Democratic (Party) Direction

I kind of share Treeship's frustration w Democratic Party's inability to combat the smears. I was hoping that Bernie would have been picked for VP slot at the time because they clearly lost control of the messaging. It was a unique situation overall to be attacked by both right AND left and have FBI intervene near the end. Also they inadvertently became the most transparent campaign in history via the leaks, who else could hold up to the scrutiny of their private communications made public like that? Ultimately it was disconcerting that Ellison wasn't picked as Chair since it seemed like he could have helped unify the divide, although I like Perez..

Oh great, the guy Bernie backed to run against DWS spreading the "Seth Rich was murdered by the Clintons" conspiracy. Clearly there was some degree of craziness that spread. Very hard to beat that stuff back. https://twitter.com/tim_canova/status/840810444839354368

Seriously annoyed by Clinton murder conspiracy theories. Mainly because if they were true, Anthony Weiner would be a dead man.

This paragraph from a recent post by Scott Lemieux pretty much says it all about the Podesta emails (emphases mine):

The purpose of the leaks and how Wikileaks framed them was precisely to sucker journalists into covering anodyne behavior as if it was scandalous. There are numerous factors, but one — which we also saw with respect to the Clinton Foundation — is that once editors and journalists have invested enough time in a story they’re very reluctant to conclude that Al Capone’s vault is in fact empty. It’s very hard to imagine even Clinton haters as obsessive as Fang and Greenwald writing a story about Hillary Clinton engaging in completely unexceptionable media engagement strategies any minimally competent campaign engages in if the story had been obtained from conventional sources, let alone hyping their “findings” as if they had he 21st century Pentagon Papers on their hands. (AFICT, neither particularly cared about the other Hillary Clinton EMAILS! scandal the Beltway media was rubbing its thighs bloody over.) What made Assange’s ratfucking work is that the reveal of SECRET EMAILS created an air of conspiracy around even the most inane trivia, and also played into a narrative that the DNC RIGGED the primary by [causal explanation absent.]

things i learned in this thread: blaming the victim is totally cool.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/13/magazine/democratic-party-election-trump.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

https://twitter.com/SeanMcElwee/status/841335564225912833

it's insane how shitty the Democratic party is

Yeah, if you're going to make *anything* a litmus test for party membership/support/resources, make it voting rights, for both moral *and* strategic reasons.

We should never vote for any Democrats because some of them are just complete suckers

Such a policy is exactly how evangelical whites got so much power in the legislature; by being merciless in withholding their votes from hypocrites

"We should never vote for any Democrats"

even i the nihilst loon of ilx doesn't practice this, so who ya arguin' with, Red Ryder?

We should never vote for any Democrats because some of them are just complete suckers

― El Tomboto, Monday, March 13, 2017 1:41 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No one should ever voice any criticism of Democrats without having someone make this facile point

not to beat this horse dead and bloody again, but I really do wish that Clinton had spent less time harping on the racism/sexism angle and more focusing on how shitty/unethical a businessman Trump is. they made those pretty effective ads with people whose small businesses went under because Trump stiffed them, and decided not to show them, instead playing the same sexist remarks over and over again, which I think really started to fatigue people and make it wish it was all over

It's like ilx rly

i think the problem was that it was all over the media anyway, it's not like anyone was going to see it reframed in an ad and think "ohh she's got a point, that Hollywood Access tape was not cool..." It turned the election into a debate about whether or not that kind of shit was right or wrong, when it shouldn't have been a debate. It should have been like, well yeah he sucks of course, there's no need to address that point over and over.

and yet here we are

No, pointing out that he was an incompetent schemer as a businessman would probably have gone a long way. IMHO, the campaign stuck to his repugnant social stances and manners because that resonates inside the chamber, AND it's something Hillary was unassailable on.

If they wanted to call him an incompetent businessman she might have had to respond to accusations that she's never run a lemonade stand, etc. so they just avoided that.

The Clinton campaign wasn't dumb, or dastardly, they were risk averse and they kept to their bubble, which is bad, but they also won by 3 million votes, so really, fuck everything

it seemed like either she had to appeal to her base or turn off people on the right, and flooding the airwaves with clips of Trump saying bigoted things isn't going to do either. it wasn't like the people who voted Trump heard the Access Hollywood tape and went "hell yeah", but rather that they're just words, and they're sick of people getting offended by words. I always thought "this dude knows basically nothing about government or foreign policy and probably couldn't pass a 5th grade Civics test" was a better line of attack.

but that's what his voters wanted!

Alfred also OTM

A lot of people hate the word "hypocrisy" especially when it's used to try and make them look dumb

"this dude knows basically nothing about government or foreign policy and probably couldn't pass a 5th grade Civics test"

this is basically a pro-Trump t-shirt

But if he had been relentlessly painted as an irresponsible, bankrupt fraud, maybe things could have been different. Maybe she could have won by 6 million votes!

Fuck everything.

frogbs, who do you think Hillary's base is?

the GOP has wanted dumbfucks who know jackshit about governing since January 1981; to know shit about governing is to imply that you WANT to govern, and governing is not in the GOP's longterm plan.

I can't get why my Dem friends don't want to understand this. Politics isn't rational!

i think Dems consistently overestimate their own inherent appeal, the appeal of celebrity supporters, and underestimate the ability of more centrist conservative voters to be swayed into more liberal voting patterns (and underestimate their ability to be swayed back with strategic fearmongering.)

underestimate the ability of more centrist conservative voters to be swayed into more liberal voting patterns

the Hillary campaign overestimated Dem appeal to these so-called centrist conservatives.

i think they overestimated Hillary's appeal!

my opinion probably isn't as informed on this subject but I think the Dem message is attractive yet they've been habitually bad at putting it out nationally since....well, forever. except for Obama.

IDK who 'her base is' in anything more than a broad sense. just know that a lot of people didn't like either candidate and Hillary needed an argument other than "I'm not Trump"

and yea I get what you're saying Alfred, but I think its one thing to support bad ideas, another to support someone whose only ideas are total nonsense. "we're gonna crack down on immigration big league!" is a bad idea. "let's build a 100 foot wall" is nonsense.

messages don't matter to the electorate nearly as much as the messenger and what they signify

i think Dems consistently overestimate their own inherent appeal, the appeal of celebrity supporters, and underestimate the ability of more centrist conservative voters to be swayed into more liberal voting patterns (and underestimate their ability to be swayed back with strategic fearmongering.)

Yes

romney's vote held up completely despite the fact the the clinton campaign focused hugely on swaying centrist republicans. never trump conservatives broadly don't exist as a significant voting block

Hillary needed an argument other than "I'm not Trump"

Have you met any middle-aged women?

never trump conservatives were hard to persuade into voting for the traditional enemy

Not in my experience. They all vote in blue precincts though

i think they overestimated Hillary's appeal!

― nomar, Monday, March 13, 2017 12:04 PM (fifty-four minutes ago)

this, sadly. you can cut it up however you want, and misogyny definitely played a big part, but hillary was personally repugnant to a huge swath of voters - mostly die-hard republicans, but also dems, independents & the undecided. same could be said of trump, but he managed to turn his negatives into strengths in the minds of his supporters, and hillary never did. at best, she "overcame" them.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/14/14908272/trump-greenberg-democrats-neolib

I thought this was pretty good, a podcast ep talking about the structural problems and shitty media culture the Dems have right now:

http://www.thisisfine.net/2017/03/23/episode-1-8-any-organized-party/

In this week’s podcast, we talk with writer, academic, activist, and erstwhile Twitter-opinion-haver Freddie DeBoer

lol kingfish what are you doing

I mean, Freddie? Really?

DeBoer is so enormously shitty. Recently he had someone doxed for criticizing Michael Tracey too much.

Jeff Stein‏
@JStein_Vox
Below, @justicedems's list of all House Dems not sponsoring Conyers's single-payer.

3 Ds heavyweights not on board: Pelosi; Hoyer; Crowley

https://twitter.com/JStein_Vox/status/847069350402117633

cool I didn't know there was a single-payer health care bill

can we get the Russians to hack it? maybe then Dems will back it

bernie would've gotten it through amirite

stop eatin Mark Russell's lunch, AB

xp

Polis did a reddit AMA yesterday, looks like he dodged on why he's not co-sponsoring

not sure what the goal of a single-payer bill at this particular time is - to make the GOP look bad? to keep the idea in the public eye? Not sure it accomplishes either.