Democratic (Party) Direction

wait you guys were basing this off a transcription including a letter salad exclamation that usually indicates someone's being sarcastic or joking?

actually idk why I am caring, CARRY ON WITH OTHER TOPICS

Or incoherent rage, which is what I was taking it as, in context.

incredible discussion. how do you guys do this all the time?

a bunch of xps: I do think there's a sort of unresolved question about what role political parties and their official, semi-official and unofficial organs should play in their own primaries. Our election system means most contests wind up two-way battles between the chosen candidates of the two major parties, so the parties have a sort of de facto control over ballot access in most races (given that third parties are rarely going to be viable in a first-past-the-post system). Should the party ever put its thumb on the scale in any way? Should it function as any kind of gatekeeper at all? Of course one potential way to sidestep these questions is just to build organizational strength and use it to jockey for the democratic ballot line, as WFP has done, as DSA is starting to do, as PCCC does, etc.

It's also hard to separate the questions of "is this democratic" vs "do I like this" vs "is this good strategy."

Should it function as any kind of gatekeeper at all?

In politics, having the power to influence or control some part of the process is a guarantee that such power will be used. Whether or not it should be used will not affect its use.

this is a guy who (oddly enough) gets paid to work for a Kushner owned health care startup

sorry what? you're talking about tim faust here?

uhhh pic.twitter.com/7sMDOr18nW

— fully automated luxury climate change (@littlecuckball) January 4, 2018

i know people who work for oscar. someone seth abramson me next.

So basically he works for a company co-founded by Jared Kushner's brother, which he has worked for since well before Trump ran for president.

BTW not to defend the Kushners who are kind of gross, but they are democrats.

Yeah no I don’t think the “having a job” part is the questionable thing here as much as the “Insurance companies are bad except for this one I’m seemingly doing PR for” thing. He addressed the concerns in a long reddit post, seems like he’ll be fine.

glad we sorted out whether or not this person who is not running for office has a job or not

You know what's a good gotcha? Screenshotting the post where someone admits where they work (and thus how that could be construed or sway their opinion).

he's just going about it all wrong. the right way to do PR for the insurance industry is by supporting the ACA.

If the Democratic party direction is guys like this golem, lock thread forever

I have officially announced my candidacy for the @MinnesotaDFL.

Contribute below to help me fight corruption in Washington.

But remember, no PACs, no SuperPACs, no foreign agents!https://t.co/T6k9kUF7eB

— Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) April 30, 2018

Idk the literal Prague golem would be a good candidate

Appropriate that his campaign logo appears to have been made in MS Paint

Richard W. Painter

http://d13ezvd6yrslxm.cloudfront.net/wp/wp-content/images/Chris-Cooper-Muppets.jpg

Nixon's got plans for housing, incl.

In 2019, New York’s rent regulation laws are set to expire. While we do not need to wait for them to expire in order to fix them, this offers an opportunity to stop the rapid loss of affordable apartments in New York City and the surrounding areas by working with the State legislature to close five major loopholes that drive rent increases and tenant harassment. Cynthia will work with lawmakers to:

- End the vacancy decontrol loophole that eliminates tenant protections and destabilizes apartments once rent reaches $2733, as described above.
- End the vacancy bonus loophole that awards landlords up to a 20% increase in rent each time an apartment is vacated. Far too many landlords evict tenants in rapid succession abusing this loophole to drive up rents and eventually take the apartment out of rent stabilization altogether.
- End the preferential rent loophole that allows landlords to lure tenants into leases at one price, which is supposedly lower than the stabilized rent, and then dramatically increase the rent overnight. 250,000 New Yorkers households have a preferential rent and are unable to benefit from the security that rent stabilization brings. Cynthia will protect these families by preventing these landlords from raising the rent as they see fit, and instead requiring them to base all future rent increases on the current amount the tenant pays.
- Finally, Cynthia will work with the legislature to revisit the rent increases that landlords are allowed for making apartment and building-wide renovations. These loopholes, known as individual apartment improvements and major capital improvements, are riddled with exaggerated costs and lead to widespread loss of affordability. Cynthia supports making these increases temporary to both allow landlords to make repairs but also to prevent tenants from shouldering an undue and sudden rent burden. Cynthia will also will work to change the way the state housing agency reviews the extent and quality of claimed renovations before approving these kinds of adjustments.

https://cynthiafornewyork.com/issue/rent-justice-for-all/

good piece: https://www.nbcnews.com/think

ooops: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/liberals-must-accept-beating-trump-was-never-going-be-easy-ncna871056

lame

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Obama-endorses-Feinstein-as-she-looks-to-fend-12888834.php

Michael Tomasky had a good piece in Wednesday NYT about the Dems turning themselves into a coastal urban party. Clinton won 487 of the 3100 counties in the country.

yeah, the ones where people live

^urban latte-lovin' elitist

I don’t think I’m an elitist but the other two can’t be denied

here

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/opinion/the-democrats-real-diversity-problem.html

that is not a good piece

tbf the NYT opinion page generally a cesspool of poorly thought out attempts at attention-grabbing handwringing

it's not a point without merit (local and state politics matters), but to argue it without mentioning the popular vote (which clinton won) and the electoral college is, at best, bad faith.

Tomasky leads with something that is very debatable (Crowley is not "perched to succeed" gimme a break), then trots out the usual shit about the parties' shrinkage during the last couple election cycles, at which point I stopped reading. Maybe he got around to addressing the party's resurgence in special elections winning where they normally wouldn't be and improving their turnout in places like Kansas and Iowa and fucking Alabama but I didn't have the patience to wade through the opening bad faith arguments.

his regular gig at nyrb astounds me

https://ballotpedia.org/Andrew_Janz

Progressives should ask themselves: When's the last time you heard any Trump supporters talking about the need to understand you? You haven't. That ought to tell you something.

https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/understanding-trump-supporters/

They could have published that piece in all the places it appeared, let the comments accumulate a couple of days, then just published those under the headline: "Progressives: This is what Trump voters think of you."

To wit: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article210497509.html

so, i know how trump voters feel about me ("think" is not an appropriate word here, i don't believe) and i feel just about the same about them. where do we go from here?

for Leonard Pitts to write that column is like reading a defense of socialism from George F. Will.

Haha yeah I was surprised too, but otoh I don't think I've seen a Pitts column since 2003 or so

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/07/608649799/republican-fears-about-holding-the-senate-start-to-sink-in

so, i know how trump voters feel about me ("think" is not an appropriate word here, i don't believe) and i feel just about the same about them. where do we go from here?

maybe start talking to the 231,556,622 eligible voters in the US that didn't vote Trump

er, the 46% of that total. that's a hell of a lot of people ignored

how? a lot of them are deplorably rude. the insult-to-decent-thought ratio among "conservative" friends and family who didn't vote (or didn't vote for donnie moscow) is often difficult to respect, leaving aside the general anti-intellectual / anti-expert / anti-fact stance

maybe i didn't express myself clearly, i don't know. my question is this - are there personal consequences to dismissing tens of millions, at minimum, of people as irredeemable human garbage? if so, what are they?

You may not be invited to Thanksgiving dinner at your uncle Sal's house.

i was thinking more along the lines of building up into a spiral of misanthropy that's left me wanting to resign my membership in the species, if you know what i mean, a fair amount of the time

but sure awkward family dinners probably factor into it too

how many times can we have this same discussion

holy shit at those senate fundraising numbers xxxp

If you want a friend, get a job. If you're cute, sit next to me.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/09/politics/cnn-poll-generic-ballot-narrows/index.html