DNC Chairman candidate to fellow Dems: "Grow up!"

A candidate for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee tore into his own party during a candidate forum in Baltimore on Saturday, saying his party needs to “grow up” and get past attacking President Trump at every turn.

New Hampshire Democratic Party chairman Raymond Buckley chided Democrats at the forum for worrying about Trump, rather than worrying about the needs of the American people.

“Telling the voters that, ‘Oh, our opponent is offensive.’ When you’re worrying about your d*mn paycheck, when you’re worrying about your job, when you’re worrying about where you’re going to live, if your kids are ever going to go to school,” Buckley began. “They don’t really give a crap if the president is an insult dog.”

“The reality is we did not offer a positive message to anyone I’m related to. We did not offer a message to my neighbor, we did not offer a message to the people in Indiana or Ohio or Pennsylvania or Kentucky,” he continued. “What we did was say, ‘Oh, how offensive.'”

“Grow up!” he told the crowd. “That’s not reality for most of America.”

Watch: Candidate for DNC chair scolds his own party for constantly attacking Trump


Truth!!

Good to see my party engaging in healthy dialogue and self-criticism. It will prevent us from ever nominating a Trump.

Agreed.
It's about time some of the Democrats wake up and begin to understand that playing cry-baby politics doesn't work anymore. "He's mean and rude" was never a great campaign slogan.

lets face it both parties have not had the best candidates for many years, yes obama was black, but surely in a country of 300million + they could find 2 people who are honest and charismatic and have a real message to bring to the people.
the main reason trump made it all the way was he was not part of the established order.
another thing that might make for better more connected candidates is restricting how much they can spend. why on earth would anyone need to spend a billion dollars or more to become president. What hope has the little man of every getting the top job.
candidates should be limited to a million dollars, and that sounds like far too much.
travel the country by train as they did in the old days, speak from a soapbox where ever a crowd gathers, lets have some proper tub thumping speeches.

the media can get the message out for free, you dont need to spend millions on ads at prime time.

I agree with your points about spending.

I actually agree with that, too -- but our Republicans have been fighting campaign finance reform for literally decades.

It's another of many examples of sneaky Republican genius -- the party of big business sets up the system so that big business (rather than the electorate) picks the winner.

My preference would be to use our public media to air campaign promotional material with each candidate getting the same airtime.

Ben Reilly wrote:I actually agree with that, too -- but our Republicans have been fighting campaign finance reform for literally decades.

It's another of many examples of sneaky Republican genius -- the party of big business sets up the system so that big business (rather than the electorate) picks the winner.

My preference would be to use our public media to air campaign promotional material with each candidate getting the same airtime.

that sounds exceedingly reasonable.
if its all about republican big business then where did clintons billion plus come from.

over here I would like to see all funding from business, unions and big private donors banned or limited to no more than £5000 per electoral term. essentially £1000 a year. I think parties should be funded by their membership and should have to cut their cloth accordingly. People will say that stops the small parties, and it might, but they are small because they dont have support.
People dont donate massive sums of money to any party without expecting something in return, and those that say they do are liars. Labour are bought and paid for by the unions and it can be said the same of the tories and business. Lets take that out of the equation and make the parties learn to balance their own budgets before we let them lose on the country's budget.
I am sure there must be parallels in america.
I have never felt the need to join a party properly, except for labour because their rules are so stupid they let anyone join for nothing and influence their leadership.
so I dont get a choice in who becomes tory leader.
I only get to vote in elections. Which I consider my duty to do so and if I didn't I cant really complain when things dont go my way.

I would also like to see voting made compulsory but with a non of the above option on the ticket, which if it won would bar those candidates from any office for 5 or 10 years. and a rerun of that particular seat would happen. another thing that might get politics more real is requiring candidates to have lived in the constituency for at least 5 years before they can stand. that would ensure more local people get into parliament and would stop failed politicians from one seat that might fall or have fallen from being parachuted into a safer seat.
politics and politicians from all over the world are not held in very high esteem any more and that is not a good thing. We need more people with a local passion taking the national stage.

another problem in britain is we have so many parties it is almost impossible for one party to get a majority of country supporting them which is why the first past the post system is the best way to go, at least then, with 2 exceptions in the last 70 years we end up with a government with a mandate even if the majority may be small. Coalitions work in times of national emergency, the rest of the time they are not good in my view as politicians have to horse trade deeply( well perhaps not) held beliefs in order to cobble together a government and that can create some very strange bedfellows.
the thing about coalitions is no one ever votes for them so manifestos are not worth the paper they are written on, and I like to know what the party standing is going to try and do and they can be held responsible for doing it or not. Much harder to do under a coalition.

another radical solution might be primaries in each seat to whittle down the parties to 2 so at least each constituency reflects the majority view. if not the country as a whole.

I like fixed term parliaments as it does not allow governments to cut and run when it suits them and perhaps they can see bad times coming ahead. labour and tories have done that in their time. now they cant unless 2/3rds of mp's vote for it which is why it is unlikely that the tories will call a snap election as it will require 70 or so labour/snp or others to vote with them and surely labour would never be so stupid being 16 points behind today.

and something both the UK and america could benefit from is voter photo id, if a country like india with over a billion voters, most who earn a few dollars a day can do it, then surely it isn't impossible for a country like america or Britain to do it to ensure that voter fraud is, if not eliminated, reduced substantially.

Lord Independent Thoughts wrote:Agreed.
It's about time some of the Democrats wake up and begin to understand that playing cry-baby politics doesn't work anymore.  "He's mean and rude" was never a great campaign slogan.

But that is EXACTLY what the repubs did during Obamas presidency

First past the post is what causes so many issues in party politics!!!
it is a statically terrible way to measure representation forcing the choice of 2 major parties. (in a universe with millions of opinions and variables.
CASE IN POINT the last US election where both major parties nominated shit candidates. minor parties on both side had better candidates.

representative democracy sucks it in not needed anymore, we can move to a more direct democracy now, technology allows it.

The Devil, You Know wrote:

Ben Reilly wrote:I actually agree with that, too -- but our Republicans have been fighting campaign finance reform for literally decades.

It's another of many examples of sneaky Republican genius -- the party of big business sets up the system so that big business (rather than the electorate) picks the winner.

My preference would be to use our public media to air campaign promotional material with each candidate getting the same airtime.

that sounds exceedingly reasonable.
if its all about republican big business then where did clintons billion plus come from.

From sucking up to big business, of course! Like I said -- the pro-corporation party has rigged the system so that even the left over here are forced to suck up to big business in order to get elected.

You either get that, or you get crisis politics -- like the environment in which a black liberal named Barack Hussein Obama gets elected because the other party just nearly caused a global economic depression.

Of course, we could be in for another round of that shortly ...

veya_victaous wrote:First past the post is what causes so many issues in party politics!!!
it is a statically terrible way to measure representation forcing the choice of 2 major parties. (in a universe with millions of opinions and variables.
CASE IN POINT the last US election where both major parties nominated shit candidates. minor parties on both side had better candidates.

representative democracy sucks it in not needed anymore, we can move to a more direct democracy now, technology allows it.

it produces a government that govern in a system that has more than 2 parties.
coalitions means horse trading your beliefs away
they work in times of crisis but not really at other times.
how can you hold a party to account for not doing something if they couldn't do it because their partner was against it.

for all its faults it usually gets you a government that can govern.
PR or AV is not a way to govern and AV was quite rightly rejected in britain.
thankfully that ship has sailed here.

ensuring that constituencies are of similar sizes is a far better way to even things up.

Yeah the horse trading part is to accurately represent the political will of the people
Otherwise WHAT IS THE POINT of voting a party that is NOT one of the major 2?

And Only idiots Hold that against a party!
LIKE the idiots did down here, when Julia Gillard instituted a carbon tax because she need to horse trade with the Greens.
It has a government that governs without the majority will.

And GOOD politicians can still govern affectively, again Julia Gillard is the perfect example got through major educational (her policy) reform and Environmental reform(greens policy)

the problem is we allow such low standards of politician, like trump cause he 'says what he thinks' or some other dimwit reason that in no way qualifies one for the position of leader of a nation

veya_victaous wrote:Yeah the horse trading  part is to accurately represent the political will of the people
Otherwise WHAT IS THE POINT of voting a party that is NOT one of the major 2?

And Only idiots Hold that against a party!
LIKE the idiots did down here, when Julia Gillard instituted a carbon tax because she need to horse trade with the Greens.
It has a government that governs without the majority will.

And GOOD politicians can still govern affectively, again Julia Gillard is the perfect example got through major educational (her policy) reform and Environmental reform(greens policy)  

the problem is we allow such low standards of politician, like trump cause he 'says what he thinks' or some other dimwit reason that in no way qualifies one for the position of leader of a nation  

and what did they horse trade away that their manifestos promised they would do.

Gillard's campaign said No carbon tax ( so did the other major party)
Greens campaign said we need a carbon tax

Greens supported Gillard allowing her to govern as long as she made carbon tax.
she also had to trade (although not broken promises) with 2 rural independents that saw their electorate get first access to the national broadband network and some local issues addressed.

A lot more got done because we had a good negotiator and a hung parliament than if one party got in on 'first past the post' basis.