Democratic (Party) Direction

in the last hour I've learned Donna Brazile is appearing on Tucker Carlson's show and she had a nice chat with Sheriff Clarke. My guess is she'll be replacing Omarosa by week's end.

seriously, every lefty who tried to welcome her to the flock because she put the HRC campaign on blast looks like a straight up clown right now.

xpost Yeah, he's kept the party united as an opposition party, especially when literally just one Dem defector could have made a big difference.

Can you believe all these libs supporting republicans who criticize trump? Disgusting

Donna Brazile welcome to the DSA

— Quinoa🖕Appropriator (@MattAlwaysWrong) November 5, 2017

ah thx, i forgot to post these. xxp

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/dem-pundits-spent-yesterday-lying-about-dnc-primary-rigging-document-d60019c59c3e

https://theintercept.com/2017/11/05/four-viral-claims-spread-by-journalists-on-twitter-in-the-last-week-alone-that-are-false/

(No balanced lefty is going to 'welcome' a lifelong political hack that quickly, regardless of the conents of her book.)

Johnstone is a Seth Rich truther who also wrote a medium piece about how that left should ally with the alt-right.

sorry, i don't keep up

The Greenwald piece doesn’t really prove falsehoods just kind of claims it repeatedly.

sorry, i don't keep up

we know

i mean like Dem employees like Nerdstrom

lol i'm sposed to know every politics writer on the interwebz OOOH GOTCHA GOTCHA

greenwald can gtfo until he stops being a useful idiot for tucker carlson.

In NYC, ran into @donnabrazile and talked about her book. Even though our political views are polar opposite, we had a great conversation. Complimented her on her courage to out the DNC and #CrookedHillary. Say what you want, more Dems should tell the truth. pic.twitter.com/IBzP6Ma9jR

— David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) November 8, 2017

Damn

clarke's hats are getting worse

love those photoshops where people make his hat gigantic and seat partway down his face

lol

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/resort-tycoon-says-hes-ordered-dem-leaders-to-adopt-pro-billionaire-platform-911c92a6116b

In the past few weeks, I've visited with three amazing women running as first-time candidates for Congress in largely rural districts. I have things to say about the Democratic Party

— Pinboard (@Pinboard) November 10, 2017

I mean it never fails pic.twitter.com/ZUdzgCLuGO

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) November 11, 2017

The trick is to move further left on issues that are broadly popular and not emphasize the issues that only appeal to a tiny niche. You can deal with the niche issues once you are in office and no one in the broad public will notice or care, while those in the tiny niche will be made happy and remember the favor.

That is way too sensible

outside of finance, there is no profession where people who have never won anything get to scold others on how to win more than dem political "strategist"

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) November 11, 2017

Related to that Molly Ball article I think we linked to upthread about the Third Way group going on safari, she was interviewed about this on Daniel Denvir’s show last week:

https://www.blubrry.com/thedig/28772955/the-hollow-center-with-molly-ball-and-eric-levitz/

Democratic Party's elevator pitch to millennials?

"Capitalism 2.0." - @MarkWarner
"We look like you." - @amyklobuchar#WSJCEOCouncil

— Josh Jamerson (@joshjame) November 14, 2017

lmao I came here to post that

"Means-testing on fleek."
"Endless drone warfare, but gender fluid."
"Airbnb for the prison-industrial complex."
"Swipe right-to-work."

— Andrew Moreturkey (@andrewmochulsky) November 14, 2017

The idea of a an "elevator pitch" containing anything of genuine political value is absurd to begin with. It's just "I like Ike" brought into the 21st century.

otoh, that goddamn "Contract with America" that Newt cooked up in 1996 probably did reach a lot of people who liked what it said and voted republican as a result. I sometimes wonder why that concept got booted to the curb in later elections. It had promise as a way to define the party political agenda and its identity, all in ten or so simple bullet points. Probably its because Newt bullied the entire House republican caucus to sign the thing and that feat has been impossible to replicate.

that joke sucks kingfish

The idea of a an "elevator pitch" containing anything of genuine political value is absurd to begin with. It's just "I like Ike" brought into the 21st century.

Oh I dunno, I think elevator pitches(or slogans in this case) containing inherent, inspirational values are useful.

“Change you can believe in” and “For the many, not the few” both work.

that joke sucks kingfish

Possibly, but I liked “Swipe right-to-work”

"Hope & Change" and "Make America Great Again" worked pretty well

If by working pretty well, you mean they created an emotional attraction on the art of some voters toward the candidate, I guess that could be seen as having 'political value'. But the sort of value I had in mind was more in terms of indicating the policies the candidate or party would pursue.

As far as setting policy direction, Hope & Change could just as easily apply to Trump starting a war with North Korea. It's a change. And we'd all be hoping like mad once it started. Making America Great Again could as easily promote returning to the income tax rates of 1960.

The manifesto thingy worked pretty well for Labour across the pond, but I guess over here nobody gives a shit about party platforms

How Education Reform Ate the Democratic Party

"So now, as America ponders the mounting economic disequlibriums that gave rise to the Trump insurgency, concerned plutocrats can all agree on one key article of faith: what is holding back the poor and minority children who figure so prominently in the glossy brochures of charter school advocates is not the legacy of racist housing policy or mass incarceration or a tax system that hoovers up an ever growing share of income into the pockets of the wealthy, but schoolteachers and their unions....

"The Clintons were early adopters; tough talk against Arkansas’ teachers, then among the poorest paid in the country, was a centerpiece of Bill’s second stint as Governor of Arkansas. As Hillary biographer Carl Bernstein recounts, the Arkansas State Teachers Association became the villain that cemented the couple’s hold on the Governor’s mansion—the center of their Dick Morris-inspired “permanent campaign.” The civil rights language in which the Democratic anti-union brigade cloaks itself today was then nowhere to be heard, however. And little wonder: Civil rights groups fiercely opposed the most controversial feature of the Clintons’ reform agenda—competency tests for teachers—on the grounds that Black teachers, many of whom had attended financially starved Black colleges, would disproportionately bear their brunt."

https://thebaffler.com/latest/ed-reform-ate-the-democrats-berkshire

thanks, Ted!

The manifesto thingy worked pretty well for Labour across the pond, but I guess over here nobody gives a shit about party platforms

Democrats in Congress aren't expected to live up to the party platform so potential Democratic voters don't give a shit about it.

Scaling back superdelegates... somewhere, gabbneb weeps.

https://theintercept.com/2017/12/09/dnc-unity-reform-commission-takes-a-whack-at-superdelegates/

i'll take it

having the remaining ones vote according to the results in their state

this does amount to effective abolition which i am p satisfied about tbh

ie no superdelegates for Andy Cuomo, who will draw about 8 voters in 5 primaries

This tweet tonight boils things down nicely

It is interesting going back to 2008 that the party out of power gets its 💩 together while the governing party foolishly thinks they’ve won the country for eternity.

— Andrew Snell (@jAndrewSnell) December 13, 2017

It's not so much either party getting its shit together as a lot of the people on the bottom who keep jumping around, looking for politicians who'll deliver them some tangible benefits, but they keep getting played.

They really *haven't* gotten their shit together, though. They got lucky. xp

Lucky counts

Of course it does, but don't bank on every opponent turning out to be a pedophile.

The party dragging its feet is only half the story, though. From a Tuscaloosa volunteer earlier today:

yeah the grassroots effort for jones has been... very grassroots. tuscaloosa is one of the biggest efforts in alabama and we only had one paid campaign operative running a group that ranged from a couple of people to over 100 from night to night. a lot of people have had to create their own volunteering opportunities and many people have been taking time off work to make this happen. no matter what happens tonight, we're looking at this as a huge occasion where we built infrastructure and established networks of communication for future elections. we weren't supposed to even be a blip on the radar, but it's election day and polls are effectively at a dead heat.

Informal movement/volunteer infrastructure that'll makes itself available for party efforts are worth their weight in gold

Who was running those efforts?

Seems like a mix of Indivisible chapters & other little orgs making do with what they could get

That rules, well played all involved.

They really *haven't* gotten their shit together, though. They got lucky. xp

this also applies to the last presidential election but thanks for the input