the most important election of your lifetime: 2012 american general election thread

How scared of OWS is the DNC?

Frank's comments about OWS are obviously fairly self-serving there. shouldn't be a surprise to anybody.

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How scared of OWS is the DNC?

not at all, because they aren't running primary challengers.

May have missed the window of opportunity to gain the sympathies of the larger electorate and impact party platforms.

i almost think they actively shunned any change to matter on that level, like the compromises involved would have been anathema

Partisans only talking to fellow partisans is a great way to build a base and lose in generals every time.

the only reason the GOP has pivoted to pander to the Tea Party types is because they successfully unseated GOPers with their own nominees.

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yeah I think that's definitely what happened contenderizer

Trotskyites vs Leninists vs Stalinists... *yawn*

OWS + grassroots work is more important/significant than voting

This whole "activism VS voting" thing reminds me of Gore explaining away his air-conditioned mansion by saying he makes up his carbon footprint in other ways.

not an either/or proposition but one has more direct results than the other

so what?

so buttons

my main issue with OWS is they've largely already lost the PR battle and are now scuffling at the margins

Spring and summer will tell the tale.

You know what the Tea Party has accomplished? With their batshit worldview and 'critique' of the Administration, they make 'mainstream' Dems snarl at any left-leaners' failure to defend Obama against both imagined and real faults.

dunno if you can blame the Tea Party for that. GOP has always been the bogeyman, whether it was Dubya or the Contract With America or the Tea Party

Tea Party's biggest influence has been on the media imo. Fox has something to use as a rallying cry, MSNBC has an object of hatred, etc...

They did incredibly well across state elections, as has been said, and reasonably so in the midterms. Those are the types of elections that the general populous doesn't really turn out for, though, which is why I'm interested to see how they do in November and in 2014, when people might have realized just how shitty things have become under them in various states.

If such a huge swathe of the Republican Party didn't believe that Obama is genuinely destroying this country's very soul (i.e. if there was a white Democrat in office) I think the party would be much more broken than it currently is. I imagine the same might happen with a Dem equivalent because we "true" liberals are still a minority.

We need the equivalent of a Jon Corzine proselytizing for it.

ewww ... i know what you meant, Alfred, but i'm still ewwwwww at the mention of that flaming sack of diarrhea's name.

and not to step outta line re OWS (since i have no involvement with them and i obviously defer to anyone that does), but my prob ignorant opinion is that the best thing for them is to remain aloof of the Democratic Party (at least in its current state). if Obama et al had been even a third of what they led folks to think they'd be, there'd be no OWS to begin w/ (and his "change we can believe in" 2008 campaign bullshit is responsible for folks not getting organized even earlier).

whether it was Dubya or the Contract With America or the Tea Party

The TP is a new level of bete noires for the Dem rank and file.

^^^alzheimer's setting already?

setting IN

like really you don't remember the garment-rending/teeth-gnashing despair of the Dubya years? remarkable.

yep and I still think it's more rabid now

also, the wingnuts also believed that Bill Clinton was genuinely destroying the country's very soul. Teabag-style hysteria is nothing new (only the Tea Party/Teabag nomenclature is new).

^^^

they impeached Clinton for chrissakes

the problem with developing a "Dem Tea Party" is that libs seem much more chained-for-life to the party than the righty nuts are to "theirs.".

― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Thursday, April 19, 2012 8:37 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't see any evidence of this at all. The right-wingers were all too happy to rally around McCain. Sure maybe some of them were into Perot, but Perot was more likely to get the support of independent-esque libertarians than righty nuts. This is actually one of the GOP's greatest strengths-- getting the base to rally around a lame Presidential candidate. It's the independents that they have to worry about.

the prob with developng a dem tea party is that the far left-wing is a marginal demographic in america. including in nyc. in a lot of ways the carnival atmosphere of zuccotti park helped mask the fact that, outside of one or two large rallies which were boosted by union turnout - there weren't that many people. I was there every day for weeks on end. there weren't that many people.

it has nothing to do with the party system.

which is why it's a PR battle. OWS needs converts.

the PR battle won a few fronts -- lookit at how The One Percent entered discourse. Even the GOP had to appropriate it.

they impeached Clinton for chrissakes

― Jilly Boel and the Eltones (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, April 19, 2012 2:59 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

as i remember it, there wasn't anywhere near as much foaming "they're destroying america!!!" panic w clinton than there has been with obama. clinton got impeached, sure, but there was a grinning, gameplayer's distance about the whole thing.

and i honestly think that dems were more freaked out by bush jr than they are by the tea party

"...as there has been with obama."

there wasn't anywhere near as much foaming "they're destroying america!!!" panic w clinton than there has been with obama

well, Bubba is white. So yeah that removes a significant portion of the type of shit levelled at Obama. But there was still plenty of hysteria - Hillary killed Vince Foster! Socialized medicine! Travelgate!

Ron Brown RIP

the far left-wing is a marginal demographic in america

I'm not talking about FAR LEFTISTS, but 1933-1975-vintage mainstream liberal Democrats. Who are now batshit-crazily labeled far leftists.

yeah well that war was lost

well I meant it in a relative sense. I don't think their label really matters. in places where solid left-wing democrats can win elections, they do win elections! there just aren't that many of those places.

I do my best to never leave those places

oh good, just one more post iatee and we can have another aerosmith v. iatee debate the ppl who live in flyover country

called 'flyover' for a reason amirite

as i remember it, there wasn't anywhere near as much foaming "they're destroying america!!!" panic w clinton than there has been with obama. clinton got impeached, sure, but there was a grinning, gameplayer's distance about the whole thing.

contenderizer, this is false. Untrue. I can tell you because I read and heard a lot of the nonsense at the time. Plus, there's always the entertaining tome The Death of American Virtue published in 2010 that records the bleatings of the right wing in luscious detail.

A list of the accusations published or aired by the pre-Internet media: HRC and Bill Clinton ran a Murder, Inc in Arkansas that they transferred to DC, as evinced in the "suicide" of Vince Foster; Clinton as rapist; HRC as socialist bitch-hag.

fly over THIS! *d-generation x double crotch karate chop gesture*

this went on for eight years, and perhaps the most grotesque thing Bill Clinton forced upon a left wing that despised him was forcing them to defend him against the calumny hurled day after day in Congress, talk shows, talk radio, and so on.

none of that was as 'respected' as the Birth Certificate Debate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UTK0-sRjOo

yeah jeez that chicken hawk David Brock wrote a book of Clinton slash fiction.

the reason why a lot of folks who might've voted for Nader in 2000 remained on the Party Reservation was PRECISELY b/c of the constant stream of demented nastiness that had been directed at Clinton, Gore and anyone to the left of Limbaugh. as in, "you'd have to be CRAZY to do anything that would let those people take charge." and after the Contract with America, the GOP takeover in 1994, Newt as Speaker (there's a reason why someone like me who's thinking of sitting out Obama v. Romney would get out and vote Obama had Gingrich won the GOP nomination), Monicagate and a zillion other things there was good reason for this mindset.

maybe Teabag shit wasn't as bad then as now, since Clinton isn't black ("first black President" challops notwithstanding). but it was still pretty fucking awful.

after all, it was the 2000 election that turned Paul Krugman from a neoliberal, somewhat Gabbneb-esque type into what he is today.

People will disagree: the vilest nonsense said about Obama lacked the vehemence of the personal attacks on Clinton. The right wing didn't merely question Clinton's ability to govern -- they called him a rapist and monster. I don't ever remember reading any GOP satrap calling the Obama marriage a sham or picking on their daughters' looks.

which is why the likes of Trent Lott puckering his jowls and smelling the fragrant memory of two good ol' boys sittin' on the porch amuses me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/us/politics/08clinton.html