Category: Democratic Party

“Please tell us why you are unsubscribing”

“Please tell us why you are unsubscribing”
Dear Hillary,
I am unsubscribing because you lost.  You ran an ineffective campaign that I did spend a lot of time volunteering for as did many, many people but in the end you managed to lose what should have been an un-losable election and the rest of the country is paying for your hubris and incompetence.  The only thing I would like to hear from you is that you are enjoying your well earned retirement and that you are exiting the public square to make space for new, fresh leadership who are untainted with your baggage.  It is mostly underserved but you are tainted with baggage that makes you a lightning rod for the “vast right wing conspiracy” making you the single most effective mobilizing tool for their base.  You need to understand that although we recognize your service to the country that does not mean that the country owes you anything and you have enjoyed much, much more than your “15 minutes of fame”.  Please enjoy your retirement and create space for talented, untainted leadership to emerge to take our country back and save the republic that your hubris and electoral incompetence have placed at such risk.
Sincerely

“Citizens, United:  What should Democrats in Congress — and Barack Obama, and you — do now?”

Jonathan Chait:

“And so the man who thought he was through with politics has, it turns out, one more essential role left: Beginning next year, Obama needs to rally the opposition, to community-organize his coalition, and to exploit his celebrity to make the case for saving his legacy. His visibility alone would serve a vital function. Trump’s election has sent a statement to Americans and the world about the country’s identity. It has been received viscerally, by bullies abusing minorities as well as by fearful allies overseas. Obama is a powerful symbol of rationalism, thoughtfulness, and pluralism — the ultimate anti-Trump, both ideologically and symbolically. Women, religious minorities, immigrants and prospective immigrants, transgender people, young Africans with iPhones, the beat-down opposition in places like Russia and China, and the people who bully all the preceding groups and more — the whole planet, really — need reminding that Obama’s version of America has prevailed before and will prevail again.”

. . .

“Trump’s election is one of the greatest disasters in American history. It is worth recalling, however, that history is punctuated with disasters, yet the country is in a better place now than it was a half-­century ago, and a better place than a half-century before that, and so on. Despair is a counterproductive response. So is denial — an easy temptation in the wake of the inevitable postelection pleasantries and displays of respect needed to maintain the peaceful transfer of power. The proper response is steely resolve to wage the fight of our lives.”

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/how-the-loyal-opposition-will-work-in-trumps-america.html

Harry Reid on the Election of Donald Trump

“I have personally been on the ballot in Nevada for 26 elections and I have never seen anything like the reaction to the election completed last Tuesday. The election of Donald Trump has emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America.

“White nationalists, Vladimir Putin and ISIS are celebrating Donald Trump’s victory, while innocent, law-abiding Americans are wracked with fear – especially African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Muslim Americans, LGBT Americans and Asian Americans. Watching white nationalists celebrate while innocent Americans cry tears of fear does not feel like America.

“I have heard more stories in the past 48 hours of Americans living in fear of their own government and their fellow Americans than I can remember hearing in five decades in politics. Hispanic Americans who fear their families will be torn apart, African Americans being heckled on the street, Muslim Americans afraid to wear a headscarf, gay and lesbian couples having slurs hurled at them and feeling afraid to walk down the street holding hands. American children waking up in the middle of the night crying, terrified that Trump will take their parents away. Young girls unable to understand why a man who brags about sexually assaulting women has been elected president.

“I have a large family. I have one daughter and twelve granddaughters. The texts, emails and phone calls I have received from them have been filled with fear – fear for themselves, fear for their Hispanic and African American friends, for their Muslim and Jewish friends, for their LBGT friends, for their Asian friends. I’ve felt their tears and I’ve felt their fear.

“We as a nation must find a way to move forward without consigning those who Trump has threatened to the shadows. Their fear is entirely rational, because Donald Trump has talked openly about doing terrible things to them. Every news piece that breathlessly obsesses over inauguration preparations compounds their fear by normalizing a man who has threatened to tear families apart, who has bragged about sexually assaulting women and who has directed crowds of thousands to intimidate reporters and assault African Americans. Their fear is legitimate and we must refuse to let it fall through the cracks between the fluff pieces.

“If this is going to be a time of healing, we must first put the responsibility for healing where it belongs: at the feet of Donald Trump, a sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fueled his campaign with bigotry and hate. Winning the electoral college does not absolve Trump of the grave sins he committed against millions of Americans. Donald Trump may not possess the capacity to assuage those fears, but he owes it to this nation to try.

“If Trump wants to roll back the tide of hate he unleashed, he has a tremendous amount of work to do and he must begin immediately.”

http://www.reid.senate.gov/press_releases/2016-11-11-reid-statement-on-the-election-of-donald-trump#.WCfaAXeZO-b

The Next Election

News update for everyone who is saying that we will make sure that we win in four years time: The next election is in TWO years time NOT FOUR. Forgetting that is how we ended up with a gerrymandered republican congress in 2010. Forgetting that is how they managed to slow down the recovery so that it still had not reached everywhere by 2016.

If we’re going to take back our country and save our republic the first thing we need to do is to get it in our heads that we cannot sit out the mid-terms. They never do.