A Note to Democrats Post Election

I can’t find much to argue with in Eric Raymond’s note to Democrats, and of course I agree that gun control is a losing proposition for Democrats and always has been. ESR and I live in the same general area, so he’s probably seeing a lot of the same things I am.

My only comment is that one should never underestimate the Republican Party’s ability to completely and utterly bork things up. It’s their majority to lose, but I have faith they can do it! I don’t buy notions of permanent majorities, or even generational majorities. I wouldn’t suggest that the Dems merely waiting around for the GOP’s self-destructive tendencies to go to work isn’t a viable strategy.

Related posts (automatically generated):

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  3. For the Inner Ahab

11 thoughts on “A Note to Democrats Post Election”

  1. I think most of these analyses of what the American people are looking for are stone-silly in light of what we’ve observed over the years.

    Other candidates in the past have offered the American people quasi-revolutionary “change” and the majority wanted none of it. E.g., the Ron Paul campaigns had quasi-revolutionary platforms, with the added benefit of Paul being a Republican who had a track record in congress, but outside a small, very committed constituency, no one wanted to hear them. (For the record, I have not been a Paulite in recent years, despite donating to him for many years previously.)

    What the American majority was waiting for was a revolutionary candidate who broadly promised opportunities to beat people up, vicariously if not personally. As soon as one showed up, nothing could hold them back. Fortunately for them, there is no shortage of pundits willing to blather about “jobs” and “lost generational opportunity.” The majority are hoping for the solutions Trump promised, whether or not they really improve anything.

    1. If you view the election results as primarily a rejection of the communitarian police state, Wall Street oligarchy, and contempt for Middle America that Clinton promised,it makes a lot more sense; Trump won because he was the only credible alternative to those things, since the Repub establishment has spent years either advocating those things themselves, or helping Third Way Dems advance them.

      In the general election, Clinton the Second was the anointed Wall Street candidate, the candidate of offshoring more jobs to lower-wage nations, the surveillance-state candidate, the ban-people’s-guns-and-magazines candidate, and the censorship candidate. Her contempt for the rural and suburban working class, for Federal IA law and regulations, and for her own subordinates has been glaring, going back to even before the first Clinton administration. She was reportedly considering Michael “Stop and Frisk” Bloomberg for a *Cabinet* position, for pete’s sake.

      Dems do have a *serious* problem, yet many are now in denial and trying to blame everything *but* their own candidates and their own off-the-rails, out-of-control platform and rhetoric. It has to be the fault of stupid racist hick voters, the KKK, evil Russian supervillains, fake journalists, and people who have sold their souls to the devil (yes, some Dems have come unhinged enough to say that). It couldn’t *possibly* have anything to do with the odious positions and attitudes mentioned above, so it must be an evil conspiracy.

      Yes, the American people are deeply divided on what we all want. But there is broad consensus on some things we *don’t* want, and Clinton got rejected because she promised to bring those unwanted things about by any means necessary.

      1. “If you view the election results as primarily a rejection of the communitarian police state, Wall Street oligarchy, and contempt for Middle America that Clinton promised,it makes a lot more sense…”

        But I don’t, because you just displayed more intellect in that one sentence than otherwise existed in the entire Trump voting base; including, possibly Trump himself.

        I’m not clear on how you regard “building a wall; a big, beautiful wall. . .” as rejection of the “communitarian police state,” but I will accept that you put some thought into it.

        Otherwise, Trumpakov expressed nothing but raw authoritarianism, and the voting public ate it up with a spoon.

        1. Most of his gun rights statements didn’t appear to be rawly authoritarian, so that’s something. I personally voted on the basis of his Supreme Court list, which was another thing.

          1. “Most of his gun rights statements didn’t appear to be rawly authoritarian”

            You may have encountered the claims that Adolf Hitler was actually more pro-gun-rights than the preceding Wiemar Republic. It is actually a half-truth. If you were the right kind of citizen – a Nazi Party member or close fellow-traveler or sympathizer of the right social class — you actually did gain some rights. Otherwise, for everyone else who wasn’t quite a “good German” (certainly not Untermenschen) he “put some teeth into” the Wiemar Republic’s laws.

            We have already seen for how many things Trumpakov appears to have had his fingers crossed behind his back, when he made his pre-election statements of policy.

            I’m sorry, but gun rights and an authoritarian nature just don’t mix. Trumpakov will not like people with a viable means for saying “no” to him. And, I am not counting on being the Right Kind of American.

            1. My rather modest point was that things are not as absolute as your statement “Trumpakov expressed nothing but raw authoritarianism” would suggest.

              Carry on.

              1. Point taken, and my apologies if mine seemed to be an over-response to what you actually said.

                But, I don’t buy for a nanosecond that our Manchurian-POTUS-elect is “good on guns.” I don’t believe that he cares about your or my gun rights for a moment, and instead I believe he has the oligarchs’ attitude “I’ve got mine (and always will); you get yours.”

                I’m not even persuaded his SCOTUS picks would be all that good, or, would even be the decoys he threw out as early enticements.

                All that said, please understand that I tend to react too strongly whenever a criticism of Trumpakov is met with “Yeah, but after all, he’s good on guns.” I can easily misread things when a response sounds too close that.

                Again, my apologies.

  2. Nice article, but the comments. I used to enjoy reading the comments at ESR’s blog. For the more political stuff nowadays, though? It’s a lot of people yelling past one another and virtue-signalling.

  3. Good luck with that.

    Politics is Darwinian. The old guard believes it has the winning formula, because each individual politician wins in their district. Nancy Pelosi is exactly what her voters demand, like Ted Cruz. Like dinosaurs, they just die when the environment changes, they feel no need to adapt.

    The old guard needs to retire or be unelected before things change.

    I agree about the Republican party shooting itself in the foot. But half the Dems will be proclaiming they really won. Just like Al Gore in 2000, Russians or the Supreme Court stole the election. Obviously.

    Dems will not get it together until 2022, after they lose in 2020 on the same message as 2016 (“It’s our turn, we should have won in 2016”), by which time a whole new crop of congress critters will have hatched.

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