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Fiction posted:the evidence is the electoral success of an idiot with no plans and the abject electoral failure of this very type of tightrope politics that Clinton was attempting to turn into a wave. Trump had plans, we just didn't like them, and the problem with Clinton's focus on racism and sexism may well have been that they didn't poll test it, and instead relied on their heartfelt belief that America just wouldn't ever vote for a monster like trump. Alter Ego posted:No, we need to stand for something, and that something should be a minimum wage that makes it so the single mother of 3 that lives in the lovely inner-city apartment only has to work one job instead of two or three. If it only polls at 50%, then that just means we haven't advocated for it hard enough or shown clearly enough how it would benefit everyone. We have dialed it back for far too long--it's time to crank up the volume and rip the loving knob off. Its absurd to suggest that focusing on a 15 dollar minimum wage is only about wanting to help the poor and has nothing at all to do with political calculus. Expanding the welfare state would help the poor quite a lot more than increasing the minimum wage, because lots of poor people arent employed, and the ones that are would benefit from being able to work less, like the example you provide here. But we focus on raising the minimum wage because it polls well. We know raising the minimum wage is easier than expanding the welfare state because it's not vulnerable to the standard republican attacks on welfare queens and lazy poors. So we've already compromised our pure principles here, the minimum wage is good policy in part because it can win. But if your position on the minimum wage is so extreme and inflexible that it is no longer politically advantageous, what's the point? If you think all we need to do is stand for something and be loud and proud, why not fight for a guaranteed minimum income or any other serious socialist policy that might actually help all poor people? Because, whether you can admit it or not, you have already accepted how vital it is to pick policies that majorities of the population might reasonably support.
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Feb 17, 2017 21:46
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Kilroy posted:Yeah minimum wage is a relic of a different age: campaign on abolishing it and replacing it with basic income IMO My point is that supporting a 15 dollar minimum wage isn't spineless compromising bullshit just because a superior but less achievable option exists, and the same thing is true for a 12 dollar minimum wage.
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Feb 17, 2017 23:36
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:Moving to 12 dollars after writing 15 down in big bold letters in the party platform would be a clear and obvious message that you're a spineless coward, regardless of whatever polling data you think justifies it. RaySmuckles posted:people didn't believe hillary, why don't you understand that. people looked at her platform and then looked at what she was saying, like: "i'm realistic. i'm a progressive who likes to get things done. i'm a pragmatist and support incrementalism" and they realized that hillary clinton would not be pushing real change anytime soon quote:Moreover, gently caress polls. Please god, just stop with the loving polls. Using polls as an indicator of public support for something you haven't even campaigned for yet is just depressing. You're admitting right out of the gate that your party has zero ability to swing public opinion and your only hope is to support whatever the cool kids think is the right thing to do. You're operating from a desperate fear that people won't like you. It's bad strategy, bad optics, and bad for morale. Stop. I'm not suggesting public support for 15 will never change, or that campaigning for something is incapable of shifting public opinion. I'm saying it's obviously going to be harder to get 15 than 12 because polls uniformly show higher support for 12 than 15. And having just lost an election at every level, I'm not sure we're in a position to be taking on positions that make it harder to win. Too late for the minimum wage, but the same dynamic is at play across the policy landscape. And when we're making decisions about what policies we should advocate for, how hard it's going to be to win, and in turn how much we're risking a loss, should be at least half of the conversation. The other half should obviously be what policies are good. But a conversation that only includes the latter is a recipe for disaster. Ytlaya posted:As I think I've mentioned before, you have a strong irrational bias in favor of centrist liberal (or more accurately "whatever happens to be the next 'step' to the right of what left-leaning liberals support") positions and take them as the default position that other people have to prove is wrong. This is not logical. I have a bias towards arguments that are made with some kind of evidence. I have a bias against evidence-free, question-begging arguments like "polls don't matter". This bias is not irrational.
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Feb 18, 2017 03:29
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TheBalor posted:It's possible and even likely that there are people who will be dissatisfied no matter what. But after the drubbing of that election, a symbolic gesture to the Bernie wing seems at least appropriate. They got the platform, and they didn't care. How many gestures do they need?
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Feb 19, 2017 19:39
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WhiskeyJuvenile posted:Why are Bernie voters "the base" as opposed to Clinton voters, given that, you know, there were more of them? Because there are millions upon millions of would-be democrats just waiting for the party to be pure enough before they actually turn out to vote.
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Feb 19, 2017 19:43
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I didn't say Bernie people abandoned Clinton, we don't know if that's true or not. I said Bernie people already got a (huge, non-symbolic) concession in the form of the platform, so why do they need another (small, symbolic) concession now?
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Feb 19, 2017 19:48
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Kilroy posted:Really it does seem to me that it's the "moderates" who are more likely to jump ship and vote 3rd party, or Republican, or not at all, than the leftists. And for what it's worth that makes more sense intuitively as well. And you're too dense to realize this spells disaster for the party if it takes a hard left. If you're claiming that the democrats will necessarily gain votes by moving left, it must be the case that fewer moderates will abandon the party than leftists will start supporting the party. JeffersonClay fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Feb 19, 2017 |
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Feb 19, 2017 19:49
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SKULL.GIF posted:Because it's not a "concession", it's what the members of the party want. Members of the party want different things, and giving the Bernie wing control over the platform was obviously a concession from Clinton's wing. The platform still matters, because (as we've discussed in the last few pages) there would be significant costs for Democrats to water down the platform next time, by say going from a 15 to a 12 dollar minimum wage. quote:If the party shifts towards policies that actually and actively help people economically and socially, policies that ensure and secure civil rights and liberties for these people, and this is what causes people to vote for the Republicans (who, I remind you, are currently subservient to Nazis), then these people weren't people we want in the party. We aren't in any position to be talking about democratic votes we don't need. That's insanity at this point. quote:JeffersonClay, yes, it's likely we'll lose some people that were on the rightward fringe of the party's base. What people are saying is that we'll gain much more people than we'll lose. If you're saying moving left will gain more votes than it'll lose, it must be the case that moderates are less likely to abandon the party than leftists. That's just math, dude. Kilroy posted:If this were a zero-sum game you'd be right. It's not. No, the point I made does not require voting to be zero sum. You claim that more centrists would abandon the party if we move left than leftists abandoned the party by running the centrist hillary clinton. So obviously if we go left, we'll gain fewer leftists than we'll lose moderates. It's just math. You haven't worked through the implications of your claims.
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Feb 19, 2017 20:18
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Sapozhnik posted:Going cautiously right has been failing for the better part of the last decade. Obama tried to actually negotiate with the Republicans in good faith like a goddamn idiot, then two years later Congress went hard to the Republicans and lost his golden window to ram some progressive policy through. poo poo has been going downhill ever since. Same big business-friendly anti-worker poo poo as usual, same interventionist warmongering as usual. We haven't been going cautiously right, we've been going cautiously left. Obama rammed through the ACA in the short window where he had 60 votes in the senate (and getting 60 required a ton of compromise). Appealing to the middle worked great for Obama and Bill. I'm not sure you have a coherent understanding of what's actually been going on, here.
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Feb 19, 2017 20:23
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You already got a concession in the platform, which apparently you've completely forgotten about, which does not imply giving you further concessions will stop your incessant whining, so what's the point?
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Feb 19, 2017 20:25
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SKULL.GIF posted:[*]There is also a big enthusiasm dropoff because people were so utterly convinced that Hillary would win that they weren't as motivated to go out to vote. I am absolutely sure that this cost her a ton of votes. This undermines the rest of your argument. If the enthusiasm problem wasn't about policy, and instead was about flawed expectations, why would we think that changing policy is necessary to increase enthusiasm? Dr. Fishopolis posted:This is the part that baffles me most. It's like the party completely forgot what Obama actually ran on in 2008. Candidate Obama was a hard left, progressive motherfucker, and he won harder than any Democrat since FDR. That's not what happened, at all. Obama 2008 was not hard left. Clinton 2016 was further left.
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Feb 19, 2017 20:56
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thechosenone posted:But he still ran on hope and change? These are bland platitudes, not a leftist agenda. SKULL.GIF posted:
You just claimed enthusiasm for Hillary took a huge hit because of false expectations of a landslide victory. Had that not occurred, she would have won handily. Therefore it's not necessary to radically change our policy agenda to fix an enthusiasm problem, because the enthusiasm problem was exogenous. BI NOW GAY LATER posted:She talked about it a whole, whole lot. People just didn't pay attention. Leftism cannot fail, it can only be failed. JeffersonClay fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Feb 19, 2017 |
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Feb 19, 2017 21:16
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I'm having a lot of trouble following your logic; you're making sudden leaps that don't follow at all from what you're responding to.
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thechosenone posted:and yet from how I experienced Hillary's campaign, It seems like she ran on the opposite, and seemed to fail. Did you experience the campaign from inside a toxic echo-chamber of jilted Bernouts? Maybe you didn't hear what she was actually saying because you heard it all in democrat voice? icantfindaname posted:The fact is the far left is much more likely to say gently caress you and not vote for ideological reasons than the center, so the party basically cannot afford not to do everything they can to mollify them. If they take an oppositional stance and tell the far left to gently caress off they will lose and you'll get permanent Republican rule. It doesn't matter how much sneering, open contempt you have for Bernie Bros and lefties and people who don't respect the meritocracy and the business of boring hard boards or whatever, those are the simple facts Kilroy posted:Really it does seem to me that it's the "moderates" who are more likely to jump ship and vote 3rd party, or Republican, or not at all, than the leftists. And for what it's worth that makes more sense intuitively as well. Seems like we might need actual data, and not pithy assertions, to figure this out.
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Feb 19, 2017 21:26
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thechosenone posted:Interesting, would have been nice to hear about it. JeffersonClay posted:Maybe you didn't hear what she was actually saying because you heard it all in democrat voice?
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Feb 19, 2017 21:31
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thechosenone posted:Cool. So you think she talked about it more than she did about trump? There's no indication that her talking about it more would have made any difference to you. You weren't listening to her, because you'd already made your judgement.
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Feb 19, 2017 21:36
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Hey guys, I'm just asking questions here. And by questions I mean statements that demonstrate my profound ignorance.
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Feb 19, 2017 21:38
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:Do you have data to support that idea? I ask because all the polls I can find say otherwise. I for one appreciate your impulse to ground your strategy in some kind of data, regardless of its quality.
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Feb 20, 2017 04:20
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Ytlaya posted:What harm do you believe is caused by more left-leaning Democrats advocating for single-payer UHC (or some other policy you believe to be to the left of what the American public will support)? Because the key issue here is that you seem to really dislike people advocating for policy that you don't think is currently plausible/pragmatic. There's nothing wrong with leftists advocating for single payer UHC. There's a lot wrong with leftists setting up a purity test around single payer UHC and describing all the democrats who don't meet it as spineless traitors who need to be purged. Advocate for whatever you want. Don't expect that everyone in the party will or should agree with you.
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Feb 20, 2017 20:35
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The purity test itself is dumb, unless the bar is quite low. Purity tests that would purge substantial portions of the party are self-defeating and the people proposing them need to be ignored for their own good.
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Feb 20, 2017 20:43
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Alter Ego posted:Where do you draw the line, then? What would you have done back in 2009-10 when Joe Lieberman was jerking the Democrats around on the public option? Or when Bart Stupak kept threatening to put a Hyde Amendment-like provision into the bill so none of the plans offered on the federal exchange would cover abortions? Joe Lieberman had already failed the purity test and been kicked from the party, and it only made him worse, in part because we still needed him to get 60 votes in the senate. Stupak was in the house, where we had a decent margin and could afford to lose a seat or two, and I wouldn't have shed tears over booting him from the party, but that's because so few democrats agreed with him. A purity test about poison-pill hyde amendments in legislation we're pushing seems like a pretty low bar.
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Feb 20, 2017 21:26
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:It is a pretty low bar. Progressives, right now, aren't asking for much. Look at this: https://justicedemocrats.com/platform/ That document goes far beyond the platform in a number of important ways. Regardless, defining democrats who support 80% of that platform as corporatist traitors because they disagree with the other 20% is real dumb. Are they planning to primary everyone to Bernie's right? And their strategy is absurd. quote:Prior to passing this amendment, all Justice Democrats should reject billionaire and corporate donations when running for office to show the American people we don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk. Good luck unilaterally disarming.
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Feb 20, 2017 22:06
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Their strategy is to call a constitutional convention to overturn citizen's united and mandate publicly funded campaigns, which is pie in the sky but there's nothing wrong with it. What's dumb is promising that their candidates will reject campaign donations from corporations and the rich before that constitutional convention to show that they "walk the walk". Again, good luck unilaterally disarming. If these candidates can win enough of the government to call a constitutional convention without public funding, competing against candidates funded by corporations and the rich, they will have disproven the need for the constitutional amendment they advocate. We believe in this constitutional amendment so strongly, we'll prove it's superfluous!
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Feb 20, 2017 23:40
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Ytlaya posted:This actually isn't the case. If winning an election is a function of both funding and other factors, it's entirely possible for candidates to win without funding without it indicating that funding has no effect; it just means they managed to overcome the influence of funding through some other means in those specific cases. Their plan is to get enough people elected to call a constitutional convention. If you have that kind of a majority, without relying on funding from corporations and the rich, you have in fact proven that it's not necessary to ban campaign contributions from corporations and the rich.
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Feb 21, 2017 00:56
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But only joe manchin will vote against DeVos. A guy who votes with you 75% of the time is better than one who never does. But more importantly, replacing him with someone better isn't plausible, both because WV is so conservative and because Manchin is so popular there.
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Feb 21, 2017 17:56
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Kilroy posted:Until no one knows what the gently caress the party stands for anymore because a third of them are voting with Republicans every other time something comes up for a vote, and voters in every district kinda lose interest and who can blame them? Literally no one in the Democratic Party is voting with republicans half the time. Manchin is the worst in terms of voting against the party line and he still votes with the party 75% of the time. And he's an outlier, not a third of the party. I think the best way to ensure people don't get confused about the actual composition of the party would be to make sure democrats like you aren't disseminating a bunch of bullshit about the composition of the party.
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Feb 21, 2017 18:42
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Part of our problem recruiting good candidates is systematic. If you're a smart, charismatic, motivated young person from rural nowheresville, after you graduate college are you likely to go back home and start your career? Your job prospects are probably better if you move to a large metro area, along with other benefits, so relatively few of these people end up coming home. The ones that do come home are likely to have more conservative views because those views inform where you'd choose to live in the first place; there's ideological sorting going on here. So part of our strategy might need to be identifying smart young liberals from targeted districts when they're young and encouraging them to go home after college so we have a better set of possibilities when we're looking for candidates. Ugh that sounds like a shitload of work for a payoff that's a long way off.
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Feb 21, 2017 19:46
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Crowsbeak posted:Jefferson Clay maybe restricting yourself to only people with graduate degrees doesn't actually help in relating to people in poor rural areas. Maybe look for people who support left wing ideas and don't care what their education background is. Less than 5% of congress doesn't have an undergrad degree. I don't think we should disqualify candidates without one but clearly people with degrees are the large majority of successful candidates. I'm also assuming the population of people who are rural, without a degree, and with impeccable leftist views is pretty drat small. If we find people like that, great, but we'd obviously benefit from having more plausible candidates to choose from. Kilroy posted:Okay well then why don't you outline what the Democratic party stands for aside from "we want incumbent Democrats to win elections" because any time anyone suggests any policy which sounds like it might be coming from a frame of reference somewhere slightly to the left of John McCain, you immediately jump in with "hmmm I don't think that can win elections, let's wait until..." The Democratic Party is a coalition of groups with aligned but not identical views. I supported the 2016 platform and still think it could win, despite minor disagreements I have with it. I think democrats should do things that make it more likely that the platform becomes law, which at this point in time does require incumbent democrats win elections. JeffersonClay fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Feb 21, 2017 |
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Feb 21, 2017 20:37
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There seems to be a significant overlap between the people who are concerned about the existence of conservative democrats creating an anti-progressive distortion of the party and the people who actively spread that distortion. Like the first line from the Justice Democrats platform isquote:It’s time to face the facts: the Democratic Party is broken and the corporate, establishment wing of the party is responsible.
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Feb 21, 2017 21:09
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One thing we should definitely take away from this election is that Republicans' ability to close ranks around their nominee, ignoring policy differences by focusing solely on lesser-evilism, is a significant strength.
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Feb 21, 2017 22:21
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snyprmag posted:That's driven mostly by white supremacy so Democrats will never recreate it. But the # of people who didn't vote was much higher than the R or D turnout, so that's who democrats need to motivate. If there was ever an opportunity for it to work for us, this election was it. I don't know if the attacks on lesser evilism from the left made any difference this election, but they were obviously counterproductive. And yet we're still arguing about whether we should support lesser-evils like Manchin.
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Feb 21, 2017 22:57
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emdash posted:why would there have been a lot of those in 2016 you doofus Because the narrative is that establishment democrats can't motivate any voters with spineless centrism, but pure progressives like Bernie would be able to motivate these voters and therefore win more elections. But the progressives that earned the Bernie seal of approval didn't actually outperform establishment democrats (Clinton) anywhere, so the narrative is dubious at best.
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Feb 21, 2017 23:09
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Fulchrum posted:Also, Tammy Baldwin was a loving Incumbent and Maggie Hansan is a beloved ex governor who won by less than a percentage point. How in the gently caress does either represent either the supressed left that the Establishment has opposed, or this unstoppable wave of support for pure leftists? And even if we grant that Hassan is a true pure non-establishment progressive, the important question isn't if she won or lost, it's did she outperform Hillary in NH? The margin of victory was very tight in both races, but Hillary's margin was 0.2% larger.
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Feb 21, 2017 23:51
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Crowsbeak posted:Oh I get it now because she didn't win a large enough margin it means Bernie hurt her. Got to love you purity centrists. Can't let Bernie have helped in anyway. No that's not the point at all. If centrism is what turned voters off, and pure progressivism is what will motivate them again, you'd expect the progressive candidate to do better than the centrist candidate in a given state or district, but we don't actually see that anywhere. It's not that Bernie hurt her, it's that centrism didn't hurt Clinton, and indeed it may have given her an advantage.
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Feb 22, 2017 00:50
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WhiskeyJuvenile posted:Again, the job losses were due to external recessions, and I think it might be worthwhile examining why people are convinced that their job is in China or Mexico (we don't even have a trade deal with China!) It couldn't be that some unscrupulous politicians in our party have sold displaced manufacturing workers a bunch of hokum about ending NAFTA and bringing those jobs back.
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Feb 22, 2017 01:26
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SKULL.GIF posted:The utter lack of support from Obama in 2011 was a huge reason I voted third party in 2012 (for the presidential, obviously I voted in support of Baldwin and Pocan). Obama's approval rating was in the low 40's in 2011. Staying away, and thus denying walker the ability to make the election about the unpopular president, was probably the right decision.
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Feb 22, 2017 01:49
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Crowsbeak posted:Remember it was the right decision to do nothing for the Unions. The point is Obama showing up and making it all about him would have hurt the unions because Obama was at his most unpopular in the 2nd half of 2011.
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Feb 22, 2017 02:21
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WampaLord posted:The TPP was a great example of messaging failure. The "No TPP" side had a simple and clear message - "TPP Bad." TPP has very little to do with free trade and a whole lot to do with soft power and hedging against China. Think Cordel Hull/FDR "trade relationships encourage peace" type policy. FDR's 1944 state of the union. quote:There are people who burrow through our Nation like unseeing moles, and attempt to spread the suspicion that if other Nations are encouraged to raise their standards of living, our own American standard of living must of necessity be depressed.
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Feb 22, 2017 05:16
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The economic-populist uprising that sold the rust belt a bunch of snake oil about bringing their jobs back is directly responsible for the white supremacy now controlling all the branches of government.
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Feb 22, 2017 17:21
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Condiv posted:that kinda happens when you cede a movement to the other party. maybe dems should have embraced said uprising instead of letting racists use it to achieve their racist ends Maybe the leaders of said uprising should have considered the possibility that the democratic electorate would reject them before validating the scam the racists used to acquire power for their racist ends.
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Feb 22, 2017 17:53
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I don't disagree with that framing at all, except to note that promising the rust belt they'll get their manufacturing jobs back if we pull out of NAFTA has always been a lie. Using a lie to wrest power from the insidious neoliberals can have unintended consequences if you fail and then need those insidious neoliberals to defeat the fascists.
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Feb 22, 2017 18:25
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