Democratic (Party) Direction

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.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi joked (in Jan 2019) that she might pay a dollar for President Trump's proposed border wall as part of ongoing negotiations over government spending.

Congress will approve https://thehill.com/policy/finance/531088-congress-to-approve-1375-billion-for-border-wall-in-2021.375 billion for a wall along the southern border tomorrow, Pelosi having bargained down by $.625 billion, according to GOP sources.

Literally the one banana meme, from a woman worth $100 million:

BREAKING: #Pelosi says $600 is a "significant" amount for working families.#LetThemEatCake #TrillionForBillionaires pic.twitter.com/PjcIV9W1JX

— Peter Daou (@peterdaou) December 21, 2020

I like the way he use those hashtags he has. I do Twitter the same way.

Peter Daou is, sadly, proof that internet bullying can radicalize people to the left and he’s really into it

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