Democratic (Party) Direction

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.

But keep in mind that an army of reanimated Karl Marxes must begin with a single reanimated Karl Marx, unless they’re batch produced, which is even more difficult

iirc there need to be at least three Marxes at any given time

And I don't mean that in a trite "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" or "avoid the circular firing squad" sort of way. I more mean that if you have actual leftist political goals you need to have some kind of strategic thinking about it, and there is zero strategic benefit to writing off AOC right now and a lot of benefit to riding the train.

I mean tbh I'm just excited to see a candidate whose analysis of the Democratic party is so clear-eyed. I like AOC a lot but her "I'm a proud Democrat" stuff threw me for a loop, mostly because I couldn't tell if it was earnest or clever pandering (if the distinction matters)

Totally unrelated question: do you think these "whip the vote" campaigns to try to unify the democrats against a SCOTUS nominee are worthwhile or not? Does it make a difference if we have 49 dems or 46 voting against whatever FedSoc lizard they put up? I keep seeing people (on facebook) say stuff like "McConnell did it so we should too" and I'm like, do they just not know how to count?

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

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, July 9, 2018 12:51 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i like AOC so much it made me reconsider my dislike of DSA, so this makes me feel good :)

They do not know how to count

Xp

I mean, it might matter a lot if one of the GOP ladies holds out too

or am I missing something

if one of the GOP ladies holds out (not holding my breath) that would probably change the calculus of the centrists in the democratic party--if they were going to vote yes on a passing vote to placate their red-state base, maybe they'd vote no if they had a real shot of blocking the nod

further exacerbating matters

Sen. Doug Jones, an Alabama Democrat, says he could vote either way on President Trump's Supreme Court justice pick https://t.co/L86wuVN8PU pic.twitter.com/nwJeDCOBky

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) July 8, 2018

he needs to make these kinds of difficult sacrifices now so he can continue to get elected in a tough state for democrats so that he can be in a position to do important things in the future, like maybe cast a crucial swing vote for a supreme court justice

omg it's almost as if he's representing a state that is not actually that liberal

anyway here's his voting record
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump-score/doug-jones/

Honestly I would gladly trade Doug Jones's seat for a shot at a SCOTUS pick. He's going to lose it eventually anyway, they'll find someone who isn't literally Aqualung to run next time.

I also have a hard time believing that having an open seat will boost GOP turnout that much -- the people savvy enough to vote based on SCOTUS are people who already vote every election, that's my guess.

can't say I disagree on either of those points

man alive otm

a rep's duty is to his conscience (if any) rather than his dumbfuck constituents

It’s political boilerplate to say he could vote either way when there’s no nominee yet. He ran on a pro-choice platform in Alabama.

Sen @DougJones was also invited to the WH #SCOTUS announcement, but will not attend, his Spox says.

Dems who were invited but declined:
Manchin
Heitkamp
Donnelly
Jones

— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) July 9, 2018

show them what you're made of, doug jones, i've always believed in you

The theory I've seen is that the centrist Dems are waiting on Collins and Murkowski, and will probably vote whichever way they do.

No pressure!

iirc there need to be at least three Marxes at any given time

― nonsensei (Ye Mad Puffin)

i read "the three marxes of ypsilanti" when i was in college, it was shit

I don't know if this has been talked about on this or another thread but it's a nice snapshot of the intellectual movement:

https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/july-august-2018/the-socialist-network/

so funny to consider this next to NYT's "Intellectual Dark Web" bullshit from a few months back. clearly the leading young socialists haven't figured out a lot of things yet, as most of them I'm sure would readily admit, but they are light fucking years ahead of the drooling goons on the right.

Haven't read that yet but I've already seen folks complain that it mischaracterizes some of its subjects' views.

given that this is a subset of people who spend almost their entire lives arguing about shit online, that's entirely unsurprising. I'm more interested and drawn to the idea of these folks deciding to take their socialism out of the realm of the theoretical and into real action/policy/candidacy, etc. It was interesting to see them realize pretty quickly that they were going to bump up against plenty of compromises because for better or worse that's just the way shit actually gets done, but I think this reality is far far more encouraging than just writing pie-in-the-sky tracts to each other all day long, especially to all the people in this country who don't spend their entire lives reading small socialist journals but could benefit tremendously from socialist policy.

I'm starting to think it's actually better for groups like DSA if they are misunderstood/underestimated

a subset of people who spend almost their entire lives arguing about shit online

board description

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.

― Fedora Dostoyevsky (man alive), Monday, July 9, 2018 7:06 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya i agree with this and your other thoughts on the value of allies with hands on the levers of power, establishing full communism such as it is is never gonna be elected's job and handwringing about that is imo like being mad that your plumber is not descending into large green pipes with sound effects to defeat king koopa

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/10/opinion/centrist-democrats-midterms.html

Not as horrible as the headline/photo combo would suggest but still amusingly condescending

https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150722124111-seventies-sexist-baby-soft-ad-exlarge-169.jpg

I take no issue with the idea that representatives are going to have to reflect their districts to win. I just think there's a lot of conflation of an imagined "center" with the agenda that would actually represent certain purple districts, just this sort of fuzzy thinking that "most people" are "in the middle," with the "middle" being basically an upper middle class moderate/technocratic agenda.

Like Staten Island is a place where you might not win on "Abolish ICE," but you could probably turn a lot of people out on an extremely pro-labor platform.

i'd like to use the sock o' manure on Bruni

how did a gay man like Bruni get by in life by appealing to moderation?

from Chapo thread:

In other news, that window keeps a movin'

https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2018/07/10/cynthia-nixon-im-a-democratic-socialist-503279

― Simon H., Tuesday, July 10, 2018 10:29 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I eyerolled at this yesterday and Jacobin did an extremely embarassing Lenin tweet about it; you've got your DSA sponsored candidate forum in 8 hours and you're seeking an endorsement and you take that opportunity to tell a reporter you're a democratic socialist for the very first time? Come on.

AND YET as brother Duhalde wisely says here:

I remember when the Hillary Clinton's campaign tweeted a "socialist feminist" case for her.
I was shocked that she, of all people, might be okay with the need to appeal to "socialist voters" or whatever was the rationale behind it. Some people, instead, chose to use it as an opportunity to further remind people she was not a socialist.

Neither of us were asking the important question: what pushed her staff to do it in the first place?

As materialists, we need to remember the important question not if a politician genuinely adopts our beliefs (ultimately, only they know the sincerity) but what social forces push them to and why.
The fact that a major candidate for one of the largest state's governorship wants to identify with the democratic socialist project in itself is victory for @DemSocialists regardless of the outcome.

. . .and then on top of that I was just reminded that Nixon's new-ish policy director is actually a socialist organizer that I've known for a couple of years, and he and I have always aligned really quite well on the strategic uses of elected officials for social movements, and he posted this today:

It’s been quite fun getting to discuss democratic socialism on our campaign these past few weeks. Housing, health care, education, a livable planet, and justice for all. Cynthia is in it to win it.

. . .and I find myself feeling quite a bit less cynical about it.

I mean there's no question that at least optically it reeks of opportunism (if only due to the timing), but if it means that she's going to have policy planks that meet the DSA threshold for endorsement, great. That said, there's going to be a whole other set of trials to endure if and (inevitably) when leaders fail to match their platforms when they're in office.

But I don't think it's necessarily true that it's a success regardless of the outcome.

Idk dude I consider the opportunistic co-option by cynics of policies I support a kind of success.

It’s an iterative process of getting those with power to do the things you want, if you aren’t going to get the reins of power yourself you have to make it inevitable for those who have it to move in your direction, I sort of feel like

My concern would be that if people in power get in on a platform you signed off on, then renege on it, that's when the real tests of how effective your mobilizations can be in response, and if it goes badly I think it can be even more demoralizing than a simple defeat

Idk maybe I'm being unduly pessimistic

if people in power get in on a platform you signed off on, then renege on it, that's when the real tests of how effective your mobilizations can be in response

i for sure think that this is right, and that this is part of what makes it imperative to be building a mass social movement with meaningful non-cooperation leverage right alongside the victories (which i count them as!) of getting politicians publicly on board with the agenda. this is a big part of why i put so much of my thought & energy into the mechanics/techniques of good organizing--i think without a real movement that's at least capable of putting the fear of defeat into our allies when necessary, optical victories can go the way of mirages.

DSA people say Nixon was courting them before the AOC win. I think everyone should be viewed skeptically, but I also think an injection of socialism isn't going to make politics not be politics anymore. I mean that's the point of organizing to begin with -- you create something that can't be ignored, that has to be catered to and have at least some of its demands met. Politics will never flow from pure goodness. AOC talks all the time about how much her campaign was about building trust with organizations and then being accountable to them. She willingly places herself in that position and I think that's the ideal, but many politicians will do it only of necessity, because it takes a special kind of person to be an AOC.

Be loyal to the party! Well, except...

A @DemSocialists-backed candidate beat a self-funder in Montgomery County, so a centrist Dem is running as an independent, potentially spoiling the race for her party. https://t.co/EwTB6tNfi8

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) July 11, 2018

initiate censure motions on mitch mcmachievelli for disrespecting the constitution. impeach all trump judicial appointees. hanks / strzok 2020. let the healing begin

now looks like Crowley is doing the same, running Ind vs. AOC

that's some fucking bullshit

opinions differ in the politics thread xp