Democratic (Party) Direction

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

gillistan

Brand Gillibrand

I like her. It's still hard to get a sense of her as a candidate, especially running against Trump.

Yeah it’s honestly too hypothetical until primary actually begins.

Summer Lee, a candidate for state representative in southwestern Pennsylvania, runs her campaign out of Milton’s Top Notch Hair Salon, in downtown Braddock. On a recent Saturday morning, three dozen volunteers, most of them bearded, white millennials, were eating bagels and studying canvassing packets, preparing to go door-to-door to convince residents to vote for Lee. Among them was Arielle Cohen, who was wearing a T-shirt that read “A Woman’s Place is in the Revolution,” and Adam Shuck—“like corn or oysters”—who co-chair the Democratic Socialists of America in Pittsburgh, which endorsed Lee at the end of last year. If she wins, Lee will be the first African-American woman elected to the state legislature from southwestern Pennsylvania. But this race is also notable for the way that it pits Lee, who is thirty years old, against Paul Costa, a popular state representative who has been in office for nineteen years and is a member of a Democratic dynasty around Pittsburgh. (One of his brothers, Jay, is a state senator; another, Guy, is a city official; and his cousin, Dom, is a state representative.)

Here in this tiny race is the larger, existential battle over the future of the Democratic Party that is taking place across the country. Will it be centrist, establishment candidates who lead the much-anticipated “blue wave,” or will progressive insurgents sweep them aside? In Texas, Tennessee, California, and Hawaii, a Democratic electorate is pushing back against the Democratic machine’s support of the old guard. Many, like Lee, see the Democratic Party’s faith in centrists, like Costa, as having already failed; the increasingly radical right means that there’s no meaningful middle in which to meet.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/a-tiny-state-legislature-race-that-represents-the-future-of-the-democratic-party?mbid=social_twitter

And Emily's List, which is about as establishment Democratic as you can get, endorses Stacey Evans in the Georgia gubernatorial primary over Stacey Abrams, who some analysts say "might have broader appeal with white moderates and thus a better chance of winning a Georgia general election."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/us/politics/emilys-list-midterm-elections.html

In fact, both candidates are significantly further to the left than most of the Democratic figures who are endorsing them. Abrams sells herself as the progressive firebrand with a national fan base (she was endorsed by EMILY’s List, where she’s been a favorite for years) who can galvanize tens of thousands of African-Americans to go to the polls for the first time. Yet she served in the Georgia House for 11 years, seven of them as minority leader, and has a reputation as a pragmatist willing to do deals with the Republicans who’ve controlled state politics for almost two decades. Between February 1 and March 31, the latest campaign-finance-reporting period, she outraised her opponent three to one.

Evans, who has the support of much of the state party’s ruling class, is a color-inside-the-lines consensus builder. “I see myself as a champion for common sense,” she says. “Sometimes that makes me moderate, sometimes that makes me liberal. Maybe every now and then it makes me a conservative.” Yet Evans is almost exclusively basing her campaign on an all-out defense of the Hope scholarship, the most progressive entitlement program the state has ever enacted.

I love this country!

But dig deeper: There’s unease in the air. In Georgia elections, “race is a factor that sits in the corner of the room all the time,” says Davis Fox, a political analyst in DeKalb County, one of the Atlanta suburbs gradually undergoing a shift to the left. “I’m very worried that this is a bitter train wreck between a black and a white.”

Jim Galloway, a longtime political reporter and columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, says that the choice is between “immediate gratification and fundamental realignment” of the Democratic Party. Will Democrats make the safer bet and go with Evans, who many think has a better shot in the general election because of her embrace of Trump-disaffected moderate Republicans and rural whites? Or will they tap Abrams as their homegrown Obama?

“I’ve talked to white Democrats and black Democrats — they’re very unsettled by Abrams,” Galloway says. Then he adds, unsettling me, “She’s not just female, she’s unmarried. That’s an issue.”

https://i.imgur.com/fm72dKp.jpg

hi it's me, jim fucking galloway

Just got back from early voting for Abrams.

And Emily's List, which is about as establishment Democratic as you can get, endorses Stacey Evans in the Georgia gubernatorial primary over Stacey Abrams

Ya mixed up your Staceys. Abrams got the endorsement.

Stacey Evans is basically a wet noodle of a candidate, white or not.

It’s cute that her divorced parents have started dating each other because of the campaign, though. That would be solid gold rom-com material back when Michael Douglas was in everything.

then the ex/new wife would accuse him of rape

Yeah I too got confused by the two Staceys, sorry, I said the exact opposite of what I meant. Emily's List endorsed Abrams.

maple cocaine is owed royalties at this point

.@SenGillibrand talking up importance of women in power at CAP conference: “If it wasn’t Lehman Brothers but Lehman Sisters we might not have had the financial collapse."

— Cameron Joseph (@cam_joseph) May 15, 2018

As we all know, women are never greedy or unscrupulous.

I know it's just a line and not a policy plank or anything but man that does not inspire confidence

Because she’s not owning up to the fact that capitalist speculation inexorably leads to boom-bust cycles and ruined lives? Or just because it sounds lame?

Lehwoman Sisters

Because she’s not owning up to the fact that capitalist speculation inexorably leads to boom-bust cycles and ruined lives? Or just because it sounds lame?

Both of those, but also the whole idea that hiring women CEOs/execs is any kind of structural fix to much of anything is pretty popular and also wrong

It’s just a corny women’s solidarity joke. It’s weird that so many people complete the process of posting the Maple Cocaine” callback and don’t stop when they how cringey and embarrassing it is.

*when they realize how

Regardless of its jokeness, a lot of people earnestly think along these lines and they really don't need to be validated

no nerdstrom, she is actually suggesting that the financial sector would be less fucked if there were more women execs. this is the height of neoliberal diversity inanity which is so well parodied in the maple cocaine tweet

i donated to greg edwards (pa-7, running against a centrist and a ... non-populist borderline republican). he seems good.

lol at Gillibrand, jesus fucking christ

"It's A Corny Women's Solidarity Joke, Relax" will be the campaign slogan of course

She didn't say the financial sector would be less fucked up with more women execs. She said "we might not have had the financial collapse." That's a specific outcome she is linking to gender. Which is what makes it very shaky suggestion at best.

I'm perfectly happy with the idea of more women execs, because women deserve the same opportunities to succeed or to screw up that men are given, but I don't think women have some moral ascendancy over men or a discernibly greater level of competence at executive decision making.

okay, dudes

sorry that was last part was unnecessary. I don't know how to express the fact that a lot of liberal gender-speak doesn't translate to electoral viability, especially in its more obviously superficial pandering form

Sotosyn pandering, and he's not even married

Gillibrand is a bullshitter, but y'know it goes with the job

at least she didnt congratulate Yam on Jerusalem like her colleague Schmucko

Sotosyn pandering, and he's not even married

well, yeah, I wanna a bunch of bros explaining as if it were a novelty that women can pander.

Gillibrand's been pretty good on many questions; she and the competition should be as vocal and omnipresent as Ted Cruz and Rand Paul were in 2013-2014.

I agree she's been mostly good for a Dem, which is why this rankled

Can’t you find something else to be rankled about

How much rankling do you try to get in every day

What can I say, it's rank out there

in other news, a couple of DSA folks (Summer Lee and Sara Innamorato) won their Philly state rep primaries

If Kristen Gillibrand is on the ballot in November 2020, I will vote for her without half a second's hesitation. It is true, moreover, that she has distinguished herself in her opposition to Trump, her advocacy on sexual assault, and all the rest.

— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) January 5, 2018

That said, I do not think it is dumb or bad to point out, for instance, that her positions on immigration in the House were basically Trumpism. https://t.co/YxRmBHoZMu pic.twitter.com/oVSxLbeZbG

— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) January 5, 2018

It is nonsense to say that switching positions makes her non-viable and it is likely true that women get more scrutiny for this than men. That said, I think there are sensible reasons to scrutinize Kirsten Gillibrand, which I wrote about late last year. https://t.co/2PZog0zBWy

— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) January 5, 2018

scrutiny is what separates us from the animals I guess

nailbiter in pa-7 for anyone who's interested.

https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/pennsylvania-house-district-7-primary-election

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pennsylvania-7th-district-lehigh-valley-democratic-primary-future-of-party_us_5af5b771e4b00d7e4c1a2ab9?a1

two big dsa wins in Pitt, Lazio winning, Fetterman winning, seems like a good night. Is there a guide somewhere to the entire set of primaries/what other races have unusually left candidates in them?

Penn roundup is here

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/15/us/elections/results-pennsylvania-primary-elections.html