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Administrator
I'm a Democrat but Clinton staffer Jennifer Palmieri's twisted logic is exactly why we lost
by Bryan Dean Wright
In an opinion article published this week, the communications director for Hillary Clinton’s campaign – Jennifer Palmieri – highlighted a small electoral victory that ironically captured the reason for my party’s ultimate defeat. “As I like to note, Clinton received more votes for president than any white man in history,” she crowed.
Got it. White men bad, women good.
In Palmieri’s political world, she believes that we can cruise to electoral dominance if we build a coalition of voters based on identity politics. In other words, if Democrats can get a particular slice of Americans to the polls – women, Jews, ethnic minorities, gay men and lesbians – we will win.
The idea for this dates back most famously to 2004 when political experts John Judis and Ruy Teixeira published their book, “The Emerging Democratic Majority.” They convinced my party that hard data – demographic, geographic, economic, and political data – forecasted the dawn of a new progressive era.
They argued that there was a massive wave of Democratic voters in the country’s urban areas just waiting to support the party, and would do so for generations to come.
In short, we couldn’t lose. We just needed to better organize these various categories of people and inspire them to show up on Election Day.
Unfortunately for my fellow Democrats – and the country – these political experts made a series of bad assumptions that has proven disastrous.
First, they assumed that each category of people was largely homogenous. For instance, people like Palmieri would make the case that all gay men are basically the same.
Next, the experts came up with policy solutions and related messaging to cater to a category’s specific needs. Again, gay men would likely respond to increased funding for HIV/AIDS research, so that’s what was pushed in gay-friendly media outlets.
With those two pieces in the bag, the actual candidate running for office was important but not terribly so, provided that she or he stuck to the script. And so that was our approach taken in 2016; Clinton was anointed as our nominee. Voters didn’t need to like her.
Pre-election polls seemed to support this strategy. The liberal Huffington Post put her chances of winning at 98 percent. My friends in the Democratic National Committee started jockeying for positions at the White House last summer.
And then, on November 9, America woke up to President-elect Donald Trump.
As a shell-shocked campaign and party struggled for answers – coming up with a litany of excuses – they missed the obvious: successful campaigns are built on candidates first, policies second, and coalitions of voters last. We had it completely backwards.
I will offer up myself as an example. By all measures in Palmieri’s playbook, I should have pulled the lever for Hillary Clinton. I’m a Democrat and voted for President Obama twice. I’ve got a college education and, for years, I lived in big cities. I support renewable energy instead of foreign oil. I’m also gay and have faced discrimination throughout my life.
Slam dunk for Team Clinton? Not so fast...
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/...-why-lost.html
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Super Moderator
I said several years back that, yes, the Republican party is being shredded and reassembled...but I also said the only reason the Democratic party isn't as well, is because they have chosen to be power blinded....there needs to be a revolution within that party as well...funny thing this author reveals though..as a 'thinking voter' HE woke up....so thinking seems to be the key
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Administrator
Originally Posted by
Quest
I said several years back that, yes, the Republican party is being shredded and reassembled...but I also said the only reason the Democratic party isn't as well, is because they have chosen to be power blinded....there needs to be a revolution within that party as well...funny thing this author reveals though..as a 'thinking voter' HE woke up....so thinking seems to be the key
You know, I don't think a lot of Democrats even believe a lot of what they support. They just support it because they are following 'the strategy' that he's talking about.
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The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to fuego For This Useful Post:
Quest (12-09-2016), Valiant Woman (12-12-2016)
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Administrator
From the comments section:
"Democracy is the most evil form of government on earth because democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner."
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The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to victoryword For This Useful Post:
Cardinal TT (12-09-2016), Valiant Woman (12-12-2016)
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Senior Member
Originally Posted by
victoryword
From the comments section:
"Democracy is the most evil form of government on earth because democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner."
That is very funny! Gonna steal it and repost it on FB.
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Senior Member
It's sad they'll never know the REAL cause of their loss. 1Cor. 1:19-21 :)
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