Democratic (Party) Direction

Qualmsley, drop the Russia stuff for a little while, please

I thinks it’s cool that we have a celeb like Eric Garland posting here.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/26/off-message-bill-de-blasio-216168

That piece‘s central argument is that the Mayor is supported and even admired by a majority of his voters and many fellow Democratic progressives who are willing to to go on the record, BUT... “they” think he’s smug, and “they” talk all kinds of smack off the record, and “they” are lots of people in the Democratic Party. Strong journalism.

still waiting for evidence that de blas belongs among the set "Democratic progressives" though. on housing, development and transit - perhaps the critical issues of inequality in NYC at this date - he has been barely distinguishable from bloomberg, with a focus on developer-friendly schemes and shiny toys at all levels.

People I know who work in planning/transit HATE Di Blasio for his positions on those. Especially the latter, where he has no problem with hard crackdowns on turnstile jumpers and bicycles but won't give a thought to congestion pricing.

also: vaporware light rail and real, expensive ferries for developers in north brooklyn, mysteriously impossible to spend money or time on anybody else's needs

https://theoutline.com/post/2783/democrats-need-to-move-farther-left

^^^ some good stuff there! always encouraging to hear the face-to-face stuff with actual progressive candidates. rooting for all of them.

I'm standing on my chair yelling HAM HAM HAM HAM

Outside of major cities, it can be shockingly easy to take effective political action. In many small towns, a little handful of committed people willing to make phone calls and mail fliers and knock on doors and wave signs and write letters and attend public meetings and generally make a very visible ruckus can get a lot of things done, because the competition for attention is not so great. Much of the actual work of politics is this sort of mundane, labor and resource-intensive stuff. Money helps, yes, but on a local level, what you really need is a band of committed people, a useful list of contacts, and a name recognizable enough for people to pay attention.

If you can bring the committed people, you can plunder your local Democratic Party for the rest.

https://splinternews.com/the-democratic-party-is-yours-take-it-1821647051

hell yeah

At @MoonPalaceBooks and I just found the book that strike fear in the heart of @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/r81nYoeqpL

— Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) January 3, 2018

!

hello there, keith.

Newsweek def clinging to ThirdWayism

http://www.newsweek.com/bernie-sanders-rich-700-jacket-billionaires-768739

America needs to get back to normal so it must elect Joe Biden to a single term in 2020 | Opinion https://t.co/WkTsSeo150 pic.twitter.com/1vicX6MIWe

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) January 3, 2018

Biden-curious

Bidenfluid

ew

Lol, surely a $700 jacket can't seriously be extravagant by Capitol Hill standards?

I hope his response is to show up on the Senate floor in one of Liberace's old minks.

if this is really the best line of attack people have he's doing a fine job

tbf i was a bit disappointed that Sanders agreed to function as a sort of inaugural prop for Mayor de Blasio, whose progressive bonafides are very flimsy until he gets me a cheaper apartment.

wtf is happening in the tone of that newsweek bernie tweak, is that breitbartian breathlessness actually how they write now

http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/will_bunch/trump-make-america-great-again-mount-airy-germantown-will-bunch-20180104.html

Lol, surely a $700 jacket can't seriously be extravagant by Capitol Hill standards?

― No purposes. Sounds. (Sund4r), Thursday, January 4, 2018 10:42 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a gift from his step-son who works at the company in vermont which makes the jackets.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/if-you-want-to-know-whos-running-in-2020-watch-capitol-hill-not-iowa/

From the late 1980s to 2016, neoliberal ideas held hegemonic sway among the Democratic elite. But the economy created by this ideology — and the ensuing crises — is a major reason why Clinton lost to Trump and the party is completely out of power today. This obvious failure has provided an ideological opening that the American left has been eager to fill.

Yet even the left-wing is divided about the best way forward. Should it follow Elizabeth Warren's lead and promise a return to the trust-busting ways of the early 20th century? Or should it emulate the more sweeping, Nordic-style politics of Bernie Sanders? Or perhaps the Democratic Socialists of America are right and something even more extreme is needed.

i like cooper, this'll be a decent series

http://theweek.com/articles/725419/decline-fall-neoliberalism-democratic-party

Well organized summary thx- very shareable for some relations who need it.

It's really good, especially including an analysis of the seventies crisis. I need to read more than that, since that's obviously what created the opening for Neo-liberalism. Slightly marred by the typical problem, that it only allows agency to Dems and none to the GOP. Wondering why Dems 'doubled down' on neoliberalism after neoliberal GOP crushed them in 2010 is for example an amazingly stupid trope which is repeated over and over and over.

pumped to read the rest of the series. this, however:

Now, it must be admitted that Obama is a magnificent political talent, the finest national politician in terms of raw ability since FDR. As long as he was at the top of the party, his sheer charisma and moderately good policy record allowed him to get re-elected — especially against a tone-deaf aristocrat like Mitt Romney, who had advocated that Detroit be allowed to go bankrupt.

But Hillary Clinton, by her own admission, is not very good at retail politics. She has neither the cool, effortless charisma of Obama, nor the warm human touch of her husband. Worse, she is accurately perceived as being firmly ensconced in the political and economic elite — made worse still by a (partly unfairly) awful relationship with the press, and a lingering miasma of scandal and corruption. But fundamentally, Clinton — virtually handpicked by the party elite, and promising to continue and build on the accomplishments of Obama — was the candidate of Democratic Party neoliberalism, for better and worse. And she lost to Donald Trump.

All this has profoundly discredited neoliberalism within the Democratic Party.

has it? i hope they're right, but you could also argue that neoliberalism was profoundly discredited back in late 2008/early 2009. and yet it seemed to bounce back, with predictably dismal consequences.

I think it's too early to know that for certain but it does seem like potential candidates have been getting a harder time for even appearing to be more of the same

Afaict Neoliberalism mostly bounced back because the GOP long ago married it to racism, and therefore benefited from the racist backlash to Obama.

Dems lost in 2010 cos when they finally had the car keys they proved to just be hot air and not give a shit about equality when it comes to actually making policy. the ACA had no public option. they did little to help with the banking/housing crisis. the foreclosure crisis in fact removed struggling voters from the voter rolls, so there's another instance where they shot themselves in the foot by not actually helping the people they are always going on about helping.

and on foreign policy front by 2010 Obama had proved that he either really couldn't do anything about drones/gitmo/etc. or he could and he just didn't care, both of which are pretty demoralizing

I feel like people are forgetting that the Republicans had the votes to prevent any more meaningful health reform. In some now-long-gone post Karl broke down the whole sordid history of the 2000's that resulted after Kennedy died, the Dems never had the votes so blaming them for "no public option" seems off.

Dems lost in 2010 because of a massive tea party backlash against perceived 'overreach'. They lost because they did too much, not too little. That they still should have done much much more is true, but let's not distort history.

well they didn't actually do 'too much,' that was just the perception of tea party people. 'too much' = electing a black president. they should've recognized early on that compromise would be impossible and just be craven about it as the GOP are doing now

idk about Obama being "magnificent" either

nor the warm human touch of her husband.

#ustoo

he either really couldn't do anything about drones/gitmo/etc. or he could and he just didn't care

Or still worse, which is that he was actually really into extrajudicial murder abroad as a solution

All this has profoundly discredited neoliberalism within the Democratic Party.

This is, at best, a half truth. To the extent that the party is led by its activists, forward-thinkers and theorists, then it has more than a grain of truth. But as soon as you add in the long term office holders and the older cohorts of theorists and activists who rose to prominence during the era of neoliberalism, this 'profound discrediting' no longer applies and the party leadership splits apart.

To the extent that the party consists of the tens of millions of voters who identify as Democrats, this assertion becomes even less true. Most of those voters adhere to the party because of a general sense that the party if 'for ordinary people and against injustice', or some such broad formulation. Most would not even recognize the word neoliberalism, let alone be able to define it in terms of theory or policy. Those voters just need the assurance that the party is trying to make their lives better, however that looks to them.

As proved by the republicans, it is not even necessary to actually make the lives of voters better in order to retain their allegiance; all that is required is a plausible story connecting your politics to some outcome your voters want. When you fail to achieve your promises, you blame 'the enemy'. Since there is an element of truth in the 'blame the enemy' formula, it can be used indefinitely. Tbf, the neoliberal elements of the Democratic party have used this same playbook for a long time, but rather less effectively than the republicans.

Bernie changed some of the dynamic by setting up the story along different lines, radically changing the promised benefits, and shifting the boundaries of who were the enemy, and he had some very good success. But HRC, using the older, more tired formula, still won more of the primaries and got the nomination. The discrediting of neoliberalism was accelerated by her loss in the general election, but it still has far to go before social democracy can claim ascendancy.

as soon as you add in the long term office holders and the older cohorts of theorists and activists who rose to prominence during the era of neoliberalism, this 'profound discrediting' no longer applies and the party leadership splits apart.

That's just the point, though--the only members of the Democratic Party who continue to believe "pragmatic" big enterprise-friendly centrism is a viable path forward in an era of widening inequality, failing infrastructure & temporary jobs are people who are, in the eyes of everyone else, discredited. Their continuing hold on the party apparatus is an artifact of their past success, not an indicator of their future sway.

I think there are millions and millions and millions of people who are basically on board with drone-driven US military adventurism and capitalism but who want abortion to be legal, want rich people to pay higher taxes, want vigorous enforcement of environmental laws, want gay people to be treated like everybody else, think immigration makes the US a stronger and better country, support stepdown of incarceration in general and pot legalization in particular, etc. Including a lot of young people.

Dems lost in 2010 because of a massive tea party backlash against perceived 'overreach'. They lost because they did too much, not too little. That they still should have done much much more is true, but let's not distort history.

― Frederik B, Monday, January 8, 2018 6:34 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my lay persons opinion is they didn't do shit to the bankers who caused the financial meltdown and instead of giving anyone involved in flagrant misconduct a haircut they made them whole 100% and the taxpayer had to pay for the bailout. also fed the narrative of the 'rigged system' in 2016.

Their continuing hold on the party apparatus is an artifact of their past success, not an indicator of their future sway.

Until that apparatus is wrested away from them, they will hold sway within the party. The insurgence requires the same sort of purging of neoliberal, business-friendly, bank-friendly, pharma-friendly, big-agra-friendly centrists that the RRR imposed on the Republican party to evict so-called RINOs. For that outcome you need lots of candidates and plenty of dedicated volunteers behind them. It can be done, but it's early stages rn.

jingleberries otm

If Oprah runs for president I’m gonna put a gun in my mouth I might not pull the trigger but I’m definitely gonna see how it feels

— dasha (@nobody_stop_me) January 9, 2018

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dianne-feinstein-2

No

absolutely not

Wait, isn't she still the one that should be primaried?