Democratic (Party) Direction

medicare / social security for all

Not specific enough imo. Sure, Trump is. But stuff like “deplorable” was so vague that it encouraged solidarity among anyone who disliked Hillary. Alex Jones, the leaders of online and irl tiki torch brigade, pizzagate boys, Sandy Hook truthers et al would surely be so thoroughly egregious and unattractive to even a (slight?) majority of Republicans,

exactly. Hillary touched on this stuff before but her messaging was pretty terrible. like, they could probably call more attention to stuff like this

Democrat dump truck derails Trump train?

This is perfect to divert the news cycle away from Trump unifying the nation with his powerful speech. #TrainCrash

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) January 31, 2018

I said this somewhere else but I'm increasingly coming around to the idea that on a subconscious level they don't really want to win

― Simon H., Wednesday, January 31,

And the GOP on a subconscious level doesn't want to govern. #bothsides

my grudging awe of what Ailes' has accomplished increases by the day

I said this somewhere else but I'm increasingly coming around to the idea that on a subconscious level they don't really want to win

it certainly feels that way. or certainly winning is incidental to fundraising and throwing money around an insular group of consultants and media buyers.

and of course any "wave" they experience in 2018 will only harden their stupid theories on what the electorate actually wants.

fresh wet face

And the GOP on a subconscious level doesn't want to govern. #bothsides

enh looks pretty conscious to me

And the GOP on a subconscious level doesn't want to govern.

oh see i think they're pretty explicit about that! or at least 'governing' (or functions thereof) should be outsourced to the brilliant and blessed 'job creators'

xpost

Fresh Wet Face in Hell

And the GOP on a subconscious level doesn't want to govern. #bothsides

enh looks pretty conscious to me

― Simon H., Wednesday, 31 January 2018 19:21 (four minutes ago) Permalink

And the GOP on a subconscious level doesn't want to govern.

oh see i think they're pretty explicit about that! or at least 'governing' (or functions thereof) should be outsourced to the brilliant and blessed 'job creators'

― constitutional crises they fly at u face (will)

dudes, accept the beauty of parallelism

#chiasmus

https://theintercept.com/2018/01/31/democratic-party-political-fundraising-dccc/

this is good & feels even-handed & thorough. and no lee fang to be seen, even.

medicare / social security for all

― reggie (qualmsley), Wednesday, 31 January 2018 19:07 (thirty-nine minutes ago) Permalin

Honestly. It shouldn’t be hard. They don’t need freshed faced people or good looking people or a fancy communications strategy, just a commitment to protecting and expanding the liberal programs that made the middle class possible—i.e., the party’s true legacy. (The good part at least.)

Everyone can see through the bullshit at this point. No one is going to be inspired by a young hotshot centrist least of all a (lol) kennnedy

its ok they obviously don't believe in him if they gave him the SOTU response

tru dat

Is that a real thing someone said that last night

that's a slightly streamlined version of an argument a few people on the US politics thread expressed iirc

Seems marvellously stupid not to seize the opportunity to put Bernie up there to tear apart Trump’s arguments thst he protects the middle class but what do I know

Bernie gave his own. It was good, it was essentially what you described. Joe Kennedy’s was good too, in front of an audience, it had more of an emotional tenor. Mentioned Black Lives Matter.

Dems are really afraid to officially get behind Bernie, party is truly split right now.

I sometimes wonder if it's even hyperbole to say there are democratic donors who are more afraid of bernie than trump.

https://i.imgur.com/NcxrA6I.gif

sucks that bernie is so damn old

Resentment over the primary might hurt him more than anything as far as POTUS ambitions go. Practically all of the major Dem rumored POTUS hopefuls co-sponsored Bernie’s Single Payer bill, He did the speaking tour with Perez. Schumer asked him to be the outreach chair (which is why you see Bernie on all of CNN policy debates). The infighting narrative tends to cloud some things.

bernie gave his own response to the SOTU, and got some flak from ppl for "undermining" the democrats' response.

the real problem w/ kennedy's speech wasn't his name, it was that his speech didn't seem like an actual rebuttal to trump's speech. it was a generic 10-minute inspirational speech. given that, i thought he did fine, but it seems ridiculous not to use that time to counter any of trump's claims.

SOTU response is the worst job in politics. Either completely forgettable or memorable because you fucked up and derailed your career like Bobby Jindal.

bernie gave his own response to the SOTU, and got some flak from ppl for "undermining" the democrats' response.

this was hilarious btw

I don’t think he undermined the democratic response at all. I feel like every major Dem leader should have been over tv tearing into Trump. I heard Kamala Harris was good in interviews but I avoided Trump’s speech and all coverage.

Kennedy’s speech maybe was geared to the older white who aren’t enormous pieces of shit. The inspirational/emotional appeals, “decency exists” are needed to a point to counter the inherently theatrical propaganda of a SOTU.

I can't remember why, but isn't the response filmed before the SOTU so therefore cannot really be a rebuttal of the speech itself?

something like that

commitment to protecting and expanding the liberal programs that made the middle class possible—i.e., the party’s true legacy.

one might even say Making America Great Again. it kills me that all the nostalgia that boomers have for some approximate grandiose past hinges on the most "socialistic" era this nation has ever known. like, you guys LOVED that shit. well, until it became clear that the beneficiaries might include people other than white 'christian' men.

People upset Bernie spent like 30 seconds talking about Russia in his speech. pic.twitter.com/A0hj9FjZ77

— Zachary 🇪🇺 (@zatchry) January 31, 2018

what a sorry legacy that the richest "freest" nation on Earth opted to resist the trajectory of the rest of the developed world, to appreciably worse ends, all because a majority of its citizens could not countenance the notion of civil rights.

They don’t need freshed faced people or good looking people or a fancy communications strategy, just a commitment to protecting and expanding the liberal programs that made the middle class possible—i.e., the party’s true legacy.

Not really the party's legacy, though.

sucks that bernie is so damn old

― marcos, Wednesday, January 31, 2018 8:16 PM (fifty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

god the 2020 primaries are gonna suck. bots are gonna poe's law existing post-16 divisions & bad blood into a fuckin red maelstrom.

"is the party tearing itself apart or is there a foreign accelerant at play" "yup"

HOOS OTM

Whole lotta compromising going on but I'd rather see Bernie back another candidate - no one's going to be as left-wing as him but someone responsive to the left of the party without making 2020 quite as much of a horror show is something I could get behind.

there's still gonna be a contingent of "bernie sold out" yahoos if he does anything but run himself but fuck those people

idk he's still so beloved by so many people he'd have to fuck up pretty hard multiple times maybe to get any significant "you sold out bitch" blowback

I know, I know, chapo, but this one-on-one interview with Hawaii rep Kaniela Ing is great (and is mostly just Ing talking). Ing seems like the best-case-scenario for a modern Dem candidate imo

https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/bonus-virgil-interviews-kaniela-ing

idk he's still so beloved by so many people he'd have to fuck up pretty hard multiple times maybe to get any significant "you sold out bitch" blowback

― flappy bird, Thursday, February 1, 2018 5:04 AM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My org was deep in Bernlandia summer 16 and a not insignificant portion of our org base insisted he sold out by asking his supporters to vote for Clinton

"Significant" is maybe the key word in your sentence there but boy were there more than I'd been prepared for

Even Noam Chomsky asked people to vote for Clinton!

pretty cool that "don't vote for the fascist" became a controversial position in 2016

Shockingly not everyone agrees with that characterization of Jill Stein.

Whole lotta compromising going on but I'd rather see Bernie back another candidate - no one's going to be as left-wing as him but someone responsive to the left of the party without making 2020 quite as much of a horror show is something I could get behind.

― louise ck (milo z), Wednesday, January 31, 2018 5:12 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, you're already seeing this in the way senators who would seem to have designs on 2020 are voting on things like cabinet appointments and ending the shutdown. tacking to the left just looks like smart strategy at this moment, it really comes down to who you can trust to at least somewhat stick to those principles if elected (because inevitably there will be some compromising/hedging).

i got Online Harassed for weeks after my org put out our "please vote for clinton" statement because i was known as the Online Guy. it was the first time the ragehose of that election cycle got turned on me and on the one hand it was awful ("wow is this what it's like to be a clinton supporter online holy shit") but on the other hand the whole thing was so nasty & the faces so unfamiliar that i was bewildered it was purportedly coming from what seemed like the same community of lefties i'd spent so much time building with that year. strangers with unfamiliar faces telling me in startingly personal terms that i was killing democracy. like we'd tripped some kind of wire & something bigger than we understood had proceeded to fire on us.

Sort of in line with my broader impression that there genuinely is such a thing as clinton derangement syndrome, but that the flipside of that is clinton bunker mentality, where nothing bad anyone says about her can possibly be true and everything must be deflected. You can see a lot of this in the comments on her recent apology for protecting a sexual harasser, with supporters saying stuff like "Why should she even be apologizing when there's a sexual predator in the White House?"