Democratic (Party) Direction

That's a higher level of bus service than public school students get, btw. That "600 feet from their homes" thing would be really helpful to some of our students who would literally have to take a city bus to get to their assigned school bus stop.

I hope this candidate doubles down on the "fuck the military" rhetoric, it's time for a backlash

Arizona Senate: Kyrsten Sinema's anti-war group blasted 'U.S. terror,' depicted soldier as skeleton in 2003 flyers

It’s not the fault of the fank and file soldiers.

whatever, dude. the uncritical worship of the military needs to stop.

9/10 people who complain about "denigrating the troops" actually mean "denigrating the american war machine" which is exactly what the flyer represented, so fuck those people.

the 2003 invasion of iraq was u.s. terror resulting in upwards of one million deaths. old flyer otm.

but don't be insensitive to the troops!

That's actually more important!

also maybe if more troops had been convinced by these flyers they would have refused to prosecute the war, and thus saved countless lives

several of my friends returned home from that war with PTSD, one killed himself shortly afterward. another ended up doing a lot of work with an anti-war veteran's group. always kind of ironic how the Respect the Troops crowd totally ignored and resisted them at every turn.

otm, because people don't really mean "the troops," in most cases, they mean "our bullshit feelgoody sense of patriotism." Don't burst my bubble is what respect the troops usually means.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBoZnF-ef-A

the troops really fucking resent the respect the troops assholes

it's a job and you get paid for it, everyone who's able should give it a try sometime

i respect this

https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2018/09/13/mcraven-former-socom-head-resigns-from-pentagon-board-following-trump-criticism/

i sometimes think that the troops respectin thing (among veterans, not civilians) is v much generational/what conflict did you serve in. some of this is colored by the fact that i've done some troop whispering in clinical settings where vietnam era vets are overrepresented, and some of those dudes are p much permanently decked out in caps/shirts/vests that advertise their military service. but they were also almost all drafted, and never had the opportunity to treat service as a job they got paid for. military service happened to them.

which imo makes it even uglier that the political cohort that most stridently venerates veterans is led by a bunch of dudes who managed to not get drafted, and who decades later sent off a bunch of young men and women who joined up to get some job skills and maybe the GI Bill

gbx otm

The ugliness of that is not lost on the current cohort of VFW-eligible progressive democrats

some interesting stuff in here

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/09/how-elizabeth-warren-is-dominating-the-democratic-2020-race.html

(god i hate these fucking clickbait headlines, sorry)
(yes, this is jonathan chait)

plus this depressing poll
https://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/intelligencer/2018/09/11/11-capitalism-vs-socialism.nocrop.w710.h2147483647.2x.jpg

in the fallout of the worst financial crisis since the great depression in 2010, 61% had a positive view of capitalism. in august 2018, after bernie sanders and AOC and what seems (in my bubble) to be a rising tide of interest in socialism, the overall support for it is pretty much unchanged. it's true, democrats are more receptive (57% have a positive view, vs 16% of republicans). but that support is also pretty much the same as it was 8 years ago.

Warren has taken the opposite tack, defending her agenda as a plan to save capitalism from its excesses. She has called herself “a capitalist to my bones” (or, at other times, her “ankles.”) “There are so many people right now who argue against these reforms and other reforms, who claim they are pro-business,” she told Franklin Foer, “They’re not. They’re pro-monopoly. They’re pro–concentration of power, which crushes competition.” It is also notable that Warren has directed some of the messaging for her early moves at economic liberals like Foer and Vox’s Matthew Yglesias, who would have a more skeptical view of Sanders-style socialism. She even touted her plans in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

You might think such rhetoric would alienate Warren from progressives. But what she probably recognizes is that, while identifying as a socialist did not harm Sanders in the primary, it does not account for his support. People who supported Sanders in the primary actually had views on the size of government that were the same as, or slightly more conservative than, those of Hillary Clinton supporters. So what accounted for his enthusiasm? Sanders tapped into a deep vein of good-government progressivism. Contrasting himself with Hillary Clinton, who was mired in scandals about donor access, Sanders presented himself as authentic and idealistic.

one possible reason for the lack of movement on capitalism and socialism: americans have no fucking idea what these terms even mean. my personal experience could be an outlier, but i can't remember either capitalism or socialism ever being brought up in my primary/secondary education, which is just astounding to me. i'm sure if there was a way to poll the understanding of the terms you'd end up with results even more embarrassing than "name any branch of the government" or "do you believe the earth was created 10,000 years ago"

Sanders tapped into a deep vein of good-government progressivism. Contrasting himself with Hillary Clinton, who was mired in scandals about donor access, Sanders presented himself as authentic and idealistic.

This strikes me as otm. People who responded well to Bernie are overwhelmingly in favor of creating a just, peaceful society where everyone is cared for, as opposed to responding to an ideology. Few of them are even capable of imagining a non-capitalist economy.

one possible reason for the lack of movement on capitalism and socialism: americans have no fucking idea what these terms even mean. my personal experience could be an outlier, but i can't remember either capitalism or socialism ever being brought up in my primary/secondary education, which is just astounding to me. i'm sure if there was a way to poll the understanding of the terms you'd end up with results even more embarrassing than "name any branch of the government🕸" or "do you believe the earth was created 10,000 years ago🕸"

i'm sure if there was a way to poll the understanding of the terms you'd end up with results even more embarrassing than "name any branch of the government" or "do you believe the earth was created 10,000 years ago"

I've said this before too, but there is easily a third of the population that can't score high enough on the ASVAB to drive a truck for the Army. It is important to never forget how many very stupid people there are.

this isn't really an issue of "stupid" though - it's an issue of the contents of education and media. many of the people who don't know what socialism is probably *do* vaguely remember a few things that, unlike socialism, *were* covered in high school, depending how relevant they were to their lives and how much they fit together with things that interested them. just like everybody else. thanks to the cold war, "capitalism," "democracy" and "freedom" and "america" are all pretty thoroughly mushed together in the popular imagination and a thorough disaggregation is a lot to ask of the average person.

the "average person" can spell maybe 3 our of the 4 words you just put in quotes

this is an encouraging read

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/15/jess-king-pennsylvania-lancaster-stands-up/

tombot do you ever have nightmares where you yrself are stupid

lancaster stands up rules!!!

this is more like it

✅ Medicaid Expansion
✅ Protecting People with Pre-existing Conditions
✅ Medicare-for-All
✅ Women’s Healthcare

If we vote, we win.#BringItHome

— Andrew Gillum (@AndrewGillum) September 19, 2018

tombot do you ever have nightmares where you yrself are stupid

flowers for algertom

medicaid expansion and medicare for all on the same platform is a bit confusing, but I guess you can have an immediate goal and a reach goal?

I mean really all of those would be covered by "medicare for all," but good to spell out the policy goals

yeah that confused me too

"medicaid expansion" is something that the government of florida has refused to act on since the ACA opened it up. it's something a new government in florida could immediately and decisively accomplish. medicare for all is the bigger long-term national goal.

tombot do you ever have nightmares where you yrself are stupid

I was unaware that nightmares came in other flavors, and I am only being slightly sarcastic in this post

not understanding anything / not knowing what is going on / forgetting trousers when I'm supposed to boarding an airplane for a work trip = pretty much the nightmare menu at chez la tete de tombot

didn't actually graduate high school, have to go back for one class per day/last week of a college class that I haven't been to for the entire semester/thrown back into waiting tables after 15 years with no training + endless weeds/same but no pants

in summation, nightmares are a land of contrasts

The Dems were so close to a great idea—make this about the Supreme Court again, and if the fates somehow give you the opening, make this about women—and then they veer back to their worst impulses, pumping the rich donor class for money and bringing out “the Clintons.” This has to also mean Bill, who’s been conspicuously absent from the campaign trail during this age of #MeToo. (Also, Joe Biden’s terrible history with Anita Hill does not exactly make him the best person to turn to either.)

https://splinternews.com/democrats-stumble-on-good-idea-that-theyre-absolutely-r-1829192550

Two consultants who work on Democratic campaigns called Axios to brag about all the money they’re about to make and ta-da, the one true master plan of all Democrats is revealed.

Your epistemic closure is especially embarrassing when you rely on 3rd-party cherry-picking of already-curated anonymously sourced quotes that came from a speaker phone in Jim fucking VandeHei’s office

speaking of the need for a renewed anti-military movement, copied from a friend but I cosign 100%

"Every single person that voted "yea" to approve this $607B military budget, the largest since the peak of the Iraq war, should be primaried then made to volunteer in an Afghani hospital.

That's all but seven of your senators, by the way. And only one of those seven wasn't a Republican.

Totally normal country."

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=115&session=2&vote=00212

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rV2CwmzRLw&feature=youtu.be

anti-military movement

yeah, that’ll sell it

Maybe try “bring the troops home” or “end the war” or any of a dozen other simple options? Christ, what’s with the self-owns on this front.

that is a fair point, I am using outdated 80's terminology and I agree with you

and I meant "militarism" but was lazy and tired, your terms are better and blaming "the military" is a terrible idea as you note.

Veterans under 50 are generally really sympathetic to increasing domestic spending and taxing the rich to pay for it. They’re middle class or blue collar and they didn’t go over there to fight for tax cuts for the rich.

A lot of Senators who voted for that are good. Seems like it would be bad idea to focus on primarying them for this one vote.

with all due respect I don't think there's anything a Democrat could do, no matter how craven and awful, that would make you think they needed to be primaried

your viewpoint is basically the viewpoint that I want the party to move beyond

and yeah I'll give Merkley a pass here but I would LOVE to see Wyden replaced with an actual progressive