Might America actually elect another black president in 2020?

[Caliman73]

70. When did that happen?

When did that ship sail, never to return? Was it the ship that dumped all of the right wing supposed populists into congress in 2010 and defended in 2012, 2014 and again in 2016? That ship is gone for good now?

Do you think that Koch's are the only mega donors? You think that Trump was actually a populist candidate? He was backed by Sheldon Aidelson and the Mercer family who are also mega donors. Just because the one set of billionaires that we all know and love to hate, did not get their man into the candidacy, doesn't mean that Republicans are now in a new era. You also seem to forget that Trump had a special benefactor that is estimated to be worth over 200 billion dollars and though he may not have put dollars or rubles as it were, into the race, he certainly provided material support that was worth more than the few hundred million that the Kochs put into helping some national but mostly state and local candidates (they've shifted focus).

Democrats may be a different story, but that is debatable. We are a hot mess right now because we keep waiting on the perfect, pure candidate that has never voted on anything that someone might find offensive. We were so happy with President Obama, until he wasn't progressive enough, so we threw a tantrum and stayed home in 2010, during a census year, so that Republicans could rewrite the district maps. That showed us!! See, piss us off Hampton society set and we will stay home and our opponents will elect people who will...um lower your taxes, allow you to hide your money overseas, okay I know, they will overturn abortion rights so you will have to go to France or Switzerland to get an abortion which you could totally afford to do anyway.

Now, I am not that cynical as to think that we can't pull the Party to adopt more policy focused on the needs of the working class, middle class, and the poor. We have and we can, but this whole idea that we are having a revolution and are transforming the Party from the top down and will do it in the span of 18 months, is pretty ridiculous.

We need to start voting for progressive candidates for school board, for city council, for local and state positions, so that in time, the only candidates coming through the system are more progressive. That takes time. In the meanwhile, we need to get the candidates that will inch us closer to where we want to be. We need to get behind the best candidates available. We should be having discussions about what our values are, what we stand for, and what we need to have better lives, not just about "who is tainted by talking to someone from Goldman Sachs" or who supported some law (that is complicated) that my brother's wife's cousin's nephew wrote about in their blog, or worse, that some Russian ratfu@er is feeding us.

I don't mean to sound hostile, but this is something that has really started to weigh heavily. We keep fighting each other and doing our real opponents' work for them. These up coming elections are the prelude to 2020, and if we do not do something to win back control of state houses and at least get even or within distance for the census year in 2020, we could be looking at another decade of Republican rule by the minority.