Democratic (Party) Direction

I'm voting for a Democratic president because he/she will nominate the judges and justices who most advance my causes.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

that's awesome! you know what's best for you, and i'm totally in support of you doing that. but why does it infuriate you that clifton heard is skeptical? i mean, look, i hate to be talking about the poor guy when he's not even here - does it infuriate you that _i'm_ skeptical? that i didn't vote for Joe Biden, that I'm not going to vote for Joe Biden? If so, why? is it my _fault_ that these judges are in office? is it heard's _fault_?

i voted for clinton in 2016, in the primaries and in the general election, because, well, i thought she was the most electable candidate. now it's 2022, and i'm out as a trans woman, and clinton is saying that the democrats shouldn't support trans rights because it might lose them votes, and you know, i feel like supporting clinton was a mistake. i try to learn from my mistakes.

Depends where you live, as ever

Plus, voters like Heard are soft Dems if they think Trump will save them.

I work for a local Dem-affiliated group because to be queer in Florida under DeSantis is a rare gift.

Sure, they’re soft Dems. You don’t interview the guy who’s going to vote for Biden no matter what.

HRC may be shitty on trans issues now, but would the two or three justices she appointed have been more or less likely to uphold trans rights than Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett?

The problem is that her lack of conviction makes that question impossible to answer. I mean I do understand what you're saying, but she is the one who opened the door to the possibility that some political calculation in this alternate timeline where she is pres would have swayed her hand.

(that said, I have not heard what HRC said about trans rights)

Sitting out an election > voting for a Republican. That voter can fuck himself.

like I don't know if Biden is bad or good on trans issues, but Ketanji Brown Jackson will likely be better on almost everything than whatever cath-fash Federalist Society goon Trump would have put in during his 2nd term.

'They won't make things get better but things will get worse more slowly (maybe)' is an argument that works on a pretty narrow band of people (most of whom are dedicated voters anyway).

The material circumstances of Heard's life are worse today than they were in the past (in his view) - it doesn't say he's going to vote for Trump, voted for Trump in 2016 or anything else. It says he's reappraising Trump - as in "shit sucks right and shit sucked less for me when Trump was President I dunno what's up with that." He's not a committed ideologue.

totally in the tea leaves here and going off nothing other than my feeeelings, but if there isn’t a pretty marked course correction on the part of Dems I suspect to see their support among working and middle class black men go real soft in the not too distant future

(cue an army of bloodless psychopath consultants to tease these numbers out in just a way that means more money for more cops, and get even shittier on lgbtq issues)

HRC may be shitty on trans issues now, but would the two or three justices she appointed have been more or less likely to uphold trans rights than Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett?

― F'kin Magnetometers, how do they work? (President Keyes)

is that like a meaningful question to you? i mean, that's not political discourse, you're talking alternate history. sometimes it can be fun to talk about alternate history, but meanwhile it's 2022, joe biden got elected president in 2020, and the democrats are about to be slaughtered in the midterms because inflation is spiraling out of control, corporate greed is going unchecked, and nobody can afford to fucking live anywhere.

in the meantime the supreme court has just declared absolute dominion over women's bodies and the response from the democrats is to retreat further from anything resembling a stand on principles or values other than to say look, if you vote for us consistently for the next 40 years we might actually be able to get a supreme court majority again and overturn the ruling overturning roe v. wade! sure. i believe them. i mean, look at the principled stand they took on merrick garland! if i can't trust these folks to get progressive judges on the courts, who can i trust?

in the meantime, all of the red states are passing laws making my friends illegal, and yeah, it does matter where you live. in 2016, i lived in indiana, and i was fortunate to be able to move to portland in the wake of that, because i'm white, because my dad died and left us money, because i and my partner at the time both had college degrees. being able to move to portland made a big difference in my life. without moving to portland, i'm not sure it would have been possible for me to transition.

i have a couple of friends who moved from homes in red states to live on the streets here in portland, because if you're trans you're better off living on the streets in portland than you are in texas. hopefully i can keep being able to afford to live in actual housing here. i'm one of the _lucky_ ones, the _privileged_ ones, the _respectable_ ones.

that's my life in 2022, i have to watch my friends who don't have the privilege i do suffer, sometimes die, and not be able to do anything to help them, because for all my privilege and respectability, it's not within my power to give them what they need. i'm just one woman. and maybe it's not within the democrats' power either. either they're unable or unwilling to help my friends. it doesn't matter which.

clifton heard doesn't bother me. this long-running alternate history society here on ilx does kind of bother me, yeah. i'm sure y'all are well-intentioned, but what is any of this _accomplishing_? like, i am legitimately a team player. i believe in compromising for the common good. i don't believe in rugged individualism, in one man one vote, i think that we need to build community, to work together to collectively advocate for our own common good against people who don't have our best interests at heart.

i mean there are people here who clearly believe passionately in the democratic party and want it to succeed, and i think that's great! i just think that the ways in which folks here are trying to support the democratic party might possibly be counterproductive and alienating?

like, y'all are talking about whether heard is a "soft dem" and i mean... i don't know the man but it's not something that's really of interest to me? i see someone who's suffering and powerless and victimized by (assuming he's black here, which is never actually stated) systemic racism and abuse and the discussion is about yeah but is he a _soft dem_? it just comes off as tokenizing to me, and it's kind of why i want to shift the discussion away from this guy because he's not here, he can't speak for himself, i'm not a fan of trying to analyze his motives. let the man make his own decisions.

why are you like rating people on a scale, like someone who doesn't vote is "better" than someone who votes for trump? like, what gives you the right to make those sort of value judgements? why are you telling voters to go fuck themselves? i mean, god, people say that we on the radical left eat our own but i would never dream of telling a member of a marginalized group to "fuck himself". like really? maybe this guy's lived experience is something i can learn from, maybe i should listen to this guy?

Decent HRC wouldn't have gotten any Justices anyway or if she did they'd have been 'moderate Republicans,' unlikely Democrats retake the Senate in 2018 under Clinton.

Decent chance

Kate otm

one thing I'll add here is while I do understand the urge to sit out or vote Jill Stein or whatever doing so operates on the assumption that the Dems might actually learn something from getting their asses handed to them, when we know that they actually never learn shit, and that even if they by the time they nominate someone halfway decent the Republicans will have made it illegal to vote Democrat

the thing is that when Dems do "learn something" from voters like Clifton, it's usually things like "Talk about pocketbook issues not culture war issues."

one thing I'll add here is while I do understand the urge to sit out or vote Jill Stein or whatever doing so operates on the assumption that the Dems might actually learn something from getting their asses handed to them, when we know that they actually never learn shit, and that even if they by the time they nominate someone halfway decent the Republicans will have made it illegal to vote Democrat

― frogbs

and how many democratic legislators will respond by changing their party affiliation, so as to better reform the system from the inside?

me, my friends, the people i care about, a _whole bunch_ of other people - we are under attack, coordinated, systemic attack. just staying alive consumes my entire existence, and i can't do that alone. i need other people who will be with me, who will stick with me when things get tough. centrist democrats don't stick with anybody. they turn around and walk away and mumble excuses. at least the republicans have the courage to hate me to my face.

well if it's any consolation polling seems to indicate that a lot of people feel the same way, and as useless as they are the Democrat party can sometimes be bullied into doing the right thing

this has become "Murc's Law, the thread"

I wonder if that’s because it’s a thread about the Democratic Party.

like it's one thing to understand why voters feel a certain way, as misguided as it is, it's another to pretend like we don't understand why gas prices are high right now or that Biden is somehow responsible for inflation.

I was with this thread when it was for calling out Biden/Dems/et al for being behind the curve on the Dobbs ruling as well as going for optics over action, but some of y'all sound like "I did this" stickers atm

sorry, I should say this is ACCELERATIONISM, THE THREAD

and I'm out, because fuck that.

I mean idk I do maybe have a problem with voters that blame only one party for economic issues, or people who can't see the aftermath of economic decisions politicians like Reagan/Trump make, even if they fool people into thinking things are great for five minutes during the temporary good it brings

wanna know why my (and my family's) life sucks now? BECAUSE FLORIDA REFUSED TO EXPAND MEDICAID DUE TO THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT BECAUSE OF HAVING ALL REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS FOR THE LAST DECADE. this directly affects my fucking family. it would have outright prevented a lot of what happened.

but hey, let's go on pretending nothing matters and forgetting that these decisions impact all of us IN AN ALMOST UNLIMITED NUMBER OF WAYS.

I guess the question then is why have democrats not found a better way to hammer things like that with voters xp

That the special learned class knows that actually Joe Biden is blameless for inflation and gas prices (which isn’t exactly true but nevertheless) doesn’t mean that the working class quite trotted out as a pull quote should know that.

Like maybe Democrats should figure out a way to improve his circumstances when they’ve held Congress and the Presidency? Might be popular!

There's a noteworthy tonal difference between "THEY ARE ALL HORRIBLE HORRIBLE PEOPLE!!" and "they do much less than we want them to do and we think they could be much better at making good things happen".

I got no problem understanding how someone's allegiance to the democrats can be grudging and provisional, based solely on the necessity for blocking the neo-fascists from controlling all our lives, but as Neando pointed out, actively discouraging even that grudging allegiance does no one any favors unless it is coupled with a reliable path to a better alternative.

Bringing up Murc’s Law is ironic since the Democratic argument is that they have no political agency - they’re not responsible for any of the bad stuff happening and also completely unable to reverse it.

Even if you agree that that’s true - what is the marketing pitch for that party?

A good chunk of dissatisfaction with Biden and the Democratic establishment is they can’t even get aroused enough to lie to us about having some plan to fight back.

That's a fair cop. There's plenty to be dissatisfied about. But most of what we do here is ratchet up the hopelessness in ever-more apocalyptic language. I'm not sure that does any good at all.

look, I ain't gonna shill for the Dems, but if we're pretending to empathize with voters who are ignorant of why inflation is the way it is, gas prices are the way they are, and fail to even account for the state of the union that the previous administration handed the country over to us in, as justification for re-considering voting for the guy who plunged us into this swamp....yeah, no. that's stupid.

it's also not 'alternate history' to bring up the SCOTUS justices, like....we know who nominated three Federalist judges, and we've seen what they have done since they've been seated on the court. I don't have to talk about what 'would have happened under Hillary', we're still paying for what happened under Trump and so will our children. and lots of parents and grandparents died due to him and his CDC stooge Redfield slow walking COVID at a time when it was ripping through nursing homes.

why was life better for anybody under Trump? simple - it was the last time in history before COVID existed and Russia hadn't invaded Ukraine.

Relevant:
https://www.gawker.com/politics/the-democrats-are-the-party-of-negative-hope

If ever the Democratic base were going to withhold its votes, this year — in which party leadership has all but declared its plans to lose anyway — would be the year to do it.

The counterargument to this position is that not voting is tantamount to voting for Republicans, and the Republican Party of 2022 is a fascist movement that finds it increasingly unnecessary to hide its contempt for democracy. This counterargument is true, unfortunately. For those of us who believe the American system should continue, the choice is between voting Democrat and taking to the street with sticks. We simply cannot afford to horse around right now. Last year, Florida passed a law protecting drivers who run down political protestors with their cars. (This law was subsequently blocked by a federal judge, so I’m sure the Supreme Court will eventually… oh no.) I can think of at least three right-wing paramilitary organizations currently making national news, and Republicans stormed the Capitol after the last election didn’t go their way. Now is the time to vote for elections to continue in the future, and that means voting Democrat.

This arrangement is gigantically dispiriting, because it reduces the range of political opinions I can responsibly express to a biennial yes/no vote on the Republican agenda. Even in this insipid game the odds are against me, thanks to gerrymandering and the inherent distortions of a senators-per-state system operating in a country that increasingly concentrates its population in cities, but as long as we all pull together in a herculean effort at the polls, we can make sure that nothing happens. Then we will enjoy a one-year window in which it is permissible to criticize the Democratic Party, before we all have to pull together once again.

"That's a fair cop. There's plenty to be dissatisfied about. But most of what we do here is ratchet up the hopelessness in ever-more apocalyptic language. I'm not sure that does any good at all.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless)"

aimless i'm sure you mean well but for trans people it is that fucking bad, "apocalyptic language" is warranted. _hopelessness_ is not warranted, but i have no _faith_ in the ability or willingness of the national democratic party as it is to make things better for us. much love, though. the greatest of these is love.

"wanna know why my (and my family's) life sucks now? BECAUSE FLORIDA REFUSED TO EXPAND MEDICAID DUE TO THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT BECAUSE OF HAVING ALL REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS FOR THE LAST DECADE. this directly affects my fucking family. it would have outright prevented a lot of what happened.

― We were clothed, except for Caan, who was naked. Don't know why. (Neanderthal)"

see! this is apocalyptic language! this is warranted! this is good! this is real! republicans are psychopaths who are ruining your life! that's _exactly_ the point i'm starting from, florida is terrifying, florida is run by crazy motherfuckers, and what power do _you_ have to help? is voting for democrats going to help? does florida have free and fair elections? is this system ever going to give you what you want? you're a fucking _victim_ here, neanderthal, not just of the _republicans_, but of a vicious and totally broken system of government pretending to be a democracy that treats its so-called "citizens" like shit and then blames _us_ for the abuse we suffer at the hands of the people in power. i mean, i don't want you to despair, i don't want you to be hopeless, i want you to think about the possibility that _you_ have power, _we_ have power, we are not dependent on this broke-ass system.

we're dependent on _each other_. that's what politics is, politics is community, politics is being here for each other, and if someone's not gonna be there for me, i can't be there for them, i have to find _other ways_ to survive, _other ways_ to get what i need. i don't hate or blame centrist democrats, not really. i just don't _trust_ them. i got needs, and they can't or won't meet my needs. do you think florida democrats can and will meet you and your family's needs? do you think they will ever have both the power and the will to use it to help you and your family? does that belief, or does the _fear_ that they won't, keep you from stepping away from this vicious, awful cycle?

like, again, i want to root this in my lived experiences, here are the experience i've had with institutional democrats in the past couple of years, where i live.

i'm here in portland oregon, where our police are institutionally racist, and there were protests against the police, and the mayor, ted wheeler, came out to _talk_ with the police, and the police tear-gassed him. and he has legal power over the police, and what has he done? he's done nothing, and he got re-elected anyway, like i said above, and you know, if i get beaten or sexually assaulted or something like that, which _is_ a risk i face, who am i going to talk to? well, nobody, i'm on my own here.

did covid affect our quality of life? yeah, covid did affect our quality of life. am i frustrated about the response to covid? yes, i am. i am frustrated because a lot of anti-vaxxers chose not to get vaccinated and as a result of that choice, a lot of people, primarily minorities, the immunocompromised, and other marginalized groups suffered and died as a result of that, and who is holding the privileged people who have access to high quality healthcare and are acting with depraved indifference to the lives of people i care about accountable for that depraved indifference? nobody. nobody. they get to do whatever insane, malicious, bigoted shit they want, and it doesn't matter how many of us suffer, it doesn't matter how many of us die, all we get are more excuses, all we get are more explanations about how it's Not The Democrats' Fault. i don't _care_! i don't _care whose fault it is_! i just want somebody i can trust to _help_.

That was a booming post.

When I return, I want to post a response that I hope palliates the suspicion I'm a shill. I'm a somewhat public figure, so I hope there's historical context too.

yes, great post.

which, tbf, should be permanently stamped on all of your posts. I apologize for being antagonistic upthread.

I was thinking about this ILX thread, which, like some other ILX US politics threads, heavily includes people who might vote Democrat, people who used to vote Democrat, people on the Left, people who wish they could see a Left strategy for Democrats, etc, debating these things.

I arrived at this observation: this does not happen in the UK. At least, it does not happen on UK politics ILX - and even, to a large extent, I think it does not happen on eg: UK Left social media, for instance.

That is: in the UK, people do not bother debating the use or direction of the Labour Party as if it is or could be a good thing. They, we, used to. But we stopped. I feel that there has been a "mental break" for people in the UK, where they severed from caring about Labour, and even in some cases started to want it to do badly.

I am "projecting" my own views, sure, but I think this is wider. ILX poster Calzino would be one example.

I then thought: if this difference does obtain, why?

The obvious answer is that the US is a two-party system, and US leftists "don't have anywhere to go" outside that system, so stay engaged, in some way with the Democrats; whereas in the UK people might be able to turn to other parties. In Scotland, NI, Wales, certainly. But most UK citizens are in England, and most other parties in England are tiny, so we are mostly "protest voters" - at any rate those of us who vote Green or whatever know we are not voting for a party of government.

So I'm not sure if the two-party scenario is the whole explanation.

Then I thought of a second reason. People have often said: "The US equivalent of what Kieth has done would be if he drove Bernie Sanders out of politics and expelled AOC from the Democrats" -- etc. That is: UK Labour has actively purged its Left, whereas our perception is that the Democrats have not yet done that. Supposing that is true, it could explain why some US leftists still engage with the Democrats in good faith, whereas the UK socialists known to me now do not engage with Labour in that way.

The left is still stronger in Labour than in the Democrats, though - you had Corbyn and years of leadership. In the US there are 10 reps and 1 Senator even roughly on the level of the Labour left.

it's because the uk left had an opportunity where uk labour was its vehicle, briefly, and it was brutally crushed by the establishment, including the labour right, who are now more interested in crushing the left than anything else. there isn't any clear way that labour becomes a vehicle for the left again when they've changed all the party rules to prevent that happening ever again & are now attempting to deselect remaining labour left mps

the us party system is very different from most in that the parties are basically just positions on the ballot paper, there's not the same sort of formal membership and there's more actual democracy with everything having primaries. the way the dem establishment maintains control is largely through being better resourced in primary campaigns, which is very effective but not ironclad & it's much more difficult for them to completely cut off the possibility of left challenges. even if say, sanders got the nomination in 2016 or 2020 and the dem establishment blatantly sabotaged it in whatever way, there isn't the sort of centralised power that would allow them to do anything to block off further left challenges. third parties are also pretty much impossible to even get on the ballot in a lot of places and are even more of a non-starter in terms of ever having power than they are in the uk.

who are now more interested in crushing the left than anything else

"We are the People's Front of Judea!"

The left is still stronger in Labour than in the Democrats, though - you had Corbyn and years of leadership

not true, they've changed the rules to ensure that something like corbyn can never happens again. they've upped the requirements to get onto any future leadership ballot to ensure that the remaining left MPs will not be able to nominate anyone as a faction, have undertaken purges of remaining left-wing party members, permanently suspended corbyn from the parliamentary party, using control over pre-selections to ensure that no one remotely left-wing can ever run as a labour candidate, and are working on deselecting remaining left MPs.

gotta build some ramparts while the old boys are stripping out the copper wiring

Is the democratic party more on the left than it was twenty years ago? Ten years ago?

I mean if you compare us to Slick Willie, I guess

pinefox - good questions re: existence of "debate" or not. my thoughts:

first, i _don't_ generally "debate" electoral politics on a national level. political debate was a major factor in my deciding to leave ilx entirely in 2020, and until today i've stayed well clear of the political threads. why am i jumping in today? i mean, it's a good question.

one of the things which i think is a _significant_ meaningful difference between the us and the uk is that we have a set election schedule, and a long, long, long campaign season. so here we are in august discussing the what's going to happen in an election which will occur three months from now.

elections are frankly traumatic events for me, and have been since 2016. the extent to which the election of donald trump personally affected me and made me rethink all of the values and principles i'd based my life around up to that point really can't be understated. i am very much filled with gnawing dread and an impending sense of doom, even this far out. my talking about it here is not so much based around any attempt to improve the democratic party, but to address, in the least unhealthy manner available to me, these own feelings of doom and despair.

the impact of the recent supreme court ruling overturning roe v. wade also cannot be understated. it's an emotionally apocalyptic event, and, crucially, one that is _not easily reversible_. this is why there's so much argument about the composition of the courts - because of all the things a democratic president can do, it's the one with the longest-lasting impact.

regarding bernie/aoc - i would argue that they _have_ been driven out of the democrats, in terms of _institutional power_. if you look at the shameful way aoc and bernie were treated at the 2020 democratic national convention, well, i think it sends a pretty clear message. i wonder, though, if the national democratic party isn't institutionally weak in a way that labour isn't. i'm not really aware how the labour party works, but in terms of selecting candidates, the democratic party process is a tremendously convoluted and arcane process of byzantine complexity. it is also patently obviously unjust, unequal, and unfair.

however, while bernie and aoc have been shut out of the _institutional_ democratic party, they are both extremely well-liked and popular among the left. someone mentioned, what, murc's law? bernie and aoc's marginalization within the party makes them immune to it. they have no power, and therefore nothing that goes wrong is their fault. if bernie were to get power and govern like obama did, i find it not unlikely that we'd be hearing grumbles of "thanks bernie" for the next decade or so.

the institutional democratic party provided for the selection of, and provides support for the governance of, the nominal chief executive of the united states. when was the last time labour was actually in power? fucking tony blair, wasn't it? christ, that was a long time ago. the democrats, in contrast, allegedly are in power, yet are unable to actually effectively govern.

while it is of course true that joe biden was not responsible for putting the judges who overturned roe v. wade on the supreme court, i think there's a good argument that the overturn of roe v. wade is, in some sense, an indicator of _decades_ of strategic failure on the part of the democratic party. what do we have, clinton, two terms, bush, two terms, obama, two terms, trump one term... i mean, the republicans have spent decades packing the court with fucking lunatic extremists in monomaniacal pursuit of the overturn of roe v. wade. i mean, we know this, right? we all know this. the democrats allowed clarence thomas on the court _despite_ anita hill speaking up against his behavior, allowed his behavior to be _accepted_ and _normalized_. the democrats allowed the ridiculous chicanery that put gorsuch on the bench, again, took it as _accepted_ and _normalized_. two of the judges on the top court of the nation owe their positions to egregious miscarriages of justice!

and that's the thing of it for me, what a _mockery of justice_ exists in america right now. i mean, i'd be glad to take a break from electoral politics, but republicans' behavior is increasingly atrocious and the democrats, who allegedly hold a certain amount of civil authority, respond to their injustices with nothing but empty words. republicans are rightly mocked for offering "thoughts and prayers" to victims of the gun violence they enabled, but do the democrats in power really have anything more to offer?

i mean yeah it's not healthy for me to engage too closely with politics. i don't like to do it. there's going to be an election in november, and the democrats are going to lose, and they're going to lose badly, and they've already started making their excuses, they've already started throwing, say, trans people under the bus. they haven't even lost yet!

i'd like to just walk away and focus on the rest of my life, but i don't really _have_ anything left, seeing my friends being called groomers by their parents, seeing people advocating for our extermination while the democrats shrug, i mean, it makes it hard for me to do anything else, quite honestly.

i've tried to do self-care, i've tried to wait it out, but this is quite honestly a crisis situation. something needs to change, it needs to change majorly, and it needs to change soon. even if i had any genuine belief that things _will_ get better in november, i'm not really confident in my ability to hold out that long!

we're not doing too well here in america. nobody i know is doing well. covid is spiking again where i'm at. i was going to go out and do something fun this evening, but you know, they've mandated masks again and people have stopped pretending to care, everybody knows the laws aren't enforced, and more importantly, i'm just too fucking depressed to have a good time right now, you know? i'm sorry, but i am. i have a pretty busy social life, i try to go out, i try to spend time with friends, but everybody else is just as miserable and fucked up as i am, if not moreso. there's no distraction, no relief, no escape from this shit.

so i guess that's why i'm here, talking about the Future of the Democratic Party. i like y'all here. even if i don't necessarily agree with all y'all, you are good people and i think we do basically share the same common values, the same common interests, and it feels good for me to talk about what i believe in. shit, times are hard right now, and if we're gonna have any hope of making it through we at least have to be here for each other, as much as we can.

"so here we are in august discussing the what's going to happen in an election which will occur three months from now."

wait. it's july, isn't it? what even is time? it's the trauma, i can't tell the hours, days, months apart any longer.