Democratic (Party) Direction

It’s really a testament to the fact she was still in the grinding phase of her career that few tagged her as a Podesta or Abedin level person when she really was! I have to give her credit for doing the work and only being on that second tier of criticism, but trying to make up for a lack of public controversy by being very online

the 2016 weirdos hollering about spirit cooking and she’s all “I got a moma day pass”

What are you talking about? Neera Tanden is embarrassing and bad.

She's a funny and human kind of embarrassing and bad, though. Beats most Democratic "operatives."

I certainly find self-destructive and clownish posting to be relatable.

<3

The point was made in different ways, by different commentators of at least outwardly different political persuasions, with different code words and different bogeys—feminists, socialists, police abolitionists, transgender people, social-justice warriors, wokeness, identity politics in general. However they might have varied in their particulars, these arguments all circled the same thesis: The members of the working class—by which is always meant the white working class and very often, incoherently but significantly, the white middle class, too—have fled the Democratic Party because of its abandonment of the firm materiality of class politics for the soft superfluities of culture and identity.

By my calculations, we are now in the fifth decade of people making some version of this claim.

If white working class so deeply cherishes "the firm materiality of class politics" that they fled the Democratic Party for supposedly abandoning it, why the fuck did they senselessly flee into the party that actively and continuously prosecutes class warfare against them? It's a stupid claim on its face.

that's a great article, articulated what's wrong with a lot of lazy tropes that have been out in force since the election (and also for our entire lives)

The Democratic party was never purely a party of class politics in the sense of a European-style labor party. We never had a labor party. We had a party that once relied on unions as part of its coalition. Unions waned in influence and the Democratic party increasingly looked to tech and wall street for funding, which was a sort of self-reinforcing cycle. But I think that the kinds of people who might have actually swung Democrat to Republican are the kinds of people who don't feel that much of a perceptible material difference in their conditions under democratic versus republican administrations. Because while it's true that Republicans would love to gut social security and medicare, they're powerless to do so, and meanwhile the Democrats openly say stupid shit like "those jobs aren't coming back" and "learn to code" and stroke their own chins at their high-IQ cold realism. I don't quite accept the premise that people are fleeing "into the party that actively and continuously prosecutes class warfare against them," because at least since Clinton, Democrats have given the impression that they are also prosecuting class warfare against them.

Also, jobs and economic populism was a huge part of Trump's messaging (even if anyone who trusted him on that was a sucker) and I don't know why commentators are so hell bent on ignoring this part of his appeal

Their paycheck depends etc

I'm suspicious whenever someone waves a hand around the words working class and lumps everyone who's used the words in together.

Claire McCaskill is obviously not talking about the working class in the same way as Bernie Sanders or Ilhan Omar (Craggs uses Thomas Frank as the avatar of 'the left' though I wonder who more people have heard talk about politics between those three), she's using it purely as a dog whistle - her economic record was garbage. What I see from the 'progressive wing' is that the Democrats aren't delivering economically or culturally.

The "fifth decade of people making some version of this claim" - yeah, that coincides with the Watergate Babies, the vanguard of the neoliberal turn and rejection of New Deal liberalism/transactional politics for anyone but the donor class.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/dianne-feinsteins-missteps-raise-a-painful-age-question-among-senate-democrats

a not great situation!

Oh I see, but when a man shows obvious signs of cognitive decline, we elect him president (twice). #feminism

Oof that article

There was a similarly-detailed and -backgrounded article on Feinstein before the election, too.

"Schumer had several serious and painful talks with Feinstein, according to well-informed sources. Overtures were also made to enlist the help of Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum. Feinstein, meanwhile, was surprised and upset by Schumer’s message. He had wanted her to step aside on her own terms, with her dignity intact, but “she wasn’t really all that aware of the extent to which she’d been compromised,” one well-informed Senate source told me. “It was hurtful and distressing to have it pointed out.” Compounding the problem, Feinstein seemed to forget about the conversations soon after they talked, so Schumer had to confront her again. “It was like Groundhog Day, but with the pain fresh each time.” Anyone who has tried to take the car keys away from an elderly relative knows how hard it can be, he said, adding that, in this case, “It wasn’t just about a car. It was about the U.S. Senate.”

ooooof

There was a similarly-detailed and -backgrounded article on Feinstein before the election, too.

she's up again in 2024, i believe. if she isn't somehow forced to resign, i fully expect the well-informed electorate to vote her in yet again, because it's a name they recognize

Meanwhile, the Feinstein situation has triggered the latest round in a larger generational fight in the Democratic Senate caucus. Unlike the Republican leadership in the Senate, which rotates committee chairmanships, the Democrats have stuck with the seniority system. Some frustrated younger members argue that this has undermined the Democrats’ effectiveness by giving too much power to elderly and sometimes out-of-touch chairs, resulting in uncoördinated strategy and too little opportunity for members in their prime.

on the other hand, what are you going to do? the seniority system has been proven to be the best

Is there a general discussion on US generontocracy anywhere? It's fascinating to me how bad it's got and what the US might do about it.
I recently listened to the ALAB podcast episode on it which mentioned that something like 12% of 1200 federal judges are over 80, some are over 90 and until recently they'd had a 100 year old guy who'd been appointed by JFK!

and what the US might do about it.

Feinstein is only personally worth $95 million, it would be cruel to make her retire to a scant $250,000/pa Senatorial pension in these trying times 🙏🏽

pic.twitter.com/avze6yWjNX

— Post-Left Twitch Creamer (@RuckCohlchez) December 10, 2020

Wow milo has found the exact minimum example of what even I consider distasteful somehow

You can sub "Ruth Bader Ginsberg" in that article.

the ALAB podcast had an entire episode talking about the problems of senility and lifetime judge appointments

the situation is... not good

Strike a bargain where if you are a federal judge you don’t get to go to the doctor anymore, to see a doctor you have to resign forever

lifetime judge appointments is a huge problem that requires a legislative solution, so no chance anytime soon

Unlike the Republican leadership in the Senate, which rotates committee chairmanships, the Democrats have stuck with the seniority system. Some frustrated younger members argue that this has undermined the Democrats’ effectiveness by giving too much power to elderly and sometimes out-of-touch chairs, resulting in uncoordinated strategy and too little opportunity for members in their prime.

^^this^^ is a huge problem that could be fixed during an afternoon meeting, if the people in the meeting weren't power-hungry pricks

if the people in the meeting weren't falling asleep at the meeting after a lunch of cottage cheese and Campbell's chicken soup.

the age thing is especially noticeable when it involves tech/social media. it is a joke to have someone like feinstein talking about twitter.

shit, i'm 37 and if i were in charge of something about tik tok, i would make sure that i have someone who is in their early 20s there to help me make sure that i don't make an ass out of myself. there's no prerequisite for committee chairs to be an expert about everything their committee tackles (it's impossible), and of course they have dozen of aide-underlings running around, composing the texts that the old people then try to say out loud for the cameras (sometimes twice in a row, at length, on accident, in feinstein's case). but still, it is the height of arrogance for a 140-year-old to try to pretend like they know how twitter works and what the problem is, let alone how to hold them accountable

longish essay in The American Prospect:

Virtually every Republican campaign ad depicted Black rioters and decried Democrats who will “defund the police” and who are now strongly opposed by the police unions. Trump held multiple rallies a day in the final week in the battleground states, where he attacked the liberals, elites, professors, and scientists who looked down on them, and liberal Democrats who were indulging the violent Blacks who are threatening to invade your suburbs and communities. The Trump campaign focused on Blacks, rarely mentioning immigrants—his main focus in 2016 and 2018.

BUT TRUMP’S RACIALIZING OF THE ELECTION was only part of the story on why Democrats underperformed. They were not pulled down by “fear of socialism,” my research showed. They were pulled down by the lack of any economic relief and any economic offer to counter Trump’s racist imagery and push to open the economy. Democrats were pulled down by their offering no competing narrative to Trump’s drumbeat on “law and order” on what was at stake in November. Democrats were not heard decrying the health care costs that are killing people, or battling for lower insurance and drug costs, or battling corporations and their big tax breaks—as they were in the midterms. Biden ended up with no advantage on who would be better for the middle class.

sounds like they were pulled down by fear of socialism tbh, except it's their own fear

Democrats were not heard decrying the health care costs that are killing people, or battling for lower insurance and drug costs, or battling corporations and their big tax breaks

They weren't? I feel like all that stuff is Democratic stump speech red meat.

Now if you think they're not going to DO anything about those problems, fine, that's a claim you can argue. But I can't understand the claim that they didn't *say* they were going to do it.

yeah, had the same feeling about that statement

https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/we-live-in-a-society/

Xpost Yeah they talked about that stuff all the time. It was interesting to see how often someone like political reporter Dave Weigel (who is sympathetic that the party needs to move left on certain things) would push back on that lazily repeated “Dems never talk about healthcare only Russia and orange man bad etc” narrative because he had the job of actually attending rallies and seeing what Dems actually campaigned on.

I don’t know that dusting off the post 2016 “Bernie Would Have Won” “economic anxiety” takes really works for 2020. Kinda have to go deeper and even acknowledge flaws in your own priors tbh.

milo, i went to high school with Gabe! we were in Human Rights Club together lol.

https://mainernews.com/how-sara-gideon-lost-to-collins-the-day-after-she-entered-the-race/

Weird how Mark Kelly and John Hickenlooper somehow managed to survive early endorsements by the DSCC, I guess Arizonans and Coloradans love big out-of-state money dumps unlike the real folk of Maine

https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/we-live-in-a-society/

― onlyfans.com/hunterb (milo z), Saturday, December 12, 2020 6:46 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is very very good

There was an NYT piece/post mortem about that Maine Senate race that was more convincing if dispiriting in the sense that Maine voters were hardly policy concerned voters. But it made a similar point about how Gideon raising money from out of state became a turnoff. Made one think nonsensical Maine voters and Susan Collins deserve each other.

“ Jared Golden, who represents Maine’s conservative 2nd Congressional district, supports “Medicare for All;” he was reelected this fall in a district that once again voted for Trump.”

Ehh Golden actually supports an incremental path toward M4A (cosponsored the same legislation that Joe Kennedy did) and actually ran on expanding the ACA.

Lots of good stuff on money and local organising in that Maine piece.

In the aftermath of Election Day, some top Democrats sought to blame progressives for the party’s poor showing in Senate and House races, but the DSCC’s record speaks for itself. Of the 18 Senate candidates endorsed by the committee, only four were victorious last month.

As the campaign gained speed, the pandemic and the national uprising against police brutality gave Gideon two big opportunities to break from the moderate pack and distinguish herself from Collins, who denied that “systemic racism” is a “problem” in Maine [...] but Gideon’s position on racial justice was limited to training-manual adjustments like banning chokeholds and racial profiling, as well as further study of the problems that have plagued Black Americans since Reconstruction.

https://i.imgur.com/g7WQ2QC.jpg

the DSCC can never fail, it can only be failed

there's a great error message at the link in G@bbneb's opening post btw

https://i.imgur.com/FsLhxc9.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/UrSqEHF.jpg

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/12/iowa-caucus-dnc-report-444649

hey turns out that things went agley in the Iowa primary bcz the DNC demanded that the local party (give the DNC access to) force their bad third-party-built Buttiegieg-funded app report to the DNC's database, then when the DNC's database had not been configured to receive data from the app, the DNC demanded the party just stop reporting election results

also the DNC refused to cooperate with an audit to find out what went wrong

appears to be garden variety incompetence coupled w party hubris but I do wonder how something like this would be reported by the concern trolls at CNN/ MSNBC or hell NPR if this had happened in oh idk a South American country where a popular leftist candidate was on the ballot

I thought this Eric Levitz piece was quite good:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/democrats-rural-voters-2024-workers-wages-weed.html

In the past, Democrats sought to broaden their party’s appeal by decentralizing their messaging, giving candidates leeway to run on whatever themes played well in their discrete districts. In today’s nationalized environment, however, growing the party’s big tent actually requires centralizing messaging. Or so the Democratic data analyst David Shor argues. In his account, the nationalization of politics means that moderate and progressive Democrats are yoked to the same brand, like it or not. As such, they should come together around a handful of substantively worthwhile policies — that poll well in every part of the country — and talk about those policies (and only those policies) whenever possible.

...

What centralizing messaging should entail is reaching internal consensus around a small number of policies that are (1) broadly popular, (2) difficult if not impossible for Republicans to support, (3) especially resonant with non-college-educated voters, and (4) of high substantive value (since centering these policies in messaging will mean putting them toward the top of the governing agenda upon victory). Ideally, the policies would also lend themselves to a snappy, alliterative slogan. ... “Workers, Wages, Weed” seems like a solid fit for the Democrats’ branding needs.

Thanks, jaymc.