Is Hillary the Democratic version of Mitt Romney?

[Slander and/or Libel]

There's nothing that makes white working class voters more important than any other voter. Obama won in 2012 without them. We will do it again.

So you are going for the Karl Rove 50+1 strategy?

You mean the strategy of getting more votes than the other candidate?

[Donald Trump 2016 !]

There's nothing that makes white working class voters more important than any other voter. Obama won in 2012 without them. We will do it again.

So you are going for the Karl Rove 50+1 strategy?

You mean the strategy of getting more votes than the other candidate?

This is a great strategy for winning the Presidency, but it also has serious negative effects for the Democratic Party. Look at the shift from 2008 to 2015 in terms of state legislatures, governorships, House and Senate elections, etc. and you'll see that the Republican Party has effectively swept the board in terms of control over the Democrats in these key areas because the Democrats have abandoned the old 50 state strategy that Bill and Dean worked so hard to build. Even if Democrats win in 2016, they don't have much to gain from it.

Here's a good article on this very subject: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/democratic-blues-121561

[Slander and/or Libel]

There's nothing that makes white working class voters more important than any other voter. Obama won in 2012 without them. We will do it again.

So you are going for the Karl Rove 50+1 strategy?

You mean the strategy of getting more votes than the other candidate?

This is a great strategy for winning the Presidency, but it also has serious negative effects for the Democratic Party. Look at the shift from 2008 to 2015 in terms of state legislatures, governorships, House and Senate elections, etc. and you'll see that the Republican Party has effectively swept the board in terms of control over the Democrats in these key areas because the Democrats have abandoned the old 50 state strategy that Bill and Dean worked so hard to build. Even if Democrats win in 2016, they don't have much to gain from it.

Here's a good article on this very subject: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/democratic-blues-121561

A combination of off-year elections, focus on national races driving attention away from state and local races (making them easier to buy), consolidation of power through the ability to draw district boundaries, and the natural geographic disadvantage currently suffered by progressives through the combination of population clustering in urban centers and single member districts.

There you go. Is that what the article says? I haven't read it yet. Does it argue against trying to win the presidency through getting  more votes than the other guy?

[Donald Trump 2016 !]

There's nothing that makes white working class voters more important than any other voter. Obama won in 2012 without them. We will do it again.

So you are going for the Karl Rove 50+1 strategy?

You mean the strategy of getting more votes than the other candidate?

This is a great strategy for winning the Presidency, but it also has serious negative effects for the Democratic Party. Look at the shift from 2008 to 2015 in terms of state legislatures, governorships, House and Senate elections, etc. and you'll see that the Republican Party has effectively swept the board in terms of control over the Democrats in these key areas because the Democrats have abandoned the old 50 state strategy that Bill and Dean worked so hard to build. Even if Democrats win in 2016, they don't have much to gain from it.

Here's a good article on this very subject: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/democratic-blues-121561

A combination of off-year elections, focus on national races driving attention away from state and local races (making them easier to buy), consolidation of power through the ability to draw district boundaries, and the natural geographic disadvantage currently suffered by progressives through the combination of population clustering in urban centers and single member districts.

There you go. Is that what the article says? I haven't read it yet. Does it argue against trying to win the presidency through getting  more votes than the other guy?

You can deduct any argument you want from the article. It mostly states facts and not opinions. This attitude of "well screw it we got the Presidency and possibly Supreme Court" that the Democratic Party has is hurting them not only at the national level but especially the state and local levels as well. There's a lot of talk about conservative extremists, but Obama is the most liberal President since LBJ and Sanders, an openly avowed socialist, is the primary challenger to Hillary for the Party's nomination. There's been an increasingly sharper partisan divide in this country with neither Party wanting to seek moderation. Ultimately this benefits conservatives since most Americans increasingly start to view the Government as inefficient and uncompromising.

Nothing about Obama's coalition has helped Democrats at any levels of Government except for the Presidency. Winning the Presidency has its' disadvantages.

[Slander and/or Libel]

Given the majorities that Democrats enjoyed in 2009, reversion to the mean was close to inevitable. Combine that with the fact that the midterm electorate is increasingly disparate from the presidential electorate, and that the second-term presidential electorate isn't nearly as excited as the first-term electorate (and that in the Senate Democrats were already defending the big gains they had made in 2006), and this looks neither mysterious or like Obama somehow failing to do something he could otherwise have done.

[King]

She's Hillary Clinton.

[Mehmentum]

There are some similarities, some differences.  I feel like John Kerry is the best Democratic analogue to Romney.  They're both from Massachusetts, both were seen as not being personable, and were called flip-floppers.  Both challenged a sitting president and failed.

[Mr. Smith]

She's more like George HW Bush if anything.

Same amount of being in politics for a long time, same coming in with relation to someone else (Prescott Bush in the case of HW), and same skepticism despite being part of a cabinet of a President well lauded by the base that elected them.

[dudeabides]

Mitt Romney was successful in both the private sector and government, he had no scandals, I don't see the parallel beyond that both have been accused of pandering, though I think the Netflix documentary about Romney post 2012 proved that in reality, he is genuine.

[Donald Trump 2016 !]

She's more like George HW Bush if anything.

Same amount of being in politics for a long time, same coming in with relation to someone else (Prescott Bush in the case of HW), and same skepticism despite being part of a cabinet of a President well lauded by the base that elected them.

This is a more apt comparison.   

[Mr. Reactionary]

Given the majorities that Democrats enjoyed in 2009, reversion to the mean was close to inevitable.

The largest Pub majority since the 1920s is the mean?

[Slander and/or Libel]

Given the majorities that Democrats enjoyed in 2009, reversion to the mean was close to inevitable.

The largest Pub majority since the 1920s is the mean?

No, I'm not saying that it's not a historic low for the Democrats. Only that starting the clock at a historic high for the Democrats is putting a thumb on the scale, if the aim is to talk about how horrible Obama has been for the party. A good bit, though certainly not all, of the decline is reversion to the mean.

[BlueSwan]

There are similarities, but no!

Six months ago she had almost universal approval from democrats (the GOP was always lukewarm at best on Romney). Her fall is due to 6-month relentless hit job by the GOP and a mainstream media desperate for a competitive democratic primary.

Granted, she will probably never be the type of candidate that everybody loves on a personal level, but until recently she was deeply respected and just about anyone sane will agree that she is very very competent. I would argue that she is easily the most competent of any of the candidates of either party, but I will concede that that point could be debated.

I will give that Romney was also viewed as competent, but he was never all that respected (relentless flip-flopping) and was way more out-of-touch than Hillary.

[Rockefeller GOP]

The Democratic Party has become associated with urban, black, liberal politics.
 

Don't think your awful wall of text will hide this line.

Why should we hide that? Nothing negative was stated. But clearly the coal miners of West Virginia who were persuaded by Clinton 1996 are not the same electorate that Democrats have to win today. They're gone for Democrats.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/11/democrats_can_t_win_white_working_class_voters_the_party_is_too_closely.html

"Working-class whites didn’t leave the Democratic Party over insufficiently populist policy and rhetoric. The liberal economic reforms of 1960s—and Medicare in particular—paid benefits to white working-class families throughout the 1970s and ’80s, even as the group moved to a decisive break with the Democrats. No, the proximate cause of the break was the Democratic Party’s close identification with black Americans, who—after the riots of the late ’60s and ’70s—became identified with urban disorder and welfare."

But wouldn't the converse of Republicans not attracting minority working-class voters also true? And shouldn't that concern any Republican, especially considering they lost the last two elections because of that?

Not giving my moral concerns but rather simply the best electoral strategy - it shouldn't be overly concerning that Republicans aren't winning working class minorities; their policies have never and likely will never benefit those folks.  However, it's deeply troubling that the GOP isn't winning more affluent minorities, and it speaks to a deep image problem the GOP has culturally.

[Taco Truck 🚚]

The Democratic Party has become associated with urban, black, liberal politics.

I agree.  That's why Bernie Sanders has the largest donor base of ANYONE running for president.  The key to his appeal is Vermont is very urban and black... Same with New Hampshire... and Iowa.

There is a lot of good insight on this forum.  It is free of hackery and racial scare mongering.

[/]

Only time will tell.

[henster]

Romney never had the ethical issues she has. He was as squeaky as a candidate can be just a bad candidate, Hillary is a bad candidate along with the ethical issues so she probably has it worse than Romney.