Democratic (Party) Direction

the 1972 platform btw http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29605

I can't read that. I've already had a glass of wine.

it seems like this part of bipartisan efforts bc now even Republicans support

bhahahahaha O RLY

do you remember Dont Ask Dont Tell? it was a 90s Clinton joint.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_ask,_don%27t_tell

yup and Democrats (not Republicans) repealed it. In fact, an out gay Democrat in the House repealed it. There are no out gay Republicans in the House.

in fact there are no out gay Republicans in Congress period afaik

trivia question: every single state legislature that tried to outlaw gay marriage was controlled by which party?

no differences here, nope:

http://time.com/3656219/2016-candidates-gay-marriage/

why these two curves are exactly alike!

http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/2ba5lvbvhew-fvqivfxv_a.png

hey here's another miraculous instance of the parties being in total agreement about major policy issue:

http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/dx4yatylw0gg6-townapxg.png

my former congresswoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, is the only GOP member of the House LGBT caucus.

(ftr Adam no she is not gay)

her son is transgender; I'm sure that helped

your Democratic Party, ladies & gents, with 'leaders' saying sure we'll work with President Trump somehow

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a44993/moderate-democrats-work-with-trump/

euthanize it

not even that good at keeping abortions ubiquitous

also fuck gay marriage

Well, as we're talking about a woman, Sanders supporters are probably threatening to euthanize her as we speak.

it's fine and all, but also a marketing fig leaf for the bloody savagery abroad that both parties drink deeply of

it's lovely that the Dems believe in climate change. they're not going to do anything to stop it (and likely can't).

so Adam otm; have a nice day, except Frederik who for godsakes should castrate himself

srsly dude, go immolate your idiot ass

Nihilism Party Registration here

"they're not going to do anything to stop it (and likely can't)"

never let facts get in the way of dogma

as expected Schmuck in as Senate leader; Bernie added in junior leadership role (so there, "he's an Independent" folx)

Schumer also expanded the Democratic leadership team to 10 members, with Sanders (I-Vt.), Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), adding to the team’ ideological, geographic and gender balance. Baldwin is also the first lesbian senator to hold a leadership role.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/11/16/schumer-elected-senate-democratic-leader/

Thomas Frank in a Politico roundtable

You look at a place like Missouri. I grew up in Kansas City. And when I was a kid, Missouri was a very Democratic state. Harry Truman is from Missouri. Dick Gephardt is from Missouri. But you look at the map now, and Trump took every county except for St. Louis, Kansas City and the college town, Columbia. And it is a wipeout for Democrats out there. You go to these small towns, and there is no Democratic presence in these places.

Thrush: I want to know what the issues are. Because it has always struck me that in the absence of a really charismatic …

Frank: Oh, can I give you an idea?

Thrush: Yeah.

Frank: Small towns, all over America, boarded up, the businesses are all gone, the kids leave as soon as they can, the family farms are dying. OK, what do you do about that? Well, one thing that’s really easy is antitrust. You know, you start going after the agricultural monopolies. Every farmer I’ve ever met knows about these companies, and is furious about them. And those people—I mean, this is a very Republican cohort now—but, you know, you start talking about their one obsessive concern, and you might be able to win some of them over. You start going after Wal-Mart, which has destroyed the businesses in every small town in America. Do you remember when Barack Obama won Iowa over Hillary Clinton in 2008? It was a big surprise, a big shocker. And the way he did it was by promising to use the antitrust laws against agricultural monopolies, or that was one of the things that he said.

Thrush: I think there were a couple of other things, too.

Frank: Yeah, of course, but this was very important to rural voters. And he never did anything on that. And, by the way, this gets us to a larger problem. Hillary Clinton actually, as I said earlier, looked pretty good on paper on economic issues. But there was not a lot of credibility there, and one of the reasons is because you have this man in the White House who, while Hillary is out there saying, “I’m against the TPP,” and here is her president pushing it.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/how-democrats-rebuild-2016-214533

Wow, I was so OTMFM in 2006.

For a while I've had the idea that the Democratic Party could improve its future by putting more money and resources into local party organizations, campus recruiting, things that give people real human connections to the party. People are much more likely to listen to their neighbor than some internet ad.
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Thursday, January 19, 2006 10:36 AM (ten years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm actually time-travelling Keith Ellison

xpost
Yeah, I'm not sure about the salary numbers either -- plenty of households still struggle on an income of $60,000 a year. The article gets it right that those people don't receive any government assistance, but that's just where the problem lies -- they end up too well off to get assistance but still unable to afford their debt and medical bills.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Thursday, January 19, 2006 10:37 AM (ten years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i.e. a big segment of the Trump vote

Yeah, it is. I already had this vague fear that Americans were becoming these kind of paranoid, fat, lonely, nihilistic internet addicts who didn't talk to their neighbors.

most of the links from the OG thread are busted but this one still works

http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/2006_01_15_firedoglake_archive.html#113778270884763784

jesus christ

actually that whole archive from january ten years ago is just a nice bit of staring directly into the abyss, from WaPo shutting down a blog because commenters are mean, the wiretapping spinelessness, to Harry Reid being the only professional Democrat willing to state the fact that cable news talking heads are basically just Republican daddy worshippers

Two key elements characterized the kind of domestic political economy the administration pursued: The first was the foreclosure crisis and the subsequent bank bailouts. The resulting policy framework of Tim Geithner’s Treasury Department was, in effect, a wholesale attack on the American home (the main store of middle-class wealth) in favor of concentrated financial power. The second was the administration’s pro-monopoly policies, which crushed the rural areas that in 2016 lost voter turnout and swung to Donald Trump....

Obama didn’t cause the financial panic, and he is only partially responsible for the bailouts, as most of them were passed before he was elected. But financial collapses, while bad for the country, are opportunities for elected leaders to reorganize our culture. Franklin Roosevelt took a frozen banking system and created the New Deal. Ronald Reagan used the sharp recession of the early 1980s to seriously damage unions. In January 2009, Obama had overwhelming Democratic majorities in Congress, $350 billion of no-strings-attached bailout money and enormous legal latitude. What did he do to reshape a country on its back?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/12/democrats-cant-win-until-they-recognize-how-bad-obamas-financial-policies-were/

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/01/thirteen-democrats-just-stopped-bernie-sanders-ame.html

No progress can happen until we start running progressive candidates in safe, blue-state congressional primaries against the center left. Supposedly "safe" congressional districts must feel threatened.

I thought the democrats might have their own "Tea Party" movement after OWS but it didn't happen. We need it now more than ever.

Here's the justification for this vote that Booker provided to Jezebel:

"I support the importation of prescription drugs as a key part of a strategy to help control the skyrocketing cost of medications. Any plan to allow the importation of prescription medications should also include consumer protections that ensure foreign drugs meet American safety standards. I opposed an amendment put forward last night that didn’t meet this test. The rising cost of medications is a life-and-death issue for millions of Americans, which is why I also voted for amendments last night that bring drug prices down and protect Medicare’s prescription drug benefit. I‎’m committed to finding solutions that allow for prescription drug importation with adequate safety standards."

So the problem is "safety." Because we've all heard about the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Canada caused by their poor drug safety standards, right? Fuck this guy.

re morbs' post.. I forgot how fucking terrible HARP or HAMP or whatever it was was called.. Clearly we need to focus on making these banks whole. god forbid anyone loses money on an investment.

Democratic (Party) Erection

@tinyrevolution
Agree or disagree with Cory Booker on drug reimportation, you have to admit he thinks Americans are amazingly stupid

I think the last election proved that point, so

Are they boo-ing me, Smithers?
No sir. They're saying "Boo-ooker!"

Cory Booker 6 Dec 2012
‏@CoryBooker
RT @rr_nyc: Tired of hearing how morbidly obese poor don't have food either. Employment is ennobling, even min wage, get 2 jobs

@DougHenwood
Dem moneybags and think tankers planning to stick with strategy that landed them in a ditch.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/democratic-party-voters-reconnect-233666

so former Labor Secretary / Establishment candidate for DNC chair Tom Perez blurted out

"We heard loudly and clearly yesterday from Bernie supporters that the process was rigged and it was. And you've got to be honest about it. That's why we need a chair who is transparent."

and then the fun began

So in Tom Perez’s conduct, one sees the mentality and posture that has shaped the Democratic Party: a defense of jobs-killing free trade agreements that big corporate funders love; an inability to speak plainly, without desperately clinging to focus-grouped, talking-points scripts; a petrified fear of addressing controversial issues even (especially) when they involve severe human rights violations by allies; a religious-like commitment never to offend rich donors; and a limitless willingness to publicly abase oneself in pursuit of power by submitting to an apology ritual for having told the truth....

One can spend all of one’s time and energy denouncing Donald Trump. But until the systemic causes that gave rise to him are addressed and resolved, those denunciations will do little other than generate social media benefits and flattering applause from those already devoted to opposing him. Focusing on and attempting to counter the fundamental flaws of the Democratic Party is not a distraction from #TheResistance; it is a central priority, a prerequisite for any kind of success.

https://theintercept.com/2017/02/09/tom-perez-apologizes-for-telling-the-truth-showing-why-democrats-flaws-urgently-need-attention/

Oh great

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/obama-democrats-party-building-234820

Ugh I remember OFA trying to pimp the goddamn TPP in the last couple years of Obama's presidency

btw

@JStein_Vox

Voting DNC members tell me that the "anti-Israel" campaign against @keithellison helped derail his candidacy

http://www.vox.com/2017/2/26/14740400/keith-ellisons-dnc-israel

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2017/02/the-assassination-of-keith-ellison-by-the-neoliberal-coward-tom-perez

"The Manichean alternative history of the DNC race not only ludicrously casts Tom Perez as a Thatcherite, it also apparently casts Chuck Schumer as a left-not-liberal class warrior. It’s incomprehensible on any level."

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C6GBQjBWQAEjfDh.jpg

Chris Hedges:

A genuine populism, one defined and often articulated by Bernie Sanders, could sweep the Democratic Party back into power. Regulating Wall Street, publicly financing campaigns, forgiving student debt, demanding universal health care, bailing out homeowners victimized by the banks, ending the wars in the Middle East, instituting a jobs program to repair our decaying infrastructure, dismantling the prison system, restoring the rule of law on the streets of our cities, making college education free and protecting programs such as Social Security would see election victory after election victory.

But this will never happen within the Democratic Party. It refuses to prohibit corporate money. The party elites know that if corporate money disappears, so do they. The party’s hierarchy, pressured by Obama and the Clintons, elevated Tom Perez over Keith Ellison—whom a major donor to the party, Haim Saban, condemns as an “anti-Semite” because of Ellison’s criticism of the Israeli government—to head the Democratic National Committee. They will press forward repeating the same silly slogans and trying to use the now ineffective Force choke on their political enemies. They may have lost control of the Congress and the White House and hold only 16 governorships and majorities in only 31 of the states’ 99 legislative chambers, but they are incapable of offering any meaningful alternative to neoliberalism and empire. They are devoid of a vision. They can only moralize. They will continue to atrophy and enable the consolidation of an American fascism....

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/donald_trumps_greatest_allies_are_the_liberal_elites_20170305

As much as I'm happy that the Clintons are gone from public life and grit my teeth at their surreptitious string pulling, the criticism of Perez is tiresome at this point.

"restoring the rule of law on the streets of our cities"

What on earth does this mean?