That's as clear an example of the difference between lived experience and an ideological position as one could want.

Actually, I've lived long enough to know who has already been shown to know better and I think I have a pretty good idea about who is likely to know better going forward. Hard to swallow, I'll admit, and somewhat humbling, but I can't look honestly at my own life and deny it. I doubt you can either.

The idea behind the philosophy is that nobody knows better than you which person or choice is the least bad.
Which is almost certainly not true. A vast number of people know far better than I what I ought to do about almost every aspect of my life. I'm pretty sure your life is no different.
To be sure, it is irksome to have to listen to people who know better than I what I ought to be doing in order to advance my own interests as I myself perceive them, and I might just prefer being allowed to go to Hell in my own way. But that is very different from the question of who knows best.

Let's not go down that road. Nobody would have anything to scream about.

Indeed, so let them come up with some small-government way to solve the problem. Unless not solving the problem is the real point and yelling "big government" is the cover -- as it so often is.

Since the medical information issue seems to be a sticking point, how about a system where the relevant agency, but not the parties, know who is who and when adopted kid needs medical information the agency gets it from biological parent and gives it to the adopted kid's doctor? As far as the parent and kid are concerned, everything goes into or comes out of a black box.

Disney?

I suspect that Democrats and Progressives would take that deal in a New York minute.

Nepotists is exactly what normal people are; they just can't get away with it in large, established institutions.

I know a fair number of purple-state districts that went for Obama went for Trump. But was that because John Smith changed his mind or because John Smith stayed home and Fred Jones, who never voted for Obama, showed up? Just how many actual human voters, as opposed to districts, changed?

About 2020, if we leave aside the very real possibility of a foreign policy clusterf**k that gets people behind the President, whoever he is and whatever he does, in which case all bets are off, here is what I see:
A. Past Facts
1. The Dems won the popular vote this time
2. A lot of Dems sat out or voted for 3d-parties
3. The EV turned on c. 80K votes in 3 purple states
4. Hillary had been the subject of vicious attacks for over 20 years
B. Likely Future Facts
1. Trump won't have accomplished much
2. His core voters won't care about (1)
3. But ordinary Republicans will be unenthusiastic because of (1) and will turn out somewhat less
4. Whoever the Dem candidate is, he or she won't have Hillary's 20 years of baggage
5. Long-term demographic trends continue to run in Dems' favor
6. The desperate desire to be rid of Trump will reduce defections to 3d parties and boost turnout

Am I missing something?

Enough of what I say is verifiable that you might want to consider believing me.

Today is Thursday
Donald Trump is President
The Cleveland Cavaliers have a small lead for best record in the NBA East
Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature
[Random batshit crazy assertion that I can't possibly know]

Eighty percent of what I say is verifiable. You ought to consider the rest.

In states that have elected judiciaries, it is generally regarded as unethical to promise to vote a certain way. I don't have strong views about the relative merits of electing or appointing judges, except to the extent that one method or the other increases my own chances, but there is something odd about electing judges when the candidates can't tell the voters anything they might want to base their votes on.

You make that sound like a bad thing.

Jemima still hasn't gotten over the breakup with Uncle Ben.

The people of the region had been betrayed and belittled, stabbed in the back, insulted, and lied to.

True, but they voted for him anyway.

From the numbers I'm aware of, we probably don't need Trump voters, but it would be nice to hive some off. The ones we want to hive off are the WWC voters who have, this time out, cut their noses off to spite their faces. Anyone who looked at who was supporting whom and what they were advocating as policy could tell that Trump would not operate in the actual interests -- as opposed to stoking the resentments -- of the WWC. It is, of course, too much to ask certain classes of voters to do that much thinking about their votes, so we need not so much "positive arguments," which we already have, but a way of getting the positive arguments through the fog of obviously phony promises and amped-up resentment. That's the part where nobody seems to have an answer.

many many people seem to misunderstand is that we can reach out to marginal Trump voters, rally non-voters and energize D’s all at the same time. Those things aren’t exclusive at all.

Nobody I know "misunderstand[s]" that. I do not mean to offend when I say that it is blindingly obvious that this is what ought to be done. What is not obvious is how one does that. And how, or whether, sparing the delicate feelings of the actual deplorables actually contributes to the project.

Not now, because they won. During the campaign, there was plenty of that.

Most of the people who voted Republican in 2016 were -- drum roll, please -- Republicans. It is now clear that most Republicans will vote for Bozo the Clown if he has an (R) after his name, because that is what they did. They would have voted for Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, or JEB! and nobody would be talking about how to reach out to Cruz, or Rubio, or JEB! voters because there is no way for Democrats to reach them other than by becoming Republicans. They deserve scorn for being willing to vote for someone as spectacularly unfit as Trump, even if they themselves are not racists, misogynists, and crooks, because they were willing to enable obvious racists, misogynists, and crooks. And there is no downside to that because they cannot be reached if we're nicer to them.
But what about the rest, the white working class voter that lives in a state that previously went for Obama and might, perhaps, have voted for him? (I'd really like to see numbers on people who actually voted for Obama in 2008 or 2012 and Trump in 2016, as opposed to extrapolations from statewide results. Did people switch or was this a "who showed up" phenomenon?)
What, specifically, do we do or say? Trump lied to them and told them he could bring back those manly, low-skill, high-paying manufacturing and extraction jobs that have been disappearing for 40 years and aren't coming back no matter what we do. I get that they may be desperate enough to fall for it, but the Republicans can lie about that better than we can so competing on that front is a non-starter. Maybe we can yell a bit louder about that portion of the Democratic message that interests the white working class so they don't think we care only about Those People. But we can't stop being the party that actually does care about Those People, and if that's a deal-breaker for the "reachable" Trump voter, then f**k off. And to the extent that they don't like us because we are what, sociologically and economically, we are, well, we can't do anything about that either, and if that's a deal-breaker for the "reachable" Trump voter, then, again, f**k off. It would be nice if we could find a salt-of-the-earth Rust Belter or Border Stater for a candidate in 2020, but that's not a long-term solution and it leaves the local dynamics largely unchained.
What, specifically, are we supposed to do, and why does anyone think it would work?

Thanks for the "who the f**k was he," but I still don't get why anyone cared. At least now we don't have to. His 15 minutes seem to be up.

I hadn't yet caught up with who the f**k this Milo person was or why anyone cared enough about him and what he had to say to try to get him banned from venues or to invite him to them in the first place. Now I won't have to, but just out of curiosity, who the f**k was he and why did anyone care?

Stephen or Frederick?

It's not that it bothers me; it's that I don't believe you. And I doubt that anyone else here does, either.

Are you under the impression that you have to "really pay attention" to see what is literally in front of your face if you watch the damn game, even if you don't care about it, or that there is some kind of virtue in pretending you don't notice what most people, who do notice, consider an obvious and innocuous fact?