Democratic (Party) Direction

"It is as if the white tribe united in demonstration to say, “If a black man can be president, then any white man—no matter how fallen—can be president.” And in that perverse way, the democratic dreams of Jefferson and Jackson were fulfilled."

BOOM

Kamala Harris's endorsement of single payer healthcare may help unite a divided Democratic Par--
Hillary Clinton: Leeeeeeeroy Jeeeeeeenkins

— shut up, mike ginn (@shutupmikeginn) September 7, 2017

hahaha

https://verrit.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=https%3A%2F%2Fverrit.com%2Fwp-admin%2F&reauth=1

for those who haven't used popular blog/content management software wordpress, this is the login page for the admin interface

Verrit, the site created by the Daou family (Peter was apparently head of a certain 2008 campaign's online wing) and endorsed by uh, well, HRC, has the worst security and technical ideas of anything I have seen recently

like rule number one of wordpress (other than "do not use wordpress if you can avoid it") is "do not leave the admin page at the default address

I'm tellin' ya, money laundering scheme.

I've just picked a fight with a good FB friend who thinks Joe Reid is the most brilliant person on MSNBC.

Joy Reid

joy reid is fantastic at her job because she tells people what they want to hear. she's verrit personified

I don't know enough about msnbc to comment!

speaking of MSNBC personalities, one who's actually worth a damn makes a point i tried to make upthread

I think the very intense debate within Democratic party is needed, fascinating and quite substantive, but would *really* benefit from...

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 7, 2017

all of the participants detaching it from the particular characteristics/personalities of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. My .02.

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 7, 2017

joy reid is fantastic at her job because she tells people what they want to hear. she's verrit personified

― k3vin k.

Precisely what I said!

imo the problem is any time one person criticizes from any given direction, it's assumed they're a fan of whatever candidate was somewhat in that position?

like dude I have these stances because I had them long before the election, I refined and changed some over the course of the last two years, and the election is goooone

we need some new concepts that people don't associate with anything at all

how about "rich people should pay higher taxes"

i think the government should..
*looks at the world*
..nationalize the ag industry?

imo the problem is any time one person criticizes from any given direction, it's assumed they're a fan of whatever candidate was somewhat in that position?

Something about the internet exacerbates the human tendency to sort people into boxes. Everyone is always speaking unwittingly as a representative of one or another loosely defined faction or interest group.

the whole bernie/hillary thing makes no sense to me after the primary, because it wasn't my experience at all

the caucuses get a lot of criticism for how they're run in some areas, and validly for issues of accessibility and availability, but I've generally had good experiences and I feel like something would be lost if they were significantly changed

I think what people don't understand is that the primary/caucus thing, while coordinated to an extent at state level, are purely of the parties. The rules and regulations are for the party, and there's nothing federally that says how the parties have to operate. If a state party voted to have the primary delegates assigned in a completely arbitrary way, it happens -- people would have to actually join the party and force a change.

That aside addressed, the Iowa caucuses are still the earliest and it was actually incredibly low drama this past year. The way it works is that each district has a given number of delegates , they do a count of the number of voters present, and candidates have to carry enough voters to get an assigned delegate. In 2008, my district had three or four candidates that got delegates! It was interesting, there is a lot of bartering when the candidates with not enough voters are forced to either dissolve and support other candidates or attempt to sway just enough to get up to the one delegate level.

In 2016, there were a couple too few people to get O'Malley a delegate, and they weren't enthusiastic enough, even when the people running the caucus were his supporters. So their choice was to go to Sanders or Clinton, and it was about a 60/40 split. You end up realizing it's your neighbors, who you see around, trying to figure out support but everyone there is involved and wants their party to do well. There are probably a few people who are there for one candidate and will bow out when they're eliminated and maybe even bow out of the party when it comes to the general, but that's a very small group.

So, seeing this in-fighting is so dumb late in the game -- I was divorced from this as of February 2016 as far as voting goes. Some of the later primary things made me motivated to pay more attention to internal politics, but seeing it physically represented in a room, by neighbors, coming together and forming alliances makes it a little more real.

i'm torn on whether arguing about the future of the democratic party is rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic or not. yesterday i was reading about the roman sack of jerusalem in 70 ad. ancient history, it's hard to know anything about for sure, but it looks like the split between "moderates" and zealots in jewish politics was a strong contributory factor. on the other hand, there's this strong sense of inevitability, a feeling that the romans were always going to wind up burning down the temple no matter what happened.

computer, give me the most infuriating collection of words in the English language:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/08/axios-vandehei-democrats-could-select-candidate-with-clinton-ties.html

not to be overlooked in that piece:

On the Republican side, VandeHei made no predictions about 2020, but warned to never discount a Trump re-election. "It's so far off. It's not inconceivable. The working assumption is he could never win again. He certainly could."

ya fuckin' think?

i mean, we're all just being trolled here, right?

axios is bad

Just to update the story higher up in the thread, Daniel Biss's new running mate is Litesa Wallace, a state rep from Rockford.

i hate to be cynical, but something in me feels that thinking it matters who the democrats run in 2020 is sort of like thinking the paris accords are going to save us all from climate apocalypse. the "smart money" democrats are smart enough to know this, but when people don't have any viable alternatives they're going to tend to do the same shit they always did.

Even Cory Booker endorsed Bernie's single payer bill!

This is a great sign imo.

btw Kaine is still in the swamp

.@timkaine pretty much rules out getting on single-payer bill, tells me and @PeterSullivan4 he prefers more choice in marketplace

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_Vox) September 11, 2017

it *is* a good sign but it's only a start. they need to be pushed much harder on a variety of issues.

I like the cut of this OH gubernatorial candidate's jib: http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2017/09/governor_candidate_connie_pill.html

The Cincinnati Democrat announced her plan Tuesday morning, just hours before the first Democratic debate. She called it an "education stimulus" that will create jobs and shore up Ohio's workforce.

"I want to make a transformative investment in education," Pillich said. "Over the last seven years our ranking has fallen from 5th to 22nd and obviously that's a result of having the wrong priorities in Columbus."

The plan includes universal pre-kindergarten for 4-year-olds, increasing funding for and revamping the K-12 state aid formula to make it more equitable and providing free vocational workforce training.

Perhaps most ambitious is Pillich's proposal for free higher education, which would radically alter the university system.

Under Pillich's plan, students with an income or family income of less than $100,000 who attend a public university would receive deferred tuition. The deferment would last for 10 years if the student stays in Ohio post-graduation.

If after the 10-year mark those students are still in Ohio, the full cost would be forgiven.

Here are some of the other planks:

Give businesses a $1,000 tax credit for each licensed apprentice they hire
Start middle and high school days no earlier than 8:50 a.m. per recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics
Increased STEM education in classrooms including computer coding
Create a fund to help current college graduates with debt
Require public universities to freeze costs at current rates, adjusted for inflation
Create the Ohio Service Corps Program and forgive graduates' student loan debt after two or three years of service

That college tuition plan is pretty brilliant aside from the wrinkle of "what happens to students who study a field where they can't get employment in Ohio?"

Like, what does that mean for contractors who need to travel? I'm thinking past technical people; what about, for example, musicians who travel across state lines for extended gigs, or people who tour? If you are an author, does your publisher need to be in Ohio in order to count towards deferment/forgiveness?

Seems to be modeled on Cuomo's scheme in New York - I think similar questions were raised about that but I haven't read anything that comprehensively takes these issues on. You'd like to think somebody's thought about them. Obviously it starts to sound like a creepy indentured servitude to the state and you can imagine people stuck in dead-end jobs not in their field, with something great available just across the border but unavailable because getting slammed with a wall of debt is not so appealing.

or companies in other parts of the country figure out they can afford the one-time write-off of a relocation incentive that includes the student loan and the smart ones leave anyway. which is fine, really.

basically if you want to major in an orchestra instrument or become an academic, assume 2-3 years of poverty in the Ohio Service Corps (doing what, who knows, probably cutting into public sector union work though)

how about this, your parents pay taxes, corporations pay taxes, all the kids who qualify get to go to college for a nominal fee. none of these absurd strings to try and hold people down after they graduate.

Would never work

Sike

That college tuition plan is pretty brilliant

It's pretty brilliant that she calls it "free higher education" when it's not free!

xp: what Tomboto said. "Free higher education" would mean "free like high school" -- it's a service you get in exchange for your taxes, no conditions.

well the conditions should be "able & inclined to keep up with the material"

yeah these types of programs feel like a way to get something that sounds bernie-esque and populist in place at the state level (which obviously does restrict your options - hard to tax Wall Street from Columbus)... without raising any taxes or pissing off any on-the-fence suburban republican types. "don't worry, don't worry, they'll be humiliatingly indentured to the state and have to jump through whatever hoops we make them! you like that, right?" i mean it might really help out tons and tons of people i guess so that's not to be entirely sneezed at but i'm with tombot and wish we could skip past these lame compromise-in-advance half-measures.

timkaine... prefers more choice in marketplace

This is such crap. If you have the ability to choose your doctor and together with your doctor you can choose your course of treatment, you've got the important choices covered. Why is a choice of which insurance company's arcane rules and impenetrable charges you are subjected to supposed to be of value to a sick person?

first time I've ever heard of Tim Kaine being pro choice https://t.co/JSKQDRYJSi

— maura quint (@behindyourback) September 11, 2017

you go, bernie. our current health care system is evil and bad for the economy both. put the (russian-colluding / deficit-spending / silver-spoon knob-slobbering / anti-christian) republicans on the defensive, dems

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/opinion/bernie-sanders-medicare-single-payer.html?mcubz=3&_r=0

Meanwhile I get my cable back after #Irmanonsense, turn on MSNBC, and listen to Chuck Todd with palpable enthusiasm wondering if Medicaid for all will "split" the party.

The Plan Would Be Fully Paid For By:

- snip -

A 2.2 percent income-based premium paid by households.

https://berniesanders.com/issues/medicare-for-all/

lol ill take it! the individual mandate penalty right now is 2.5% and that's for NOT having health care.

looking okay OK

http://newsok.com/democrats-win-special-election-in-norman/article/5563866

bernie is so fucking stupid it's unbelievable. chait otm

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/sanderss-bill-gets-u-s-zero-percent-closer-to-single-payer.html

lol

matt yglesias wrote an actually worthwhile version of this point of view recently: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/29/16196608/wonks-single-payer

chait is such a fuckin' tool.

I cannot tell anymore if sleepingbag is being sarcastic or just going all in for the SBs

I guess the "so fucking stupid it's unbelievable" is OTT enough to indicate not-actually-trolling

Chait is always a total jackass whenever anyone brings up nationalizing / re-nationalizing privatized services. His wife is a charter school network exec. I'm sure he was a big vote in favor of hiring Andrew Sullivan at nymag, too.

What I don't understand is how you go from writing The Big Con to being such a devoted capitalism-first neoliberal. When he writes shit like this he turns into the McArdle of the center-left

i like matt yglesias, i don't like jonathan chait or josh barro

— Sam (@VaguelySteamy) September 9, 2017