mr grieves said:
I'm sure they would! And, despite the best efforts of some of Obama?s former campaign team, May lost her majority and Corbyn's Labour made the biggest gains the party had seen since Clement Attlee in 1945. So we'll see how Labour does if they seize the majority in the next general.
Um, no. Corbyn's Labour Party picked up 30 seats in the 2017 election. Tony Blair's Labour Party picked up 147 seats in the 1997 General Election.
Again, dislike mushy centrists all you want but Blair's Labour Party didn't hang their hat on close losses.
mr grieves said:
Sure. But note that his voters were motivated by cultural resentments, not a desire to transfer wealth to the rich or deregulate the financial sector.
Right. He did not, as you say, pick up a lot of votes because of vague threats to do stuff to Wall Street. He did it because white voters were scared of brown people.
mr grieves said:
Yes, that's the party that won. And the electorate in 2010 was whiter, older, and righter than in 2008. Some observers of American politics see this as a law of nature --Democrats don't do midterms -- others, however, wonder what would happen if Democrats put a positive vision of things they'd like to do when in power on the ballot, instead of a list of things the other party will do if you don't show up and they get in. People--at least not Democrat leaning voters--don't stand in line for that, which is why we all should've known "Dangerous Donald" was a losing strategy.
This is also why Bernie Sanders won a crushing victory in the 2016 primary...or, you know, got waxed. One of the two.
mr grieves said:
In 2010, was there a popular hunger for more pain for the financial sector? Well, if there were, which party was putting additional regulations on the ballot? Cos my recollection is 'none of the above.'
Considering the winning party was the one that wanted to go with fewer regulations I'll say...no?
mr grieves said:
I just really can't see how Obama pushing through a bigger and/or more visible stimulus, giving at least a speech in favor the Employee Free Choice Act, prosecuting CIA torturers and bankers, directing HAMP to bail out homeowners on the verge of foreclosure and make their creditors take a haircut, and taking over and winding down massive banks would've resulted in a loss in 2012. Would Mitt have looked any less like a plutocrat? Would there be fewer votes for the Democrats?
I think your not being able to see why attempting to prosecute the previous administration, something there was very little appetite for, could lead to a deep divide and discord and, yes, potentially a worse performance in an election explains some of your myopia here that's obscuring you to, among other things, the actual scope of a president's powers.
But either way, I was really asking a hypothetical about the wisdom of pursuing middle-ground policies in the interest of keeping someone worse out of the office.
mr grieves said:
When the voters swing back and go with the Dems again (8 months or so from now) and then give them a couple branches of government (2020, probably), Democrats will have gone through a few cycles over which they might've learned what voters want/care about and how their political opponents operate. So, if we get another 'restore dignity to the office' centrist prone to mushy inaction and the voters -- once again -- lose interest, will we keep blaming the voters? Or will we finally begin to wonder why the professionals haven't learned anything?
You always "blame the voters" for the results of their choices. In a democracy, you're responsible for what you vote for. If the Democrats' 2020 candidate is a centrist, it'll be the choice of their primary voters regardless of whether or not you think it's a good political strategy. If people don't show up to vote because they don't get exactly what they want, that's still on them. There is no point at which the electorate loses culpability for the results of elections.
