2018 Democrats thread

[Reddy]

5 minutes ago, Dam8610 said:

But several people have proven that theory wrong, now, in both positive and negative ways. Bernie Sanders ran an extremely competitive presidential campaign with no PAC money and Clinton's corporate money didn't help her beat Trump. More recently, the two biggest surprise winners on the Democratic side, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Conor Lamb, both refused corporate money, and made it a campaign point. It can be done and done effectively, and I don't think we'll see campaign finance reform until there's a large group of Congresspeople who haven't taken that money, allowing them to actually represent the interests of their constituents rather than the corporate donors.

Bernie was lightning in a bottle - cult of personality - and those running with his endorsement haven't often fared well because they're not *him*. But I'll take your Ocasio and Lamb and raise you a Doug Jones. I expect many of the Dems who flip red districts on Nov 6 will have taken some corporate cash. I just honestly don't care *how* Dems win right now, or what kind of Dems they are, as long as they're Dems and as long as they win, because the most important thing at this unique moment in history is the Speakership and the Majority Leader's gavel. There's plenty of time for the rest of it, and moving left and eschewing corporate money. All I care about right now are wins. And if a Dem has to raise some corporate funds to keep up with the fundraising of the R, then so be it.

[caulfield12]

1 hour ago, Reddy said:

Bernie was lightning in a bottle - cult of personality - and those running with his endorsement haven't often fared well because they're not *him*. But I'll take your Ocasio and Lamb and raise you a Doug Jones. I expect many of the Dems who flip red districts on Nov 6 will have taken some corporate cash. I just honestly don't care *how* Dems win right now, or what kind of Dems they are, as long as they're Dems and as long as they win, because the most important thing at this unique moment in history is the Speakership and the Majority Leader's gavel. There's plenty of time for the rest of it, and moving left and eschewing corporate money. All I care about right now are wins. And if a Dem has to raise some corporate funds to keep up with the fundraising of the R, then so be it.

Except that race was an anomaly because of pedophilia charges, and Jones will vote similarly to Manchin and Heitkamp...and possibly even crosses party lines on the SCOTUS nomination.

[Reddy]

1 hour ago, caulfield12 said:

Except that race was an anomaly because of pedophilia charges, and Jones will vote similarly to Manchin and Heitkamp...and possibly even crosses party lines on the SCOTUS nomination.

And it's only because he was moderate that he still won.

[StrangeSox]

6 hours ago, Reddy said:

And it's only because he was moderate that he still won.

But he didn't moderate on things like his pro-choice stances. Same with Lamb. He isn't some sort of ur-progressive, but he didn't run the Republican Lite model chasing "Trump Democrats" or other nonsense.

[caulfield12]

6 hours ago, Reddy said:

And it's only because he was moderate that he still won.

Nobody has ever claimed a progressive/liberal/socialist could win in Alabama.

[Balta1701]

9 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

Except that race was an anomaly because of pedophilia charges, and Jones will vote similarly to Manchin and Heitkamp...and possibly even crosses party lines on the SCOTUS nomination.

Are we really, truly, sure that pedophilia counts as an anomaly any more? We've literally got the president in defending a guy who covered that up.

[Reddy]

2 hours ago, StrangeSox said:

But he didn't moderate on things like his pro-choice stances. Same with Lamb. He isn't some sort of ur-progressive, but he didn't run the Republican Lite model chasing "Trump Democrats" or other nonsense.

If they didn't do that, than damn near NO Democrats do that, and thus it's a really stupid narrative.

[Reddy]

1 hour ago, caulfield12 said:

Nobody has ever claimed a progressive/liberal/socialist could win in Alabama.

This is my entire argument in this thread. People are extrapolating Ocasio's win and saying her politics could win across the country. All I'm saying is not everywhere. That's it. But for some reason that's divisive coming from me, and not from you? Whatevs.

[BigSqwert]

8 minutes ago, Reddy said:

This is my entire argument in this thread. People are extrapolating Ocasio's win and saying her politics could win across the country. All I'm saying is not everywhere. That's it. But for some reason that's divisive coming from me, and not from you? Whatevs.

Honestly, I think it's because you come off as condescending.  I'm sure you have good intentions and all but you have a way of making it sound like you have all the answers.  I'm not trying to be a d*** about it. I know I come off as a tool at times.

[Dam8610]

6 hours ago, Reddy said:

This is my entire argument in this thread. People are extrapolating Ocasio's win and saying her politics could win across the country. All I'm saying is not everywhere. That's it. But for some reason that's divisive coming from me, and not from you? Whatevs.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/23/public-support-for-single-payer-health-coverage-grows-driven-by-democrats/

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/college-game-plan/two-thirds-americans-support-free-college-tuition-n620856

http://thehill.com/homenews/335837-poll-bipartisan-majority-supports-raising-minimum-wage

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-tax/three-quarters-of-americans-favor-higher-taxes-for-wealthy-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSL2N1MM024

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-poll/most-americans-want-aggressive-action-on-climate-change-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN18X198

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/23/two-thirds-of-americans-give-priority-to-developing-alternative-energy-over-fossil-fuels/

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/05/americans-support-marijuana-legalization/

https://www.aclu.org/news/91-percent-americans-support-criminal-justice-reform-aclu-polling-finds

That's why I think these policies would win anywhere. Because the polls say they will.

[greg775]

Read this column!! The behavior of the left is helping Trump immensely.

By Mark Thiessen

Wash post

Washington — Democrats have a new theory for how they can win back Congress and the White House. Just like “soccer moms” helped put Bill Clinton in the Oval Office in 1996, and “NASCAR dads” helped George W. Bush win in 2004, Donald Trump, the theory goes, was elected because of “#NeverHillary” voters who didn’t particularly like him but despised her. Axios reports that Democrats are targeting the “20% of Trump’s voters [who] told exit pollsters they didn’t like him” hoping these reluctant Trump voters will help power a “blue wave” in the 2018 midterms and defeat President Trump in 2020.

One problem with that theory: The left’s nonstop, over-the-top attacks on Trump are not peeling those voters away from him; they are pushing them further into the president’s camp.

 

In recent weeks, Trump derangement syndrome on the left has reached critical mass. First, there was Robert De Niro’s “(f-word) Trump” tirade at the Tony awards, followed by Samantha Bee’s calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless (c-word) on her TV show. Then the owners of the Red Hen restaurant threw out White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders because she works for the president, while chanting protesters heckled Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen at a Mexican restaurant. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., added fuel to the fire by openly calling on mobs of left-wing activists to “absolutely harass” Trump officials. Then, there were the countless Trump opponents in the media, Congress and on Twitter who compared family separations at the southern border with Nazi Germany, and the Time magazine cover depicting Trump staring down heartlessly at a crying migrant girl and implying she was separated from her mother (until it emerged that she had not in fact been separated from her mother). And now come the threats to block Trump’s Supreme Court nominee before he has even nominated one.

How do liberals think that 20 percent of reluctant Trump voters respond to these displays of unbridled contempt? They are outraged not at Trump but at his critics. The unhinged hatred for the president makes these voters almost reflexively defend him.

Don’t take my word for it. The New York Times recently interviewed dozens of tepid Trump voters who explained how the incessant attacks are causing them to rally around the president. “Gina Anders knows the feeling well by now,” the Times reports. “President Trump says or does something that triggers a spasm of outrage. She doesn’t necessarily agree with how he handled the situation. She gets why people are upset.”

But Anders, who the Times says has “not a stitch of ‘Make America Great Again’ gear in her wardrobe, is moved to defend him anyway.” When she hears the “overblown” attacks on Trump, she says, “It makes me angry at them, which causes me to want to defend him to them more.” Another reluctant Trump voter, Tony Schrantz, agrees. “He’s not a perfect guy; he does some stupid stuff,” he tells the Times. “But when they’re hounding him all the time it just gets old.”

These are exactly the voters Democrats are hoping to win back. Instead, they are doing the opposite. Polls bear this out.

Two weeks ago, Trump’s Gallup approval rating hit 45 percent — the highest it has been since his inauguration. (It slipped slightly to 41 percent last week). Trump’s approval among Republicans is at a near-record 87 percent, comparable to the levels of support for George W. Bush in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Think about that: The left’s attacks on Trump have had the same rallying effect for GOP voters as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

So, if appeals to civility, decency and conscience won’t work, then perhaps an appeal to base political pragmatism will. Democrats are deluding themselves if they think they lost because of “#NeverHillary” voters who will come home when she is not on the ballot. They lost because they have become a party of coastal liberal elites who have lost touch with millions of ordinary citizens in Middle America — working-class voters who are struggling with factories closing, jobs leaving and an opioid epidemic that is destroying their families. These voters concluded in 2016 that Democrats no longer care about their problems and that Trump does.

Spasms of anti-Trump outrage are not going to win them back. If anything, they are confirming these voters’ conclusions that Democrats still don’t get it — and don’t get them. The left’s miasma of contempt may feel cathartic, but it is the best thing that ever happened to Trump. Indeed, it may very well get him reelected.

— Marc A. Thiessen is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.

Edited July 7, 2018 by greg775

[Reddy]

5 hours ago, Dam8610 said:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/23/public-support-for-single-payer-health-coverage-grows-driven-by-democrats/

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/college-game-plan/two-thirds-americans-support-free-college-tuition-n620856

http://thehill.com/homenews/335837-poll-bipartisan-majority-supports-raising-minimum-wage

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-tax/three-quarters-of-americans-favor-higher-taxes-for-wealthy-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSL2N1MM024

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-poll/most-americans-want-aggressive-action-on-climate-change-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN18X198

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/23/two-thirds-of-americans-give-priority-to-developing-alternative-energy-over-fossil-fuels/

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/05/americans-support-marijuana-legalization/

https://www.aclu.org/news/91-percent-americans-support-criminal-justice-reform-aclu-polling-finds

That's why I think these policies would win anywhere. Because the polls say they will.

And I could make an even bigger list of candidates who support those policies with actual real life electoral losses in the past year and a half. So, again, shrug.

I support all of those issues, too, but they don't exist (or run) in a vacuum.

Edited July 7, 2018 by Reddy

[StrangeSox]

So that makes at least three open Nazis when you include the guy in IL-3, four if you include incumbent Steve King, running on the GOP ticket.

[Dam8610]

13 hours ago, Reddy said:

And I could make an even bigger list of candidates who support those policies with actual real life electoral losses in the past year and a half. So, again, shrug.

I support all of those issues, too, but they don't exist (or run) in a vacuum.

All that proves is that money in politics is bad.

[Reddy]

1 minute ago, Dam8610 said:

All that proves is that money in politics is bad.

Money out of politics would've given Hillary an even easier path to the Dem nom in '16. Money out of politics makes everything a popularity contest. It's not a panacea. 

[Dam8610]

47 minutes ago, Reddy said:

Money out of politics would've given Hillary an even easier path to the Dem nom in '16. Money out of politics makes everything a popularity contest. It's not a panacea. 

There was never no money in politics, and Bernie Sanders was raising as much money without PAC money as Hillary Clinton was with PAC money. When I say "money in politics is bad", I mean the money that came about as a result of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. People should be allowed to contribute to campaigns within the limits of the law (without the legal loopholes that allow people to make hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign contributions, no one person should be allowed to donate more than $2,700 to a campaign), but this is one of the many cases where Corporations should not be given personhood.

[Reddy]

20 minutes ago, Dam8610 said:

There was never no money in politics, and Bernie Sanders was raising as much money without PAC money as Hillary Clinton was with PAC money. When I say "money in politics is bad", I mean the money that came about as a result of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. People should be allowed to contribute to campaigns within the limits of the law (without the legal loopholes that allow people to make hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign contributions, no one person should be allowed to donate more than $2,700 to a campaign), but this is one of the many cases where Corporations should not be given personhood.

Of course I agree, but as it currently stands not every Democrat running has the benefit of Bernie or Beto's celebrity to raise them money, so if they choose not to take corporate $ they're putting themselves at a huge disadvantage against their Republican counterparts. If everyone were to eschew corporate PAC money, it wouldn't be newsworthy, and thus they wouldn't get the social media fundraising bump you see with people like Beto. 

I'll address your imminent Ocasio-Cortez comeback of just "working harder" - that's easier to do in a tiny district made up of apartment buildings. It's a helluva lot harder in a district in Iowa made up of 20 counties.

It behooves Dems not at all to eschew corporate money before the GOP also has to do it, except in a couple anomalous high-profile cases. Most often, the candidates who do that end up losing.

[Dam8610]

7 minutes ago, Reddy said:

Of course I agree, but as it currently stands not every Democrat running has the benefit of Bernie or Beto's celebrity to raise them money, so if they choose not to take corporate $ they're putting themselves at a huge disadvantage against their Republican counterparts. If everyone were to eschew corporate PAC money, it wouldn't be newsworthy, and thus they wouldn't get the social media fundraising bump you see with people like Beto. 

I'll address your imminent Ocasio-Cortez comeback of just "working harder" - that's easier to do in a tiny district made up of apartment buildings. It's a helluva lot harder in a district in Iowa made up of 20 counties.

It behooves Dems not at all to eschew corporate money before the GOP also has to do it, except in a couple anomalous high-profile cases. Most often, the candidates who do that end up losing.

Bernie's celebrity? Lol, the biggest reason he lost was that he didn't have the national name recognition of Hillary Clinton. It was Bernie's platform, not his "celebrity" (which, again, is hilarious considering his campaign announcement came in a rather nondescript press conference outside the Senate chamber and no one knew who he was at the time), that garnered all of that money.

And yes, I do believe working harder and getting out more would lead to more progressive victories. In my district, for example, I didn't even know of the existence of Larry Chubb until the night before the primary, and that was only because I actively went in search of a candidate that actually shared my views on the issues. Of course I voted for him, but with Visclosky being a 33 year incumbent, having all the money and support of the local party, and lazy party line voters who don't do that kind of research, there's no way he was going to lose without an extreme ground game from the other candidate. Chubb would've had to knock tens of thousands of doors like Ocasio-Cortez did to overcome all those disadvantages he started out working against. This is an example of how stances on issues have nothing to do with these candidates winning or losing elections. It wasn't Visclosky's superior platform that allowed him to win, it was Democrat cronyism, money, and the incumbency advantage.

[caulfield12]

2 hours ago, Reddy said:

Of course I agree, but as it currently stands not every Democrat running has the benefit of Bernie or Beto's celebrity to raise them money, so if they choose not to take corporate $ they're putting themselves at a huge disadvantage against their Republican counterparts. If everyone were to eschew corporate PAC money, it wouldn't be newsworthy, and thus they wouldn't get the social media fundraising bump you see with people like Beto. 

I'll address your imminent Ocasio-Cortez comeback of just "working harder" - that's easier to do in a tiny district made up of apartment buildings. It's a helluva lot harder in a district in Iowa made up of 20 counties.

It behooves Dems not at all to eschew corporate money before the GOP also has to do it, except in a couple anomalous high-profile cases. Most often, the candidates who do that end up losing.

But blanket media buys in Iowa are much cheaper.

 

https://truthout.org/articles/how-liberal-partisan-politics-strengthen-the-right-wing/

How liberal (centrist, really) politics are actually strengthening the right wing agenda.

 

[greg775]

1 hour ago, Dam8610 said:

Bernie's celebrity? Lol, the biggest reason he lost was that he didn't have the national name recognition of Hillary Clinton.

I disagree. I think he was red hot and had time to take the country by storm had he gotten the nomination. The reason he didn't get it? Cmon. You all know it was fixed for Hillary. Remember the coronation talk? It was her turn, her time to be awarded a lifetime achievement award. Bernie was a pest, a deterrent and the DNC refused to acknowledge he was anything but a pest. Bernie was starting to draw huge crowds. I think he'd easily beat Trump in 2020. The problem? The clock. Poor Bernie is a bit too old. The Millenials can save him, though, if they continue to love him and support his run.

[caulfield12]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/07/politics/steve-fitzgerald-kansas-candidate-barbarism-comments/index.html

Greg, what do you think of this guy from your neck of the woods?  Who compared Planned Parenthood to Dachau, except worse...

[Jack Parkman]

19 hours ago, greg775 said:

Read this column!! The behavior of the left is helping Trump immensely.

By Mark Thiessen

Wash post

Washington — Democrats have a new theory for how they can win back Congress and the White House. Just like “soccer moms” helped put Bill Clinton in the Oval Office in 1996, and “NASCAR dads” helped George W. Bush win in 2004, Donald Trump, the theory goes, was elected because of “#NeverHillary” voters who didn’t particularly like him but despised her. Axios reports that Democrats are targeting the “20% of Trump’s voters [who] told exit pollsters they didn’t like him” hoping these reluctant Trump voters will help power a “blue wave” in the 2018 midterms and defeat President Trump in 2020.

One problem with that theory: The left’s nonstop, over-the-top attacks on Trump are not peeling those voters away from him; they are pushing them further into the president’s camp.

 

In recent weeks, Trump derangement syndrome on the left has reached critical mass. First, there was Robert De Niro’s “(f-word) Trump” tirade at the Tony awards, followed by Samantha Bee’s calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless (c-word) on her TV show. Then the owners of the Red Hen restaurant threw out White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders because she works for the president, while chanting protesters heckled Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen at a Mexican restaurant. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., added fuel to the fire by openly calling on mobs of left-wing activists to “absolutely harass” Trump officials. Then, there were the countless Trump opponents in the media, Congress and on Twitter who compared family separations at the southern border with Nazi Germany, and the Time magazine cover depicting Trump staring down heartlessly at a crying migrant girl and implying she was separated from her mother (until it emerged that she had not in fact been separated from her mother). And now come the threats to block Trump’s Supreme Court nominee before he has even nominated one.

How do liberals think that 20 percent of reluctant Trump voters respond to these displays of unbridled contempt? They are outraged not at Trump but at his critics. The unhinged hatred for the president makes these voters almost reflexively defend him.

Don’t take my word for it. The New York Times recently interviewed dozens of tepid Trump voters who explained how the incessant attacks are causing them to rally around the president. “Gina Anders knows the feeling well by now,” the Times reports. “President Trump says or does something that triggers a spasm of outrage. She doesn’t necessarily agree with how he handled the situation. She gets why people are upset.”

But Anders, who the Times says has “not a stitch of ‘Make America Great Again’ gear in her wardrobe, is moved to defend him anyway.” When she hears the “overblown” attacks on Trump, she says, “It makes me angry at them, which causes me to want to defend him to them more.” Another reluctant Trump voter, Tony Schrantz, agrees. “He’s not a perfect guy; he does some stupid stuff,” he tells the Times. “But when they’re hounding him all the time it just gets old.”

These are exactly the voters Democrats are hoping to win back. Instead, they are doing the opposite. Polls bear this out.

Two weeks ago, Trump’s Gallup approval rating hit 45 percent — the highest it has been since his inauguration. (It slipped slightly to 41 percent last week). Trump’s approval among Republicans is at a near-record 87 percent, comparable to the levels of support for George W. Bush in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Think about that: The left’s attacks on Trump have had the same rallying effect for GOP voters as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

So, if appeals to civility, decency and conscience won’t work, then perhaps an appeal to base political pragmatism will. Democrats are deluding themselves if they think they lost because of “#NeverHillary” voters who will come home when she is not on the ballot. They lost because they have become a party of coastal liberal elites who have lost touch with millions of ordinary citizens in Middle America — working-class voters who are struggling with factories closing, jobs leaving and an opioid epidemic that is destroying their families. These voters concluded in 2016 that Democrats no longer care about their problems and that Trump does.

Spasms of anti-Trump outrage are not going to win them back. If anything, they are confirming these voters’ conclusions that Democrats still don’t get it — and don’t get them. The left’s miasma of contempt may feel cathartic, but it is the best thing that ever happened to Trump. Indeed, it may very well get him reelected.

— Marc A. Thiessen is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.

If this is true, then we have lost our democracy. Fascism for everyone. 

Edited July 7, 2018 by Jack Parkman

[Reddy]

7 hours ago, Dam8610 said:

Bernie's celebrity? Lol, the biggest reason he lost was that he didn't have the national name recognition of Hillary Clinton. It was Bernie's platform, not his "celebrity" (which, again, is hilarious considering his campaign announcement came in a rather nondescript press conference outside the Senate chamber and no one knew who he was at the time), that garnered all of that money.

And yes, I do believe working harder and getting out more would lead to more progressive victories. In my district, for example, I didn't even know of the existence of Larry Chubb until the night before the primary, and that was only because I actively went in search of a candidate that actually shared my views on the issues. Of course I voted for him, but with Visclosky being a 33 year incumbent, having all the money and support of the local party, and lazy party line voters who don't do that kind of research, there's no way he was going to lose without an extreme ground game from the other candidate. Chubb would've had to knock tens of thousands of doors like Ocasio-Cortez did to overcome all those disadvantages he started out working against. This is an example of how stances on issues have nothing to do with these candidates winning or losing elections. It wasn't Visclosky's superior platform that allowed him to win, it was Democrat cronyism, money, and the incumbency advantage.

He became a celebrity quickly because of his unique platform. I addressed that phenomenon in my post.

Also, how many campaigns have you worked on in a paid capacity?

[Reddy]

5 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

But blanket media buys in Iowa are much cheaper.

 

https://truthout.org/articles/how-liberal-partisan-politics-strengthen-the-right-wing/

How liberal (centrist, really) politics are actually strengthening the right wing agenda.

 

Yes, truthout.org. 

[StrangeSox]

4 hours ago, Jack Parkman said:

If this is true, then we have lost our democracy. Fascism for everyone. 

I wouldn't put a lot of stock Marc Thessien's ideas