2018 Democrats thread

[StrangeSox]

shocking developments

 

 

 

 

so much for all of those "Free Speech Rallies" that definitely weren't just white supremacist rallies

[Reddy]

https://www.vox.com/2018/5/22/17382650/georgia-texas-kentucky-arkansas-winners-losers 

3 winners and 3 losers from primaries in Georgia, Texas, Kentucky, and Arkansas: A good night for establishmentarians and Medicaid expansion.

"And while progressive ideas continue to flourish in the post-2016 Democratic Party, the vehicle for bringing Bernie Sanders’s political revolution down ballot continues to struggle to establish itself as a real difference-maker.

Loser: Our Revolution - Bernie Sanders’s post-campaign national political organization endorsed two House candidates in fiercely contested primaries — Laura Moser and Rick Treviño — and they both lost rather badly."

[StrangeSox]

you seem so much more angry at Bernie and anyone left of the garbage establishment than you are at Republicans and Trump

[Reddy]

 

you seem so much more angry at Bernie and anyone left of the garbage establishment than you are at Republicans and Trump

Well yeah. Trump and the GOP are supposed to try and beat Democrats because they disagree with us ideologically on almost every issue. I don't agree with them, but they're doing the logical thing for people who think and feel the way they do. The far left attacking Dems makes literally no logical sense, and directly undercuts the work we're doing to try and achieve progress and defend our country from the greatest threat its faced in a long, long time. So yeah, that's much more frustrating.

[StrangeSox]

Running in primaries against other candidates isn't "attacking dems," though. You seem gleeful that more progressive candidates are losing simply because Sanders' organization endorsed them.

Guess what! There's lots of disagreement ideologically within the Democratic base as well! A lot of people are beyond frustrated with the approaches of the Clintons and Schumers of the world. A whole lot of people were disillusioned when Obama's Hope and Change was undermined by people like Lieberman. I hate that my rep is probably the worst Dem in Congress (Lipinski), it's a shame he barely held on in his primary despite being "attacked" by someone daring to challenge him and his awful policies.

There's plenty of dumb in the Sanders camp, too. Some who'll never reconcile with voting for the least-bad and vote Clinton in 2016 or Booker/etc. in 2020. They want Bernie or someone to his left or they'll sit out. They see the Democratic party as offering little more than half-measures that still largely appease modern capitalism and capitalists because, hey, that's who their wealthy donors are.

But at the same time, guys like you need to realize you're going to have to reconcile with at least some of that more progressive base who's distrustful of the Democratic establishment and the DNC. What good do you think your attitude does? How many potential progressive voters do you think that sort of vitriol directed at anyone who dares to challenge a Democratic establishment which has sucked for a very long time are turned off by it?

[Reddy]

The hope is that they realize that supporting someone like Bernie won't get Dems the coalition they need to beat Trump. That there's so much division within Democratic and progressive ranks on this that supporting someone who alienates a majority of the base (minorities, women, and white establishment Dems) isn't shrewd if your goal is actual realized progress. Theoretically, based on the data, it should be clear that we need to move on from BOTH candidates from 2016 for the good of the country.

If Dems don't take back Congress this fall, Roe v. Wade is gone. Trump appoints another SC justice, and the courts swing far right for a generation. Gerrymandering gets further entrenched. This is the most important election of our lives, and based on the data from ALL the races that have taken place since 2016, in the vast majority of them, Berniecrats don't give us the best chance of winning this fall. His brand doesn't resonate the way his supporters think it does. My only goal is winning this fall and in 2020. That's it. I'm not gleeful progressives lost, I'm hopeful that those data points will help convince people that those strategies aren't in our best interest RIGHT NOW. 

Obviously, because of the demographics on this board I seem like an outlier, but I promise you I'm not. There are more Dems who feel the way I do re: Sanders than are excited about him and his brand of progressivism, and that's been born out election after election. It only seems the other way around because of the skewed demographics on social media.

We need to vote blue no matter what, and we need to have candidates who have the best chance of winning. While your emotions may say otherwise, the data is so unequivocally clear that Bernie's brand doesn't give us that in 2018.

[Reddy]

 

Running in primaries against other candidates isn't "attacking dems," though.

1

To be clear, the progressives who lost last night did a GREAT job of rallying behind the winner and endorsing them - creating unity. I definitely applaud that. They didn't learn that, however, from Bernie.

Bernie does continue to lob grenades at the party. Who does that help?

[BigSqwert]

3 minutes ago, Reddy said:

 the data is so unequivocally clear 

 

Hope you're not relying on the Clinton campaign's data gathering techniques.  ?

[StrangeSox]

"Bernie's brand" has done well in some races and not in others. I don't think there's any basis for your sweeping dismissal of it (and implicit endorsement of centrist politicians in its place). I'm not a guy shouting that we need to primary Joe Manchin because he casts a lot of votes I don't like--I recognize that he's probably the best we can hope for from WV. Certainly miles better than any R replacement. But I do reject the idea that Democrats need to essentially cede political ground to Republicans and run as Republican-lite everywhere. In some places maybe that's what needed, but then again, maybe it isn't! Doug Jones didn't back down into wishy-washy nonsense on abortion on his way to winning Alabama. Conor Lamb isn't some progressive hero, but he took strong stances rather than capitulate to whatever framing Republicans have put out there as we saw again and again in 2010-2016. And on the flip side, you've got guys like Ossof who ran seemingly blah campaigns that didn't really end up going anywhere.

 

Just look at Virginia last year. You had candidates across the Dem spectrum doing well. Look at the new da in Philly. Cheering for more centrist candidates to beat progressive candidates because electibility doesn't have a strong track record. At least the "run socialists everywhere" side doesn't have a history of failure since it's never really been tried.

Edited May 23, 2018 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

America’s Version of Capitalism Is Incompatible With Democracy

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/americas-brand-of-capitalism-is-incompatible-with-democracy.html

Quote

 

American democracy is unwell; on this much, President Trump’s detractors can agree.

But when they turn to the tasks of identifying our republic’s symptoms, naming its illness, and writing a prescription, different factions of “the resistance” produce divergent diagnoses.

One group — comprised of comparative politics scholars, liberal pundits, and NeverTrump conservatives — have their eyes fixed on Donald Trump. They see the moral cowardice of a Republican elite that declined to deny an illiberal demagogue their nomination, or to abandon him in the general election, or to let the investigation into his campaign proceed unimpeded. They observe a president who relentlessly assails the independence of federal law enforcement, the legitimacy of adversarial media, and the veracity of official election results — and a conservative base that takes his lies to be self-evident. And, pulsing beneath it all, they discern the rise of a hyperpartisanship that’s leading each party’s elected officials to eviscerate informal constraints on their authority — and each party’s voters, to believe that the other side has no legitimate claim to power.

In these complaints, the democracy movement (as my colleague Jonathan Chait has dubbed it) sees all the telltale signs of a bad case of norm-erosion. Democracies can’t live on laws alone; they also require adherence to certain informal rules that correct for the inevitable flaws in any Constitution’s design, and protect against the threat of charismatic leaders consolidating power. Thus, to heal our republic, and immunize it against future strains of the same virus,several liberal thinkers have called for the formation of bipartisan coalitions, united in defense of democratic norms and the rule of law. In their view, the threat that Trump poses is so grave and unique, ideologues on both sides of the aisle should now prioritize maintaining a rule-based order over winning policy battles, so as to safeguard their freedom to settle such disputes democratically in the future.

But there is a second opinion.

Several social democratic (and/or, democratic socialist) thinkers, examining the patient from a few steps to the democracy movement’s left, have had their eyes drawn to a different set of symptoms. They see state and federal legislators who routinely slash taxes on the wealthy, and services for the poor, in defiance of their constituents’ wishes; regulatory agencies that serve as training grounds for the firms they’re meant to police; a Supreme Court that’s forever expanding the rights of corporations, and restricting those of organized labor; a criminal-justice system that won’t prosecute bankers for laundering drug money, but will dole out life sentences to small-time crack dealers; a central bank that has the resources to bail out financial firms, but not the homeowners whom they exploit; a Pentagon that can wage multitrillion-dollar wars that exacerbate the very problems they were supposed to solve — and still get rewarded with a higher budget — even as the Housing Department asks the working poor to pay higher rent for worse accommodations; and, seething beneath all of these defects, disparities in the distribution of private wealth so vast and consequential, the nation’s super-rich have come to enjoy an average life expectancy 15 years longer than its poor.

In these grisly conditions, social democrats see a textbook case of malignant capitalism. Democracies cannot survive on norms alone. When markets are left under-regulated — and workers, unorganized — the corporate sector becomes a cancerous growth, expanding until it dominates politics and civil society. An ever-greater share of economic gains concentrates in ever-fewer hands, while the barriers to converting private wealth into public power grow fewer and farther between. Politicians become unresponsive to popular preferences and needs. Voters lose faith in elections — and then, a strongman steps forward to say that he, alone, can fix it.

All this contraindicates the democracy movement’s prescription: If our republic’s true sickness is its inegalitarian economic system, then that illness won’t be cured by cross-ideological coalitions. Quite the contrary: What’s needed is a movement that mobilizes working people in numbers large enough to demand a new deal from capital. Thus, if the liberal intelligentsia wishes to save American democracy, it should devote the lion’s share of its energies to brainstorming how such a movement can be brought into being — and what changes that movement should make to our nation’s political economy, once it takes power.

 

Quote

Let’s say Chuck Schumer becomes Senate Majority Leader next year. If restoring norms is the paramount objective, then he will have to implore his caucus to confirm any conventionally qualified judicial nominees that the president puts forward; if combating runaway corporate power is the first priority, however, he’ll need to have those nominations killed in committee, to keep seats open for future, pro-labor judges. Similarly, if Democrats secure full control in 2020 (or 2024, or 2028), abolishing the filibuster will almost certainly be a prerequisite for any major redistributive reform. And if Trump is able to appoint multiple Supreme Court justices — and a “neo-Lochner era” commences, with the court’s far-right majority routinely vetoing landmark progressive legislation (as it came within one vote of doing to the Affordable Care Act) — then it will be very important for progressives to know whether norm-erosion or economic inequality is the more fundamental threat to their democracy.

Quote

In his critique of the democracy movement’s leading thinkers, Jedediah Purdy argues that their various analyses of America’s political crisis share a fundamental defect: They all fail to ask whether the version of capitalism that emerged in the United States in the wake of the stagflation crisis of the late 1970s — a capitalism characterized by, among other things, weak labor unions, corporate concentration, low growth, and high inequality — is “compatible with democracy.”

Purdy suggests that it is not. And he’s right.

There are two distinct arguments for this position. First, there is the hypothesis that the failures of capitalism are largely responsible for the rising popularity of illiberal populism throughout the West, and thus, that reforming our economic system is the best way to shield fundamental democratic norms from future assaults.

Many object to this argument by pointing to the abundant evidencethat Trump’s support was rooted in racial and cultural reaction, not “economic anxiety.” And it is difficult to argue that America’s relatively high levels of immigration — and eroding racial and gender hierarchies — would not have inspired some amount of reactionary backlash, even in the best of economic circumstances. But this objection is not dispositive. For one thing, there is both historical and social scientific evidence that in times of economic uncertainty, people become more inclined toward the kinds of cultural resentments that Trump exploited and cultivated. When human beings feel that the basis of their self-esteem and social status is under threat — as is often the case for downwardly mobile workers in deindustrializing regions — they tend to grow increasingly wary of diversity, more open to extremist ideas, and more defensive of the status of the social identity groups to which they belong.

More critically, the claim that our current crisis has economic roots does not rest on psychoanalyzing the Trumpen proletariat. In the four decades since the stagflation crisis — which inaugurated a sharp right turn in the politics and economics of Western democracies — American workers’ share of productivity gains plummeted; the nation’s private-sector unionization rate collapsed; the gap between the wealth of rich and poor households exploded; and the middle class became reliant on an ever-higher levels of debt to finance their homes, automobiles, and children’s educations.

And over that very same period, social trust, civic engagement, voter participation, and confidence in public institutions all fell significantly in the United States. There is cause for seeing these latter developments as products of the former ones: In the years before Trump’s election, polls routinely found supermajorities of the American public saying that their nation’s economy was “rigged” against them. In November 2015, a Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) survey found 64 percent of Americans agreeing with the statement, my “vote does not matter because of the influence that wealthy individuals and big corporations have on the electoral process.” One year later, 75 percent of voters who cast early ballots in the 2016 election told Reuters/Ipsos that they were looking for a “strong leader who can take the country back from the rich and powerful.”

Whatever was in the hearts of marginal Trump voters, a nation where most citizens believe elections don’t matter because the powerful control politics is one ripe for authoritarian populism.

much more at the link, but a really solid article that touches on the divisions within the Democratic party as well

[Reddy]

 

"Bernie's brand" has done well in some races and not in others. I don't think there's any basis for your sweeping dismissal of it (and implicit endorsement of centrist politicians in its place). I'm not a guy shouting that we need to primary Joe Manchin because he casts a lot of votes I don't like--I recognize that he's probably the best we can hope for from WV. Certainly miles better than any R replacement. But I do reject the idea that Democrats need to essentially cede political ground to Republicans and run as Republican-lite everywhere. In some places maybe that's what needed, but then again, maybe it isn't! Doug Jones didn't back down into wishy-washy nonsense on abortion on his way to winning Alabama. Conor Lamb isn't some progressive hero, but he took strong stances rather than capitulate to whatever framing Republicans have put out there as we saw again and again in 2010-2016. And on the flip side, you've got guys like Ossof who ran seemingly blah campaigns that didn't really end up going anywhere.

 

Just look at Virginia last year. You had candidates across the Dem spectrum doing well. Look at the new da in Philly. Cheering for more centrist candidates to beat progressive candidates because electibility doesn't have a strong track record. At least the "run socialists everywhere" side doesn't have a history of failure since it's never really been tried.

How many high profile (read: higher than city council) elections has an OR-endorsed candidate won? You say it's done well in some races. Can you cite them? Are they victories or just "strong showings"? The VAST majority of OR endorsed candidates have lost. The number's something like 82%.

I never suggested Republican-lite. I suggested establishment Democrats. Are you really going to pull the false equivalency card? Nancy Pelosi was one of the most liberal members of Congress her entire career, and she still is.

[StrangeSox]

Well, that's more of an indictment of Congress than anything lol

 

But I didn't mention pelosi. I'm talking about the Manchin types, the Lipinski types where they aren't needed. Feinstine and Schumer.

 

And it's not specifically about Sanders or our revolution and their candidates but the policy and ideology. Again, look to Virginia. A dsa-backed candidate won! They're to the left in Sanders! Look at the Philly da. Major reforms that never would have come from the establishment.

 

And it shouldn't need pointing out how badly the Dem establishment had been at electoral politics for a long time now. 2006 and 2008 and 2012 versus everything else since 2000.

[Reddy]

 

And it shouldn't need pointing out how badly the Dem establishment had been at electoral politics for a long time now. 2006 and 2008 and 2012 versus everything else since 2000.

 

I agree with this. That's why I'm stoked at the leadership Perez/Ellison have been providing as they recommit to a 50 state strategy with the goal to run candidates everywhere - something we got away from during the Obama years. We've got candidates across the country in races that haven't seen Dem opposition in years - more Dems running for office than ever. Perez's covert strategy in the Doug Jones race was executed flawlessly. I agree that the party made massive mistakes over the last 10 years. That was then. This is now. And so far, our strategy is paying dividends in these races. I know it doesn't seem like it, but the DCCC, DSCC and DLCC are operating better and more effectively than they have over a decade and a half.

[StrangeSox]

You've eagerly defended alt right white supremacist gatherings as "free speech rallies" on multiple occasions so you seem to care!

[Dam8610]

3 hours ago, Reddy said:

The hope is that they realize that supporting someone like Bernie won't get Dems the coalition they need to beat Trump. That there's so much division within Democratic and progressive ranks on this that supporting someone who alienates a majority of the base (minorities, women, and white establishment Dems) isn't shrewd if your goal is actual realized progress. Theoretically, based on the data, it should be clear that we need to move on from BOTH candidates from 2016 for the good of the country.

If Dems don't take back Congress this fall, Roe v. Wade is gone. Trump appoints another SC justice, and the courts swing far right for a generation. Gerrymandering gets further entrenched. This is the most important election of our lives, and based on the data from ALL the races that have taken place since 2016, in the vast majority of them, Berniecrats don't give us the best chance of winning this fall. His brand doesn't resonate the way his supporters think it does. My only goal is winning this fall and in 2020. That's it. I'm not gleeful progressives lost, I'm hopeful that those data points will help convince people that those strategies aren't in our best interest RIGHT NOW. 

Obviously, because of the demographics on this board I seem like an outlier, but I promise you I'm not. There are more Dems who feel the way I do re: Sanders than are excited about him and his brand of progressivism, and that's been born out election after election. It only seems the other way around because of the skewed demographics on social media.

We need to vote blue no matter what, and we need to have candidates who have the best chance of winning. While your emotions may say otherwise, the data is so unequivocally clear that Bernie's brand doesn't give us that in 2018.

I don't know what you're considering to be "Bernie's Brand", but I consider it to be the progressive economic policies that have wild popularity in all polling that's been done since 2015. From the "hopefully now Reddy will get it" section of the article:

Quote

This shows that it’s possible to make economic issues front and center in a campaign platform in a way that doesn’t just talk to working class whites and dismisses the concerns of female and minority voters. It also shows that the oft-discussed dilemma among Democrats — whether to prioritize college educated voters or working class ones — may be a false choice.

Indeed, a progressive economic agenda can talk to all of these groups and bridge the gap between them.

When many hear discussion of outreach to “working class” voters, they silently add the words “white” and “male” and all too often imagine them working on a factory floor or in construction. They shouldn’t. According to another analysis by CAP from late last year, just under 6 in 10 members of the working class are white, and the group  is almost half female (46 percent). Three out of four work in the service sector and only one in five work in construction, mining or manufacturing. 

At the same time, women and minorities earn less as a group than white men, have less saved for retirement, and are more likely to live in poverty or near poverty in old age. As Alex Rowell, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress and the co-author of the new study, told me: “When you focus on these progressive issues, they are also about racial and gender equity. Women and workers of color are worse off, and when you focus on these broad economic issues, you are bringing them up.”

 

Be sure to read that last paragraph several times.

Edited May 24, 2018 by Dam8610

[Reddy]

 

I don't know what you're considering to be "Bernie's Brand", but I consider it to be the progressive economic policies that have wild popularity in all polling that's been done since 2015. From the "hopefully now Reddy will get it" section of the article:

Be sure to read that last paragraph several times.

Great. They poll well. Why aren't those polls reflected in the results on election day?

As for that last paragraph, I'm aware of the arguments, and I agree with the policies, but why can't Bernie articulate them like this? Why is it so hard for him to speak in a way that doesn't cast minorities and marginalized groups as an afterthought? Words matter. It doesn't really matter what your policies are if you can't sell them to the people you need to vote for you.

[Dam8610]

6 minutes ago, Reddy said:

1) Great. They poll well. Why aren't those polls reflected in the results on election day?

2) As for that last paragraph, I'm aware of the arguments, and I agree with the policies, but why can't Bernie articulate them like this? Why is it so hard for him to speak in a way that doesn't cast minorities and marginalized groups as an afterthought? Words matter. It doesn't really matter what your policies are if you can't sell them to the people you need to vote for you.

1) Because people are convinced to vote against their own interests so often, and Democrats are part of that problem. By listening to the bad advice of "be moderate in swing districts", Democrats don't actually give these voters a candidate to vote for. See Conor Lamb, who the article mentions. How did he win a district that typically votes hugely conservative? By campaigning on the important economic issues in that area. He campaigned on defending unions, social security, and medicare, and fighting for better healthcare and education funding for higher education. He hit all the economic issues that were important to his constituency, and now he's a representative.

2) For someone as utilitarian as you present yourself to be about just winning in 2018 and 2020, this seems an odd criticism. The guy has the right message. If he's not framing it right, wouldn't it be better from the utilitarian perspective of only being concerned about winning in 2018 and 2020 to try to help him frame it correctly than to criticize him for not framing it correctly? We saw the result of the latter of those two approaches in the 2016 election.

[caulfield12]

If we're going to criticize Sanders for not releasing his donor list, then we need to do the same with Obama.  The lack of support for the national and state parties in 2010 and 2014 when he wasn't running (even then, 2012 was a debacle for almost every aspect of the party other than keeping the presidency)...it's not difficult to understand the lack of trust after 2016 and everything that happened to the Sanders campaign.

And Laura Moser got crushed in Houston because the DCCC weighed in against her, not unlike Blankenship in WV.  Of course, that runs the risk of someone like Blankenship continuing to run as an independent because he's so pissed off he basically wants to give the election to the Dem's in order to spite Trump and McConnell.

Our Revolution endorsed Abrams in GA, although they didn't actively support her financially.

I do think getting behind Cynthia Nixon (the Sex and the City actress) despite her lack of any substantive policy experience besides celebrity-oriented advocacy work is going to blow up in their faces in NY.

 

Right now, there's a stalemate.  Sanders and Warren are probably too old....the likes of Gillibrand/Booker/Harris aren't ready and Biden is the fallback option for many Dem's who just want things to return to a sense of normalcy.

Biden's also the only Dem who Lamb brought into that district in Western PA...who can actually talk to rural/white/middle class voters and has their respect.  Cheri Bustos in Western Illinois would be one of the few others that I can think of.

 

Edited May 24, 2018 by caulfield12

[greg775]

8 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

Greg, Bernie Sanders most definitely is not the one to lead the charge to take away guns...research the positions of any Vermont politician on this, political suicide to go after the Second Amendment.  It’s worse than threatening to raise taxes as a policy/platform issue.

What is wrong with the Democratic party? I sense disdain for Bernie, almost hatred. This is a guy the Millenials want. He could win. And like I said, I've given up. The Republican candidates don't care about the middle class going broke over health care. And Social Security that is going to put so many Baby Boomers on the streets when they run out of funds in retirement. I'm generally not for socialism but I've been forced there by Trump and all the politicians who don't give a flip about the middle class/poor class.

Get behind Bernie. I do wish we could turn back the clock and make him 10 years younger but whatever. He'll need a good VP candidate, not some embarrassment. Bernie I predict will adopt a gun policy that will support the grade schoolers and high schoolers who are under siege by maniacs/madmen. If we don't start fixing health care and college kids going into severe debt just to get a degree, etc., we better build homeless parks cause 70 percent of the current middle class over 50 will be homeless someday. And these Millenials will be homeless in their late 30s, 40s because of lack of jobs and the fact they've just got no money. Cancer is out of control; diseases are out of control and like I said your savings will be gone in an instant if you ever need surgery and/or a 3 week hospital stay. I wish the Democrats would get behind Bernie. But again I sense flat out hatred of him.

Edited May 24, 2018 by greg775

[caulfield12]

Greg, don't confuse REDDY with widespread hatred.

Frustration sometimes, about his (over) support for 2nd Amendment gun rights (but this is true of many Dems from rural areas, not just Sanders)...about his lack of interest in foreign affairs, leading him to focus almost exclusively on domestic (economic) issues, but he's actually "loved/admired/adored" by many people under 35 in America.

They might believe a lot of his ideas are impractical from an economic/budgeting standpoint (pie in the sky), but the Republicans just sold an equally preposterous tax package that gives 90% of the benefits to corporations and the rich/elites, and they got away with it...so who's to say what's possible anymore and what's not.

 

[Jack Parkman]

8 hours ago, Reddy said:

How many high profile (read: higher than city council) elections has an OR-endorsed candidate won? You say it's done well in some races. Can you cite them? Are they victories or just "strong showings"? The VAST majority of OR endorsed candidates have lost. The number's something like 82%.

I never suggested Republican-lite. I suggested establishment Democrats. Are you really going to pull the false equivalency card? Nancy Pelosi was one of the most liberal members of Congress her entire career, and she still is.

Those two statements are one and the same. Moving on now. The problem I have with Establishment Dems is they are Republicans with some sort of conscience. There is virtually zero difference between the platform of mainstream Republicans and mainstream Democrats on anything but social issues, with the exceptions of healthcare/social security. Maybe Bernie wasn't as in tune to social issues, or maybe he thought the ills that are faced socially by minorities could be overcome if they were economically empowered. 

In any event, my ideal candidate for 2018 and 2020 has the economic platform of Bernie Sanders, combined with the social awareness of the establishment. 

Edited May 24, 2018 by Jack Parkman

[caulfield12]

The Newest Deal: Dems build a progressive platform for 2020

Six ideas are the centerpiece, and it’s guaranteed to drive Reddy crazy, haha.

Actually, the USPS/microloan and bank idea is the one that’s the most interesting to me.   That is, as long as they’re bringing in banking/finance experts and not expecting post office employees to handle this job (fwiw, Alibaba in China already is going to be IPOing a $100 billion financial/banking arm called Ant Financial which has a lot of similar properties....threatening traditional commercial banks and the equivalent of payday loan sharks for poor and middle class borrowers.)

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/newest-deal-dems-build-progressive-platform-2020-090052433.html

[Reddy]

5 hours ago, Jack Parkman said:

Those two statements are one and the same. Moving on now. The problem I have with Establishment Dems is they are Republicans with some sort of conscience. There is virtually zero difference between the platform of mainstream Republicans and mainstream Democrats on anything but social issues, with the exceptions of healthcare/social security. Maybe Bernie wasn't as in tune to social issues, or maybe he thought the ills that are faced socially by minorities could be overcome if they were economically empowered. 

In any event, my ideal candidate for 2018 and 2020 has the economic platform of Bernie Sanders, combined with the social awareness of the establishment. 

This narrative is patently and unequivocally false. It's insane that it's so prevalent. Pick ANY social issue, and establishment Dems and Rs are on completely different sides. Same for the majority of economic issues. 

 

Seriously. Pick an issue. Or make a list. I'll tell you where Dems stand vs Republicans, and we can examine whether they're the same. 

[Reddy]

2 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

The Newest Deal: Dems build a progressive platform for 2020

Six ideas are the centerpiece, and it’s guaranteed to drive Reddy crazy, haha.

Actually, the USPS/microloan and bank idea is the one that’s the most interesting to me.   That is, as long as they’re bringing in banking/finance experts and not expecting post office employees to handle this job (fwiw, Alibaba in China already is going to be IPOing a $100 billion financial/banking arm called Ant Financial which has a lot of similar properties....threatening traditional commercial banks and the equivalent of payday loan sharks for poor and middle class borrowers.)

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/newest-deal-dems-build-progressive-platform-2020-090052433.html

You realize I support Bernie's platform in a perfect world (and if there's a viable funding source) right? I just don't support him because he divides the party and is an electoral liability. 

[Reddy]

9 hours ago, Dam8610 said:

2) For someone as utilitarian as you present yourself to be about just winning in 2018 and 2020, this seems an odd criticism. The guy has the right message. If he's not framing it right, wouldn't it be better from the utilitarian perspective of only being concerned about winning in 2018 and 2020 to try to help him frame it correctly than to criticize him for not framing it correctly? We saw the result of the latter of those two approaches in the 2016 election.

Come on. I can't change how Bernie speaks, how he does it, or his implicit biases. You're trying to talk pragmatism while suggesting I should change things I have absolutely NO impact on. All I can do is try and convince people that he's not a smart choice if we want to win because of his inability to excite and mobilize and incredibly vital part of our base.