Pissed-Off Democrat (I Assume): The Democratic Establishment is Finished. What a Joke!

The Democrats are having the very contentious debate that Republicans are also having, though we're having it under better circumstances.

As the once worth-a-damn Bill Kristol said: Now comes the fun part of the election -- the recriminations.

Seriously, as you read this, ask yourself: If a Republican were writing this after a Trump loss, would a single word change, besides swapping out "Republican" for "Democrat" and "Trump" for "Clinton"?

Well sure -- other words would change, like blaming the establishment for enabling Trump. The Republican version would be "The Establishment didn't do enough to stop Trump or force him out of the race."

But pretty much, this is the argument we will be having ourselves.

Except for the part about having lost everything.

The Democrats will now control next to nothing above the municipal level. Donald Trump will be president. We are going to be unpacking this night for the rest of our lives, and lives beyond that. We can't comprehend even 1 percent of what's just happened. But one aspect of it, minor in the overall sweep, that I'm pretty sure we can comprehend well enough right now: The Democratic Party establishment has beclowned itself and is finished.

I think of the lawmakers, the consultants, the operatives, and--yes--the center-left media, and how everything said over the past few years leading up to this night was bullshit.

...

Theoretically smart people in the Democratic Party should have known that. And yet they worked giddily to clear the field for her. Every power-hungry young Democrat fresh out of law school, every rising lawmaker, every old friend of the Clintons wanted a piece of the action. This was their ride up the power chain....

We should blame all those people around the Clintons more than the Clintons themselves, and the Clintons themselves deserve a ridiculous amount of blame. Hillary Clinton was just an ambitious person who wanted to be president. There are a lot of people like that. But she was enabled. The Democratic establishment is a club unwelcoming to outsiders, because outsiders don't first look out for the club. The Clintons will be gone now. For the sake of the country, let them take the hangers-on with them.

Let me do my own recriminations about the GOP:

The 2012 "post-mortem" that said we had to drop border security as an issue and give illegals amnesty was always a lie. And they knew that, even before Tuesday night.

Think about it: if the issue was that politically toxic, why would they affirmatively run on the issue in the midterms every four years?

Does that make sense to you? That in 2010 and 2014 border security is a winning issue, and then in 2012 and 2016 it's a losing issue we have to abandon at all costs?

Now, I know the presidential electorate is slightly different than the midterm electorate -- the presidential electorate is younger and browner, the midterm electorate is older and whiter.

But that isn't enough to explain why in the midterm, you nationalize the election around the issue of border security, and then in the presidential election, you completely reverse yourself and begin claiming Amnesty Is Our Only Salvation.

The shift cannot possibly be that dramatic.

Nope! There was never any electoral reason for this.

The reason for it?

Because it's what their Donor Class, the Corporate Class, the Capital Class, wanted.

They could have run on border security in presidential years too, and I think they knew that. I think they knew they could have won.

At worst, you'd say you have to merely soften your rhetoric on this, undersell it. Not completely reverse your damn selves ever two years and expecting the suckers to keep buying the loads of horseshit you're selling them.

But the Money Guys wanted unlimited inflows of Replacement Workers, so they cooked up a story that only with Amnesty could we win an election, and sold it to their voters over and over again.

Wrong.

This was never about counting votes. It was always about counting donor dollars.

They -- like the power-seeking jagoffs of the Democrat Party -- must all be swept out of the house and put into the trash as well.

By the way, the obviously not-really-committed-on-the-issue Trump offered a more "extreme" version of the Republican's alleged anti-abortion position this election -- including punishing women (!!!) for having abortions, and admitting, like no other GOP presidential candidate ever clearly has, that his vision for the Supreme Court includes, necessarily, Roe v. Wade being fully overturned -- and yet he won even with that baggage, too.

So no, I don't believe the GOP that it can't win if it pushes hard on abortion anymore.

I'm a pro-choice guy (with limitations). That's not my preferred position.

But can you win on it? If you want to?

Turns out -- you can.

So again, I don't believe that electoral considerations dictate the GOP's pretend-we're-against-abortion-then-do-nothing-about-it position.

What i think is that the Capital Class and most GOP consultants are a lot more pro-choice than the rest of the party, and that they don't want this "extremist" plank to be taken seriously.

Again, I kind of agree with them on that-- but as a policy preference. Not due to the horseshit they always feed us: "We can't do the things we've promised or else we'd lose! And you don't want that, right?"

Well this cowboy is done buying that bullshit excuse.

Say what you will about Obama, but he actually delivered to his base (while lying to the rest of America).

Yes, it did cost them bigly. But still, he did deliver on his base's cherished policy positions.

And, if the Democrats had nominated a halfway decent candidate -- hell, they could be solidifying their gains from the Oval Office in January.

Would be nice to have someone in the GOP willing to do the same, and actually risk losing seats in Congress to deliver on longstanding policy promises.

posted by Ace at 11:54 AM

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