voters invested in the political process and focusing on "the long game". It's a tricky situation and I don't envy anybody at the DNC trying to figure it out but I hope that the next DNC Chair focuses a lot of time on this.

Thank goodness we didn't elect Hillary Clinton!

Looking ahead to 2020

Who does everybody think would be good potential candidates to unseat Trump in 2020? I know that the dust hasn't quite settled on 2016 but given how important it is to reclaim the WH in 2020, does anybody have any dream candidates? Have there been any names bandied about within the party as potentials for 2020 yet? I would guess that, due to age, neither Clinton nor Sanders are likely to run again. So, who's up to bat for us, next?