Democratic (Party) Direction

Nice bit:

https://www.gq.com/story/what-are-the-tea-cup-democrats-afraid-of/

Jesus Christ on pudding pop how many hours did you fucking dipshits spend arguing about an obvious troll and bikeshedding about the right way to make poor people less poor? And half the posts are by a Dane, a Canadian and a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid-80s. Mods, please lock this thread.

Well I don’t think anyone was furiously F5ing for an entire Sunday evening

Simon maybe.

A good article from Ed Burmila: http://www.ginandtacos.com/2018/07/22/own-goal/

Could it just be that some counties will poll great with a more radical leftism and other places will poll great with someone like Tim Kaine? I still don't understand how we got into the idiotic Sanders/Clinton dichotomy, reading ilx, twitter, the news, I feel like very few democrats want a proper coalition.

― Van Horn Street

a "coalition" is all well and good, but it seems like what centrists mean by a "coalition" is a party where the left votes for them and the centrists compromise with the republicans instead of compromising with the left. i don't see that working out too well.

Yeah, is even the DSA advocating to primary incumbents in every county and run socialist candidates across the board at this point? I feel like the 'coalition' VHS describes is exactly what the 'far left' is looking for.

thank yew

Sure, the centrists are mostly to blame because proportionaly they have been holding much of the power, but when I read the article Andrew posted a few posts back, I can’t help to think that the disgust exist on both side.

And no I don’t think this is accurate even in the slightest ‘and lo and behold all of the policy they push is virtually indistinguishable from anything the Republican Party has wanted since the 1970s’.

It's the Aaron Sorkin / West Wing deleted scenes version of political reality

i'm so tired of this as the no. 1 analogy

i can't think of ppl more obsessed with the west wing than hardcore leftists

I agree that it's done to death at this point but I'm not sure there's an equally accurate or popular/zeitgeisty embodiment of that strain of american liberalism

pretty sure it's the diagnosis for mushy libs, not leftists

xp

you have no idea what i'm talking about but that's ok

Could it just be that some counties will poll great with a more radical leftism and other places will poll great with someone like Tim Kaine? I still don't understand how we got into the idiotic Sanders/Clinton dichotomy, reading ilx, twitter, the news, I feel like very few democrats want a proper coalition.

― Van Horn Street

it seems like what centrists mean by a "coalition" is a party where the left votes for them and the centrists compromise with the republicans instead of compromising with the left. i don't see that working out too well.

― Arch Bacon (rushomancy), Monday, July 23, 2018 8:47 AM (forty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I feel like the 'coalition' VHS describes is exactly what the 'far left' is looking for.

I know this might sound crazy but ... maybe most democrats, those who would describe themselves as centrists and those would describe themselves as on the left, are indeed backing left candidates in districts where leftism is popular and centrist candidates in districts where centrism is popular.

That's what I see happening here in the Midwest, at any rate.

ah when ppl make straightfwdly snarky statements i don't plumb further

xp

the rub is when you run into a primary where a leftist and a centrist are running against each other, which is happening more and more, which is one reason why this conversation happens.

My wife and I were talking about this yesterday because of the way Swing Left and other organizing systems like it are likely to change Democratic campaigning (see https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/business/swing-left-primary-campaigns.html for recent blah blah about stuff).

In red-purple suburban districts where a Democratic candidate might normally be encouraged (by precedent, and by usual-suspect consultants) to take centrist positions in order to have even a snowball's chance of beating the GOP opponent, having Swing Left provide a ready avenue for getting volunteers and funds from nearby urban areas could have the effect of making such Democrats more inclined to take stronger progressive positions in their campaign.

If that winds up being the case, then the direction of the Democratic party is in upper-middle Creative Class white folks with time on their hands. If you want, you can debate whether you prefer that over it being in the hands of wealthy business moguls, but that seems like a waste of time. At least the former group sometimes give a shit about labor issues.

Nathan Robinson asked me what I meant by "Russia hacked the election." Here was my response, and what I think about the various elements of that claim. pic.twitter.com/hmHFh5OQ5h

— corey robin (@CoreyRobin) July 23, 2018

I have to admit, this is a new one to me, the idea that hacking the DNC was not at all a big deal and potentially even a good thing. I have no fondness for that organization whatsoever but I still find this reading of events totally baffling. not the least of which because if we're living in the real world here, it was inevitable the media was going to seize on anything in those leaks that had a whiff of scandal or salaciousness.

'hacking the watergate hotel was a good thing' is pro-level self-delusional trolling

why the dems can't control the narrative -- we aren't just taxpayers, people, we're CITIZENS -- is amateur hour

Barbara Lee launches bid to unfuck the Democratic Party https://t.co/i7Wc2lFskT pic.twitter.com/NhLbhL0dOa

— Jezebel (@Jezebel) July 23, 2018

I like Barbara Lee, good luck

Heard of Medicare for All?@KanielaIng, candidate in Hawaii w/ @Ocasio2018 support, is pitching "Housing for All"

It would create:
- 10M new homes
- A "Tenants Bill of Rights" barring unjust evictions
- "Punitive" taxes on vacant properties worth +https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1020057721205379073Mhttps://t.co/hWwkUWcgzt pic.twitter.com/Oat6szpB5p

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) July 19, 2018

partially derived from 3P's work looking into social housing strategies, apparently:

http://peoplespolicyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialHousing.pdf

Unfortunately the Roberts court is likely to declare all federal legislation unconstitutional forever

https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-UE217_35Kbs_OR_20170707131524.jpg?width=620&height=407

I know this might sound crazy but ... maybe most democrats, those who would describe themselves as centrists and those would describe themselves as on the left, are indeed backing left candidates in districts where leftism is popular and centrist candidates in districts where centrism is popular.

That's what I see happening here in the Midwest, at any rate.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, July 23, 2018 10:35 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Really glad to hear it! Surely I've been extrapolating articles like Burnilla's or tweets like Robin's to what the Democrats as a party have been concretely doing.

Twitter Ads info and privacy
partially derived from 3P's work looking into social housing strategies, apparently:

http://peoplespolicyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialHousing.pdf

― wayne trotsky (Simon H.), Monday, July 23, 2018 2:16 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lol wouldn't mind seeing more of that in Canada too.

I found this to be thought-provoking: https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/the-lefts-missing-foreign-policy/

What would such an approach look like? It would oppose American international police power—the presumptive right of intervention—and refuse to treat any community as an instrument in the service of state security ends. What follows are a non-exhaustive and initial set of principles.

The first is a global commitment to social democracy rather than free market capitalism (as embodied in austerity, neoliberal privatization, and trade agreements built on entrenching corporate property rights). When Trump attacks Merkel or questions the financial utility of NATO, the response among most democratic elites has been to wax poetic about the wisdom of the postwar order, no matter how much violence maintaining that order actually wrought throughout the world. Essentially, the options available seem to be Trump’s bellicose and dangerous ethno-nationalism or an old and failed cold war imperialism, backed by market dictates. But one might rightly question the austerity German leadership has imposed on Europe, or look to post-Soviet NATO expansion as over time promoting a tense and militarized relationship with Russia, one that has actually strengthened the hand of ethno-nationalist autocrats like Putin.

A necessary corollary of global social democracy is demilitarization. For Havel and Gorbachev after the fall of the Soviet Union, both NATO and the Warsaw Pact were outdated Cold War holdovers. The hope was to create new and inclusive multilateral regional and international institutions, premised on mutual disarmament and shared decision-making. But given their commitment to American hegemony, this was not the path that Republican and Democratic officials pursued. And as the US instead promoted privatization and the starving of state institutions in Europe and elsewhere, policies like NATO expansion funneled money yet again back into defense. Any left foreign policy would have to conceive of how to invert these trends—investing in social welfare and pushing back against military intensification. The ultimate goal should be some version of Havel’s and Gorbachev’s old ambition—a demilitarized and multilateral order—but getting from here to there will be much harder than it would have been in the early 1990s.

“Do no harm” would be another key principle. The impulse of the Democratic establishment is to see force (from boots on the ground to drone strikes to sanctions) as the go-to method of responding to perceived threats or humanitarian instability. Just as with Iraq, doing “something” often means using force, and the only choice is either confrontation or appeasement. Not only does this involve a systematic devaluing of diplomacy—something that despite the success of the Iran nuclear negotiations has been receding in both parties for decades—but it also ignores the extent to which the story of American international police power has been to generate even more violence and disorder. A non-imperial approach would instead begin with caution and skepticism. Its question would not be “What red lines will lead to US military intervention?” but “What are the likely effects of using coercive power—from sanctions to actual troops—and to what extent would such force add to the human cost?” Crucially, this principle would need to be be applied not only to direct US behavior but to those of presumptive allies, like Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Egypt.

Such an approach would inevitably buttress a commitment to local self-determination and to legal self-constraint. With respect to the former, it would put into question the existing regional orderings that the US has for so long maintained with treasure and force of arms—including the current terms of the US–Israel relationship, whose rippling effects cannot simply be ignored. And with respect to the latter, it is impossible to take seriously a principle of “do no harm” when government actors enjoy absolute impunity for their own violence and are never held legally responsible—criminally or otherwise. In fact, the condition for the return of individuals like Trump’s new CIA director Gina Haspel, who oversaw torture, to the heights of power, is the longstanding and bipartisan tendency to treat domestic and international legal limits on national security as non-binding—to be avoided when necessary.

Finally, neither global social democracy nor an emphasis on “do no harm” are possible without a systematic transformation of the national security apparatus. The security state has fed American interventionism, criminalized dissent, and placed immigrant and Muslim communities under constant suspicion through institutions ranging from ICE to the FBI to the National Security Agency—a tendency that has grown under both Republican and Democratic administrations, and that Trump’s white nationalism has only further weaponized. The new social-democratic wing of the Democratic Party has been best at challenging this element of American policy, but more needs to be done. What should a left Administration do with the NSA? If the Department of Homeland Security is eliminated, how will immigration and security policy be implemented? And what will the ends of such policy be? These are the questions such principles seek to address—and they are only a start.

That’s all stupid sorry

A foreign policy that borrows ethical ideals from the Hippocratic oath is a foreign policy that begs to be completely abused by anybody who actually does statecraft for a living.

Seems like a good set of principles to me. Better than the current zero-sum thinking that's been driving our foreign policy for basically ever.

But you know a lot about this, so maybe explain yourself?

I know this might sound crazy but ... maybe most democrats, those who would describe themselves as centrists and those would describe themselves as on the left, are indeed backing left candidates in districts where leftism is popular and centrist candidates in districts where centrism is popular.

That's what I see happening here in the Midwest, at any rate.

― Guayaquil (eephus!)

i lived in indiana for a decade. i'm not sure i would say that centrism is "popular" there. in fact if you look at the states where the democrats are the most "centrist" these are the parties that are one-party states for the republicans, and my growing conclusion is that republican domination is not because people are more right-wing in those states, but because the "centrist" democratic parties fail to inspire or to offer a viable alternative, instead giving us corn-fed whitebread ruralists in the exclusive hope of appealing to precisely those people who will never, ever vote for them.

Otm

I thought we’d moved past “otm” and on to “booming post”

I was thinking of Wisconsin, which is decidedly not a one-party state for the Republicans, and where Democrats have already flipped two state senate seats in special elections -- those seats, in rural parts of the state, were won by people I'd call centrist democrats (pro-choice, pro-public schools, pro-gun, basically silent on race, selling "I'm a pragmatist who'll push back on toxic/dirty GOP hegemony in Madison but also work across the aisle and solve problems") while meanwhile Marc Pocan (WI-2) is introducing legislation to abolish ICE and Gwen Moore (WI-4) gets arrested with fast food workers protesting for a $15/hr minimum wage. And it all feels like one party.

I should keep posting photos of Smilin' John Roberts whenever a poster alludes to redistricting

Maybe don’t bother since we already have enough “we’re doomed” bullshit on all the politics threads

In the weeks since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez‘s surprise victory in New York’s 14th District, the Democratic Party has been waking up to the possibility that a progressive wave could overturn the party’s leadership and usher in a new guard — one led by young women of color. Ocasio-Cortez said as much in her victory speech, delivered from a bar top at the pool hall in the Bronx that hosted her election night party.

“We’ve got a whole bunch of primaries to go. When we get to November, we should be electing a caucus,” she said.

That’s what Tahirah Amatul-Wadud is hoping will happen in Massachusetts’s 1st District, where she’s mounting an insurgent campaign against Richard Neal, one of the longest serving Democratic representatives in the House.

According to Amatul-Wadud, Neal represents everything that’s wrong with Washington Democrats. He’s an uninvolved career politician who puts the interests of his national donors in front of the people he represents, Amatul-Wadud says, and his seniority in the House hasn’t brought much benefit to the region. While Ocasio-Cortez effectively dinged her primary opponent, Joe Crowley, by pointing out that he and his family don’t live in his congressional district, Neal’s reputation among his constituents might be worse: Last year, some of his rural constituents took out an ad in the local Weekend Gazette asking, “Has anyone seen this man? (yes, he’s your congressman).”

Amatul-Wadud hopes to fill that absence.

https://theintercept.com/2018/07/19/tahirah-amatul-wadud-congress-massachusetts-richard-neal/

https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/37812364_10156275802870767_622853515861032960_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=2e458d0a607b37ce67d2582254e96ac0&oe=5BD2F102

bless you

good thread team

Sarah Jones: There is no silent centrist majority

yeah, i just read a piece on that conference in New York Magazine and it seemed like the conversation was almost exclusively focused on "how do we get people to vote for us?" rather than "how do we actually improve people's lives?"

^^^^ otmfm

At this point I'm fairly convinced that some of grand players of liberal media are salivating at the thought of an all out war between centrists and leftist within the democrats.

"some"?

I haven't read them all!

Anyway, it seems to me a silent majority is down with the centrists: they've won the popular vote in all but two presidential elections over the past 30 years. If journalists on the left don't want to see this strength as an opportunity for the leftist wing of the party to gain some traction, well they are as dumb as centre-leaning journalist who claim that america ain't ready for single payer health care just yet and ask for caution at all turns, and no one would want to be that dumb. It's just wedging after wedging after wedging.

I'll go back back to eephus posts about the specifics of Wisconsin to not have 2020 related nightmares.

The “party infighting” is a broad media thing that people push for interest/clicks and it’s obviously a two way street. For example, “the Young Turks” exists and everyone with half a brain knows it’s a ratfucking enterprise, Nina Turner is invited on the Sunday shows solely because she pushes “the Dems are bad”, unless there are other state senators who get that kind of visibility idk.

I can’t think of a single example of MSNBC portraying a leftist negatively Ocasio-Cortez received uniformly positive coverage from liberal media outlets etc