Democratic (Party) Direction

XP conservatives understand very well the value of slicing off even a sliver of something. Even 5-10% fewer healthy people buying insurance drives up costs for everyone and contributes to a further cycle of people dropping their plans.

Much like with Janus, you may only see a trickle of public workers leaving the unions in the beginning but this will gradually weaken the union and they’ll continue other attacks as well and over time the unions will diminish. T
Democrats have either failed to apprehend this strategy or just haven’t been able to stop it.

understandably, it's tough to muster the enthusiasm to defend the law since it was a compromise with immoral actors in the first place

why are you insulting the Hamilton cast like Adam Bruneau has

Okay when we get done with Hamilton let's work on Pocahontas and Braveheart. Lots of correcting to do, I'm sure this is a great use of our time

Federalist (Party) Direction

I'm sure this is a great use of our time

Not sure if the ad is as good as the tweet implies but it's definitely a good line of attack

DAMN. This is a devastating ad. This Trump contribution scandal should, and could, engulf Cuomo's reelection bid. pic.twitter.com/u6QThYIoBO

— Kumar Rao (@KumarRaoNYC) July 6, 2018

that is good

what is Nixon polling at right now, 20%...?

What was Ocasio polling at, 30%?

I mean to be clear I actually think she's more of a longshot than Ocasio, going against Cuomo is a tough game. But I wouldn't underestimate her chances this year.

also, AOC just made the probably-valid point that polling tends to favor likely voters, whereas lefty candidates' path to victory generally relies on mobilizing people who generally don't.

Shakey Downer

26% in a geographically big, politically heterogeneous state in which i'm guessing a minority of the population even know you're running is pretty good.

what is the status of her signature gathering? is that public information?

I would hope you guys can guess where my sympathies lie, but AOC won her primary, Nixon did not. Nixon's going into a general election that is quite a different landscape than AOC, involving a lot of voters who are not to the left of Cuomo, as well as an extensive network of Cuomo loyalists.

maybe i'm being too much of a dweeb but I'm not a big fan of Nixon dragging Trump stuff into this. I mean, I know she's trying to win an election, but her candidacy is a lot more inspiring when she's just hitting Cuomo on meat-and-potatoes issues like the subway, minimum wage, prisons, legal weed, etc. rather than even partly making this a guilt-by-Trump-association thing.

what is the status of her signature gathering? is that public information?

was wondering about this too - has she even secured a spot on the ballot yet, or is she hoping for write-ins? cuz if it's the latter...

wait, Nixon hasn't even had her primary yet, right? i thought the NY gubernatorial primary wasn't until September or something.

she has to gather 15k signatures to get on the democratic primary ballot in september (and so does anyone who wants to challenge her). i was asked to sign for her in brooklyn last week, so they're still working on it, but i assume they'll manage it.

*who wants to challenge cuomo

I would hope you guys can guess where my sympathies lie, but AOC won her primary, Nixon did not. Nixon's going into a general election that is quite a different landscape than AOC, involving a lot of voters who are not to the left of Cuomo, as well as an extensive network of Cuomo loyalists.

― Οὖτις, Friday, July 6, 2018 12:31 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The gubernatorial primary didn't happen yet. It's in September. One of the fucked up things about NY politics is that we hold our federal and state primaries on different days, making voting that much more of a pain in the ass and driving down turnout.

I would hope you guys can guess where my sympathies lie, but AOC won her primary, Nixon did not.

i agree with your implication (she's a long shot) but the state primary hasn't happened yet so this is a high standard to hold nixon to.

lol xp

But the primary for all intents and purposes IS the election, in both AOC's case and Nixon's.

Also my whole point was that AOC polled at 30% IN THE PRIMARY, i.e. before she won it.

the only ballot she's lost (so far) was the chance to get 25% by voice at the state convention in may, and thus avoid the signature gathering requirement. the democratic party in NYS appears to run a tighter ship than in california in this respect.

BTW total aside, but if you are in NYC and want to help John Liu get on the ballot for state senate in eastern queens (challenging a fake dem who caucuses with the republicans), they're petitioning this weekend.

sorry for any misunderstanding there about the schedule, I knew Nixon had lost out at the NY Dem Convention, which was what I was thinking of

xp

she has to gather 15k signatures to get on the democratic primary ballot in september (and so does anyone who wants to challenge her). i was asked to sign for her in brooklyn last week, so they're still working on it, but i assume they'll manage it.

yeah I wouldn't think this would be that hard a threshold to cross for a wealthy celebrity with good messaging tbh

I truly wish we had a more politically experienced challenger than Nixon, but Cuomo is a fucking snake and I don't really trust him to be #theresistance.

Nixon's about as experienced as Schwarzenegger was and probably about as smart so idk, take what you can get. She's definitely smarter and more capable than our current fearless leader.

Cuomo's running the kind of party machine that can p much *only* be challenged by an inexperienced outsider. any real challengers from within the party would have been co-opted and or strangled in the crib.

Shakey has erased Nixon bcz she didn't win the approval of the Central Committe of the NY Dems

Cuomo's running the kind of party machine that can p much *only* be challenged by an inexperienced outsider. any real challengers from within the party would have been co-opted and or strangled in the crib.

― Οὖτις, Friday, July 6, 2018 12:48 PM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this is OTM

fwiw she does have the working families endorsement, which is big, although the whole situation around them, her and cuomo is a fucking mess.

wait, is that a Socialist I hear complaining about a Central Committee?

heh

I'm not erasing anybody Morbz I am just not super-enthusiastic about Nixon's chances (yet)

I get wanting a more experienced challenger but I’m not sure it’s fair to equate Nixon with Swarzennegar. Maybe I haven’t seen enough she seems pretty informed and articulate. Plus her experience working with non-profit orgs at the high level seems relevant.

I'm voting for her in any case

One of my biggest priorities right now is to see measures to protect unions. I hope she will make good on that. Cuomo pretends he will but has backstabbed unions before. The fact that they still support him is a symptom of how fucked up NY politics are and how strong his grip is.

I'm very glad I don't live in New York, for this and many other reasons. (I'm generally happy with my new governor, Murphy, so far.)

there's surface parallels between her and Schwarzenegger - relatively inexperienced celebrities aiming to upset established party power dynamics. Both were involved in non-profits/ballot initiatives prior to running, both p smart and informed. (For the record, I absolutely loathe how Schwarzenegger usurped the governorship and hate him personally and his movies... but as a public servant he was not bad, and he did a lot of stuff I approved of).

the odds are against her, but ya never know... esp if the Trump donations to Cuomo gets legs

that's a really, really good attack angle right now, I wouldn't discount its chances of getting legs

I could see some devious push polling being done on it

"If you found out that Donald Trump had donated $64,000 to a candidate for governor, how would that impact your willingness to vote for that candidate?" etc

Hadn't noticed AOC is part of a slate of candidates called Brand New Congress

https://brandnewcongress.org/policy/

no formal "abolish ICE" language in there yet that I've seen but I'd be surprised if it wasn't added in the near future

Julia Salazar is much more upfront than AOC in advocating for using the Democratic Party strictly as a vehicle for gaining socialist power:

MD
What have been the primary failures of the Democratic Party establishment to date, and whose interests does the party serve at present?

JS
Take the commentary we’ve seen in the last week, since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary in her congressional district in New York. The dominant centrist liberal wing of the Democratic Party is completely out of touch with what the majority of registered Democrats — which is to say, working-class people — actually want, and the policies that actually resonate with them. I think what we’re seeing is that the constituents of the Democratic Party have a much bigger political imagination than the party establishment, whether at the federal level or in local machine politics.

So the main problem is a lack of political imagination, approaching every dispute from a position of compromise instead of from a position of readiness to fight for the working class and marginalized.

MD
What do you think the prospects are for socialists in transforming the Democratic Party into a fighting force for working-class people? Can it be realigned, or is it merely a tool at present for building independent socialist politics?

JS
I definitely think the latter. My feeling is that Democratic Party realignment is at best a laudable secondary goal, not a primary goal. Ultimately, the two-party system de facto disenfranchises people, and I can’t see the Democratic Party ultimately being a vessel for the democratic socialist revolution, so it would be silly and shortsighted for democratic socialists to put a lot of effort and resources into that project.

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/07/julia-salazar-interview-socialist-new-york-senate

I think she's probably right, but I think there is a certain symbiosis there, where if DSA can help candidates win, it advances the DSA, and in turn they grow as a political force. But yeah DSA hardly has the organizational capacity right now to win more than a handful of elected offices even if revamping the party was its primary goal. I'm not part of DSA, but its success right now gives me some hope -- for the first time in a while I feel like large numbers of young people are coming to understand the value of being part of an organization, of participating within that organization, of engaging in political processes within that organization, of activism that goes beyond just "direct actions" and creative one-off protests.

my pals who are skeptical of "AOC the Reformist" are excited about Salazar which says............something idk

A reformist who will side with you more often than the person she replaced is not bad. I do get the sense JS is a more committed DSA person, but AOC courted them pretty hard and has apparently been showing up for a long time.

Salazar is a lot more /twitter/

Also, you could send reanimated Karl Marx to congress and he'd still just be one vote among hundreds. Kind of silly to get overly obsessive about whether she's for full communism at this point.