To rebuild the Democratic Party, which has been hollowed out, we need ALL Dems everywhere.

[Hortensis]

9. We lost 2010 because we were too ANTI-corporate.

The Democratic Party had to be stopped, and fortunately our corporate enemies had the enormous wealth and new information technology to do it with. We'd cut personal taxes on the wealthy all the way back to where they were before Ronald Reagan was elected, enacted the Wall Street reforms of course, were leading nations gathering to fight climate change and imposing environmental regulations, and had big plans for doing more. Much more.

How our corporate enemies did it in 2010 is that they with the Republicans microtargeted key districts and poured unprecedented money and effort into turning them red -- not just to take control of congress but to affect the 2010 census for redistricting. This was political microtargeting using new computer information capabilities, and the Republicans did it first, devastatingly. They also poured enormous amounts of black money and effort into governorships and state legislatures.

Far too many of the people who believed that "too corporate" garbage, instead of believing the ideals of our party, were among those who were foolishly and dreadfully dissuaded from voting.

But deluded leftists were only of the disaffected groups who assisted 2010's corporate takeover. There was huge national backlash to too much change too fast, helped enormously by right wing swiftboating. A black president was the biggest change, of course. The liberal agenda in Washington threatened to force healthcare on everyone. Women taking jobs from white men. This was the era of "trolling for assassins" on Fox, a symptom of the national fever we went into the 2010 midterms with. Most ironic, the rising anger at corporate greed and the devastation of the 2008 economic collapse lead voters to give them control of our congress--they called it "change."

But in the end, Democrats lost in 2010 for the only reason we ever lose: The right wing's hate and fear brought them out to vote in larger numbers than our ideals did.

Millions of us Democrats did go vote our beliefs, of course; but a critical number of armchair warriors chose to confine their concerns about liberty, justice, wellbeing of those in need, and of course "corporatism" to their usual complaining.

“The enemy isn’t conservatism. The enemy isn’t liberalism. The enemy is bulls**t." —Lars-Erik Nelson