General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Van Jones on Democratic Partys Future: The Clinton Days Are Over You Cant Run and Hide [View all]Alekzander
(479 posts)been shown.
I am not sure, that remains to be seen but there may or may not be too much emphasis or whatever put on the rustbelt or midwest white male voters. There were a lot of factors involved in the Clinton loss all around.
The Dem Leadership has to figure out:
1) How we interpret that data has important ramifications for how the Democratic Party moves forward. If, as a New York Times headline said, Trump's win was in large part a result of non-college educated white voters who supported Obama in 2012 defecting to the Republicans perhaps for good then the logical conclusion is that Democrats have to reach out to this group specifically or face the prospect of future losses.
2)Or did Trump energize just enough Republican-leaners who stayed home in 2012, and Hillary Clinton failed to turn out just enough Democratic partisans, then we can attribute this disaster to factors that aren't specific to this group. It may be that she was an unpopular candidate who faced a perfect storm of media coverage tainted by a tendency toward false equivalence, hackers releasing her campaign's internal emails, a clumsy intervention by FBI Director James Comey and latent misogyny all of that while running against a celebrity who dominated nearly every news cycle. If that's the case, then the solution, whatever it is, should be the same for blue-collar white Democrats as it is for Democrats in general running a better candidate who's more focused on a progressive economic agenda, for instance and we shouldn't indulge in a lot of handwringing over this one group of white people.
Based on what we now know, there's good reason to believe this last analysis is the correct one. According to the exit polls, Clinton underperformed Barack Obama's 2012 results among not only non-college educated whites but also white men; black men and women; Hispanic men and women; Asian men and women; men and women of other races; every age group except voters over 65; liberals, moderates and conservatives; Protestants, Catholics, adherents of other religions and those who claim no religious affiliation; married men and unmarried men and women; union and non-union households; self-identified Democrats; straight people; people who think undocumented immigrants should be given legal status; and people who think the country is going in the right direction.
I don't think Bernie or others are saying we need to kiss anybody's asses but are saying we need to get it figured out & we have always been the party of inclusion which means everybody if they are interested. Van went out to the Midwest Rust Belt & including a lot of time in Ohio to do this.