Democratic (Party) Direction

I guess Poppy and his types were pretty uneasy w evangelicals, but they liked winning more than they were embarrassed by a bunch of Christ-bitten rubes. Also, white values voters with an inclination to fear communism don’t upset capital

I think "Vote for Trump even if you don't like him because you will get something you want" is a better message than "Vote Hillary you idiots Trump is bad!" even if the latter is arguably a good enough reason to vote Hillary

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, July 1, 2022 11:50 AM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

sure, but it must be said that Hillary got 3 million more votes in 2016, and Biden 8 million more in 2020, a big part of the issue for Dems is they have to win by so much more. for god's sake look at the Wisconsin legislature, Dems won the popular vote by like 10 points but only got a third of the seats. I mean all these conversations are worth happening but issue 1A for them has got to be making sure that Democrat votes count just as much as Republican votes and they've failed miserably there.

of course one other issue re: "getting what you want" is that the satisfaction is so much more immediate for Republican voters as their foremost priority, as they've articulated time and time again, is to make people they don't like upset. doing blatantly evil things will do that. I vote Democrat even if most of their policies wouldn't directly benefit me, and yeah that's a big part of why things feel so stagnant, personally. I don't even get the satisfaction of watching these idiots get pissed off because, who's gonna argue against stuff like the Child Tax Credit, or wind farms on the East Coast? it doesn't trigger anybody, it's just common sense

I will argue against wind farms on the east coast

There is more to the NIMBY/"you're ruining my view" people.

Offshore windfarms devastate local marine ecosystems, and invite non-native marine life to inhhabit the artificial reefs that such wind farms create. That's only the beginning—

the idea that we can solve problems of emissions and climate change by engaging in acts that wantonly destroy ecosystems and lead to habitat loss is absolutely fucking bonkers and the height of hubris.

And don't get me started on the emissions caused by building, transporting, and maintaining windfarms in places like Wyoming and etc. It's like tote bags— they do a fine job for what they're used for, but they aren't actually all that eco-friendly.

It's been so dispiriting to see how ill-prepared the Democrats seem to be in the wake of Dobbs--it feels like they had nothing in the can for this eventuality. This was a scenario with a high probability of occurring--shouldn't a major political party have a filing cabinet full of contingency plans for the end of Roe, a repeal of ACA, etc.? Isn't that what all these think tanks, consultants and wonks are paid millions of dollars for?

I understand the plan is "vote harder/elect a bigger majority"--but then what? Why can't Pelosi/Schumer/whoever assure us that they have a strategy? Hold a press conference and announce, "If we gain a majority, we'll 1) introduce and pass a law containing a, b, c and d; 2) Do X to ensure Y; 3) Safeguard future rights by doing Z."

Instead, it feels like the situation is, "Give us a majority, and then we'll figure something out. You know, explore our options, brainstorm."

That would require them to have a strategy. Or even desire a strategy.

the idea that we can solve problems of emissions and climate change by engaging in acts that wantonly destroy ecosystems and lead to habitat loss is absolutely fucking bonkers and the height of hubris.

― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table), Friday, 1 July 2022 17:30 (six hours ago) link

What can we do to solve problems of emissions and climate change that doesn't have any ecological consequences whatsoever? I'm pro-nuclear power for example, but I imagine if you don't like wind farms you don't like those either. Mining of the minerals needed to make lithium batteries and solar panels is pretty dirty business too. These are conservative talking points.

or I guess I should say fossil fuel industry talking points

They’re also radical environmental talking points, fwiw.

Reduce consumption? No. Limit air travel? No. Limit farm and ranch subsidies? No. Mandate crop diversification while limiting overtillage? No.

But destroy fragile ecosystems just so we can continue “our way of life”? Sure, sounds great.

YOU are the conservative here, NOT me.

jeez, table, stop with the accusations. You could've made your points and omitted the last sentence.

(I think no one will accept being less comfortable. The difficulty is to make it equally comfortable or more comfortable at equal or less cost and to communicate the trajectory as well as has been done for infiation, for example. I wish this is how global politics and influence could be shaped in the future. Oil has been the stick.)

end the military? no

Many people who are in favour of renewable energy projects (which may well do some ecological damage) are also strongly in favour of reducing consumption, flying less, questioning "growth", cutting meat production, etc.

These things are not opposed, at least in terms of the constituencies that support them.

I wonder if personal lifestyle choices can make a difference when weighed against industrial consumption if on a sufficient scale. I guess the point is to make the choice anyway, and industrial production might respond accordingly.

I was thinking along the lines of accepting a fundamentally lower standard of living by choice for environmental reasons, but I don't think that will ever be a choice anyone will be compelled to make. Perhaps instead the gradual increase in the standard of living enjoyed by the majority would begin to reverse itself over time as the cost of living got more expensive when factoring in environmental costs.

The military would probably still be around. I was thinking that less emphasis might be placed on extraction of natural resources and more on technological innovation.

Kate Soper wrote a recent book on this that has its flaws, but has some good points about how our “standard of living” and “way of life” are actually not all that great, and that one of the main ways to “sell” degrowth to a skeptical populace is to talk about how degrowth would inevitably allow us more connection to our families and communities, as well as allow us a more simpatico relationship with our environments.

Sorry I attacked you, man alive, I just don’t like being compared to conservative or fossil fuel lobbyists, as my perspective is entirely oppositional.

Xp I don’t take any offense. I think we probably all want human life to be able to continue in some non miserable form and want to minimize ecological disruption. I’m all for reduced consumption, I just don’t think it’s possible to prevent global warming by that alone without causing untold human suffering, and thereby making the solution the same as the problem. And I don’t think there is any way to live free of ecological sin. Cities, for example, while efficient at reducing carbon footprints, are in many other ways ecological disasters.

I guess I just don't agree with you about the "untold human suffering" part— I truly believe that in "the west," at least, we would all be a lot happier and healthier if we consumed less and did so less often, but the way that so much of our society is set up makes that seem unthinkable to a lot of people. Like, many people genuinely believe that you need to buy a new phone every year, or a new wardrobe every season, when that thinking is obviously false and completely oppositional to what a good life actually is, imho.

it's also categorically false, cost of a 100% renewables transition would be recouped in just over 5 years, this was literally just covered on ILX although the thread escapes me

^ ^ ^

A 100% renewables transition would include the kind of habitat disruption table is talking about.

yes, and prevent much more down the road. hard bargain but I would take it,personally

Same! But that’s what I’m saying, there are going to be hard bargains to strike no matter what.

Most humans try to defer making hard bargains until they are forced to.

Kate Soper wrote a recent book on this.

Sorry I attacked you, man alive, I just don’t like being compared to conservative or fossil fuel lobbyists, as my perspective is entirely oppositional.

― broccoli rabe thomas (the table is the table), Saturday, 2 July 2022 16:24 (one hour ago) link

No worries. I didn't mean to compare you to them either, only meant that there's a lot of (quietly) fossil fuel industry-funded stuff out there that's like "solar power farms destroy habitat" or whatever. And some of it may even be accurate, I just think there are going to be tradeoffs no matter what.

_Kate Soper wrote a recent book on this._


The composer Kate Soper?

I agree on 'less consumption' being necessary (and good) but what that actually looks like is always pretty vague - the vast majority of people don't get a new phone and wardrobe every year. Most consumer spending is food, housing and transport, which you can streamline (with massive public investment) but the truly discretionary individual spending is nibbling at the edges at best.

I think we pretty much need to pursue all avenues - technocratic solutions, renewables, reduced consumption, etc. I'm skeptical of the utopian version of degrowth and I think it would probably be regressive and harsh at the bottom in practice.

I mean, I’m legit advocating for a complete reorganization of society, so I get all of these obstacles. It’s just that if we want to avoid the worst, then such a reorganization is going to need to happen anyway.

In the meantime, I’m still against OWFs because frankly I care more about marine habitat and ecosystems than I do about reinforcing shitty energy practices and policies. Call me crazy but I’ll never be convinced that the only thing that can save the planet is fucking it up more.

They’re also radical environmental talking points, fwiw.

Reduce consumption? No. Limit air travel? No. Limit farm and ranch subsidies? No. Mandate crop diversification while limiting overtillage? No.

But destroy fragile ecosystems just so we can continue “our way of life”? Sure, sounds great.

YOU are the conservative here, NOT me.

Making the perfect the enemy of the good in this way is definitely a major industry disinfo talking point. The only “radical environmentalists” I see taking this line in general are boomers thoroughly entrenched in a 1970s ecological puritan time warp position.

Maybe you didn’t get the memo yet, but we’re fucked. Yeah we can keep our natural gas power AND protect the niche habitats off of Cape Cod, but that will mean dooming several entire island nations to a choice between dying from slow starvation or fast armed conflict. So yay Cape Cod I guess.

I came here to post this, but damn this thread took a quick turn towards the shitty:

BREAKING: Biden announces plans to expand oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska the day after the devastating supreme court decision on climate, and despite clear warnings from the world's climate scientists that fossil fuel expansion must end immediately.

— Peter Kalmus (@ClimateHuman) July 1, 2022

In hindsight I should’ve just taken it to the US dystopia thread and dodged this one entirely, let you kids vent here all you need to.

I’ve quite literally never agreed with you on anything, so your beliefs and opinions mean nothing to me.

"kids" huh

xxp I'm almost 56, asshole

THe redirected page content for the link in the thread question seems mournful, as does the appeal for funding that shows as a banner until you x it out. The latter also strikes me as not good messaging or framing. It's as if no one really believes in their better self. (I googled and found that the site had interesting founders.)

It strikes me that people can have worthy, principled debates about the pros and cons of climate policies, but meanwhile the (Democratic) VP's comments on this topic are as follows:

this can’t be real 😭 pic.twitter.com/9mYOLlvXDe

— Julianne Neely (@juleneely) July 1, 2022

I'm 100% of the belief that Biden's people are actively undermining her so she doesn't try to bump him off (politically) for 2024.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3edtd9AkWg

I'm 100% convinced that Biden's people are actively undermining her so she doesn't try to bump him off (politically) for 2024.

illinois people, is this true?

To drop the bit for a minute: people like JB because he was a Democrat who ran on things that were very popular amongst Democrats, and then he did basically *all* of those things in office. Somehow, that is rare. He delivers for the base in a way we expect from red state Govs. https://t.co/w7LtkQpGum

— Socialists for Pritzker (@PritzkerForPrez) June 29, 2022

He had a really good spring 2019 legislative session where he pass legal weed, capital infrastructure bill, and balanced the budget for the first time in many years. Of course with a Democratic super majority in the ILGA. Other than failing on his fair tax plan, has held steady through Covid. He’s been good, but our bar for a good governor is very very very low.

That said, I don’t want him to be prez because we may never get a good governor again.

https://www.salon.com/2022/07/01/sinema-plan-to-codify-abortion-rights--then-fundraises-on-protecting-womens-health-care/

Thank God the party cleared the way for her to start with.

was going to joke about making his sister governor as a replacement but apparently she's a Lincoln Project Republican

I agree it seems plausible that she has been given a difficult portfolio that, with limited information, seems intended to discredit her. The media coverage has been awful and seems such an about-face from during Obama's presidency that it makes me wonder about Biden (or his influence with the media (but not seriously)).

The greatest cost one might have to pay might not be the new wardrobe but face-to-face interactions. Both require a belief in presence but the latter I think believes in chance and reciprocity.

I ask myself: why and how is VP Harris so bad?

True, the clips of her being idiotic are a self-selecting sample. I only see her when she's bad. But wasn't that true, for many of us, with Danforth Quayle and Sarah Palin?

VP Harris comes across like someone who hasn't really been elected to this post at all, who is filling in or pretending to be VP for half an hour. But it's not just that she is VP -- she also held high office in a huge state before this. She has tons of experience. Why hasn't it made her better at talking and thinking in public?

Being a political operator, especially one that seems unwilling to acknowledge the contradiction at the heart of her own project, does not make one a good politician or public speaker. Her public appearances are as mangled and incoherent as her ideology.