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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

Mio Since: Jan, 2001
#175926: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:05:06 PM

[up][up][up][up]Perez seemed to have more support among the party leadership, who were the ones that were doing the voting anyway.

The rank and file seemed to show more support for Ellison, but was really the only candidate that seemed to have media coverage until a few months ago so I can't say for sure.

edited 25th Feb '17 4:05:20 PM by Mio

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#175927: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:06:05 PM

[up][up] On economic issues yes (same goes for any pre-Reagan Republican), for his time on environmental issues arguably (he created the EPA remember, and climate change wasn't known about), otherwise you're absolutely correct.

edited 25th Feb '17 4:06:45 PM by CaptainCapsase

math792d Since: Jun, 2011 Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#175928: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:06:28 PM

[up]x4 You mean the democratic voter turnout for the 2016 election that had only been eclipsed once in history by 2008 Obama?

Yes, I can see that base being very, very alienated.

edited 25th Feb '17 4:06:53 PM by math792d

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
Gilphon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#175929: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:06:46 PM

@Perian: I think Ellison being the deputy should be read as promoting unity, for starters. I also think that reading favouring Perez as trying to kick the Sanders out although is an absolutely horrific exaggeration of what's happening.

But mostly I'm downright angry at anyone- on either side of this- who looks at a race between two qualified people who respect each other deeply and have very similar views on policy and tries to turn it into an excuse to tear the party in half. And saying 'the other side started it' makes me respect you even less. If they did start, then you get to be the one who ends it.

edited 25th Feb '17 4:07:57 PM by Gilphon

Kostya (Unlucky Thirteen)
#175930: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:07:01 PM

Why does Ellison running mean Perez shouldn't? People argue that Perez isn't different enough from Ellison to justify his bid but doesn't that defeat the argument that this is some great betrayal to begin with? If the two are virtually identical it should make no damn difference who won.

edit: @Democrats need to reach out and change their strategy. They lost by 70k votes. That is a fraction of a percent. Given all the shit Clinton had thrown at her and the questionable campaign strategies I don't see how that means centrism has failed and we need to commit ourselves to Saint Bernie. We just need to run a candidate that isn't Hillary and spend more time in the rust belt.

edited 25th Feb '17 4:09:50 PM by Kostya

CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#175931: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:08:20 PM

[up][up]Nixon was liberal as far as the GOP of the time went. Environmental protection and health care funding were expanded under him, but he was still a conservative as far as American politics went. It's just that the modern GOP is so Reagancentric that reading about Nixon can be a disconcerting experience and lead someone to the incorrect conclusion that he was a progressive.

It's also worth noting that Congress was Democrat-controlled for most of the period between Eisenhower and Clinton. Nixon's progressive domestic achievements are more accurately legislative triumphs that Nixon was unwilling to obstruct.

edited 25th Feb '17 4:11:42 PM by CrimsonZephyr

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#175932: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:09:01 PM

@math: In certain areas of the country, absolutely. You can't explain Trump's victory otherwise, because Republican turnout was basically the same as usual; critical democratic constituencies saw drops in voter turnout, namely southern minorities and young voters.

edited 25th Feb '17 4:11:42 PM by CaptainCapsase

MadSkillz Destroyer of Worlds Since: Mar, 2013 Relationship Status: I only want you gone
Destroyer of Worlds
#175933: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:09:36 PM

...are we seriously saying that obama was less liberal than Nixon? The warmongering racist that spied on the dnc and exploited and extended the Vietnam war for political gain? You cannot be fucking serious.

All those things are separate from what liberal means or rather it's not all what it means to be liberal.

Liberal =/ anti-racist and pro-peace

The Democrat and Republican Party had slide far down to the right since the Carter/Reagan era.

The Democrats today would've been moderate Republicans during Nixon's time.

edited 25th Feb '17 4:14:52 PM by MadSkillz

Perian Since: Jun, 2016
#175934: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:12:13 PM

Would one of the Berners in this thread be so kind as to provide a quote from someone connected to the Obama White House saying that Perez was put in to stop a Sanders choice from being selected?

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Struggling to respond to Donald J. Trump’s victory, a group of shellshocked Democrats moved swiftly to endorse Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota for chairman of the Democratic National Committee, hoping that he would be a fresh face for a party with a depleted bench.

But after steadily adding endorsements from leading Democrats in his bid to take over the party, Mr. Ellison is encountering resistance from a formidable corner: the White House.

In a sign of the discord gripping the party, President Obama’s loyalists, uneasy with the progressive Mr. Ellison, have begun casting about for an alternative, according to multiple Democratic officials close to the president.

The battle pits the titans of the Democratic Party against one another, with Mr. Obama’s camp at odds with figures like Chuck Schumer, the new Senate Democratic leader, and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Mr. Obama’s advisers, some of whom discussed the party leadership race at a White House meeting last week, have talked about whether Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez and former Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan would be willing to run for the post. Mr. Perez met with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. last week and had lunch Tuesday in the White House Mess with Valerie Jarrett, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, while also visiting with David Simas, Mr. Obama’s political director.

Some in Mr. Obama’s circle were even holding out hope that Mr. Biden himself could be persuaded to step into the chairmanship as a unifying force for a party reeling after losing the presidency and making scant gains in the House and Senate.

But Mr. Biden’s office said Tuesday that he was “not interested in being D.N.C. chair,” though he plans to “remain deeply involved in helping shape the direction of the Democratic Party moving forward.”

The tumultuous tenure of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was forced out as party leader in July, convinced a wide range of Democrats that whoever takes over the committee must make it their sole focus.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the new minority leader, also supports Mr. Ellison, but he is at odds with the White House. “There’s too much at stake for us not to have somebody working in a full-time capacity,” said Michael Blake, a New York assemblyman and veteran of both of Mr. Obama’s campaigns, who is considering a D.N.C. vice chairmanship. “This has to be your priority.”

But there are other reasons for the discomfort with Mr. Ellison that illustrate lingering divisions after a bruising presidential primary fight and a general election in which Hillary Clinton suffered deep losses among working-class whites and could not match Mr. Obama’s support among young and nonwhite voters.

Some Democrats, in Mr. Obama’s orbit and beyond, say that elevating Mr. Ellison would amount to handing the party to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Mrs. Clinton’s primary race opponent, and his liberal followers.

Mr. Ellison was a high-profile backer of Mr. Sanders’s presidential campaign, and Mr. Sanders has been rallying support for Mr. Ellison’s D.N.C. bid. Already a polarizing figure among Democrats, he ignited new controversy this week by saying the party needed to “go beyond identity politics.”

“It’s not good enough for someone to say: ‘I’m a woman! Vote for me!’” Mr. Sanders told students in Boston on Sunday, a comment widely seen as a criticism of Mrs. Clinton. “No, that’s not good enough. What we need is a woman who has the guts to stand up to Wall Street, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, to the fossil fuel industry.”

This call for an economic-centered brand of liberalism is what galvanized so many of his supporters, but his blunt language also served to remind some Democrats of the divisive primary race. There is little appetite for a replay of that fight in the D.N.C. race, which will be decided by members of the committee when they gather in February for their winter meeting.

Some top Democrats had hoped to pre-empt a contest by backing Mr. Ellison’s bid. Mr. Schumer, Ms. Warren and an array of House members and unions were lining up behind him even before he formally entered the race.

But along with his inability to do the job full time and his links to Mr. Sanders, Mr. Ellison’s past criticism of Mr. Obama and praise for Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, worry some Democrats looking for a figure to lead the opposition to Mr. Trump.

[...]

Mr. Perez and Mrs. Granholm, who both declined to discuss whether they intended to run, were early supporters of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, which could turn the D.N.C. race into the Clinton-versus-Sanders proxy war some Democrats want to avoid.


Also, what I find kind of weird about the idea that the spot was deserved by Ellison and was sabotaged by Perez is that a) this is exactly the same thing Sandersites accuse Hillary Clinton of expressing (and seem to be totally unaware of their hypocrisy) and b) even though those two were the frontrunners, there were several other people also running and I don't see any Sandersites saying any of those people shouldn't have run.

The problem is not that Perez decided to run. The problem is that Ellison is ten times more qualified than Perez, and no-one can give a good reason why Perez was chosen anyway. If one of the state chairs (like Ray Buckley or Sally Boynton Brown) was chosen, for example, I doubt that you would see this amount of backlash.

edited 25th Feb '17 4:17:41 PM by Perian

JBC31187 Since: Jan, 2015
#175935: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:12:50 PM

On economic issues yes (same goes for any pre-Reagan Republican), for his time on environmental issues arguably (he created the EPA remember, and climate change wasn't known about), otherwise you're absolutely correct.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the Democratic majority have something to do with it as well?

CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#175936: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:14:44 PM

[up]It absolutely did, and can't be overstated that a huge part of the "progressivism of the past" was due to the legislative agenda being controlled by progressives, or at least social liberals.

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#175937: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:15:30 PM

[up][up] Perhaps, but the economic orthodoxy back than was still essentially an evolution of the New Deal. You didn't question Keynesian economics in the same way you didn't question neoliberalism in the 90s and 00s.

edited 25th Feb '17 4:15:58 PM by CaptainCapsase

Mio Since: Jan, 2001
#175938: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:18:33 PM

@Kostya: The issues with surrounding Perez were more about optics then anything else.

He entered the race at a fairly late juncture with a lot of built in support from the out-going Obama administration. At the time Ellison had been campaign for months, had built a strong base support and seemed like shoo-in until Perez arrived on the scene.

Regardless of Perez's own stances and his plan for the future of the Democratic party (largely similar to that of Ellison's), it felt like a very blatant attempt certain members Democratic elite to keep Ellison out of the chairship. The fact that the state chair-people choose Perez over Ellison despite his long campaign, his reassuring of higher-ups and the big grassroots support he enjoyed, is simply not going to look good to a lot of people .

MadSkillz Destroyer of Worlds Since: Mar, 2013 Relationship Status: I only want you gone
Destroyer of Worlds
#175939: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:23:20 PM

The thing the radical leftists tend to miss is that corporations are not inherently good or bad. It really depends on the ethics of who's running them. (A corporate entity, as a non-person, is inherently amoral but the people running the show can steer it toward doing good or ill.)

Here's the problem. Corporations, for the most part, are designed to make as much money as possible. It is an organism without morality. Governments have to regulate corporations or they would exploit people like they do overseas like China and Southeast Asia.

Right now, governments are ceding more and more control to corporate influence. Our economy is growing and profit is going up but all the wealth isn't ending up in the regular person's hands. Real wages are down, wealth is down, income inequality has grown by leaps and bounds and it's all perpetuated by the system.

Ideally, corporate interests and politicians would negotiate with each other to come to a balance between regulation and libretarianisim (small-L). If they are ignored or pressured out, they can pick up their ball and leave. We want them on our side too.

Well that what they're doing right now and it's not working.

Our politicians are reliant on corporations and their money to get them voted in. So they can't actually stand up to them too hard.

IFwanderer use political terms to describe, not insult from Earth Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
use political terms to describe, not insult
#175940: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:27:33 PM

Gilphon:

But mostly I'm downright angry at anyone- on either side of this- who looks at a race between two qualified people who respect each other deeply and have very similar views on policy and tries to turn it into an excuse to tear the party in half. And saying 'the other side started it' makes me respect you even less. If they did start, then you get to be the one who ends it.

[awesome]

1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV
MadSkillz Destroyer of Worlds Since: Mar, 2013 Relationship Status: I only want you gone
Destroyer of Worlds
#175941: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:28:23 PM

Donald Trump: Congratulations to Thomas Perez, who has just been named Chairman of the DNC. I could not be happier for him, or for the Republican Party!

Ouch.

https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/835610917568200705

PhysicalStamina i'm tired, my friend (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Coming soon to theaters
i'm tired, my friend
#175942: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:29:15 PM

Ohhhhhh boy...

i'm tired, my friend
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#175943: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:30:03 PM

[up][up] Hopefully Perez surprises us; he can't be unaware of the fact that his support from the left wing of the base is weaker than Ellison's, and if this struggle for the soul of the party is still happening in 2018, the democrats aren't going to gain back either chamber of congress.

edited 25th Feb '17 4:31:27 PM by CaptainCapsase

MysteryMan23 (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#175944: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:31:27 PM

And Perez's reply:

Call me Tom. And don't get too happy. @keithellison and I, and Democrats united across the country, will be your worst nightmare.

cool[tup]

edited 25th Feb '17 4:31:46 PM by MysteryMan23

Draghinazzo (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: I get a feeling so complicated...
#175945: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:33:01 PM

Is it possible that this is a calculated jab to try and fragment the base? If Perez is supposedly not that different from Ellison then surely he can't be doing Trump that many favors.

Mio Since: Jan, 2001
#175946: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:33:56 PM

[up]Yeah, I'm pretty sure he would said something like that regardless of who was elected.

[up][up]Not bad Tom. Not bad at all.

edited 25th Feb '17 4:35:04 PM by Mio

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#175947: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:35:04 PM

[up][up] I get the distinct impression that Trump, regardless of what the conventional wisdom says (and it's still conflicted), probably thinks he'd have more trouble with the Sanders democrats than with people like Clinton going forwards. Trump actually put in a surprising amount of effort trying to court Sanders's voters, and at the height of Sanders's popularity when it was conceivable that he might have won the primary, Trump really didn't seem sure of what sort of insults to fling.

edited 25th Feb '17 4:37:00 PM by CaptainCapsase

Hodor2 Since: Jan, 2015
#175948: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:36:24 PM

Eh I think it would probably be something anti-Muslim if Ellison was elected.

Note- I think the anti-Muslim smears against Ellison by other Democrats or anyone were despicable (although I'm skeptical of attempts to smear Perez as being responsible), and I definitely don't think it is at all a valid reason to not support Ellison. But I think betting on Donald Trump being anti-Muslim is a pretty safe bet.

@Perian- Thanks. Doesn't seem like anyone is "quoted" expressing the sentiment, but since it's the New York Times, I'd consider that pretty valid. Although I would say that since Perez was Obama's Secretary of Labor, Obama or Biden supporting him isn't that odd/sinister For what it's worth, I do agree with Perez's criticism of Sanders. I mean obviously Sanders did/does have a fair amount of support from African Americans, but I will say that as a non-African American, Sanders' various dog-whistles have rubbed me the wrong way.

edited 25th Feb '17 4:40:13 PM by Hodor2

MadSkillz Destroyer of Worlds Since: Mar, 2013 Relationship Status: I only want you gone
Destroyer of Worlds
#175949: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:37:47 PM

I have no problem with Perez but if Ellison and Perez were really that similar then it was a completely stupid move by the Democrats to put Perez in.

This is the energy you should be harnessing:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) turned out en masse at ordinarily sleepy party caucuses earlier this month, electing a slate of delegates who could be poised to take over the largest Democratic Party organization outside of Washington, D.C.

As final vote totals trickled in, Sanders backers claimed to have elected more than 650 delegates out of 1,120 available seats chosen at this month’s caucuses. Those delegates will choose the next state Democratic Party chairman, along with other party officials.

Sanders supporters say they hope to change the very nature of the Democratic Party.

“One of the issues we’re looking to do is transform the party,” said Shannon Jackson, executive director of Our Revolution, the organization that grew out of the Sanders’s presidential campaign. “This is the first step in that process.”

Our Revolution ran an on-the-ground get-out-the-vote effort to make sure supporters attended caucuses in each of the state’s 80 assembly districts. The group sent out more than 100,000 emails and delivered 40,000 text messages, Jackson told The Hill. More than 800 Sanders supporters signed up to run for delegate seats.

Longtime Democratic activists, used to low-turnout caucuses in which only party regulars show up, were stunned by the long lines they faced this year. One party strategist in Sacramento said he waited 45 minutes in line before being able to vote, when he was used to walking in and out in the span of five minutes.

The surge in turnout, and Sanders backers’ success, caught the attention of elected leaders in Sacramento.

“There’s a lot of energy in the party right now. We need to move really quickly to harness this energy,” state Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D) said in an interview, marveling at the turnout in his Los Angeles-area district.

http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/315040-sanders-backers-take-over-california-democratic-party

edited 25th Feb '17 4:38:10 PM by MadSkillz

Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#175950: Feb 25th 2017 at 4:38:20 PM

@Mad: There are limits to how exploitative a corporation can be and remain profitable, however. A business that is severely exploitative tends to also be badly managed because if you treat people like shit, they are less productive/willing to buy your stuff. Many (but not all) companies are well aware of this.

The elephant in the room that is the rise of automation also needs to be talked about. Because if business and government aren't in that discussion together, that world is going to be in for a nasty shock.

edited 25th Feb '17 4:39:41 PM by Elle


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