Democratic (Party) Direction

not ready to go live, an old interweb story

I bet Verrit's a money laundering operation, and a reward to Daou for his loyal service.

lol no

It's totally half assed. It's like one of those store fronts where everything's expired and covered in an inch of dust.

Status quo was all a Dem could promise in 2016, what with GOP running congress, and I still think campaigning on anything more than that would have led to disappointment and backlash, and hurt progressive priorities in the long run. Though it would obviously have been better than Trump.

I think the Clinton campaign/wing of the party very happily thought that Trump was a gift that enabled them to straddle their Wall Street donors and their base without having to go too far left. I really think they thought it was ideal, at least at first.

So many people thought Trump was the easiest to beat.

He had sky high unfavorables, low party support and extremist views. Turns out that didn't matter. And man, imagine how dangerous a demagogue would have been in this environment if he wasn't a lazy idiot like Trump.

Yeah, it definitely crosses my mind a lot that he has all the intentions of a fascist dictator, he's just too lazy and incompetent to become one.

Fred, Dems could have promised anything they wanted to. That's the one thing Trump understood better than Clinton. Worrying about putting big ideas out there because of partisan obstacles just makes it seem like you have no big ideas.

good luck with this

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/06/democrats-launch-super-pac-to-win-back-statehouses-242330

I don't think Trump 'understood' that. He's too stupid to realize there's a difference between him saying something and it happening, that's not the same. And he has taken a beating time and time again as he tries to realize campaign promises that were unrealizable.

he's not stupid, fred. he's corrupt. there's a pretty big difference

What does anyone think would be happening right now if there was a Dem in the White House who had campaigned on single payer? Would there even be a law proposal, how would voters react?

I think he totally got the idea that if you promise lots of great sounding stuff, the rubes will happily sign on. I'm not saying he's some super genius, but big empty promises are the core of his brand.

There would be nothing happening with single payer right now, but that's beside the point. The election wasn't a contest to make the most plausible proposals, it was about getting enough votes to win.

It's so massively depressing to hear clever people say that. Politics is not about doing anything to win, it's about passing policies that improves peoples lives. The 'anything to win' thing was exactly what led the Democrats off course in the nineties.

stupidity and corruption are hardly mutually exclusive properties xp

Yeah? They'd deliver proposed legislation, it'd bounce off of the republicans in congress, and you just keep bouncing it. It's not as if you can't propose things, proposing it alone is worth it for the press coverage and churn.

I mean, republicans have the majority and Trump's in there and they have, for instance, absolutely no healthcare legislation. They pieced together some bullshit, and then claimed to do an outright ACA repeal, because they have absolutely nothing. It's so transparently partisan and dumb -- republicans in congress had nearly seven years to draft an alternative (or have a think tank do it) and Trump, for all of his idiocy, could have had one of his minions grinding out some proposals. There are no policy proposals.

sorry, xp to Fred's first one

and no, democrats in the 90s were on some "pinnacle of america" moment where they decided paring back the social welfare system and deregulating banks (and continuing to deregulate the media) was an amazing idea because surely things would be great forever

all of those things are huge concessions to republicans and were popular at the time because.... who even remembers

my is correct. To be clear, I'm not saying Hillary should have promised a bunch of ridiculous nonsense, but any agenda she may have had as president would have died quickly in the Republican congress, so why not focus on the big picture vision instead of a bunch of dull technocratic ideas that have no better chance of advancing either way?

best not to build expectations, hurts less

The knock against Hillary was that she didn't advance any political ideas at all, opting instead to focus on Trump. Not that she was too technocratic. What technocratic ideas did she advance?

why have expectations at all

which reminds me, has anyone here read "Achieving Our Country" by Richard Rorty? From the late 90s, and people jumped all over one quote that seems to predict Trump's election, but I'm more interested in the pragmatism/future vision bits and how the left has drifted into this stasis where cultural issues are talked about but less about economic/structural issues

i did once maybe but i forgot what it said

He said he hated the word "wonks."

technocracy is a whole thing. it has a meaning and a history, there were technocrats before there was email so knowing how to use a smartphone or w/e really isn't a qualification for being on.

tbh jaymc it doesn't really sound like you're high on technocratic liberalism so much as like, a belief that a well-staffed and empowered government, including wonks in the correct advisory roles, can indeed be a boon to society. technocracy is more like rule by experts. put the statisticans, economists, and computer-model-making systems analysts directly in charge of decision making and the results will be great! the key is the "-cracy" which is a cue that it's at heart not "democracy" but something else. its earliest advocates were basically the 19th century descendents of that wing of the enlightenment which sought the benevolent dictatorship of kings advised by natural philosophers.

I swear, something gave nearly everyone in politics brain worms and they think they're doing whatever-dimensional chess is the metaphor of the day instead of determining how many dollars to allocate to paving roads

― mh

hate to break it to you but i think the "something" in this case is, uh, voters.

whenever i hear the word "technocracy" i think of the "technocracy" movement of the early 1930s, which was hilarious.

Ever notice the options available under "pragmatism" get more narrow ever year?

(You can imagine me saying that w/ Andy Rooney cadences if you wish.)

Hillary going after Bernie for running a mean campaign is fucking golden when you consider the tactics they tried to use on Obama

Never forget "I'm not dropping out, Bobby Kennedy was shot in June."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/26/barackobama.uselections2008

just dropping this again for posterity

Now that we have established that Hillary Clinton is Satan incarnate, can we get back to impotently watching Republicans stomping on non-white people and non-straight people?

that's what the trump threads are for iirc

doctor casino otm, must be a real doctor

or a real casino

Hillary Clinton is Satan incarnate

I was gonna slightly amend that by quoting The Night of the Hunter but it's too close to the baseball playoffs for me to get banned again.

Apparently the DACA battle right now is forcing democrats in the house who had previously been noncommittal or against it to toe the party line, so that's a small good

I like this as descriptor of why Verrit fails as a site but succeeds masterfully as exemplar of the mindset between the campaign

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/09/verrit-shows-everything-wrong-with-clintonism

yep, someone posted that upthread, and the fact that I agreed with it wholeheartedly is what made me feel more affinity to The Left than I previously had.

Apparently the DACA battle right now is forcing democrats in the house who had previously been noncommittal or against it to toe the party line

not just in the House - Tester in the Senate too, for ex.

Charismatic gay Latino running mate booted off ticket for supporting BDS is some peak THE DEMOCRATS https://t.co/B89NsBPZss

— TOMÁS RÍOS (@TheTomasRios) September 6, 2017

I wonder how many of those it'll take before DSA formally drops the "reform the Dems" concept (they're mighty close as-is)

christ

I thought it was "take advantage of the dems ballot line" not "reform the dems"

giving emerging trump replicant netanyahu a blank check is nagl for the dems imo

I thought it was "take advantage of the dems ballot line" not "reform the dems"

I should have rephrased that, I meant at what point will they stop running members as Dems entirely

IDK but I hope not because it's their only hope of not being irrelevant like the fucking greens.

I enjoy how not being down with BDS is the same as giving netanyahu a blank check

jesus fucking christ if progressives can't stop eating each other over the most trivial performative shit then I guess we really do all deserve this

greens and their ilk are plenty relevant imo - they're terrific if you're a republican

shit isn't fucked up because Progressives are Bad People.