Democratic (Party) Direction

ooops: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/liberals-must-accept-beating-trump-was-never-going-be-easy-ncna871056

lame

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Obama-endorses-Feinstein-as-she-looks-to-fend-12888834.php

Michael Tomasky had a good piece in Wednesday NYT about the Dems turning themselves into a coastal urban party. Clinton won 487 of the 3100 counties in the country.

yeah, the ones where people live

^urban latte-lovin' elitist

I don’t think I’m an elitist but the other two can’t be denied

here

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/opinion/the-democrats-real-diversity-problem.html

that is not a good piece

tbf the NYT opinion page generally a cesspool of poorly thought out attempts at attention-grabbing handwringing

it's not a point without merit (local and state politics matters), but to argue it without mentioning the popular vote (which clinton won) and the electoral college is, at best, bad faith.

Tomasky leads with something that is very debatable (Crowley is not "perched to succeed" gimme a break), then trots out the usual shit about the parties' shrinkage during the last couple election cycles, at which point I stopped reading. Maybe he got around to addressing the party's resurgence in special elections winning where they normally wouldn't be and improving their turnout in places like Kansas and Iowa and fucking Alabama but I didn't have the patience to wade through the opening bad faith arguments.

his regular gig at nyrb astounds me

https://ballotpedia.org/Andrew_Janz

Progressives should ask themselves: When's the last time you heard any Trump supporters talking about the need to understand you? You haven't. That ought to tell you something.

https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/understanding-trump-supporters/

They could have published that piece in all the places it appeared, let the comments accumulate a couple of days, then just published those under the headline: "Progressives: This is what Trump voters think of you."

To wit: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article210497509.html

so, i know how trump voters feel about me ("think" is not an appropriate word here, i don't believe) and i feel just about the same about them. where do we go from here?

for Leonard Pitts to write that column is like reading a defense of socialism from George F. Will.

Haha yeah I was surprised too, but otoh I don't think I've seen a Pitts column since 2003 or so

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/07/608649799/republican-fears-about-holding-the-senate-start-to-sink-in

so, i know how trump voters feel about me ("think" is not an appropriate word here, i don't believe) and i feel just about the same about them. where do we go from here?

maybe start talking to the 231,556,622 eligible voters in the US that didn't vote Trump

er, the 46% of that total. that's a hell of a lot of people ignored

how? a lot of them are deplorably rude. the insult-to-decent-thought ratio among "conservative" friends and family who didn't vote (or didn't vote for donnie moscow) is often difficult to respect, leaving aside the general anti-intellectual / anti-expert / anti-fact stance

maybe i didn't express myself clearly, i don't know. my question is this - are there personal consequences to dismissing tens of millions, at minimum, of people as irredeemable human garbage? if so, what are they?

You may not be invited to Thanksgiving dinner at your uncle Sal's house.

i was thinking more along the lines of building up into a spiral of misanthropy that's left me wanting to resign my membership in the species, if you know what i mean, a fair amount of the time

but sure awkward family dinners probably factor into it too

how many times can we have this same discussion

holy shit at those senate fundraising numbers xxxp

If you want a friend, get a job. If you're cute, sit next to me.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/09/politics/cnn-poll-generic-ballot-narrows/index.html

Generic ballots don't matter now. Enthusiasm does.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/09/politics/cnn-poll-generic-ballot-narrows/index.html

― reggie (qualmsley)

yes let's all obsess about the polls because that worked so fucking well in 2016, and also because those polls were totally dead-on about that asshole in west virginia so we should definitely panic at every time there's a slightly unfavorable trend in a poll

getting people registered is the only important thing right now. what people think or believe doesn't matter until october at the earliest.

a Nate Silver story from April 2010:

A couple of weeks ago, we examined the potential upside case for Democrats in November’s midterms. If the party were able to limit their losses to about 20 House seats and 3-4 Senate seats, it might not have as deleterious an effect on their policy agenda as you might think.

But that is the upside case for Democrats. It is not the base case, and it is certainly not the worst case — both of which look as grim as ever. Although I think people may somewhat underestimate the probability of a shift in momentum back toward the Democrats, they may simultaneously be underestimating the magnitude of losses that might occur if momentum fails to change, or moves in the other direction.

For starters, let’s look at the state of the generic congressional ballot. The Real Clear Politics average now shows Republicans with a 2.3 point lead. How does that translate in terms of a potential loss of seats for the Democrats?

Let’s suppose for a moment that, in November, the Democrats lose the national house popular vote by a margin of 2.3 points. It is actually not safe to assume that a 2.3-point deficit in generic ballot polls translates to a 2.3-point loss in the House popular vote — but we’ll get to that ambiguity in a moment.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/generic-ballot-points-toward-possible/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/upshot/unable-to-excite-the-base-moderate-candidates-still-tend-to-outdo-extreme-ones.html

Annoyed by the over-interpretation of this I saw on twitter from centrist moderate types. Not enough discussion of funding and the role that plays in getting primary votes. Also "extreme" defined so widely it could mean anything. But DCCC establishment types will interpret this how they please.

The frequency with which Booker Brown Gillibrand Harris Sanders Warren et al team up in a way that pushes the Democrats' legislative agenda to the left while neutralizing the goofy bickering between their whackjob stans is actually quite heartening. Our children is learning.

— Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) May 9, 2018

hmm....

otm!

Sean’s otm. It’s a good sign but I’m reticent about being optimistic.

You know what we say about Rubio? Booker is that, but Yale.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) May 9, 2018

I would guess Booker’s presidential campaign would be about as successful as Rubio’s. “Presidential” from afar or maybe in limited moments but flop up close and weirdness exposed amidst the duration.

saw him speak at a dinner and flop up close is otm

His whole Newark projects story felt like something preconceived to make the perfect This American Life episode. Or maybe campaign stump story.

His story/schtick works at college graduation events-- I saw him do one (until you realize he delivers the same one everywhere and look into his past. But we're tougher on our candidates flaws than Republicans are on theirs).

Meanwhile rich Republicans using their tax cut to try to stop any blue wave

Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson has cut a $30 million check to the House GOP-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund, a massive cash infusion that top Republicans hope will alter the party's electoral outlook six months before Election Day

well I would obviously vote for him for pres if he were the nominee and wouldn't be loudly talking shit about him at that stage, but I don't see him as a likely all that viable candidate. Although it's not like there's anyone in the pool that looks like a clear winner right now.

I've never warmed to Booker. I'm Team Kamala all the way at this point. I'd be happy with Gillibrand too. Bernie and Biden are too old and doddering.

I'll take Harris but I still want it to be Duckworth more

Kamala's prosecutor instincts are a deal breaker for me. I'm pretty sure I'm in the tank for Gillibrand at this particular juncture.

Booker's a whore.

I’m fairly close to self identifying as a “Gillibro”

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/11/17340502/kirsten-gillibrand-immigration-border-stop-bill