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Tom Perez B/K/M? This poll is closed. |
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77 | 25.50% |
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160 | 52.98% |
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65 | 21.52% |
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McCloud posted:I am merely saying that the democrats behavior up until recently made sense given the political reality. Yeah, Obama cozies up to insurers because it's either that or not passing healthcare reform. Yeah Hillary supports fracking, because the option is to be dependent on Saudi Arabia and that's terrible, etc etc. You're operating on assumptions that certainly aren't safe to make and likely aren't even true. Consider the following - the "we did the best given political realities*" rationale can literally always be used to justify polticians' actions. You do realize that the only way this stuff changes is if people get upset about it, right? If everyone had your attitude literally nothing would ever change because people would just keep assuming the status quo was, by definition, the best possible outcome given current and past knowledge. Seriously, step back for a bit and think about the fact that some of your underlying reasoning and "common sense" might actually be wrong. You know how all these Democrats are coming out in support of Sanders' MfA bill? That is only happening because of the leftists you're complaining about making their dissatisfaction with the status quo known! If everyone was like you, the recent concessions, as well as Hillary's from the 2016 campaign, would have never happened! * "Realities" which, uh, for some reason include the assumption that your own party is going to make bad decisions. Once you're including the lack of support of your own party for beneficial policy as a "political reality" (in the context of people condemning said party, no less), it's time to step back and reassess things.
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Sep 13, 2017 14:54
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Condiv posted:maybe we should make single-payer a litmus test then so we can't have tremendously damaging turds like lieberman in our party (and as potential veeps) They tried kicking Lieberman out, he won as an independent.
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Sep 13, 2017 14:54
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Mechafunkzilla posted:They tried kicking Lieberman out, he won as an independent. how about, he should've never been a democrat to start with? and he didn't win for long as an independent now did he? maybe we should be kicking out scum like pelosi who refuse to support workable healthcare when our nation needs it so badly?
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Sep 13, 2017 14:56
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McCloud posted:So again, Obama is hamstrung by the GOP/blue dog democrats, and he pays the price for it. A constant theme during his presidency. Who cares, we're not writing a hagiography of Obama here, we're discussing what the Dems need to do to win again. Notice your position has shifted from "leftism doesn't win elections" to "okay leftism wins elections but it wasn't Obama's fault he didn't govern as a leftist it was all the fault of the terrible terrible Dem politicians in congress". Fine, even if that's true (it's not but even if) then the logical course of action is to fight as hard as we can to move the party to the left so next time we win we aren't "hamstrung" by corporate bootlickers in our own party.
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Sep 13, 2017 14:59
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McCloud posted:They needed to compromise with turds like Lieberman, who alone did tremendous damage to the ACA. But again, it was a big improvement. The problem with this is that it begs the question of why they didn't kill the filibuster. You can argue they didn't know that Republicans would throw a tantrum, except that the '90s happened and Republicans already threw a tantrum under Clinton. If, when presented with the biggest political and economic crisis in living memory, the Democrats use their total control to... toe the line and not actually do much, then that's possibly the most damning thing I can think of. Obama didn't need to and couldn't snap his fingers and fix everything, but they needed to stake the Republicans in the heart when they had the chance. That's the only thing half the electorate even wants from Democrats. Lightning Knight fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Sep 13, 2017 |
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Sep 13, 2017 14:59
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maybe lieberman's win had something to do with the dems refusing to support lamont? quote:The story of the national Democratic Party's abandonment of Lamont will likely be written more fully in the coming weeks, with explanations of both how this happened and even more importantly, why. But the broad strokes are obvious: Almost every major figure in national Democratic politics save John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Wes Clark and John Edwards refused to seriously help the Lamont campaign. We saw this coming when, right after Lieberman lost the primary, he was welcomed with a standing ovation back to the Senate club by his Democratic colleagues. Subsequently, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid indicated that Lieberman's seniority would be preserved if he won reelection, despite the fact that he officially abandoned the party. To understand how much this abandonment affected the race, consider that Lieberman bragged in October to the Associated Press that he was actively using Reid's promise of seniority to promote his key "experience and seniority" argument -- and that such an argument was helping him win over voters. On Election Day, Lieberman appeared on Fox News to thank the national Democratic Party for refusing to help Lamont, the Democratic nominee. 
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Sep 13, 2017 14:59
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Ytlaya posted:To be fair, if you live in any of the majority of non-swing states she doesn't really have anything to feel guilty about. we lived in ohio at that time
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Sep 13, 2017 15:01
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Condiv posted:maybe lieberman's win had something to do with the dems refusing to support lamont? Think on this the next time some poo poo says "Bernie isn't even a Democrat."
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Sep 13, 2017 15:01
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Radish posted:Think on this the next time some poo poo says "Bernie isn't even a Democrat." He's no longer an Independent?
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Sep 13, 2017 15:05
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Condiv posted:they had to compromise with blue dogs apparently Blue dogs and one of the independents who caucus with them (which, incidentally, is what killed the public option that might have made the whole thing actually make sense).
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Sep 13, 2017 15:07
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Avirosb posted:He's no longer an Independent? He's basically running the Democrats, so...
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Sep 13, 2017 15:08
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Condiv posted:maybe we should make single-payer a litmus test then so we can't have tremendously damaging turds like lieberman in our party (and as potential veeps) Well the dems seem to have tried everything else, so why not. Can hardly get any worse. Ytlaya posted:You're operating on assumptions that certainly aren't safe to make and likely aren't even true. If I'm reading this right, I agree with you, yes. Voters and leftist should absolutely make their voices heard. Vote early, vote often, complain, call your congressmen, write, fax, email, engage in the voting process! This is a fight for survival, and for many people I mean that literally. If the voters won't make their voice heard, the dems can't be blamed for not listening. I'm not complaining about the leftists, I'm saying that there was a rationale behind the dems actions and strategy, and that if it wasn't sound at least there was some reasoning behind it. It didn't pan out for a multitude of reasons, but there's a lack of nuance on the topic, and especially around Obama, which is irksome. Dems have done a lot of good. Can they have done more? Yeah, sure. And them being pulled to the right along with the overton window is infuriating. I agree to all that. But again, ultimately, the dems didn't think moving left was a good idea, and they had good reason to believe that (and still do). Hillary did move left, but was a flawed candidate that had a lot of things working against her. Moving to the left 10 years ago was probably not a good idea because I don't think the public wanted or was ready for that then. But I think if they don't do so now they won't survive as a party. I think it was a mistake not to follow Bernies popularity (even though I resent his fans) and I think trying to triangulate now is suicide.
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Sep 13, 2017 15:09
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Lightning Knight posted:The problem with this is that it begs the question of why they didn't kill the filibuster. Remember, in the 90s, Republicans specifically said they had to kill Clinton's health care reform at all costs. Not because they thought it was bad policy or that it wouldn't work; they were afraid it was good policy and it would work, and this would explode all their arguments that government can't do anything for the middle class except cut taxes: William Kristol, 'Defeating President Clinton's Healthcare Proposal', December 1993 posted:The long-term political effects of a successful... health care bill will be even worse—much worse.... It will revive the reputation of... Democrats as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government. They absolutely knew or should have known that Republicans would do everything they could to sabotage the economic recovery and any health care reform.
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Sep 13, 2017 15:15
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VitalSigns posted:Who cares, we're not writing a hagiography of Obama here, we're discussing what the Dems need to do to win again. Then you're having a different conversation. I'm saying Obama was limited in what he could do, contrary to this illusion that he could have done a lot of stuff but chose not to because he was a corporate crony. I am also saying that the dems had a reason to believe that going left wasn't a winning move, for a lot of reasons. If you ask me what dems need to do to win now, today, then I agree with you. They should move left, and try to put up as many challengers as they can for every position from county clerk to sheriff to dog catcher to governor.
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Sep 13, 2017 15:18
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Guys here me out. What if we were pragmatic about healthcare and rolled back the ACA and some regulations to let the market even itself out naturally then we sweep in and require all citizens to buy health insurance and if they don't we place a fine on them that is less than the cost of the insutance.
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Sep 13, 2017 15:18
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McCloud posted:I'm not complaining about the leftists, I'm saying that there was a rationale behind the dems actions and strategy, and that if it wasn't sound at least there was some reasoning behind it. loving  "Our strategy totally failed, but at least we had a bad strategy!"
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Sep 13, 2017 15:19
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The cynic in me feels they 100% knew the Republicans would sabotage everything but didn't really want to shake things up as much as the public wanted so it was safer to just walk into Republican land mines and claim they couldn't do better. Obama getting his SCOTUS seat stolen I think probably shocked them a bit since they still felt that bipartisanship was somehow a thing and they wouldn't go THAT far but they were idiots to believe that.
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Sep 13, 2017 15:19
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Lightning Knight posted:The problem with this is that it begs the question of why they didn't kill the filibuster. Because 1: Gentlemans agreement. 2. It could be used against them next time GOP had control. Again, hindsight
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Sep 13, 2017 15:19
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Condiv posted:They'll believe it regardless. But they can change. I mean heck yes loam is improving a lot, peachfart too, and this thread is filled with former pragmatists who have changed their minds. i used to be an incremental pragmatist type. now i want revolution
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Sep 13, 2017 15:20
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McCloud posted:Because 1: Gentlemans agreement.
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Sep 13, 2017 15:25
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VitalSigns posted:Remember, in the 90s, Republicans specifically said they had to kill Clinton's health care reform at all costs. Not because they thought it was bad policy or that it wouldn't work; they were afraid it was good policy and it would work, and this would explode all their arguments that government can't do anything for the middle class except cut taxes: If the GOP had any sense they'd pass single payer and an infrastructure stimulus bill and live of that for the next 30 years.
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Sep 13, 2017 15:25
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VitalSigns posted:The instant Republicans had 50 votes for something they wanted (SCOTUS) they ended the filibuster for that thing anyway soooooooo McCloud posted:Again, hindsight Then again, how the gently caress didn't they see it coming is beyond me.
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Sep 13, 2017 15:26
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The real use of the filibuster is to give the majority party an excuse for why they can't fulfill their campaign promises despite having majority control. The fact that it is so easily circumvented when things really matter makes that pretty clear. The only people that give a poo poo about breaking out the nuclear option are political wonks and pundits, or people that don't want whatever is passing to pass. Notice how many people that thought that democracy was over when the Democrats used it with the ACA suddenly didn't care when it was used to steal a SCOTUS seat. There is literally no political cost to overriding the filibuster if you are using it for what your voters want and the Senate is so far up its own rear end it thinks people care about its dumb rules. Eggplant Squire fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Sep 13, 2017 |
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Sep 13, 2017 15:28
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VitalSigns posted:The instant Republicans had 50 votes for something they wanted (SCOTUS) they ended the filibuster for that thing anyway soooooooo Besides that you don't need any kind of hindsight to see that the GOP doesn't and didn't give a gently caress about any gentleman's agreements or decorum if it stood in their way. So there are two options here: Either bad dems just idiotically assume that these things should be adhered to despite reality smacking them in the face again and again or they're just using decorum and tradition as an excuse for not doing things they don't want to. Neither option is a good one.
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Sep 13, 2017 15:30
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McCloud posted:If the GOP had any sense they'd pass single payer and an infrastructure stimulus bill and live of that for the next 30 years. Absolutely but then they wouldn't be Republicans. Trump would probably be the most popular president ever if he actually passed $1 trillion in infrastructure spending (not tax credits), asked Republican governors to expand Medicaid under the Trumpcare brand, and passed a Repeal and Replace Obamacare with MAGA Trumpcare Act the text of which was lifted from Hillary's website.
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Sep 13, 2017 15:33
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VitalSigns posted:Absolutely but then they wouldn't be Republicans. This was my nightmare but luckily the GOP and Trump are too loving stupid/shortsighted to realise what an opportunity they squandered
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Sep 13, 2017 15:49
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I just listened to PSA's interview with Clinton. I think a lot of people already talked about the most egregious points. But the thing that really bugged me was that she claimed that in 2008 she ran a campaign on the issues, unlike Bernie. And that she quit as soon as she lost. Unfortunately, none of the PSA guys pushed back (though you could see that Lovett was trying to). But yeah, the "try to get this photo of Obama in African garb - but call it Muslim garb - into as many news programs as possible" strategy was totally about the issues. As was the "I am not quitting because someone might decide to kill the first Black nomination winner" part.
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Sep 13, 2017 15:49
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McCloud posted:Then again, how the gently caress didn't they see it coming is beyond me. The problem with this is that the most charitable reading of events thus implies that they're idiots.
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Sep 13, 2017 15:50
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McCloud posted:Because 1: Gentlemans agreement. Hahaha gentlemans agreement wtf
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Sep 13, 2017 15:53
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After the Goverment shutdown they still thought the Republicans wouldn't gently caress them over at all costs?
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Sep 13, 2017 15:58
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https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/907981513144315904
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Sep 13, 2017 16:04
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white sauce posted:Hahaha gentlemans agreement wtf you know that Isaac Newton saying about "if I see far, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants" a centrist is someone who, from atop the shoulders of giants, collapses into the fetal position and starts sobbing "OH GOD WHAT IF I FALL"
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Sep 13, 2017 16:05
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"joepinetree posted:I just listened to PSA's interview with Clinton. I think a lot of people already talked about the most egregious points. But the thing that really bugged me was that she claimed that in 2008 she ran a campaign on the issues, unlike Bernie. And that she quit as soon as she lost. Unfortunately, none of the PSA guys pushed back (though you could see that Lovett was trying to). But yeah, the "try to get this photo of Obama in African garb - but call it Muslim garb - into as many news programs as possible" strategy was totally about the issues. As was the "I am not quitting because someone might decide to kill the first Black nomination winner" part. "is obama a muslim? not as far as i know..." - bernie in 2008 probably
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Sep 13, 2017 16:05
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The charitable excuse is that they were naive idiots. The less than charitable reasons are that they were either cowards and too terrified of any sort of resistance reflecting badly on them, were not actually interested in passing what they said they were and used the Republicans as a scapegoat, or were so committed to the process and institutions of government that they were willing to sacrifice their goals in order to follow the rules they knew the other side had no interest in. So the nicest way to explain the way the Democrats acted when they had majority control was they were hopelessly stupid and that's the type of people we are supposed to trust implicitly to protect us from maniacs.
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Sep 13, 2017 16:06
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Like, if Democrats aren't going to be a proper left-labor party they need to at least stand hard and fast against overt fascism, which is what Republicans are now. If they can't stand for the poor and disenfranchised on top of not creating positive legislation then they're worse than useless. They need to be at least a party that is staunchly anti-Republican, if not also pro-leftist. If they can't even manage the former they can gently caress off.
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Sep 13, 2017 16:06
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Lightning Knight posted:Like, if Democrats aren't going to be a proper left-labor party they need to at least stand hard and fast against overt fascism, which is what Republicans are now. If they can't stand for the poor and disenfranchised on top of not creating positive legislation then they're worse than useless. Ze Pollack posted:centrist dems make a lot more sense once you realize their politics are entirely divorced from outcomes. it's just blind veneration of The Process, the blind idiot god of comfortable cowards. the system produced me, therefore the system must be preserved until the end of time. the Hillary Clintons, Cory Bookers, and Andrew Cuomos of the world have no issue with fascism, as long as it at least claims to respect the Process. the only important thing to them is that the system endure. this has, as an interesting corollary, McCloud's delightfully moronic proclamation: if voters stop supporting the system, because of some pesky trivialities like "it's immiserating and killing us," the solution is to make voters more okay with the system destroying them. the centrists will hem and haww over how fascist silencing of the people is uncomfortably ~activist~ in nature, but once you can give them a set of reports to file on how many people are headed to the camps this week they'll be happy as a clam. the alternative is to make a change to the system, and if you change the system, the centrists might not remain on top. Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! fucked around with this message at 16:21 on Sep 13, 2017 |
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Sep 13, 2017 16:19
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Ze Pollack posted:the Hillary Clintons, Cory Bookers, and Andrew Cuomos of the world have no issue with fascism, as long as it at least claims to respect the Process. the only important thing to them is that the system endure. Now see, it's not that I somehow do not understand this. It's just that my experience has been that of someone from a mixed face family living in a Republican district of an increasingly Republican state. My dad had to get a new drivers license last week, and couldn't find his naturalization papers. My parents were terrified, partially because they couldn't afford the 550 dollar replacement fee, and partially because he was born in Mexico and they couldn't prove he is a citizen. That existential fear is something they never experienced under Obama. Even as we speak, Republicans in my home town have enacted legislation that will resegregate the schools and break off the wealthy suburban high schools from the city schools. The only two politicians to call it out are our own Democratic representatives, one of which I've met several times in person. To me, Democrats represent some semblance of stability for minority groups. That appears to be crumbling, but so long as the other option is fascist Republican rule, I don't see how I can reasonably abandon the party. That doesn't mean I don't want it to be better, or that I don't think there are bad Democrats. It's just that people like Trump actually do represent a bodily threat to people like my dad. I tell my parents, some Democrats are bad, but all Republicans are bad. But the truth is that it's really more of a matter of degrees.
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Sep 13, 2017 16:44
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I can say for certain that first table is misleading citing Louisiana State Senate District 2, for one, Louisiana Democrats barely count as democrats (depends heavily on district) but two and most important, that district was never going to elect a republican, I'm not sure how they came up with that number for a "swing". The jungle primary had 13 people running for it and all but 3 were democrats, the runoff was between two democrats. BUT the second table is a little more meaningful and just by sheer volume, the Ds could make a big sweep next year if previous trends are anything to go by and is the only hope I can really hold onto besides the turnout in support of Bernie's Medicare proposal. The number of democrats registered to challenge seats is really exceptional, blowing away previous numbers by a huge margin. At the same time a lot can happen in a year and I wouldn't put it past the organization as a whole to dig deep and really work hard to gently caress it up.
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Sep 13, 2017 16:48
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Ze Pollack posted:the Hillary Clintons, Cory Bookers, and Andrew Cuomos of the world have no issue with fascism, as long as it at least claims to respect the Process. the only important thing to them is that the system endure. This guy gets it
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Sep 13, 2017 16:49
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Ze Pollack posted:the Hillary Clintons, Cory Bookers, and Andrew Cuomos of the world have no issue with fascism, as long as it at least claims to respect the Process. the only important thing to them is that the system endure. This is basically Clinton's Vox interview where she lambasts the left for wanting to destroy or reform the system.
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Sep 13, 2017 16:50
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