Democratic (Party) Direction

I guess I always thought that stuff was a result of their attempts to coopt left policy, but I need to read up on it more. Also I don't think the libertarian/anti-statist right was anywhere near as much of a force back then.

might be on a continuum with things like how at-a-glance "universal" programs in the US have in many cases disproportionately benefited whites - plenty on this out there, but i'm thinking of e.g. FHA-backed mortgages after WWII where most high school history textbooks are not going to mention redlining, restrictive covenants, nonavailability of mortgages to renovate existing property etc., which made the program de facto white. or at the same time how social housing steadily lost support as it lost implicit or explicit "don't worry this will mainly be for carefully-screened aka white and normative families" rhetoric and policy.

i think we talked abt this stuff a bunch when bernie was running cause there were a lot of pieces pointing out fairly that this kind of problem is why a race-blind class analysis doesn't work in the US and (one of the many reasons) why previous welfare efforts failed to really change income and wealth disparities between white and nonwhite. see also "the case for reparations" etc. etc.

I actually think Fred B is otm there man alive - certainly I wouldn't read that quote as saying "let's not talk about class" - she'd be pretty bad at taking her own advice if that was the case:

The top 25 hedge fund managers make more than all of the kindergarten teachers in America combined. That’s not acceptable.

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 26, 2016

ding ding xp

might be on a continuum with things like how at-a-glance "universal" programs in the US have in many cases disproportionately benefited whites - plenty on this out there, but i'm thinking of e.g. FHA-backed mortgages after WWII where most high school history textbooks are not going to mention redlining, restrictive covenants, nonavailability of mortgages to renovate existing property etc., which made the program de facto white. or at the same time how social housing steadily lost support as it lost implicit or explicit "don't worry this will mainly be for carefully-screened aka white and normative families" rhetoric and policy.

i think we talked abt this stuff a bunch when bernie was running cause there were a lot of pieces pointing out fairly that this kind of problem is why a race-blind class analysis doesn't work in the US and (one of the many reasons) why previous welfare efforts failed to really change income and wealth disparities between white and nonwhite. see also "the case for reparations" etc. etc.

― |Restore| |Restart| |Quit| (Doctor Casino), Friday, November 2, 2018 11:48 AM (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Aware of this history, but I don't think that there's a way to redline, e.g., medicare for all. And also, I don't mean this as a callout against you or Hoos, specifically, but so many people who raise The Case for Reparations in this argument do not seem to actually be part of any mass movement for reparations, whereas there actually is in this moment a strong movement for Medicare for All.

In other words:

1) Is the case for reparations a good case? Yes.
2) Do calls for universal programs elide the need for reparations? Maybe.
3) Would universal programs nonetheless benefit black people and other marginalized groups? Yes.
4) Are some of the people who bring up the case for reparations using it as a derail? Sure seems like it.

Of course there's a way to redline Medicare 4 All.

you're right that's fair

yeah i mean just think like a republican who sees the m4a writing on the wall (or a blue dog looking for "compromise" solutions or w/e) - come up with weird convoluted eligibility formulas that disguise biases at several levels of remove, maybe, or create a lot of hoops to jump through, english language requirements, or limit coverage for diseases that disproportionately strike minority communities, or add riders prohibiting cities and program admins from actively signing people up, or nobody in public housing can get it cause they're "already getting a handout" .... all horrible health policy obviously. but it's not unimaginable that ppl would be working on this shit and that it will have to be actively fought imo.

also the way red-lining worked was iirc that the mortgages had to be issued by banks, who were using maps (with red areas drawn on them) created by a different arm of the federal government than the FHA (which was guaranteeing the mortgages for the banks) in order to avoid "" risky""" loans. to find analogies for m4a you'd probably be looking at the end providers of medical care (clinics and hospitals) and how there might be policy racism or structural racism affecting access to those places for nonwhites, or the quality of service available. i'm not an expert in either housing or health policy mind you.... just maybe a little paranoid abt america's capacity for cobbling together or arriving at racist distributions of ostensibly universally-accessible goods.

FiveThirtyEight did a couple of articles on it: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-health-care-system-is-leaving-the-southern-black-belt-behind/ and https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mortality-black-belt/

This is partly why Tim Faust (DSA's Andrew WK-esque M4A evangelist) frames M4A as health justice:

The United States may be a country where Saudi princes can fly to get a heart transplant, but it remains a place where poor men die fourteen years earlier than rich men. In a land of resplendence, the powerful condemn the marginalized to chronic illness, because it’s not profitable to provide nutritious food or adequate shelter.

Fragmented and commodified, the present model treats health care as something that only happens when people are insured, not a holistic process spanning an entire life. Single-payer could begin to change this. Once the federal actor bears the costs of providing care and not providing care, it could finally be a tool for realizing health justice.

If people are getting sick and dying because they don’t have a place to live, or if the places they live are unsafe, then housing is health care, and you build housing to bring health care costs down. If people don’t have access to healthy food to eat, then food is health care, and you provide them with affordable or free food options to bring health care costs down. If people live in fear of their personal safety — if they are assaulted or beaten at home, at work, by the police, or by their domestic partners — then safety is a form of health care, and you provide safe havens for them to bring health care costs down.

In other words, a single-payer program is not the goal. Single-payer on its own cannot be the goal. Single-payer does not solve the biggest sin of commodified health care: that taking care of sick people isn’t profitable, and any profit-driven insurance system thus disregards the most vulnerable.

Sick people, people with disabilities, poor people, pregnant people, trans people, people of color — all of them are valuable to insurance markets only inasmuch as profit can be extracted from them; afterward, they are drained, discarded, abandoned to charity care, or, absent that, to the carceral state. Corporations have proven themselves unable and unwilling to look these problems in the eye, and people suffer while Democrats use public money to bribe corporations into trying to ameliorate the health care crisis.

Single-payer alone does not solve these problems. But it gives us a fighting chance to square up against them.

Tim Faust rules

"Freedom" is nice but vague and used equally asmuch by the right

As Dr. C. Says, that's exactly why to use it - take the theme back from them. They don't own freedom, ffs (quite the contrary) and it's tactically right to deny them exclusive use of freedom language.

That seems stupid and doomed to fail. They should make it more like a frat party entry ratio -- one republican for every two democrats or something like that.

― Fedora Dostoyevsky (man alive)

yes, government needs to be _more_ like a frat party

If govt was any more frat-like brother trump would be hazing the fuck out of pledge cruz, and sending him on dick missions but still burning his signature list.

Little pledge marco would have alcohol poisoning after bro trump forced mutliple chug sessions.

then trump would drop a ball on both of them but only after theyd been through most of hell week.

Democrats refuse to take Trump's home stretch bait

Democrats are refusing to take President Donald Trump's bait.

In the run-up to next Tuesday's crucial midterm elections, Trump's push to turn out his base has included a raft of divisive policy proposals, controversial political statements and even a racially charged ad from his re-election campaign.

He's announced that he's contemplating a plan to roll back protections for transgender students, sending a war-sized force of U.S. troops to the southern border with instructions to shoot migrants if they throw rocks, and writing an executive order ending the 14th Amendment's guarantee of citizenship for those born inside American borders. And he's called his opposition the “party of crime” and “really evil people.”

Democrats, he told a rally crowd in Missouri this week, “have gone crazy, folks. They have gone totally loco. The Democrats are the party of rigid ideology and total conformity.”

While Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., responded to his taunts of “Pocahontas” by releasing genetic information, that episode was an outlier among Democrats the president has attacked by name — and one that many of them say provided proof for the theory that he shouldn’t be fought on the ground he chooses.

Instead, most of the party has pushed back — gently — without rushing to cameras to fight on cultural issues at a time when they believe they have the upper hand in the battle for control of the House and are still in the hunt for several Senate races within the margin of error in recent polling.

...

It's not a coordinated strategy so much as a collective assessment that it's smart to avoid obvious traps Trump is laying in what they believe to be an increasingly desperate attempt to knock Democrats off their message.

...

After the delivery of pipe bombs to prominent Democrats and the murders of 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue, Pelosi sent her colleagues a letter reminding them to keep their eyes on the path to winning a House majority next week.

"While the GOP attempts to divide and distract the public from their tax scam for the rich and their assault on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and people with pre-existing conditions, Democrats across the country are focused on bringing people together," she wrote. "In this all important final week, only by relentlessly driving home our For The People message of health, jobs and integrity in government will we win a better future for all Americans."

"In this all important final week, only by relentlessly driving home our For The People message of health, jobs and integrity in government will we win a better future for all Americans."

First time I’ve heard of For The People, but I live in a safe Democrat zone so the message isn’t for me I guess

Democratic politicians have a touching faith in the use of vague, rah-rah slogans like For the People as their core medium for messaging. Will they never learn?

You want consistent, persuasive messaging, Nancy? How about a "Contract With America" style manifesto promising a program of simple, widely popular legislation that all Democratic candidates for the House sign onto, led by 'Medicare for All' and 'Student Debt Relief' paid for by increasing taxes on mega-corporations and the super-rich?

What's that? You say Democrats are afraid they'll be attacked by their Republican opponents for backing those? I say let them! They'll just be reinforcing your message for you.

I don't think having a 'for the people' slogan is mutually exclusive with what you propose

It's a waste of the alphabet, imo.

Haha that's a pretty good line

Public doesnt vote on policy proposals, they tend to prefer slogans and vague promised

Promises

Tbf what are M4A and Free College if not slogans and vague promises with a relative panoply of legislative approaches

sidebar: cant see M4A without seeing m'ungry 4 ass #ripcankles

Lmfao

yeah, promises, like “a chicken on a cross of gold,” or “pot in every garage.” now those were slogans.

remember when bill clinton was like "come and get this MONEY girl!" and he did the macarena? #1996

Public doesnt vote on policy proposals, they tend to prefer slogans and vague promise

The public doesn't vote based on complex, abstruse or trivial policy proposals, but they can definitely understand when a basic and major policy proposal would affect them personally, like the military draft, free tuition, or universal health care. But because the system is more or less run for the convenience and benefit of the wealthy, the public tends to get slogans and vague promises instead.

However you craft your message, it has to be simple, clear, direct, and make a strong emotional connection. "For the People" lacks all those qualities.

tim faust otm

Public doesnt vote on policy proposals, they tend to prefer slogans and vague promise

The public doesn't vote based on complex, abstruse or trivial policy proposals, but they can definitely understand when a basic and major policy proposal would affect them personally, like the military draft, free tuition, or universal health care. But because the system is more or less run for the convenience and benefit of the wealthy, the public tends to get slogans and vague promises instead.

However you craft your message, it has to be simple, clear, direct, and make a strong emotional connection. "For the People" lacks all those qualities.

― A is for (Aimless), Saturday, November 3, 2018 12:18 AM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Aimless 100% OTM. Shakey NOTM

when was in middle school, i ran for vice-president of junior high national honor society. i made a poster that said "pro-zach - you'll feel better"

this was a better slogan than "for the people"

lol, "You'll Feel Better" is a good slogan.

do you mind if i use you as a ref on my application for chief strategy officer of DNC?

my career - "it's going places"

will get the rangers vote out anyway

I find it hard to identify any clear lessons from the midterms about Democratic party direction. Some more vocally left candidates did well, some poorly. Some "moderates" did well, some poorly. Some women did well, some poorly. I dunno, do you guys come away with any strong sense of "Democrats should do X but not Y"?

Democrats should vocally support progressive domestic policy platforms like Medicare for All and the $15 minimum wage and legal weed and trans rights and voting rights and ending mass incarceration. If there’s an office they can’t win with this platform they should bend every available resource to redistricting fights in 2020. But like that package of stuff is basically the price of admission to get young engaged voters to give a shit about you, especially young people of color who are justifiably suspicious of the Democratic establishment. If the likes of Heidi Heitkamp and Claire McCaskill don’t think they can win with that then don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

I’m not going to insist that democratic candidates do the o-pen bor-ders *clap clap clapclapclap* I’ve been doing for several years but it’d be nice.

Oh also abortion on demand without apology, or step to the back.

"Bipartisanship" -- the liberal word for Surrender. #BlueSludge pic.twitter.com/B2ITxWdSdv

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) November 7, 2018

Honestly I hate the word as much as anyone but that's standard issue first day conciliatory bullshit that nearly any politician would do. It's meaningless.

I think she'll use it in January and February too.

Yeah the Dems who lost the Senate had more to do imo with conservative Kavanaugh backlash than a referendum on any unified Dem ideology, some longshot this-is-a-movement candidates did shockingly well even in their losses (Beto, Abrams), some bright lights were running in tough places (Jess) or backwoods dirty races (Cathy was right: Ironstache got owned by his personal history in the end -- I shoulda listened).

from Zack Exley, who along with Becky Bond made the Bernie machine happen:

The pundits are missing the significance of Beto and Abrams getting so close. They've pointed the way. Standing up boldly against racism and xenophobia, for progressive programs and ideas, and really good organizing. The Dem senate incumbents who lost mostly were playing Republican light. The way forward is clear.

Also...I have been knocking on doors in TX and observing the incredible Beto campaign for the last several days. Thank you to everyone who made the Beto miracle come together. You created a whole new kind of campaign. With hundreds of newly minted political staff organizers, this is going to have huge repercussions for 2020 campaigns.

cruz winning by 2 percent is stunning. his first time up - when it was an open seat! - he won by sixteen. hutchison won her final contest by twenty-five. i know we sometimes get worn out on "texas is changing, it could go blue" stuff, but it's not exactly a charlie brown football story. it's legit closer each time.

I think the general feeling I've been seeing is that the Dems need to stop going after this mythical white women vote when it's becoming increasingly clear that half will do anything to uphold white supremacy and their place in the patriarchy. They have to put more of their resources/ unfailingly progressive platform towards black people who've been with them all along and possibly try to overcome the Latinx catholic/machismo upbringing that makes a large enough percentage vote R.

converting voters is a fool's game. getting new voters into the voting pool is how you transform the electorate and win elections, and that is hard work.

not if you restore felon voting rights!

New voters also are also energized by the candidates strongly embracing racism and Trump. Those were the Reps that won.

But that has been a huge ongoing problem with the Dem party, that they have historically ignored the base that has always supported them.