Democratic (Party) Direction

"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

I guess seeing it applied to (imo) lavishly overpaid consultants that seem to only fail upwards doesn’t really bother me

like maybe Neera doesn’t make much more than a higher ranking associate at a Big Law firm (also overpaid), but those folks have to actually produce, bill ~2k hours etc.

and I wouldn’t even begrudge them these salaries if they were at the least out pushing for genuine improvements in the lives of the people who have to bring them their DoorDash and handle their Amazon packages. during a gd pandemic.

The Mothership/Neera/think tank grifter call comes down to whether or not you think their goal is to win elections and make policy, or if their goal is essentially no different from any other marketing/PR firm (ie to skim money off the top) regardless of results.

imo Mothership: grifters, Neera: not grifter, just a person with shitty politics but she does appear to want to govern

Sure dude

Xpost

fair point

xp

you got it dude Don

This Mothership?
https://mothershipstrategies.com/

Yes, they're the people behind the constant IF YOU DON'T SEND ME $5 RIGHT NOW MY DOG WILL BE KILLED fundraising e-mails.

Can their "scare old people into giving money" tactic work possibly as well it does for Trumpers? I hope not honestly

It's extremely effective at getting people to donate AFAICT.

Less effective at winning races - they made their name raking in the cash for 2017 Ossoff

did they do McGrath bc wowowowow

people who thought Daou wasn’t on the level before but he is now

I mean, the job might have been a grift on society but the sentiments seemed genuine in the past? I have no real way of gauging it, and maybe it's all posturing in search of a job or increased clout. But it's the same vague hollering into the void of twitter. I did not mean to imply that he was a reliable source of information or that his tweeting was worse then than now, just that he's pivoted.

and I think sic's link was about the video clip, not that it was Daou tweeting it. even a dude like Daou can spot a banana

It doesn’t matter what his link was about. Conversation shifted in ways that were beyond my control and it will probably happen again.

It doesn’t matter what his link was about. Conversation shifted in ways that were beyond my control and it will probably happen again.

You're the one who shifted it by bringing up grifting!

I remembered it being more of a fluid collectively driven and gradual conversational shift but maybe your right.

you’re

A Mothership email

lol pic.twitter.com/E3xEb8e3Bg

— da jdpon joker (@Hegelbon) December 23, 2020

and I think sic's link was about the video clip, not that it was Daou tweeting it. even a dude like Daou can spot a banana

yeah Daou is a clown but it was too late at night to bother looking for another source on the clip

Verrit was his hilarious "a numerical code to prove memes are true" project btw

also tbh I do feel happy for him that he saw through the emptiness of Sorkin centrism, even if he keeps being the same level of teethgrindingly earnest about actually positive pro-human policies. so if the thread drift came from gabbo aiming to clown me, fair enough

small rustled jimmies

“Sorkin Centrism”

That should be a thing we don’t say.

I guess if you don't say it then we won't be

Dianne Feinstein has filed with the FEC to seek re-election until 2030, when she will be 96.

Uh

Barbara, come get your girl

file and forget

Don't really know anything beyond this tweet, but FWIW:

Even candidates that literally say I AM NOT RUNNING AGAIN file this paperwork, it has to do with transferring campaign money around https://t.co/gplOW9cF2U

— metal dot txt (@metaltxt) January 13, 2021

Yeah, the amount of the national Democratic Party infrastructure is just consultancy grift and media buys to their friends isn’t really understood by most people, especially not by those who are paid to comment on them on air

thanks, this also sucks!

Say what you will about the Democrats, at least they're all going to vote for a second time to impeach and convict Donald J. Trump. Who else is going to do this public service on our behalf? The Republicans?

Reporting today says Biden picks Jaime Harrison as DNC chair, but I don't get it -- I thought DNC chair was a thing there was an election for, not a thing the President picks, am I confused?

Yeah, I've been confused about that, too.

Here's what the NYT said:

"Incoming presidents traditionally take control of the party committees, installing their own chair and staffers. Former President Barack Obama chose to try to establish his own political operation outside of the committee, a decision that many D.N.C. members say damaged state parties and led to years of dysfunction at the national level. Far more of a party institutionalist, Mr. Biden has promised to rebuild state parties and deepen investments in the committee."

So, I guess there was a DNC election in 2017 because there wasn't a Democratic president in the White House?

Also, Wikipedia says that the 2017 election was the first contested DNC race since 1985.

The general way it works is that the DNC is notionally the president’s operation when a democrat is in office. They set the national direction for the party, etc.

Obama shunned the DNC, which might have been OK for him but was disastrous for all the things the DNC is supposed to do. Debbie Wasserman Schultz arguably tanked the whole thing, and all he had to do to was wave his hand and she’d have been replaced

There would have been both pros and cons to him just installing a portion of his Obama for America staff directly in the DNC office, but in my opinion... it would have been a better idea than pretending he was independent of their operation

Anyone have a take on Schumer's proposed "power sharing agreement" with the GOP? Left friends already cringing, probably not a bad bet that they are right to, but just wondering if this is some kind of necessary move to avoid 100% deadlock.

Seems similar to what the Senate did in 2001 when there was also a 50-50 tie (for a few months, anyway, until Jim Jeffords switched parties)

Since ties in the committees will still send bills to the floor, having equal members doesn't seem like a big deal.

But don't you need equal members in the committees for that to happen, which has to be allowed by the 51-seat party? I don't get the rules (which seem by and large totally arbitary in the Senate)

yeah the committees are going to have equal members under this agreement

I guess the question for me is whether there *needs* to be an agreement at all. The narrative around the Senate since November has been that the Democrats would win control with a 50-50 split because Harris would break ties. From that perspective, any discussion of "power-sharing" looks like feckless deference on the part of Democrats. Like, you have a majority, act like it!

On the other hand, it's possible that the actual operation of the Senate requires some minor adjustments when there is a 50-50 split. And it might be the case that the Democratic majority is seen as more of a functional majority (because of Harris) rather than an intrinsic one -- although the fact that Dems will be committee chairs does make it seem like an actual majority.

I guess my question is - what if Schumer decided he didn't want to do that? What would happen?
(My guess is that, they do this as a sort of handshake agreement to appease the other side and hope that the Republicans will treat them fairly in other situations, which, lol)

xp jaymc right, that's what i'm wondering

I shared this in the other thread: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/18/politics/mitch-mcconnell-chuck-schumer-power-sharing-deal/index.html

yeah what Nhex said, that's what I'm trying to understand - are Democrats getting something out of this that they wouldn't already have with the tiebreaker seat, and is what they're getting worth whatever they're giving up?

They're upholding Norms!