Democratic (Party) Direction

(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

x-post: A lot of that evidence seems cherry picked, though. At least 65% of California voters support Medicare 4 All, yet Dianne Feinstein is opposed and still seems to be cruising through primaries.

That is not in itself sufficient evidence that people prefer centrist policies. Californians could elucidate more but it seems to me like Feinstein simply has too firm a grip/is twoo well-connected to be dislodged. (Possibly the same deal as Cuomo.)

Machine bosses like Feinstein and Cuomo are not going to be the first to go, no.

I'm not arguing it's unpopular - it should not be, it's great - I just can't see any evidence that it's 'a winner'. So far it doesn't seem to have won anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi6v4CYNSIQ

Fake "Gimme Shelter" score aside, this is a fantastic political ad that could work particularly well in a red state like Texas.

it's good. i saw that cook report has this district as "likely r" so itll be a longshot, but the important thing is a lot of vets from iraq and afghanistan are running as dems bc they know the gop is bad

Very slick, but even after 3.5 minutes of ad I have no idea what she stands for beyond women guards

Well “I got involved because women couldn’t get hired in my field and I found out first have that my tea party incumbent will literally only meet with his personal donors” probably shouldn’t be hand waived away by that meme you like but also her website should maybe include a policy position or two.

*first hand

Protect Families
Families come in all shapes and sizes, with people of all walks of life making wonderful, loving parents. Quality, affordable health care should be a basic right for every family, as should stronger parental leave for both moms and dads. A living minimum wage, job training opportunities, wage equity and supporting our educational system can be achieved without sacrificing small businesses.

I mean it's seems pretty clear at this point.

I'm not trying to hand-wave anything, just that it's a long ad that puts biography above all else. Which, maybe that'll work!

That said, "affordable" health care isn't at all a clear or bold position

Agreed it isn’t clear, but does it need to be bold ?

Personally I like it if you go to the candidate’s website and there is a distinct page/area for the policy positions
and not hidden/interspersed within the home page body.

does it need to be bold?

For me, the Democrats have played to the mushy middle so long and with such mushy results that reaching for "bold" seems like a smart gamble to me atm. It must be carefully framed, but most of all it must be simple, direct, and unmistakable.

"Medicare for all" seems like the simplest, most direct and least radical-sounding frame for the issue. It soothes current Medicare recipients by not threatening their care, references a popular current program most people already know about and accept as worthwhile, and seems like a relatively simple step to take to expand it. The explanation of how to pay for it should be equally simple, direct and popular. A financial transaction tax of a couple of cents per transaction seems best to me and most likely to gain popular momentum.

The party needs to agree to hammer this message home in every national race. Then no one candidate will be out on a limb alone and the chances are better that people would take it seriously as something they get to vote on and then make happen.

I hadn't realized two things: 1. how bold something as simple as 'medicare for all' is in the us political landscape, and 2. how different the ideas of 'affordable health care' and 'medicare for all'. So I thought she meant medicare for all and I thought it was pretty run of the mill. So yeah agreed 100% Aimless.

yeah - "affordable" is mushy enough that it can basically be the Republican promise too - "increased competition for drug prices will make health care affordable" or whatever. see also "affordable housing" which can mean quite a range of approaches, outcomes, and beneficiaries.

the other fave mushy term is "access"

In light of the trend of female veteran democratic candidates I have a slogan--

Democrats 2018: Empowered to Kill

It’d be really nice if we had the think tanks creating policy recommendations that candidates could cite. There are some, but they’re too few and not strong enough yet.

It’s a bigger deal for state legislature races, but saying “here is what I propose and the bill looks like this” with a link to the bullet points of a bill, including what policies it’d affect/modify seems like it’d be bold! Especially if the goal is to introduce a bill or push the party to introduce a bill your first day in office.

This seems too cut and dried, but there’s a stack of legislation that’s nearly identical across many states that has been pushed by Koch-funded groups and their cut-outs get this shit rammed through

Hegar's ad is decent. I feel like anyone saying it's "great" is probably assuming that the military appeal has the potential to win over a lot of republican-leaning voters. That assumption is incorrect and has been proven incorrect over and over for decades, but democratic consultants will not give up on it.

Her platform sounds very Clinton-esque, but she seems like a nice, likeable and down-to-earth person and that always helps. Based on turnout in the GOP vs Dem primary I'd say she's a longshot, as would be any dem even in this wave year.

Like really the swiftboating of John Kerry while he was running against a draft dodger should have been the nail in the coffin, but they just doubled down on it. Remember when everyone thought Trump was finally DONE because he "insulted a gold star family?" Sorry guys, "respect the troops" doesn't actually mean what it says, it means "we don't like insubordinate black people and queer freaks."

Yup. Repubs own the troop respecter vote, regardless of who you run.

It's not a perfect analogy but it reminds me of Republicans who think they can peel off lots of latino votes by running a Cuban candidate from an exiled resort millionaire family.

I still want Tammy Duckworth tho

Pretty much, man alive.

Who among you is willing to see the glorious blinding sun against the backdrop of a blood-drenched sky?

Heart pounding. Adrenaline taken beyond the max limits.

What I see is something else. Do you guys really not follow everything closely, and remember it? Even as it disappears within hours... I can't blame you if you don't catch it fast enough.

We were all born in interesting times. Way beyond this shit. Guess that's fun, right? There's strange fucking shit going on, no different than the history we love to study.

Who said history stopped? They were idiots!