“Distancing” From Democratic Policies Caused Democrats To Lose - Dave Johnson at Our Future

For some reason, Democrats candidates didn't seem to consider the possibility that maybe being embarrassed to be a Democrat is not the best way to appeal to the Democratic voters.

In the recent midterm elections, progressive policies won at the ballot box, while many Democratic candidates lost.

Many of those Democratic candidates ran on “centrist” (i.e. “corporate”) platforms that distanced themselves from core Democratic policies and positions. Now they are learning that lots of Democrats decided not to vote for them, while the Republicans they were trying to appeal to still voted for Republicans.

Oddly, despite Obama's overall success, candidates chose to distance themselves from their own President and many of his progressive policies — like health care reform, protecting the environment, and giving the millions of immigrants who are here without documentation a path to legal residence and citizenship.

Granted, the right wing media and Republicans in Congress who are beholden to it have been on a 6 year, scorched-earth campaign to smear the Obama brand; irrespective of factual accuracy or how he has actually performed as President. 

But for some reason, Democrats candidates didn't seem to consider the possibility that maybe being embarrassed to be a Democrat is not the best way to appeal to the Democratic voters.

Voters who elected Obama in 2008 and 2012 expected delivery on change appropriate to the 21st century. The fact that the Democratic members in both houses failed to get behind the President when they had the votes to deliver changes in Education, Healthcare, and Energy Policies is not only bad governing, it's bad campaign strategy.

The full article is available here

Yearning for a World of Love and Justice - Rabbi Michael Lerner in Tikkun

To successfully transform our society from its current obsession with acquiring material goods, we need to help connect people with their deepest yearnings for a world of meaning and purpose.

We live in a world filled with loving and caring people.  We all crave a world filled with love and care.

Yet most of us doubt that we can experience a loving and caring world beyond our own private lives and homes.

Why? Because the ethos of the capitalist marketplace, which places greatest value on money and power, has infiltrated our personal lives, shaping our unconscious and conscious beliefs about “human nature.”

In the economic marketplace we are taught to look out for ourselves, maximize our profits, and do what we need to do to get ahead.  Predictably, we then build walls around us to protect ourselves.  The powerful drive within all of us to be loving and caring seems so “unrealistic” in this situation. 

To successfully transform our society from its current obsession with acquiring material goods, we need to help connect people with their deepest yearnings for a world of meaning and purpose.   We need to place priority on the extent to which institutions and policies nurture our capacity to respond to other human beings as embodiments of the sacred and to respond to the grandeur of the universe with gratitude, awe, and wonder.

Then we will begin to rebuild trust in each other’s goodness and start to believe that compassion and kindness can flourish not only in our homes but in our communities and our workplaces as well.

The full article is available here

Obama's Failure to Communicate - David Corn in Mother Jones

Republicans (many of whom don't want government to be considered as an effective tool) benefit from public disgust—even if their constant obstructionism causes the sclerosis.

Obama has faced a structural problem. He hasn't been able to vanquish Republican obstructionism on his own. The anti-government forces of the GOP were in the happy position of knowing that if voters viewed Washington as dysfunctional Obama would bear much of that taint. Republicans (many of whom don't want government to be considered as an effective tool) would benefit from public disgust—even if their constant opposition caused the sclerosis.

The president and his party did not effectively present a competing story to counter the vague, fear-mongering, competence-challenging attacks Republicans mounted against Obama and his party.  Referring to its messaging efforts, one Obama adviser recently told me, "We suck. We're good during the campaign when people are focused. It's hard when they are not."

Obama and his team succeeded in transforming campaigning, integrating an intense focus on data and metrics with on-the-ground organizing. And they did it twice. But the president has not transformed politics. To beat back the expected oppositional waves of 2010 and 2014, he needed a playbook as unconventional, imaginative, and effective as those he used in 2008 and 2012.

Perhaps it is nearly impossible for a president and his aides to govern well in difficult times (crafting complex and often not fully satisfying responses to knotty problems at home and abroad) and promote clear political messaging that consistently cuts through the chaff and connects with stressed-out voters freaked out about the future.

Yet elections work…for those who use them.  And angry Republicans have once again taken advantage of Democratic disaffection, disappointment, apathy, or whatever. Now, in part because Obama could not convince voters in Iowa, Colorado, and elsewhere to stick with him and the policies he champions, many of his accomplishments are at risk, and the nation faces the prospect of more gridlock and chaos in Washington.

The full article is available here