Sooooo. What lessons did Democrats learn from 2016 that they can apply in 2020?

[Fuzzy Bear]

I don't see where they've learned anything. 

They SHOULD have learned that since there are more conservatives than liberals in America, they need to be a "big tent" party.  That means tolerating centrists, giving them real roles in the party, and recognizing that, at times, a moderate compromise is better than no advancement at all. 

[Fuzzy Bear]

I don't see where they've learned anything.  

They SHOULD have learned that since there are more conservatives than liberals in America, they need to be a "big tent" party.  That means tolerating centrists, giving them real roles in the party, and recognizing that, at times, a moderate compromise is better than no advancement at all.

Your idea of "centrist" is much different than mine.

Hillary Clinton is far left on social issues, leftish on economic issues.  

Jim Webb is a centrist.

With all due respect what the f*** are you talking about, we nominated the most centrist ticket we could of had.

A ticket of McCaskill and Manchin would have been the most centrist ticket possible.

Perhaps it's true that Clinton-Kaine is as centrist as it gets for today's Democratic Party.

[Fuzzy Bear]

I don't see where they've learned anything. 

They SHOULD have learned that since there are more conservatives than liberals in America, they need to be a "big tent" party.  That means tolerating centrists, giving them real roles in the party, and recognizing that, at times, a moderate compromise is better than no advancement at all. 

Do you have ANY statistical proof that there are more conservatives than liberals, after the GOP lost the popular vote six times in the last seven elections?

Yes.  Yes I do.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/180452/liberals-record-trail-conservatives.aspx

Conservatives outnumber liberals 38%-24%.  

It is not news that Democrats need the votes of "moderates" and even a few "conservatives" to win elections. Michael Barone once pointed out that a big reason the GOP took over the Congress in 1994 was that for years, the overwhelming majority of Americans voted for Congressional candidates either (A) Republicans, or (B) Democrats who insisted that they were moderates or conservatives, yet every year, some piece of liberal legislation would pass by a narrow margin.  Barone pointed out that the advent of the Clinton Administration brought much of this out into the open.  There, it was revealed how many moderate and conservative Democrats would vote against liberal legislation on the floor, yet support it with key votes during the committee process.  What happened is that, over time, "conservative" and "moderate" Democrats lost some credibility; they were viewed as "liberals" when they were needed.

The Democrats won the popular vote by over 50% only twice (2008 and 2012), and they were aided greatly by circumstance.  Bill Clinton won with 43% and 49%, and the Perot vote was not a "liberal" vote at all.  The Democrats have proven more popular in the Presidential vote because the GOP had, indeed, become locked into a strident niche of conservatism that was off-putting to many voters in the center.  There was an uptick of liberal self-identification; it became less attractive to be a "conservative" after 2006, and conservatives haven't really recovered from that yet.  Politicians now describe themselves as "liberals" and "progressives"; they were afraid to until 2006.  

I would hold that the solid lead the GOP has in (A) the House of Representatives, (B) Governorships, (C) State Legislative seats, a lead that has been pretty constant since 2010, is proof that while there is not a conservative "majority", there are more conservatives than liberals.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Barone pointed out that the advent of the Clinton Administration brought much of this out into the open.

The issues that led to the 1994 blowout didn't just materialize out of nowhere or with the Clinton administration. They were building up for years. Democrats maintained a lot of power in states that were very clearly, particularly with hindsight, moving away from them and had been for a long time. It was only a matter of time before presidential voting habits found their way further down the ballot.

In fact, I might argue that the Republican Revolution began spilling blood in '92, when Democrats lost 9 House seats despite comfortably winning the presidency and began losing their grip in numerous states (AK, WI, MI, OH, etc) with mostly not-insignificant legislative losses that were later followed by more severe losses in '94.

I'm sure there are lots of nuances to the GOP's surge to power, but Barone's explanation doesn't really fit, imo. At least not as a "primary" explanation. Maybe a marginal one.

I would hold that the solid lead the GOP has in (A) the House of Representatives, (B) Governorships, (C) State Legislative seats, a lead that has been pretty constant since 2010, is proof that while there is not a conservative "majority", there are more conservatives than liberals.

If we're going by quantity, then it might be better to measure by (or at least consider) which party wins the popular vote for, say, House/legislative elections state-by-state. It's no secret that for natural and unnatural reasons, in numerous states, the GOP has been winning more seats than their vote share would reasonably predict, sometimes quite a bit more. As for gubernatorial/other elections - 8 years of an incumbent Democratic president who was pretty unpopular during each midterm, one being during a slow recession recovery, it's not surprising that Democrats got bled out and it's hardly, at least in my eyes, a convincing measure of popular GOP support. To me it looks more like they got really, really lucky, in addition to having some structural advantages (better hold on older/white voters, etc). If the GOP is so popular and desired, then they shouldn't have trouble holding onto much of their power in 2018.

I don't know when, even if, there was a time when liberals outnumbered conservatives in Gallup's (or anyone's) polling, but I think the better question here is which party has more supporters overall, and that has long been the Democratic Party. The presidential PV streak shines a light on that if you ask me, but then again, it doesn't mean as much as one might think when you consider that many of them are 1) concentrated in areas where they help us less, and 2) we have a lot of low-propensity voters

Some of the 9 House seats lost in 1992 were due to reapportionment in the South.  Due to Court decisions, FL, NC, GA, LA, SC, VA, TX, and AL created Congressional districts that were 65% black in order to elect black Democrats from the South to Congress.  This, alone, accounted for a gain of 2 GOP seats in GA and 1 in AL.  It also ensured that a number of moderate-to-conservative Southern Democrats would have tougher re-election fights, and would not be replaced by Democrats.  (Many of these Democrats retired in 1994.)

1992 was also a year where a number of Democrats were implicated in the House Bank and House Post Office scandals.  A number of House members with large numbers of overdrafts were dumped in 1992, guys who were considered fairly safe up until then. 

There was also a war going on against "The Permanent Congress".  "Term Limits" first began to be a theme in 1992.  Books such as "Conservative Votes: Liberal Victories" had already been written.  But it took the advent of a liberal Democratic President in Bill Clinton to bring out in the open how Democrats who claimed not to be liberals provided the votes for critical liberal legislation.

As an aside:  I used to think that more ideological parties would be more coherent.  I thought the Democrats should trade Stennis and Eastland for Javits and Case.  We have that now, and I think it's awful.  The ideological nature of today's parties is the root of the obstructionism we suffer under.  Up until now, the GOP was primarily at fault for this, but Democrats are now showing me that they can narrow that gap.