Regardless of which strategy they deploy in the next eight years, I think the democrats have some math issues to contend with.

For the last ten years and five election cycles, they have been happy to sit on their "big blue wall" for presidential elections and lose the state count 27-23 or somesuch because the 23 had enough EVs to stop the GOP from entering the white house.  The problem with that strategy is that it hollows you out at the state and legislative level.  You give the GOP the majority in the senate and the house, you give them more and more ground in state houses and governor's mansions.

The thing I see is that the left believes in governing from the top down (always has) and is thus primarily focused on the presidency.  They've become like the 2003 Mariners - no prospects, a bunch of veterans running out the clock to retirement who are year to year as to their viability.  They don't have a bench presently either...it's all about who their starters are.  They have to grow a new generation of leaders - and it's hard to do that if the other party controls most of the local, state, and federal positions beneath the Presidency.  It's been Obama's party...they've spent no time on developing his natural replacement.

The energetic faces of the party are Howard Dean and Bernie Sanders...two guys who represent a bygone generation and are on their way out.

Meanwhile, as much as the left doesn't want to see it, the GOP has an enormous farm system, a generation of diverse, young, exciting politicians at every level of government, and believes in governing from the bottom up.

That isn't to say that the left can't recover...they can and will focus, now, on developing young talent...but they're in a rebuilding year and it requires a five-year plan.

And, unfortunately for them, they picked a bad time to be rebuilding, because the GOP is going to have 3-4 supreme court nominees coming up and by the time they get back into contention, the umpires will be stacked 6-3 or 7-2 against them.

In any event, the party that holds the presidency usually loses ground during their tenure, especially if they run for 8 years.  But the losses the democrats have taken under Obama are matched in modern history only be the collapse of 1930 (GOP losses due to Hoover's general ineptitude), and the late collapse of the democrat party in the 1940s (FDR/Truman governed for too long and people basically told them to stop).

So right now, the left is hoping Trump is as bad as they think he is (and I fear he is) and will scare people enough that they run back their way...we shall see.

Going into 2009 was a popular President with a ruling congress. Eight years later, we are where we are politically with amazingly shrinking opportunities for Democrats to actually rule. Whatever the Democrats do, it will matter much less than how successful Trump is in making America Great Again. If in four years, it's "Morning in America," they are toast. if not, we may be talking again (foolishly, but talking again) about a permanent Democratic majority.

Doc originally framed this in sort of a 'what will the Democrats do in 2018?' scenario.

Well, obviously none of knows exactly what will happen betwen now and then, but I'm really interested in the opinions of the denizens.  

So my question is this: consider the current state of America (or at least that part that's affected by government) as a base line of zero.  Now think of a positive 'gain' in this sense from one to ten--ten being the best thing you could imagine.

And then consider the same thing in the opposite direction, with -10 being a total disaster (borrowed that phrase from Trump!).

Anyway, what's your guess?  Where will America be when the 2018 campaign begins in earnest?  

Give me a number!  

thx

So over the course of the last five to ten years, I've taken an inordinate amount of time to think about not just politics but the philosophy that underpins the vast political machine which, every few years, each of us runs up against when it comes time to decide the future of the world via chad, number 2 pencil, or pull of a lever.  If that responsibility isn't daunting to you, you're made of entirely different stuff than I ;-)

Early-ish in my ruminations and musings, even before I became (as Dave Rubin puts it) 'awakened' to what was going on in global politics, I found D-O-V and was fortunate enough to benefit from the learned wisdom, tempered advice, and generally high-energy level of the community there.  I think the things I took most from D-O-V and its community was a respect for critical thinking, individuality, and the wisdom of those who have gone before us.

Not long after running across D-O-V, I started to pontificate (almost exclusively in silence) about how we could make our nation, our society, and even our world a better place.  I'll save you from the boring laundry list of ideas which sprang to my mind, and skip ahead to the part where I discovered Monticello.org--the repository of all things Thomas Jefferson (or at least all those things which can be compressed into digital format).  It was there that I started to truly understand how the Founders arrived at their unique vision for the country and, by extension, for our entire species.

Every idea I'd had, and every remedy I had discussed with close friends and family, was already elucidated and presented *somewhere* in Thomas Jefferson's collected works.  This was one of those rare moments in my life when, for a fraction of a second, *all* of the dark light bulbs in my brain teasingly flashed at me in unison.  Needless to say, I began to pore over Jefferson's works with aplomb and, while I haven't conducted a scholarly examination of the man's robust body of written work, I do think I came to understand how his mind worked.

The vast majority of what Thomas Jefferson advocated, in terms of policy prescriptions and philosophical priorities, falls neatly into a political framework called 'Classical Liberalism.'  This is *key* to understanding how the present political system functions in the USA, so I'll link to Wikipedia's Classical Liberalism page for reference.  Basically, Classical Liberalism is the belief in individual freedom, limited government, and freedom of all potentially competing ideas to be expressed (whether these are expressed in published written works or speeches, market forces, or votes at the ballot box) so that the strongest ideas will drive society.

The vast majority of people I grew up with who self-identified as Conservative or Republican are, in fact, aspiring Classical Liberals.  There are some few Religious Right people--some even within my own family, I suspect--who subordinate much of their political agency to their religious beliefs or tenets, but in my experience this is a relatively small group (and I was borh into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints--Mormons, to those of you unfamiliar with our right and proper organizational name--which I think receives more scorn and ridicule than just about any other mainstream religion in America) but none of the people I grew up around, with whom I've spoken on the issue, have declined to accept that they are Classical Liberals after having that political portfolio described to them.

Keep this thought in mind, as well: Since America was founded predominantly on Classical Liberalism, the majority of American Constitutional Conservatives are, or at the very least strive to be, Classical Liberals.  They believe in limited government, freedom of expression up and down the board, and support competition since it produces refinements and improvements everywhere it is employed.

This creates some confusion, then, when the term 'liberal' is associated with Progressivism and never with Conservatism.  There are most certainly different strains of liberalism, and I suppose it's possible for there to be some cross-over between some of the more leftward strains of liberalism and Progressivism.  But even if there is then that only outlines my point that much more clearly--that the American Political Center has MUCH more in common with itself than it does with the extreme 'wings' of the political spectrum, regardless of whether or not someone who falls into the Center voted R or D on their latest ballot.  Remember: Constitutional Conservatives are attempting to protect, preserve, and promulgate the principles upon which America was founded--and all of that falls under Classical Liberalism.

Cooroborating my hypothesis, that the American Center is becoming increasingly disaffected with its various extremes on the Left/Right/Authoritarian/Libertarian quadrants of the compass, is the Gallup poll from January of this year which shows that a historically high percentage (42%) of Americans no longer identify along party lines, but rather self-identify as Independent.  The linked article goes into some contortions in an effort to demonstrate that these people still have political leanings and are therefore far from 'independent,' but the rising number of us who no longer identify along party lines is an important data point which helps explain the current political climate.  It is my opinion that the Center is finding itself and that, if we're very, VERY lucky, it will continue consolidating away from the various extremists which tug at it from across the political spectrum.

So as I've personally pondered the issue of the Left vs. Right, or Rich vs. Poor, or Conservative vs. Liberal as individual dichotomies, I've run into unavoidable obstacles which call into question the very nature of those labels themselves.  My generation is increasingly inclined to talk about politics in a two dimensional (or somtimes even a THREE dimensional!) framework.  I can't find the best example of a two dimensional spectrum just now, but the ones that look accurate to me have Classical Liberalism in the center of either a 3x3 grid (with Classical Liberalism occupying the central square), or a 4x4 grid (Classical Liberalism occupying the central four squares).  This jives with my own personal interactions with people.  Most reasonable people agree on the vast majority of subjects; the divergence of policy is almost never based on fundamental disagreements about how things *should work* but rather they're about theh *priority* in which certain issues should be addressed.

If you doubt that the American Center is, indeed, Classically Liberal (or at least *significantly* Classically Liberal) then I would encourage you to listen closely to the partisanship when terms like 'wedge issue' get bandied about.  It's never a wedge that they're trying to drive between the extreme Right (Religious zealots are probably the most powerful constituency of this end of the spectrum) and the extreme Left (the Progressives who think the answer to every problem is bigger government which necessitates the curtailment of individual liberties).  There's no need to try separating those groups of people since, though they both generally seek to employ state power to advance their agendas, their ideological divide is simply too great to permit them to come together.

Instead, wedge issues are aimed at those of us in the Center of American politics, to get us to divide from each other so as to shatter the Center (this is another insidious outcome of Identity Politics, as well, since after accepting one's place in his/her/it's respective 'identity bucket' one is functionally restricted in voicing dissent from prevailing groupthink).  As Milton Friedman said in one of his many lectures (though I'll be paraphrasing here): democracies work best not when the very rich are fighting the very poor, or when the Left is fighting the Right, but when the *middle* fights against all extremes--be the left, right, rich, or poor.

Some of us are indeed too 'extreme' to contribute meaningfully to many debates, but I would venture to say that the majority of us agree on the general framework of how society should function, but we've allowed these so-called wedge issues to divide us and, unfortunately, to inspire hatred among us for those whose views are a few points of the compass different from our own.

Sorry for rambling...