Democratic (Party) Direction

already doing the GOP's work for 'em (yet again) eh

and working together

https://theintercept.com/2017/07/17/with-new-d-c-policy-group-dems-continue-to-rehabilitate-and-unify-with-bush-era-neocons/

do you read the whole thing before you link to it or do you just cackle as you imagine me trying to cope with an entire GG piece without losing my breakfast

anyway I loved these two bits

As this new policy group illustrates, the union is grounded in widespread ideological agreement on a broad array of foreign policy debates: from Israel to Syria to the Gulf States to Ukraine to Russia. And the narrow differences that exist between the two groups — on the wisdom of the Iran deal, the nobility of the Iraq War, the justifiability of torture — are more relics of past debates than current, live controversies. These two groups have found common cause because, with rare and limited exception, they share common policy beliefs and foreign policy mentalities.

yes that very narrow difference between Dems and the GOP on torture, Iran and the Iraq war

also this is hilarious

What we see instead are leading Democratic foreign policy experts joining hands with the world’s worst neocons to form new, broad-based policy advocacy groups to re-shape U.S. foreign policy toward a more hostile, belligerent and hawkish posture.

re-shape it into a more bad, bad and bad and worse thing than it already is!! because the only thing worse than Rex Tillerson running the State Department and the DoD running itself would be a Democrat in charge of anything. Yours truly, Glenn Greenwald

I mean the policy group he's flipping out about is another fly-by-night beltway special that all these usual suspects glom on to in case it goes anywhere, and then it never does - Chertoff has to have been associated with like 50 of these things by now - and the whole piece goes on and on and on without making a single specific point other than guilt by association and the usual self-congratulatory confirmation bias that must be catnip for wont-be-fooled-again megacynics like Morbs

guilt by association

^^^this

Kamala also has a big dem donor class sewn up - she's a former AG of CA and her husband is head of the west LA office for Venable LLP. Big law firms were Hillary's #1 source of cash in 2016. (too lazy to google. if it wasnt #1 it was top 3 for sure.) xp

Relevant to GG.

The folks who sold Trump as a non-interventionist would rather talk about this Russia stuff than Trump's death toll. https://t.co/IIgDClIpRx

— Charles Davis (@charliearchy) July 17, 2017

yr losing yr breakfast is just gravy, T

ew

I don't understand who would eat "gravy."

it takes a special kind of asshole to require IDs to vote to avoid outside interference in our elections, then turn around and say russia interfering in our elections is okay. it takes professional socioeconomically comfortable democrats blind to their own privilege too polite to raise a stink to high heaven not to repeat that message day in and out

nominally straight reporting pushes deeply ideological editorial part 64,123 https://t.co/Wnb3DhjZ8P pic.twitter.com/49E3Hv81vg

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) July 18, 2017

Ryan Adams‏ @filmystic Jul 5

Ryan Adams Retweeted Bernie Sanders

How does it happen that we have a liberal senator who's done 10,600 tweets, yet this is the only time he's ever dared mention Putin by name?

yeah, ari melber was grilling bernie earlier about whether or not he benefited from russian espionage, or utilized it, when he called for debbie wasserman schulz to step down. he didn't seem to be coming from a place of red panic but it still seemed like an irrelevant and dumb question.

I like Harris. I'd rather win.

it feels like everyone is biding their time, not wanting to get out in front too early in the cycle, but the result is the party is being led by effectively nobody. There is nobody out there talking up platform planks and positions, it's all wait-and-see and holding statements and gross fundraising spam.

Oh, not "introduced Albert Hammond Jr. to heroin" Ryan Adams.

Thought this was good (in response to Chait, who is a hopeless charter school stan, and so of course believes neoliberal is just something strangers call him on Twitter)

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/7/18/15992226/neoliberalism-chait-austerity-democratic-party-sanders-clinton

yeah Vox has been slightly less useless of late

generally parties out of power never have leaders. Who was the "leader" of the GOP in 2010, John McCain?

christ https://t.co/OFdojTyPKn pic.twitter.com/CPFFU9CQ6s

— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) July 19, 2017

because that worked out so well last time

as you all know I find HamNo's look-at-me writing style to be indigestible but I agreed with most of his points in this

http://fusion.kinja.com/democrats-wake-up-and-smell-the-failure-1797015279

They mistake weakness for pragmatism. They mistake pandering for savvy. They always seem to imagine that the closer they edge to Republican policy positions, the more votes they will inevitably capture, due to math. They—the establishment, the ones in control, with all of the plugs plugged into the current power grid—are unable to imagine a world in which they lead voters to their side with bold, progressive policies, and by telling the truth. That is considered hopelessly unrealistic, by the circle of operatives that helped to lose to Donald Trump. The entire apparatus of Democratic operatives who spent decades accumulating power, riding their way up through the Bill Clinton and Obama administrations, are still there. And they did their best in 2016. And here we are.

Anyway, to Shakey: Having no leaders of the opposition party, except in the managerial or tactical sense (which is not leadership), is probably responsible for more horrible problems in our democracy than we maybe want to admit. It guarantees at least four years of rudderless bitching and being dragged around from one carefully curated echo chamber to another by barely competent consultants who sustain their mortgage payments by keeping the country in perpetual 51-49 deadlock.

There is no Labour Manifesto to speak of for the Democrats, other than the 2016 Platform, but since that campaign "lost" the election by negative 3 points, those planks are of no interest to the grossly overmatched hacks still running the DCCC, and they're just one egregious example. There's nobody to lead on anything more than cussing in public about how we want to help people. Well and we have a guy who lost in the primaries to the "most unpopular candidate ever" who isn't even a Democrat.

right, he's a communist, as Ms Popularity all but said out loud repeatedly

btw

The former secretary of state has always been a polarizing figure, but this survey shows she’s even lost popularity among those who voted for her in November.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-18/finally-a-poll-trump-will-like-clinton-even-more-unpopular

nobody likes a loser

dems vomit out shitty slogans because they can't name that which is afflicting people's lives without upsetting their rolodex of donors.

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) July 20, 2017

What city is Adam Johnson from?

it's right there in his display name

H.

Here's your chance, Dems. Now! Let us all watch as you fuck it up in the most spectacular fashion.

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/342867-poll-majority-says-federal-government-should-ensure-healthcare-coverage

More AHJ content
https://youtu.be/17Csy9m1BFM

I thought I would hate this, but ended up kinda digging the idea:
https://newrepublic.com/article/143602/back-work-how-democrats-win-americans-left-behind-new-economy

I also support a UBI, but this seems more palatable to Americans, while still having enough of a think-big element to seem inspiring.

jfc, ALEC wants to repeal 17th amendment

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/41307-trump-team-alec-koch-industries-debate-gerrymandering-the-us-senate-in-denver

Centrist Dems smeared Keith Ellison as a scary Muslim to keep him from getting the DNC job. Let's see how their guy Tom Perez is doing pic.twitter.com/JiR19uYZgq

— christopher (@SpectatorCitizn) July 21, 2017

Good tweet there, guy

Tom Perez as a regular old centrist
Keith Ellison as a guy who isn't Perez's #2 at DNC
Fundraising as most important activity for Dems to be doing

"Centrist Dems smeared him as a scary Muslim" is such a blatant lie. It's almost like people like him are a huge part of the problem.

Also

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/07/24/does-the-opening-predict-a-wave/

So basically that guy's an idiot who hates Dems that aren't him

If only we had a few more of his sort around

the party is being led by effectively nobody.

otm. Clinton is entirely off the leader board. Sanders has some media presence, but no clear power base. Pelosi has taken a step back from taking the lead. Warren has not grabbed the reins. The nearest thing to a national party leader atm would be... Chuck Schumer. (morbs gags audibly and justifiably)

I think they're all trying - its kind of hard to get any space in the media these days.

If you want to see who is vying for party leadership just check the list of guests on Pod Save America.

I don't care if "a better deal" could use "a catchier slogan" tbf - although why we're still talking about "deals" on both sides on the Atlantic come 2017 is its own epistemic problem, imo

the "deal" presumes some kind of game between parties whose interests aren't entirely mutual, when the continued existence of humanity, in a healthy and fulfilling environment, seems like something we should all be in favor of. Let's not make any more fucking deals. Let's have a better fucking way of life.

"Better deal" is so stupid bc Trump already claims to make the best deals

Democrats 2018: Liberté, Equalité, Beyonce

yeah so all that said can we move on to the planks

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2017/07/better-deal-far-democrats-moved-far-need-go

E Pluribus Unum = what's in it for me?

xxp

presumes some kind of game between parties whose interests aren't entirely mutual

imagine

Right now millions of unemployed or underemployed people, particularly those without a college degree, could be brought back into the labor force or retrained to secure full-time, higher-paying work. We propose giving employers, particularly small businesses, a large tax credit to train workers for unfilled jobs. This will have particular resonance in smaller cities and rural areas, which have experienced an exodus of young people who aren’t trained for the jobs in those areas.

it's 15$ by 2024 which inflation adjusted is the same as hillarys 12$, but money illusion is real so 15$ ppl will be appeased (and tbh, it was prob intentional on activists part to set it high with knowledge that it would take better part of a decade to pass)

infrastructure good, seems like a esp good one to beat Trump with given his empty promises on it

i find Matt Stoller really annoying and Loomis is prob right that antitrust is likely too boring, but in areas like telecoms and healthcare there's some low hanging fruit, and antitrust is already bipartisan and an easy sell to Americans

tax credits for retraining; something like this should prob exist, but the devil's in the details. ideally you wanna strike the right balance between wasting tax expenditure on hires that would've happened anyways and incentivizing those that don't; something like setting the subsidy proportional to unemployment (or 1 - prime age epop) in the commuting zone and having it phase out with firm size

They always seem to imagine that the closer they edge to Republican policy positions, the more votes they will inevitably capture, due to math.

The Democratic party of 2017 embraces an end to mass incarceration, free higher education, legalized marijuana, and civil rights for both gay people (which even Republicans have come to grudgingly accept) and trans people. It has made extreme income inequality into something people see as an injustice instead of the God-given order of things.

I mean I'm not saying they're political masterminds but I don't think they're moderate Republicans. I think their failures are largely structural and tactical; focusing too little on state legislatures, which creates a situation where there aren't enough seasoned Dem candidates to run for U.S. office, and which allows state law to bit by bit put money in the hands of organized groups that donate to and campaign for the GOP, keep money out of the hands of organized groups that donate to and campaign for Democrats.