The great lesson of the last 8 years: Don't go to sleep at the wheel!
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After the great Obama victory of 2008 the Democratic Party went to sleep, and it KILLED US!!!!!
Make no mistake that I give great credit to Obama for many things, and he is a great guy who will be fondly remembered. But to understand what went wrong we also have to fairly critique him along with everything else so we can understand what went wrong so that we can fix things going forward. He did some very good things, but he campaigned as a soaring transformational guy but all too often led as a chess-playing TRANSACTIONAL guy who tried to make deals with the R's who never wanted or had any intention of making deals. He should have taken his popularity and mandate straight to the American people and HAMMERED the GOP in a much bigger and louder way and done more of the great things he campaigned on. He and Dems all over did little to combat the Tea Party movement. And he put in Tim Kaine and then Wasserman-Schultz at the DNC who were not full time DNC chairs and did not do a good job. The DNC turned into a corporate-lite establishment fundraiser instead of a strong grassroots organization out there organizing BIGTIME in every single county in the nation. The DNC just plain STUNK! We therefore got GUTTED at the state level all over the country and had SHITTY elections in 2010, 2014, and 2016.
In addition, the party FAILED BIGTIME to put together ONE overarching compelling message for candidates to run on which should have been a MASSIVE POPULIST message saying: GOOD JOBS FOR EVERYONE EVERYWHERE and JUSTICE FOR EVERYONE EVERYWHERE!! Simple as that. A strong, compelling message with a relentless focus on the ECONOMY EVERYWHERE. Instead, Democrats/Progressives fumbled and bumbled around in the weeds squirreling around with this issue and that issue with no overarching message and FOCUS. And our turnout in non-presidential cycles has STUNK! So we all have to take some of the responsibility here.
Folks, we must be honest and understand WHAT WENT WRONG so we can now get a new a much better DNC chair in place, re-organize the party at the grassroots everywhere, and get ONE clear, compelling, STRONG overarching message into operation so we can straighten this party the hell out and WIN again. We actually are the largest party and we win on the issues. But we have FAILED to COMMUNICATE and ORGANIZE correctly, so we have LOST. A good, honest, hard look in the mirror is always what is needed. We can't keep going to sleep at the wheel!! We need to WAKE UP and SHOW UP!
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