Meanwhile, two other special elections in heavily Trump-leaning districts are won by progressives from the Bernie wing of the party. People who didn't listen to the defeatists and actually made a difference.

This is a thunderbolt of resistance.

This primary season will be extremely important. Bernie opened the door a crack, if it doesn't get knocked down this season...forget it in 2020.

"The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing - for the sheer fun and joy of it - to go right ahead and fight, knowing you're going to lose. You mustn't feel like a martyr. You've got to enjoy it."
— I.F. Stone

You're so on point in this thread.

That's not the 1/2 of it. The 3rd way knows all of the momentum is on the Berniecrats side and it scares them to death. They are putting out the narrative that the loss in MT. shows the weakness of the populist message.

Sanders revolution hits a rough patch

Bernie's supporters struggle to capture the actual levers of power.

Completely ignoring the ton of money ($800,000) that Paul Ryan's Pac
And the paltry some the DNC spent as noted in the main link.

This Shows that the 50 state strategy is just lip service. And shows they are fighting harder against their own base than they are against the republicans still holding back betting all the marbles on 2020

The Democratic party still thinks it will win by 'not being Trump

Afraid that if they assume a populist message they will lose all of their big money donors. Something they see as sure defeat.

I wouldn't expect too much out of the Democratic Party or its supporters. I made the mistake of reading the comments for that Biden article over on r/politics. What a mess. It's a shame the Greens didn't reach anywhere near that 5%. Without another party on the left, the Democrats have no reason to leave the right.

It is worse than you think... Bernie Sanders‏Verified account @SenSanders

This is what oligarchy and austerity are about. The public sector is being starved, while billionaires get tax cuts.

The comments are just sad.

Yeah, the comments there are like "it's not the Democratic Party's job to convince those idiots to vote for them, that's the responsibility of the voters!"

That's not how democracy works, dumbasses.

Ideology aside, from a purely strategic standpoint the DNC was probably right about the Montana seat- it was always a big long-shot.
Much as the the populist left is loath to concede- there tragically are large swaths of the country that will persistently tack right and vote against their own self interests, for any number of obstinate reasons- cultural, religious, dumb-ass, etc. Folks need to acknowledge that political polarization in this country isn't just conjured by the media and the ruling elite, it may actually be a real thing.

If you run Left vs. Right in Montana you will lose every time. If you run populist vs. Oligarch you can win. It has also been a long time since the people in the Mountain West have even seen a Democrat let alone heard any other message than cut taxes and deregulate. You can win overnight.

Barack Obama performed better in this district than Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton. Hope and Change Barack Obama performed vastly better than reelect me Barack Obama. Quist lost by 6 points. The fact that Hillary Clinton lost the election while winning the popular vote should be a wake up call to the Democratic party that it doesn't have the luxury of ignoring large swaths of the country.

You can't really use Obama in '08 as a standard model of political success. Timing is everything. Hope and Change was an easy sell, even for a brown guy named Barack Obama (who also happened to have a gift for politicking) in a year of severe economic crisis and an electorate desperate for change after eight years of failed leadership and disastrous policies.
Now things are different, obviously. Yeah, I agree that the Dems are doomed to failure (or at best, very limited success) if they can't come up with a positive, policy-driven progressive platform. And I'd really like to agree that this is basically a revolution waiting to happen, but I really don't see that if you build it people will come.
Because if there's any big lesson to be learned from the election of '16, it's that people are stupid. Unfortunately a certain, significant percentage will be stupid no matter what, without regard to actual policy.

Sure you can. I just did! Plus, you seem to be missing the part where reelect me Barack Obama still outperformed all those other Democrats, but I'm sure you've got a convenient rationalization for that one too.

As a matter of fact I do:
Incumbent almost always has a big advantage. And did I mention how politically talented Obama was?

That advantage doesn't come from people flipping parties, it comes from voter turnout. Again, 6 points with no help from the DNC. That's the point of all this, that's the point of having a party. If you're going to ignore the places you have to work for, then the one thing we can seem to agree on is there's no future in the Democrats.

Also, you're forgetting to mention the part where Obama was a colored, secret muslim, community organizer, Taliban Manchurian Candidate, with ties to the Weathermen, that went to a church with a black supremacist preacher. It's not as if he just waltzed into the Whitehouse because of an economic crisis. Even with all of that, he sold himself as a different breed of politician, and the areas you're writing off still showed up for that better than you're giving them credit for.

Well there might indeed be no future in the Democrats. We'll see how they do in the Georgia 6th, and of course 2018 and if they can get a cohesive message beyond being anti-Trump.
Look I'm totally on board with a true progressive platform and something like a 50 state strategy (obviously as resources allow). All I'm sayin' is that I have little faith in the electorate going for it. Maybe if we see a situation like '08- economic crisis, disaffected voters, a charismatic candidate. I just don't think there's such a thing as real formula for political success. It's lightning in a bottle.

There is however a real formula for political failure, and that's not trying.

The Fifty State Strategy worked. Your simplistic defeatism is part of the problem.

Your opponent is pushing for statism and winning. That's how they control 75% of state legislatures. Along with Gerrymandering.

Show me how the fifty state strategy worked. So far, it's a dismal failure.

Remedial history: The Fifty State Strategy resulted in Obama coming into office with a Democratic majority in the House and the Senate. Then they booted Dean as head of the DNC and turned their backs on the people who got them there. There hasn't been a Fifty State Strategy since - except on the GOP side, where it's still working fine.

The Dems are losing because they keep focusing on the White House and playing defense in Congress, while abandoning their base and their message. Dean's whole point was that you have to fight for votes everywhere at every level: dogcatcher and school board and town alderman. The GOP has been fighting that fight. The Dems have not.

So you still haven't learned anything. Sounds like a personal problem.

Nope. Sounds like you're living in a fantasy world, and engaging in the conservative right bullshit by slapping down anybody that holds a differing opinion with condescension. Have a nice day.

Sounds like you don't like to be shown you were wrong.
Nancy Pelosi held the gavel, a Veto proof majority in the Senate and the first black president in US history. I'd say that worked.

1. The 50 State Strategy worked, and was promptly abandoned
2. ...which is a shame, as it was always intended as a long-term strategy

You rebuild the Democratic Party in red parts of the country by giving people there a real alternative, forcing the Republicans to fight on their home turf. If you only fight where you're pretty sure you can win, that battlefield will inevitably shrink - as it has.

Ya that is the other side. They ran away from the ACA. Got their ass handed to them in the midterms then concentrated their efforts on holding the Whitehouse. in the process abandoned the state houses and Governorships allowing the Republicans to gerrymander themselves into power for a decade.

You have to give the GOP some credit here as well they worked hard on statehouses and spent money and time it was a multiyear strategy and it worked.

Snippet from the wiki:

Highlight: "Obama was ultimately able to win Virginia and Indiana, two states that had not voted Democratic since 1964, and North Carolina, last won by a Democrat in 1976. However, the margins of victory in the four aforementioned states were considerably closer than they had been in 2004."

So while it was a failure in general, he was able to flip two states. I think the important part is chipping away at the republicans in the states they take for granted- but by offering a populist message vs a new way one.

It wasn't a failure - the 50 State Strategy was never about electing Obama president (and even so, flipping 2 red states is a pretty good result).

So let me get this straight. Dumpster won by ignoring NY CA and a few others, knowing that it would be a mistake to spend resources on states that he didn't stand a chance in hell of winning. That was "Bad." Apparently, it worked. They played the electoral college to win the presidency. And did.

The Obama rise wasn't just politics or the message or their base, but racist guilt. Not to mention a military hawk opponent coming on the heels of two wars and an airhead as a running mate. And yet most put it all in the category of politicking. Naive in my opinion. He did in fact engage the grass roots in all states, but would have been unsuccessful had he been white. Obama sucked wall street and corporate dick just like the rest of them to get elected, yet that is ignored. He had the same message as HRC, only masked by the color of his skin. They varied on maybe .2% of policy. Nobody remembers that "remedial" history.

There's no doubt addressing ALL states is important. What happened is that the DNC was blind sided by racism and the attack on liberalism in general. They underestimated bigotry. I know a lot of people don't want to acknowledge that. They prefer to blame the DNC and wall street. In that I agree with the GOP. It's a lot of whining coulda shouda woulda crap. Everybody seems to think it was the message. The DNC were counting on common sense, whereas the opposition wasn't. It has nothing to do with all state philosophy, but emotion and a fabricated slander on Clinton. Sometimes you can't combat emotion, regardless of the message. Look, the DNC made mistakes, but it wasn't completely their fault for not focusing on certain issues. There was in fact, an opposition party. A few additional states won and dumpster isn't in the white house. But hey, the prevailing theory is that they should have focused a message on Texas or Tennessee or S. Carolina.

But fuck that. I'm too stupid and don't want to be told I'm wrong.

You were wrong because you said the 50 state strategy didn't work and it did.

" But hey, the prevailing theory is that they should have focused a message on Texas or Tennessee or S. Carolina."

Ya....but don't think you are going to win. But if you never make your case you are always going to lose.

The DNC story and the Clinton story are two different tales. The DNC was manned by Obama appointees. He felt no loyalty to party and concentrated the efforts in DC. If he didn't think he could win the state he left it.

What does any of that have to do with the 50 State Strategy?

The fifty state strategy didn't work in all 50 states. You're not gonna flip Texas or Kansas without some kind of real demographic shift.

The 50 State Strategy is not a strategy for winning all 50 states in a presidential election.