Democratic (Party) Direction

nobody ever thought of having a band that is actually two one-man-band guys playing at the same time

This is incredible. https://t.co/O0oEisXEeJ pic.twitter.com/ro04fnHdcR

— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) April 26, 2018

Republicans were trailblazers in this area

“We're already seeing progressive democrats win formerly red state legislative seats with no help from the DLCC”

Anyone know what real think this is in reference to? Only case I can think of, it later turned out the guy had help.

*real thing

the party's unspoken prick

man i miss so much stuff out pounding the pavement for a job

Man, this profile of Levi Tillemann’s family doesn’t feel all that much like the working class neighborhood underdog guy I heard about earlier. https://t.co/ayfqFBLRXU

Interesting. And maybe a great candidate. But not what I felt like was being described to me.

— David Waldman, LLC (@KagroX) April 27, 2018

that story is not well-written

*head tentacles flailing about*

http://demonssouls.wdfiles.com/local--files/enemies/mind-flayer.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axHoy0hnQy8

David Waldman doesn't think any of that could take place in a working class neighborhood?

If Gremlins has taught me anything...

I disagree with him on several things, but this whole thing just reminded me how much I admire Jeremy Corbyn. Labour leader elections, talk about the party elite putting their thumbs on the scale. But once he got the chance, he took it, and he beat them. Then he did it again a year later. Then he destroyed May's conservative majority. He wrote down the policies, he ran on them, and he won. Compared to him, the American left is straight up pathetic. What's the theory? That the left has all these great ideas, but the party won't run on them because of their donors, but if only the populace got the chance, they would for sure beat everything the GOP threw at them. But then, the left can't win primaries either, because the Democratic establishment is just so nefarious! What with all their thumbs on the scale, and they put James Crow on a list that carries symbolic weight even though McArthur had a better website, and then what are you going to do?

So no. Don't criticize the DNC, DCCC or DLCC. Fucking beat them. Show them that you have the ideas, and the support, and go win. Instead of whining about thumbs and how hard it is to find resumes from the party. Create those freaking grassroots movements, it even sounds like there was one in Colorado even before Tillemann got there. That used to be what the left did. If you can't even figure out how to beat a bumbling idiot like Hoyer, then you're never ever going to get M4A anywhere.

who are you talking to?

lol

who are you talking to?

An Open Letter to the American Left from a Concerned European.

So no. Don't criticize the DNC, DCCC or DLCC.

Why not? Can't we do both? Why should we have to fight our own party?

I feel like the DCCC/DNC folks have almost a hazing mentality about all of this. They spend like 30% of their time begging rich people for money, so why should some new candidate get to skip all of that?

I guess if what you're saying is that rather than try to change them, we (the left) should just beat their establishment asses into irrelevancy, I totally agree. It's just a bummer that they (still!!) don't understand that there is another way to win. Not only that, but that their way hasn't been working for years.

I can't say he's wrong, either. You get power by winning elections. You win elections by winning votes. You win votes by connecting to voters. Back the candidates and ideas you connect with and then you are doing the right kind of political work to align the power structure with your ideas. Just complaining is a dead end and an energy sink.

lots of people are running on the ideas. doesn't mean you can't also bitch - done correctly it can in fact be quite galvanizing

jeremy corbyn won by winning a position (leader of his political party) that doesn't remotely exist in US politics, and his party has an explicitly social democratic history and platform. US progressives might be inspired by his example but it's hard to think of anything else about him they could really hope to emulate.

they could grow beards, though

also some of the bitching has resulted in (hopefully) useful Dem reforms, like the clawing back of superdelegates' power

idg how expelling all criticism is good for any party, if anything it is going to drive people away

The guy is running in the primary, he was told by the DCCC to drop out, they sent Steny Hoyer (from Maryland) out there to put the screws on him, and he taped it. Fred's answer is QUIT WHINING AND RUN IN THE PRIMARY which is, uh, what he is doing.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/26/nancy-pelosi-steny-hoyer-recordings-555935

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee sent an email Thursday morning encouraging donors to give to Tillemann and two liberal candidates in Nebraska and Pennsylvania the group says have been targeted by the DCCC.

PCCC and Democracy for America, a progressive PAC, later called on Hoyer to resign from Democratic leadership.

“Steny Hoyer and his corporate cronies already lost,” PCCC co-founder Stephanie Taylor said in a statement. “They don’t represent the future, and it’s time for them to step aside and make room for a new generation of leadership — one that inspires and motivates the base instead of depressing it.”

Tell us how it is again, Fred.

Xpost The misinformation/people thinking superdelegates cost Bernie the primary is really weird given that the 2008 primary wasn’t that long ago and it was all explained then, respeatedly. It’s a perfect example for why people like Fred are rightly skeptical of anti-Dem narratives. Weirder still that it would be a priority issue for anyone on the cusp of midterms.

Ultimately it’s fine if they get rid of the SDs if that makes people happy, I mean clearly they havent provided enough of a proven failsafe that’s worth the confusion having them generates about process.

regardless of the actual difference they've made (or haven't made), superdelegates were explicitly introduced as an attempt to make primaries less democratic -- the idea was that the increased voter involvement in the 1972 and 1976 primaries had given us mcgovern and carter -- so it's not rly surprising that they're perceived that way.

Modestly favor Bryce here but still think DCCC should stay out.

I assume other left critics of DCCC will be denouncing this as well? https://t.co/QQv4JY514u

— Nathan Newman (@nathansnewman) April 27, 2018

lots of people are running on the ideas. doesn't mean you can't also bitch - done correctly it can in fact be quite galvanizing

― Simon H., 28. april 2018 00:48 (ten hours ago) BookmarkFlag Post Permalink

Yeah, but who is it galvanizing? Both Moser and Tillemann parachuted into primaries where grassroot movements already were building, and are angling for out-of-district money to run their campaigns. It's a shitty way to build a movement connected to the people on the ground.

It's not building democracy back up, it's just exchanging one group of gatekeepers with another. And if we talk about track records, the Intercept and their leak culture has a pretty fucking disastrous track record.

i gotta take a leak culture

The guy is running in the primary, he was told by the DCCC to drop out, they sent Steny Hoyer (from Maryland) out there to put the screws on him, and he taped it. Fred's answer is QUIT WHINING AND RUN IN THE PRIMARY which is, uh, what he is doing.

― El Tomboto, Friday, April 27, 2018 7:48 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it’s almost like rank partisanship calls one’s credibility into question

It’s almost like Fred’s entire argument against publishing evidence of the shitty way the beltway consultants choose to try and do business on behalf of people in flyover country, using old white guys from incredibly safe blue districts as their bag men, is perfectly distilled in his last sentence.

the way Tim Faust talks about health care reform is the way every Dem should talk about it imho

🔥🔥🔥🔥
“Among developed nations America
Is the MOST DANGEROUS place to be sick MOST DANGEROUS place to be Black MOST DANGEROUS place to be pregnant.... pic.twitter.com/1963YoPHBc

— Childish Guerrillero 🌹 (@Tweetsby5tan) April 29, 2018

When the GOP had their fake single payer plan to get people to stop fighting the ACA repeal, Bernie warned people against falling for it and Tim fell for it big time.

k, how long ago was that and how does it reflect poorly on the rhetoric being deployed here

Not that long ago, if you recall there were huge citizen protests to stop it from happening and disability activists made significant sacrifices because the repeal would effect people’s lives and this is a guy who (oddly enough) gets paid to work for a Kushner owned health care startup being “single payer or nothing”
performative

iirc very recently he indicated that "Medicare Extra" or whatever (the alternative recently proffered by a mainstream thinktank) was a step in the right direction even if it wasn't Medicare for All

but again I'm not really arguing about his bona fides, I'm arguing in favor of his rhetoric

I think pushing hard for a proposal that the conservatives were not actually behind, but pushing as an empty Trojan horse, is rhetorically fine

They had no support for actually passing it and it was there to call the democrats’ bluff, so both the Sanders position of pointing out it was bullshit, and a pragmatic stance of supporting it a path to realizing goals, are both reasonable positions

And, as I said, they never really were pushing it as a real thing

Xpost good to hear about MedicareExtra

Faust actually said “primary everyone” when he saw the Democrats didn’t vote for the fake single payer thing. Later deleted it when people explained the situation to the “policy expert”

almost sounds like he's willing to evolve and learn from mistakes

Like it wasn’t a strategic position on the level of Bernie’s as much as “guy seemingly not understanding something”

he’s actually traveling around constantly doing town hall type meetings and bringing together healthcare voters. I get that you think there is an insidious motive or he’s somehow misguided, but the actual people at these meetings aren’t blowing up established democrats on his say alone

and if he’s deleting tweets or changing approach it sounds like he is trying to be effective in his speaking cause so I don’t get why he’s a stooge of something. this sounds like a classic litigation of tweets versus actual groundwork

like I’ve messaged my local state senator, who is running for a county position, about tonal issues in social media and he is someone I see around town, and he actually knocked on my door to talk about the primary. chastising people who are 90% in your camp, when they are willing to shift when people point out flaws, is crazy

I mean, you should push people about that 10% but you still support them because everyone else is completely on a different level of non-alignment

He probably should have apologized for getting something so important wrong. Similar thing when he described ACA as a heritage foundation plan though I don’t believe he deleted that one..

But groundwork is definitely more important than tweets. I initially folllwed when I heard him describe his own experiences w hc. He’s toxic when he’s another dude in the infighting narrative.

The ACA is really close in the broad strokes to a counter-proposal the heritage foundation cooked up in the 90s in case it looked like the democrats were going to get close to passing a universal healthcare bill. So it wasn’t real legislation per se, but the comparison isn’t ridiculous http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2013/nov/15/ellen-qualls/aca-gop-health-care-plan-1993/

like idk why you’d delete that when it was a moderate democrat talking point and not far off, that’s just a good starting point for discussion about shifting opinions on healthcare

It’s not a good starting point for a discussion. His use of it has the agenda of “the ACA isn’t worth defending”. It wasn’t good when moderate Dems pushed the idea either.

http://prospect.org/article/no-obamacare-wasnt-republican-proposal

it’s a rhetorical point where you can immediately launch into the differences, including rallying support for medicaid, which is popularly supported

this is all splitting hairs and delves into the ACA-as-passed versus ACA-in-effect difference where the Supreme Court fucked up incredibly important pieces. living in a state where the governorship rolled to the republicans and they fucked up the Medicare expansion by handing state healthcare to a completely useless third party, anything that fixes that hole in the system seems like a respite