(11-13-2016, 12:40 PM)Punchwood Wrote: Qvait you are just proving my point, you don't understand middle America you live in a very left-wing part of the country. Look at the map of state control, it's overwhelmingly red. For every young voter you may get how many independents do you lose? How many middle ground voters do you lose when you win one left-wing one. The left will always vote for the Dems, why piss about giving them control when you need the middle ground to win? If Dems want to risk giving the party up to the left then they can do so, but when President Trump is re-elected they should know that they allowed it to happen.

But that's precisely the Source of the problem, and why the Dems have to go left. The Dems tried have tried being the "centrist"(they weren't, they were Center-right) party since Reagan, and since then, the Centrist voter has been shafted with right leaning policy and deregulation that has caused the American middle class to disappear. As the Republicans have drifted farther right, it's only gotten worse. The only progress we've even really made in regards to real economic equality(or economic equity, for that matter) was Obamacare and the Consumer Financial Protections Bureau, and at least one of those is about to get shafted, not to mention the social issues that are about to go up in smoke as well.

We don't have a Three party system like the UK does. We don't have a party on the left, one on the right, and one in the middle who keeps them in line. We have two parties, just two. And the farther right one goes, the farther right the policy will be, and the more dangerous the policy will be to the ever dwindling middle class, and an even more dangerous threat to the economic and social status of US citizens. Without the Dems going left, that policy will be far out of balance, alienating moderates even more from participation in government. I am by no means talking about having some radical, militant left like the American Right does, but, the Democrats have gone with the Centrist argument for so long, and after the Podesta Email Scandal, Citizen's United, and heavy Corporate involvement in the Dems(and Reps, for that matter), that Centrist argument has lost it's authenticity. Meanwhile, on the right, you have this strong, grassroots Conservative movement called the Tea Party, that is dragging the Republican Party(by force) to the Right. Without authenticity, without at least the guise of honesty in their message, the Democrats will never win an election again.

46.9% of eligible people didn't vote. Either because they didn't think it was important enough, or didn't have the time because they couldn't afford it, or because they've been alienated from the system because it's gone so far to the right. 46.9%. 149 million people, just about. More people didn't vote in the US, than live in the UK and France combined. All because of the way the system has been built for the last 4 decades. All because they had been alienated, or economically unable, or simply didn't think that their vote was either necessary or worth it, because their voice didn't matter.

Your perspective, Punch, has been this whole time that Bernie Sanders Democrats or Progressives have been trying to turn the US into a large scale version of a working Soc. Dem. system, and while you're not wrong about that in the long term, right now, we have to bring the system back to the Center. Back to sanity. The first to step to that is bringing the Dems back to the Left, and giving them an authentic message, something people can believe in, and fight for. That's what Obama did with Obamacare, he came in on the Left with the original proposal of single-payer healthcare, and then negotiated with those on his Right to the Universal system we have now. That's what FDR did way back when during the New Deal to get Conservative Democrats on board. The Democrats need the Left, the US needs the Left, or else, there won't be a Center worth saving.

And if you read this, and somehow still think I'm some crazed hobo madman, The Heir to the Senate Minority Leadership, and my Senator, Chuck Schumer, a man who is about as Corporate Democrat as you can get, understands this. He understands at the least the Democrats will need the Passionate Grassroots campaign that Bernie created if they ever want to win an election again. And that the only way he's getting that, is to start putting the Progressives in visible places of power, and letting their voices be heard at a national level.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/us/pol....html?_r=0

"The first step in solving any problem is recognizing that it exists"- Zig Ziglar