Democratic (Party) Direction

You all make good points but actually the one who knows what’s going to happen is me

Who said collegial?! He'll enforce his will on making the nominee as old and moderate as possible.

Breyer isn't a difference maker now or in the medium-term future, it's a 6-3 court.

If Breyer announces his retirement on Jan. 22, McConnell now has to stall for four years with a 1 seat majority.

McConnell can't have his hands tied or they'll drop off completely

he will stall for four years. can't believe you think he will compromise

otm

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/05/biden-mcconnell-relationship-434524

I hope he can make deals with McConnell, honestly, but don't expect a deal over Breyer's replacement unless it is by another liberal justice. Don't see that happening. Hope Breyer can wait it out but we could have a 7 or 8 seat supreme court by 2024

I can see where Dan's coming from but I think milo is right - in the scenario where Breyer bounces early and the court ideological balance being what it is, McConnell risks more by stalling for that long a period that long than he does by briefly appearing "reasonable" (while not at all actually endangering the GOP's legislative agenda)

And where I'm coming from is about overall strategy - not an absolute certainty that Breyer would retire. But treating McConnell as just a kamikaze obstructionist is wrong - he walked in on Jan whatever 2011 to a President that had a staffed executive, had moved past the first part of the economic crisis, and had just been soundly repudiated in the midterms.

That's a very different scenario in using obstruction as a political tool vs. being able to force Biden to do your bidding from the very start during an ongoing economic and humanitarian crisis just to have a Secretary of State. He's in a better position to extract concessions, Biden's older than dirt so there's less leverage over costing him a second term, there's less risk of appearing to give in (on, say, a Breyer retirement) and the stakes are fundamentally higher in terms of blowback.

you sound like someone who would get conned by mcconnell

This stands as much chance of being the direction of the Democratic Party as anything involving AOC, though it might be tougher to insert white where it wasn't said if she's the interview (but not impossible) -

@ everyone who was in my mentions claiming leftists don’t push the “we need to focus more on the [white] working class” narrative https://t.co/XFqErrxAN0

— Bree Newsome Bass (@BreeNewsome) November 7, 2020

Hasn't this always been Bernie's line?

He needs to say it in a diner.

WWC voters are only ever to be communicated with in diners; I know this from my NYT subscription.

Just want to say thanks man alive for bumping this thread as a place for non-partying - it was getting heated and flaggy over on the main politics thread and I really didn't want to see people getting banned for healthy scepticism (while understanding that pissing on everyone else's chips is going to get people mad, obv). So basically, good call.

Every thread should come in threes: positive, negative, neutral.

Then again, the next four years will be (rightly) devoted to ragging on Biden. The truce is bound to be short-lived.

xpost Yes. It's amazing how much more cogent and hearable these discussions can be when the participants aren't thumbing their noses at others.

xp (and not xp) and thank god for that. there will be a fair amount of "better than trump would've done" until covid is under semi-control but i hope that blows past quickly and the new administration can be judged on their merit instead of against horse-in-a-hospital

The AOC interview is (as always) righteous and confirms something I was discussing just yesterday (i.e. my belief that, as nice as it would be, AOC might never actually run for president, if only because she doesn't seem broken in the way that pretty much everyone who runs for president has to be in order to think that they in particular are special enough to run the entire US).

A damn impressive interview.

if they box her out (and they will), they deserve to lose

Every thread should come in threes: positive, negative, neutral

No, you need nine: chaotic positive, chaotic neutral, chaotic negative; lawful positive, lawful negative, lawful neutral...

I’m not sure we need to concentrate on the next four years as much as the next two, before the midterms

I’m not so deluded as to think sad republicans are going to stay home and not vote in 2022, but it’d be nice! In reality, I’m hoping there’s a larger Justice Democrats slate encompassing more states.

xp don't tempt me…

not too belabor this, but imo you need 11: the 3x3 D&D grid, but with 2 additions:

10: absolutely perfect
11: absolute worst

I don't know if I've complained about this in this thread before, but let me just say, as a guy who did not vote for Bernie Sanders in either primary, the full-time anti-Bernie retweet brigaders are some of the most unhinged people on Twitter. Like, why? Your guy is going to be President! The guy you hate just spent six months doing everything he could to help your guy get elected President! Why NOW is the thing you feel most has to be said in public is "Bernie would have lost, suck it?" I truly... do... not.... get it. Like why RIGHT NOW is the highest priority of your life to go around angrily quote-tweeting anybody who thinks the Democratic party should be a tick more progressive? Why aren't you, I dunno, talking about what Cabinet position you think Mayor Pete should get? (Remember, I really like Mayor Pete. *I* would be happy to talk about what Cabinet position Mayor Pete should get.) Anyway I just have been finding this consistently annoying and needed to share.

Because the left is threatening to them and they want to squash it.

There are sore winners on both sides ...

Yea that’s always been Bernies line and I heard plenty of griping during the primary about his “disdain for identity politics” as one person put it. It’s amusing and maybe troubling that we could see three fissures in the party; moderate and conservative dems, groups pushing for more racial justice, and groups who are more concentrated on the white working class. Now in a functional party this just means three factions to craft the same message to, but in the dem party it probably means internecine warfare.

The point of that tweet is that Bernie repeatedly refers to the working class and Bree Bass has added "white" and then gotten mad about it.

What he actually said in that clip:

you left this part out. "It's not going to solve all of our problems, not going to solve systemic racism..one of the ways we can bring people together, is around an agenda that works for farmers in Iowa, as well as low-income people in New York City...all of us need health care"

— Loot Every Walmart (@BethLynch2020) November 7, 2020

ie one direction of the party is going to be disingenuous left-punching. Claire McCaskill talks about the white working class.

The Bernie left grew exponentially due to Obama's second term, as pointed out by Lenin as far back as 1920.

Left-punching is going to happen but the left of the party isn't such an easy target this time out? Time to go on the offensive (after inauguration)

The U.S. Democratic Party fucking sucks. It is the party of superficial representational politics, wall street, and gradual deregulation, and the only reason I vote for it is because it's better than the party of racism, big oil, and rapid deregulation. And it's the party of smug shits who think they are "the smart people" and whose whole lives have been an exercise in resume building. I don't blame people for hating Democrats, because I hate Democrats even as I vote for them. They suck, and they only still exist because the other party sucks worse.

They're also not good at being a political party, or at seizing, holding or wielding power. They seem like they aren't even sure they want to govern. Again, their existence is only justified by the other party being worse.

Bringing this informative twitter thread over here - it was linked in response to AOC's comments on ground game in her NYT interview:

The comments @aoc is making about Democratic ground-game weakness are being dismissed. I have seen, up close, exactly what she is talking about.

— Richard Cooke (@rgcooke) November 9, 2020

and Soto commented :

I can confirm Cooke's tweet thread anecdotally. Three Thursdays ago, I drove to what I thought was Daniella Levine Cava's Coral Gables office. It wasn't -- it was an unfurnished office of a state senator. Taken aback, I asked the college-aged volunteer (the only person in the office) for correct directions. It took five minutes of her thumbing through her phone.

I mean this year in particular the Biden campaign basically BRAGGED about not having ground game. And I know COVID made for an exceptional situation, but it's not the first cycle where we've seen Democrats insistently over-rely on media buys etc. Honestly how fucking ridiculous is it that the REPUBLICANS ARE BETTER AT SOCIAL MEDIA THAN DEMOCRATS! How can that even be?

Honestly maybe Democrats should listen a little more to the person who came out of nowhere to dethrone their presumed successor to Nancy Pelosi. Maybe she does actually know what the fuck she's talking about re ground game. And I know she does, because I witnessed it first hand, her operation was incredible.

COVID seems like a pretty weak excuse for the lack of ground game - a two minute chat outdoors masked is pretty low risk, if your argument is that the fate of humanity hangs in the balance of the election.

If they aren't knocking on doors in Georgia, they don't really want to win.

100%, and I also wouldn't underestimate the way perceived overreaction to COVID hurt democrats. Granted that GOP went WAAAAAAY too far in the other direction.

In seriousness, I think the fact that Biden beat Bernie in spite of his "ground game" led to party overconfidence that ground game was irrelevant or something. And what they failed to realize is that ground game is why a socialist senator from a tiny state who probably shouldn't have a chance actually gave A-list democratic candidates a run for their money twice.

Not sure the Democratic party has a persistent ground-game "machine" outside of South Carolina. Decades of right-to-work laws have decimated the labor movement which used to form the core of the ground-game. The GOP played the long game there.

a two minute chat outdoors masked is pretty low risk

One is, but a hundred a day? When only some of the people who open their doors to chat with you are going to have masks on?

I get why they don't think it's a good idea to do it.

Osita Nwanevu argues that the left needs to start organizing immediately:

Activists need to devise strategies for shaping the policymaking process in the interim, as bleak as things seem—to plan not only for the next two to four years, but the next two to four months. It should be obvious by now that direct action, on a scale and at a pitch this country hasn’t seen in half a century, will be absolutely critical. Climate, health care, inequality, immigration, policing, reproductive freedom, the American war machine, labor rights, our civil and democratic rights, the power and perversity of the Republican Party as an institution: Each of these issues should be met with a wave of organizing inspired by our remarkable past decade in mass protest, which culminated dramatically with the demonstrations against the killing of George Floyd earlier this year.

today i have come to terms with the fact that i do not, at core, believe in the democratic party or its platform. i'm going to register with the dsa instead as soon as i can pony up $45.

Osita otm as usual

good for you map!

osita nwanevu is always otm

yeah, i’m out. I made good on my promise to vote for Joe if GA proved to be a swing state, and I’m going to be canvassing w my friend Jessica for the special election but that’s it. last election I support any candidate at the federal level who doesn't loudly and unequivocally support Medicare For All, GND, $15 min wage, etc.

same as it ever was

https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/the-false-hope-of-a-biden-presidency

it’s completely opaque what the “democratic party” even means because, on paper, it means the Democratic National Committee, which is a relatively inept and toothless organization

then there’s the DCCC and DSCC that work with house and senate campaigns, and the DLCC which theoretically helps with state legislature races, and so on until you get to the state parties. they all coordinate to some degree, but with differing goals and very questionable outcomes

living in a state without the critical mass to have an effective state democratic party means it’s just a shitshow of coordinating with whoever is in charge. cynically, I think the only way things are going to work well is to boost the influence of national politicians who have a strong shared platform, whether it be those the Justice Democrats PAC has endorsed or others, and try to stir up a solid base

again, regrets about the Obama campaign apparatus just falling to the side after 2008/2012 and his complete lack of guidance when he was the de facto head of the DNC that led it to be just a shambles

in the uk you can actually join a political party. you pay dues. you can then attend interminable local ward meetings in church basements to debate eligibility for treasurer.