Democratic (Party) Direction

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.

I don't think she would have won tbh

she's a good Senator, but her public persona is p much identical to Trump in the minds of Trump voters ("uppity lying scold of a schoolmarm tellin me what to do!") and I don't think the election dynamic would have changed much.

er identical to HILLARY in the minds of Trump voters

I could see her energizing the Dem base and not having the baggage that lends itself to division within the party as Hillary had.

No, she was definitely a woman.

And magically this was posted an hour ago.

Black voters made Doug Jones a senator and Barack Obama a president. More than 80 percent of black voters voted Democrat in every election since 1972. Without the black vote, the Democratic Party would be as impotent and powerless as Donald Trump in a threesome with Vladimir Putin and Nancy Pelosi.

Yet the Democratic Party only pays attention to black voters during election season. They spend the rest of their time courting and catering to the 49 percent. The independents and the undecided. The moderates.

The white people.

https://www.theroot.com/5-things-black-voters-should-demand-from-the-democratic-1827842891

Well yeah again I’m not confident about it.

I personally would have been a million times more enthusiastic about Warren than Clinton. She had some of the "you're getting screwed" attitude of Trump, but with actual policies that addressed the problems.

yeah but voters are stupid and don't care about policy!

also none of the stench of 'superpredators', voting for the iraq war and bill clinton. we can go on forever tho. =|

xp

i do think the obviously gendered and unfair "schoolmarm" aspect would have been a problem, but i also agree that her signature thing of going after "the banks" and visibly sticking up for regular people would have played well, and maybe helped her hold on to those states which went for obama in 2012 but trump in 2016. impossible to know of course. in practical terms, clinton's minuses with the left were probably canceled out by really massive enthusiasm on the part of those who did like her and wanted desperately to see her win. but maybe a candidate who didn't need to do that canceling-out would have had that many more organizers and volunteers ready to go door-to-door....

the other trick of these counterfactuals is that we're reaching back knowing that trump was the GOP nominee, and that clinton lost, neither of which was obvious to people considering a run back in 2014 and 2015. back then it was more or less assumed clinton would be the dem nominee and that the GOP would put up someone like rubio, and that would have informed the pros and cons of the sacrifices, headaches, and potential setbacks of mounting a failed run.

Warren is a marvelous Senate candidate.