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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Only a Sith Republican deals in absolutes.
His approval ratings don't really help the Democratic Party itself too much as long as he refuses to say "I am one of them".
Granted, they probably wouldn't be as high if he did. I'm pretty sure part of the reason he's doing well is because he's got the whole "outsider sticking it to the establishment and making them bark on his command" image going for him.
edited 19th Apr '17 1:02:30 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised![]()
Not being a Democrat doesn't make him my enemy.
It does make him untrustworthy, though. Like a Hired Gun.
"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."It helps immensely by having the Democratic Party associate themselves with him.
Like I said, Tom Perez is smart to tour the country with him and promote the party by using his popularity.
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Well, there's always seeing if whether Trump is actually in the top 4% of American earners.
Doug LaMalfa's town hall did not go well for him
.
edited 19th Apr '17 1:22:10 PM by Krieger22
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot
Man, Republicans do not handle power and responsibility well. That one quote about Lincoln springs to mind...
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
Actually, the Republicans aren't handling adversity too well either. I guess being booed counts as adversity, right?
edited 19th Apr '17 1:25:35 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised![]()
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to that extent you can make the comparison, but the similarities are far fewer than the differences. For starters, were he a few years younger and a declared member of the democratic party, Sanders' resume would be perfectly in line with a normal presidential candidate. Trump's background is pretty much as different from previous Presidents as humanly possible.
edited 19th Apr '17 1:26:08 PM by CaptainCapsase
Trump's also a specific type of populist. A demagogue.
How California Gave Us Trumpism
The article's too long to copy and too much like a series of stories to meaningfully excerpt, but tis an interesting tale of how these few reacted to a changing society. It wasn't healthy, the key word is "reaction" after all.
And Two Perspectives on 2018:
Democrats begin to wonder: When do we win?
For all the anger, energy, and money swirling at the grass-roots level, Democrats didn’t manage to pick off the first two Republican-held congressional seats they contended for in the Trump era, and the prospects aren’t markedly better in the next few House races coming up: the Montana race at the end of May, and the South Carolina contest on June 20.
...strategists and lawmakers [wonder] how to keep the furious rank-and-file voters engaged in fueling and funding the party’s comeback — especially given the sky-high expectations that surrounded Ossoff’s ultimately unsuccessful run at the 50-percent threshold that was necessary to win the seat outright.
“The resistance has it right: They are fighting mad, but they find joy in the fight. And so it’s not that anybody should be expected to gloss over the challenges that we have, or be Pollyanna about our situation as a country or as a party,” said Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, decrying some of the party’s messaging describing the prospect of an Ossoff loss as devastating. “It’s just that there has to be a sense of momentum that builds over time and that requires that we define our objectives tightly — and that we are prepared to lose more than we win for the time being, but that we understand that we have the vast majority of the American people on our side, and history on our side.”
By any measure, Ossoff’s strong performance in Georgia and the 20-point swing toward the Democratic nominee in last week’s Kansas special election are impressive accomplishments given the conservative orientation of those districts. But they still fall under the category of loss mitigation, not concrete victories against a president the party loathes.
Now, with Ossoff falling short of an outright win despite an unprecedented surge of campaign cash and national attention — in a district which Hillary Clinton lost by just 1 percentage point in 2016 — comes the potential for another round of fingerpointing within the party. The worry: that if operatives and voters continue their practice of quietly blaming one another for losses, as they did after a narrow defeat outside Wichita last week, the current level of runaway enthusiasm and budding trust in the national party leadership could sputter out long before the 2018 midterms.
“Whatever happens over the next few weeks, it’s critical that rank-and-file Democrats feel like the [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] left it all on the playing field,” said longtime party strategist Simon Rosenberg, president of the NDN think tank.
After attorney James Thompson came within 7 points of winning the race for CIA Director Mike Pompeo’s old seat in Kansas last week, some leading progressive voices, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, were quick to blame national Democrats for not spending enough time and energy to help Thompson. Since then, DCCC and Democratic National Committee officials have been sure to detail the work they’ve done for the party ahead of Ossoff’s race.
One way to avoid a letdown, some Democrats say, is to train the focus on legislative fights where Democrats have slowed the White House, from its travel ban to the attempt to repeal Obamacare. Party operatives figure pushes like that might be enough to keep the base energized as opportunities to push back on individual policies surface.
“People are responding to Trump, and as long as Trump is in office they will continue to respond,” said Democratic pollster Margie Omero. “There are plenty of other avenues for engagement. Constant meetings and groups popping up all over the country. You have corporate motivated efforts that people are taking to make sure that companies they support have political views that line up with their own. You have the groundswell of activism against [Neil] Gorsuch, and then you have the protests like the tax protest or the climate ones coming down the pike. So there’s lots of opportunity for opposing the president. [Yes,] as long there’s voting, people are going to be paying a lot of attention to it. But it goes beyond that.”
The fact that Democrats have picked themselves up off the ground since Election Day to mount a resistance at all creates a positive feedback loop, they believe — pointing to local legislative races as evidence of an optimistic trend.
“The biggest driver of enthusiasm right now is the rejection of Trump and the Trump agenda,” said party strategist Jesse Ferguson, a former top official at the party’s House campaign wing. “There have been far more successes in resisting the Trump administration than anyone would have expected on November 10, whether it’s beating back the health care repeal or some of these special elections in state legislatures, or closer-than-expected congressional races.”
With the political map glaringly free of obvious near-term win opportunities, Schatz believes the party’s messaging needs some refining. In his view, that means officials at the DCCC should cut the doom-and-gloom messaging in their fundraising emails — a significant way the party communicates with backers.
“I don’t mind the occasional call to action that is based on a negative emotion, it’s the declaring final defeat at the start of the third quarter that bugs me. ‘All is lost’ is a preposterous thing to say to a voter or a donor, and to use words like ‘crushing’ is a total misunderstanding of how to motivate people,” he said on Tuesday, just hours before the DCCC sent out a Nancy Pelosi-signed note with the subject line "crushing loss."
“The point to be made here is this is Tom Price’s seat,” he added. "One of the most conservative people in the United States House. And when he vacated his seat nobody thought it was going to be a problem for national Republicans and competitive for us. So if we can keep up this competitiveness, it’s going to be a really interesting year in 2018. But if we define our success as winning in Kansas, Montana, and Georgia, we’re setting ourselves up for potential disappointment.”
Dems show surprising strength at start of brutal 2018 midterm
Republicans say it’s too soon to sweat the Democratic incumbents’ fundraising. Though the first midterm election of a new presidency is typically a referendum on the commander in chief and favors the party out of power in the White House, no one knows how Trump will be perceived 18 months from now. It’s also noteworthy that the Republican Senate campaign arm outraised its Democratic counterpart.
Still, Democrats are cautiously optimistic that they can, at least, stanch additional hemorrhaging in the Senate — after a 2016 election in which the party was widely expected to win control of the chamber...
Potential Republican challengers collected middling amounts by comparison. Indiana Rep. Luke Messer, who is considering a challenge to Donnelly, raised just over $700,000. Rep. Todd Rokita, another potential Donnelly opponent, raised a mere $320,000. By comparison, Sen. Todd Young raised $1 million in the quarter following GOP Sen. Dan Coats’ retirement announcement in March 2015.
Two years ago, the Senate map was essentially a mirror image of the 2018 cycle: A host of GOP senators were up in blue and purple states, while Democrats had few seats to defend.
While six Democratic senators raised more than $2 million in the first quarter of 2017, just three GOP senators had banked at least that amount at this point two years ago: Rob Portman of Ohio, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and John Mc Cain of Arizona, all prolific fundraisers. No other Republican incumbents in key 2016 races had raised more than $1.4 million during the first quarter of 2015.
But two years ago, a handful of Republicans had war chests that far outpaced the cash-on-hand totals of Democrats this year. For instance, Portman already had $8 million at this point in 2015, while Toomey had reported nearly $7.3 million cash on hand. This year, in those two states, Brown has a $5 million war chest, while Casey is reporting $3.8 million cash on hand.
Mc Caskill’s $2.8 million haul is nearly triple that of Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who raised just under $1.1 million during the first quarter of 2015. But both reported similar cash on hand totals after the first three months of the cycle: $3 million.
Democrats are particularly ebullient about the smaller contributions, since that means donors are far from being maxed out and can keep donating as the midterms get closer. And they believe the controversies coming out of the Trump White House will give them no shortage of fundraising opportunities.
“Our base is motivated and the small-dollar donations are the latest sign that they are engaged early headed into 2018,” DSCC communications director Lauren Passalacqua said.
The uptick in online donations isn’t unique to Democrats; the NRSC has also gotten a boost in online fundraising. But Democrats have a built-in advantage with Act Blue, the online fundraising portal for Democratic candidates, that gives donors one clearinghouse for online contributions. There’s no Act Blue equivalent for Republicans.
“They know how to fund us, but we don’t have the same system where there’s just one website,” one GOP official said. “We just don’t have it.”
Two Democratic senators in seemingly safe blue seats — Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Chris Murphy of Connecticut — posted massive numbers in the first quarter, with Warren pulling in $5.2 million and Murphy banking $3 million. Warren and Murphy are considered potential 2020 presidential contenders but first need to win reelection.
Warren and Murphy may not need their cash to keep their seats, but both could build chits by spreading the wealth. Senators can give an unlimited amount to the DSCC, and Murphy has already said he will use some campaign funds to build up anti-Trump groups in his home state.
Former Democratic vice presidential nominee and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine raised $2.9 million. Kaine represents a blue-trending swing state that’s further down the NRSC’s target list.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who is occasionally mentioned as a presidential nominee, raised $1.5 million. Another potential 2020 candidate up for reelection in 2018, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, raised $4.4 million in the first three months of 2017.
The thing the likes of Bannon hates about California is that brown and yellow people (like me) are making money in Silicon Valley. It's not part of a "civic society".
That's probably why Bannon hates seeing minorities make it big in California.
edited 19th Apr '17 1:43:52 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised
On the high schooler's comment in the article about LaMalfa's town hall meeting. Yes, constantly booing and shouting down the speaker is not the most appropriate behavior. But these adults are the ones who have to actually face the consequences of what the politicians do and don't do. So they'll probably be much more emotionally invested in the matter and don't like being lied to.
edited 19th Apr '17 1:57:37 PM by danime91
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They're equally mad that it was Latino's registering Democrat that shattered their grip on a reliably Republican state. Latinos who felt discriminated against because the governor and state legislature were saying racist things and passing discriminatory laws.
Oh right, I actually came into the thread to mention there are rumors the White House is planning to bring up Obamacare repeal again before the end of the 1st hundred days.
edited 19th Apr '17 2:00:03 PM by Watashiwa

@Cap'n Capsase
In that case, Sanders can be the out-and-out Socialist he really wants to be, but he needs to pick a label and own it like it's a part of him. If you're a Socialist, say you're a Socialist. If you're a Democrat, say you're a Democrat. If you're a Republican, say you're a Republican. Don't be a wishy-washy "everything to everyone" independent. If a socialist wants to enter into a coalition with a Democrat, fine, but first he has to say it loud and proud that he's a Socialist. Not, 'I'm with you, but maybe I'm one of you...I'll help you...for now...'"
edited 19th Apr '17 1:01:05 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."