What the Democrats learned from the election

Another solid analysis of why the Dems lost and what they need to learn from that:

Democrats can’t win until they recognize how bad Obama’s financial policies were He had opportunities to help the working class, and he passed them up. By Matt Stoller January 12

Excerpt:

First, he saved the financial system. A financial system in collapse has to allocate losses. In this case, big banks and homeowners both experienced losses, and it was up to the Obama administration to decide who should bear those burdens. Typically, such losses would be shared between debtors and creditors, through a deal like the Home Owners Loan Corporation in the 1930s or bankruptcy reform. But the Obama administration took a different approach. Rather than forcing some burden-sharing between banks and homeowners through bankruptcy reform or debt relief, Obama prioritized creditor rights, placing most of the burden on borrowers. This kept big banks functional and ensured that financiers would maintain their positions in the recovery. At a 2010 hearing, Damon Silvers, vice chairman of the independent Congressional Oversight Panel, which was created to monitor the bailouts, told Obama’s Treasury Department: “We can either have a rational resolution to the foreclosure crisis, or we can preserve the capital structure of the banks. We can’t do both.”

Second, Obama’s administration let big-bank executives off the hook for their roles in the crisis. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) referred criminal cases to the Justice Department and was ignored. Whistleblowers from the government and from large banks noted a lack of appetite among prosecutors. In 2012, then-Attorney General Eric Holder ordered prosecutors not to go after mega-bank HSBC for money laundering. Using prosecutorial discretion to not take bank executives to task, while legal, was neither moral nor politically wise; in a 2013 poll, more than half of Americans still said they wanted the bankers behind the crisis punished. But the Obama administration failed to act, and this pattern seems to be continuing. No one, for instance, from Wells Fargo has been indicted for mass fraud in opening fake accounts.

Third, Obama enabled and encouraged roughly 9 million foreclosures. This was Geithner’s explicit policy at Treasury. The Obama administration put together a foreclosure program that it marketed as a way to help homeowners, but when Elizabeth Warren, then chairman of the Congressional Oversight Panel, grilled Geithner on why the program wasn’t stopping foreclosures, he said that really wasn’t the point. The program, in his view, was working. “We estimate that they can handle 10 million foreclosures, over time,” Geithner said — referring to the banks. “This program will help foam the runway for them.” For Geithner, the most productive economic policy was to get banks back to business as usual.

It’s worth reading the whole thing.

Another key factor: Bill Clinton’s sexual history. In my view, the Access Hollywood tape bombshell would have sunk Trump for good if not for Bill. In enough people’s minds, they said “Both sides do it!” and it (basically) cancelled out Trump’s history of sexual assault.

I don’t think it should have done that, but it did, IMO. And if the Dems had run a candidate without that kind of baggage, the spotlight remains on Trump. He doesn’t get to shift it to his opponent.

But, again, I don’t think the Dems have learned a thing from any of this. And zooming out further to just generalized strategy . . . . They have no room to grow to their right. The GOP owns that. It’s a done deal. So the Dems are wasting their time courting more of the right.

They’re only “growth opportunity” is to their left. Which means a massive about face, the implementation of truly “progressive” policies at least, and authentic, genuine, honest to goddess outreach to their left.

WV,

I know this is damn annoying, and I don’t want to be a nudge, but that website is owned by the John Birch Society. It’s not exactly the most objective source for news about Clinton.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_American

And the New York Observer is owned by, guess who?

Jared Kushner, Trump’s son in law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Observer

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I just googled the story and all the links are to right-wing sites. To each their own, but I’ll wait for media reports with less of an axe to grind on this particular issue.

Beyond that, IMO, there’s a ton of bigger fish to fry when it comes to things the Clintons have done wrong. You’ve posted a ton of really good articles on those bigger fish.

I’m probably not expressing myself here well, but wanted to put it in another way:

History used to be taught using a kind of “great man” theory. But in recent decades, that’s been rejected for a much more inclusive approach. More and more histories are being written as the story told from dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of points of view. This history of WWI is an excellent example:

Along with this change, we went from thinking it could only be about kings and queens, to an acceptance of the impact of people once called “the peasants.”

The arts changed along these lines too, paintings started to depict “the common man,” and then the “common people,” as did poetry and literature and so on. No longer did we only witness to the lives of the Aristocracy. Anyone and everyone became a subject.

Brueghel’s Peasant Wedding. 1567

To make a long story short, I have a feeling that our focus on single politicians is a remnant from those olden days and the “Great Man” theory. While it’s always essential to trace things back to “leaders” and hold them accountable, it’s also incredibly important to remember it often takes large numbers of people to do horrible things or good to great things . . . . and if we “sack” just one among the many, more often than not, the problem doesn’t go away.