Those celebrating east coast Democratic victories should not think that signifies too much. Maine Medicaid expansion was an excellent result. Four safe Republican House of Representatives seats stayed safe. Utah: Republican 57.6% Democrat 27.1% and NJ should have been a landslide but wasn't. If Roy Moore is defeated in Alabama that will be something. I think the moderate-progressive infighting is not helping, on both sides, and am torn by it. As an old fashioned liberal I keep close to my mind and heart all progressive principles and ideals but more than anything I want those monsters out, and quickly, as they do daily harm, much of which is not visible (local authorities, judges, etc.). While Donna Brazile goes on a triumphal book tour, the dirty laundry on the Dem side supports ongoing attacks and implies that you might as well have Trumpians as insider Democrats, which is simply not true.
I believe it's important for Democrats to celebrate this rare win, and for us to try to extract enough knowledge from it to assure future victories.
We seem to have elected Democrats of every stripe and persuasion, which may indicate that this was more a backlash against Trump, or the Republicans, than the sudden embrace of the democratic values we hold dear.
If this is so we shouldn't rest on our fresh bower of laurels, but get back to work and discover how we can improve our candidates and our party, to the point that we can win elections, even when our opponents are not shooting themselves in the foot at every opportunity.
In the excerpts from Brazile's book that I've read so far, the campaign that lost to Trump's high tech juggernaut seemed quite capable of losing again, with or without outside interference. Regardless of whether we believe that the Evil Russkies had a measurable effect on the outcome, we should act, going forward, as if it was actually a contest between ourselves and Trump's Republicans, and therefore a contest in which our actions will have an effect on the results.
Brazile speaks of unfair primaries, due in part to the DNC's squandering of donations on contract experts during off election years.
Is the DNC's spending out of control at this time?
Are we paying for consultants that we don't need, and can't afford?
We hired an outside firm to determine who leaked or hacked our computers. Why? The FBI typically handles this type of thing at no charge. If they're still under contract, fire them, hand over the hard drives to the FBI and let them do their job.
Once we have our spending under control we can again take control of whose donations we'll accept. Obama's DNC wouldn't allow lobbyist to donate. That would be a fitting start.
And for gods sake stay away from Donna's expert acupuncturists!
Terry