Democratic (Party) Direction

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.

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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

“If you look throughout the heartland, there’s a silent majority who just wants normalcy, just wants to see that people are going to go out to Washington and fight for them in a civil way and get something done,” said Illinois Congresswoman Cheri Bustos. “There’s a lot of people that just don’t really like protests and don’t like yelling and screaming.”

this quote is p funny in its obliviousness. It puts the onus squarely on tactics (rather than, y'know, policies and goals) and doesn't seem to consider the possibility that the reason people are yelling and screaming is because the party isn't listening.

xp

I can’t think of a single example of MSNBC portraying a leftist negatively

https://www.google.ca/search?q=am+joy+bernie+sanders&oq=am+joy+bernie+sanders&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64l3.3971j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

I don’t begrudge AOC doing this — going on Maher is a mistake smart people make all the time. I just hope she realizes that at this point it’s not a coup for her, it’s a coup for *him* pic.twitter.com/YRpvkN88wu

— Owen Ellickson (@onlxn) July 24, 2018

I wondered if the argument would hang entirely on “that one lady’s tweets”

good point, she should stay home instead of reaching millions of viewers - teach Bill Maher a lesson!

who cares if she goes on his show, yeesh

well if he goes on one of his anti-Muslim screeds...

a lot of petty AOC ankle-biting lately

what I like to call NAGLing

How in-depth does an argument need to be to demonstrate "a single example"?

Joy Reid’s back and forth w rando Bernie supporters on Twitter doesn’t count as MSNBC attacking leftists.

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.

She's the President of one of the most visible and driven new organizations mobilizing for the left flank of the party and is widely understood as a surrogate for the most popular politician in America, maybe that has something to do with it.

(and to be clear I can't wait for her to get out of a leadership position, all reports from former staffers to volunteers say she's not the person any Our Rev enthusiast would ultimately want running the show)

The silent majority who are down with centrists are white and lazy or rich enough not to care.

Silent majority the largest collection of straw man in human discourse iirc.

Shouldn’t Turner’s having refused to endorse the candidate who was running against the fascist president mean everyone is too embarrassed to be associated with her now? Isn’t there something inherently wrong if that’s not currently the case? If she was good at getting people elected, even herself, I could see letting that slide possibly.

ny mag piece saying warren is the leader of the left flank of the dems? that seems... uhhh a unique take. certainly a prominent voice, but-

Elizabeth Warren, Leader of the Persistence
Rebecca Traister on how the Massachusetts senator has emerged in the past few weeks as the de facto leader of the Democratic Party, and the candidate-of-the-moment for 2020

https://www.thecut.com/2018/07/elizabeth-warren-fight-to-defeat-trump.html

it's not at all clear who the leader of the party is right now, because there isn't one. Nominally it's Schumer and Pelosi.

Shouldn’t Turner’s having refused to endorse the candidate who was running against the fascist president mean everyone is too embarrassed to be associated with her now? Isn’t there something inherently wrong if that’s not currently the case? If she was good at getting people elected, even herself, I could see letting that slide possibly.

― Nerdstrom Poindexter, Tuesday, July 24, 2018 9:23 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

who are you talking to

ny mag piece saying warren is the leader of the left flank of the dems?

lol i saw this magazine on my stairwell, the cover is that picture of warren in natick with the headline "front runner???" and it took me a second before i was like "... oh that's elizabeth warren! ...? sure, i guess!"

if warren was the 2016 nominee she would have won imo

She definitely should have run but it’s impossible to know the kind of narratives that take shape in an election to ever be confident about hypothetical candidates like that.