Democrats still don't get it

Once again Democrats were sure they could win elections by just being "against Trump". Once again, in both Georgia and South Carolina, they lost despite pouring vast amounts of money and star power into the races.  Once again the liberal media pundits are trying their best to spin the losses as somehow at least a moral victory (they didn't lose by as much as might be expected) , and once again they simply look foolish and partisan and out of touch trying to do that.

Democrats still don't get it. Tons of outside money alone doesn't win elections. Appearances by Hollywood stars doesn't win elections.  Identity politics doesn't win elections. Just being against Trump won't win elections. It takes a positive message that resonates with voters, and Democrats have yet to fashion such a message.  Their old message - promising the government will do everything for us - no longer works. They badly need a new message.

There is plenty of opportunity for fashioning a new message. There are plenty of big issues - like the impact of automation on jobs or the growing national debt or the growing influence of corporations in politics - that would give them material to fashion a message that could appeal to voters. But they have to get real and realize that what they have been doing and the message they have been selling just doesn't work for enough voters, and they need to rethink their approach.

Unfortunately what I have seen to date from Democrats is just ineffectual and rather childish  thrashing about and venting of emotions.  I have yet to see any serious tactical or strategic thinking or planning. Democrats seem to think that if they can just unseat Trump by impeachment on one charge or another, they will be back in power. Of course if they actually succeed in that - in unseating a legally elected president with partisan attacks - they will have set a precedent and truly poisoned American politics and any president they manage to elect in the future will be subject to the same destructive attacks.

I've said before that US politics works best when there are two healthy parties keeping each other in line and acting as a check on each other. We badly need a viable, sensible, opposition party to the current Republican party in power, and the Democratic party, riven by conflict between the center and the populist extreme left, led by aging and out-of-touch leaders, driven by the most extreme members of its base, still wedded to an out-of-date ideology, is simply not the effective opposition party we need.