WhiskeyJuvenile posted:

Neurolimal posted:

Thats not andrew *johnson though

WhiskeyJuvenile posted:

Neurolimal posted:

Thats not andrew jackson though

The Kingfish posted:

Jaxyon posted:

It's a stylistic issue. His policies are already better, but that deosn't win elections.

BigRed0427 posted:

Hey, you don't have PMs so I hope you see this.

I just wanted to say thank you. I did go to the meeting and actually had a good time. I didn't agree with everything they said during it but it made me wanna volunteer and work with them more. Thank you

And sorry everyone for the derail. I thought this was the effective Leftism thread.

Inescapable Duck posted:

I have a sinking feeling that, bar (even more) crippling health issues, Hillary Clinton is absolutely going to run again in 2020, and if not she is definitely going to push a sock-puppet candidate for her exact policies. The question is whether the Democrats will sabotage other candidates, as well as if voting Democrat is even still allowed after 2018.

quote:

“The Democrats,” Vice President Pence said recently, “have already settled on their agenda, and it can be summed up in one word: resist.”

He isn’t the only one with that view of Democrats. In the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, only 37 percent of Americans think the Democratic Party “stands for something,” while 52 percent say it “just stands against Trump.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the House Democrats’ campaign arm, seemed to admit as much two weeks ago when it sent supporters an email with the proposed slogan: “Democrats 2018: Have you seen the other guys?”

On Monday, I am told, congressional Democrats — in the Senate and the House together — will roll out a legislative policy agenda, their de facto 2018 campaign platform. The details, after months of haggling and cat-herding, could yet disappoint, but the broad outlines as described to me are exactly what the doctor ordered.

As important as what’s in it is what’s not. Democrats jettisoned social and foreign policy issues for this exercise, eschewing the identity politics and box-checking that has plagued Democratic campaigns in the past, most recently Hillary Clinton’s. This will be purely an economic message.

They also resisted invitations to steer the party toward the center (as pollster Mark Penn advised) or in a more progressive agenda. This is meant to be a populist manifesto that doesn’t conform to the left/right debate but instead aims to align Democrats with ordinary, middle-class Americans fighting powerful special interests.

Titled “A Better Deal: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages,” it is expected to have many Democratic staples — tax increases on the rich, affordable college, infrastructure spending, higher wages, job training, paid family leave and the like — and a few new ones.

Hashed out over several months by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Luján (N.M.), and Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Cheri Bustos (Ill.) and David Cicilline (R.I.), it will be outlined Monday with a few sample proposals, to be followed in the coming weeks by more proposals, some to be introduced as legislation and some to be offered as Contract With America-style promises that a Democratic Congress would implement. Schumer told me in December that Democrats would have “five, six sharp-edged [policies] that can be described in five words,” although it sounds as if the plan hasn’t come out quite so lean.

The goal is to avoid repeating Clinton’s problem in 2016. She had so many proposals, and she scratched the itches of so many Democratic constituencies, that she lacked a coherent economic message. The full-throated populist agenda should also make it harder for President Trump to claim that he is the one fighting special interests, which he did to great effect against Clinton.

Democrats have been little but the anti-Trump party lately, successfully fighting his legislative agenda, particularly health care, and raising a ruckus about the Russia scandal and Trump’s other outrages. The danger is that an impression solidifies among voters that the party has nothing else to say.

As if to illustrate the point, 23 liberal House Democrats announced Wednesday morning that they were filing a “resolution of no confidence” in Trump. It contains no fewer than 88 “whereas” clauses (whereas “the embassy of Kuwait held its national day celebration at Trump International,” and whereas “Trump referred to United States Senator Elizabeth Warren as ‘Pocahontas’ ”). The idea might work — if Democrats had a majority and if the United States had a parliamentary system.

A reporter asked Rep. Steve Cohen (Tenn.), sponsor of the no-confidence resolution, if he was focusing too much on Trump over jobs. “Bubble-gum chew and walk at the same time,” he recommended.

Except Democrats haven’t been doing both. Some think they don’t have to, because polls show that voters prefer a Democratic Congress. But as The Post’s Mike DeBonis and Emily Guskin point out, more Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (65 percent) say they will definitely vote next year than Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (57 percent). To boost Democratic turnout, the party needs to be more than just anti-Trump.

Even if it doesn’t help their electoral prospects, Democrats need a clear agenda so they can govern if they do win. If they win without a sharp agenda, they would end up where congressional Republicans are now: in power but without a popular mandate for their agenda.

On Wednesday, I asked Rep. Linda Sánchez (Calif.), the No. 5 Democrat in the House, about the search for a unified agenda, and she bristled. “We’re not searching for an agenda,” she replied. “Democrats have always known what we stood for.”

They just did a really good job of keeping it under wraps.

Grouchio posted:

The dems are finally getting their poo poo together:

Raskolnikov38 posted:

let's see what they actually propose before congratulating them, other than paid family leave I suspect the others will be watered down and uninspiring

WhiskeyJuvenile posted:

Inescapable Duck posted:

I have a sinking feeling that, bar (even more) crippling health issues, Hillary Clinton is absolutely going to run again in 2020, and if not she is definitely going to push a sock-puppet candidate for her exact policies. The question is whether the Democrats will sabotage other candidates, as well as if voting Democrat is even still allowed after 2018.

Grouchio posted:

The dems are finally getting their poo poo together:

Fulchrum posted:

Even if Hillary died, there is a 100% chance that people in this thread would say she faked it and will spend 2020 secretly pulling the strings of the Dem party behind the scenes just to satisfy her totally real hatred for the left.


In other words, blue dogs.

You fuckers in this thread are so goddamn transparent.

Fulchrum posted:

In other words, blue dogs.

You fuckers in this thread are so goddamn transparent.

Grouchio posted:

The dems are finally getting their poo poo together:

WampaLord posted:

That sounds like the opposite of blue dogs? What the gently caress are you on about?

Fulchrum posted:

Ignoring all social issues like minority rights, women's rights, lgbtq rights, and all the other things racist whites find scary, instead just going purely for economics. That's blue dogs. And spoilers motherfuckers, those voters still will riot if MAH TAXES go towards health spending that would benefit the aforementioned minorities, women, lgbtq, etc. etc. And somehow, telling them how it would benefit them too just somehow doesn't seem to work on them. Must be that economic anxiety.

Grouchio posted:

The dems are finally getting their poo poo together:

Grouchio posted:

The dems are finally getting their poo poo together:

Fulchrum posted:

Ignoring all social issues like minority rights, women's rights, lgbtq rights, and all the other things racist whites find scary, instead just going purely for economics. That's blue dogs. And spoilers motherfuckers, those voters still will riot if MAH TAXES go towards health spending that would benefit the aforementioned minorities, women, lgbtq, etc. etc. And somehow, telling them how it would benefit them too just somehow doesn't seem to work on them. Must be that economic anxiety.

Grouchio posted:

The dems are finally getting their poo poo together:

WampaLord posted:

That sounds like the opposite of blue dogs? What the gently caress are you on about?

EugeneJ posted:

Bernie and Zuck debating is going to be the weirdest loving thing

"I've been standing up for the rights of minorities and the underprivileged for the better part of 40 years"

"...I drank a 40 with some black people once - see I have a photo!"

Avirosb posted:

They're Zucky & the Bern, they're Zucky & the Bern,
one wants your blood, the other's infirm

WampaLord posted:

You're delusional.

galenanorth posted:

It's strange how they used having to compromise with Blue Dogs was the excuse for not getting a public option, to sidestep answering whether or not Democratic leaders wanted a public option themselves, and now the answer is "make the party have a greater % of Blue Dogs". People say "You had a supermajority and still couldn't get anything done?" Blue Dogs just make the Democratic Party look more ineffective and more culpable for inaction.

WampaLord posted:

I'm more shocked that they seem to have finally learned something, anything from 2016. Yea, I know, be cautious about what exactly it is, but I haven't even heard a peep of this type of talk coming from the Dems before now, so I think it's at least a good sign that the party might not be headed into a death spiral.