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Helsing posted:Yeah but "terrorizing the DLC types" is really the issue. They currently have a stranglehold on the party. We'll have to see how the primary elections shake out today but it really looks as though the remnants of the DLC are about to coronate another hardcore DLCer over the objections of a much more energetic grassroots campaign that numerous polls suggest would actually be more electable. And meanwhile its a Democratic president pushing one of the worst trade bills in history over the objection of some of his party's core constituencies:
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Mar 1, 2016 20:20
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I agree with you that seeking control of party institutions, especially at the state (and also county) level would be key. My concern, as an outside observer, is that while the Sanderistas at least have a theory about how some kind of huge grassroots mobilization will be necessary to break the current gridlock I'm not sure they fully understand what that entails. I hope that after Sanders losses the nomination that his followers are able to actually set up some kind of enduring movement that carries forward the same goals. If the Sanders followers lose heart or just fold back into the larger mass of the Democratic party then all their efforts will have been for nothing. It will be interesting to watch it all play out. If the American left, such as it is, can start to focus on more concrete organizational capacity building rather than just investing in the cult of personality of this or that leader then there may be some hope for them to leave an actual mark on American politics. Otherwise I suspect in a decade or two this moment in history will be looked back on as a small blip in the steady rightward trajectory of American society post 1970.
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Mar 1, 2016 20:28
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When I see the success of the WFP Iin general. Along with actions against the charter school types. The success of local raise the minimum wage efforts. ALong with movements like BLM.I think this is not only possible but something we can do by 2030.
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Mar 1, 2016 20:39
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Helsing posted:The real problem, though, is that Sanders won't win. So where does that leave his supporters, and the Democrats more generally? Do the Bernouts launch another bid to seize control of the presidency in 4 or 8 years? Do they focus on taking control of state partys or down ticket races and nominations? I honestly don't know, but that to me seems like the more relevant conversation to be having. Instead of vesting too much hope in individual candidacies or campaigns I'd suggest that the progressive left in America should be focusing on actually creating an institutional basis that could plausibly take control of the Democratic party rather than merely being co-opted by it. How exactly that is done is impossible to predict in advance, but there are numerous 20th century examples of how particular demographics or interest groups have seized control of political parties and re-purposed them to new ends. So perhaps looking to some of those examples, such as Goldwater and McGovern, would be a good first step. The question is "where did the DLC types come from"? The answer, as far as I can tell, is that Clinton built the current Democratic party establishment from the ground up. When Bill Clinton left office, he was the first Democratic president to be elected to and serve two full terms since FDR, and the first Democratic president to spend more than four years in the White House since Lyndon Johnson. Granted, Democratic congressional performance has been generally better, but Clinton had a huge effect on the modern party, and there's a reason the party is full of Clinton alumni and former Clinton staffers who faithfully follow Clintonian policy. Having a friendly President in the White House appointing people to real positions does do a lot to build groundwork and populate the ranks of experienced Democratic staffers with your own loyalists.
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Mar 1, 2016 21:01
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Main Paineframe posted:Besides, aren't you the one treating them like overall-wearing yokels? It might shock you to hear that guns are not the only political issue that rural whites care about. There are government policies which affect rural whites' lives far more deeply and importantly than how many attachments they're allowed to stick on an AR-15. Of course there are. But economic issues can be nebulous and poor whites have no reason to trust anyone. Gun control, however, is a clear indication of "gently caress YOU, REDNECK".
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Mar 1, 2016 21:42
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Atrocious Joe posted:AFSCME, the largest public employee union, represents prison guards. They tend not to be happy about closing prisons. If prisons did close, wouldn't it start with private prisons which rely on government contracts, anyway? If people already said all this stuff or we're back to gunchat again, my bad.
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Mar 1, 2016 21:46
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Watermelon City posted:I'm not sure the alternative to the current policy would even be prison closure. Prisons are so horribly overcrowded right now a change in policy would lead to normal prison population densities. It would make prisons safer for staff and those incarcerated. Prison understaffing and overcrowding of prisoners means yeah there's more opportunity for OT and base wages are very high for staff, but this also means turnover is high and conditions are unnecessarily dangerous for staff. At least here in California, the prison union's political warchest is so massive things aren't going to change unless the guards themselves can be convinced to change the current policies. A democratic president might be able to overcome the prision union problem. They could declare that overcrowding-related problems are violations of prisoners' federal rights. Then they could start suing the prisons and pressing charges against corporate executives. It would very, very quickly become unprofitable to run private prisons, particularly at the current density. That's going to suck for prison owners. But then they shouldn't have signed contracts with the anticipation that they'd crowd people into sub-standard conditions. Of course, we know that no democratic president would actually take this kind of decisive action against corporate bad-actors. Which, to me, seems like one of the key problem.
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Mar 1, 2016 22:32
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falcon2424 posted:They could declare that overcrowding-related problems are violations of prisoners' federal rights. I'm pretty sure the President can't do it.
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Mar 1, 2016 23:36
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The democratics could maintain 2008 black turnout levels if Obama announces a black Supreme Court justice and campaigns on the next democratic nominee and congress pushing them through. This is dependent on the Republicans denying Obama all year and Obama actually helping out.
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Mar 5, 2016 14:31
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Trabisnikof posted:I'm pretty sure the President can't do it. The president could pardon/commute a few hundred thousand prisoners, that would free up some space.
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Mar 5, 2016 17:02
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Infinite Karma posted:The president could pardon/commute a few hundred thousand prisoners, that would free up some space. https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/population_statistics.jsp There are literally fewer than two hundred thousand federal prisoners, so you want to pardon/commute everyone?
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Mar 5, 2016 18:03
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farraday posted:https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/population_statistics.jsp Okay, fine, I was spitballing the actual number when responding to a one sentence post. But federal prisons are still 40% over capacity, so getting a full 1/3 (~65,000) of federal prisoners out of jail would still leave prisons pretty much at maximum capacity.
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Mar 5, 2016 18:17
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Infinite Karma posted:Okay, fine, I was spitballing the actual number when responding to a one sentence post. But federal prisons are still 40% over capacity, so getting a full 1/3 (~65,000) of federal prisoners out of jail would still leave prisons pretty much at maximum capacity. No they aren't you're using blatantly old numbers which I'm guessing you don't even realize are old. The current 195 thousand is down 10% in the past year alone. Anything else you want to pull out of your rear end instead of actually studying the issue?
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Mar 5, 2016 18:37
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Really? Federal prisons are what we're arguing about? That's like being on a plane that just lost both wings and the engine's on fire and having a slapfight about how we should address the fact the rudder is sticking a little bit.
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Mar 5, 2016 19:05
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Maoist Pussy posted:Of course there are. But economic issues can be nebulous and poor whites have no reason to trust anyone. Gun control, however, is a clear indication of "gently caress YOU, REDNECK". Exactly. Screaming about the need for gun bans in the face of the SCOTUS's ongoing series of 'gently caress OFFS' to such bans is very, very clear to much of the hobbyist populace as a direct statement that they have no home in the Democratic Party. And then we wonder why the rural poor, who have much to gain economically and in terms of quality of life from progressive policies, are so often unflinchingly hostile to the party.
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Mar 6, 2016 02:50
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Whoa whoa hold up there gun bunny, I think you'll find that it's better to threaten people with hard time for possession crimes (BTW FYI I think the drug war is bad) and also give people the impression that we think they're poo poo because of where they're from. I don't see how we'll lose voters doing this and any voters we gain who love the two aforementioned selling points will definitely be people whose politics will take America to good places.  I'm not obsessing about this, YOU'RE obsessing about this!
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Mar 6, 2016 03:58
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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Ah yes, I too remember when Obama tried to ban all guns, which only rural poor people have any interest in. Fortunately, the Republican champion Mitt "gun-freedoms-lover" Romney was there as an alternative to the evil evil freedom-hating Democrats, so freedom triumphed. Somehow. Even though B Hussein "gonna ban all the guns" Obama won two elections in a row, the total ban on all personal firearms that gun lobbyists and hobbyists have forecasted for the past eight years has failed to pass, which is clearly proof of the Democrats' diabolical scheme to ban guns!
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Mar 7, 2016 18:02
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Main Paineframe posted:Ah yes, I too remember when Obama tried to ban all guns, which only rural poor people have any interest in. Fortunately, the Republican champion Mitt "gun-freedoms-lover" Romney was there as an alternative to the evil evil freedom-hating Democrats, so freedom triumphed. Somehow. Even though B Hussein "gonna ban all the guns" Obama won two elections in a row, the total ban on all personal firearms that gun lobbyists and hobbyists have forecasted for the past eight years has failed to pass, which is clearly proof of the Democrats' diabolical scheme to ban guns! You don't have to literally ban 100% of all guns 5eva in order to warrant the full brunt of the NRA steamroller. You also still deserve to be associated with gun bans if it didn't happen post-Sandy Hook purely due to elements outside of your team's control. Your hyperbole doesn't have much to do with what I said anyway. Gun control is often perceived as an identity issue (and just as often delivered by its proponents in such a way, rhetorically) by rural folks whether or not they're the only gun owners out there. And beyond success or failure in the moment, assault weapon bans introduce a possession crime over a statistically insignificant issue. Nobody's immune to falling into the moral panic trap. Any voter who falls for it can just as quickly turn on issues you care about. Thread continues to deliver live demonstrations of why the Dems won't retake the house. Voted 5.
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Mar 7, 2016 20:03
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DeusExMachinima posted:You don't have to literally ban 100% of all guns 5eva in order to warrant the full brunt of the NRA steamroller. Not banning any guns at all, on the other hand, seems to make absolutely no difference in where the "NRA steamroller" points itself. For that matter, actually successfully banning guns doesn't seem to matter much either! It's almost as if actual facts have no effect on the political outcomes of the gun "debate", which exists mainly to manipulate low-education voters by openly lying to them, and therefore the actual details of a politician's or party's position on guns are entirely irrelevant - just as the specifics of Obamacare didn't get in the way of the "DEATH PANELS" hyperbole. quote:Your hyperbole doesn't have much to do with what I said anyway. Gun control is often perceived as an identity issue (and just as often delivered by its proponents in such a way, rhetorically) by rural folks whether or not they're the only gun owners out there. Honestly, I don't necessarily buy the assumption that gun control is really a primarily rural issue. It's commonly stereotyped as such, and there's no shortage of lovely articles from some lazy reporter who went out to a small-town gun range to tell us all about how those wacky exotic rural people think, but what little data there actually is suggests that perhaps it isn't the sole factor or even necessarily the deciding factor, as the stereotype suggests.  The reason people oppose the War in Drugs isn't because they're morally opposed to criminalizing the possession of an item.
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Mar 7, 2016 21:10
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