This is from Meet the Press yesterday morning. I’m throwing this up quickly because I thought many parts of this discussion would interest this community, as well as possibly provide a basis for fruitful debate here and beyond.
Transcription of the interesting bits by me. Please feel free to use elsewhere, with attribution. *** indicate something is missing. Emphases mine.
Chuck Todd: Republicans have never seemed more ascendant, they have their biggest house majority since the 1920s and more governors in multiple generations, yet they can't get anything done.
Democrats have never seemed more ascendant, demographics are moving relentlessly in their direction, and yet they can't win any elections.
Both sides are focused more on... firing up their base, talking to people who already agree with them, than they are about persuading people to eventually agree with them.
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Republican Senator Jeff Flake: Conservativism has kind of been compromised by populism... We can't say that populism is a governing philosophy, because I don't believe that it is.
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It's not conservative on foreign policy, for example, to keep your allies guessing.... A conservative is steady and measured and sober.
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I think it's first and foremost the duty of conservatives to tell the truth to the constituency.... My concern is that populism is a sugar high, and once you come off it, it's particularly troublesome for the party. And so I wish that we would have been more truthful with the electorate in terms of what we can and what we cannot do in Washington.
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If we're going to fix the big things that we need to fix, in particular our debt and deficit, that has to be done with Republicans and Democrats. There's no way one party will take the risk. And that's what is so broken about our politics, is we just can't get together on the big things. And as conservatives, we simply can't enact conservative policy if we continue these polemics.
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David French, senior writer for National Review: There is a market for what Trump is selling, and we cannot ignore that and we can't just focus completely on Washington. What we are overrun with right now is negative polarization... where people are supporting Republicans not because they love what Republicans stand for, but because there is so much hostility to Democrats.
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Dan Balz, chief correspondent for Washington Post: There's very little that either side, frankly, has put up positively since Trump was elected President, and actually before that, I mean I don't think that, we know that this didn't start with Donald Trump, this condition that we're in.
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Andrea Mitchell, host, MSNBC: What we're seeing is... anger against elites, people feeling that they have been passed over, anger, you know you see the stats on anger against elite colleges even among those who are college educated, extraordinary, so it's anger against all of us, the media as well.
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Chuck: It's not so clear what the Democrats are for. They are buoyed by anger and activism, with liberals fighting moderates and Berniecrats fighting Clintonites and the cultural left fighting the economic left.
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There is a lot of work to do. There is a lot of distrust, if you will, from the white working class voters who were Democrats 20 years ago, 30 years aog, and do not trust the Democrats even on the economy now. How did that happen?
Governor Jerry Brown (California): The global economy is changing. America is losing manufacturing jobs both to foreign countries, but also to technology, automation, innovation, and all of that. So we're going through a real transition.... In America... jobs, downward mobility, insecurity, and all the rest of it. This is a global phenomenon. And Democrats have been the champion of working people and they haven't been able to deliver in the face of these global trends, and yes, you'd have to say that the leadership has not been clever enough or strong enough or perhaps visionary enough.
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Brown: Visionary enough. I don't want to make the point, because it isn't true, that it is just a matter of clever. You know, it takes values, believing in right and wrong, and a sense of what America is all about. And it takes a certain vision, how the hell do we get out of this? And it takes some political skill at the same time.
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Chuck: How do you tell the Democratic base that... sometimes you have got to compromise? So for instance, the issue of abortion....
Brown: The segments of our party are highly differentiated, there are environmentalists, there are gun owners, there are pro-choice
people, there are religious fundamentalists, not very many but they are there. So I would say look, even on the abortion issue, it wasn't very long ago that a number of Catholic Democrats were opposed to abortion. So the fact that somebody believes today what most people believed 50 years ago, should not be the basis for their exclusion.... You can't let hot-button issues that work great in particular Congressional districts one way or the other, to be the guiding light for a national party that covers a very wide spectrum of belief.Chuck: So you don't believe there should be a litmus test on abortion. Is there an issue there should be one on for the Democrats?
Brown: The litmus test should be intelligence, caring about... the common man. We're not going to get everybody on board, and I'm sorry, but running in San Francisco is not like running in... Mobile, Alabama.... You have to have a broader, a party that rises above the more particular issues to the generic, a general issue of "making America great," if I might take that word.
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We have to recruit better candidates. I always hold the candidate responsible. So if some candidate doesn't win, don't blame it on somebody else... As a candidate, when you are running in a Republican district, if you are a Democrat, you had better be extraordinary, and you have to relate to a very different kind of constituency.... Make sure the candidates represent and can empathize and be a part of the district they are running in.
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Chuck: The social justice wing of the party versus the economic wing, and while I know you'll make an argument that you can do the two together, there is a split here, isn't there?
Heather McGhee, President, Demos Action: I think there has been a split, and it's really driven by consultants, it's really driven by this desire to sort of micro-target an audience rather than give a unified message. And I think the key thing to watch here is the millennial generation and younger, who are... feeling like they inherited... an economy that is completely broken, a politics that is broken. People are looking for a populism, but a multiracial populism, they are looking for candidates who say, "I am willing to take on the wealthy and powerful, and also I am not willing to let the wealthy and powerful divide us from each other so that they can have the spoils of our great nation."And that is actually, I think, the message that unites identity and class. Because we have seen, frankly, the right wing in one breath talk about what is wrong with the economy and scapegoat people of color and immigrants. And I think progressives really need to similarly understand how to weave those messages together.
(end transcription at 40:16)
Please consider this an open thread and discuss anything you like. Some possible topics:
Should we be more focused on persuading others to eventually agree with us?
Do you agree with Senator Flake’s characterization of conservativism?
Do you agree that most people vote Republican because they have grown hostile to Democrats (and if so, what do we do about it?)?
Do you agree that neither side’s messages have been positive?
Do you agree that people feel angry because they feel that they have been passed over?
Do our factions fighting each other so much obscure a positive message?
Is part of the problem beyond our control — that we are perceived as the champion of working people, but global changes have kept us unable to deliver?
Do we need to be more visionary or do we have it now with the Better Deal?
Do you agree with Governor Brown’s litmus test?
If candidates run in Republican districts, are we throwing our money away if we support candidates who are less than extraordinary?
Have consultants been micro-targeting their messages too much?
Is the answer multicultural populism?
Can we discuss questions raised by the video without pie?
Inquiring minds want to know!