Democratic (Party) Direction

Retweets are not endorsements

https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/national/national-politics/dems-should-worry-about-long-term-direction-not-2018-message

For much of the 2016 campaign, an election between the two most disliked party nominees in history, the focus was on Trump, and he was running behind. But in the final few weeks—after the last debate, the Access Hollywood tapes were made public, and any chance that the real estate magnate could win seemed to evaporate—the spotlight shifted to Hillary Clinton. The election became a referendum on her, and she lost.

How on earth he could tap-tap this on his keyboard without mentioning Comey staggers me.

But if the party that holds the White House, House, and Senate, 33 governorships, and the majority of state legislative chambers and seats is doing almost everything imaginable to self-destruct, why would the opposition party want to do anything other than have a referendum on the party in power? Why wouldn’t Democrats just get out of the way?

This is....definitely a strategy.

yeah it really worked last time

Let's talk about Christina Hartman, the Democratic establishment's newly-annointed candidate in Pennsylvania's 10th district! pic.twitter.com/p4XezSdP9i

— Pinboard (@Pinboard) March 7, 2018

(click through for thread)

Kamala Harris defends ICE's existence #AbolishICE pic.twitter.com/QjzI1Nq3n2

— Brett Banditelli (@banditelli) March 9, 2018

ohhhhh nooooo, take it back Kamala

"Well, somebody's gotta do it."

her aipac speech left a little to be desired too

cnn: do you think there should be rules or laws or a society at all, or a country or a world?
dem: probably there should be that
leftists: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SERIOUS SMH DONE WITH THIS BITCH

nice caricaturin'

luv 2 extrapol8

what she said is reasonable.

uh, i hate ICE too, but are you all saying that in the (relatively rare, compared to the general US population) cases where an undocumented person really does commit a violent crime, there shouldn't be any enforcement group that does anything about it? probably not. so are you saying another group should have authority, like the local police station, with all the problems that might lead to? or something else? don't get me wrong, what's going on with ICE is deeply fucked up, that's clear. but i'm not sure the answer is as simple as just removing the organization.

i admit that i have no clue how all this was handled before DHS/ICE was founded. maybe it really is as simple as just going back to that?

Kind of, except putting toothpaste back in the tube is a royal pain in the ass

do you think there should be rules or laws or a society at all

ICE is only 15 years old.

Also, if you read the actual thread, it's clear this is not only a problem w/ Harris

(the "defund ICE" option seems easier)

i guess (as an outsider) it just makes more sense to reform ICE, hopefully under a more humane administration, than it does to delegate authority to thousands of local police departments. especially the kinds of local police that are heavily armed with slightly used gulf war era equipment and filled with skinhead racist cops.

guess (as an outsider) it just makes more sense to reform ICE, hopefully under a more humane administration, than it does to delegate authority to thousands of local police departments. especially the kinds of local police that are heavily armed with slightly used gulf war era equipment and filled with skinhead racist cops.

― and in my opinionation, the sun is gonna surely shine♪♫ (Karl Malone), Friday, March 9, 2018 7:04 PM (thirty-seven seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

at the very least to write them a fucking blank check for whatever they want like trump did when he was running. ice/border patrol union were one of the few organizations that endorsed his disgusting ass in '16.

ugh mean 'don't' in front of 'to' up there

yeah, totally agree! i'm just saying it shouldn't be shocking when a national politician is asked whether or not ICE should exist, and she doesn't immediately advocate abolishing it. it's a fun idea but she has to think about reality.

i admit that i have no clue how all this was handled before DHS/ICE was founded. maybe it really is as simple as just going back to that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Naturalization_Service
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol

ICE didn’t exist until 2003 but there were laws before then iirc. The movement to disband it isn’t synonymous with no immigration law enforcement. It’s because it’s an institutionally cruel and sociopathic organization and it would be better to start again.

Glad someone else dug that up.

ICE's function is hardly limited to deportation work, abusive or otherwise. They're also involved in things like interdicting human trafficking. What the percentages are, past or present, IDK.

more on the case (and current support levels) for abolishing ICE here

https://www.thenation.com/article/its-time-to-abolish-ice/

lets
fucking
go

Americans love shutting down institutions -- just not the ones whose mandate includes state violence.

"Abolish ICE" sounds radical because it has "abolish" in it. "Let's shutter this recently created agency with an overly broad mandate and rethink the federal government's role in enforcing the law in this area" is the moderate conservative position on the CFPB.

— Official Centrism (@pareene) March 10, 2018

McElwee just popped up again w/ some pals on the NYT op-ed page to tackle "the missing Obama millions."

We would hardly urge Democratic strategists to abandon Obama-to-Trump voters. However, Obama-to-nonvoters are a relatively liberal segment of the country who have largely been ignored. They are mostly young and nonwhite, and they represent an important part of the Democratic Party’s demographic future. Given the likelihood that many Obama-to-Trump voters will remain in Republican ranks, it is hard to imagine how Democrats can win elections if this group remains on the sidelines.

To explore the characteristics and attitudes of these voters, we used data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, a large survey with a sample of more than 64,000 adults. We grouped all 2012 voters into one of five categories, three of which we focus on in this essay: Obama-to-Trump, Obama-to-nonvoter and Obama-to-Clinton. (We used validated voter turnout data rather than self-reported turnout, which tends to overstate actual voter participation and which one of us used in a preliminary analysis.)

So who were the Obama-to-nonvoters? Fifty-one percent were people of color, compared with 16 percent of Obama-to-Trump voters and 34 percent of Obama-to-Clinton voters. Twenty-three percent of Obama-to-nonvoters were under 30, compared with 11 percent of Obama-to-Trump voters and 10 percent of Obama-to-Clinton voters. More than 60 percent of Obama-to-nonvoters make less than $50,000 a year, compared with 45 percent of Obama-to-Clinton voters and 52 percent of Obama-to-Trump voters.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/obama-trump-voters-democrats.html

Social democracy dies in darkness. This terrible bank bill is a reminder that the left will always have trouble outmuscling the Democrats’ Wall Street wing in policy fights that happen far from the media spotlight. One upshot of this is that the personal ideology of the next Democratic standard-bearer matters an awful lot. Progressives may have enough clout to force the next Democratic president to push major legislation that reflects their priorities, regardless of his or her own inclinations; but he or she is likely to enjoy much greater flexibility when it comes to cabinet appointments.

Given these realities, the case for the left to back a 2020 candidate who’s consistently evinced a personal, ideological commitment to combating Wall Street power (like, say, Elizabeth Warren) over one who’s only recently had their “come-to-populism” moment (like, say, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, or virtually every other rumored 2020 hopeful) seems strong.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/democrats-are-moving-left-except-when-youre-not-looking.html

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/13/politics/democrats-free-trade-fault-lines/index.html

Sally Albright, ladies & gentlemen:

How A Twitter Fight Over Bernie Sanders Revealed A Network Of Fake Accounts

One Democratic Party consultant said an unnamed client controlled many of these accounts.

By Paul Blumenthal

pic.twitter.com/jMUjxzwFsk

— Luke Savage (@LukewSavage) March 14, 2018

(Cross-post to Twitter thread)

honestly the enthusiasm in this crowd is almost terrifying

The end of @SenSanders 1st speech in DC #NationalWalkoutDay pic.twitter.com/zaBWoaGrCS

— People For Bernie (@People4Bernie) March 14, 2018

I've never heard of Sally Albright, but Harvard's Carl M. Loeb University Professor Laurence Tribe, one of the half-dozen-most-cited professors of American constitutional and public law, is definitely a fake conspiracy sock puppet just like that other raving nobody with a twitter account who definitely doesn't have a Master's in International Affairs and Technology Policy and definitely has never worked for a futures consultant to Fortune 10 companies or the Central Intelligence Agency.

Oh and NYU Gallatin grad and former Drug Policy Alliance and Rock the Vote blogger Paul Blumenthal definitely isn't a former employee of Manafort-linked Bernie Sanders campaign manager Tad Devine.

jesus christ

how many BernieBros have you personally strangled, gabbneb?

Was Tribe the one who had an elaborate fantasy where Hillary could become President in mid 2017?

X-post— I like the data work and analysis McElwee presented in NY Time op-ed re Obama voters who stayed home in 2016. More data work still needed re voters for Conor Lamb in PA, but some folks already trying to spin it various ways based on he being a moderate Dem on some issues

Tribe was the one who said Russia shot down a passenger plane to hit a dissident not on the plane, right?

This is the Tribe tweet in question:

Not at all. It looks like Russia picked Tillerson to be a Putin puppet, then pushed Trump to fire Tillerson when he proved to be an unreliable puppet. No mystery there. https://t.co/nqYGlZvZ5g

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) March 14, 2018

No matter his credentials, he is clearly unreliable.

I've never heard of Sally Albright, but Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital Ben Carson, pioneer in neurosurgery & recipient of more than 60 honorary doctorate degrees, dozens of national merit citations, and over 100 neurosurgical publications, is definitely a fake conspiracy sock puppet

clip of football hitting Hans Moleman Moo Vaughn in the crotch

btw, Moo's last post in this thread absolutely identifies him as gabbneb imo

was there ever any doubt?

I entertained doubts. I like to take my time when deciding if a new poster is bedsheet thrown over a banned poster.

a bed sheet with mooncalf eyes

did the benbbag variation actually get banned?