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So...how is VA doing? Anyone reading the tea leaves? Is there a campaign that would do better with a little more cash? I'm happy to donate to a few more small, important races and any advice on candidates to consider is much apprecited. NJ and PA as well.
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Oct 10, 2021 06:19
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VorpalBunny posted:So...how is VA doing? Anyone reading the tea leaves? Is there a campaign that would do better with a little more cash? I'm happy to donate to a few more small, important races and any advice on candidates to consider is much apprecited. NJ and PA as well. The retired CIA voting block will clinch it for us
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Oct 10, 2021 06:37
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It’s closer than I’d care for it to be. Fox News is trying to churn up conservative turnout with the CRT boogeyman. https://twitter.com/mattgertz/status/1446830607229722627?s=21
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Oct 10, 2021 06:53
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I lit some money on fire donating to some Virginia House of Delegate candidates. It'd be nice to get some good news out of Virginia for once, but it does seem like the GOP has all the media momentum and enthusiasm. Everybody I know seems to be feeling stressed instead of enthused, which isn't a good sign.
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Oct 11, 2021 20:06
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Eric Cantonese posted:It'd be nice to get some good news out of Virginia for once, but it does seem like the GOP has all the media momentum and enthusiasm. Everybody I know seems to be feeling stressed instead of enthused, which isn't a good sign.
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Oct 11, 2021 20:51
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Is the right to work repeal on the legislative schedule this year? I was assured last year that Virginia Democrats totally supported it honest pinky-swear, but were forced against their will to vote it down because Lee Carter disregarded parliamentary decorum and that could not be allowed to stand regardless of the consequences to working people. So now that he's been booted out in favor of someone who respects the process, Right to Work repeal should sail through right? Especially considering how much Democrats depend on support from unions I can only assume they're doing everything they can to strengthen unions ahead of a gubernatorial election that's looking closer than anyone thought.
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Oct 12, 2021 17:54
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VitalSigns posted:Is the right to work repeal on the legislative schedule this year? " The Virginia Mercury posted:However, McAuliffe was a little clearer in a discussion earlier this year with the Democratic Business Council of Northern Virginia. Former and possible future D governor basically admitted a repeal of RTW can't pass through the current democratic controlled House and Senate. State senate elections aren't until 2023. RTW repeal is not looking promising.
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Oct 12, 2021 18:18
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Yeah I saw that from McAuliffe but I don't understand his comment because I was assured by the smartest politics people I know that Democrats are so pro-labor the repeal was a foregone conclusion until Lee Carter cut in line and singlehandedly ruined it for everyone, so why can't it make it through the legislature now? Was his trespass so egregious that the concept of Right to Work repeal melted away for all time, like he opened the Ark of the Covenant? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 12, 2021 19:27
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I'm surprised blue Virginia can't repeal RTW when a voter supermajority in red Missouri repealed it by referendum.
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Oct 12, 2021 20:42
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PerniciousKnid posted:I'm surprised blue Virginia can't repeal RTW when a voter supermajority in red Missouri repealed it by referendum. Things change. A year is forever in politics. Every indication we've gotten says the votes were there before, and then Lee Carter's Ego ruined it for everyone. Now maybe the votes aren't there. Or maybe they still are. Who knows. Maybe Friendbot can give us an update on what's actually happening.
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Oct 12, 2021 22:10
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Sanguinia posted:Things change. A year is forever in politics. Every indication we've gotten says the votes were there before, and then Lee Carter's Ego ruined it for everyone. Now maybe the votes aren't there. Or maybe they still are. Who knows. Maybe Friendbot can give us an update on what's actually happening. I think support was soft all along, and suspect some legislators might have even been quietly grateful they had an excuse to not vote on it (edit: or a fig leaf to disconnect the vote from their ostensible political positions). I can't fathom why, it just strikes me as similar to how at the federal level you'll see something die a couple votes short, but then details leak that other senators opposed it and were playing a game of Hide Behind Manchin, and it mysteriously never comes up again. Blue Footed Booby fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Oct 13, 2021 |
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Oct 13, 2021 14:55
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Well, at least we've had one vote that tells us who definitely, really supports it.
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Oct 13, 2021 16:14
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They're going to be whining about Lee Carter for years as an excuse not to do anything that helps anyone, aren't they?
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Oct 14, 2021 01:44
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Are they even using Carter as an excuse? McAuliffe just straight up said it's not happening because too many Democratic politicians don't want to do it. Blaming it all on Lee Carter seems to be more what political partisans are doing to reassure themselves and avoid facing up to the reality. The actual politicians are just saying "nah you can't have that, just be satisfied with other stuff" VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Oct 14, 2021 |
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Oct 14, 2021 03:53
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NYS democrats seem to be adopting the Virginia Model, and by that I mean being very hostile to socialists. https://twitter.com/morganfmckay/status/1450163231591473154?s=20
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Oct 18, 2021 22:12
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I feel like there's got to be some mechanism to not endorse the primary winner, but it should be something difficult to overcome. Sometimes primaries go weird, someone dies, or they're involved in a scandal right before the election, and then you end up with a real weirdo. Maybe something like a 75% threshold for the vote in the party committee or something, definitely not 51%.
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Oct 18, 2021 22:25
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Like I had mentioned in another thread, this is not in itself a socialist vs non-socialist thing. New York State is largely a machine state or largely a lot of little machines. The Democrats are strongest in New York City and its suburbs, in Albany County, and in Erie County, where Buffalo is. In each of these areas, you have a Democratic machine that dominates city/county politics. I could talk about some of the machines, but for purposes of this, lets talk about Buffalo and Byron Brown. Brown got his start in Erie County politics the way a lot of people get their start in Erie County politics.....he got to know people in Erie County politics. He had been a salesman for Bristol-Myers Squibb after he got out of college, but he wasn't happy with the job. So after looking for a while, he became Chief of Staff for the president of the Buffalo Common Council. After that, he went to work for Arthur Blackwell, in the Erie County Legislature, then he went to Albany to work for Arthur Eve, who was Deputy Speaker of the Assembly. He then went back to Buffalo and became director of the Erie County division of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and at the same time, got involved in the Buffalo voter mobilization organization Grassroots. After like 8 years of this, he decided he was going to run for office himself, and after a failed run for the Erie County Legislature, he ran successfully for Buffalo Common Council in 1995. In 2000, he ran successfully for New York State Senate and then in 2005, he ran successfully for mayor, and he's stayed in there until now. In 2006, when Cuomo ran for Attorney General, he went out of his way to court Brown, who was seen a rising star in the party. This was part of an overall strategy by Cuomo to court black politicians. In 2004, Cuomo had lost the Democratic nomination to Carl McCall, who was black and had gotten a lot of black support in the primary. Cuomo and Brown stayed very close since them. Meanwhile, Cuomo over the years had had a rocky relationship with the Working Families Party, I can go into more detail about the formation and development of the Working Families party, but in brief, it came out of the New Party, and got a lot of additional support when the Liberal Party fell apart, and its base is sort of a combination of labor union supporters and middle class progressives. They had started out having a good relationship with Cuomo but it fell apart after Cuomo had become governor, and the WFP had criticized some of his actions. (It got so bad that in 2014, Cuomo created a new party called the Woman's Equality Party. It was ostensibly because Cuomo was trying to get a bill passed called the Woman's Equality Act, which helped with pay equity, ironically, strengthened laws against sexual harassment, increase punishments for domestic violence, and so on, but, more cynically, had its abbreviation ,WEP.) I bring this up because India Walton appeared on the WFP line. One of the reasons Governor Cuomo was successful for so long is that he was able to fill positions with political allies. In this case, Jacobs, who had been a major figure in the Nassau County party and had been chairman in 2009 and was appointed by Cuomo in 2019. Jacobs is very much a Cuomo man, and if given the choice between having the state party endorse a long time Cuomo ally and supporter, or having it endorse a candidate backed by a party hostile to Cuomo, he's going to do the former. The county party is backing Walton, though.
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Oct 18, 2021 23:50
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And Cuomo fleeing the Governor's Mansion in disgrace to avoid his own party impeaching him doesn't change their war calculus? State level politics can be so wild.
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Oct 19, 2021 01:00
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Sanguinia posted:And Cuomo fleeing the Governor's Mansion in disgrace to avoid his own party impeaching him doesn't change their war calculus? State level politics can be so wild. Probably not, especially because Brown himself had been the State Party Chairman until 2019, when he stepped down for Jacobs. So you're asking the state party leadership to support somebody who the chairman doesn't support over the former chairman. That's kind of a big ask. Brown himself is pretty popular in the party among the leadership. Walton doesn't really have any institutional experience at all, as near as I can tell, other than being a union representative and the director of a land trust.
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Oct 19, 2021 01:10
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Cuomo's out but a lot of the people he helped lift up are still there (and the preexisting machines that supported him are still there too). If they stick together and it's still business as usual, why wouldn't they still be wielding a lot of power?
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Oct 19, 2021 02:21
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Epicurius posted:Probably not, especially because Brown himself had been the State Party Chairman until 2019, when he stepped down for Jacobs. So you're asking the state party leadership to support somebody who the chairman doesn't support over the former chairman. That's kind of a big ask. Why. The former chairman lost the primary election, why is it a big ask for the party leadership to support their voters' choice? What does "Democratic" in "the Democratic Party" mean, is it just a meaningless adjective, should it actually be named "the Sinecure Guild For Connected Politicians Party" because then I think it would be reasonable to tell voters to gently caress off
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Oct 19, 2021 04:05
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VitalSigns posted:Why. Because, in New York, at least, the State Democratic Party leadership, in general, is more loyal to the machine and the Governor than it is to the rank and file Democratic voter. Maybe Walton will win anyway. Like I had said, the Erie County Party leadership supports her. Reform candidates have won before. Usually, what the reform candidate does is to dismantle the old machine and build a new machine loyal to them. If she does that, if she stuffs the city and county with loyal DSA people or whoever it is that backs her, she'll likely survive and have a future. Brown will get a job someplace else, and the party will adjust to the new Buffalo politics. It's happened before. Brown came in as a kind of a reformer too, the ambitious young African-American who was going to use grass roots organizing to finally get a black mayor.. eta: I'll also say beyond that that human beings are social and that your relationship with other people affects the way you treat them and they treat you. If all the party leadership thinks "Hey, I know Mayor Brown, I worked with him and he's a great guy", they might not endorse him, but might figure, " let's just stay out of this. No reason to hurt his feelings or make him feel bad.". Political relationships, especially, are personal ones. Epicurius fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Oct 19, 2021 |
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Oct 19, 2021 04:21
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Oh ok you said it was quote "a big ask", and I don't see how it is at all. Respecting the voters is a bare minimum in my eyes for a party that wants to call itself "Democratic". Now you're saying something that sounds more like "well they don't respect the voters, so it's foolish to expect someone who doesn't respect the voters to respect the voters" and yeah ok I agree in the same way that it would be foolish to trust say Bernie Madoff with my money and ask him not to steal it. But if he did steal somebody's money it would be very weird to go "well it's a big ask for Bernie Madoff not to steal so no fair being mad at him or saying he should face consequences" because yeah actually it's not a big ask for someone to act with the bare minimum of integrity and decency and yeah actually we should be mad if someone falls short of the lowest ethical bar even if we already knew they had no integrity in the first place?
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Oct 19, 2021 04:48
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VitalSigns posted:Oh ok you said it was quote "a big ask", and I don't see how it is at all. Respecting the voters is a bare minimum in my eyes for a party that wants to call itself "Democratic". I did add something to my lot post that cross posted with yours, btw. And I'm not saying you can't get mad about the situation. You can. It just probably won't make much difference. As for the party calling itself "Democratic", well, North Korea calls itself a 'democratic republic' too. My personal take is, while I probably would have voted for Brown in the primary had I lived in Buffalo, and I don't like either Walton or the DSA much, I think the state party should endorse her, because she did win the nomination after all. But I don't really have a lot of say, so....
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Oct 19, 2021 05:01
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Epicurius posted:As for the party calling itself "Democratic", well, North Korea calls itself a 'democratic republic' too. I guess I don't see how that's relevant unless you're arguing that's the bar the Democratic Party should aspire to? But yeah ok, if you agree that machine politics are bad then fine.
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Oct 19, 2021 05:13
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It's more the rank hypocrisy given the accusations of disloyalty and opportunism (at best) constantly slung at leftist candidates and anyone supporting them, while there's demonstrable examples of the machine politics outright self-destructing the party when a leftist gets elected. (see also: Jeremy Corbyn) Not to mention things like the PUMAs.
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Oct 19, 2021 07:15
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Ghost Leviathan posted:It's more the rank hypocrisy given the accusations of disloyalty and opportunism (at best) constantly slung at leftist candidates and anyone supporting them, while there's demonstrable examples of the machine politics outright self-destructing the party when a leftist gets elected. (see also: Jeremy Corbyn) Not to mention things like the PUMAs. I can't really speak about Corbyn. its my understanding that there are enough differences between American and British politics that you can't really make a good comparison about the way party structures and internal processes work, and that's even more true for the Labour Party that has this hybrid labor unions\local party mixed organizational structure. The PUMA thing was different. It was largely astroturfed by the Republican party, wasn't supported by national Democratic leadership, and the arguments of the PUMAs was very much that party leadership was institutionally biased against Clinton. None of that has much to do with NY state politics, though.
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Oct 19, 2021 10:46
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NY state politics do not exist in a hermetically sealed bubble. A black socialist who legitimately won the election being attacked by the wealthy white party leadership and compared to a literal Klan leader exists in context, and none of it makes that remotely acceptable. I wonder if we'll see the return of Donut Twitter. Also, PUMAs were very much a real thing, certainly more so than Bernie Bros.
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Oct 20, 2021 04:35
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PUMAs are a feel thing, but to the best of my knowledge, they weren't being encouraged by the national party leadership. And yes, compari g a black politician to a Klan leader is a pretty bad comparison.
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Oct 20, 2021 12:37
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I wish that the Democratic Party was a machine, with a spoils system and everything. Then working-class people might at least get a few jobs out of it. Who was Harriet Christian, anyway?
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Oct 20, 2021 14:07
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https://twitter.com/chuckschumer/status/1451313864671481859
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Oct 21, 2021 23:40
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Isnt this endorsement actually kinda a red flag for her? Since shes running as a socialist and the NY machine wants to put her down, a big name establishment politician endorsing her makes me wonder what sort of promises she made to him. Unless Schumer really hates the other guy or something.
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Oct 21, 2021 23:58
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Communist Zombie posted:Isnt this endorsement actually kinda a red flag for her? Since shes running as a socialist and the NY machine wants to put her down, a big name establishment politician endorsing her makes me wonder what sort of promises she made to him. This is some twisted loving logic.
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Oct 22, 2021 00:02
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:This is some twisted loving logic. Hey, Ive seen other posters use that same logic before and more often than not the politician walked back their progressive talk.
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Oct 22, 2021 00:07
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I bet Chuck made her denounce Zinoviev and Kamenev. 
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Oct 22, 2021 00:11
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Communist Zombie posted:Hey, Ive seen other posters use that same logic before and more often than not the politician walked back their progressive talk. More often than not the entrenched establishment blocks progress, forcing politicians to walk back positions or admit failure. You could predict walkback based on phase of the moon or necromantic interference and be right about the outcome most of the time. It doesn't make the logic sound.
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Oct 22, 2021 14:10
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It's not like she comes with a fully socialist city council to send her good bills.
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Oct 22, 2021 15:05
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Even though he represents the whole state in theory I'm pretty sure as an NYC pol Schumer doesn't give a gently caress about Buffalo. He just didn't have any specific objection to Walton, felt more heat over not endorsing her than he would've felt from Brown's machine, and gave into the public pressure - good! e: And I gotta give props to the people applying that pressure. 
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Oct 22, 2021 15:28
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So any tea leaf reading from NY and NJ's first weekend of early voting?
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Oct 25, 2021 15:39
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Well, tonight is going to be a deeply anxious experience for a number of reasons. I've avoided most election coverage for the last couple of months, aside from occasionally checking in with the math nerds, but tonight we get to see if sentient fleece vest Glenn Youngkin and his patented "blanket every inch of the suburbs with lawn signs to convince the spooked white base that they're allowed to vote Republican again" strategy will pull it out against Terry "did I mention Trump lately" McAuliffe. I'm promising myself not to doomscroll, and to focus on watching fun movies instead, but I'll probably cave at some point.
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Nov 2, 2021 14:55
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