Sqword

Also, nice of Ted Turner to show up in the audience.

Check.

I am happy that we all weathered the "you're a fake ass delusion liberal OBAMA IS THE LEFTEST LEFT LEFT" shit together, and remained friends here at poeTV.

I would also say that Obama was more than passive in moving that center to a place where the right became impossible for the GOP to maintain.

John Holmes actually had a very large penis that would be relatively easy to suck by one's lonesome.

Completely different guy.

They are great in a variety of different ways though.

I dont' know if "optimistic" is the right word, because either party unencumbered by opposition would be a complete disaster. Only thing worse than a two party system is a one party system.

Don't worry, the Democratic party has plenty of opposition within its own ranks.

Some of the best progress this country ever made was during the period when Republicans were effectively wiped out.

There was a time the Republicans didn't have anywhere near the strength they have enjoyed for the past 30 years. As a snapshot, here are the box scores on the Medicare Act of 1965:

SENATE:
Democrats 57 yea 7 nay 4 n/a
Republicans 13 yea 17 nay 2 n/a

HOUSE:
Democrats 237 yea 48 nay 8 n/a
Republicans 70 yea 68 nay 2 n/a

Used to be that the Democrats utterly dominated Congress, and additionally, take a look at how the Republicans would split on Democratic initiatives (i.e., they were anything but lockstep back then).

The Republicans' resurgence has been a matter of the Southern Strategy and related anti-minority activity; they've had an easy time of saying, "are you with us or are you a nigger-lover?" Demographics are starting to play against that, but the Republicans aren't not done yet, nor are they likely ever to be in some places.

If Hilary runs, she wins. There are no candidates capable of defeating her.

If Hilary doesn't run, there's no Democrats really central to the scene right now. Alan Grayson has that weird eye, and we all know how Anthony Weiner turned out. The last minute solution would be George Clooney running, a long shot but probable in a no-Hilary 2016. There's nothing but weak candidates on the Republican side, especially if the Rand Paul side sees further vilification of Edward Snowden, and run the chance of 3rd party if Christie or Rubio get the nomination.

Flipping the vote of mostly conservative immigrants may be possible, but most immigrants are no longer mostly conservative. There isn't some big Communist block anymore for conservatives to emigrate from in fear. Furthermore, most immigrants are younger than the population average. First generations still skew slightly more conservative on social issues, but left on economic ones. As for Latinos as a whole, the very fact of the rapid growth of the community means that there are a lot of young Latinos. Latinos as a whole are now more left than the population average on social and economic issues.

There's also the huge generational wins that Obama achieved, which are the largest since FDR. There's a conventional wisdom that people are leftist young then become reliable conservative voters as they get older, but that's not true. Look at how different generations have voted over time; most people remain loyal to the party of their first 2 presidential votes. The coalition that is keeping things going for Republicans right now are the Nixon/Ford/Reagan coalitions, and those weren't as firmly skewed towards Republicans as under-35s are skewed D. Obama has been pretty anemic on achieving anything his supporters have hoped for, but he's built a coalition that will drag the country left.

Even if most Hispanics are conservative at heart, that doesn't mean they're likely to forget how the Republicans have treated them. Besides, Republicans aren't conservative, they're extremists being consumed by extremism.

The Democrats have a conservative wing, with mostly sane conservatives. I would have to imagine they'd be a more appealing option than the Republicans, for any minorities with a memory anyway.

So long as the immigrants are from a country that wasn't invaded by America in this century, Democrats will be okay. I don't think any of the drone rape country immigrants are going to vote Democrat. Not unless they got some serious Stockholm syndrome, or buy the lie that only Republicans slaughter foreign citizens wholesale.

Conservative Democrats are traitors, as bad as Republicans.

You're counting on Americans to remember how badly Republicans fucked them over?

See what I mean about insanely optimistic?

"Mentioned this a ton before but I think it's insanely optimistic to think that the GOP will die off. Obama being reelected means little, and Republicans are still being elected and doing plenty of damage at the state level."

"At the state level" is the operative phrase here.

The GOP has positioned itself to repeatedly win regional elections through extensive redistricting, which has produced a lot of short-term gains. The problem is that when your entire electoral strategy is "appeal to racist elderly Christian whites in low-population districts with few electoral votes," you put yourself in an ugly predicament: To fend off primary (i.e. Tea Party) challengers, you have to veer ever harder to the right, but when national elections roll around, there's hours of footage of you talking like a racist caveman wizard (see: Richard Mourdock, Todd Akin, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, etc.). You can't get any actual governing done because you got elected by convincing your constituents that the other party is full of Hitlers that think we came from monkeys, which kills your legitimacy in the eyes of moderates. The result is that, with every election cycle, the GOP further entrenches itself as the party of old white racist sexist homophobic Christian xenophobes.

At the same time, the right-wing media complex makes life even harder by encouraging this, even as actual GOP operatives know it's forcing them to pander to a vanishingly small, yet impossibly ideological, base. Their current strategy is unsustainable. They've alienated blacks, gays, hispanics, women, young people, Atheists, Muslims, the college educated, urbanites, the poor, and non-crazy white people in favor of appealing to the one fucking demographic that's rapidly shrinking and dying.

So yeah. The GOP is fucked, and turning this boat around will take a hell of a lot more than some presto-chango "rebranding."

"Conservative Democrats are traitors, as bad as Republicans."

That's crazy oversimplified. The first question I have is what you mean by "conservative Democrats", and to keep things unambiguous, let's talk about the Blue Dogs (which may not be the whole of the "conservative Democrats" you speak of but it's at least an identifiable group defined by some stripe of conservatism). The Blue Dogs tend to come from conservative districts, where you couldn't hope to elect a Barney Frank anyway, and their common characteristic is economic conservatism. So what can you expect from a Blue Dog? Let's take the nation's favorite (former) Blue Dog, Gabby Giffords: she's pro-immigrant, pro-women's rights, pro-education. All in all not a bad package, sane policies that will serve the people, and certainly not as bad as the Republicans.

But what sort of person do you get if the Democrat loses in a conservative district? The 2010 election taught us: Teabaggers and wingnuts of every stripe. This isn't 1993, where Republican politicians were just talking about socialist takeovers to fleece the masses; twenty years later and the Republicans are running people who actually BELIEVE the horseshit, in whatever tiny cluster of brain tissue they devote to politics. Self-deluded charlatans, bigots, and lunatics, every last one of them. And the worst part is, the people of their districts are willing to vote them into office.

Let's talk about last year's most conservative Democratic Senator, Ben Nelson, for just a second too. By definition he's not a Blue Dog (Blue Dogs are a House phenomenon), but his voting record unquestionably puts him on the conservative side of things. What is the driving force behind that traitor Ben Nelson ... ? The good of his constituents in Nebraska. With the ACA he called for a special amendment to serve Nebraska (then did not bitch when it was ultimately cut). And he voted against the Keystone XL pipeline, because -- wait for it -- he was concerned about its impact on Nebraska. Yeah, these are the actions of a traitor all right: anchoring his votes in what he believes will serve his constituents best.

Of course, when I'm talking about Blue Dogs and Ben Nelson, I'm focusing on people most would agree are conservative. But of course it's all relative, and knowing how far left you are, Sherrod Brown stands a chance of being a conservative in your eyes. But bear in mind that only like 25% of the country, give or take, self-identifies as "liberal" ... how do you plan to win elections on a quarter of the vote? Just about any Democrat capable of winning / defending his seat is going to need to swing towards the right far more than you like. That doesn't make them traitors, that makes them successful enough to do some good, when there are enough of them in office to do so.

"So yeah. The GOP is fucked, and turning this boat around will take a hell of a lot more than some presto-chango "rebranding.""


I'm sure people said the same thing in the mid 70s.

"I'm sure people said the same thing in the mid 70s."

Immediately after Romney's embarrassing defeat, the issue of "rebranding" was in the mouth of every Republican, and trust me, they have neither the vision nor the resources to turn this ship around without divine providence or some serious self-inflicted wounds. At best, some practical economic conservatives mumbled something about not being assholes to gay people and the religious right tore them a new one. It won't be pretty.

Besides, this is a structurally different problem than losing a few cycles. It's a fundamental shift in America's voting demographics crashing headfirst into the centerpiece of the GOP's entire electoral strategy. There is literally not a single major issue right now--economic, cultural, racial, or even martial--that the American public broadly identifies with the GOP on. Pandering to old white racist Christians worked for a generation and a half, but now that a younger, browner, eagalitarian, non-Christian generation is taking their place, Republicans have to choose if they can sever an arm to save the body.

They won't.

I just want to take a moment and brag that, five years later, everyone but me was wrong in this thread.

nyah nyah!

Thanks for saving me the time. I was about to settle in to watch until I saw the "conservatives" and realized we weren't going to have a debate so much as watch preening douchebags exchange catchphrases.

surf nazis, all of em