Democratic (Party) Direction

what other democrat is gonna win a senate seat in WV tho

Manchin sucks, but he will always vote against ACA repeal and that's supremely important

A progressive national turn isn't really a threat to a big tent including Manchins - because WV is WV. What are they going to do, primary him?

"Centrists" are afraid of threats to their links to the donor class, nothing more.

Yeah exactly. Their focus group is fortune 50 board members

A progressive national turn isn't really a threat to a big tent including Manchins - because WV is WV. What are they going to do, primary him?

"Centrists" are afraid of threats to their links to the donor class, nothing more.

― louise ck (milo z)

best i can tell the way they see it is that when manchin loses - and if he runs again, he will lose - they will think it was because of those darn single-payer radicals and not because the democratic party is dead in west virginia. they're pre-prepping the blame game. it's unlikely to avail them much, but the people who need to believe that story will believe it.

I thought Manchin led in all polls?

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

― sleepingbag, Wednesday, September 13, 2017 6:23 PM

pareene:

"Something that is well-known to people who’ve read Chait for years, but may not be apparent to those who just think of him as a standard-issue center-left pundit who is sort of clueless about race, is that he is engaged in a pretty specific political project: Ensuring that you and people like you don’t gain control of his party.

"I say “you” because his conception of the left almost certainly includes you. He is not merely against Jill Stein voters and unreconstructed Trotskyites and Quaker pacifists. He means basically anyone to the left of Bill Clinton in 1996. If you support a less militaristic foreign policy, if you believe the Democratic Party should do more to dismantle structural racism and create a more equitable distribution of wealth, if you think Steve fucking King is a white supremacist, Chait is opposed to you nearly as staunchly as he is opposed to Paul Ryan.

"It’s not merely that he thinks your ideas or politics are wrong. He has been battling for years to keep you from having any ability to influence the politics or strategy or direction of the Democratic Party. This is the actual message of much of his work: Don’t let the left win. I don’t even think he’d dispute that, really. But everyone should be clear on how expansive his definition of “the left” is, because you’re probably in it."

http://splinternews.com/you-are-jonathan-chaits-enemy-1818814301

are you sharing that because you think people here don't know that already?

well apparently sleepingbag doesn't

you know what, the twitter echo chamber is really effective at making above-average people write some fucking obvious shit and believe they've discovered something

+ xp, sleepingbag is a troll

i'm trying to reach out to the trolls

I like Pareene but wish he'd used more recent examles of Chaitery.

Actually I think that's a pretty useful article, if only to have handy to post whenever someone posts a Chait article on facebook.

if the democrats had half a brain between them would not participate in the GOP 'tax reform' shame until 2scoops releases his tax returns

it's not clear to me that the GOP even needs Dem votes on this? Hard to keep track of what goes through reconciliation and what doesn't.

just going through my Instagram today and was delighted to see some friends are posting selfies with Sanders as Bernie's in town speaking at a local restaurant drumming up support for mayoral candidate Vincent Fort. Fort is awesome. some of my pals have volunteered for him and regularly post updates and stuff. pretty exciting to see people being pro active at the grass roots level!

Vincent Fort
https://vincentfort.com/

Massive piece on the history of Dems, race, and class in Jacobin

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/09/democratic-party-2016-election-working-class

https://cmgajcpolitics.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/vincent.jpg?w=640&h=505
http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2017/09/27/why-bernie-sanders-is-plunging-into-atlantas-mayoral-race/

http://www.myajc.com/rf/image_medium/Pub/p8/MyAJC/2017/09/30/Images/newsEngin.20001366_100117-bernie104.jpg
http://www.myajc.com/news/local-govt--politics/bernie-sanders-stumped-for-vincent-fort-mayoral-campaign-saturday/9uiIPwE0j3cMmxZ7QTaLdI/

I guess I should pay attention to this race even though I don't live in Atlanta proper anymore (East Point has its own mayor, who isn't running for a second term, and that's a shame because she's been amazing and everyone running to replace leaves much to be desired).

I was under the impression that Mary Norwood was the favorite to win in Atlanta, but I haven't tracked it for a couple months now. Anything changed on the ground?

btw just wanted to say I WAS RIGHT:

(...) The only development that would actually seriously shock me is if, in 2018, Bernie is not all over the fucking place making speeches with Candidate X in cities where Bernie did well this year, working the crowd, doing some of his 'greatest hits' and speaking about how excited he is that Young People like Candidate X here are the real future of the Political Revolution In This Country. I mean, that shit writes itself. (...)

― never ending bath infusion (Doctor Casino), Monday, April 4, 2016 6:45 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this isn't going to happen. setting this aside for future reference fwiw

― Οὖτις, Monday, April 4, 2016 6:54 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no idea really. Fort seems like the more progressive choice

Fort was the first author of Georgia's predatory lending law, which, until replaced by a measure written by Congressman Tom Price, was the strongest law in the country. Senator Fort’s legislation to fight predatory lending has been recognized by the national media as a model that could have helped reduce the severity of the 2008 financial crisis, had Georgia Republicans not repealed it and if it had been adopted by more states. He has appeared on or been quoted in numerous local, national and international media outlets about the topic, including CNN, Fox News, the New York Times, MSNBC, the Washington Post, Newsweek, The Nation Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, HDNet with Dan Rather and Financial Times.

He has also sponsored and co-sponsored bills against prostitution, hate crimes, drug-related nuisances, discrimination against citizens with disabilities, racial profiling, disabled access to housing, and collective bargaining for law enforcement officers. His hate crimes legislation made him the first Georgia legislator to sponsor a bill to create a state hate crimes law. Fort has been described as a supporter of Grady Memorial Hospital.

Fighting for minority business access in the city and the state has been a top priority for Senator Fort. In 2015 he led the effort to push for a board-adopted Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program after passage of the Transportation Bill (H.B. 170). The bill called for an increase in gasoline tax and other fees to make available $900,000,000 per year in transportation improvements statewide. The Department of Transportation DBE program aims to enable African-Americans, women and other minority businesses to compete on a level playing field.

In February 2010, Fort opposed a bill that would prevent Georgians from being forced to receive a microchip implant against their will, calling it "a solution in search of a problem. "On October 26, 2011, Senator Fort was arrested along with 52 other members of Occupy Atlanta, in support of the protesters. Senator Fort was also arrested in a protest for Medicaid expansion in Georgia at the office of Governor Nathan Deal. In the aftermath of the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Fort criticized police militarization in Georgia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Fort

he did criticize Hillary tho which may be a dealbreaker for book fans

btw just wanted to say I WAS RIGHT:

(...) The only development that would actually seriously shock me is if, in 2018

ah, but it's not 2018 yet

this is good

We must replace the money bail system with a risk assessment system. We need to reform our broken bail system.

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) October 1, 2017

nevermind, I was wrong and it just sounded good lol

https://theamericanscholar.org/weapons-of-math-destruction/#.WdI489VSyUl

That is an excellent book btw.

I had a hunch the former prosecutor wasn’t making that statement on behalf of the accused

I hate to "politicize a tragedy" but the thought crossed my mind that it would be pretty sweet justice if a million or so Puerto Ricans resettle in states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and register to vote there.

Holy shit, I was saying the same thing yesterday to my neighbor (whose PR neighbor on the other side was greeting her just-arrived parents fleeing Puerto Rico).

Good news! The Sanders-backed mayoral candidate in Birmingham won the race.

Nice!

And a socialist won in Jackson, Mississippi.

I've had some major criticisms of Bernie's strategy and messaging in the past but he's been killing it over the last couple months on quite a few fronts, and his stumping work seems to be paying off.

Daniel Biss, who's getting surprising traction though is still a longshot in the Illinois Dem Gov primary, releases a proposal to "Rewrite the Rules"

https://www.danielbiss.com/rewriting-the-rules/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=dbfb&utm_campaign=signup&utm_content=20171007_db_read_rules_all&source=social_dbfb_signup_20171007_db_read_rules_all

Planks include: nonpartisan districting commission (in one of the states where gerrymandering helps Democrats), ranked-choice voting (which helps third parties by allowing voters to choose a third-party candidate while still asserting preference between D and R), term limits for party leadership, etc.

No voluntary nonpartisan redistricting in blue states without some kind of reciprocal agreement imo. That's dumb.

nevermind, I was wrong and it just sounded good lol

https://theamericanscholar.org/weapons-of-math-destruction/#.WdI489VSyUl

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Monday, October 2, 2017 9:04 AM (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That is an excellent book btw.

I had a hunch the former prosecutor wasn’t making that statement on behalf of the accused

― El Tomboto, Monday, October 2, 2017 9:34 AM (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm not sure if that part of the book holds up though; here's a paper that finds replacing judge discretion with an algorithm

our results suggest potentially large welfare gains: a policy simulation shows crime can be reduced by up to 24.8% with no change in jailing rates, or jail populations can be reduced by 42.0% with no increase in crime rates. Moreover, we see reductions in all categories of crime, including violent ones. Importantly, such gains can be had while also significantly reducing the percentage of African-Americans and Hispanics in jail. We find similar results in a national dataset as well.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w23180

in general i think the overall argument of WMD is extremely valuable but a lot of the inference in it is sloppy casual pop social science, and lots of better future work in that vein will be way more informative. i see the book as more of a warning/wake-up call than a conclusive indictment of the algorithms she discusses

when i was ten there was a word for a lot of "data science": gigo. i don't know why that acronym fell out of use, because the behavior it describes has become increasingly prevalent.

people still say garbage in garbage out all the time. but data has gotten significantly less garbage. the point of the paper i linked is that judges are more biased/racist and trigger-happy than the algorithms, suggesting less garbage out

all i get from that paper is that "people who pretend to be 'objective', particularly white people, aren't". it's nice to have data to back that up, but i'm skeptical about any potential policy impact. how long have we known, for instance, that the "war on drugs" was a terrible, terrible idea?

how long have we known

I'm not so sure about "we". I've known it since about 1975.

the point is removing some human/judge discretion can lead to more fairness and less punishment, which is the opposite of cathy oneill's fears (that the algorithms will just reify discrimination in a black-boxed gigo way and amplify it potentially in some sort of positive feedback loop)

i'm actually not sure how directly this applies to the policie K Harris was suggesting tho so i should stfu

I made a thread for this discussion dudes

"Data" Professions - what's the shittiest

here is something relevant to this thread topic though

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a12781302/democrats-alabama-mississippi-progressives/

If the Democratic Party weren’t so terminally bumfuzzled, and if many of its activists could get over the wounds their delicate fee-fees suffered during the 2016 presidential primaries, the party could see a great advantage in coordinating efforts between the formal party apparatus and what could be described as the progressive shock troops that carried Woodfin to victory in Birmingham.

Right now, for example, if you can believe it, the Democratic National Committee seems to be slightly baffled about what to do as regards the race for the open U.S. Senate seat in Alabama. The Democratic candidate is Douglas Jones, the former U.S. Attorney who sent to prison the last of the terrorists who bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963. The Republican candidate is a lawless theocratic nutball named Roy Moore, who lost his job as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court twice because of flagrant judicial misconduct.

It would seem to the casual observer that people generally should realize it to be their patriotic duty to keep Moore out of the Senate for the good of the country. However, as reported by The Daily Beast, the Democratic Party apparatus can’t even decide if it should go all in for Jones.

OK, I'll bite -- why is that crazy? "When we have a choice to spend a dollar in a race against a terrible Republican that's pretty close, or in a race against an even more terrible Republican we're very likely to lose, where should we spend it?" That seems like exactly the kind of choice that actually presents difficulties if you take the job seriously. (I'm aware of polls showing Jones not-as-far-behind-as-you'd-think, I have sent Jones my own personal dollars, etc.) I mean, James Inhofe is as horrible as just about anyone, should the Dems be taking money out of defending Tammy Baldwin's seat and giving it to his opponent instead? (Baldwin's opponent will almost surely be a terrible Republican who's less of a threat to America than Moore or Inhofe.)

Signaling matters

is there evidence for that?

agree with eephus that all else being equal, scarce resources should go to where they will do the most good -- assuming the candidate were diverting resources to has met minimum standards we expect of national democrats

I mean yes! Democrats should contest every race with all their might! 50-state-strategy! I believe in this too! But every dollar and every hour and every volunteer that's in Alabama isn't in Virginia fighting for Ralph Northam and fighting for Danica Roem and the rest of the Virginia House of Delegate seats, all of which up for grabs, and where Democrats stand to make real gains. It's not like the choice is "fight Roy Moore or light the money on fire."

xp Maybe Dems should be signaling that they care as much about the long hard process of building majorities in state governments as Republicans do, because that, more than anything else, is where the party has failed. They have a lot of Senators but they have fuck-all when it comes to statehouses.

And with the Supreme Court we're gonna have in 2020 you better fucking believe people don't want GOP supermajorities in their less-and-less constrained state legislatures.

Sorry, I said "fuck" too much, I'm not even really mad, it just gets to me when people act like running a political operation is simple and the decisions are all easy.

IMO the time and money available can be increased by showing that you are not cowed by Ossoff's defeat, and you can use "we're trying to get a (D)-Alabama in the Senate" as fanfare to get more Virginians to step up. Fuck!

I'm not sure why I'm defending Pierce's point, I think we're all okay here. It would be phenomenal to see Jones beat Moore though.

Sorry, I said "fuck" too much

sorry to butt in here but i just want to say that for purely selfish reasons i oppose the precedent of apologizing for this