Do you agree with the platform of "Justice Democrats"?

I think the system is ripe for a third party.

IMHO it is wishful thinking. Hillary’s campaign was 100% dependant on big donors and she still didn’t win. Distancing the Democratic party from big money will spell disaster and then force them to rely on Sanders type donors and thusly into a platform that is very far removed from the Liberal Democratic principals they believe them to be. It would take a complete upside down turn of Democratic principals for them to even have a hope of any success even at the state or local level. Can’t hurt to try though as the Dems have lost over 1,000 Democratic state and local seats in the last eight years.

@Cruiser I’m not following your logic. Clinton’s campaign out fundraised Trump by a huge margin, and she got crushed in the electoral college. IMO that proves that big money donors are not sufficient to win. I also think Bernie’s campaign proved that it’s possible to be competitive without Super PACs, instead getting small donations from lots of people.

It has to be “grass roots” to take effect. Anything else is just another scheme that will grow corrupt and fail. We do indeed need a third party but it will have to arise from the needs of the people.

EXACTLY @gorillapaws Her big money was her only hope and without it she would not have won the popular vote. Not only did she have the big money she had the media in her back pocket. Only magnifies how out of touch the Dem machine is. They are preaching to corporate interests and not the people. Sanders would have creamed Trump.

A third party with an origin around the center…coming soon….

Apparently the organizers considered pursuing this platform as a 3rd party, but decided that reshaping the Democratic Party from within via supporting progressive candidates in Democratic Party Primary elections had a higher chance of success. One of the organizers talks about it in this video.

I hate helping the opposition @gorillapaws if you are truly seeking a new path to victory then look right towards the 40+% independents of who a majority voted for Trump. They are the new majority that is not so easily fooled or swayed by the bullshit of either party. Time to shed the wolf in sheep’s clothing if the Dems even dream they have a chance in the mid-terms. I see another slaughter in the making.

@Cruiser It is my understanding that it’s a myth that the 40% independents are in the middle between the 2 parties. I remember learning that the lion’s share of independents are either to the left of the Democratic Party or the Right of the Republican Party.

The clip’s analysis is right on the money. Things went South for the Democratic Party once Tony Coelho noticed that Republicans were getting all the corporate money. Coelho reasoned correctly that there was no reason Democrats should not crowd their noses right into the corporate trough alongside their fat Republican colleagues. The party still maintained leverage on the social issues, but as corporate toadies, deserted the economic interests previously defining the Democratic Party. Those of you who didn’t watch the video included in this question, should take the 5 minutes to check it out. Cruiser might be correct, but for reasons unforeseen. Trump is so awful, that the failure of the Democratic candidate to best him might just mean the death knell for the “not quite as evil as my Republican counterpart yet still in the pocket of big money” Democrat.

@gorillapaws Fatal flaw in believing in what you perceive to be a myth over knowing what you know is fact. I thought you ran in the crowd that was well above mere conjecture.

@Cruiser Here’s a source.

Says you @gorillapaws Link

“The poll finds Trump surging among independent voters, with the mogul trailing Clinton by only two points among those voters, 38 percent to 36 percent. T”

Please don’t be one of those that embrace polls hook line and sinker that gave the election to Clinton. We now know how these polls predicted the outcome.

@Cruiser Alternate fact
“The poll finds Trump surging among independent voters, with the mogul trailing Clinton by only two points among those voters, 38 percent to 36 percent. T”

MAKE BELIEVE

@Cruiser Polls make assumptions about turnout which can be wrong (This election proved that). That doesn’t discount information about how voters feel. Clinton did win the popular vote don’t forget.

Are you suggesting that the information in the article is inaccurate?

As long as there is “big money” in play, both sides (as well as any others who really want a chance to win) will have to play the “big money” game. Until there is real meaningful campaign finance reform (good luck on that!) we will continue to see huge donors and gazillionaires calling the shots.

It works for me. I think they should team up with The Working Families Party

I am supportive of the viewpoint but I am curious to know who these people are.

If the democrats don’t have big money support they will go nowhere. They need $$ to grow.

So dumping your large supporters is tantamount to committing suicide.

Dumb idea. I don’t support this rather wacky approach.

@gorillapaws I am not suggesting the information is inaccurate….merely disingenuous. Pew sells itself on it’s reputation on it’s integrity of the information it provides especially poll data. I won’t hold it against them that their polls missed the mark on who was to win the election as everyone got it wrong. But take a closer look at the link you provided and Pew who has current poll data, chose to use data that only reflected party affiliation data from 2014. To selectively not use current 2016 data is exposing themselves to be biased with a political agenda and less than truthful with the sole purpose of attempting to justify why their poll data was so painfully wrong.

But what few have examined and admitted to that IMO was the deciding factor as to why Clinton lost the election is the 3rd Party vote Most everyone assumed a 3rd party vote was a lost vote for Trump where that makes little to no sense as Trump was viewed by the media as unfit and unelectable. This begs the question why would anyone vote for 3rd party candidate? Any vote for a 3rd party candidate is a clear message that neither Trump nor Clinton was fit to be their President. Trump swept all the swing states and thusly won the election. These 3rd party votes are the very difference in number of votes that had they voted for Clinton instead of 3rd party, Hillary would have won the election.

What would be interesting to see would be how these 3rd party voters would have voted had they only had a choice between Hillary or Donald.

Trump was/is republican and ran on the republican platform, of course. But it should be remembered that he was not really accepted by the republican establishment in politics at first. It was a “grass roots’ effort that got him elected. People will vote for the candidate that meets the need they have.

Fr’instance,—even though Bernie Sanders is in the same age bracket, he reached more Generation X’rs and Millennials than Hillary or Donald. The Democrats would have done better if they had not squelched Bernie.

Donald Trump was NOT the first choice of Evangelicals in the nomination. Ted Cruz was, But Trump may now be the prototype of the future Republican platform. Bernie and whoever the “Green Party” candidate was will probably replace the Democratic party.

As someone who voted for the lesser of two evils, I will testify that I think the Democrats will rebound if they promise to fill the void Trump will make on the world stage. The U.S. used to be the world leader, and Trump’s “America First” will probably dissolve our involvement in global politics. Something “Globalist” will probably be greatly desired in the future.

Also, I was greatly dissuaded by the Democrat’s disdain and condemnation for law enforcement. I live in a black neighborhood in an 80% black city, and although I may or may not be bias, I think ALL of us are sick of crime and welcome the police—“Black Lives Matter” is NOT a grass roots effort—it was organized from a higher source—and does NOT represent the views of any of my African American neighbors. Yes, they are concerned about profiling but still want a strong police presence and do not side with Michael Brown. No party should run with condemning law enforcement on their platform.

Rust belt auto UNION members crossed party lines and voted for him. What else needs to be said. This is where the democratic party lost touch with a significant part of their base.

It would be extremely interesting to see the results if all fundraising was banned.

I mean, who doesn’t have access to the Internet somehow these days?

Frankly it sounds like a repackaging of the same old democratic platform that they used to lose the election. Nothing new and no lessons learned. SOS.

I want to get back to this “Justice Democrats” and their perspective, because it’s something well worth considering. What the guy in the clip is saying is an aspect of Trump’s success that we really should discuss. These folks are claiming that Trump’s election reinforced by Sanders’ huge success are indicators that the era of big money corporate dominance in our politics is ending. The take is that both Hillary’s drubbing and the shellacking of Democrats nationwide is due to the Democratic party’s being little more than a less strident copy of their Republican counterparts. The take here (and I agree) is that the Democratic Party neglected its core principles regarding economic matters in order to keep the coffers full.

@stanleybmanly I’m beginning to think that there was a huge vacuum created in the center. The Obama Democrats went too far left and the Tea Bagger Republicans went too far right. Those in the middle were lost and grabbed onto whatever they thought was left that would save their rear ends and, unfortunately for all, we got Trumped in the process.
If one wonders why, then, did Trump get nominated in the first place, it could be because the large portion of voters, the mostly right leaners in the middle, could see what was going down beforehand, and the whole Republican slant went that direction in lieu of anybody else. Once nominated, the other Republicans and Tea Baggers had no choice but to vote for Trump.

@kritiper That is exactly what happened. The other side was the hatred for Clinton’s status quo establishment politics by left-middle and right-middle leaners. For reasons I don’t quite understand people on the left bought into her. Take her out of the equation and we would have had a Sanders Presidency.

@kritiper I think that analysis is completely bogus. Hillary went to the RIGHT of Obama trying to pick up Republicans that couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Trump. She’s Center-RIGHT. Only 2% of Republicans crossed over and voted for her, while 7% of Democrats voted for Trump and many more didn’t bother to turn out. Obama isn’t too far left, he’s too far right.

Americans overwhelmingly want higher minimum wage, universal healthcare (with a public option), affordable college, a fair, progressive tax system, keeping jobs in the US, clean air/water, free and fair markets without monopolies (e.g look at the telecom industry, banking, healthcare).

@Jaxk You’re wrong. It’s a return to the Democratic Party’s roots: a return to the New Deal, FDR Democrat party. Clinton spent more time with donors at cocktail parties than she did with Union workers in the the Industrial Mid-West. She outspent Trump 2 to 1. THAT is the loosing platform.

Clinton is in no way center-right.

@gorillapaws “Obama isn’t too far left, he’s too far right.”

Ick….you had to have pulled that one out of your ass…as a conservative I cannot for the life of me think of ANYTHING Obama said or did that is remotely conservative. Obama is so far left he is holding hands with Bernie from where he stands in line. If he signed a bill with hints of anything conservative it was because Boehners snuck it in a bill with his pet liberal policies being held hostage by House Republicans.

I do agree that with the zigging and zagging Hillary did on the campaign trail her average would land her slightly right of center….noble effort…nice try.

Nobody on the right bought her maneuvering either. It made her look even less trustworthy than she already was.

@Cruiser Obama was nobody’s lefty. What you call “traditional conservatives” should love the guy. He bailed out both Wall st & the banks, passed the insurance industry’s dream plan, deported more aliens than anyone in the history of the country. He’s slaughtered more people with drones than you can shake a stick at. It’s a matter of perspective. Both Obama and Clinton are solid centrists, and the proof that it is conservatives that have drug the landscape toward lunatic right is realized when you consider that Obama and his positions were actually to the right of Richard Nixon who in fact was the last genuine New Deal President.

@stanleybmanly Ask any true conservative about the bailouts and they will tell you it is and was a dumb bunny move and the end results show it was a colossal waste of money. Slaughtering innocents with drones is a chicken shit move and you know it and certainly not a conservative value either. Clinton and her debt free college idea during her campaign firmly planted her next to Obama who is standing in the left line holding hands with Bernie. Only when she then had to go toe to toe with Trump in the campaign was when she started to throw thinly veiled conservative promises at the wall hoping something would resonate with the independents. Her ploy only partially worked, butt in the end the rust belt was not buying any of her phony act.

It was Sanders she had to go toe to toe against, and it was Sanders, not Trump who forced her centrist corporate toady ass leftwards. When Democrats are forced off the corporate bandwagon, THEN you might see some genuine leftist politics.

It’s a sad state of affairs that the political pendulum has swung so far to the right that solidly centrist Democrats are characterized as radical leftist.

I once heard someone say that Communism is when businesses are operated by and for the benefit of the government; Fascism is when government is run by and for the benefit of business. Capitalism is that narrow path between the two.

@stanleybmanly Are you so sure about that? Genuine leftist politics IMO is why the Democrats have lost over a 1,000 state legislature seats since Obama took office.

The Democrats haven’t pushed genuine leftist politics regarding economic matters since before Ronald Reagan.

I tend to agree with @stanleybmanly about the Democrats losing their base by following the money. That and the Republican ability to look to the future and plan ahead.

The gist of the clip is that the failure of the democrats was precisely due to the fact that the party no longer fought for the economic interests of their natural constituencies-those same rust belt people you keep bringing up. The Democratic Party was every bit as complicit in the deindustrialization of this country as their Republican counterparts & for exactly the same reasons. The great unspoken scandal in Trump’s success is that he won by actually picking up the mantle that the Dems dropped for corporate money. Why weren’t Clinton & Obama the supposed leftists threatening Ford for switching production to Mexico?

And this is why “Justice Democrats” should make great headway, and Trump’s tenure will be impossibly problematic for the GOP. Trump is NOT a conservative & this little fact spells a great deal more trouble for the GOP than the Democrats.

Frankly, this is all missing the point. Only the ideologues on both sides care whether the President is conservative or liberal. They only want policies that work and will improve their lives. We have heard for the last 8 years that job creation has been the longest positive streak in history but we don’t feel it. 4.5% unemployment IS full employment but we don’t feel it. Universal Health Care is wonderful but what we see is catastrophic care for a very high premium because nobody can afford the deductibles. Gay Marriage is great but it hasn’t stopped our shrinking wallets. Yes, Global Warming is a horrible threat but I still need to get to work. Democrats promised more of the same and the same simply isn’t good. Promising higher taxes while median incomes are shrinking, simply doesn’t solve the problem. Your platform of Social Justice only works if the economy is working. It’s not.

Trump promised change and if it works the Democrats could be dwindling for quite some time. If it doesn’t, You’ve got a shot. That’s why the Democrats have to hope Trump fails and they’ll be doing everything they can to make that happen. Good luck with that Social Justice thing.

That’s a direct replay of the successful Republican strategy against Obama. But the only reason the Republicans got away with it was because Obama and the Democrats want to play the same game as the Republicans. Everyone is an ideologue. But I fault the Democrats for failure to actually mount an offensive from the left. There is CLEARLY no such problem propagating right wing ideas in the GOP.

@Jaxk Don’t forget that “Obamacare” is basically a rebranding of the Republican plan from 1993.

A genuine liberal plan would have had a public option (AT MINIMUM), and ideally would have been a single-payer medicare-for-all system.

Also it turns out that one of Trump’s first actions was to raise taxes on Middle class homeowners via reversing a scheduled cut in mortgage insurance premiums.

@gorillapaws but we as a nation were too busy wondering about his tirade at the inauguration numbers and war on the media to notice the Middle Class tax increase.

@gorillapaws – First if you’re moving from state to federal. that alone means it’s not the same. As for the mortgage insurance, it’s not an increase if the rates remain the same. Obama announce the cut 10 days before he was to leave office and the cut wouldn’t be effective until after he left office. Another little nugget he left to try and screw Trump. The article is so liberal biased as to be laughable. They say it will raise rates by $500 annually but it also says: “Counties like Santa Clara, Alameda, and Santa Cruz, California, and Honolulu and Maui, Hawaii, would see the biggest increases, from $1,253 to $1,448 annually.” If the biggest increases are only $200 how the hell does it increase rates by $500 overall.

You’re spending way too much time on those liberal web sites.