Democratic (Party) Direction

Romney ran against a good candidate.

In any case, the Republican donor base has been more pro-immigration than the voter base for a long time.

xxpost Obama was a better candidate without question but he might have had some trouble with contextless email leaks that were curated to enrage whatever narrative/grievance against him and people who should have known better easily goaded into undercutting his campaign’s critcism of the fascist running against him w endless “what about”

oh cool let's do this again

pfft whatever, we're definitely going to figure it out this time

cmd-f racism

If I recall correctly, immigration wasn't that big a deal for Romney in 2012.

neither was honesty

snap!

He certainly wasn't out constantly stumping and demagoguing about it the way Trump did. xp

Well it is not something he ran on like the GOP are doing right now and did in 2016.

the koch vision of open borders is nothing like what you probably have in mind

― Fedora Dostoyevsky (man alive), Wednesday, June 20, 2018 2:32 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the """anarchist""" libertarians i know love to loudly insist that both people and capital should flow freely across borders

it's the stupidest shit

(these anarchist libertarians, i should note, are all literally koch affiliated)

Not the right thread but I wonder how the Kochs have responded to the trade and tariffs wars and the alienation of economical allies, maybe Man Alive you have some knowledge of that?

interested to hear, because i tend to believe they would take a "creative destruction" view- the new deal and global orders must be destroyed first.

i think Bernie Sanders is on to something re the Kochs and "open borders"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdGflNp10Lk

ftr i still love open borders

IDK what the Koch bros take on the current tariff policy is but I don't think they generally like tariffs.

u rite

Koch Brothers' Groups Are Lobbying Congress to Curb President Trump's Authority on Tariffs

http://time.com/5316633/koch-brothers-donald-trump-tariffs/

Koch bros arent just GOP boogeymen they regularly contribute to NPR

yeah don’t tell Morbs but they funded a lot of the Burns’ Vietnam war documentary.

they even occasionally support democrats. Their policy agenda is more important to them than partisanship, but they have overwhelmingly seen the GOP as the best vehicle for their agenda.

Nixon called ICE a terrorist organization yesterday.

Nixon: Now More Than Ever

Nixon called ICE a terrorist organization yesterday.

― Simon H., Friday, June 22, 2018 1:01 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

when is this primary? this is cool but i'm trying to decide if i feel like it's strategically worth the thrill i get out of it

September

(she is clearly not going to win but it's pretty awesome to see how far left she's willing to go)

optimism of the will my dude

I would be curious to see some more up-to-date polling, she was making significant gains a while back iirc

The last poll from Siena from earlier this month has Cuomo back up at +35 :(

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2018/governor/ny/new_york_governor_democratic_primary-6526.html

The good news is there's almost three months to go.

btw Nixon has the Working Families nom for the November election, so she will be on the ballot then.

so hoping for a Cuomo indictment (or something just as good) in October.

Wait, that has been confirmed? I thought she wasn't going to be on the ballot, to not act as a potential spoiler.

just as Zephyr Teachout was on the Nov ballot 4 years ago, I expect CN to be.

The chief difference is that the WFP endorsed Cuomo in '14 and he was on their line. Now he is their mortal enemy as a result of the Nixon nomination. They are not going to pull Nixon and endorse him this time if she loses the Dem primary.

mea culpa: Teachout was not on the general election ballot four years ago. Cuomo won with 54%.

(I must've voted Green for Howie Hawkins)

pretty booming thread here

We need to talk about the future of the Democratic Party.

We are at a crisis point in our country.

If we continue to vote for the same leadership & tactics that lost us 1,000 seats, the House, the Senate, AND the Presidency, we will continue to be a nation in decline.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) June 22, 2018

Gonna keep my fingers crossed for her all damn day tomorrow.

the problem with discussing democratic party direction is that every democrat in the country, me included, thinks "my politics are something tons of people would enthusiastically get behind if only the party structure could see it"

if only there were some sort of scientific way to find out what people's opinions on policy actually are. But that just sounds too futuristic.

Oh I guess the Ocasio/Crowley race isn't till Tuesday, I forgot that y'all always do this on Tuesdays lol

afaics, the dependability of opinion polling has been dropping for about a decade. I know I've been refusing to answer any sort of polling for longer than that, because it is generally impossible to know who is behind the poll or what use the information will be put to. if it were structured more as a full-scale plebiscite, with foreseeable consequences, I'd be more amenable, but for all I know, I'd just be helping the Kochs figure out how to sell the public the idea that climate change is caused by volcanoes, not people, so I hang up 100% of the time.

Oh I guess the Ocasio/Crowley race isn't till Tuesday, I forgot that y'all always do this on Tuesdays lol

― Simon H., Friday, June 22, 2018 6:16 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

as if our dumb asses would have an election on the weekend

if only there were some sort of scientific way to find out what people's opinions on policy actually are.

I mean I get this but I look at those polls and if I'm honest with myself I don't think I know what makes a Dem candidate more or less likely to win. I have lots of intuitions but none of them really have any basis.

Medicare for all and l3gal w33d and $15/hour are winners I think there’s a lot of evidence of this building up.

re that Ocasio twitter thread, it's depressing how often you see people making the argument "We can't afford this infighting now! Trump is president!" It's one of the safest blue districts in the country. FWIW I've even seen that argument in primaries where the GOP isn't fielding a candidate in the general.

x-post: Where is that evidence? Centrists have done quite well the last year and a half.

Also, yeah, Ocasio-Cortez is exactly right about targeting that kind of districts.

Data for Progress has offered plenty of evidence. I'm not sure the success of moderate/centrist candidates is necessarily a sign that those policies aren't popular - plenty of left candidates have done well, too. Basically it seems to be a good time to not be a republican, for some mysterious reason.

centrists have done well because the anti-trump sentiment is so strong. the question is whether this is a good time to push further. the usual suspects will take their usual positions, we will have the same arguments we have had since forever, and we will do all this again in 10 years. politics is dumb