What is the party platform for the Democratic Party nowadays?

selmaborntidefan

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I want to add two other things here.


1) Party platforms HAVE to have some elasticity to function in the real world.

A nominee may well have every intention of cutting the defense budget but something like 9/11 can change that immediately - just to use one example.

2) Presidents by definition respond to events as they occur in the future unbound by the promises they made in the past.

One of the big things for Bill Clinton (and it's been pretty much forgotten) was attacking Pres Bush for not insisting on more human rights in China as they were under most favored nation status (MFN), this after the Tiannemen Square Massacre in 1989. He bashed him the whole race on that and sounded REAL good. He bashed Bush from one end of America to the other, snorting the whole time about how we ought to shut down the US market there until they had human rights.

Then he got to be President and.....oh, how things changed. First, his advisers persuaded him that keeping that status actually made it more likely they might listen to him on human rights (mimicking Reagan in his efforts with Gorbachev). Secondly, they realized that this would raise the tariffs on Chinese imports to the US from 8 to 40 percent. And both business groups and farm groups pointed out China had one of the world's most growing economies and they could make money there (which amazingly changes everything).

In 1994, Clinton opted to keep MFN with China. Michael Kinsley, the liberal from "Crossfire" who had endorsed Clinton, came down in favor of keeping it with this observation: "the only thing worse than a bad campaign promise is keeping one."


Could anyone in 1964 have predicted how we handled Vietnam?

Did anyone in 1968 imagine our changed policy with China?

And who, in 1980, would have ever thought that by the end of his tenure, Ronald Reagan would go to Moscow and modify his earlier assessment of the Soviet Union as "the evil empire"?

Did anyone in 1992 forsee the rise of domestic AND global terrorism? (Waco, OKC, Bin Laden)

Did anyone in 2000 realize how close to something like 9/11 we were or that Bush had the proverbial aroused part for Iraq?

I guess I've said enough. They're generic, a sop to special interests, and virtually useless as a guide for what the parties will actually do.
 

uafan4life

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Q: Who are the stupidest people on planet Earth?

A: Anyone who believes anything coming out of a politician's mouth.

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selmaborntidefan

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Yet....likely to get re-elected in two years. Fascinating
What a lot of folks don't realize is that Trump right now is a better than even bet to win again.

"Now that folks have had a chance to see what a scumbag liar Trump is, they'll never put him back in there - so we should nominate a true believer socialist to push this country where we want it."

I FEAR this is what they will do. The Ds will all but for sure take the House this year. If they do or if they take both houses, just watch. Like every other time party wins big, they'll interpret their win as some sort of "repudiation" of Trump, a "mandate" to rush full bore into left-wing fanaticism and all kinds of declarations of "taking our country back" and "the people spoke and rejected Trumpism" and all that bloviating nonsense out of proportion with reality.

But the TRUTH to anyone who has lived through more than four election cycles is that it doesn't work that way.

Nixon was a liar, a dirty dealer, a skunk, compared three times in the 72 campaign by McGovern to some guy who gassed the Jews. Even after the Watergate break-in, he utterly smashed the Democrats in the fall.

Reagan cut all those social programs and threw all those people out on the street (he didn't but I digress), he was a loose cannon who would get us into a nuclear war with the Soviets, the economy was in the crapper.......he manhandled Mondale.

Clinton was the most similar I've seen to Trump as far as lying EARLY ON. (He did get better after botching the Lani Guinier nomination). His party got drilled and lost a 40-year hold on both houses. Clinton was losing to "generic Republican" right after the 94 mid-terms, 40-33, he had a 41% approval rating, and 2/3 of Democrats wanted him to face a primary in 1996. Dole led him, 51-44, in February 1995. And the cherished myth is, "He won the government shutdown and rode to victory," but the reality is that he began running ads in the late summer of 1995 to frame the course of the debate - only in swing states. Trump is no Clinton as a candidate but neither was Nixon.

Bush was in trouble in early 2004 when the truth about WMDs came out. He still won.

Obama - by the standards normally used - was going to lose because the economy had not come back robust enough and the health care law was on the SCOTUS docket. But he won - and not (as Reps assert) because of Hurricane Sandy.


I don't ENJOY observing this, folks - but he has a much better chance at winning again than almost anyone here wants to admit. How does that make me feel? Well, how does it feel to sit on a homemade H-bomb and hope it doesn't explode?
 

Crimson1967

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If I had to bet I would say Trump wins. The Democrats need a better campaign than “Trump sucks” to beat him.


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Bodhisattva

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When the DNC and/or the GOP nominate a broadly intelligent, rational, serious adult to be president I will vote for that person.

It's been more than 25 years since I've voted for either major party.
 

CajunCrimson

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When the DNC and/or the GOP nominate a broadly intelligent, rational, serious adult to be president I will vote for that person.

It's been more than 25 years since I've voted for either major party.
If they were smart they would fall in line behind someone like Tim Ryan in Ohio. I’m guessing though that the Dems won’t ever nominate a white male for President ever again
 
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Bazza

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If they were smart they would fall in line behind someone like Tim Ryan in Chicago. I’m guessing though that the Dems won’t ever nominate a white male for President ever again
I think the upcoming mid-term elections will help determine what their strategy is come 2020.

Like I said before - I'm just an observer with no horse in the race.

Plenty of popcorn on hand too. ;)
 

Aledinho

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I know it is hard watching your guy get bashed in the news every day. Democrats had to deal with the same thing 2009-2017. Try going fishing. It will help.
But they didn't. Obama had more favorable coverage than other Presidents. Chicago Tribune

John Kass said:
While Trump's 80-20 negative coverage ratio is amazing, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also received much negative coverage in their first 100 days, at about 60-40 ratios.So how was President Obama covered in his first 100 days? With a 60-40 positive to negative ratio, according to the Harvard study.
 

selmaborntidefan

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When the DNC and/or the GOP nominate a broadly intelligent, rational, serious adult to be president I will vote for that person.

It's been more than 25 years since I've voted for either major party.
The only candidate I ever voted "for" was Daddy Bush in 1988.

Every other election since then has been "against X." Every. Damned. One.

Sometimes against BOTH X's.
 

selmaborntidefan

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But they didn't. Obama had more favorable coverage than other Presidents. Chicago Tribune
Obama DID have more favorable coverage than other Presidents. That's true.


On the other hand, he also had more sense than to act like a child on Twitter every single day of the year, too.


The political reporters who are actually honest (the late Jack Germond noted this) will admit the trouble from his time frame in covering a black candidate - Jesse Jackson being the most notable example. Reporters let all kinds of stuff Jackson said (particularly statistics wise) pass based on the simple notion of "well, he isn't going to be the nominee anyway so there's no need in antagonizing your black readers who voted for him by telling the truth."

Sadly, this sort of happened with Trump. The media found him entertaining and never called his nonsense in the early primaries. The moment he won the nomination, they assumed he'd get waxed in the general election, but they went almost overboard trying to find stuff. I don't mind this - I think a diligent press corps is a foundational necessity of a free society - problem is they play up the wrong stuff.

Think about this: the Russia story broke just two hours before the infamous audiotape. Whatever one's view of a candidate, we'd all agree colluding with a foreign power is FAR more egregious than his use of the P word.


Guess which was the bigger story?
 

Bazza

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Obama DID have more favorable coverage than other Presidents. That's true.


On the other hand, he also had more sense than to act like a child on Twitter every single day of the year, too.


The political reporters who are actually honest (the late Jack Germond noted this) will admit the trouble from his time frame in covering a black candidate - Jesse Jackson being the most notable example. Reporters let all kinds of stuff Jackson said (particularly statistics wise) pass based on the simple notion of "well, he isn't going to be the nominee anyway so there's no need in antagonizing your black readers who voted for him by telling the truth."

Sadly, this sort of happened with Trump. The media found him entertaining and never called his nonsense in the early primaries. The moment he won the nomination, they assumed he'd get waxed in the general election, but they went almost overboard trying to find stuff. I don't mind this - I think a diligent press corps is a foundational necessity of a free society - problem is they play up the wrong stuff.

Think about this: the Russia story broke just two hours before the infamous audiotape. Whatever one's view of a candidate, we'd all agree colluding with a foreign power is FAR more egregious than his use of the P word.


Guess which was the bigger story?
P Power?

:eek:
 

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