Democratic (Party) Direction

Was he bullied by the left or the right into his current day.. situation

left

mocked for doing weird centrist things and being a hashtag-resistance guy iirc

I can’t even remember the name of that website he made that was meant to verify quotes by politicians but it was so harebrained that... well, he deserved the jokes and I think it eventually registered

I don’t know much about Daou but that tweet is otm and Nancy is a real life Lucille Bluth now.

I would say save the bullying for the people we pay to “represent” “us”.

He was a grifter when he was doing the same exact thing he do now but in a resistance way but you can tell
he saw the light and it’s not grifting when he do it now.

not too many former actual Clinton pals punching center these days. he's been at it long enough that I suspect his conversion is "genuine" (inasmuch as any social media persona can be)

hey remember glenn beck's three seconds as a resistance guy

Appreciated this Eric Levitz piece on the "pathological tendency within a small subset of the U.S. left...of mining anti-political cynicism out of its own naïveté":
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/jimmy-dore-aoc-medicare-for-all-strategy.html

A clear-eyed view of the political obstacles to single-payer is compatible with a wide array of strategic judgments. What it is not compatible with, however, is the judgment that anyone who does not push for Medicare for All’s passage right now is a lying, careerist shill with no commitment to the cause.

does Daou have a Patreon? is he paid to consult? (Genuine questions i literally have no idea who he is). How does he get paid? And is he more or less of a grifter than Neera Tanden or Robbie Mook or Lisa Smith or those Mothership dorks?

Sir those people have jobs

I feel like the word "grifter" has lost its meaning.

(NB: I have no idea who "Lisa Smith or those Mothership dorks" are. Maybe they are grifters!)

Sir those people have jobs

And so how are they grifters, exactly? Who are they grifting? What's the grift?

They work on actual political campaigns. If Lis Smith could do that well running some small town mayor’s campaign Bernie probably should have tried to steal her away imo.

Oh...Lis, not Lisa. Maybe Chinedu is the mark.

I feel like the word "grifter" has lost its meaning.

It’s true that the word has lost its meeting to an extent but people who thought Daou wasn’t on the level before but he is now because he does the same thing but mirrors their exact priors back to them this time reveals something probably.

Oh man. Forgot about Chinedu. The fact that he turned out to be a real guy should have inspired some more reflection than it did.

Sir those people have jobs

― “Big” Don Abernathy, Tuesday, December 22, 2020 8:52 AM (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hilary Clinton paid Peter Daou

If the CIA could do that well running some small town mayor’s campaign Bernie probably should have tried to steal them away imo.

The “Pete is CIA” thing is a solid example of not learning the lesson of the Chinedu debacle

That sentence is almost coherent.

god i'm so glad big don abernathy is a regular poster now

two things can be true xp

what would we do without your input big don

split other hairs and not your hairs, that's what

Daou is obviously not to be trusted, he turned left after the failure of the fact check thing and then not having his loyalty to Clinton repaid.

But his face turn is hilarious and since he has no power in the world, and no one laughing at the idea of Chairman Daou has any power in the world - who fuckin' cares?

yes, he's fundamentally a funny figure. his house music is not bad too.

Yeah that’s true

"Grifter" seems to mean something like "social media influencer for politics" now. Given how con-artist-like or at least -adjacent other kinds of influencers are, I can mostly forgive how broad the term has become, even though it does imply people are cashing in on twitter or podcasting to a degree that is probably literally impossible.

imo "grifter" means you are materially benefitting from a genuinely outsized, possibly fraudulent rep and not from doing an actual thing. eric garland for instance I happily call a grifter because he leveraged #resistance paranoia into (possibly?) lucrative paywalled content despite making no sense ever

peter daou's album of "piano elegies for america" currently stands at 275 views so I suspect if he is attempting a grift he is v v bad at it

I guess seeing it applied to (imo) lavishly overpaid consultants that seem to only fail upwards doesn’t really bother me

like maybe Neera doesn’t make much more than a higher ranking associate at a Big Law firm (also overpaid), but those folks have to actually produce, bill ~2k hours etc.

and I wouldn’t even begrudge them these salaries if they were at the least out pushing for genuine improvements in the lives of the people who have to bring them their DoorDash and handle their Amazon packages. during a gd pandemic.

The Mothership/Neera/think tank grifter call comes down to whether or not you think their goal is to win elections and make policy, or if their goal is essentially no different from any other marketing/PR firm (ie to skim money off the top) regardless of results.

imo Mothership: grifters, Neera: not grifter, just a person with shitty politics but she does appear to want to govern

Sure dude

Xpost

fair point

xp

you got it dude Don

This Mothership?
https://mothershipstrategies.com/

Yes, they're the people behind the constant IF YOU DON'T SEND ME $5 RIGHT NOW MY DOG WILL BE KILLED fundraising e-mails.

Can their "scare old people into giving money" tactic work possibly as well it does for Trumpers? I hope not honestly

It's extremely effective at getting people to donate AFAICT.

Less effective at winning races - they made their name raking in the cash for 2017 Ossoff

did they do McGrath bc wowowowow

people who thought Daou wasn’t on the level before but he is now

I mean, the job might have been a grift on society but the sentiments seemed genuine in the past? I have no real way of gauging it, and maybe it's all posturing in search of a job or increased clout. But it's the same vague hollering into the void of twitter. I did not mean to imply that he was a reliable source of information or that his tweeting was worse then than now, just that he's pivoted.

and I think sic's link was about the video clip, not that it was Daou tweeting it. even a dude like Daou can spot a banana

It doesn’t matter what his link was about. Conversation shifted in ways that were beyond my control and it will probably happen again.

It doesn’t matter what his link was about. Conversation shifted in ways that were beyond my control and it will probably happen again.

You're the one who shifted it by bringing up grifting!

I remembered it being more of a fluid collectively driven and gradual conversational shift but maybe your right.