Democratic (Party) Direction

very very bad

I feel it worth noting that literally all the commies I know (of various stripes) are hateposting that quote today

this is considerably better but doesn't erase the stupidity of the original quotes

Let me be absolutely clear: Donald Trump, Brian Kemp and Ron DeSantis ran racist campaigns. pic.twitter.com/QwZtCe4xh3

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) November 8, 2018

Schleifer, of the Fairness Project, said his group plans to keep pushing ballot initiatives such as Medicaid expansion and a higher minimum wage in other parts of the country going forward, no matter their political leanings.

“People in other states are watching what’s happening,” he said. “I think we’re going to see a lot more of this activity in 2020.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/from-medicaid-to-minimum-wage-even-red-state-voters-backed-progressive-measures/2018/11/07/b0b61572-e2bc-11e8-ab2c-b31dcd53ca6b_story.html?utm_term=.636cb6c7148d

What Bernie described as "not racist" is definitionally racist. SMH. Hope he just apologizes.

I tend to avoid politicians and people who use "absolutely," even when they're clear.

make no mistake

let me be clear

feel like this thread is ripe for revival these days

Phrases I Never Want to Hear Uttered by Talking Heads/Press/Politicians Ever Again

let me make a mistake

make no mistake mistakes were made

bernie quote is dumb, but whatever. he is, however misguidedly, trying to lay blame on the campaigns instead of the voters

i mean is it crazy that i think he was trying and failing to recognize that white people have ingrained antiblack biases without making those same white people recoil from the label of racist

and obviously the latter is a problem, i'm not defending it, i just * think * i see where the language he was using is orthogonal to the actually correct thing, like a misremembered scripted line

otm, I recognized what he was going for but the execution was so off, way moreso than I can recall him being in quite a while, and at like the least opportune moment

another note from colleagues:

https://ips-dc.org/we-have-movement-work-to-do/

We must recognize the sober reality that the president and too many others campaigned on hate—on racism and Islamophobia, on hating immigrants and “the other”—and that in many places it worked. In Texas 59% of white women voted for Ted Cruz against Beto O’Rourke, despite all his policies that will hurt women and children. Racism and division are not anomalies in our country, they are part of the basis on which this country was founded. We have movement work to do.

The most important defeat of the 2018 midterm elections was the fact that 51% of the voting public still did not vote. With all the anger, all the outrage, all the marches and mobilizations, more than half didn’t show up. Certainly many faced structural or institutional problems—for some, the poll lines were too long (by design, as happened in Georgia) and, being low-wage workers with no paid leave, they had to report to work and couldn’t wait that long. Naturalized immigrants in border communities may have been terrified to vote. Others, poor and elderly or disabled, couldn’t get to the polls because they can’t drive/can’t afford a car, and there’s no public transit where they live. We have movement work to do to change that.

But millions more who could have voted stayed home. What if they had gone to the polls instead? What if Democrats had reclaimed the Senate as well as the House? It wouldn’t have meant the end of systemic racism and misogyny, environmental degradation and corporate overlordism, Islamophobia or anti-immigrant laws. Not to speak of endless wars and an out-of-control military budget—plenty of Democrats are longstanding supporters there.

But if more registered voters—more young people, more people of color, more poor people, more women, more immigrants and students and workers and activists—had voted, things might be just a bit better. That’s our real challenge. Not to get caught up in the negatives, the limitations of elections which are always—always—about how we engage with power, not victories in and of themselves. And certainly not to just go chill, not to think the fight is over because we won a few things. The challenge is to mobilize now, harder than ever. Not just about voting, though voting remains a key right we need to continue to fight for. But to mobilize, to organize, to build the movements and the organizations we’re going to need to fight for power. We have a long way to go – last night was only the latest of our beginnings. We have movement work to do.

LOL

@ztsamudzi
5h5 hours ago

“... not necessarily racist...” “...felt uncomfortable for the first time in their lives about whether or not they wanted to vote for an African-American...”

Bernie Sanders speaks about black people like he’s from a state that’s 1% black and so can literally avoid it if he wants

that's good

I feel like ppl need to constantly be reminded that engaging in politics is a literally never-ending struggle. An electoral defeat is not the end of anything, and that goes the same for electoral victories.

um xp

good new tactical campaigning report from M+R. this lightbulb jumped out at me.

We ran two digital recruitment programs for different organizations, using different content and messaging, both primarily targeting voters of color. In one, 25% of potential voters we found were unlisted or mislisted. In the other, it was 33%.

Traditional targeting doesn’t reach these voters—ad platforms likely match only 45-60% of a given segment of the voter file (fewer as you go for more infrequent voters). And that doesn’t count the additional 25%-33% who aren’t on the file in the first place. That means you’re leaving out a majority of your target audience if you’re only matching to the voter file.

So, instead of relying on traditional electoral targeting strategies, we tested various lookalike and modeled audiences, overlaid with key modeled zip codes, to identify, recruit, and turn out unlisted/mislisted and infrequent voters—reaching people the voter file can’t reach (and that most campaigns don’t even try).

We also found something that disproved countless skeptical consultants: unlisted, mislisted, and infrequent voters are NOT disengaged. Turns out these voters respond to text messages at rates higher than frequent voters: in one program, they made up 52% of recruits but drove 70% of our actions. In another analysis, unreachable and unscored voters drove more SMS responses than listed and scored voters!

We’ll see how the actual returns shake out, but bottom line: Many campaigns are writing off an active and engaged swath of the electorate who are disproportionately Black and Latinx, fueling a cycle of non-contact and—surprise!—non-voting. Institutional racism in the flesh.

You can’t simply show up at election time and ask for their vote. Instead, start with long-lead organizing around issues that matter in their daily lives. Opt them into ongoing SMS streams to organize them, turn them into volunteers, and get them to the polls. After the election, instead of being left with nothing, you’re left with real relationships—ones you can use to organize at scale and build real long-term power.

https://www.mrss.com/lab/three-insights-from-2018-that-are-changing-our-plans-for-2020-and-might-change-yours-too/

can we pls lob those quotes at all the "let's scold non-voters till they change their ways, it's bound to work this time" crowd

for real. engagement on their terms is the key

HOOS yr a hero btw

i mean is it crazy that i think he was trying and failing to recognize that white people have ingrained antiblack biases without making those same white people recoil from the label of racist

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, 8. november 2018 21:43 (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and obviously the latter is a problem, i'm not defending it, i just * think * i see where the language he was using is orthogonal to the actually correct thing, like a misremembered scripted line

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, 8. november 2018 21:44 (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Can you elaborate on this? I can't square the two posts, like what is even close to being 'correct' about refusing to label people with ingrained antiblack bias as 'racists'?

I wasn't sufficiently clear I think -- what I'm saying is the 'correct' part there, whic his post-16 new hires have helped him learn to articulate, is 'white people have ingrained antiblack bias.' the totally botched and maybe hopelessly revealing in terms of his capacity for getting these things right is his insistence on not hurting these ostensible listeners feelings by insisting 'BUT they're not racists'

I;'m glad I wasn't imagining that he "got better" (read: hired smart and plugged-in staffers to help out w/ messaging) since '16

one word could have made a big difference - ie "not necessarily consciously racist"

Or just not including it at all: “I think you know there are a lot of white folks out there who are not necessarily racist who felt uncomfortable for the first time in their lives about whether or not they wanted to vote for an African-American,”

hyup

aw the poor ittle nonvoters

not everyone in iowa is terrible

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/zachary-wahls-who-went-viral-defending-his-lesbian-moms-in-speech-wins-iowa-state-senate-seat-2018-11-07

but i can't help think that believing that there are republicans who would really end up supporting it is like charlie brown and the footbal

there is already a bipartisan caucus supporting the bill. for any new members to join, they have to bring a member of the other party.
https://citizensclimatelobby.org/climate-solutions-caucus/

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, October 31, 2018 4:01 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

90 fucking members

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, October 31, 2018 4:01 PM (one week ago)

19 of the 43 republicans on the Climate Solutions Caucus , including the co-founder Carlos Curbelo, lost during the mid-terms, or are retiring

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/how-many-house-republicans-believe-climate-change/575233/

sorry, not sure why that discussion is in this thread.

Has anyone seen a good, thorough, relatively objective analysis of how various left vs moderate approaches fared in elections? Obviously it wasn’t exactly a crushing victory for the Bernie platform in either the primaries or the general but I’d like to see a thorough analysis of where / why / which races bucked the trend etc on both the federal and state levels.

https://wthh.dataforprogress.org/ might be useful for that

At this juncture, I’d be content with a political majority that conceeded science is our best approximation of fact:

* Anthropogenic climate change is an existential risk for human civilization.
* Males and females have equal intellectual potential.
* Race isn’t a viable biological category.
* Sexual orientation is innate, and not a choice.
* There’s also an innate human need to escape the churn of life, which some do with spiritual rituals, and others with psychotropics.

Anything beyond that, like looking at outcomes in more progressive societies, and modeling our own society (in social provision of healthcare, criminal rehabilitation, or economic safety nets) after others with the best outcomes is just bonus, at this juncture.

I interviewed incoming Congressman @SeanCasten about how he flipped a 40-year Republican district by talking incessantly about climate change https://t.co/c30p24Hne2

— Emily Atkin (@emorwee) November 12, 2018

Also this is going to be fun

"I'm Richard Ojeda and I'm running for the president of the United States of America." https://t.co/MEV2SIcyPF

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) November 12, 2018

I heard him referred to as a "rape apologist" somewhere without context and I'd really like to know what that was in reference to.

wait did Ojeda even win his race in WV?

No he lost by 20 points iirc

Still I’d like to see him get a ride out if trump

*rise

Jfc bit early in the morning for that typo

I like an angry labor union dude but c'mon

There are going to be like 50 democratic candidates, and we can’t pay attention to all of them, and this guy is going nowhere. I get it. I just want to see trump take the bait a few times.

No he lost by 20 points iirc

Lost by 12 in a pretty GOP district; was looking good in polls in the summer by October he was pretty clearly behind.

Cool about Sean Casten.

I volunteered in 2016 for Martin O'Malley, not because I believed he had a good chance, but because he was the candidate who cared most about the issue, and it gave me an opportunity to talk about climate change to other voters.

Anthropogenic climate change has a long duration, between 5 and 160 thousand years in the literature. 5 thousand years ago, Egyptian pyramids were still in construction. If you live in a coastal city, in 5 thousand years the sea will be 170-180 feet over your head, and every physical object you ever cared about will be slowly buried in silt.

We know the effects on crop yields. Its -10%/° C for the first few degrees, and more for heating beyond ~3° C. Just multiply crop yield losses by the expected duration of climate change. Its staggering. In our lifetimes, humanity will emit enough greenhouse gasses to prevent the existence of tens of billions of humans. In their future, maybe they'll match population to resources with mandatory sterilization, or just abandon infants, as was the norm for many societies before modern chemistry aided agriculture. Every so called pro-Life voter is either a climate change hawk, ignorant, or a hypocrite.

For those of us who strive to be ethical, climate change shifts all markers. Just living as a first world person, now, means that several people will never live over the next several centuries. I can't justify plane flights to see the last coral reefs, because the plane flight emissions cause more harm than my tourist dollars can rectify.

So, I will always work for and vote for the candidate with the strongest climate change game. Even if they're flawed in other respects, as whatever other issue you may care about is pretty trivial in comparison.

can't wait to vote for the Dem who primises to kickstart radically reorienting the global economy to serve the needs of the species and planet instead of accumulating capital for a walled elite!!

that voting rights package is dope and exactly the kind of big obvious must-happen shit i want to see actually get enacted when they finally get the power to do so. going ahead and putting it on the table now is really encouraging. needs a little tightening up (some pieces, esp. overturning citizens united, sound like they need to be constitutional amendments)... and maybe some additions, to try and deal with some of the vulnerabilities of electronic voting, and definitely to make election day a holiday (even if it's just moving Columbus Day's observance over or November or something).

Really believe that a candidates who just says "corporations are not people, and hence have no protected rights", and promises to only nominate Judges who also doubt the court reporter comments on the 1886 Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company that gave us corporate personhood, would claim much of Trump's angry voter base.

Lol no

The people that were angry enough to toss a grenade at DC labeled "Trump" aren't corporation fans.

If you believe that there should be immortal citizens that aren't subject to the criminal law as it applies to humans for murder, theft, pollution, and which should have unlimited ability to fund politics to favor their own issues, then I submit you aren't a Democrat.

Corporations are not people. They shouldn't be granted the rights of people. They should be granted charters and exist solely because they can benefit the economic welfare of real people. When they chose to harm the society that granted them life, we as society should revoke their charters. The death penalty. There are many corporations that have demonstrated contempt for the common good, and we the people need to kill them.

if Democrats have done much of anything to roll back corporate personhood in my lifetime I've not heard about it