Pelosi Promotes Democratic Party Discord – Favors a Fractured, Weakened Party Facing Trump
As you read this recall that Bernie Sanders beat Clinton in Michigan, winning in 73 of Michigan’s 83 counties. Also recall that Clinton went on to lose Michigan to Donald Trump.
WASHINGTON Nancy Pelosi is issuing a pointed message to Democrats running for president in 2020: Those liberal ideas that fire up the party’s base are a big loser when it comes to beating President Donald Trump.
Proposals pushed by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders like Medicare for All and a wealth tax play well in liberal enclaves like her own district in San Francisco but won’t sell in the Midwestern states that sent Trump to the White House in 2016, she said.
“What works in San Francisco does not necessarily work in Michigan,” Pelosi said at a roundtable of Bloomberg News reporters and editors on Friday. “What works in Michigan works in San Francisco talking about workers’ rights and sharing prosperity.”
“Remember November,” she said. “You must win the Electoral College.
I see Pelosi as a part of the problem, someone stuck in the past and fearful of change. She’s also ignoring something that Bernie proved in the 2016 election, and that’s that progressive ideas are popular and many of us have no fear of the dreaded “Socialism!” that has terrified the simple minds of we Boomers. Americans want Medicare for all and live in constant fear of getting sick and losing everything. I know I do. And we’re not going to get there with her at the helm.
Mr Boozer wrote:
The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said:
Is it true that the Democrats are roughly 40% socialists? What if it’s 75%? Thing is, somewhere around 0% of Republicans are socialist, and maybe only half of independents. If you lose 60% or even just 25% of your party, can you really win elections?
Elizabeth Warren’s calculations are that Medicare for All would cost $20.5 trillion over ten years, and many think that guesstimate is very overly optimistic: the same article, from the leftward-leaning Atlantic, notes other estimates range from $31 to $34 trillion. And she’s telling people that there won’t be any tax increases, other than on the wicked rich, to pay for it. Maybe if she said something like, yes your taxes will increase, but it will be counterbalanced by losing your current health insurance premiums, it would be believable, but no, that’s not what she says.
I’m guessing that Nancy Pelosi, who has done something really radical like actually win elections, understands this.
Remember the stories — after the election, of course — in which it was revealed that Bill Clinton told his wife’s campaign that they needed to pay more attention to white male voters, to rural voters, to people the campaign was ignoring. Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton’s 34-year-old campaign manager, is reported to have said that Mr Clinton was just trying to relive his old electoral glories, and that he, Mr Mook, really knew the way, with his analytics and spreadsheets and modern thinking. So, Mrs Clinton listened to a new wave political guru, rather than her husband who had only won two presidential elections . . . and she remained a private citizen.
As President Kennedy was filling his administration with The Best and the Brightest, Sam Rayburn (if I remember correctly from the book of the same name) is reported to have said that yeah, he was really impressed by these men, but that he’d have felt better if just one of them had run for sheriff or something once. Now think of the trouble McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara and William Bundy and the others managed to lead Presidents Kennedy and Johnson into.
The Atlantic has not been leftward-leaning since Clinton left office.
Elizabeth Warren has released a plan, as if the details matter at this stage of the debate, that’s more detailed than you claim. But to pretend the details matter is to pretend that a presidential proposal won’t get hammered into a much different shape in trying to get it through Congress.
The new wave political guru earned her a 3 million-vote victory. The places where she lost votes vis a vis Obama in the crucial Rust Belt states were the cities, not the places full of white men. Look at the lost votes in Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia — off by 100,000 or more, far more than she would have needed to win.
Ummm, as we sit today, America will spend $35trillion on health care over the next 10 years. Right now with the capitalist model of healthcare…$35trillion and people still are not covered and some still file for medical bankruptcies.
Don’t you get it Dana?