More low-traffic-hours afterthoughts (that I heartily endorse) from last weekends’ BernieCon:
People who remember when "liberal" was an epithet from the right who are furious that it's now used as an epithet by the left.
— Jeff Fecke (@jkfecke) June 10, 2017
The left is only able to argue for single-payer now because moderate Dems were able to start to regain power in the 1990s and 2000s.
— Jeff Fecke (@jkfecke) June 10, 2017
They voted knowing they would lose their jobs, and the thanks they get is the left attacking them for not getting to perfect.
— Jeff Fecke (@jkfecke) June 10, 2017
But if you set someone up as your enemy, and you keep attacking them, they will fight back. And with Trump, that's a fight we can't afford.
— Jeff Fecke (@jkfecke) June 10, 2017
Mike in DC
A good summary. Neoliberal has been thrown around so much as an epithet, it’s lost much of its original meaning.
People who refuse to formally join the party wanting to be able to determine the presidential nominee of the party are hubristic at a level nearing the current president.
Mnemosyne
@Mike in DC:
Contrary to what the trolls here will tell you, “neoliberal” doesn’t mean “new liberal.” The correct definition is more like “laissez-faire capitalist.”
This is what happens when idiots hear a word and assume they know what it means rather than looking up the definition before using it.
Mary G
I think more and more that Putin is funding BernieBros. The incoherence keeps increasing.
NotMax
File under: Diamonds often have a flaw.
B-J has a weird obsession with prattling on and on (and on) about Wilmer.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: With a special focus on privatizing things and general enclosure of the commons. Think Margaret Thatcher, not, you know, Hillary Clinton.
@NotMax: Evidence of anything as brilliant as a diamond, please?
Also, that’s like the people who say BJ has a weird obsession with Trump’s tweets, or why are we focusing on Russia when we should focus on Trumpcare, or why are we focusing on Trumpcare when we should focus on Russia. It’s in the news; it’s discussed here.
Temporarily Max McGee (Phase II)
@Mary G:
Is timeless strategy: The Bolsheviks must always go for the Mensheviks first.
Yoda Dog
@NotMax:This is just a rare space where bros don’t get to drop trow and take a dump on Hillary or the Democratic party with impunity.
marcion
I’m starting to reach a point where I feel like we’d all be better off if Hillary and Bernie were put on a rocket together and fired into the Sun.
(And, while I’m at it, Trump would get to watch the rocket take off from directly underneath…)
Amir Khalid
@Mary G:
I’ve concluded that BernieBros (“Bernistas” is my preferred term, though) are much more pro-Bernie than they were ever pro-gressive.
James Powell
While I agree with the general thrust of Fecke’s tweets – stop slamming the people who won elections & passed legislation – there are a few points he just wrong about. Democrats did not lose their seats because they voted for ACA; they lost their seats because the president was black and the people who vote in midterms lost their minds. It is also the case that several of the senators and congress-creatures who voted for ACA only did so after they put enough defects in it to make it more complicated and less popular.
That said, this Bernie thing isn’t going to go away unless and until some new leadership emerges. I’m kind of surprised we haven’t seen more of some people, but let’s wait & see.
Anne Laurie
@Mary G:
Why pay for what he can get free? A relatively small investment in trolls & bots before the election (all them, to quote, “American, like pie from apples”) seeded bits of untruth & phantasy to the dude-bros resentful of having to share “their” party with uppity women & people of color who didn’t know their place. The broflakes retreated ever further into their bunkers, telling each other stories about HRC’s pedophile pizza rituals and the miracle of how St. Bernie raised the DSA from the dead. The only question is whether the core of the True Believers devolve into “leftist” LaRouchies or go full Heavens Gate… and it won’t cost Vladimir a dime, either way.
TenguPhule
Can’t we all just agree that the Republicans are scum and behave accordingly?
Major Major Major Major
@James Powell: @Anne Laurie: I agree with this wholeheartedly. Look no further than what they did with brogressive hero Greenwald and The Intercept, from Snowden all the way to Reality Winner. The dumbass brogressives on my Facebook feed are only now, long after the damage has been irreparably done, coming to realize they’ve been conned for years.
@TenguPhule: I’m happy to, but evidently not.
Chet Murthy
I’ve been reading that our Dem senators are planning on allowing unanimous consent to Senate motions, in the runup to voting on the AHCA. The argument I’ve read is that this is in trade for a few things:
(1) strengthened Russia sanctions bill
(2) consent to various testimony (e.g. Sessions in open session)
maybe other things.
Why do I feel like the Dems are Charlie Brown, and Lucy is the Rs, holding the football?
Is there any good reason for this? Is there any good reason why we shouldn’t be hollering at our Dem Senators to hold the line, no consent, no nuthin’? I’m willing to entertain decent arguments, really I am.
Tim Pardo
@TenguPhule: too true. The problem isn’t the ACA, isn’t a black president, isn’t third way, blue dog, bayh-manchin spectrum opportunists. Republicans are scum, and democrats aren’t offering an alternative. It’s not enough to be “not them” we gotta be for some shit. Fight for $15, Medicare for All, enhanced SSI benefits. Stuff it down every gaping grifter maw for the next 2 years and tell me we can’t win some races. “They are fucking you, here’s how we make it better”. Gillibrands already running on it.
Major Major Major Major
@Chet Murthy: The only argument I can think of is that they would know better than us whether that’s the sort of trade-off that would actually accomplish anything. The chamber is traditionally a place of horse-trading, maybe there’s still a little of that left.
Maybe not.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major: Well if the BTL people here could just stop slagging off on Bernie Sanders without provocation at every opportunity and ignore the obvious fight cues being flung by people who may or may not actually be Sanders supporters, I suppose that might help.
It really has gotten out of hand, I’ve seen people here building on shit Huckabee-Sanders is spouting and mistaking it for him, And when corrected just saying “but he would have said something like that anyway.”
I can’t believe I’m the one saying this, but can we just focus on the utter destruction of the Republican party, then argue doctrine at some point where doing so will not risk the end of the world as we know it?
Van Lingle Mungo
@Anne Laurie:
Would not surprise me at all. It’s pretty easy to create some twitter bot’s pushing a radical leftist agenda (universal health care, $15 minimum wage, etc.) get a bunch of re-tweets from other bots to convince a bunch of naive wet-behind-the-ears millennials that anyone who doesn’t push for the idea isn’t a real progressive. Vlad knows that white people are too racist to ever support crap like that and that supporting it will weaken the Democratic party, the only party which might actually oppose him.
TenguPhule
@Chet Murthy:
Well, the obvious problem is we can’t get all of them to cooperate. Our southern Democratic reps tend to be fair weather vanes when it comes to things which impact their local interests. We can holler and we should, but they know they’re the ones best able to hold their seats, so the power imbalance is in their favor.
In order to get them into compliance would require A) credible primary challengers or B) incriminating evidence to blackmail them
I’ll let someone else figure out which one would be easier.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: BTL?
Yes, there is bad behavior on both sides, but one is still worse. If side A offers up minor provocations and mutters nasty things occasionally, which they do, and side B responds with the rhetorical equivalent of a carpet-bombing, it’s hard to blame side A for starting it. Now, I realize you’re supposed to let toddlers throwing tantrums tire themselves out, and lots of people poke the trolls, but that’s hardly behavior limited to this blog, nor is the conversation required reading.
Chet Murthy
@TenguPhule: The argument I’ve read is, McConnell can just change the rules to eliminate unanimous consent. But until he does, it doesn’t take “our southern Dem reps” growing a spine. It takes our blue-state Sens growing one. I’m talkin’ Harris, Warren, Murray, etc.
And sure, let’s suppose McConnell does blow up unanimous consent. Well, that’ll be another stick to beat the Rs with in 2018. And I’ve read that it’s critical to get the vote delayed until after the August recess (to force R Sens to go home and defend the bill, to allow time for the bill to be actually read and understood by constituents & journalists).
I’m just unsure that trading the chance to stop the AHCA, for hearings and Russia sanctions, is a good trade. B/c those hearings will amount to diddly-squat, and we all know it. All the really incriminating stuff is classified. Won’t be any impeachment with these Rs in control. It’s up to Mueller to bring in the indictments. So I don’t see the point of giving up the AHCA, really I don’t.
patrick II
@Mnemosyne:
My own definition is that neo-liberals acknowledge (unlike a “laissez-faire capitalist” would) that the government has obligations to serve the common good, but most of those obligations are best achieved by using the free market. Many things that were once done by government agencies are now contracted out to private industry because it is “more efficient”. That often isn’t true (for instance, see Obamacare private contractor rollout of ACA software). Or the ACA itself.
Eljai
@Chet Murthy: I hope Senate Democrats aren’t considering this route. Indivisible was talking about how Senators should just withhold consent. I also read an article over at Dkos earlier today on delay tactics that Democrats can implement. Apparently, even though republicans are trying to operate in secret, they’re still obligated to open up the process for amendments. Thus, Democrats could delay by offering up amendment after amendment, no matter how far-fetched.
Kathleen
@TenguPhule: It’s also important to focus on those who are determined to destroy the Democratic party, which, whether you like it or not, is one of the few institutions left with the will or the smarts and the will to actually govern. Bernie talks like a Republican and is every bit an enemy as Trump and the Rethugs. If you don’t like your hero “slagged” don’t read the comments.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
Below the Line of the post.
I got no dog in the Hillary/Sanders fight. So I’m looking from the outside in. There’s been lots of legitimate criticism of Sanders here and that’s fine. But I’ve been noticing a nasty turn to it lately, now its Russia/Sanders, Russia/Bernie-bros. Absent some legitimate proof, its the same kind of “questions need to be raised” shit that was being decried against Clinton. Yes, the pro-Sanders supporters tend to be behaving badly, but that doesn’t make all of their points wrong.
Unless someone like Adam is willing to put forth something credible linking Sanders and his campaign to Russia, I’ll consider them idiots at worst but not traitors.
TenguPhule
@Kathleen:
And this attitude is part of the problem.
We have too many enemies as it is, we don’t need more.
Kathleen
@TenguPhule: @TenguPhule: Bernie made himself the enemy. He’s a tool of the right (who also funded him by the way). When you’re fighting for your life you’d damn well better know who all of your enemies are.
NR
@Kathleen:
Bernie Sanders last weekend:
Yeah, he sounds just like a Republican.
It’s sad how you people have come to believe your own bullshit.
TenguPhule
@Chet Murthy:
They may be counting on the final AHCA vote getting delayed by something more pressing, the upcoming debt ceiling vote which is next month.
And that is literally do or die.
But I could be wrong. McConnell seems to be trying to force the AHCA vote through ASAP, but because they’ve kept the details under wraps its impossible to say whether or not they’re making enough changes to the House version that would require a second vote in the House.
Without more information its just all speculation from our side.
I agree in principle that they need to fight it across the board on a united front, but the Senate Rules are currently CalvinBall, they only mean what McConnell wants them to mean now.
TenguPhule
@Kathleen: He’s a vote we need in the Senate. If FDR can deal with Stalin, hold your nose and deal with Sanders as an ally until and unless he becomes unnecessary.
EBT
@NR: You voted for deadbeat donnie, go fuck off.
NR
@EBT: Once again, you are a liar. And becoming very tiresome.
Kathleen
@TenguPhule: Speaking of our friends from Bernie CouldaWouldaStock, tweet from David Atkins (since deleted):
Yoda Dog
@NR: If you’re tired, then by all means, go the fuck to sleep.
gene108
@TenguPhule:
The problem Democrats face is people are not sure what they stand for and what they are willing to fight for.
We need a clear concise doctrine. It would make a big difference.
@TenguPhule:
What worries me is there is so much bad blood from the primaries that is just lurking under the surface because of Trump that it will have to spill over at some point.
@Kathleen:
I don’t think Bernie talks like a Republican, but he did a lot of damage at the end of the primaries in pushing a “Hillary is corrupt theme”. And he does not seem to understand, whether intentionally or not, the damage he did.
The problem is a lot of Bernie supporters are young, do not remember the 1990’s, and fell for a lot of the smears that originated from right-wing fever swamps.
Whatever flaws the Clintons may have, they have never abused the power of their offices for personal gain.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
With the FBI investigating Sanders’ wife for bank fraud; with Sanders still mysteriously hiding his tax returns and finances, he’s never been more weak and unelectable.
Surely with socialism being the wave of the future, with socialism’s inextricable march towards history, there must be some untainted socialist capable of seizing the mantle of socialism.
Perhaps not.
Sad!
TenguPhule
@gene108:
I’d like to think “We fight for Constitutional Rights” would be something simple enough we could all agree on.
I mean, with all the shit we already have to eat from the Manchins of the party, you’d think we’d be used to Sander by now.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@TenguPhule:
Any changes in the House bill(including, but not limited to changes in punctuation) would require a revote in the House.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NR:
Pot meet Kettle.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@gene108:
Their current financial situation aside, they actually were broke when they left the White House. Now, being the Bill was an ex-President that was a short term problem.
Betty Cracker
I am hopeful that Sanders won’t run in 2020 since he’ll be pushing 80 and that, with perspective and a fresh slate of presidential candidates, Democrats will move past the tiresome and destructive primary pie fight. What interests me now is how the Sanders supporters who are in the DNC and part of the rules-making committee are proposing to change how primaries operate and whether they prevail.
FTR, the Sanders backers in the DNC won many policy fights, though some don’t seem inclined to take “yes” for an answer. I agree with them on some issues, like making a $15 minimum wage part of the platform. But rumor has it they are attempting to change the way delegates are selected: For states that run closed primaries, a post-primary caucus would determine how delegates are selected rather than the primary results.
I’m against such a change. The states control primary operations, not the parties. And caucuses are the least democratic form of choosing candidates or delegates since most people cannot participate. These negotiations are allegedly taking place in a DNC committee, but it’s a closed process, so the rest of us don’t get to weigh in for now.
IMO, issues like this and ongoing policy changes are the only 2016 primary artifacts worth discussing because they are future-focused. Re-litigating the primary and arguing counterfactuals is a waste of time.
TenguPhule
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Calvinball, remember.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Betty Cracker:
Talk about “rigging” the system.
Yoda Dog
@TenguPhule: We’re not at calvinball just yet. Bill is correct, they would have to revote.
Betty Cracker
For the “Whoa If True” file:
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Under the current rules, a skinny black guy with a funny mooslim name (that nobody had ever heard of) broke the color barrier and beat 6 Senators, 2 Governors, a Congressman, and a former First Lady.
Sore loser Sanders still sulking over losing to a girl.
Applejinx
@marcion: As much as I like my Vermont Senator, I would totally accept this.
Aimai
@TenguPhule: how can st bernie be an enemy? He means so well. Oh thats right, he is not a democrat and a attacks the party on a frequent basis thus making it hard for effective resistance to trump.
JGabriel
*Sigh*
I’m so old, I remember when Republicans were salivating at the prospect of using his ties with Russia against Sanders.
TenguPhule
@Aimai: Sanders is a vote we need in the Senate. Until and unless this changes, attacking him openly is friendly fire.He’s opposing Trump too and we have too many wavering shits like Manchin who are ACTUAL Democrats to throw too many stones at Sanders who at least is saying some of the right things.
Betty Cracker
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: That approach would make the primaries held in states like mine a meaningless beauty pageant and make it possible for a relative handful to overturn the votes of millions of people. It’s not like the Democratic Party of Florida has the option to switch to an open primary even if we wanted to; the Republican-controlled statehouse makes those rules.
TenguPhule
@Yoda Dog: And if it doesn’t, Calvinball is the offical rulebook of the Senate & House.
Aimai
@NR: you are spamming this quote in every thread wilmers name comes up. its not relevant to a discussion of how he is actively kneecapping the democratic party.
Aimai
@TenguPhule: blog comments are not war. No actual opposition to trump will be affected by personal attacks. You don’t see elizabeth warren saying she will take her ball and go home because she isn’t treated right. Why do you accept this prima donna act from bernie? Why do you think its a defense of him? You are basically ceding the point that Bernie’s ego and need to harm democrats is stronger than his antipathy to Trumps policies.
raven
So people wanted to freak the fuck out because Joe and Mika backed off a bit yesterday. That ship sailed.
Baud
@TenguPhule: Sanders isn’t about to start voting with the GOP. That’s silly.
Baud
@raven: Thank God!
Baud
@Betty Cracker: I’m afraid were moving in the wrong direction on primary reform.
Manyakitty
@Amir Khalid: Yes! I shall spread that far and wide, too.
Manyakitty
@Anne Laurie: Hey, if they go full Heaven’s Gate, at least they’re out of the way.
AnonPhenom
Must be coming on July Cause it’s Marching Season @ Balloon Juice!
Long after the 2 old farts who ran in the Democratic Primary of 2016 are dead you people will be the death of us..
Manyakitty
@TenguPhule: I view them as useful idiots more than obvious traitors. They fell victim to Clinton Derangement Syndrome, and the rest was history. Now Bernie is representing the Democrats by crapping on the entire party, and that’s inappropriate. He can focus on unity and solving some of the obvious problems with message, etc., but what he’s doing now is NOT COOL.
Kay
@Mike in DC:
It’s just weird to have a whole convention focused on bottom-up politics and the only thing that comes out of it is re-doing the primary and delegate rules for the Presidential race.
I did volunteer legal work one summer for this local group that was vaguely Bernista – Bernista before Bernie. They were environmentalists. Are. They’re still around. They were Kucinich Democrats and angry conservatives who are liberal on the environment and pain in the ass, impossible-to-work-with libertarians. Libertarians were interested in the issue because pollution affects private property. Devalues their property. They were fighting against mega-farms which is very hard to do because all of the laws have been changed to protect mega-farms. I didn’t help that much- I did a lot but didn’t accomplish a whole lot, I should say, but I did end up respecting them because they really focused on that one local issue and they won. The mega farm (it was an egg production facility) decided we were too much trouble and dropped plans to open here.
If the Democratic Party really is this iron fist at the Presidential level, why not go under them instead of over them?
Starfish
@TenguPhule: I am on your team. There were not that many Bernie dead-enders to still be fighting them. A lot of people who voted for him then went and voted for Hillary. There were some who voted for Jill Stein or Donald Trump, but those numbers were fairly small. And the people voting for Stein or Trump were not really Democrats.
Kay
So, and this is based on a single lunch so maybe it isn’t broadly true, if one of the liberal issues is fracking that would be a good local issue. I sat with a group of Bernistas at a Sherrod Brown event and all they talked about was fracking. That’s “hot” here because we have a lot of pipeline being laid and there was just a big local lawsuit that went to trial – the private property owners who were anti-pipeline lost. You could maybe elect a liberal county commissioner here on anti-gas pipeline. Maybe. Possibly.
Baud
@Starfish: Even fewer anti-Bernie people, so by that logic, they should be free to do what they want.
@Kay: The difficulty is that there is a plethora of issues where the coalition breaks apart as soon as the solution involves supporting a Democrat.
Betty Cracker
@Kay:
QFT. It’s almost as if that whole “bottom-up” thing was a rhetorical device. Anyhoo, reacting to actual changes in the party I belong to is the only dog I have left in this hunt. Bernie’s gonna Bernie — always has, always will. He’s not going to be a team player rhetorically (though he almost always is as a senator) because his whole shtick is “angry outsider.”
different-church-lady
I just wish that if front pagers and commenters are going to bait Sanders people, they’d at least own it.
I see a lot of nonsensical defenses of Sanders, but I don’t see a lot of people blundering in and turning the conversation towards him.
Hang out a bat light, draw bats. You’re not a victim.
Baud
@different-church-lady: AL does post these things in the middle of the night.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker:
Holy shit, really? This is a disaster in the making for 2020. How is it going to look when the primary vote in NY, PA and Florida is literally nullified in favor of a sabotage candidate put in by Republicans gaming the caucuses? They could give the Democratic delegates’ votes to Trump if they wanted to.
How is opening the process to non-party members more democratic than actually having a primary instead of a caucus?
Jinchi
Dems lost power in the 1990s and 2000s. And it’s “moderate Dems” who use the word “liberal” as an epithet.
Baud
@Jinchi: He’s talking about Clinton, Obama, and 2006-10 Congress. You know that.
Jinchi
@Baud: No, he’s claiming that we’re arguing for single payer now thanks to moderate Dems, which is BS. Liberals have been talking about single payer for the last 70 years.
Baud
@Jinchi: That’s true. I read his comment to mean it was a more viable argument now because of the gains we’ve made. But it’s not a new argument.
Kay
@Baud:
I don’t care that much. I don’t want to pretend I’m earnestly advising them. I was just internet-commenting :)
As a Democrat, a member of the Party, I would say though that if The Democratic Party is so weak that this Bernista faction destroys it then it probably didn’t deserve to survive. The Party went into the 2016 election very weak in rustbelt states. They should have know that because they were losing governor’s races in states like Illinois. They have to decide if they plan on competing in these states or if instead they plan on expanding the map by adding western or southern states. They can’t get to 270 without MI, WI and PA. They have to add something.
Baud
@Kay:
I don’t know about deserve. The Dem party is weak because nearly half the voters are GOP, so we can’t afford even small schisms, whether it be by the Bernie people or by moderate white suburbanites. But there’s only so much we can do to preserve unity. Whatever will be will be.
Raven Onthill
“The buzz today from Senate Ds offices is there is no chatter of withholding consent over AHCA, contra demands of @IndivisibleTeam/@MoveOn” – Jeff Stein of Vox, yesterday He goes on; read the whole thing. The “center-left” Dems that are being defended here are talking about caving, letting their own achievement be gutted, apparently because they are unwilling to put up a fight.
Now, they may be pushed into fighting, but right now it doesn’t look good; this is exactly how the Supreme Court was lost.
What is being saved here, beyond the wallets and comfortable positions of the
lords, er, Senators?Kay
@Baud:
Also, for the record, Bernie’s full of shit with his “I have no use for consultants”. He ran a VERY conventional campaign. He raised money from small donors but he spent it the same way everyone spends it. If he wants to claim “revolution” he can’t be shoveling money to the same people and entities everyone else shovels money to.
Kay
@Baud:
Raven will deny it, but I think Georgia is do-able. Missouri used to be a swing state. Now it’s not. They either have to regain ground or gain ground somewhere new.
Jinchi
@Baud: Universal healthcare in the U.S. has been a liberal agenda item, advocated by Senators like Ted Kennedy, who worked tirelessly for it. “Moderates” didn’t want to take up healthcare at all. It was “moderate” Joe Lieberman who killed the public option – the closest thing to single payer in the ACA. After Kennedy died and his seat was lost to Scott Brown, many moderates were pushing for Obama to drop the bill entirely for the ridiculous reason that there were only 59 Democratic Senators remaining.
So it’s a bit much to claim moderate Dems deserve full credit for that bill, never mind the idea of single-payer, which they’ve explicitly opposed. The reason we’re talking about single-payer today is that Republicans are getting ready to blow up Obamacare.
Baud
@Jinchi:
I didn’t say that. But Obamacare laid the groundwork for further progress to be viable, and the entire team, including moderates, was responsible for getting us to a point where we could enact Obamacare. And the people who win in swing and red districts, when we do win, are moderates.
Baud
@Kay: I hope so. I don’t know .
Jinchi
@Baud:
No. Jeff Fecke did in the tweet cited at the top.
I give credit to the Democrats, most particularly Obama, for passage of the health care bill. But that includes liberals who accepted a deal that wasn’t as good as what they hoped for, as much as it included moderates who stepped up when Obamacare came up for a vote.
tybee
@TenguPhule:
and him openly attacking the democratic party isn’t?
Baud
@Jinchi: Agreed. Unfortunately, we need moderates and progressives to work together because neither is popular enough on their own to win. So IMHO viewing moderates as people who are hindering progress is counterproductive.
different-church-lady
@tybee: Remember: when Hillary criticizes the party, she’s “shitting on all the people who worked their asses off for her.” But when Bernie criticizes the party, he’s leading a REVOLUTION!
Matt McIrvin
@Jinchi: You didn’t see the whole Jacobin issue entitled “Up from Liberalism”?
Jinchi
@Baud:
Actually, that’s not really true. You wouldn’t get swings from Barack Obama plus 60 Democratic Senators and 257 Representatives, to Donald Trump with 52 Republican Senators and 241 Representatives over 8 years, if that were true. The reason the numbers swing like this is that voter identification is fluid.
When given a choice between the 2 parties, we make one of three choices: vote Republican, vote Democratic or don’t vote. 40% of the population typically choose that 3rd option. The Democratic party is weak when the people choosing option 3 are Democratic leaning voters. It’s their job to inspire people who don’t necessarily give a damn about the party and have never heard of a BernieBro or a HillaryBot. That means Democrats need to have a distinct message. The only real question being debated is, What will the party stand for?
Baud
@Jinchi: The number of nonvoters is pretty stable over the long run. We really can’t run long term on inspiration alone. We need to build up our base of committed voters.
Zach
Dems should radically revamp their primary to be held on at most 3 days. Iowa and NH same day because otherwise people will throw a fit. A rotating collection of 5-10 diverse states two weeks later. All wrapped up in the Spring. Trump is already running a national campaign and this year’s GOP contest was unusually combative compared to typical coronation while Dem primaries are toxic and mutually self destructive as a rule.
3 primaries of progressively increasing size is enough to weed out those who can’t organize quickly and who have a popular appeal that doesn’t withstand scrutiny (see Wesley Clark, Fred Thompson, etc). Anything beyond that just sows sour grapes.
The only loser in this plan is the horse race political media. Good riddance.
Edit: Also get rid of superdelegates; never mean anything in practice and gives meaning to endorsements from people who haven’t done anything to deserve that power any time recently.
Jinchi
@Baud:
The number of non-voters may seem stable. But the people making up the non-voters is not.
Baud
@Jinchi: But no one disputes that we need to get more consistent turn out. No one knows how to achieve that, however. Talking about “inspiration” is kind of hollow if no one knows what will inspire a net gain of voters.
Betty Cracker
@Jinchi: I don’t disagree with folks who want to craft a stronger message. However, let’s not forget the role of voter suppression in all of this, nor the fact that the Democrat who was vilified for 25 years as a murderous communist from one side and a corporate sellout from the other still managed to win the popular vote by 3 million or so.
Matt
Shorter “center left”: if you hippies don’t STFU we’re going to go back to being Republicans.
Also hilarious since the “center left” has been punching left and hugging right for its entire existence. WE DO INDEED FIGHT BACK MOTHERFUCKERS.
Betty Cracker
@Matt: And the contradictions will be oh so heightened! Fucking moron.
mapaghimagsik
@James Powell: The moment any leader is given kudos, there is the inevitable purist who screams they are part of the party machine. There is only one leader, it seems, and that leader is perfect.
LongHairedWeirdo
@James Powell: I’d say there was another huge reason why they lost their seats. The Republicans were able to dive into a void of anxiety and anger and fan the anger into flames. I never saw the Democrats even try to fight back, or counter with a message of their own.
And one of the reasons for this is that they’ve never even tried to forge any lasting messages. Mind you, Republicans already stole many of the good messages. They’ve been pretending to be good economic stewards for so long, they don’t even have to *try* any more.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Baud: @Baud: “The difficulty is that there is a plethora of issues where the coalition breaks apart as soon as the solution involves supporting a Democrat.”
I’m helping to put together a summit of all the progressive orgs in the area and during our meeting discussing the logistics one guy mentioned the issue of whether we should include local Dem Clubs because “there’s alot of people who are hesitant to do anything officially connected with the Democratic Party.” Let that sink in. At a summit featuring: Planned Plarenthood, ACLU, Sierra Club, Indivisibles, NDLON (day laborers), Unite Here! (unions) etc., people are suggesting the Dem Party NOT be there. It’s madness. This is supposed to be a summit for us to band together and figure out how to better GET THINGS DONE. Things that frankly, the Democratic Party is the only logical force big enough in a position to accomplish.
At just about every one of our Indivisible meetings (which I sorta lead) we have a Bernista show up. They are always white and usually men. They come in and listen to us talk about all the stuff we are doing on local Sanctuary ordinances, swinging sister districts, registering voters, police reform etc., and are confounded when they find out that nobody’s working on “The Real Problem” which is obviously the perfidiousness of the Democratic Party. Usually they sit through the meeting but never come back after we explain that that’s not really our focus and we won’t indulge in bickering about the DNC or conspiracy theories. We have had a new version of one of these people show up at EVERY meeting. On the flip side, guess how many people have demanded that we discuss the problem that Wilmer and his supporters are presenting for the advance of progressive goals and fighting Trump? NOT. EVEN. ONE. I’m so tired of the Both-Sides! narrative of this issue that ignores the fact that the division is being pushed largely by one side.
These dead-end Wilmerites and people who are anti-Dem more than they are anti-GOP, are a real problem. They are wasting our valuable time and continuing a narrative that is toxic to real progressive advances: that the Democrats are the enemy and that their achievements like say, expanding healthcare access to 20 Million Americans and saving the US and world economy via stimulus, were somehow not progressive because the ponies were the wrong color.
DHD
From the outside, it seems like the problem is that the US has never, in recent memory at least, ever had a “centre” party of the likes of the Liberal Party of Canada or the UK Liberal Democrats. This function used to be taken up by the “moderates” in both parties, but in the Republican Party those people no longer exist. And yet, you’re stuck with 40% of the population or so who would vote for a pig, or even Donald Trump, if you stuck an elephant pin on its lapel. So, because your electoral system is broken on a level that makes the British parliamentary system look positively functional (it’s not), the Democratic Party has to simultaneously occupy two roles at once, being the “sensible” party of bland centrists who can be counted on not to do anything outrageous (like restrain the power of corporations), and the “people’s” party, advocating for things that exist nowhere else in the developed world (like single-payer health care with no co-pays or deductibles that covers everything people currently get from their employer plans… good luck with that, California).
The Republicans managed to pull off a similar feat for a pretty long time, mashing together what would be called “liberals” in the rest of the Free World (i.e. Thatcherites) with racists and theocrats, so I don’t think it’s impossible. Particularly since the left wing of the Democratic Party doesn’t believe that their platform comes directly from the Bible, unlike the Republicans.
Mnemosyne
@Jinchi:
As Betty already pointed out, a big reason for those swings is race-based voter suppression. Wisconsin has one of the most restrictive voter ID laws in the country, and one of their Republican state representatives bragged in April of 2016 that they had rigged things to guarantee that WI would go to the Republican. Michigan and Ohio also have strict voter ID laws, and though Pennsylvania’s law is still making its way through the courts, there were reports on Election Day of people being turned away at the polls for not having the “right” ID.
We aren’t going to win elections if the Democratic base isn’t allowed to vote. Period.
Mnemosyne
@Uncle Ebeneezer:
Quoted. For. Truth.
Matt McIrvin
@DHD: It was really a coalition of racists, racist theocrats, racist Thatcherites and racist libertarians. That’s why it’s held together for so long despite serious internal disagreements: they’ve got one thing they can basically all buy into, though for some it’s euphemistically-expressed subtext and for some it’s text.
With the Democrats, to get a viable electoral majority we have to have a coalition of racists and anti-racists, which is rarely possible.
Long-term, time is probably on the anti-racist side. But in the long term we are all dead.
different-church-lady
@Matt: You kids take the fighting outside. I just cleaned the living room.
different-church-lady
@Zach: If the GOP had superdelegates Trump probably would not be president right now.
Mike in DC
Trading unanimous consent for a floor vote on Russia sanctions was a good call, in my opinion. Withholding consent won’t stop a bill from being passed, it just slows things down. It was the only bargaining chip they had, and they used it about as well as could be expected.
TenguPhule
@Aimai:
I’m not, I’m saying that the legitimate criticism of Sanders is turning into something else. Something festering and nasty and which has been called out repeatedly when it happened to Hillary Clinton.
The same “guilt by implication” that the right was throwing at her, commenters here are throwing at Sanders. Its a blind spot that needs to be recognized and addressed, because its weak point that reflects similar attitudes across the country that Republicans can and will exploit if they can.
TenguPhule
@Baud: Not voting for the Republicans does not always translate as voting with Democrats. Again, at some point we will need him to vote with the Ds and until that changes its not wise to waste limited resources against him.
TenguPhule
@tybee: There are plenty of ways to attack him without leaving obvious fingerprints on the hilt.
WVm
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Are any of the people elected to federal electoral positions clean? I guess some of them are… but do they have the ambition to go with their clear souls?