Democratic (Party) Direction

even if they both declared (which I very much doubt!) Clinton won't have cleared away the field this time

tbh I'm increasingly OK with the idea of Sanders running with a younger, hipper running mate to step in in case of infirmity, but only because the other non-Gillibrand options are looking dimmer by the day

it's too early to be negative about Harris, her trial balloons about tax credits are just trial balloons after all. We'll see what she says when she declares.

What gets me is that there must be some people who saw the Florida ballot and thought "Yes, felon voter rights are important, I am totally happy with the obvious result of this, which is enfranchisement of a large population of black men. That is some good work, I can go home - ah no wait, I nearly forgot to vote for that racist cumstain."

I feel like it's weird to think this is weird

tbh I'm increasingly OK with the idea of Sanders running with a younger, hipper running mate to step in in case of infirmity

i guess you're increasingly ok with this but i'm not

my main criterion for primary voting is what Canadian podcasters are ok with

Unless sanders takes a dive cognitively I see no reason why he couldn’t run; that said there are other people. I’m down for Harris, certainly.

hey if there's another candidate who's expressed a desire to build a robust international left to combat incipient fascism abroad I'm all for 'em

stalin

he is dead dmac

no barrier to election in states iirc

he lives on in the hearts of the proletariat iirc xp

lmao

footage of Antonio Delgado victory speech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk8LoHqHkGI

The really boring thing: Dems won Governor races in all the midwestern states that flipped the election to Trump, and if they can win there again in 2020 he's gone, no need for the re-enfranchised voters in Florida to change things, or for Georgia or Texas or Arizona or any of the other states that are always just on the cusp of going blue. But the winners in those governor races were absolutely boring and bland: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democrats-bland-scott-walker-troy-evers-governor_us_5bd74093e4b0a8f17efab16c?guccounter=1 And it worked... It worked more emphatically than pretty much any other strategy the Dems have tried.

So... Amy Klobuchar in 2020?

the (former) KGB tore England from the EU . . . will they tear the Confederacy from the USA?

the official line on that is that that's not allowed and never was

we should have treated the South the way Rome did Carthage. oh well

well we did burn Atlanta to the ground tbf

beto/bernie 2020

Bernie at the top of the ticket is pretty stupid imo but this is why we have primaries. He won't have a unified anti-Clinton wing of the party behind him.

I have a hard time imagining him as a running mate but stranger things have happened

Gillibrand is dull.

I thought the theory was that Clinton wasn’t minority/young/interesting enough for those states and hence didn’t pull young and minority voters. Maybe that was wrong. Maybe it’s both things. Dunno.

I'm increasingly OK with the idea of Sanders running with a younger, hipper running mate

Joe Biden's ears perk up...

No.

Fucking.

Shit. https://t.co/zawywujRpe

— Surefire Director Of Diversity And Inclusion (@agraybee) November 8, 2018

Lol YMP

oh ffs BERNIE YOU FUCKING DUMBASS

Democratic officials woke Wednesday morning searching for answers as to why the party was unable to win several marquee Senate and gubernatorial races the night before.

But for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) the explanation was simple. The candidates who underperformed weren’t progressive enough; those who didn’t shy away from progressivism were undone, in part, by “racist” attacks.

“I think you know there are a lot of white folks out there who are not necessarily racist who felt uncomfortable for the first time in their lives about whether or not they wanted to vote for an African-American,” Sanders told The Daily Beast, referencing the close contests involving Andrew Gillum in Florida and Stacey Abrams in Georgia and that ads run against the two. “I think next time around, by the way, it will be a lot easier for them to do that.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/bernie-sanders-on-andrew-gillium-and-stacey-abrams-many-whites-uncomfortable-voting-for-black-candidates

there's discussion going on in the main thread abt that quote

Gillibrand is dull.

did you see her on the senate floor the week of the kavanaugh hearings? she's not remotely dull imo

there's discussion going on in the main thread abt that quote

durr, I see that now. anyway I sort of get what he's trying for in various parts of that article but the analysis is very bad, esp when the votes aren't even done being counted in one or two of those races iirc

Apparently all of Al Franken’s relatives who vote in New York wrote him in on Gillibrand’s Senate race ballot.

Wow I’m sure that made them feel very good about themselves

They’re still really angry about what happened, obvs. It’s possible to be disappointed in him (I was) and fucked off with how he was treated, particularly in our post-Kavanaugh situation.

bernie, stop, do not

very very bad

I feel it worth noting that literally all the commies I know (of various stripes) are hateposting that quote today

this is considerably better but doesn't erase the stupidity of the original quotes

Let me be absolutely clear: Donald Trump, Brian Kemp and Ron DeSantis ran racist campaigns. pic.twitter.com/QwZtCe4xh3

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) November 8, 2018

Schleifer, of the Fairness Project, said his group plans to keep pushing ballot initiatives such as Medicaid expansion and a higher minimum wage in other parts of the country going forward, no matter their political leanings.

“People in other states are watching what’s happening,” he said. “I think we’re going to see a lot more of this activity in 2020.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/from-medicaid-to-minimum-wage-even-red-state-voters-backed-progressive-measures/2018/11/07/b0b61572-e2bc-11e8-ab2c-b31dcd53ca6b_story.html?utm_term=.636cb6c7148d

What Bernie described as "not racist" is definitionally racist. SMH. Hope he just apologizes.

I tend to avoid politicians and people who use "absolutely," even when they're clear.

make no mistake

let me be clear

feel like this thread is ripe for revival these days

Phrases I Never Want to Hear Uttered by Talking Heads/Press/Politicians Ever Again

let me make a mistake

make no mistake mistakes were made

bernie quote is dumb, but whatever. he is, however misguidedly, trying to lay blame on the campaigns instead of the voters

i mean is it crazy that i think he was trying and failing to recognize that white people have ingrained antiblack biases without making those same white people recoil from the label of racist

and obviously the latter is a problem, i'm not defending it, i just * think * i see where the language he was using is orthogonal to the actually correct thing, like a misremembered scripted line

otm, I recognized what he was going for but the execution was so off, way moreso than I can recall him being in quite a while, and at like the least opportune moment

another note from colleagues:

https://ips-dc.org/we-have-movement-work-to-do/

We must recognize the sober reality that the president and too many others campaigned on hate—on racism and Islamophobia, on hating immigrants and “the other”—and that in many places it worked. In Texas 59% of white women voted for Ted Cruz against Beto O’Rourke, despite all his policies that will hurt women and children. Racism and division are not anomalies in our country, they are part of the basis on which this country was founded. We have movement work to do.

The most important defeat of the 2018 midterm elections was the fact that 51% of the voting public still did not vote. With all the anger, all the outrage, all the marches and mobilizations, more than half didn’t show up. Certainly many faced structural or institutional problems—for some, the poll lines were too long (by design, as happened in Georgia) and, being low-wage workers with no paid leave, they had to report to work and couldn’t wait that long. Naturalized immigrants in border communities may have been terrified to vote. Others, poor and elderly or disabled, couldn’t get to the polls because they can’t drive/can’t afford a car, and there’s no public transit where they live. We have movement work to do to change that.

But millions more who could have voted stayed home. What if they had gone to the polls instead? What if Democrats had reclaimed the Senate as well as the House? It wouldn’t have meant the end of systemic racism and misogyny, environmental degradation and corporate overlordism, Islamophobia or anti-immigrant laws. Not to speak of endless wars and an out-of-control military budget—plenty of Democrats are longstanding supporters there.

But if more registered voters—more young people, more people of color, more poor people, more women, more immigrants and students and workers and activists—had voted, things might be just a bit better. That’s our real challenge. Not to get caught up in the negatives, the limitations of elections which are always—always—about how we engage with power, not victories in and of themselves. And certainly not to just go chill, not to think the fight is over because we won a few things. The challenge is to mobilize now, harder than ever. Not just about voting, though voting remains a key right we need to continue to fight for. But to mobilize, to organize, to build the movements and the organizations we’re going to need to fight for power. We have a long way to go – last night was only the latest of our beginnings. We have movement work to do.