Democratic (Party) Direction

it basically comes down to your opinion on the 50-state strategy

my opinion: we should not have that many

xpost which, i suppose reasonable people may disagree. but the idea of fighting for every possible race isn't some mysterious, hitherto undiscussed strategy.

Even as part of a 50 state strategy, in West Virginia the Governor is GOP, every house rep is GOP, almost every other elected executive officer is GOP. If you have that great message that will defeat any GOP candidate in West Virginia, run for something else in the state, not the one big office that is currently held by a Democrat.

and i have to say, all of the many, many people who are left-leaning but reside in states that are "unwinnable" because it's 60% Rep - 40% Dem in their state would really appreciate the presence of an actual candidate of the left. it's good for morale, even if everyone knows it's an uphill climb.

xp gee lemme think abt all the ways Manchin fucked us over this past year, does the name Jeff Sessions ring a bell?

Again: You want a morale-boosting leftist candidate in West Virginia, go win a house seat. None of them has Dem incumbents. Those kinds of wins would probably also help the leftist candidates in the presidential primaries in 2020. Primarying Manchin, then perhaps losing the seat, would hurt.

does anybody here actually live in west virginia?

Also Manchin's vote on Sessions didn't fuck anyone over. GOPs voted for him unanimously, Manchin didn't matter. Should still have voted no, but again, pick your battles.

god I can't wait until you get banned again

he's...not wrong?

Manchin’s vote against health care repeal was much more crucial. In light of thst I can’t say the “we gotta get this guy out of there” mentality makes much sense or should be a priority but at the same time I don’t necessarily think it’s the end of the world if someone challenged him with a distinctly more progressive/left agenda. Sometimes you have to take that risk to demonstrate whether that kind of vision can win a primary in that part of the country instead of leaving as a debated hypothetical forever.

I'll endorse the idea that running the strongest leftie Dem candidates you can muster against WV's republican reps in the House makes more sense than letting them run unopposed or nearly so, while trying to primary Manchin out of the race.

Don't know how narrowly you mean 'that part of the country' Nerdstrom, but why not take that risk in Tennessee or Mississippi, or heck, against Tim Kaine in a safely blue seat?

hey guys who do you think should run against putin in the next election

Putin won't run again after this one, no?

Xpost Those other seats would be preferable but I don’t live in WV so I don’t want to dismiss the very idea of a more progressive candidate challenging there.

OK, to elaborate beyond reactive snark, my problem with all this argument is that it totally ignores the still fundamentally _local_ nature of Democratic politics. Personally I do not see any evidence that there is a significant detriment to a democratic candidate based on their ideological bent or their policy positions, and that just like the Republicans, the vast majority of the votes for a Democratic candidate will come because they have a (D) next to their name on the ballot. I'm not persuaded that if whoever the Alabamian equivalent of Bernie Sanders had run in Alabama that he or she would have done any worse than Doug Jones.

The issue is testing this hypothesis. Democratic voters may be largely motivated by a national set of values, but the question of who gets on the ballot is a local issue, and is controlled by the state Democratic organizations.

State and local Democratic organizations in Republican states are miserable little hives of failure. The Jon Ossoff campaign is a textbook example of their approach to politics - they run by asking everybody frustrated with the status quo for money incessantly, and when they lose complaining that the other people had more. And if they don't feel they can win? Then they dole out doomed candidacies as patronage. That's when the Stooksburies come out. These people are not open to new ideas and, considering all the power they've had for decades is the power to obstruct, have gotten very good at developing barriers to change. The only path to reform on a state level is to beat these petty powermongers at their own game, which is useful practice because winning a rigged game is the only way to beat Republicans as well.

Which you can't do without local candidates, making all this talk in exercise in cat-belling. When I moved out here to Oregon, I lived in Clackamas, and I found out that my state Representative was a Blue Dog. Now, I ask you, what in God's name is a fucking Blue Dog doing in Oregon? Why would anyone, in 2017, identify themselves as a fucking Blue Dog? I looked at him and I instantly said to myself, "OK, this guy needs to be primaried". Which is all very well and good, but nobody is running against him. Am I going to run against him myself? Hell no, never in a million years. I don't have the personal charisma to get elected dogcatcher. Is nobody running against him because there's no interest, or because the filing for candidacy was open for five minutes in the basement of a rental car place in the middle of nowhere? Got me. I haven't been to any party meetings in Oregon.

The media keeps trying to find Trump voters to give column space to. I wish they'd spend a little more time looking for socialist displaced coal miners in West Virginia. There's more productive potential in that, because media exposure is the most viable way to break what remains of blue machines in red states.

Completely without snark, I say go for it against Oregon Blue Dogs! And I also agree with the point about the fundamentally local nature of this discussion, but then want to point out that the local candidate in question, Richard Ojeda, seemingly agrees with me and is running for a seat in the third congressional district ;)

Okay, that final smiley might not have shown my claimed non-snark-ness, but y'know.

The issue is testing this hypothesis. Democratic voters may be largely motivated by a national set of values, but the question of who gets on the ballot is a local issue, and is controlled by the state Democratic organizations.

Which is whyyyy it's as important as anything that we've got a fresh panoply of orgs & activists offering up candidates & activated constituencies working to get them elected. The hypothesis is being tested.

what in God's name is a fucking Blue Dog doing in Oregon?

That district (which is also mine) was a pretty even split with closely contested elections between Ds and Rs right up to the end of Dubya's second term. The Blue Dog representative, Kurt Schrader, first got in his seat about that time and, yes, he does need to be primaried now. He is a very unreliable vote, afraid of moving an inch left.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/10/paul-krugman-mistake-white-working-class-voters-republicans

https://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/

Oh man, I hope these guys comb every episode of Thom Hartmann’s RT show for hidden clues

That district (which is also mine) was a pretty even split with closely contested elections between Ds and Rs right up to the end of Dubya's second term. The Blue Dog representative, Kurt Schrader, first got in his seat about that time and, yes, he does need to be primaried now. He is a very unreliable vote, afraid of moving an inch left.

― A is for (Aimless)

yeah, i just got here but i've read up on local history and things have changed a lot in the past ten years. the frustrating thing is that i got the primary slate recently and schrader doesn't have a challenger this year. i can't but see this as a major missed opportunity and it's pretty demoralizing in terms of my hopes for things going int he right direction.

i haven't kept up on indiana, but does donnelly have a primary challenger? joe donnelly is another one who needs to be primaried, a sacrificial lamb who got lucky when his opponent imploded and has accomplished nothing in six years. it's great that grass roots organizations are offering challenges, but some places need to be challenged more than others.

According to wiki, Bill Bowser is challenging Joe Donnelly in 2018. Also, I'd say the same thing about that as I said about Joe Manchin :)

Well, I'm certainly glad to hear your opinions about the people of Indiana. I'm sure they come from a place of deep knowledge and understanding.

Thanks for letting me know about Bill Bowser. If I still lived in Indiana I'd definitely support him. Based on how completely ignored he seems to be, I don't think he has much of a chance of winning, but having a real, serious candidate as running as an alternative to Donnelly is the minimum of what's necessary. The next step is making people _aware_ of alternative candidates, and Fred your research has helped me a lot with that, so thank you.

Admittedly the only thing I know about Indiana is that there is a Nascar race. But some quick research show the state to have a PVI-score of R+9 and going for Trump by +19,2. Donnelly has a Trump-score of -36,5. It's not exactly the same thing as West Virginia, as I could sorta kinda see a Dem having a chance if the wave turns into a flood, but it's not a primary race I would prioritize in 2018, no.

Admittedly the only thing I know about Indiana is that there is a Nascar race.

― Frederik B, Saturday, January 13, 2018 8:47 AM (fifty-seven minutes ago)

yes, the indy 500 is the best nascar race in america

Lmao

good thread

💙 west texas 💙

I have lived in Lubbock all my life. My father was born here. My mother was born in a little teeny tiny crossroads called Woodrow. I am 27 years old and proud to be the chair of the Lubbock County Democratic Party. pic.twitter.com/CBOnRaAaxg

— Stuart Williams (@CaprockDemocrat) January 11, 2018

TEXAS, BABY

that is great

Hell yeah

Dems continue to massively overperform in special elections, flipping a state senate seat in Wisconsin today in a district that went hard for Trump in Nov 16.

TBH I'm not sure there's much the Democrats winning these elections have in common, besides being Democrats.

Parallel with winning elections based on revulsion from the republicans, which will remove power from republican control, we need a new wave of democratic candidates who believe in using government to accomplish social good by redistributing wealth back down the income scale and creating shared community resources that benefit everyone.

I am cynical as hell but I don't believe that until or unless the underlying culture of disinformation is addressed any candidate or set of candidates can "fix" things. Even if we had a candidate elected on a blatantly pandering platform of "YOU GET A CAR! AND YOU GET A CAR!", our current political culture is designed to blame all the things wrong in an individual person's life on a failure of the political party in power.

When the Democrats are elected they will have two years to completely fix everything that is wrong in America. When they fail to do this the voters will elect a new slate of Republicans, Republicans who will be more extreme and more hateful than the last batch. Continue until America terminates.

Life and politics aren't about "fixing things" – it's incremental steps that we hope won't (but expect to) get effaced.

cnut '20

Cnut/Sisyphus: "Make America gr- aw, fuck it, what's the point?"

unless the underlying culture of disinformation is addressed

taken care of
https://verrit.com/

Daou/Garland 2020

As Pareene has pointed out, your average republican candidate is going to be worse for a while. only the Pepes or Maga Chud-types are the ones who haven’t been completely driven away, while structural issues(tribalism/gerrymandering/etc) mean that the GOP candidate on a ballot tends to get elected.

In other words, the only republicans left are _college republicans_.

oh god

meanwhile Chelsea running continues to break brains and provoke some truly awful writing

https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2018/1/17/dear-chelsea-manning-please-dont-do

the only republicans left are _college republicans_.

It's Chads all the way down

Dems continue to massively overperform in special elections, flipping a state senate seat in Wisconsin today in a district that went hard for Trump in Nov 16.

TBH I'm not sure there's much the Democrats winning these elections have in common, besides being Democrats.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Wednesday, 17 January 2018 04:21 (thirteen hours ago) Permalink

The common thread is the involvement of new grass roots groups (and notably NOT the party) who are willing to knock doors and make calls for just about any democrat in any seat anywhere in the country, from DSA members to centrists. I'm curious to see how this is going to play out in 2018 -- special elections are one at a time so you can martial resources from around the country for a single race. When you have hundreds of races at the same time it gets more complicated, but you will also have a lot more interest.

Lol yeah Simon it was pretty hilarious to watch all the same people that were hysterical last week going "OPRAH 2020!!!!!!!!!!!!" dismissing Chelsea Manning by saying she "wasn't qualified." give me a fucking break

x-post: It went pretty well on election day in 2017.