The Democrats are so bad at messaging. We're doomed.

MaeZe said:

OK, so the sentiment has some value, but half the country is against immigrants and the other half isn't sure.

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MaeZe said:

Sigh....

There's a video circulating of Keith Ellison, deputy chair of the DNC, wearing a t-shirt that says "yo no creo en fronteras" (I don't believe in borders).

Here is the actual sentiment behind that position. To get to it I had to go through a couple pages of links to the alt-right echo chamber passing the stupid message around like hot cakes.

The Hill Op Ed

OK, so the sentiment has some value, but half the country is against immigrants and the other half isn't sure it may be enough to keep us from getting a majority in Congress. How can the second in command of the D. Party not understand that and come up with a message that isn't going to get voters believing the Democrats are one step away from communism?

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MaeZe said:

Sorry. I did not mean everyone is against immigrants, I got emotional there about how bad of a campaign message this is.

The #2 guy in the Democratic Party is sending out a campaign message that almost certainly will lose votes, not gain them.

If the Bernie supporters cannot slow down, there won't be a blue wave in November. I want all that stuff too, public support of colleges, rein in the corporate greed, increase minimum wage, universal health care. But if our campaign message is all that all at once, it won't win.

We have to use Words that Work—"It's not what you say, it's what people hear." The GOP figured this out decades ago.

Why can't Democrats figure that out! It makes me so angry. You'd almost think Ellison is a secret GOP plant.

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We argued in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed piece that President Barack Obama should stand down and let Secretary of State Hillary Clinton run as the Democratic presidential nominee in 2012.


We are now calling on Democratic voters nationally — particularly in New Hampshire — to organize a write-in campaign for Clinton. This is something that New Hampshire voters have a long history of doing.


We advocate this Draft Hillary movement not because of the desire to make political mischief — but to put the country on the right course.


It’s clear that Obama has been unable to build consensus and, with the polarizing campaign he is now running, will be unable to govern effectively even if reelected. Only Clinton can commit the Democratic Party — and, indeed, the nation — to a unification and healing process. (Sure. The way she did in 2016. Oh, wait...) This could allow Washington, in a bipartisan manner, to finally address the economic and governmental crises that now grip America.


A write-in candidacy in 2012 can send a message that the Democratic Party must stand for something more than Obama’s reelection at all costs.

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This is a critical moment for the country. From the faltering economy to the burdensome deficit to our foreign policy struggles, America is suffering a widespread sense of crisis and anxiety about the future. Under these circumstances, Obama has the opportunity to seize the high ground and the imagination of the nation once again, and to galvanize the public for the hard decisions that must be made. The only way he can do so, though, is by putting national interests ahead of personal or political ones.


To that end, we believe Obama should announce immediately that he will not be a candidate for reelection in 2012.


If the president goes down the reelection road, we are guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it. But by explicitly saying he will be a one-term president, Obama can deliver on his central campaign promise of 2008, draining the poison from our culture of polarization and ending the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity and common purpose.


We do not come to this conclusion lightly. But it is clear, we believe, that the president has largely lost the consent of the governed. The midterm elections were effectively a referendum on the Obama presidency. And even if it was not an endorsement of a Republican vision for America, the drubbing the Democrats took was certainly a vote of no confidence in Obama and his party. The president has almost no credibility left with Republicans and little with independents.


The best way for him to address both our national challenges and the serious threats to his credibility and stature is to make clear that, for the next two years, he will focus exclusively on the problems we face as Americans, rather than the politics of the moment - or of the 2012 campaign.


Quite simply, given our political divisions and economic problems, governing and campaigning have become incompatible. Obama can and should dispense with the pollsters, the advisers, the consultants and the strategists who dissect all decisions and judgments in terms of their impact on the president's political prospects.


Obama himself once said to Diane Sawyer: "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president." He now has the chance to deliver on that idea.

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