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gobbagool posted:I'd say end the war on drugs but the left is far too deep in the pockets of public employee unions for that to ever fly I don't follow.
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Feb 17, 2016 22:11
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Flowers For Algeria posted:I don't follow. I don't doubt it. In most states in the US, public employee unions are (with good reason) completely in the bag for Democrats. They pour huge sums of money into Democratic political campaigns. One of the more powerful subsets of the public employee unions (at least in the NE and Great Lakes regions, where I live) are the Corrections officers. They're vocal, and very well organized, and tend to get their way in intra-union conflicts. This group stands to lose considerable power and numbers if the drug laws are reformed because they wont have as many 'customers'. Any time there's talk of drug law reform, the immediately and stridently oppose it.
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Feb 17, 2016 22:18
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Flowers For Algeria posted:I don't follow. AFSCME, the largest public employee union, represents prison guards. They tend not to be happy about closing prisons. Granted, even though they're the largest public employee union, they don't have much pull on the Democratic party platform nationally. They certainly wouldn't be a big supporter of ending the Drug War but they're not much of an impediment to the Dems.
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Feb 17, 2016 22:19
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Holy poo poo this gunchat is ridiculous. Makes it pretty obvious that pro-gun people are babies that ignore evidence. A plethora of polls and statistics showing gun control is a WINNING issue for democrats is responded to with nitpicking and misinterpretation of math. Essentially being willfully dense. But for the Democrats to win the house back, don't most of the polls show that they have to just say progressive things? Most Americans are actually center to center-left on policies across the board. Most Americans are actually in favor of regulating Wall Street, increasing taxes on million/billionaires, UHC, raising minimum wage, etc. the Democrats refuse to push the narrative that they are fighting for these things in any meaningful way, so people are left feeling depressed and like they have no say in the political process. Seriously when progressive polices are laid out without stupidly bias conservative spin Americans support them overwhelmingly. Of course the Democratic Party prefers to push Republican lite, instead of relabeling as progressives. But never mind it's the "silent majority" in democratic voters that creams themselves over AK-47s that are the REAL turning factor in all these elections. It can't be that the Republicans have effectively locked down the crazy vote and control the narrative. Nope it's that Democrats don't cater to the gun nuts enough.
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Mar 1, 2016 01:28
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RasperFat posted:Holy poo poo this gunchat is ridiculous. Makes it pretty obvious that pro-gun people are babies that ignore evidence. A plethora of polls and statistics showing gun control is a WINNING issue for democrats is responded to with nitpicking and misinterpretation of math. Essentially being willfully dense. Then how about the Democrats actually run on UHC, breaking up Wall Street, ending free trade, promoting unionization, minwage increases or the like? Instead all we get is weaksauce identity politics and gunchat.
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Mar 1, 2016 01:31
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Part of the problem is that, while when asked on individual issues whether they prefer the left over right, when asked as whole they still split evenly. So people are for 'cutting spending', but no one wants to cut the department of education, or social security, or medicare, or defense, or basically anything else that money is actually spent on. They've been told there's just too much spending, somewhere, that needs to be cut, somehow, and also taxes are too high?
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Mar 1, 2016 01:50
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RasperFat posted:Holy poo poo this gunchat is ridiculous. Makes it pretty obvious that pro-gun people are babies that ignore evidence. A plethora of polls and statistics showing gun control is a WINNING issue for democrats is responded to with nitpicking and misinterpretation of math. Essentially being willfully dense. The legitimate point being made, beneath many layers of special pleading and willful obtuseness, is that polls don't reveal the intensity of voter feelings, meaning that it's actually safer to be on the side of the minority who love guns and feel passionately about them rather than on the side of the larger number of people who are mildly in favour of gun control but who probably don't make it their only issue. Of course what gun control opponents in this thread can't really respond to is the fact that there's very little reward in chasing gun votes when so much of the gun owning community might as well live on Mars for all their political awareness. American politics is so disconnected from reality that huge numbers of people genuinely fear that the Muslim president is on the verge of sending swat teams door to door confiscating fire arms. Anyway, the issue with the Democrats being more "progressive" has already been identified: it's not what the people running the party actually want. The Democrats are funded by the same billionaires as the Republican party, and the major Democratic policy wonks and political operatives all eat from the same trough as the Republican policy wonks and political operatives. They have strong vested interests in the current billionaire funded private welfare system that exists in Washington. Remember that the purpose of winning in American politics is, for many people, to invest in your future by gaining exclusive access to the halls of power. You do your time in government or within the apparatus of a major political party and then you parlay that access and experience into real money after you retire. Even if the Democrats could theoretically gain more votes by eschewing this system they'd be risking their ladder to easy riches. It's a hell of a lot easier for a young, educated and connected person to go and make their fortune in Washington than it would be to actually work your way up through the ranks of a real business or to profit off of genuinely entrepreneurialism. This is without evening getting into the problems with winning an election in America without the support of the billionaries. The only person who looks plausibly positioned to do that right now is Trump and he's doing it by utilizing strategies that aren't available to the Democrats. This is why lurking behind any kind of progressive / conservative conflict is a more basic issue with systemic corruption. The Democrats aren't stupid. They understand that support for the status quo has waned significantly (perhaps they under estimate how rapidly that support has dissipated, as evidence by Hilary's campaign, but they understand it well enough to try and exploit it). But they have no real opportunity to chase that anti-establishment vibe without abandoning the corporate welfare that is the lifeblood of the party and its activists. Basically you need to stop thinking of the Democrats as an ineffective progressive party and recognize that it's mostly a vehicle for enriching its senior members. It just happens, due to historical accidents, that contained within the party is a contingent of progressives who are occasionally harvested by a cynical party elite when the time comes to rebrand.
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Mar 1, 2016 02:01
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One way Democrats can win back the House is to keep allowing illegal immigration to put downward pressure on the wages of blue collar voters, and then calling those voters racist when they complain about it.
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Mar 1, 2016 02:07
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I disagree that Trump's tactics can't be used progressives, his simple showmanship and ability to grab the media cycle isn't tied to his racism or whatever, it's simply turning the outrage-cycle on its head, by using it to suffocate coverage of your political opponents. That, combined with the loss of faith in the main political institutions (which includes the media) means that they end up doing free advertising, under the misconception that it will finally sink him or whatever. It's actually fairly ingenious.
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Mar 1, 2016 02:07
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rudatron posted:I disagree that Trump's tactics can't be used progressives, his simple showmanship and ability to grab the media cycle isn't tied to his racism or whatever, it's simply turning the outrage-cycle on its head, by using it to suffocate coverage of your political opponents. That, combined with the loss of faith in the main political institutions (which includes the media) means that they end up doing free advertising, under the misconception that it will finally sink him or whatever. It's actually fairly ingenious. So what we need to do is convince Trump, after he wins the GOP nomination, to declare he is also running for the Democratic nomination.
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Mar 1, 2016 02:20
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rudatron posted:I disagree that Trump's tactics can't be used progressives, his simple showmanship and ability to grab the media cycle isn't tied to his racism or whatever, it's simply turning the outrage-cycle on its head, by using it to suffocate coverage of your political opponents. That, combined with the loss of faith in the main political institutions (which includes the media) means that they end up doing free advertising, under the misconception that it will finally sink him or whatever. It's actually fairly ingenious. I doubt you can just turn it around like that. Trump's ability to grab the media cycle with his "outrage-cycle" is inherently rooted in the fact that building a wall and banning Muslims are outrageous. When you stop saying that kind of thing you're no longer outrageous and thus stop getting an outsized share of attention. None of what you said matters. As someone who hates gun control, I won't worry about Obama banning anything unless the split is ever 80/20 or 90/10 in favor of more control (it won't ever be). Motivation matters. You can have whatever pro-control opinions you like as far as I'm concerned, just be sure to stay home playing DOTA when election day comes around and/or don't be willing to credibly threaten to burn down your own party if they regularly or significantly abandon you on the issue. DeusExMachinima fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Mar 1, 2016 |
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Mar 1, 2016 02:32
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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He's the first one to ever use this tactic, but imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Others will follow. Most will fail, but there's a chance others will actually do better. I'm not sure whether that's a negative or a positive long term, but if progressives don't adopt those tactics as well, they'll fall behind. If they can pull it off well, they'll win.
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Mar 1, 2016 02:33
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Where is the evidence for this large army of gun-owning single-issue voters who will vote religiously against the Democrats unless they weaken their stance on guns? Where is the evidence? The pro-gun posters in this thread have provided no evidence they exist. Only just-so stories about how the Democrats lost the election and it must have been due to the assault weapon ban because *furious hand waving*. I'm honestly open minded to being proven wrong on this point, but I want to see unambiguous statistical evidence that these voters exist in significant numbers, enough so that the Democrats would be better off dropping gun control than keeping it on their platform.
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Mar 1, 2016 02:33
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DeusExMachinima posted:I doubt you can just turn it around like that. Trump's ability to grab the media cycle with his "outrage-cycle" is inherently rooted in the fact that building a wall and banning Muslims are outrageous. When you stop saying that kind of thing you're no longer outrageous and thus stop getting an outsized share of attention.
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Mar 1, 2016 02:38
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rudatron posted:I disagree that Trump's tactics can't be used progressives, his simple showmanship and ability to grab the media cycle isn't tied to his racism or whatever, it's simply turning the outrage-cycle on its head, by using it to suffocate coverage of your political opponents. That, combined with the loss of faith in the main political institutions (which includes the media) means that they end up doing free advertising, under the misconception that it will finally sink him or whatever. It's actually fairly ingenious. Trump's strategy is intimately tied up with Trump's public persona and his access to an unlimited warchest of his own money. I'm sure there are lessons to be learned from his campaign but the idea that you could just appropriate his tactics and slap a progressive coat of paint on them strikes me as hollow. Can you name a single political figure within the Democratic party over the last 30 years who you could plausibly imagine running something analogous to Trump's campaign? For one thing, his appeal is so tied up with racial politics right now. For another, the Democratic establishment is no more supportive of economic nationalism than the Republicans, perhaps even less in some cases. Also you still have to address the fact that the Democratic party, as opposed to Democratic voters, has displayed zero interest in any kind of populism that would be genuine enough to threaten their access to Plutocrat Welfare. I think many of them would probably prefer that a genuine populist candidate lose than risk upsetting the system that reliably delivers so many benefits to them. Both parties know that the system inevitably puts them back into power after a few cycles, so why upset the apple cart with a risky anti-establishment candidate when you're going to win anyway eventually, and when your personal well being is guaranteed either way? The problem is the structure of the Democratic party. They aren't stupid, they just have no incentive to pursue the kind of progressive agenda that a lot of people want. It's not for nothing that Benrie Sanders campaign has relied so much on support from people who previously didn't participate in the party or who only got involved in 2008 onward. If you look at how the GOP ended up being a vehicle for conservative ideologues, one of the clear factors was that conservatives in the 1960s (really in the 1940s and 50s but things didn't properly get underway till the 60s) decided to seize control of the party. That was a battle that raged continuously into the 1980s. By contrast the Democrats went through a similar takeover in the 1960s by progressive activists but unlike the GOP the Democratic establishment rallied itself, kicked those people out and then rewrote the party rules so they'd never win again. Then they spun an entire mythology around why McGovern had lost so they'd have a neat little cautionary tale to point to for future elections. To fix the Democratic party you'd need to actually start taking control of the party apparatus and changing the party's culture, much in the way that the Goldwaterites and their fellow travelers were able, through decades of trench warfare, to take over the Republicans.
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Mar 1, 2016 02:39
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His warchest isn't unlimited, and compared to his opponents, he's spent a negligible amount of his own money. He was also not a member of the Republican party establishment, nor even a Republican until very recently, so your challenge to find someone 'within the party' doesn't compare well. And it's not as if the GOP is any less in the Plutocratic Welfare trough, possibly more so. There's definitely lessons to be learnt there, whether you acknowledge that or not. Personally, I think the Democratic party's stranglehold is must stronger the GOPs, but that doesn't mean it will end well for them, it just means the crisis point will come a little later & be more intense. Looking forward to the eventual riot, it'll be a real fireworks display.
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Mar 1, 2016 02:45
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rudatron posted:Racism isn't the only way to grab attention. The trick is to find the right avenue that doesn't alienate the public, but still positions you as an 'outsider'. Bernie is probably the closest you'll get to this, at least in the near future. As much as BernBros can be annoying and/or retarded, it's hard to say they're not as much believers as many Trump fans are. But there's not nearly as many of them which suggests that either Bernie's rhetoric doesn't have the same outrage-per-pound ratio or the audience isn't there. Chomskyan posted:Where is the evidence for this large army of gun-owning single-issue voters who will vote religiously against the Democrats unless they weaken their stance on guns? Where is the evidence? The pro-gun posters in this thread have provided no evidence they exist. Only just-so stories about how the Democrats lost the election and it must have been due to the assault weapon ban because *furious hand waving*. Not all Dems are from San Fran, dude. In the 2013 Colorado recall, the gun control side spent $3 million and the NRA spent $500,000. The pro-gun side won both recalls and forced another senator to resign so the Dems wouldn't lose the senate majority. Anyway, one of the Dem senators lost in a heavily Latino urban district in a purple state by 12%. That same district then replaced the Republican who won the recall with a Democrat at the next normal election. Seems almost like they were trying to say something about the issue without jumping onto the destroy-all-social-programs train.
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Mar 1, 2016 02:59
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I know that our system is broken and run by big money on both sides, that's not the issue. We are talking about how Democrats can take back the house, and even paying lip service to these ideas would boost their numbers greatly. I don't expect them to actually push for the socialist utopia in Congress like we want, but they aren't even trying to seem progressive anymore. Take the "Job Creators" rhetoric that was ramped up for OWS. The movement had basically zero positive response from the Democratic establishment. Again not expecting them to provide any real support like new laws or budget changes, but even just saying "Hey these people might be right about one or two points, even if we wouldn't try to make changes with their methods". Nope it was the same doubling down on being "moderate" (read center-right) and that those lazy hippies/millennials should stop complaining. If the Democrats had even the tiniest of balls and made some empty promises in favor of progressives, I'd put serious money on increasing voter turnout by a lot. Instead they use the same lovely arguments Republicans use and their base gets demotivated and doesn't show up to vote. Similarly, people downplaying how many and how passionate Bernie supporters are is highly depressing. We finally have a wave of young people getting interested in politics, and actually in favor of good policies, but they get poo poo on as "berniebros" and "bernouts", even within this heavily left-leaning forum. (Bernie is probably not getting the Nom, but myself and I'd imagine 90+% of his supporters would still vote Hillary when she gets it instead, not just stay home) If the Democrats want to win and continue winning they just need to push progressive candidates and ideas harder, not play down he middle and drop things like gun-control like people here are suggesting. That's exactly how they played the more recent midterm elections and got crushed.
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Mar 1, 2016 03:03
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RasperFat posted:If the Democrats want to win and continue winning they just need to push progressive candidates and ideas harder, not play down he middle and drop things like gun-control like people here are suggesting. That's exactly how they played the more recent midterm elections and got crushed. But they've spent the last 50 years becoming the Less Overtly Racist Republicans. You want to throw that all away!?
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Mar 1, 2016 03:10
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RasperFat posted:If the Democrats want to win and continue winning they just need to push progressive candidates and ideas harder, not play down he middle and drop things like gun-control like people here are suggesting. That's exactly how they played the more recent midterm elections and got crushed. This. People are acting like this strategy didn't already get tried in 2014  
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Mar 1, 2016 03:13
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Gun control is not a core issue that will bring back or energize voters. Do the Sanders supporters care much about guns one way or the other? It's the economy, and lunch pail issues will win or lose far more votes than banning laser scopes or some such. If the biggest tweaks to the Dem platform we can imagine involve cosmetic features on dad's guns we're pretty hosed anyways.
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Mar 1, 2016 03:18
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VitalSigns posted:This. People are acting like this strategy didn't already get tried in 2014 Democrats barely talked about economic issues, they doubled down on War on Women and nobody showed up.
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Mar 1, 2016 03:23
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rudatron posted:His warchest isn't unlimited, and compared to his opponents, he's spent a negligible amount of his own money. He was also not a member of the Republican party establishment, nor even a Republican until very recently, so your challenge to find someone 'within the party' doesn't compare well. And it's not as if the GOP is any less in the Plutocratic Welfare trough, possibly more so. There's definitely lessons to be learnt there, whether you acknowledge that or not. Personally, I think the Democratic party's stranglehold is must stronger the GOPs, but that doesn't mean it will end well for them, it just means the crisis point will come a little later & be more intense. Looking forward to the eventual riot, it'll be a real fireworks display. He loaned his campaign millions of dollars that someone else would have had to fundraise for and that money makes him inherently threatening to his opponents since they know if he wanted to he could start spending more at any time. It also gives him credibility among his followers. And never mind finding someone currently within the Democratic party, point to any figure in the political establishment right now who could plausibly be a left wing or progressive Donald Trump. The closest equivalent right now is arguably Sanders and while there are similarities between him and Trump in terms of how both of them are exploiting the divergence between what donors want and what regular voters want, there are also some pretty dramatic differences in terms of both style and substance. The lessons to be learned from Donald Trump mostly relate to how weak the political centre is right now and how the economy is doing vastly worse than anyone in the pundit or political classes can appreciate (exhibit A would be Paul Krugman crowing about the successes of the ACA). But beyond the fact that the political establishment is weakening it's not clear to me what specific lessons you think the Democrats can learn from Trump right now. A lot of his success seems to be coming from exploiting the particular dynamics of where the Republican party is right now. The Democrats have their own set of issues that would seem to call for its own unique solution. Arguably that should have been Sanders but its unlikely he'll get the nomination.
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Mar 1, 2016 03:24
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RasperFat posted:I know that our system is broken and run by big money on both sides, that's not the issue.  Do you really not see how the role of money in the system is placing limits on what the Democrats are willing to say and do? These aren't unrelated or only tangentially connected issues, they are two expressions of the same underlying problem.
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Mar 1, 2016 03:27
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Helsing posted:Can you name a single political figure within the Democratic party over the last 30 years who you could plausibly imagine running something analogous to Trump's campaign? gohmak fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Mar 1, 2016 |
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Mar 1, 2016 03:39
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DeusExMachinima posted:I doubt you can just turn it around like that. Trump's ability to grab the media cycle with his "outrage-cycle" is inherently rooted in the fact that building a wall and banning Muslims are outrageous. When you stop saying that kind of thing you're no longer outrageous and thus stop getting an outsized share of attention. I'd quibble with the wording here. The issues themselves don't need to be all that outrageous. They just need to really, really piss off some specific subset of the other side. Take the wall. In an objective sense, it's a minor departure from mainstream policy. Congress started building the thing with their "Secure Fence Act of 2006". The project has already covered 640 miles of the 1,954 mile border. We already spend $13B / year paying guys with guns to patrol our borders. The barrier is treated as normal and moral. But a wall? Madness. What's happening is that there's a faction of Democrats who treat openness and multiculturalism as core moral principles. Trump is taking a big, symbolic poo poo on them. So all of their discontent with the status quo comes pouring out at Trump. I think this is Trump's goal. He's using carefully-provoked outrage to create a wedge. By the general election, I expect that the lines will have been drawn so that the debate becomes "Open Borders!" or "Trump!" The Democrats could probably pull the same trick. They just need to find a few "crazy" candidates and poke at the far-Right's sacred values. The issues should be ones where the far-Right cares a lot, and the far-Right consensus will already be unhappy with the status quo. For instance: Every child deserves a good eduction. That's why we're requiring that homeschooled kids and their parents show the ability to pass federally-constructed common core exams. After all, unless the parents can provide an education that's at least as good as the one in the local schools, then they're not equipped to teach. (For bonus points, add a section on 'American Demographics' to the exams that paints gay families and minorities as increasingly normal.) The family values people really, really care about parental independence. They're already unhappy with perceived meddling. Forcing them to submit to federal testing should drive them into a frenzy. The american American, on the other hand, won't be impacted at all. And will probably agree that standards for teachers are a generally good thing.
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Mar 1, 2016 05:07
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DeusExMachinima posted:Not all Dems are from San Fran, dude. In the 2013 Colorado recall, the gun control side spent $3 million and the NRA spent $500,000. The pro-gun side won both recalls and forced another senator to resign so the Dems wouldn't lose the senate majority. Anyway, one of the Dem senators lost in a heavily Latino urban district in a purple state by 12%. That same district then replaced the Republican who won the recall with a Democrat at the next normal election. In the mean time, here's yet another national poll that seems to contradict the conventional wisdom about single issue gun-owners   Americans are almost exactly as likely to be single issues voters on gun control regardless of party, ideology, or actual gun ownership
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Mar 1, 2016 06:42
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Chomskyan posted:In the mean time, here's yet another national poll that seems to contradict the conventional wisdom about single issue gun-owners That's certainly interesting. I'd have expected the people who self-identify as a "Liberal Democrat" to be more concerned about gun control than their "moderate/conservative" peers. Edit: Also self-identified Republicans care the least about gun control. Would not have predicted that. Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 07:37 on Mar 1, 2016 |
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Mar 1, 2016 07:32
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Helsing posted:
No I see the connection and I personally think campaign finance is probably the biggest single issue problem right now. However you'd think that the big donors would be smart enough to do what they used to do with progressive vote pandering and just claim they were going to reform. That's exactly what Obama did and cue to having massive turnout. We get a few small improvements (ACA is better than nothing) and claim massive victory. People are not "happy" but will stomach the small changes because at least it appears to making progressive changes. Remembers the ACA is essentially Romneycare from Mass., a Republican health care plan. (Caveat, I know unprecedented obstruction/racism from Republicans made getting anything done post 2010 impossible.) Which is why it's surprising they dropped he facade of being the progressive party and instead rebranding as the centrist party in recent years. Again, the question wasn't how to have good governance it's how the Dems take back the house. The rich fuckers should be telling their puppets to say one thing and then pass weak rear end legislation, like "left-wing" politicians have been doing for decades now. Instead we have a lackluster party no one is really excited for. Liberals don't have the luxury of an insane base that goes full tribal 24/7 through endless anger and religious nonsense. You have to at least SAY you're doing something reasonable and progressive, not just less Republican.
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Mar 1, 2016 10:04
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Chomskyan posted:Where is the evidence for this large army of gun-owning single-issue voters who will vote religiously against the Democrats unless they weaken their stance on guns? Where is the evidence? The pro-gun posters in this thread have provided no evidence they exist. Only just-so stories about how the Democrats lost the election and it must have been due to the assault weapon ban because *furious hand waving*. Well, I worked on the Bill Clinton gubernatorial campaign in high school, and the single toughest sell was always gun control. We always had to publish photos of him shooting ducks and whatnot. This was in Arkansas and 25 years ago, of course.
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Mar 1, 2016 10:20
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Helsing posted:Trump's strategy is intimately tied up with Trump's public persona and his access to an unlimited warchest of his own money. I'm sure there are lessons to be learned from his campaign but the idea that you could just appropriate his tactics and slap a progressive coat of paint on them strikes me as hollow. Can you name a single political figure within the Democratic party over the last 30 years who you could plausibly imagine running something analogous to Trump's campaign? For one thing, his appeal is so tied up with racial politics right now. For another, the Democratic establishment is no more supportive of economic nationalism than the Republicans, perhaps even less in some cases. While I would say that the tale of Mcgovern is more then a myth. Mcgovern really did get utterly hosed by Nixon. At the same time Democrats returning to power requires that the left takes back the party from the donor class and forces our own Rockefellers to get in line or get out.
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Mar 1, 2016 11:49
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Chomskyan posted:Where is the evidence for this large army of gun-owning single-issue voters who will vote religiously against the Democrats unless they weaken their stance on guns? Where is the evidence? The pro-gun posters in this thread have provided no evidence they exist. Only just-so stories about how the Democrats lost the election and it must have been due to the assault weapon ban because *furious hand waving*. Maybe that's the trump ticket for the Progressives. Become the Liberal Crimesquad that promises to destroy every gun in America. Send the military to fight the NRA. Declare the KKK a terrorist organization that will be bombed. Become the boogieman the right wing media itself has built up for years and you will get the attention by saying everything they fear.
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Mar 1, 2016 12:31
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Crabtree posted:Maybe that's the trump ticket for the Progressives. Become the Liberal Crimesquad that promises to destroy every gun in America. Send the military to fight the NRA. Declare the KKK a terrorist organization that will be bombed. Become the boogieman the right wing media itself has built up for years and you will get the attention by saying everything they fear. So Bloomberg
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Mar 1, 2016 12:46
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Crabtree posted:Maybe that's the trump ticket for the Progressives. Become the Liberal Crimesquad that promises to destroy every gun in America. Send the military to fight the NRA. Declare the KKK a terrorist organization that will be bombed. Become the boogieman the right wing media itself has built up for years and you will get the attention by saying everything they fear. Nah the fire and brimstone should be completely economic. Run as a hardcore iron fisted communist. Rip out a media moguls heart and eat it on public television. Chase the biggest tax evaders, polluters and hoarders of wealth. Arrest all the 1% and retroactively pardon and strike off all drug possession charges ever. Implement a Living Mincome Crush the greedy, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their stooges.
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Mar 1, 2016 13:24
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Liquid Communism posted:At that point you have to go with the President -wanting- to ban guns that are statistically very unlikely to be used in crime out of either fear or a desire to punish gun owners, or with the idea that the President is so poorly informed on the issue or ill educated in statistics that he actually thinks this will be an effective measure to reduce homicides. Or he's trying to look tough on gun control in the eyes of people who are poorly informed about guns, while in reality pursuing policies that do not affect the vast majority of gun owners (keeping in mind that the vast majority of gun owners just have a handgun or two, not an arsenal of hobby weapons). I can't understand how anyone with the slightest understanding of modern politics can be naive enough to look at an apparently ineffectual regulation a politician is pushing and blame it on "stupidity" rather than "trying to look like they're doing a lot about the thing, when they're actually doing as little about the thing as possible". Do you also think that ineffective financial regulation and flawed tax codes that give rich people the advantage are just accidents created by incompetent politicians who don't know any better? If a politician pushes a regulation that would not affect the vast majority of people who do or own the thing the politician is supposedly trying to regulate, then that is almost always a deliberate and intended "flaw", rather than stupidity. Doesn't really matter anyway, since 2012 demonstrated extremely clearly that gun owners vote Republican regardless of the actual policies of the candidates. The fact that the gun lobbies supported Romney over Obama in 2012 and the gun hobbyists followed that lead is a pretty clear proof that actual gun policy doesn't matter anymore, and hasn't in a very long time. SedanChair posted:Nobody is saying that dropping gun control would swing an election, only that it would begin the slow process of signaling to rural whites that Democratic leaders do not see them as yokels with one tooth and overalls, but no shirt. Of course since Democratic leaders do think that, there probably is no point trying to pretend they don't--their passive-aggressive contempt will manifest in plenty of other ways. No, it really wouldn't, considering that the Democratic party as an institution basically abandoned rural white areas after 2006. However, the reason they did this was not out of contempt, it was because they wanted to they wanted to maximize their short-term return on campaign dollars, and therefore cut out regions where their 2008 chances weren't great in order to focus more dollars on flipping purple areas. Long-term, of course, the effect is negative and I don't really approve...but to be fair, I can't blame a black candidate for not investing a whole lot of effort into building his political support among rural whites in the deep South. 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. anne frank fanfic posted:2009: Entire country gives a supermajority to Democrats since the republicans had been so bad the past 8 years. They could've done anything except touch guns and they'd be the power for the next decade or so. "Trust us, we won't touch guns as soon as we get into power" was the rallying cry to wary voters. Is this satire or something? I can't tell
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Mar 1, 2016 17:06
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Debbie Wasserman Schultz continues to be a piece of poo poo http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/debbie-wasserman-schultz-paylenders-cfpb_us_56d4ce38e4b03260bf77e8fc quote:Wasserman Schultz is co-sponsoring a new bill that would gut the CFPB's forthcoming payday loan regulations. She's also attempting to gin up Democratic support for the legislation on Capitol Hill, according to a memo obtained by The Huffington Post.
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Mar 1, 2016 19:30
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gohmak posted:Alan Grayson Other than a propensity for bombastic rhetoric I don't really see the similarity between him and Trump. I feel like you're focusing on the more superficial (though still important) elements of Trump's appeal, like his bombastic rhetoric and bullying nature. I think what you're over looking is that Trump also had a very effective strategy: one I don't see any equivalent of on the Democratic side. Trump was able to identify a specific and dramatic divergence between the GOP leadership and the GOP rank and file, specifically immigration and globalization, and Trump has exploited that weakness. So many liberals are acting like Trump is commanding rabid support through some kind of dark rhetorical sorcery that has no connection to any actual policy or factual reality. What this view overlooks is that Trump is actually playing masterfully into a real division within the GOP to leverage his own advantages. His bombastic rhetoric helps him but his rhetoric wouldn't be so powerful if the division didn't already exist to be exploited. What's the Democratic equivalent of that? Is there a democratic equivalent of that? Because that's more important than the rhetoric. RasperFat posted:No I see the connection and I personally think campaign finance is probably the biggest single issue problem right now. Honestly this post kinda approximates how I imagine Hilary Clinton and a lot of her advisers have viewed American politics. I want to highlight one statement you made that I think is particularly telling: RasperFat posted:That's exactly what Obama did and cue to having massive turnout. I don't mean to pick on you or to read too deeply into what you said but this to me is a really fallacious way to view things. You're basically treating the voting population as an inert mass upon which different political parties enact their strategies. You model implicitly suggests that when Obama has the right combination of promises he gets high turn out and wins. It calls to my mind Hilary's many frustrated attempts to "introduce herself" to voters, which invariably push her negatives higher. You can almost hear the grinding of teeth over at Hilary HQ each time they try to deploy these supposedly reliable media strategies only to have their candidates unfavorables remain dizzyingly high. What you're ignoring, I think, is that politics unfolds in the real world. Obama's high turn out can't just be viewed as a byproduct of a clever strategy. It was part of a larger historical moment involving the middle east wars going sour and the George W. Bush economy collapsing. People's material living standards were under threat and every indication was that the future would be worse. Obama may have capitalized on these circumstances but he didn't create them. He was, if anything, lucky to be a blank slate upon which millions of people could project their own hopes (or fears, as we discovered). I also think this misunderstanding shows up in your description of the Obama years. His policies utterly failed to actually improve the lives of ordinary Americans, which have arguably gotten worse during his time in office. The ACA might look better on paper, and no doubt some people are glad to have insurance, but basically the law sucks and is forcing people to buy expensive insurance with co-pays and deductibles that make the insurance largely unusable. I would suggest that these failures, plus the general weakness of the Democrats in any midterm, are a better explanation of the Democrats electoral defeats in the house. Sure Obama's surprisingly conservative approach to governance probably didn't help and his administration badly mishandled some important individual races such as the Scott Brown fiasco, but the real lesson of the Obama administration seems to be that soaring rhetoric can cover up a fundamentally lovely economy. And again, this all comes back to money. Actually enacting policies that significantly improve the lives of regular voters and give them an incentive to continue voting Democratic would be contrary to the monied interests who have bankrolled the party for decades. Such a shift would also threaten the privileged position of Democratic leaning policy wonks like Jonathan Chait or Ezra Klein. It would potentially shift the balance of power within major unions, whose leadership are mostly invested in supporting the Democratic party's status quo. In other words: a more aggressively populist and left leaning Democratic party would be opposed by much of its own core leadership and functionaries. So my suggestion would be that while the rhetoric or strategy of individual politicians can make some difference one way or the other, your focus should be the facts on the ground. What's the state of the economy, whats the orientation of major institutions like businesses, unions, the media, etc. Whats the attitude of party insiders, what's on the minds of voters. It's dangerous to get too focused on individual campaign strategy when ultimately it's the big picture that sets the conditions upon which political struggles play out. Obama won in 2008 because of the failures of the Bush years, and he proceeded to lose congress and various state governments in large part because he utterly failed to do what was expected of him and fix the economy mess his predecessors had left behind. Crowsbeak posted:While I would say that the tale of Mcgovern is more then a myth. Mcgovern really did get utterly hosed by Nixon. At the same time Democrats returning to power requires that the left takes back the party from the donor class and forces our own Rockefellers to get in line or get out. I say its a myth because all that is remembered today is that McGovern was very liberal. It's actually very much an example of what I am talking about above: the material situation is ignored and only McGovern's campaign strategy is looked at. So never mind that the Democratic party was in the midst of a bloody rupture as the Dixiecrats were forced out. Never mind that the civil rights legislation passed in 64 was still a major and controversial issue. Never mind that the cultural gap between unionized blue collar workers and the New Left was much more intense back then than it is now. All of these important historical factors are ignored because its more convenient for the DLC and its successors to spin the election as a clear rebuke of liberalism.
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Mar 1, 2016 19:30
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Helsing posted:Other than a propensity for bombastic rhetoric I don't really see the similarity between him and Trump. I feel like you're focusing on the more superficial (though still important) elements of Trump's appeal, like his bombastic rhetoric and bullying nature. I think what you're over looking is that Trump also had a very effective strategy: one I don't see any equivalent of on the Democratic side. Winning I would argue requires focusing on elctions on the ground and terrorizing the DLC types. Lets be honest outside of HIlalry their a bunch of cowards who will fall in line if the fire below them is hot enough. Push against the Charter school assholes. Push for more minimum wage laws in states and in local elections and when you can primary sociopaths like Schulz.
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Mar 1, 2016 19:38
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In addition to the political upheavals of 1968, that year was also the worst recession since the Depression. By 1972 the economy had fully bounced back, allowing Nixon to take credit for it. It wouldn't have mattered if Strom Thurmond was the Democratic candidate, anybody would have been trounced in 1972. McGovern should basically be footnote to history, but Bill Clinton just couldn't forget about it. e: Crowsbeak posted:you can primary sociopaths like Schulz. https://secure.actblue.com/entity/fundraisers/42087 menino fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Mar 1, 2016 |
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Mar 1, 2016 19:39
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Crowsbeak posted:Winning I would argue requires focusing on elctions on the ground and terrorizing the DLC types. Lets be honest outside of HIlalry their a bunch of cowards who will fall in line if the fire below them is hot enough. Push against the Charter school assholes. Push for more minimum wage laws in states and in local elections and when you can primary sociopaths like Schulz. 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: Politico posted:Labor seeks revenge on free-trade Dems What's the point of talking about "terrorizing the DLC types" when the entire party establishment is controlled by those same types. There's an old military saying that goes like this. "Amateurs worry about strategy, experts worry about logistics." Most people in this thread want to talk about strategy: they want to discuss the killer campaign rhetoric or decisive issue that the Democrats can use to smash the Republicans in elections. These are people who seemingly think that all it took to get the New Deal was FDR calling rich people "malefactors of great wealth". But the real issue for any progressive or left liberal or social democratic person in the USA seems to be more logistical than strategic. You guys don't have your own political party. The Democrats actively work against your interests. You lack the institutional weight to enforce your political will. I don't claim to have any easy solution. It seems like a two front war may be necessary, in which progressives are both fighting the Democratic party's leadership and trying to win elections against Republicans. Whether that is actually doable is questionable at best but that seems to be what the situation calls for. But the point stands that its somewhat premature to talk about the Democrats retaking the house by enacting progressive policies when really the Democrats have shown almost zero interest in deviating from the Clinton-Bush-Obama economic paradigm that the entire leadership of the party is solidly committed to. Sanders, to his credit, at least has a theoretical explanation for how to break this impasse. It's a big vague in the particulars but it amounts to using mass mobilization and grassroots pressure to break the deadlock in Congress, and he'd try to rely on grassroots fundraising to replace big money donors. Whether any of that is feasible at the national level is questionable, but at least it's a somewhat coherent plan for weaning the Democrats off billionaire welfare. 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.
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Mar 1, 2016 20:05
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