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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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Well, that's...less than half. That's good, I guess?
edited 4th Apr '17 12:13:12 PM by KarkatTheDalek
Oh God! Natural light!Well, I think the idea is to win them with universal medicare, universal college, and other progressive economic policies.
But I kind of get the sense that while they are walking around it, Capsase and Mad Skillz also think that Democrats should completely stop talking about any social welfare/racial equality policies until they win the election.
So in particular, probably no discussion of anti-transgender laws, the Muslim Ban, Black Lives Matter, abortion, etc.
edited 4th Apr '17 12:16:03 PM by Hodor2
Eh, I don't think you watched the video and if you did then you weren't paying close attention. They pushed back on him and he explained his points and it seems to have worked to some extent.
Wisconsin did vote for him though. It's one of the states that Bernie would've carried if he had beat Hillary.
And some of these Trump supporters are actual Democrats that would've picked Bernie in the general election.
Despite being to the left of Hillary, Bernie beat Hillary in every county on West Virginia. Hmmmm.
So is that why most Bernie supporters voted for Trump then? Come on. Now you're just making things up.
[[quoteblock]]If you want to solve the problem, you need to acknowledge that it can't be solved by just a folksy chat about the benefits of Universal healthcare.
I'm talking about getting votes and not solving the problem. Look at how Hillary's strategy to ignore the Rust Belt worked out. It cost her the election.
Then why push Tom Perez when Keith Ellison would've done? It's not an equal partnership. It's shut up and follow my lead.
Because Tom Perez became head of the DNC amid worries that the party would be under the control of the progressive branch. It doesn't help that they immediately chose to veto any rules about receiving corporate money.
Then look at Tom Perez's transition team. It was like one progressive and tens of Establishment Democrats. It's better now that there has been an outcry about it.
People are also afraid that an establishment figure is going to try to hurt the next progressive candidate like last time.
And you know you have tropers here like Ambar that think the other side should be completely ignored. Truly the wing that wants unification.
edited 4th Apr '17 12:25:50 PM by MadSkillz
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Not in the slightest, despite your apparent that anyone who supported Sanders is a closet Trump supporter, I am merely insisting that the democrats take economic issues as serious as they do social issues. Let me reiterate once again that I have no expectation of winning back the white working class in large numbers; just a few percentage points is what I'm after, particularly among people who previously voted for Obama. As much as you insist that social justice and economic justice are not mutually exclusive whenever I try to make this point, your response to proposals for moving left economically suggest you believe otherwise, perhaps unconsciously, perhaps not.
edited 4th Apr '17 12:26:38 PM by CaptainCapsase
Nooooo. I'm a minority and this would directly affect me too, ya know.
Just market to these white voters the things they find relatable. Talk to them like they were your friends. It's all about how you say things and do things. Basically optics.
You know the best person of winning the next election would probably be a southern anti-establishment progressive with a folksy way of talking.
Hmm. Well, we had someone recently who fit many of those ideas — Bill Clinton comes to mind. And he is currently under a lot of fire from — who else, the Justice Democrats.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"@Capsase-
So answer me this. What are you advocating in terms of messaging. Is it just adopting more economic justice policies or is it also about gearing messaging specifically toward the white working class and assuming that other demographics will just come along for the ride? I'd also kind of question the idea that Democrats should take economic justice "as seriously" as social justice. The former is certainly quite important and is also tied to the latter. But at the same time, the latter is all about people's fundamental rights, which is why you are encountering so much hostility due to the suggestion that those should be downplayed.
@Mad Skillz- That kind of sounds like a No, Except Yes answer. So the Democrats shouldn't drop those concerns but they should choose a folksy white candidate who will focus exclusively on appealing to white people.
edited 4th Apr '17 12:29:22 PM by Hodor2
Bill Clinton isn't a progressive though. He's much further to the right than Obama.
A progressive Bill Clinton would be fire in the next election though.
edited 4th Apr '17 12:28:46 PM by MadSkillz
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The former; adding a greater emphasis on economic justice in the platform and particularly in rhetoric to give people who don't care one way or another about social issues that don't personally effect them a reason to come out and vote and to potentially regain the left wing voters and union voters that stayed home in 2016.
I feel like your view of bigotry as it impacts election outcomes is somewhat Manichean; viewing people as either being prepared to self immolate before a single cent goes to the well being of minorities or being prepared to bleed and die for the cause of a minority demographic they do not belong to. That's not really reflective of how people actually make decisions; there's always going to be a great many people who just don't care one way or another, people who hold regressive views but can be swayed to vote contrary to them with the right incentives, and people who will proclaim support for social justice causes but will not match those words with action.
edited 4th Apr '17 12:35:06 PM by CaptainCapsase
I'd rather not follow the northern anti-establisment regressive with a folksy way of talking in the white house right now with that, if I have the option. I'd really love if the next president was somebody who got elected because they know how to actually govern.
edited 4th Apr '17 12:29:27 PM by Gilphon
I don't get it. What can we offer Trump voters that might help move them towards the Democrats that does not take the form of selling out the interests of core Democratic voters?
Well, that is pretty easy to answer. You try to convince them that the "interests of core Democratic voters" are not incompatible with theirs. Racism is not a form of prion disease and while plenty of people here assert that persuasion won't work, there is not much evidence either way.
Most of the Sanders and WWC discussion so far has consisted in people throwing the exact same arguments over and over again at each other with little evidence to support them and nobody has been convinced by the other side so far as far as I can tell. So unless someone has a killer argument to offer, I suggest we quit for a while with that particular line of discourse.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanInteresting you mention that, let's crunch some numbers:
2016 WV Dem primary votes between Bernie, Hillary and the third guy that got almost 9% of the vote: 124,700 (B) + 86,914 (H) + 21,694 (Other) = 233,308 total votes.
2008
votes for Hillary Clinton ALONE: 240,890
So Hillary got 7.5k more votes in WV in 2008 than the top three Dems running in 2016 got combined. Does that tell you anything?
1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KVCaptain answered before me but I agree with him.
No. He got some applause. That's it. You are extrapolating what fits a preconceived notion.
It's quite simple: Bernie has to be able to win these people over with the greatest of ease just by talking to them. Only then can we decide Clinton was the greater villain because Bernie would have solved everything had he Just Been Allowed To.
[[quoteblock]]Wisconsin did vote for him though. It's one of the states that Bernie would've carried if he had beat Hillary.
And some of these Trump supporters are actual Democrats that would've picked Bernie in the general election
And you know in West Virginia, Bernie beat Hillary in every county.
Know who didn't vote for him? Nevada. Know who didn't vote for him? Florida. Know who didn't vote for him? Pennsylvania. North Carolina, Massachusetts. You give Bernie Wisconsin and Michigan, he still loses. Oh, and spare me "he would've carried Wisconsin"...you base that on nothing but wishful thinking. You think he would have carried it, but you ignore the data on why they swung for Trump.
West Virginia primary voters going for Bernie means nothing for a general. Remember when Hillary crushed Obama there in 2008? It's almost like the white woman beats the black guy there but loses to the white guy.
Know what's tiresome? This "Oh, if only she listened to ME!" on these issues. There's a lot of issues. There was Comey. Russia. Wikileaks. Issues with the campaign...but you know what? Colorado was 'ignored', and yet went for Clinton still, despite the similarity in demographics. Florida and Pennsylvania weren't ignored, and yet...
Oh, no! The super progressive guy who fights for the working class beat out the super progressive guy who fights for the working class in an election both agreed to abide by, then both teamed up and have been working together ever since! The Assassination Of Keith Ellison by the Neoliberal Coward Tom Perez is a narrative you've invented. Nobody 'pushed' Perez. He chose to run. And probably because he's a politician? He thinks he can do a good job? He's more comfortable there than seeking elective office? Why does it HAVE to be sinister?
Then look at Tom Perez's transition team. It was like one progressive and tens of Establishment Democrats. It's better now that there has been an outcry about it.
People are also afraid that an establishment figure is going to try to hurt the next progressive candidate like last time.
And you know you have tropers here like Ambar that think the other side should be completely ignored. Truly the wing that wants unification.
Ellison backed off the laws about corporate money, you have may noticed. He named Ellison his deputy like 30 seconds after he won and has been working with him and stumping around with him constantly. The two of them have a history of working together on labor issues.
But morality plays need villains, and if they don't exist, they have to be invented. Perez's record doesn't matter to these people. It doesn't matter that he's spent his career fighting on the side of good, what matters is that they made it into The One Last True Battle for the soul of the Democratic Party, and bleat about 'establishment' like it means anything (because a thirty year congressman who sells out to Lockheed Martin and dumps waste on a poor Latino town and tells them to go fuck themselves when they ask to talk to him about it isn't establishment)
Btw? Ambar's Canadian. Progressives have been offered compromise after compromise and they refuse it again and again. It's their way or the highway and it's tiresome. It's been going on since Carter now.
edited 4th Apr '17 12:38:40 PM by Lightysnake
Y'don't say.
Well, how do you feel when numbers of marginalized people get constantly told by these 'JUSTICE' Democrats that their issues are wedge issues, distractions, and fighting for them 'isn't good enough?'
Don't even begin to try to tell me it doesn't happen.
Universal Healthcare, job security laws, access to cheaper education and investments in infrastructure renewal/expansion projects mostly, housing and mortgage cost reduction policies.
However, a campaign aiming to seek their votes should be tailored to keep subjects they disagree with away from becoming the focus and use terms and buzzwords simple enough for them to agree with like cost-effective, cheap and balanced while avoiding entering the abortion, birth pills and death panels controversies mostly by dismissing them as hogwash by people who want to take health care away from you or reminding them that those damn minorities and immigrants are leeching off them mostly by stating those benefits would go to tax payers only (which is broad enough and basically everyone is a tax payer).
I think the Democrats will at one point or another say what those people want to hear, but the thread they will be walking is how much they can say without turning into impossible or unviable policies and how much they can appeal to them without throwing everyone else under a bus.
I also think they should take some notes of the Republican playbook and latch into a screw up big enough from the Republicans and Trump to remind everyone how bad they are for them, basically run a smear campaign on how Trump and the Republicans are making everything worse.
Another one would have easily to follow and recognized slogans. It worked for Obama and definitely worked for Trump. I really think the Democrats will have to start treating the swing states as Viewers Are Morons by using easy to digest and simple information about their economic policies instead of explanations that require understanding and nuance to work, specially for a public that doesn't read news beyond just the headline.
The Republicans are simply getting away with murder because they are not afraid to bullshit their way out of trouble and pin all their shit on someone else, I guess it is time for the Democrats to fling the shit that was thrown over their heads back.
Inter arma enim silent leges
The danger of playing hardball like that is that it tends to create a self-reinforcing feedback loop. One side obstructs, the other responds in kind, the first side escalates, leading to further escalation and eventually either a civil war or a dictatorship. This is a very common pattern in Presidential democracies, including the United States in the lead up to the American civil war. It's a good short term strategy with potentially catastrophic long term consequences, so I'd really like to avoid it.
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In what world are the "justice democrats" representative of the left wing of the democratic party? They've fairly small compared to the other various left wing groups vying for influence within the party that MadSkillz is undoubtedly about to list.
edited 4th Apr '17 12:54:56 PM by CaptainCapsase
From the What the Fuck Just Happened Today Twitter feed
:
Assad Apparently ‘Gasses’ Civilians Days After Tillerson Hints He Can Stay in Power
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/04/days-after-tillerson-mouths-russian-line-on-syria-assad-uses-gas.html
Now, while that alone might merit the global terrorism thread or one dedicated to Syria, if there is one, we also have this:
Spicer: Syrian chemical attack a 'consequence' of Obama 'weakness'
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/04/04/politics/syria-chemical-attack-donald-trump-obama/index.html
@Capsase- Well, I kind of think we are at an impasse because just as I apparently can't convince you that I care at all about economic justice, you haven't really convince me that you care at all about social justice (which is kind of a bad, weak term to talk about discussions of fundamental rights).
Because all I see from you is posts about how for "pragmatic reasons" Democrats should downplay anything non-economic. And whenever anyone talks about taking rights issues out of the voting booth or even preventing voter suppression, you always accuse people of wanting to abolish democracy.
A progressive Bill Clinton would be fire in the next election though.
Right there that is gold. There are no real left-wing on the democrats. Complaining that Bill is more right wing than Obama doesn't help anyone and squabbling over which democrat is actually left wing is just as useful as arguing about whether a teapot drifting between Mars and Jupiter is red or blue.
Putting it simple, economically the Democrats are right wing mostly to the center right but the difference being that the majority of the Democrats are within the socially progressive block, even if ones are more socially progressive than the others. There is nothing that is going to change how Democrats work with corporations and major business and how they have policies that support the Supply Side of the economic equation, however they are also willing to accept and address the issues with the Demand Side, something the Republicans never really did in the last 30 years.
Compared to the alternative which are the Republicans. A Democrat being slightly less progressive than another one is just about one unit short of infinity better than anything the Republicans are bringing to the table.
Complaining over the candidates how to the right or left and if she/he is or isn't progressive enough is exactly what got everyone into this goddamn fucking mess to begin with.
edited 4th Apr '17 1:00:23 PM by AngelusNox
Inter arma enim silent legesFundamentally, the argument that Sanders was "more progressive" than Clinton and yet would have captured the White Working Class during the general election is nonsensical, if we take as a given that the WWC is less progressive than the Democrats as a whole.
Simple logic means that both things cannot be true. By process of elimination, we are left with several possibilities:
- The WWC is racist and will prefer candidates that do not remind them that "their tax dollars are going to welfare queens and illegals", despite both of those being false.
- The WWC is sexist and will not vote for a woman (Clinton's votes in 2008 were because the alternative was a black man).
- Sanders is not "more progressive" than Clinton.
- The majority of voters do not actually care about the issues and cannot be educated to care about them; rather, they want pithy sound bites, juicy scandals, and identity politics.
edited 4th Apr '17 1:11:51 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I didn't say that he converted them into Democrats. I said he connected with them which is good. Maybe instead of trying to play 4 D chess with Trump, Hillary could've gone there to campaign. It would've made the difference.
[[quoteblock] Know who didn't vote for him? Nevada.
A state that even Hillary didn't win.
Closed democratic primary. No independents allowed only Democrats so he was disadvantaged there.
Hillary lost this one too.
A safe blue state. Massachusetts going red this election with Bernie on the ticket would be as likely as California going red.
Bernie winning or losing is based off speculation. No one can say for sure but I know Hillary lost.
Bernie is Jewish, an atheist and a socialist. Does race and gender influence their votes? Of course but it doesn't have to be the deciding factor.
But this was under her control. She can't control what wiki leaks, Russia and Comey do. She can control where she campaigns. She chose to ignore advice from Obama, Bill and Bernie. So she paid for her hubris.
Florida is a swing state. Irrelevant.
Hillary did campaign in Pennsylvania but she did a poor job in campaigning in the needed parts of it:
And Hillary's campaign knew Michigan was contested but they preferred to play mind games with Trump:
A senior official from Clinton’s campaign noted that they did have a large staff presence in Michigan and Wisconsin (200 and 180 people respectively) while also stressing that one of the reasons they didn’t do more was, in part, because of psychological games they were playing with the Trump campaign. They recognized that Michigan, for example, was a vulnerable state and felt that if they could keep Trump away—by acting overly confident about their chances—they would win it by a small margin and with a marginal resource allocation.
Ugh.
He chose to run. And probably because he's a politician? He thinks he can do a good job? He's more comfortable there than seeking elective office? Why does it HAVE to be sinister?
Ellison backed off the laws about corporate money, you have may noticed. He named Ellison his deputy like 30 seconds after he won and has been working with him and stumping around with him constantly. The two of them have a history of working together on labor issues. But morality plays need villains, and if they don't exist, they have to be invented. Perez's record doesn't matter to these people. It doesn't matter that he's spent his career fighting on the side of good, what matters is that they made it into The One Last True Battle for the soul of the Democratic Party, and bleat about 'establishment' like it means anything (because a thirty year congressman who sells out to Lockheed Martin and dumps waste on a poor Latino town and tells them to go fuck themselves when they ask to talk to him about it isn't establishment)
Nope. Obama and Biden urged Tom Perez to run:
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/309568-pressure-grows-on-tom-perez-to-enter-dnc-race
Also go read the New Republic article about it. The case for Tom Perez as they say makes no sense.
Here is most of it:
There is one real difference between the two: Ellison has captured the support of the left wing. Ellison backed Sanders early in his primary race against Hillary Clinton, and was one of the first candidates to announce his bid for DNC chair. His election would generate goodwill from Sanders supporters—or, to put it another way, would avoid the enmity that would surely result from a Perez win. In the Huffington Post, one Ellison supporter put it succinctly:
“Keith Ellison had incredible support from the quote-unquote establishment side of the party, the progressive side of the party, the grassroots and the elected officials. Nobody was clamoring for another entrance, and yet we got one foisted upon us. If Tom Perez were to win, the message that would send to the grassroots, to labor unions that endorsed Ellison before Tom Perez joined the race, [is] that their voices, their muscle, their enthusiasm and turnout doesn’t matter.”
But members of the Democratic establishment don’t quite see it that way. The Hill reports, “Perez supporters have expressed concern about handing the party over to the Sanders wing of the party, arguing that Ellison would move the party too far to the left.” And the New York Times suggests that Democratic leaders pushed Perez to run because they viewed Ellison as too close to the Sanders wing.
It appears that the underlying reason some Democrats prefer Perez over Ellison has nothing to do with ideology, but rather his loyalty to the Obama wing. As the head of the DNC, Perez would allow that wing to retain more control, even if Obama-ites are loath to admit it. Sanders has been accused of re-litigating the primary in his criticisms of Perez, but the fact that Perez was pushed to run, while Ellison was quickly and easily unifying the left and center, seems like the move most predicated on primary scars. While Obama has stayed out of the race officially, Vinson Cunningham reports in the New Yorker that he is watching it closely:
And it’s not just Obama- and Clinton-ites that could see some power slip away with an Ellison-headed DNC. Paid DNC consultants also have a vested interest in maintaining the DNC status quo. Nomiki Konst, who has extensively covered the nuts and bolts of the DNC race, asked Perez how he felt about conflicts of interest within the committee—specifically, DNC members who also have contracts with the committee. Perez dodged the issue, advocating for a “big tent.” In contrast, in a forum last month, Ellison firmly stated, “We are battling the consultant-ocracy.”
These concerns about power, control, and money echo of the dismal failures of 2008, when top Democratic operatives decided to fold Obama’s online grassroots behemoth, Organizing for America, into the DNC. The story is infamous now: Party regulars wanted to ensure control of the group, rather than allowing it to flourish as an independent entity, one that could challenge the party itself. The muzzling of Obama’s grassroots support has been blamed for being partly responsible for the Democratic Party’s enormous losses in state and local seats over the past decade. Chris Edley, who pushed for OFA’s independence, told the New Republic recently about the choice, “If you’re not really that committed, as a matter of principle, to a bottom-up theory of change, then you will find it nonsensical to cede some control in order to gain more power.”
The same could be said of today’s battle over the DNC and the push to install a loyal technocrat like Perez. This reluctance to cede control comes despite the fact that Democrats have lost over 1,000 state legislature seats since 2009. There is no case for Perez that cannot be made for Ellison, while Ellison is able to energize progressives in ways that Perez cannot. The question that will be answered on Saturday is whether Democrats have more urgent priorities than denying power to the left.
https://newrepublic.com/article/140847/case-tom-perez-makes-no-sense
@Fighteer- Yeah. I was thinking of how to phrase this, but it comes off like Capsase, Mad Skillz (and Sanders) are framing the term progressive to mean only economic policies, as well as acting like the Democrats as a party and Democrats in this thread are only liberal on "social issues". Which has the end result of essentially arguing that Mad Skillz's father, who believes Obama is a Kenyan Muslim is more progressive than Obama himself.
edited 4th Apr '17 1:11:53 PM by Hodor2

I don't get it. What can we offer Trump voters that might help move them towards the Democrats that does not take the form of selling out the interests of core Democratic voters?
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"