Democrats, Let Your Leaders Emerge

There are 14 women senators aligned with the Democratic part in the current Congress and there will be 16 in the next. It was absurd for the Democratic party to insist that these women put any aspirations they had on hold so that the wife of a former President could be anointed.

We need to let new leader emerge from this group. Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota is from their Democratic-Farmer-Labor party. Sounds like just the combination needed to energize the disenchanted who voted for Trump in the Midwest.

Elizabeth Warren is excels at many things. But she is not an effective campaigner and will be 70 in 2018. Moreover, she represents the liberal educated class that voters turned away from in 2016.

It would have been much better if Democrats abandoned their subservience to the two-party system and revived or resurrected such parties as the Loyalists, Know-Nothings, Whigs or even dyed-in-the-wool Confederates. They should also separate themselves from the militant vegans and promoters of political correctness and cannabis-use.

So agree that the talent for national leaders from the Democratic Party must bubble up from the bottom. The only role for the Clintons, Obama, Biden, Reid and Boxer have to play is to introduce them to their money fountains, their constituents and get them into the national spot light through their influence and connections. The list of aspirants for the next generation is long, deep and diverse. This paper ran a line up of 14 Young Democrats to Watch by Frank Bruni on June 25, 2016. Included was my favorite Julian Castro and his twin brother Joaquin. I was outraged when Hillary picked Tim Whats-his-name as her running mate when she could have introduced a younger democrat to the national stage.

Democrats are pinning their hopes on changing demographics - the increasing share of voters who are not white males. I have reservations about this assumption: I don't believe Latinos -the largest new group. I see Latinos as a socially conservative group, easily attracted to the Republican party. Neutralize the immigration issue and Latinos will not be in the Democratic column. The great challenge for Democrats is to return to their FDR roots and become a peoples party of a workers party. I think the pull of identity politics -equality issues- will be too strong to make this shift. Bye bye, Democrats.

Look for Gavin Newsom, to enter the conversation in 2018, when he is likely to succeed Jerry Brown as Governor of California. He was the ex-Mayor of San Francisco and has served as Lt. Governor since 2011.

The man has liberal bona fides, is very media savvy, young, tall and very photogenic. He will have no trouble raising cash for Democrats. Let's not get too caught up with the need to march in a rust belt candidate. Trump is as far from Rust as his limos and lush New York lifestyle. It was the message, stupid.

I'm not saying Newsom is The Man, yet, but he should enter the conversation, with a progressive message that will appeal to same beaten down constituency that elected Trump...but with a message of hope and equanimity instead.

I want a government full of boring but honest technocrats who are highly trained to run the country efficiently. I don't want media personalities or insiders whose message is shaped by polling stats. Even Bernie Sanders became a brand, despite his urging that policy was more important than star power.
Basically we need a post-political (post-media) government that uses technology and computer programming to understand and fix problems and create long-term strategies. Accountability would be insured by the publishing, by the media, of in-depth "report cards" on the success or failure of policy.
Without a radical reimagining of government, we will continue this back and forth between moneyed-up insiders and populist over-simplifiers, neither of whom, once in office, has any real desire or ability to shape policy for the ultimate good of the people.

Once you leave the Beltway bubble and the safe confines of the state of New York, Sen. Schumer is not seen as a leader. Rather, he's seen as part of the problem with his ties to big money, etc. Additionally, the new leader, as the Times wrote "has cast his lot with Republican presidential candidates, other hardliners and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in declaring his opposition to the nuclear agreement that President Obama and five other world leaders negotiated with Iran. Given Mr. Schumer’s wrong-headed and irresponsible decision, Democrats may want to reconsider whether he is the best candidate to be their next leader in the Senate, a job he desperately wants."

He spoke every so sagely this summer, “The number one factor in whether we retake the Senate is whether Hillary Clinton does well, and I think she’s going to do really well,” he said … For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” showing an analytical touch that left Democrats completely out of power.

Senator Schumer voted for the Iraq war, to repeal Glass-Steagall, and has raised millions from the financial industry for himself and others. This shows him out of touch with the broad consensus of voters who want real reform of our economy. The Beltway Democrats have failed to learn anything and are setting themselves up to fail again.

He did emerge over a year ago, his name is Bernie Sanders. But the establishment got in his way. He's a once in a lifetime candidate. I hope he runs in 2020, but I bet his age will raise eyebrows. If he's still as active and sharp as he is, age shouldn't be a problem. Hindsight is 2020, go Bernie!

You state that Hilary lost because she was out of step with the mood of the electorate, which wanted an outsider. First, let's keep in mind that she got a million more votes than Trump before drawing too many conclusions about why nobody voted for her. Second, they are plenty more reasons why Trump may have attracted votes.

Perhaps Trump attracted votes with his racist message, his willingness to shamelessly lie about everything, and his entertainment value. What should the democrats learn from this? That they should nominate a tweeting racist liar?

No, I think Hillary was the right candidate.

What I've learned from this is not that the democrats needed to nominate a different kind of candidate, but that we should push back against racism, find a way to counter the lies floating around social media, and that the press should do its job. Also wouldn't hurt if the FBI stayed out of politics and the electoral college was abolished (as Donald Trump has advocated himself in the past).

The Democratic Party is in free fall as they have spent eight years treading water, afraid to promote to prominence and getting older and more wrinkled in the process, both in façade and ideas. Now, for the party of Wall Street and machine politics led by a nefarious billionaire, populism is a trump card that can no longer be played. And is poor Bernie limping back to the Democrats hoping to rebrand it with Elizabeth Warren as the Quixote Party of old angry socialist shouters?

The wheel continues to turn and surprise, but more surprising is the mistaken choice of Chuck Schumer, another New York troglodyte of low enthusiasm and zero charisma, now picked to lead this forlorn band of sad faces.

You won't find me supporting Chuck Schumer, and DCCC and DCSC. I got tired of their cookie cutter candidates, and so did the electorate. And I got tired of their support of the illegitimate President, George W. Bush. There were 21 Democratic Senators who voted against going to Iraq. They should have received a bigger stage. I'm tired of Democrats that throw their electorate under the bus as a way to appease the Republicans.
Don't call me until those Democrats that abandoned the "New Deal" and Social Security and Medicare are gone.

To think that Sanders can ever be trusted as a leader in the Democratic party is very foolish. This is the man who had a lot of social media geniuses pulling together a group of new voters. They knew what buttons to push, and they pulled together for one reason: the worship of their god and savior, Bernie Sanders, and free education. And FUN, and rallies, and new friends. But their politics were skin deep. All slogans and buzzwords. When all was in, he made them hate the party, and he vilified Hillary long past when he had a chance to be the nominee. He convinced a lot of children that the system was "rigged" but of course didn't condemn the caucuses. And they stayed home or voted third party and we have Trump.

How can we ever trust that? How can he be a leader in the party? Sanders is about himself. He gave us Trump. By pushing for some ill defined "purity," he will end up pitting left against left. He needs to be recognized for what he is and rejected.

"Rather than anointing a leader only to find that leader out of step with the electorate, the Democrats will have to go through more of a bottom-up process."

This sums up the serious issues within the Democratic party. There is no one at all interested in listening to the base any more. That HRC was "anointed" by party leadership shows how out of touch they are.

Here's to hoping 2016 was a wake-up call...

The Dems need to go back to the smoke-filled room to pick the candidate who is most likely to win rather than the one who has the next turn. Forget the primary elections. The electorate has shown it can't pick the most qualified candidate.

Major accountability for last week's debacle goes to the Democratic Party which treated its transfer of leadership as a coronation to "political machine influence" rather than to meritocracy. The Party has a far stronger bench of less entitled and more inspiring talent than many observers give it credit for, yet it selected an aging, entitled heir apparent.

Witness the heavy thumb on the primary election scale of such figures as Deborah Wasserman-Schultz and Donna Brazile who rigged the process against Bernie Sanders, a fresh figure who might or might not have won the general election but at least was an appropriate candidate for this dyspeptic moment in our history.

The Democratic Party has a long and inglorious history of shooting itself in the foot. In 2010 and 2014, prodded in no small measure by the Clintons, the Party ran away from Barack Clinton in a near hysterical race to paint itself as GOP-Lite. In 2016, it selected a presidential candidate out-of-step with the national mood with a highly dubious history of integrity. Hillary Clinton was not about to change anything that deeply troubles our body politic and the voters knew it.

The Democratic Party may not be salvageable. Neither for that matter may be the Republican Party. New political options are needed beyond these two sclerotic dinosaurs to function effectively in tune with a 21st Century political reality already well into adolescence.

www.endthemadnessnow.org

My 40 yrs of voting has been based on the best ideas and capabilities. That's meant being a consistent Dem voter. I can't think of one good GOP idea in the 21st century for solving 21st century challenges. But I'm writing to object to Leonhardt's phrase "out of step" since I don't believe Hillary was - she was inaccurately demonized by shameless liars; any brilliant woman threatens too many fragile-ego men; and too many idealistic/lazy voters did not ensure the most capable person/party has Pres/Congress power. Most important: citizens are too ignorant of the very limited power of the Federal govt to fix their economic malaise. The middle classes have faced high inflation rates (beyond their wage increases) for decades of the things they need to be affordable to them to advance their lives: higher education, healthcare, and housing. Without the oil glut, transportation would be included. Labor rates must be competitive with the people around the world willing to do the same work, but who have much lower costs of living and/or standards for living. Our primary options are to reduce the costs of essentials for middle class quality of life. But who is willing to seriously limit residential real estate prices? The Dems provided politically feasible answers for higher ed and healthcare costs given unpatriotic GOP resistance, but those policies didn't enough impress the people that need them . Wanted: real solutions, citizen intelligence, and fresh faces.

Schumer is a hack and a disgrace. This is the man who endorsed Hillary in 2013 (!), promising, "If you run, you'll win, and we'll all win." He deserves his share of blame for the election debacle.

http://www.thestrix.com/the-comeuppance/

I am not planning to support or vote for any Democrat anywhere anytime who does not support single payer. Preferably they are already a co-signer to a single payer bill (such as HR 676) or outline a clear plan for single payer on their website. Let's start with the issues and then decide on the followers.

The meme now is that Sanders would have won. While I would have gladly supported Sanders, here's what I'd like to know: why haven't there been a host of Sanders-inspired grassroots candidates running for office? They would have been a smashing success, wouldn't they? What prevented them? Or where there some who did try? How did they fare?

In case people have missed it, there wasn't just a president to be elected. there were thousands of congressional, state and local legislative seats and offices to fill. And voters have reelected 95% or more of incumbents for US Congress and state legislatures, most of them "establishment" Republicans hostile to the interests of the working class. The "anti-establishment" theme looks a bit far-fetched to me. Americans say they are fed up with their political institutions, and Congress has been getting abysmal ratings for years, yet every two years those voters reelect the ever same political insiders with winning margins way beyond what is common in other democracies (not to mention the many contests that are unopposed). Americans have perhaps the lowest level of trust in their government among advanced nations, while at the same time they may have the highest rate of reelection (at least outside North Korea).

It amazes me that this paradox is practically never discussed. It doesn't fit into the neat narrative that journalists prefer but it needs to be addressed if American democracy is to be saved. Any answers?

The author is short on Facts, which is unacceptable Journalism. Top Democrats did not 'make way' for Secretary Clinton - they knew Secretary Clinton was head & shoulders above them in Popularity within the Democratic Party. Even VP Joe Biden understood he did not stand a chance. Secretary Clinton had won More Democrats' Votes, More Elected Delegates & More States than Bernie Sanders. We all know Secretary Clinton won the Popular Vote in the Presidential Election. Out of Step with the American people ?? 21st Century Democracy has thrown New Challenges to win votes for a Progressive Agenda against demagoguery fired up by modern media. The author's distasteful attempt to make Secretary Clinton the scapegoat for defeat will only make it harder for the Democratic Party to explore & expose the Root Causes for the Unexpected Voice of the People in this 2016 Elections.

"Democrats, Let Your Leaders Emerge" As long as they aren't women.

Hold it, David! The trouble with after-election punditry is that everyone becomes a political visionary. Now, you may say that if people didn't vote at all, that means that they rejected you. But what happens when people who are normally on your side don't bother to vote. Clinton lost Michigan by 13,000
while Wayne County cast 67,000 fewer votes than in 2012. You can call it rejection if you want, but it would fly against the political reality of that place.
How can you be "deeply" out of touch with voters when the voters have given her the majority of votes and may finally get 2,000.000 more votes. The difference between losing and winning was a total of 107,000 in three determinant states, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. A shift of 55,000 would have changed the election. Now, go on with the rest of your argument.

No more baby boomers

As important, Bernie Sander's "Our Revolution" organization fundraises independently of the Democratic Party whose corrupt behavior this election disgusted and disillusioned so many at the grassroots level.

The answer to WHY the wave of nausea spread so fast over our nation is very simple.
The Electoral College.
If there is ever a reason to trash it as the anti-democratic organ it has become, we have that reason once Again!
When it can clearly ignore the Will of the People and install someone like Trump, then "We The People" must get rid of it. Our Government is "Of the People, By The People and For the people" Not "Of the Electoral College" and the minority it represents.
This injustice should not stand.

But the DNC and party elite still think they know best.

Look what have they wrought.

Maybe the NYT should drop the paywall in election years.

It seems pretty clear that we are in the mess because the Democratic machine decided before the primaries that it HAD to be Hillary. It did its best to knock Bernie out, regardless of the will of the voters. The New York Times figures pretty prominently in this blame, as the media should have been neutral in coverage except for an official endorsement,
However, despite the fact that rules do not allow you to count the dubious votes of superdelegates, it was in the Times coverage almost daily for months and months. The message was clear: we know you like Bernie, but it's impossible for him to win, as Hillary has too many superdelegates! The Times is equally guilty in spreading this message that essentially was a tool used to render the California voter impotent. Most of the late-voting states would have shown Bernie trammeling Hillary, but we were told by all of the pundits that it was a lost cause. If these same people had done their homework and realized that Donald Trump in fact could easily beat Hillary, as many polls had shown, would they have conspired against Bernie? I think not. We are in this place because of the smug, conniving, downright un-democratic people running the DNC and the media.

Donald Trump emerged from a crowded field of Republican hopefuls because (a) Trump was a known minor celebrity, (b) the only other nationally known contender was Jeb Bush, who ran an uninspired campaign, and (c) Trump, because of his outrageous behavior, received an enormous amount of free, non-critical coverage from the mainstream print and television media.

Donald Trump was able to build upon only a 30% base to become the G.O.P. nominee and, ultimately, our president-elect.

David Leonhardt’s advice to Democrats to allow their next nominee to emerge is good advice. Senator Sherrod Brown is one such Democrat who would make a wonderful president. Let us, however, not force a crowded field of unqualified or ho-hum candidates like the Republicans did this year.

The hoot will be a meeting of the minds between the disaffected wings of each party, in concert with the administration, which will have the hilarious effect of delivering on the Trump campaign's signature economic pronouncements. This will of course provoke hysteria in those in each camp that thrive on a continuing treadmill of influence peddling and log rolling, results be damned. When the attendees at the signing ceremony include the champions of the populist left AND right, the peals of laughter at the consternation of each party's previous gatekeepers could overtake greetings sent by SETI missions in cosmic reach.

Sanders is too pie in the sky for many of us. I want someone who has big dreams, but who tells it like it is as to what is possible. And certainly NOT someone who, as Bernie does, shoots down anyone who is working hard if they don't deliver both the moon and the stars. Bernie's supporters would have turned on his the first time he had to compromise. He's the screamer in chief. I want another Obama. And Hillary's field plan, to do nothing but recruit and register voters until October 15th was BEYOND ridiculous!! We start voting on the 20th. I ran my own field plan, and pulled my own universes (field talk for who I targeted), and I slammed my state house race. My high school interns know better than to do what the Clinton campaign did.

Amen! And for god's sake let the next leaders be people who weren't around during the age of Aquarius. That includes you, Bernie.

We had a great leader. His name is Bernie Sanders. He was savaged by the DNC and your paper who tried to shove Hillary down our throats. How'd that work out? People know the truth now, a reputation is hard to reconstruct after trust has been shattered.

Elizabeth Warren is unelectable! That would be the Clinton mistake squared!

The Republicans would only further solidify their lead.

Here come old Bernie
He come with--Mr. Al Franken
They bring--New York Kristen
They join--newbie Duckworth
They speak "Come with, Castros and Cortez and Murray--
Wyden, Hickenlooper (which is so hard to say)"

Come together
Right now
All of we.

There are plenty of great Democratic leaders out there. The party simply has not brought them into the public eye, relying on the same old faces. Some names that come to mind are Gavin Newsom, the Castro brothers, Seth Moulton, Zephyr Teachout, Ayanna Pressly, etc. Where is the Democratic program for building the next generation of leaders? Democrats need to start thinking 10 to 20 years down the line like the Republicans do. Without more care to build a farm team, their appeal to younger voters will suffer.

I've valued your comments so much in recent days, Mr. Leonhardt, but I think you are a bit off here. With the incredible threat posed by Trump, I think we need all hands on deck. Even Secretary Clinton, President Obama, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden -- all of those whom I presume you'd characterize as 'old guard' -- need to be on board to combat this existential threat to our democracy. While Secretary Clinton may not galvanize young Democrats in the way we need now, she is certainly a role model and source of strength for older groups of women who worked for her election. Every progressive leader who has been on the US taxpayer payroll -- yes, Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer, too -- need to work with the people and help to unify the Trump opposition into the most effective movement possible.

On my ballot, four of six local races had no Democrat for me to vote for. The GOP candidate was unopposed. And this has been true for many years now. They are all too willing to give up if a victory isn't a sure thing. The GOP doesn't give an inch, running candidates in the most liberal areas. The dems have more work to do than anyone at the National level seems willing to acknowledge.

Screw picking a new set of leaders in the Democratic Party. We do not need to substitute one set of political hacks for another.

What we need is for the Democratic Party to create a real plan on EXACTLY what every Democrat will do. Not campaign promises that are routinely ignored. We need a hard and fast plan, and a blood oath if need be, that every Democrat is going to follow.

I want to KNOW what I am voting for in the future and not some half-baked promise that is never kept. We need to be voting for specific ideas not people.

Democrats need to recognize that there is a class of white working class voters who are easily convinced that their problems have to do with minorities and immigrants, challenging their upward mobility and their cultural way of life. Democrats will not win if they only focus on women and minorities. Rich educated voters, even though supposedly enlightened are fiscally conservative and want lower taxes. This constituency cannot be considered reliably democratic. Middle class white voters fear losing their way of life and fear that they will not have enough to retire on or take care of unforeseen health situations. Democrats are relying on minorities, poor and students to turn out for them but with voter suppression efforts, it is difficult to motivate these people to turn out unless there is an inspiring candidate like President Obama. Democrats need to develop a deep bench of individuals who can speak to different constituencies, white educated voters, middle class and working class white voters, and minorities with ease and genuineness. And they need to be able to communicate clear messages re: what they stand for. They stand for progress, better jobs, better education, higher wages, fairness in taxes, protection of safety nets for disabled and elderly, civil and women's rights, fiscal prudence and economic growth. They stand for leading the world towards the future, not go backwards. They need charismatic and genuine leaders with a clear message!

I think the moral of the story is that every primary should be a boxing match. The other lesson to learn, I believe, is that once you are defeated soundly in a primary you should not run again. This is not just true for Hillary Clinton, who lost to Obama in 2008, but for McCain and Romney, who were the "also rans" from prior cycles. If you lose the first time in a convincing way the electorate is probably sending you signals about your future as well as your present. There are exceptions, most notably Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, but I believe that times and mass media have sufficiently changed that we should not rely on those two examples.

Hillary won the popular vote by almost a million at this writing. I would not call that "deeply out of step." I'm tired of this over-blown narrative. Fake news is what lost this election. This today from Nate Silver: one million more Americans shared fake news stories on Facebook than real news during this election cycle. More than eight million fake news stories were shared. Crazy lies and conspiracy theories fueled white working-class anger. I saw many of these bizarre stories myself. Let's concentrate on the real problem. Those who didn't vote for Hillary hated her for a lot of reasons, but most of them were grounded in profound misinformation.

Dems not only lost; they did so when just about every prediction said they would become the majority party due to demographics etc., and that, from here on out, Republicans would be on the ropes. Thus, false expectations compounded the disappointing loss.
As a Hillary voter, I thought her campaign was coming together during the debates, and was on track until the FBI October disclosures. Still, I was never enthusiastic about her, as I am whenever I hear Obama, or when I hear Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. The reason: while Clinton's solutions seemed good, the government she would have led was at a remove from the public. "They" were talking to "us."
Trump has tapped into the popular angst, even if his "solutions" are problematic. He wants to blow things up, and a part of me wants things to be blown up, too - although different things from what Trump wants.
The takeaway is that John Q.Public wants to be heard, not manipulated by feel good ads he knows to be false. Big campaign war chests did not win - Clinton had more money; the individual need to be heard and recognized did.
When we integrate fly over country into the mainstream by respecting these overlooked people and including them in our discussions/proposals, we open the door to victory. Not until then.

David -- Giving Chick Schumer the Senator from Wall Street a chance to reshape the Democratic Party? Good God, don't you know what this election was about?