Democratic (Party) Direction

fwiw, valerio deleted the tweet above after people criticized him for mischaracterizing the press sec's words

1. I deleted a couple of tweets cabout this summary of @PressSec's comments on the filibuster because I now have the transcript and I believe that @ValerioCNN's viral tweet mischaracterized @PressSec's remarks.

🧵https://t.co/lLjnFiDEXw

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) June 25, 2022

the evasive answer that she gave was not great, and also not exactly indicative that biden supports expanding the court. he almost certainly does not. he did support ending the filibuster on laws relating to voting rights though, and i imagine he is also in favor of a carve out for abortion.

anyway, this doesn't take away from the broader point of the dems being useless and consulted-to-death

kinda feel like American democracy is at a point where leadership, particularly at the federal level, has quietly become mere figurehead status, essentially like the British Monarchy. just dumb comforting little stories we like to tell about ourselves for national identity purposes, full of characters who can’t *do* anything except pantomime a certain set of aesthetics we’ll either find comforting or objectionable, usually based on where we live and our consumer choices. capital interests have fully supplanted the ability to “self-govern”—insofar as it has ever existed in this country (outside of white male landowners). the primary difference is that the British at least understand the Queen is a merely a mascot.

I guess the only people who didn’t get the memo are rightwing faux populists. but since nothing they do or think really upsets capital, then hey let ‘em have their little tantrums. it keeps everyone busy and clicking and mad online.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JTtI3D6lqk

sorry folks sleep deprivation turns me into stoned dorm room guy pls don’t ban

https://eoinhiggins.substack.com/p/it-feels-like-they-couldnt-care-less

^^ all that is OTM, idk how you see the Dems as anything but complicit in this. like it was just two weeks ago that Biden was heaping praise on McConnell for being a good friend and a man of his word, even though he cheated the system in plain sight to steal a SC Justice, while Biden himself was VP!! the most unpopular politicians in this country are people like Collins, or Murkowski, or Kasich, or Manchin, or fucking Jeff Flake, those who try to play both sides and wind up serving conservative interests while pissing everyone off. why the hell is the White House straddling that line? they ran on broadly popular policy, accomplished pretty much none of it, and are afraid to act because they don't want to rile up a party who literally calls them the spawn of Satan. it's so pathetic.

now, having said all that, it's not like the Dems will change if you DONT vote for them, so I'm gonna vote for them anyway and hope everyone here does the same

Speaking as someone on the ground so to speak we've, typically, gotten no guidance from the Florida party.

the real job of the state is to support capital

i know i'm adding zero to this discussion here but i've lost hope in things ever getting better, i've lost hope in the democratic party ever changing, i've lost hope in the small leftist wave within the party changing anything. i feel like i've said this several points over the past few years but there's always a little last bit of hope left to break. i think that god bless america video might have finally done it. it's a party of evil people who happened to watch The West Wing once and it'll never be anything more. i want a new party.

With the wave of unionization efforts, it's too bad the "Labor" brand is as bad as "Democratic."

i want a new party

it's less work to occupy the hollow shell of an existing party, like a hermit crab, than to create a new party. which isn't to say that occupying that shell isn't a monumental task all on its own. so, when you notice someone else valiantly trying to inject some life and sense into the Democratic party, cheer them on and maybe throw them some support.

Inside the existing party are powerful and entrenched interests to render your entryism completely ineffective or co-opt you entirely.

we always knew the democratic party was never ever going to deliver socialism but to make up for that they would at least stop the fascists from dragging us back to the stone age. right? that was the devil’s bargain. but they couldn’t even cope with that. so what are they for again? it’s true, they’ve had years to prepare for this moment. where’s the beef???

it's less work to occupy the hollow shell of an existing party, like a hermit crab, than to create a new party. which isn't to say that occupying that shell isn't a monumental task all on its own. so, when you notice someone else valiantly trying to inject some life and sense into the Democratic party, cheer them on and maybe throw them some support.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Monday, June 27, 2022 4:55 PM (forty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

No

So, what you're saying is you don't care about the direction of the Democratic Party. There's a great thread for that. Things You Just Don't Care About

you can talk about a direction without thinking that it's a good direction

Wonder why you haven’t before

(Bad r.e.m. pun, sorry!)

you can talk about a direction without thinking that it's a good direction

you can talk about anything, but talking does not imply caring. for me, caring requires a willingness to engage, not just observe. according to their response, X has abjured any desire for engagement.

This is the direction in which we’re being led, and these absolute morons don’t understand that Trump will easily win in 2024 against Biden. It wouldn’t even be a contest— https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/27/us/politics/biden-2024-democrats-trump.html

"for me, caring requires a willingness to engage, not just observe."

Wrong again!

I'm glad you won't be my caregiver in old age.

OK so I've been thinking about how people on the left talk about, bemoan, lament the Democratic Party — for good and obvious reasons — and I think the framing of those concerns is maybe part of the problem.

Considering the great SCOTUS victories of the past week for assorted right-wing interest groups is instructive. Those interest groups (evangelicals, NRA, the anti-EPA industry sector) did not view the Republican Party as some monolithic force and petition for its attention. They burrowed inside it and took it over. It took several decades to establish anti-abortion/pro-gun/anti-climate-action as default positions of the party, and it took relentless and vicious attacks on anyone in the party who didn't check the box on whatever the pet issue was. Also, those interest groups essentially bought into each other's core issues — the gun people were OK with the god people and vice versa, the checklist of modern mandatory Republican attributes was built box by box.

Meanwhile I feel like groups on the left more tend to see the Democratic Party as something separate from them, like they're Lilliputians shouting up at some giant who occasionally responds. Those responses when they come are almost always disappointing and inadequate. I think the lesson from the right is to understand the party for what it is, a largely hollow vessel for harnessing and using power. The key is to take control of it. No single interest group can do that by itself, but my fantasy version of how this happens is that there is a national unifying of interests on the left — labor, women's/reproductive rights, BLM, LGBTQ rights, climate/environment, gun safety, police/prison reform, economic equality, church/state separatists, public education supporters, healthcare campaigners, etc etc — that comes together outside of the Democratic Party and establishes a broad coalition of already established groups that basically demands the same checklist of every candidate everywhere and either supports them or doesn't. If you want to change what being "a Democrat" means, you have to set the definition you want.

People in the comfortable corporate center of the party will of course resist this, as some comfortable corporate Republicans tried in various ways to keep their own interest groups at a manageable distance from power until they got consumed by them. But the interest-group coalition would just politely say, "Sorry, these are the rules." This takeover would happen first in more progressive states and cities, which is exactly what happened with the GOP and its interest groups, and that's OK despite inevitable screeching from centrist pundits about how it will hurt you in "swing states." You have to build the base where it is, first.

I've been puzzling over the whole "inside the system"/"outside the system" dichotomy because it's always hazy what people mean by working "outside the system" — armed revolution being neither a realistic nor desirable approach, at least imo. But if by "the system" one means the Democratic Party specifically, then I think a takeover strategy is realistic, if you can put that progressive coalition together and hold it together and hold people accountable. I realize there are a lot "ifs" there, and so much of this would depend on good leadership at many different organizations and levels. But it's a much better and more active approach than waiting for something called "the Democratic Party" to get its act together.

I feel like groups on the left more tend to see the Democratic Party as something separate from them, like they're Lilliputians shouting up at some giant who occasionally responds. Those responses when they come are almost always disappointing and inadequate. I think the lesson from the right is to understand the party for what it is, a largely hollow vessel for harnessing and using power. The key is to take control of it.

The Perlstein accounts of that -- movement conservatism's hostile takeover of its target organization -- I found absolutely thrilling. "Holy shit we don't have to ask for their permission, we can let them know that we hate them and just take the party from them.. damn what if 'movement social democracy' conquered the Democratic party?"

One difference, at this point, is that far fewer Democrats now HATE the Clintons and Obama, as traitors, as Republicans then hated Eisenhower and Rockefeller, as traitors.

yeah, it seems like a majority of Democrats seem to actually like their establishment figures, whereas Republicans view a guy like McConnell as a moderate sellout.

And I'm not sure hatred works as well as a motivator on the left as the right. Hatred of specific people and groups is core to a lot of the right's priorities, not so much the left's — which do, overall, imagine a place for everyone in a just society. I feel like a version from the left would use anger, for sure, but anger joined to a larger mission of justice. (Again, this is just my pipe dream of how that kind of coalition could come together. I'm not naive about how hard it is to pull any two groups together, never mind dozens.)

Key difference between the two situations - the insurgents in the GOP had a shit ton of money on their side to sustain them for the long haul until they could force patrician conservatives into accommodation (by making it clear they weren’t going to fuck with their money).

That situation can never exist on the left because there will never be a social democratic Koch foundation or network of southern car dealers who’ll back think tanks.

Yep, that's true. But there is a lot of money out there available to progressive causes, collectively they raise billions a year. A progressive coalition could definitely afford to primary a Democrat in a safe D seat. And as the Republicans have shown, you only have to actually do a couple to make a lot more fall in line.

Again, so much depends on good organizing and good leadership, which aren't things you can just magically manifest.

One issue is that the money availed to progressive causes should actually go to progress causes. I’d be horrified if my donations to bailout funds and decarceration groups were funneled to a political campaign.

Sure, of course you don't rob those individual orgs. But a progressive coalition could have a political fund to support good candidates. Would basically have to, to have any impact.

I don't know that Republicans fell in line after a couple of insurgent victories - the gap between traditional Republicans and the Bircher/Moral Majority/Reagan/Trump insurgencies was always pretty narrow focused more on attitude than ideology. The two always agreed on the regulatory state, on the moral sorting mechanism of capitalism and Republican social moderation never really existed.

The Democratic divide is about money and the donor/commercial property magnate class of the party can't come to an agreement with progressives because the latter threaten the former on an existential level. Hollowing out the party is the only option and that does make it 'something separate from' progressive interests. What it would take is not just a couple of primary victories (we've had those - and still wound up with Biden/Schumer/Pelosi running the show) but actual painful losses by Democrats forcing them to appeal harder to progressive interests - the Squad doesn't get anywhere if Clinton is elected in 2016 IMO.

pretty narrow and focused more

And of course even that sidesteps the question of whether the donor/magnate class of Democrats would prefer to cede power to the Republicans or progressives if it came down to it. Maybe they take the painful losses in stride because their taxes are low and they're already sympathetic to locking poor people up for ruining the view with their homeless encampments.

I think it's a mistake to think of the "donor/magnate class" as a fixed entity. Donors and magnates have their own pet issues. Some of them are even good ones, like climate or reproductive rights. But in any case they can do what they're gonna do. No successful progressive movement can be like, "What will we do without the magnates?"

Their pet issues take a back seat to their money. It's not a question of 'what will we do without the magnates' but when you're talking about 'take control of' the Democratic Party and comparing it to the GOP, the response of the donors/magnates/landlords who own and run the party is pretty important.

The donors and magnates of the GOP stayed because the interests of the insurgents didn't actually threaten them. That's not the case with the Democrats.

Two things I have come to be fairly confident about in American politics are that (1) a third party is almost impossible to build unless you're somewhere with a non-first-past-the-post voting system (ranked choice etc), and that (2) on the other hand, the parties are much more like empty vessels than in other countries, and therefore it's much easier for insurgents to run and win on one of the two major parties' tickets. The problem is that this works much better in safe D districts - you can look at the NY state legislature now, for example, and see that a bunch of young and relatively left candidates have won seats. But so far that's not a formula for national power. You get a few AOC type congresspeople, but they have limited power and it's hard to build a critical mass of them.

Yep and yep — I didn't say any of it was easy! Even with the funding advantages, it was 15 years from Goldwater to Reagan, and another 40 from Reagan to overturning Roe, e.g.

But yes, right, you start in the safe districts and build out. That's what the right did. But the key thing I'm really talking about is a progressive coalition strong enough to hold together around a core set of issues and just fight for them relentlessly, cycle after cycle. It can't just be a bunch of groups and interests snarling around the pantlegs of the Democrats, that's where we already are. And that thing doesn't exist right now. But there's no obvious reason it couldn't.

I agree with progressives who say the Democratic Party acts like they are beholden to it. The old "Where else you gonna go" routine. The path to power is to reverse that arrow, make the party beholden to the agenda. Again, it's what the right has done.

I appreciate your positivity Tipsy.

I agree with you, tipsy, tho my
optimism that such will happen is pretty minuscule. Still, practically, your point about the party being beholden to the agenda is well-taken and important.

I think, too, that one of the major reasons for disillusionment on the left and in progressively minded people is that the party often acts like it is beholden to the agenda when it is merely paying lip service to it or engaging in theatrics that aren’t substantive policy-wise— see the kneeling in kente cloths by a bunch of cop-loving fossils, for example.

absolutely booming post tipsy

Seconding. I plan to share some of it at my next meeting. Thank you.

A progressive coalition could definitely afford to primary a Democrat in a safe D seat.

I don’t think this is all that common or easy due to how “safe D seats” tend to have a massive amount of Establishment types backing them who aren’t good at anything else other than punching left and defending their own position.

Safe D Seats tend to reside in rich cities full of upper middle class types whose self-image and pocketbook will fight against anybody more progressive coming along.

I think there might be more value in trying to get some people in as independents(or fuck, even socialists) into office in other parts of the country

Independent and third-party candidates could be good options some places, it depends on the local political dynamics and who the candidates are. That would just put more pressure on the Democrats.

(Knowledge of the local landscape everywhere is also important, and there are already groups almost everywhere that are informed and engaged. A lot of this would just be connecting existing resources and expertise.)

#PROJECTION: Rep. Danny Davis will win his primary after a challenge from progressive Kina Collins. #IL07 #ElectionDay #Elections2022 pic.twitter.com/Qa0XfwY4C4

— Democracy Desk (@DemocracyDesk) June 29, 2022

Oh thank god, the median age of a Democratic Congressman might have dropped below 76.

I think viewing the Democratic Party as a top-down organization with a single vision is completely wrong, especially post-Obama. The DNC, the DCCC, and the individual state parties do a really mediocre job of coordinating and any movement within the party is going to have to come from building larger caucuses in the house, or competence from larger state orgs, imo

There have been a myriad of articles written about how Obama’s campaign worked largely outside the DNC and he let the opportunity to rebuild it rot on the vine.