I have not been happy with the DNC, and haven’t been for years. It’s been a captive of the neo-liberal wing of the party, and is too corporatist and too conservative to win elections any more. And now there’s argument over who should run the show, either Tom Perez, the choice of the Obama/Clinton faction, or Keith Ellison, favored by the more progressive Sanders wing. They had a debate this week, but I did not pay attention — I know who I’d like to see in charge.
Ellison is black and Muslim, and as Mano points out, he’s been getting some rather bigoted push-back. Personally, I don’t care that he’s Muslim — if he weren’t, they’d be promoting a Christian, and I really don’t see a difference between the two. What matters to me is who is backing the candidates, and I’m a bit tired of billionaires dictating policy. So I’m with Mano, I’d rather see that connection broken with Ellison.
So when we say, correctly, that the Republican party is beholden to the wealthy, we should remember that the current ruling segment of the Democratic party is equally beholden. They just have different billionaires to please.
This is why the control of the Democratic party has to be wrested away from the Obama-Clinton neoliberal faction that has run the party into the ground by making it Republican-lite, and put in the hands of the Sanders faction.
I also like what Nina Turner has to say.
I am supporting Congressman Ellison. If the DNC doesn’t elect him, I’m not so sure the party is serious about changing. Because the party structure itself has to regain its integrity. That is what’s so biting about what happened in 2016. Not just that Senator Sanders was not treated fairly, but that the structure that is the Democratic Party lost integrity.
We have to acknowledge that. Berniecrats deserve an apology. The sins must be confessed and whoever is the next leader must say very clearly that what happened to Senator Sanders in the primary will never happen to anybody again, whether they’re running for Dog Catcher or President of the United States. That the DNC, by its own bylaws, will be neutral in a primary. That no bodies, no fingers, no thumbs will be placed on the scale. There needs to be a healing within the Democratic Party.
We have to go and get the people who were not necessarily diehard Democrats but who started to believe because of the candidacy of Senator Sanders. But in order to get them, the Party must show it learned its lesson. And that the leadership will change and that every person who works for the DNC understands very clearly what their role is. The D should matter. It shouldn’t just be some letter or symbol that automatically gets you elected.
We lost our way in 2016 and we lost the election because of it. Let’s face it: we’ve been losing statewide and legislative elections since 2009. It’s not just about the President but the State Senators and State Reps and Governors and Secretaries of State and auditors and Attorneys General. And we have to stop talking about off-year elections. There’s no such thing. Every single year there is an important election and we need people to come out and vote, and to run and to care. And we need elected officials to do what is necessary to change the lives of the people who elected them. They need to stop whispering sweet nothings into voters’ ears every time it’s time to run, but then are nowhere to be found when it’s time to put up.
The pattern established with Bill Clinton has to be broken. It’s not working, especially not when people are finding little to distinguish between generic Democrats and generic Republicans (the current crop of R’s are anything but generic, though — they are exceptionally Republican).
And of course, Tom Perez is now chair of the DNC.
I’m supporting Ellison, but Perez would be fine. There’s some hilarity in that, in that the most progressive Secretary of Labor since Frances Perkins is supposedly the choice of the neoliberal crowd. But there is this:
If the Democratic Party was a real party and not something you could join just by checking a box on your voter registration form, Bernie never would have had a chance that way either. He wasn’t even a Democrat until it was convenient for his presidential campaign, and the primaries and caucus states he won were largely those where you don’t even have to mark yourself as a Democrat to show up and vote in the primary/caucus election.
The whole system is rotten to the core. The amount of big funding by special interest groups has to constitute corruption on a massive systemic scale. Break the cycle of lobbying and special interest special pleading and become a democracy again. It seems to be the problem with both sides. Could one solution be for interests to be declared and being barred from speaking or voting on any issue that comes under those headings?
For as long as I can remember, up to and including Clinton 2016, the Democrats’ strategy seems to be pandering almost exclusively to the values of the middle class; it’s my best explanation for why they all seem to think that being genteel and polite is more important than actually fighting for anything or even bringing up the facts about their opponents that might help them win elections (eg, why wasn’t that video of Bush pooping himself on 9/11 playing in ads on every channel in the 2004 election? Because their despicably middle class base might consider it “rude”).
But it seems increasingly clear to me that our Democrats are so damn out of touch that they don’t realize that one group, the middle class, upon whom their whole strategy rests, has been withering away for two decades. There is no middle class anymore, not in the sense of what that term used to mean here and what it still means overseas. The middle class, now, is just anyone over the poverty line. And they give so much less of a shit about being genteel than they care about not being fucking foreclosed on.
Bothsidesism isn’t reality-based. Republicans are different and they’ve been different for a very long time. Are centrist (please stop using neo-liberal this way. It’s a school of economic thought, not a political ideal.) Democrats too conservative to win elections? Maybe. But I very much hope Progressives don’t fall into the same sort of purity-testing that has afflicted the post-Tea Party Republicans.
Bothsidesism is a way of pretending to be above the fray. It’s self-important jackassery and has no place in sober political discussions.
I also dislike and further reject this theory of how 2016 was lost. Hillary was a credible candidate. The D did mean something, and she represented it. She won the majority of the vote, and was defeated by dishonorable and immoral means. There’s really no evidence Sanders would have done better.
Sanders’ candidacy was an anomaly. You can’t base long-term strategy on that kind of anomaly, and until the money gets out of politics, we’ll need the support of like-minded billionaires, like it or not. The Democrats didn’t screw up in 2016. They screwed up long before, when they lost the states and in turn the House.
PZ, I’m sorry to see you side with the Bernie whiners who think he lost the nomination because he was treated unfairly. As far as I can see, there’s no evidence that the DNC treated him unfairly. There’s evidence that several DNC members were Hillary supporters in private but that’s a very different thing.
I don’t have a dog in this race – I am Canadian – but it saddens me to see there’s a substantial fraction of party supporters who are prepared to abandon the party if they don’t get their way. It’s a very childish attitude (“I’m going to pick up my ball and go home”). It means Trump and Republicans for eight more years and that’s bad for Canada and the rest of the world.
robertrichter wrote:
There’s a few problems with that assertion:
1) Sanders wasn’t the only anomaly during the campaign. Trump was also a similar kind of anomaly. His campaign was run on a tight budget for a reason entirely different from Sanders (he’s a cheap-ass rich guy), and still managed to trounce his opponents. Two anomaly in one election cycle? What are those odds.
2) Clinton spent much, much more money on the election cycle than Trump did. Trump’s entire campaign seemed to be little more than a method for laundering campaign donations to himself, while Clinton did what was supposed to be done, and advertised, campaigned, and spent that money the way common campaign knowledge says you’re supposed to.
3) Sanders managed to bring in far more money than anyone actually assumed was possible from small donors. Rather than investigate this to see if the party should be working to pull in more small donors, they all fall back to the looking primarily at getting money from the billionaires because it’s just easier and more comfortable, even though those dollars come with far more strings attached.
Maybe 2016 was just the year of serial coincidence, or maybe the common knowledge that “everyone knows” is actually somehow wrong. Regardless, I can tell you that getting money out of politics is going to be damn difficult for a party still badly addicted to it.
I don’t care about Keith Ellison’s religion either. But I DO care about his association with Farrakhan. Farrakhan is a more vicious anti-semitic huckster and Jew-baiter than David Duke.
I have never voted non-Dem in my life (except in 1992, I voted for Ross Perot, but I was in California, so I knew my Perot vote would not hurt Clinton) BUT, if Ellison becomes leader of the Dem party, he must unequivocally disavow Farrakhan; in fact, he must explicitly CONDEMN Farrakhan, including, he must explicitly say, publicly: “Farrakhan supporters are NOT WELCOME in the Dem party; if you like Farrakhan, please DO NOT VOTE FOR US”, or else, I will have to stop supporting Dems, across the board.
I’d be interested in seeing the sins confessed and it said very clearly that what was done to Hillary Clinton before, in, and after the primary will never happen to anybody again, personally. People willing to see the country destroyed, possibly literally, because they didn’t get their way don’t get to talk about ethics.
Perez and Ellison are actually very similar.
It’s Perez.
Maybe I am just ignorant, being Canadian, and having never taken part in this, and it is possible I don’t understand the system. If the DNC shows it is not serious about change, and decides to continue doing the same thing it has always done, shouldn’t the goal be to change the DNC? It is my understanding that the DNC voters are chairs and vice chairs of the state parties, members elected by various processes in different states, a bunch of representatives of various Democratic organizations, governors, etc, and at large members. Wouldn’t a ground up movement to change the make up of state parties and organization be a better way of actually changing the party? It feels like many people are concentrating on a very top down approach. Which seems like a reasonable approach while there is the opportunity to work towards it, but judging from a lot of comments I have read online, it seems like a lot of people will just give up after that.
Perez just moved to appoint Ellison Deputy Chair.
The motion passed by unanimous acclimation.
Ellison is calling on his supporters for unity. “We don’t have the luxury to walk out of this room divided.” Too much to be done.
Ha – this is the question.
Well bollocks. The move to throw a bone to Ellison is pretty transparent. We’re going to have to take over this Party from the bottom. Maybe Perez will have enough acumen to move toward our side but that’s going to take a lot more energy to gain the same amount of trust that they would have gotten if they’d just went with Ellison.
Perez and Ellison are friends. They’re not that different politically. Deal with it.
We need a Jacobin party.
There is no “Sanders” wing of the Democratic Party because Bernie is not a Democrat – never was, never wanted to, never will be. He and Nina have nothing but scorn and the deepest disdain for Democrats. And that’s the way the Republicans like it, because they know that Bernie and Nina have no interest in forming a third party. Mass movements are dirty, and you can’t win if you don’t play. You can’t feel the pain if you don’t have the pain, and neither Bernie, Nina or any of the politicians have the pain. They have great health plans, they don’t have student debt, they don’t fight crime or war. They’re just as comfortable with Trump at his worst, and fundraising is even better with the Left more desperately energized. In Maine we’re divided so we get LePage, and if the Left remains divided, Trump will be re-elected.
I like that Perez just made a statement in Spanish.
Don’t ever change, PutiLeaks.
The guest host on AM Joy this morning, had talked to both Perez and Ellison. He said there really wasn’t any difference in the ideas of the two men, but he leaned toward Ellison as he was younger and more likely to be able to engage the millennials. If good use of made of each of their skill sets, the democratic party should recover.
In the eyes of some, democratic party will lack the “purity” that a certain segment of progressives require. Keep in mind the greens are pure, but they only appeal to 1% of the population at best. (No way I would vote for that hodge-podge of new age bullshit that makes up their plank; I heard all that from the hippies back in the ‘Nam war days, and it smells worse with added years.) Rather than being a purist, but won’t run yourself, you have to vote and back those who are viable (meaning electable by the general populace) candidates closest to your personal ideology. Otherwise, somebody like Trump can be elected.
Too many commenters this last year have tried to overtightly define what it means to a liberal/progressive. Basically somebody that totally agrees with them. That nonsense needs to stop. Since reality is always messier than absolute ideology, one can reasonably be considered a liberal/progressive if your meet more than a simply majority of positions that would define one as such, and you identify as such. Some folks need to ease of the “purity” business if you really want to resist the present administration.
Afraid not, Larry. I think Bernie lost fairly, and I also don’t think he would have won against Trump, if he had been the candidate. I voted for Clinton. I think she would have been a fine president, if not the strong liberal I was hoping for (I also think Bernie was flawed.)
I’m also not talking about abandoning the party. I think the Democrats need a major shakeup, and it’s weird that losing congress and the presidency isn’t making them rethink their formula at all.
An article by David Corn from last month – “Why Tom Perez Is a Strong Competitor Against Keith Ellison in the Democratic Party Race: This isn’t an establishment vs. progressive clash.”
The Democratic Party also needs to learn that, in the presidential race, POLICY DOES NOT MATTER.
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did not win the race because their policy was superior to that of their opponents. They won because they were more charismatic. By the same token, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton did not lose because their policy is inferior to that of their opponents. They lost because their opponents were more charismatic.
The people who decide who to vote for candidates based on policy are almost always going to vote for the same party. Those aren’t the people who’ve decided every single presidential election since the advent of TV news.
I lost count of how many articles I read about how Clinton was a shoe-in because of her superior policy, her experience, and her level-headed demeanor. The articles were correct in the sense that Clinton was objectively the better choice in every sense, and if voting were a purely rational and logical affair she’d have won hands down. But the voters who decide every presidential election are making a purely subjective decision. They squeal and clap their hands over the outrageous circus clown, and forget all about the boring old bureaucrat (except, perhaps, to remember the made-up scandals).
If elections were decided based purely on policy, Republicans would get less than twenty percent of the vote (the rich, the wanna-be rich, and their hangers-on). But there are two types of low information voters that give them their support: those who always vote Republican, and those who vote Republican because they “want to have a beer” with the candidate.
The only exceptions to this trend seem to be during a serious backlash. Nixon winning because of the anti-Vietnam backlash (which Nixon stoked by sabotaging the peace talks) is the first example that springs to mind.
Now, the sins of the Trump administration are apt to be so great that the backlash will bury him and his party in 2020 (assuming we survive that long, and assuming we still have elections), no matter who the Dems run. But if the Dems are running a bland technocrat in 2024, they will lose.
Throw in Intercept and the Chapo Trap bros. And then preferably lock the door behind them.
Ellison as chair would not be a “major shakeup*,” as these men are identical. He’s better off where he is, as deputy and Congresscritter both.
*in the sense that the Democrats are not already following a linear, left-leaning path**, which included HRC as candidate, lefter than Obama as POTUS, and there is no reason to doubt they’ll continue
**compared to, say, the state of the party in the 90s; compared to the rest of the world, centrist
I don’t like to give into hyperbole very often, but one thought keeps ringing in my head: The United States, and the world in general, is doomed.
Not because Perez beat out Ellison. That literally does not matter. It doesn’t matter because the DNC chair does not have that much power. It doesn’t matter because Ellison is the Vice Chair, and quite frankly, since they went rounds with each other, they are probably going to function as co-chairs. I actually think this is the best thing that could have happened because I want Ellison to stay my Representative (I like voting for him). Now Ellison can influence policy, but the work itself can be done by Perez and Ellison still has time to work in the Congress.
We are doomed because people are upset to discover that the rest of the country isn’t as liberal as them. You don’t goddamn say. They are upset because their favorite special candidate, with all 7% of the difference between him and Clinton, didn’t win the candidacy by millions of votes. And if he couldn’t win the Democrats, there was no way he was going to win the presidency. We are doomed because they are mad that we have a two-party system where your choices are Republicans or Democrats, and Republicans have the advantage between the electoral college, voter suppression, and gerrymandering and we’re giving them more help because we can’t come together or compromise. And instead of doing something, you know, useful, there are too many people that are going to take their ball and go home and claim it’s the fault of the people who stayed. You want to do something useful? Do the long, boring slogging work of changing things. Get ballot initiatives to change first-past-the post to Instant Runoff. Actually do some work to get what you want to accomplish, instead of moaning that the whole thing is “too corrupt” and washing your hands of it.
We’re coming to a head with some major problems, and people are getting mad that their favorite cult of personality didn’t win the largely powerless post. Climate Change is happening. Tech-sourcing is happening, and pretty soon we’re going to have a much higher “normal” unemployment. What are we going to do about that? We have deep gendered, racial, and religious STRUCTURAL divisions in this country- what are we going to do about that?
So we’re doomed. And I’m going to keep rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic until we finally sink because I don’t have another choice.
Perez is off to a good start.
Those whining that Perez has similar positions to Ellison demonstrate a profound lack of understanding about what this race represented and of politics in general. Anyone who’s even remotely familar with politics in this country should know that there’s more to what a politicians agenda is than what he or she says in public.
https://newrepublic.com/article/140847/case-tom-perez-makes-no-sense
Ellison represented a challenge, however small, to the consultant class and democratic establishment. He wanted to replicate the Sanders fundraising model of small grassroots donations at the DNC and end its reliance on the model of pandering to the concerns of big money donors.
Where Perez was aggressively backed by national party and Obama administration officials, Ellison’s base of support was among state party officials who’ve seen their organizations and roster of elected officials wither and die over the past eight years as money and resources have been vacuumed up by those very same people backing Perez now. Why do you think it is the Democrats where drubbed so hard down-ticket despite Hillary’s popular vote win ?
This DNC chair race has demonstrated that the people who’ve so utterly let us down and handed the right total control of this country have learned nothing, and more importantly, don’t want to.
These people are not our friends; if they have to choose between electoral success and their cushy consulting jobs they’ll thrown us under the fucking bus every single time.
And what are YOU doing to get your state to institute IRV? There are alternatives, but they require YOU to work and be political, like getting people to sign petititions for IRV in states reasonable citizen initiated referendums. Which leaves out where I live, where it pretty much must come from the state legislature.
You don’t verb very well.
I don’t have citizen ballot initiatives either. So I have been wring my state Rep and Senator. I also join an indivisible political group and convinced the to call theirs as well. I have been talking to my conservative relatives to call theirs (because it will mean more coming from Republicans) despite meaning that I have to engage with them about politics.
Our Indivisible group is deciding how much money we should collect in dues and seeing is this should be one of our first pamphlets to start handing out at events.
Also, this. Telling anyone who will read that we will be much better off and we can convince people that first past the post needs to be amended. That if you can do a citizen level ballot, do it, talk to your reps if you can’t. We don’t really have much of a voice when it comes to the DNC chair but we do have a voice about this.
If we could fix some systematic voting problems, we would we better off as a nation. And it would be more representative. And I it would break the stranglehold of the two party system. And then we could determine districts by mathematic equations, and have early voting, and same-day registration and abolish Voter ID acts (or prevent them) and demand enough polling places and workers and we make progress. Fucking slow progress, but progress. Whoever is the DNC chair won’the change that.
Funny: If there’s no difference between Perez and Ellison, why was Perez pushed on us after Ellison had already started? Clearly, somebody thinks there’s a difference. I wonder who?
Apparently, you aren’t even trying? Why not? Either do something constructive, or shut the fuck up. Only complaining can and will be dismissed. Doing something positive makes that harder to be dismissed.
I find the insistence on a leader with the right policies sort of strange. A leader with no party support might as well promise everyone free blowjobs because they’re getting nothing passed. Their ‘allies’ have more reason to let the leader fail than to support them. Getting other politicians onboard is something Clinton is extremely good at, to the point where it looked rigged because the entire DNC were already on board. Hell, even Republicans knew she could get them on board with what she was doing if she had to.
I think too many people see Sanders as the future of the party, mistakingly believing his socialism is a principled stand based on the day’s economics rather than him being a stubborn old git who’s 40 years behind (see: his deficient gun control policy). We’re seeing the same thing in the UK, where their Sanders figure won the party. He has no institutional support, he’s widely considered unelectable and the big thing he’s 40 years behind on is Brexit so the left wing party are officially in favour of closing borders.
If you want to know what the future of the left looks like, they’re not the DNC. They’re Black Lives Matter. Don’t look for the stopped clock in the old party, get people in power who understand life in 2017. This might well involve a new party, not beholden to the forces that choke the DNC, but it will certainly be nimbler and it will have to take state elections seriously.
This isn’t complaining, it is telling you what we can all do. What can we do about the DNC chair? What DID you do about it?
And did you miss the rest of it?
Shit I forgot to mention solidarity. It is the traditional lifeblood of the left and it’s not something people talk about as an organising principle. Your group has their back because they’ll have your back later.
Probably not much. It isn’t YOUR problem. And as far as I am concerned, that is the end of the discussion, if you think only one data point. being your opinion, will change humanity. What are YOU doing to make your opinion more robust than just YOU? That is difference between activism, and noise….
In case @37 was directed at me: I’m Australian and given ‘the Australian system’ has been the nickname for fairer and more democratic elections for a hundred years I feel like fighting for a better electoral system is low down on the priority list.
We still regularly elect some shockers. That’s democracy for you.
(Compulsory Voting: it sounds terrible but trust us, it works)
Ellison…’s been getting some rather bigoted push-back.
And not just outside of FtB.
More from Ellison’s remarks.
@Matt Campt, it wasn’t at you. We just happened to post at the same time. It was at Nerd of Redheads. I actually support compulsory voting, but I think it is honestly just too far afield of American tradition and values to get much traction here. Having the extra choice that Instant Runoff, though, I feel fits into our national values.
Ew.
@Drawler, 30
This is a revelation to exactly no one, thus verging on non-sequitur.
You mean if they disappoint their constituents by failing to uphold campaign promises they won’t be re-elected but instead pursue lobby and think-tank work? I’m positively shaking an’a quaking in my boots. THIS IS AS IT SHOULD BE, pace your mystified tone and muddled logic. It’s like voting wasn’t invented until 2015-6. Where have you all been? What is with this, presumably feigned, naïveté?
Stephanie Hansen just won the special election in Delaware, so Democrats keep control of the state senate. Onward.
It’s somewhat adorable that you think electoral politics are relevant anymore. The republic is dead. We live in a one party state. act like it.
Who the DNC chair is, is pointless.
And it’s being reported that the margin was like 17 points and turnout was extremely high for a special election.
#47
Yawn.
Link to SC’s #46 & 48 reports. Not close, the Resistance had an effect.
@49 at SC
Let’s count the ways in which the US is structually fucked…
1) Gerrymendering has rendered GOP control of the House nigh untouchable
2) the electoral college is likely to to do the same for the president now. (White rural votes are always going to carry too much weight because of the the EC and the 30’s law that capped the House)
3) voter suppression conceviably gave Trump the election. WI especailly can be completely chalked up to REAL ID
4) Sessions is just going to continue to supress Democratic voters, either directly though things like REAL ID or indirectly through mass incarnation/war on drugs.
5) Unions are going to have their back broken very, very soon as a national so-called right-to-work law is coming. ( http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/national-right-to-work-law-would-be-the-union-apocaly-1791844314 )
6) Federal funding that liberals depend on is gone. Things like planned parenthood are about to go the way of the dodo.
7) oh an thing slike this are coming http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/321018-state-legislators-take-steps-to-criminalize-protests . Our central liberty is gone; the USA is now a kakistocracy. We can only hope to survive.
I have elected to retreat. I’m recloseting (something I am recommending all LGBT folks do ASAP) I have left academia and retreated to the boondocks. I might be boring to you but I’m calling it like I see it.
I hope you stay safe and well, truly. I won’t miss your irrational reactionary fatalism.
Don’t act surprised when the jackboots show up at your door in the boondocks, Mike Smith, and “disappear” you. You think that will save you? Pffffft. Either we win, we die trying, or we lay down and die. Nobody can force your decision, of course, but hotbloodedness aside, if it comes down to it, you’ve volunteered to be given up to save ourselves…I’d much rather you were fighting with us, but you’ll make a decent human shield in a pinch, too.
I’d be happier if Perez and Ellison were co-chairs, but this will be fine. Say what you will about the less than savory circumstances leading up to his run (namely, the Obama administration folks fishing around for people to contest the DNC chair position against Ellison), but his progressive record is mostly solid stuff.
Or at least it will be fine if Perez actually changes up strategy. It sounds like some of the centrist Democrats want to rehash the whole “let’s let Trump self-destruct for the win!” strategy, which almost worked until Comey. It wouldn’t be the first time they stuck to a bad strategy – remember when Dean took over in 2005 and instituted the 50-state strategy after a fight with Rahm Emanuel, then after he left Kaine took over and the DNC was like “that 50-state strategy stuff that helped us win Congress was great – now let’s go back to same old crap we were doing before Dean took over”?
@4, robertrichter:
For as long as I’ve been alive, the Democrats have always been where the Republicans were a couple elections ago, meaning both have moved steadily to the right.
Exactly what do you mean by “purity testing?” Because all too often, the phantom of “purity” has been invoked against the idea that there should be any standards at all— that we should support any atrocity as long as (a) a Democrat is doing it, and (b) the Republican is technically worse.
I’ve heard the term neo-liberal used that way before, to refer to people who talk liberal but act conservative. I’m willing to accept it as a legitimate use.
@5, Moran:
How does that even? Why would you support someone you oppose just because they belong to the same party as someone you support?
Maybe political parties work differently in Canada, but in America there are only two major parties who, between them, have complete control over the country. Each party is a “big tent” that encompasses many people of very different viewpoints, but at the same time each party pushes particular views as a whole, which in turn impacts both which people can be covered under its big tent and its perceptions to the country as a whole.
Right now the Republican party is so far to the right that only extremists fit under its big tent, although many different varieties of extremist can be found there. As a whole, the party is pushing even further to the right, and the few people who might be semi-moderate on some issues are getting squeezed out. Meanwhile, the Democratic party is clearly right of center, but close enough to the center that a few moderate liberals fit under its big tent. Unfortunately, the Democratic party is also moving even further to the right, and its few remaining liberals are slowly being squeezed out.
Under the circumstances, a Democratic presidential primary has ramifications beyond the presidential race. Because a sitting president wields considerable control over the internal party apparatus, a Democratic president can exert a considerable push on which way the party goes (and who will fit under the big tent in the future).
Which means that if you’re trying to advance liberal policies, a conservative Democrat can actually do more damage than a Republican, since a conservative Democrat can move the Democratic Party to the right until there are no liberals to vote for.
Which means that if neither candidate is good, it can be worthwhile to sacrifice an election to the Republicans to help curtail the rightward shift of the Democrats. If we’d sacrificed the 2012 election, we wouldn’t be in this mess— instead of Trump campaigning on Democratic failures, the Republicans would have Romney hanging around their necks and the Democrats would have learned a harsh lesson on what happens when you promise liberal policies but don’t deliver so they’d be more likely to have a better candidate than Clinton.
It also means that the notion of party loyalty should be absurd— but unfortunately, many people have yet to learn that lesson.
OK, I was going to pick apart the absurdity of calling it “childish” to refuse vote in opposition to your own beliefs, values, and interests but I mostly covered that above and I was struck by the oddity of that analogy.
Like, if it’s your ball, don’t you have some say in what happens to it? If I brought my ball to the park to play handball, but three strangers approached me and told me the three of them voted that we should play basketball, wouldn’t I be within my rights to take my ball and go home?
Well, no. Trump’s electoral successes had nothing to do with liberals abandoning the Democratic party and a lot to do with the Democratic party abandoning liberals.
A lot of people seem unwilling or unable to cope with the realities of human nature, but the fact is it’s just not possible to win an election when the only thing you stand for is “we’re not the other guy.” It’s not possible to lie and then get people to trust you. It’s not possible to demonstrate complete and utter contempt for people without them turning away from you. And the Democratic loyalists can complain that three quarters of the American electorate are morally defective or irrational or “cutting off their noses to spite their faces” but it won’t get the Republicans out of office.
If the Democrats want to position themselves exactly one step to the left of the Republicans and claim it makes them the “lesser evil,” then that’s their right. And when they lose the election, the fault lies with them, and not the voters who couldn’t be bothered to make it to the polls over such a minute difference.
@11, Travis:
The two are complementary, not mutually exclusive. The best option is a squeeze approach— build a grassroots movement to take over from below while pressuring the top to yield to them.
@19, blbt5:
The term “Sanders wing” refers to the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which primarily voted for Sanders in the 2016 presidential primary.
I wouldn’t object to a better term superseding it, but it’s not worth the nitpick.
@23, PZ:
How you figure?
Sanders massively outperformed Clinton on the issues most important to voters (namely, cleaning up the mess of Washington’s corruption). He was massively better than Clinton on the issues most relevant to the swing voters who flipped the election (namely, American factory jobs and whether we sign “free trade” deals to ship them away). He energized the base far more than Clinton ever could. Every poll considered him a stronger candidate than Clinton.
What leads you to assume he would have lost?
I’m pretty sure you think the same about Obama, so this means nothing.
I doubt anyone would claim he wasn’t. Frankly, I opposed him too. He was substantially better than Clinton, and if he were on the ballot I might well have voted “for Sanders” rather than “against Trump” but we could have done a lot better.
Weird to you, maybe. I’m not surprised in the least.
@25, vucodlak:
Bullshit.
It’s true that no people evaluate the two major candidates and decide, based on policy, which one to pick.
However, there are people who decide, based on policy, whether to vote Democratic, third party, or not at all.
And there are people who decide, based on policy, whether to vote Republican, third party, or not at all.
And when the Republican and the Democrat are virtually identical on policy, there are people who use various tie-breaker mechanisms to pick a lesser evil.
@Troll, 22, 31 & 39:
Or in other words…
If you’re not working to change the system, you’re a whiny complainer who needs to shut up and get to work, but if you are working to change the system then you’re a purist hippie who needs to shut up and accept that only 1% of the population is willing to vote for anyone to the left of George W. Bush.
And then you wonder why your preferred candidate lost and start indignantly whining that a majority of Americans dared to think they had any say in who they vote for.
@Jessie Harban #56
I more or less agree with a lot of your long post, except with the last part.
It does not seem fair to use #39’s argument to undermine #22, #31.
I do have to agree with the Troll, there is a lot of people complaining rather than actually engaging.
We need to commit our time and effort to change the political landscape bottom-up.
[My one and only reply to Harban:]
The 2016 Democratic platform was the most progressive in the party’s history.
I strongly urge you to stop commenting here as well. Best to be on the safe side!
I have honestly no idea why that person keeps writing on FtB.
+++
Sorry to hear the wrong guy won. But I still don’t think you have time to retreat. People all over the world are worried about the USA and we can’t do much about it.
Holy shit that post is awful, what the hell?
When you post about the “thuggery of black lives matter” maybe its time to stop posting and think about what you typed.
Giliell, #60
Anjuli is a disappointingly sloppy critic of Islam. As an ex-Muslim, it’s pretty sad to see her falling so easily for the anti-Muslim version of religious criticism a la Harris and Dawkins. I used to peruse her blog in the beginning but quickly realized it’s not what I thought it was going to be. So it makes sense that she’s getting things wrong on BLM too. Makes me think she gets her info from the bigoted atheist sources and doesn’t care to think about them critically herself.
I’m surprised a blog like that is on FtB.
Saad
You and me both.
I once tried to correct her on a simple fact (i.e. that while there were many cases of sexual assault in that Cologne New Year’S Eve night there were not “multiple cases of gang rape”) which got me labelled “pro rape” or something.
I guess she thinks they’re her friend if she’s just nasty enough, a la Hirsi Ali or something…
I’ve been put on moderation after I made comments contrary to Anjuli’s opinion in that blog post. I don’t think I was being particularly rude, but you can check them out and be the judge. This makes me upset as a commenter told me that “Reasoned responses are not your thing,” and that they expected dead silence or little more from me, and it certainly looks like it if my reply doesn’t show up. This was it, just in case:
The whole idea that we “allow” words to take on racist implications when we recognize dogwhistles for what they are is ridiculous. Definitions reflect usage, and if a word is being consistently used in a racist way, that is part of its definition.
Selectively taking a prescriptivist stance to label socially progressive people as complacent in racism for the mere act of recognizing common usage is nonsense.
I’m going to quote (with reformatting and de-abbreviation up for non-Twitter) a Twitter thread from Melissa McEwan, Editor in Chief of Shakesville.com:
@58 SC (Salty Current)
Doesnt count because she is pandering to young milleniels and is not serious about keeping that platform*rolls eyes*.
Clinton the DNC are always in a “damn if you do and damn if you dont” situation when it comes to most third party ppl.
@57, FO:
Actually, it was #22 that undermined #31 and #39. In the latter two (and other comments in other threads), Nerd dismisses complaints by telling people that unless they’re working to change the system, they have no right to complain about it. And in #22 (and other comments in other threads), Nerd dismisses people working to change the system by telling them that changes aren’t “viable” because only 1% of the population will ever support liberal policies.
@58, SC:
And, as I’m sure I’ve explained to you multiple times, that means precisely fuck all. People are evaluated by their actions, not their self-congratulatory statements about themselves.
Trying to prove that the Democrats are progressive by pointing to their platform is like trying to prove someone isn’t racist by pointing to the fact that they don’t think of themselves as racist. That’s just not how anything works.
@68
I would agree that I generally think the platform to be kind of useless to tell what policies are actually going to be advanced and fought for, but I’m not sure if I exactly agree with that comparison. I think making a platform that at least tries to cater to and look good on certain issues is somewhat of an acknowledgement that you are after that voting block and are willing to lose other voting demographics over it.
I don’t think the platform is a refutation that the Democratic party has been disappointing and troubling, but I’m just not sure I think it’s utterly meaningless. Even if it’s lip service, I think the way they’re doing the lip service and who they’re saying it at is at least something.
Democrats need to take a lesson from the Tea Party. At the time the republican establishment meant to pay only lip service to this group, but that was the opening. The lip service paved teh way for a complete take over by that third party (Tea Party) and thier values got integrated within the republican establishment and any politicians that didnt play ball got rekt in the primaries and local elections. This could happen again with the alt-right.
Meanwhile progressives have the DNC by the balls, but instead of uniting some of us do not want to seize this oportunity. This is more than lip service. This is the Democrats not being able to afford to lose more seats. We have them, and now its time to put the pressure. DO NOT play the purity game. Sorry but no, Perez is a good choice even if hes not YOUR choice.
Wrong asshole, I’m saying you need to do MORE than just complain on this blog, you need to take action. If you want to make third parties more viable, work at the state level, where the elections are managed, and use citizen initiative to get IRV in place. That would stop the strategic voting you hate.
Another asshole statement. The greens aren’t the only ones with progressive policies, and some of the newage sewage the greens believe in should be dumpstered.
What I have said all along, is supporting a political party that the general electorate, the 40-60 percentile voters on a left/right scale, will not accept, and hence will not be elected, is an exercise in futility. The greens 1% showing is crystal clear evidence of that. They aren’t even getting much of the left end of the democrats. YOU HAVE TO BE ELECTED TO CHANGE THE COUNTRY/STATE/CITY.
Work with the greens all you want. But, until they actually sit in government at many levels, they are nothing but irrelevant noise. So, what are you doing to change that, that doesn’t involve hectoring us who really understand politics, like working on a citizen initiative for IRV?
Nerd of Redhead @ # 71: YOU HAVE TO BE ELECTED TO CHANGE THE COUNTRY/STATE/CITY.
Not necessarily. In the US, the Populists, Progressives, and Socialists made very little headway electorally, but set trends in motion that produced major results generations later in FDR’s New Deal & LBJ’s Great Society programs. On the other side, the Know-Nothings and the States Rights Party (aka Dixiecrats) lost elections during their brief organizational lives but produced powerful movements against immigration and integration.
At present, however, we don’t have generations to spare in protecting and extending necessary policies.
You’ve explained nothing to me. The platform is reflected in the policies Clinton promoted and would have worked to enact, particularly when pressured by a mobilized Left. They build on the same policies many Democrats, including both Ellison and Perez, have put into action or worked to put into action for years. It’s not remotely where the Republicans were four years ago, eight years ago, or ever, and they haven’t moved steadily to the Right over those years. No one is going to take you seriously when you’re making claims like that.
OK, I’m done. You’re such a tiresome, long-winded git.
Jessie Harban, #56:
They have moved to the right on a few issues, but far from all of them. I would say Dem politicians (and presumably many Dem voters) are much better — substantially, that is, in terms of what they’ve actually already accomplished — than they were just ten or twenty years ago, in regard to racism, sexism and homophobia, to name a few very obvious examples. In terms of fiscal, trade and some other economic policies… that’s quite a bit less impressive, I have to say.
But even assuming your quote above were true, it doesn’t contradict the claim that they are different, and in particular that at any given time the Democrats are different such that they are very clearly preferable to the Republicans. So I have to wonder how you could think yours was an appropriate response.
Well, start with this little riddle: How does someone you support belong to the same party as someone you oppose? Why would you support such a person? Or what does it even mean to say you “support” them, given that they aren’t supportable (in the sense I would use the word) at least in terms of their political affiliation with those you “oppose” (whatever that means)?
Do you think politicians within a political party, a party that’s actually functioning to some extent in the government, work together to actually do anything? (Is there any good reason you could try to dream up, about why these people might be working together in the same party? What do they get out of it?)
Or do they just sit around talking to each other about how miffed they all are about random, abstract nonsense, which I suppose they expect someone else to address? I imagine it could depend on the party in question. Greens may not actually do anything, for all I know — other than fundraising and shit-stirring, obviously, but I mean doing something in/about the government as a political party.
Pure bullshit.
It’s strange that you don’t understand that taking your ball and going home implies you’re no longer playing the game (presumably the game the ball was designed for). In this case, the ball represents your political activity, such as it is. So, going home with it, to do precisely jack shit and not play that game, is not what you want to do with the fucking ball you fucking have and can of course use as you wish.
If you do want to have a say in whether or not you play that game with that ball at that time, then yes, you obviously do have a say in that. How could that matter? By failing to participate in a meaningful way (by voting for people who can accomplish something good, something better than the reasonable alternatives, if not everything you should hope for or everything you actually support), it doesn’t do you any fucking good whatsoever to merely have a say in whether or not you can take your ball home with you. So if you want to completely apolitical and live under a rock in the middle of the wilderness, that’s totally up to you and nobody has said otherwise, but that’s not one of the constructive options for you as someone who is trying to accomplish some kind of political goal.
Then you should be happy to learn that you’re being a bullshitter (again, as usual), because in fact Democrats don’t just stand for that. Maybe you just don’t want to be happy about anything, or don’t want to learn anything. In any case, that’s what you should try to do.
If you can’t be bothered to vote, when the difference is as stark as Clinton vs. Trump (and I’m very well informed about Clinton’s faults, thank you), then yes, I’m definitely going to blame you for grade-A head-up-your-ass dumbfuckery like that.
That shit is not hard to understand. Every time read things like this from you, I’m more and more inclined to believe you’re actually a conservative who’s just concern trolling us (or perhaps more conservative than even you realize). Because it’s really fucking hard to imagine how a reasonable person (as I try to assume you are, although that may be a mistake) with any remotely liberal views could believe things like that. At the same time, you strongly distinguish between Clinton and Sanders, who are not so different politically, which makes it even more baffling. I’m pretty sure you’re just a bullshitter. Maybe you should consider going off-script and changing your argument, if you learn that you’ve got a shit argument that is false and/or doesn’t make any sense. Have you considered doing that?
@69, Vivec:
Very well. I will concede that the Democratic Party has at least as much integrity as an affinity scammer.
@70, logicalcat:
We do? Just a few months ago, the DNC ran a nationwide purge of liberal candidates in primary elections and now we have them by the balls?
I’ve been calling the Dems every chance I get, but they’re still convinced that we want them to work “with” Trump.
That’s never stopped them before.
What, exactly, is the “purity game?” Because the only times anyone has mentioned “purity” it’s as a snarl word to disparage the idea that we should care about any progressive values at all.
I don’t know enough about Perez to approve or dismiss him at this time, but the fact that he was supported by the far-right trio of Clinton, Obama, and a billionaire donor is not a good sign. Nor is the fact that he was swooped in at the last minute when an actual progressive had already volunteered for the position.
And from what I’ve heard, it was a politically boneheaded move even if Perez is perfectly adequate for the job.
@71, Troll:
You didn’t actually address anything I said in any coherent manner. You just screeched a few random insults, shredded a couple straw men, and then spent the bulk of your post ranting irrelevantly about the Green Party.
Exactly why are you so obsessed with the Greens?
@72, Pierce R Butler:
Exactly. A third party isn’t an electoral success, it’s the threat you make to force one of the major parties to listen to you.
@73, Salty Current:
OK, I’m not sure how to break this to you, but politicians lie. Clinton would not have enacted any of the policies she “promoted” on the campaign trail. (Or, perhaps more accurately, she would have enacted one of them and pointed to it every time someone mentioned she broke the others.)
Do you seriously not remember Obama? It wasn’t even that long ago that he ran for office promising to undo Bush’s atrocities and enact progressive reforms, and once in office he doubled down on Bush’s atrocities and promptly abandoned all those wonderful progressive promises.
And after Obama had spent four years flipping off the left and mocking us for being dumb enough to support him, we decided to reward him with a second term because hey, he was “better” than Romney.
Right. How’d that work out under Obama?
Let me tell you how it worked out— all the left-leaning advocacy groups that email me asking for my time and money spent eight years asking me to defend Obama and support Obama. The idea that the left will “mobilize” to demand liberal policies from a right-wing Democrat is a lie— we’re told it’s best to get a Democrat in power because they can be pressured into doing the right thing, but once they are in power, we’re told to support their conservative policies lest pressuring them “divide the party” and let the Republicans take power.
And I’ve certainly never seen any “freethought resistance” under Obama here— tepid criticism, sure, but certainly nothing like what Bush got.
Under Bush, the Republicans supported indefinite detention and torture of political prisoners.
Under Obama, the Democrats did likewise, and added “extrajudicial assassination of US citizens” to the list.
Under Bush, the Republicans supported a massive surveillance state.
Under Obama, the Democrats did likewise.
Under Bush, the Republicans supported making rich bankers and Wall Streeters completely above the law.
Under Obama, the Democrats did likewise.
Under Bush, the Republicans started two colonialist wars.
Under Obama, the Democrats started three more.
Under Bush, the Republicans initiated mass deportation of undocumented Americans.
Under Obama, the Democrats did likewise.
Under Bush, the Republicans ignored global warming.
Under Obama, the Democrats did likewise.
Under Bush, the Republicans cut taxes on the rich.
Under Obama, the Democrats kept them low.
Under Bush, the Republicans persecuted whistleblowers.
Under Obama, the Democrats did likewise, to a much greater extent.
Do you seriously need any more examples?
So Guantanamo is closed then? Good to hear it. Do you have a Youtube clip of Chelsea Manning receiving her medal?
It must be nice in your little world where the Democrats are liberal.
@74, consciousness razor:
The thing you need to keep in mind is that society itself has progressed considerably on those issues, and whether a view is liberal or conservative is determined, in part, in relation to society itself.
Which means that a party which moves to the left slower than society exhibits a rightward shift even if they’re technically further left than they were before.
A healthy neurotypical five-year-old who acts like a two-year-old is immature; if, after six years, that child is now an eleven-year-old who acts like a four-year-old they are considered more immature despite having technically matured in absolute terms.
Whether they’re “very clearly” preferable to Republicans depends on the individual pairings. Sanders v. Trump? Obviously the Democrat is preferable. Clinton v. Trump? The Democrat is very clearly preferable to most people but a few might legitimately think otherwise. Obama v. Romney? They’re identical. I’d say Romney is technically the lesser evil, but the difference is negligible.
Exactly what “response” of mine do you think was inappropriate?
Because parties are big tents that encompass many different beliefs?
I don’t know. I’ve tended to argue against supporting people you oppose.
What does any of this word salad mean?
Now you want a treatise on why political parties formed?
I think you’re trying to argue that since a political party represents an alliance, it makes the various parties to that alliance functionally identical; ie, that since Sanders and Clinton allied for mutual gain, it makes Sanders and Clinton equally desirable. This is, of course, completely asinine. Even bitter enemies can form alliances; the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.
Argument by assertion, I see.
In that case, the analogy doesn’t really work.
Which I basically said at the outset before musing on it for a couple sentences.
And you apparently felt the need to devote two paragraphs to that largely meaningless aside.
And what, pray tell, do the Democrats stand for?
Please limit your list to policies they’ve actually enacted, as I’m sick and tired of Democratic tribalists claiming lip service is a tremendous achievement.
Ideally, you should also exclude policies they enacted only in the most half-assed form.
And if you blame the non-voters for Trump and describe them as “head-up-their-ass dumbfucks,” what do you think will happen in 2018 when you need their votes to take back Congress? Do you think they’ll vote for the candidate some random asshole tells them to vote for? If anything, they might even vote Republican just to spite you.
And you can scream about how they’re all irrational bigots who cut off their noses to spite their faces, but the Republicans will still have control of the government.
Oh and incidentally, what about when the difference is as nonexistent as Obama v. Romney?
Don’t be ridiculous. You just need to learn a few things about basic human nature, and maybe how to see things from someone else’s perspective.
Try to imagine for a moment that you didn’t see party labels and you didn’t know much about anyone’s history beyond the most basic details. You’ve lost a decent job because the company outsourced it to a foreign factory. You can’t get a new one because the economy is in tatters, and the government has been ignoring your plight. Now it’s time to vote.
On the one hand, you have a candidate who disparages outsourcing and insists we should bring jobs such as yours right back to America, but seems a little overzealous in blaming foreigners for having taken your job in the first place. This candidate has never been in government before.
On the other hand, you have a candidate who wrote the laws that allowed your job to be outsourced, and who claims the policies that cost you your job are a good thing for the nation as a whole. This candidate promises economic reforms to benefit you – wage hikes, better health care, and more – but since they’ve been in government for a long time, you know they’re a pathological liar and don’t believe a word of that. Besides, they supported the policies which caused the economic crash— and then worked hard to coddle the billionaires while you and your family suffered.
Who do you vote for? And can you understand why someone else would make a different choice?
Perhaps I’m wrong, but I suspect you’re mistaking my attempt to explain the positions other people hold for the positions I hold.
It’s baffling how often the Pharyngula commenters make that mistake.
If you can’t see the massive chasm between Clinton and Sanders, then you really don’t have anything insightful to say on the topic.
Jessie Harban:
Democrats (politicians and others) are in fact part of our society. They’re the members of society who have progressed considerably, as I claimed.
To say that they (Democrats) did not make such progress, while this society they belong to has, implies that some other unnamed, nebulous members of society have progressed. So it’s equivalent to claiming that non-Democrats are ones who are (mostly or entirely) responsible for that progress, which is simply false.
What you’d like is to shift the goalposts and say that somebody out there is really doing all this good, just not Democrats, so that you can avoid crediting Democrats for anything, to continue harping about them without interruption or even the slightest attenuation. I’d like you to criticize us fairly, because we certainly need it if we’re going to make even more progress on various important issues. What won’t help is a bunch of incoherent whining full of falsehoods and nonsense, but unfortunately that’s most of what you’ve been writing.
You just said “society itself has progressed considerably” … but now it somehow also “exhibits a rightward shift.” Presumably that’s a shift on those same issues over the same period of time, or else you’re saying something transparently irrelevant. Is there any version of this idea you’re trying to express, which doesn’t involve contradicting yourself? I don’t think so. Maybe you could try again, but I bet you’ll be wasting your time.
A human society, full of many millions of people with sharply contrasting political views and incompatible interests, is not like a single person who matures with age.
Who would think so? And what would their reasoning be like, which makes it legitimate? Explain that if you can. Because I’m not going to accept vague, unsupported, unanalyzable assertions like that.
You’re the one asserting (1) there is some identifiable rightward shift of Democrats, (2) that making more conservative people win elections will somehow move the country in the opposite direction, and that (3) through this magical process Democratic politicians will learn the “lesson” you think you’re teaching them.
Anyway, I didn’t need to address your inane assertions concerning a “strategy” that consists of wishful thinking and is built on a blatantly false premise. Just quoting/reiterating/describing that crap should suffice for a reasonable person.
I don’t know. Maybe they’ll come to their senses and take their heads out of their asses, maybe not. I don’t believe that comments I write on an obscure blog has a significant effect on future election outcomes. I’m fairly sure that in fact it doesn’t have any effect like that. Do you ever care about facts, or is it always going to be just a bunch of rhetoric?
Then they’d still be acting like dumbfucks. So isn’t what I’ve said correct? Should I not be honest about it, because I’m supposed to care more about being polite or about not insulting anyone or something like that?
Are we supposed to coddle people and tell them that no matter awful and illiberal their ideas are, no matter how horrible the consequences of their actions will be, they’re still invited to be a central part of this “big tent” mindset that you thought you were criticizing? Are you not actually interested in honest criticism and making real progress with substantial moral/political consequences for actual people, but simply interested in winning an election for your team? Where exactly is this line that you’re apparently drawing, where your wildly unmeasured criticism of Democrats is justifiable, yet my criticism of people thinking and acting like you isn’t? Wherever it happens to be, should anybody believe that’s a decent place to draw the line?
Yet you’ve implied (and explicitly said a number of times) that Republicans are better, or (I guess depending on your mood or the amount of pushback you get from basically everyone) they’re at least not substantially worse. So if you really believe that, what do you care if they have control of the government? Again, is this primarily about you winning this argument or your team (whatever that is) winning the election, or is this about something more important?
You should stick with telling us the truth, as best as you know it. Not bullshit, whether or not you decide to pass it off to other people. We won’t get anywhere by taking bullshit seriously, supposing it has any validity or that false things are anything other than false.
I think I may have misread this:
Let’s use some numbers to make this concrete.
– We start at 0 at some time in the past.
– Over some period of time, the Democrats move left 1 and society moves left 2. (I’m going to call leftward political movement positive because it’s a good thing.)
— I’ll just assume, only for the purposes of this argument, that the claim above is true: that some non-Democratic faction is responsible for the additional leftward movement of the larger society. Because otherwise those are not the kinds of figures we should use to accurately represent what happened in the real world to coherently-defined groups of actual people, as I’ve already expressed above. If the Dems moved more in that direction, they should have the larger number, not the other way around.
– So the score for the Democrats is 1. That is not equal to 0, and it is not a negative number.
– A “rightward shift” among Democrats (not among the broader society as I first interpreted your claim) would mean a decreasing number, not an increasing one. That’s a sensible way to describe or represent a shift in that direction using this kind of scale, assuming we’re trying to be consistent about its application, not just act like Trump and say whatever random bullshit that comes out of our heads.
But you also gave an analogy about a child maturing. We have different expectations about how a child will behave at different ages. So you might consider recalibrating some kind of scale that you would use to evaluate their behavior. Needless to say, although I’ll repeat it anyway, a society full of many people isn’t like a single person. And you can perfectly well distinguish between your recalibration efforts (and the reasons why you’re doing that) from whatever definite standard you started out with that simply tells you how you think things actually are so as to make some kind of comparison, independently of your decisions to change the scale or whatever criteria you may use when interpreting whatever results you may get.
@76, 77 consciousness razor:
When I described the Democrats, I was referring to the establishment of the party— just the politicians, not the people who describe themselves as Democrats but don’t have any meaningful say in what the politicians do.
The Democratic establishment is a negligible percentage of society.
The > 99% of society who are not Democratic politicians or members of the Democratic Party leadership are a “nebulous group?”
I think the problem is that, being a tribalist, you think of yourself as a Democrat and included practically everyone on the left as “Democrats” despite the fact that neither you nor they have any direct affiliation with the party itself and thus no direct say in its operations. We may be the Democratic base, but claiming we’re actually members of the Democratic Party is a bit like claiming to be a member of your favorite football team.
Since the next few paragraphs are based on this overbroad definition of “Democrats” I can mercifully skip them as a bunch of straw men.
If society progresses considerably as a whole while a tiny subset of that society remains in place, then that subset exhibits a rightward shift relative to society. As in, by virtue of staying in place while everyone else moves left, they are now to the right of everyone else.
Do you have trouble understanding analogies? They don’t have to be perfect; in fact, they can’t be. They just have to be analogous. A single person is not identical to a society, but a single person can be used as an analogy to explain the idea that if you’re being judged by a moving target you can fall behind even as you move forward simply because the target has moved faster than you.
Or in other words, if you’re walking on a lengthy treadmill and you don’t walk as fast as the treadmill moves, you can end up further back despite having walked forward. Now do you understand, or will you object on the basis that a treadmill is not a society?
If you realistically believe that you can survive four years of Trump just as well as four years of Clinton, then there’s no short-term reason to pick one over the other. Under the circumstances, you will vote entirely based on long-term impact. Clinton will be very corrupt, perpetuate the system of corruption in Washington, move the Democratic Party to the right, and provoke a backlash against the Democrats in 2018 and 2020. Trump will be completely corrupt to the point where it might be impossible to ignore the elephant in the room, spark mass protests among the left (which may be sufficient to recapture the Democratic Party) and provoke a backlash among the Republicans in 2018 and 2020.
So among the two equally terrible candidates, the “lesser evil” overall is the one who, by virtue of being more evil individually, will make evil less tenable in the future.
And before you object to the idea that both candidates are equally terrible, read the first sentence of the first paragraph— there are people rich and privileged enough to survive four years of Trump and four years of Clinton equally, and those are the few people who might legitimately disagree with the idea that Clinton is preferable.
That much is obvious. If you can’t remember the eight years of Obama, then you really shouldn’t be talking.
“Making more conservative people win?” Do you ever listen to yourself?
I’ve seen no shortage of people insisting that a vote for Stein is literally the same thing as a vote for Romney/Trump, but this suggests you believe that is actually true.
Be brutally honest with yourself. Imagine you’re a Democratic strategist who oversees election campaigns. In 2008, your candidate Obama promises liberal policies, the other candidate McCain promises conservative ones. Your candidate wins in a landslide as the party base and unaffiliated voters sweep him into power. He then enacts conservative policies. In 2012, your candidate Obama promises the same liberal policies, but now he’s been proven a liar, and the other candidate Romney promises conservative policies roughly identical to what your candidate has actually enacted. The other candidate wins with less than half the vote because the party base and unaffiliated voters split between your candidate and a liberal third party candidate that everyone thought was completely irrelevant.
Somehow, you think that if the vote was 40% Romney, 35% Obama, 25% Stein, this would convince the Democrats that they need to be more like Romney rather than more like Stein?
How exactly does bleeding voters to a liberal third party convince the Democrats they need to be less liberal?
There’s nothing magical about the idea that the left abandoning the Democrats teaches them not to abandon the left.
Or in other words, you don’t have a shred of evidence, so you simply assert that the premises are false without even trying to show that they are.
You should stick with telling us the truth, as best as you know it. We won’t get anywhere by taking bullshit seriously, supposing it has any validity or that false things are anything other than false.
Seriously? At this point I know you can’t really believe the bullshit you’re spewing.
The idea that anyone who isn’t a party loyalist is a dumbfuck is commonplace. I’ve been accused of being a Trump supporter simply because I criticized Clinton rather than pretend she was perfect “for the good of the Party.” This attitude will alienate the voters we need, and your response is to claim that since your personal advocacy of this idea has a negligible effect, we can dismiss the collective effect?
If the owner of an obscure white supremacist blog tried to claim that his personal words have no impact on anything, would you let him off the hook for supporting white supremacy?
And the Republicans would still be in power.
It depends. If you’re concerned with purity, then go ahead and say it. But if you’re concerned with making sure elections are won by liberal candidates who will enact liberal policies, maybe you shouldn’t tell left-leaning people that they’re not “pure” enough and their “dumbfuck” support doesn’t matter to you.
What did that poor straw man ever do to you?
I’m not sure if I should point out that arguing against a Democratic loyalty purity test for liberals is a bad way to get liberal policies enacted or if I should point out that given how awful and illiberal your ideas are, you should be excluded under your own asinine argument.
Holy fucking hell. Exactly how did you manage that astounding feat of projection?
The one argument I’ve been making all this time is that we need to make real progress with substantial moral and political consequences for actual people, not just winning elections for Team Democrat.
While you have been advocating the idea that any loss for Team Democrat is a bad thing by definition, even if the win for Team Democrat would mean a loss for the moral and political progress we care about.
And somehow, you manage to flip those two around and use my arguments to criticize me for defending your position.
Try using facts and logic.
My criticism of the Democrats is sound and therefore acceptable, while your criticism of me is bullshit and therefore you might want to rethink it.
As long as you’ve brought it up (even tangentially), it’s worth asking again.
Is there any position, belief, or action so abhorrent that you would never support a candidate who holds/does it, even if that candidate is a Democrat running against a Republican who is even worse? Where do you draw the line?
That’s a brazen lie.
I’ve said, essentially, that the best path overall can involve a tactical retreat that gives certain Republicans control for a time as part of a strategy to get rid of them entirely, not that we should want them in power.
But to the Democratic tribalists, saying: “Voting for Stein, even if Romney wins, is better than voting Obama into a second term specifically because Romney will damage the Republicans, shock the Democrats out of their complacency, and maybe give us a liberal Democratic government in 2014 without causing irreparable damage to the country” is exactly the same thing as saying: “Republicans are better than Democrats or at least not substantially worse.”
If there’s a way to get rid of the Republicans without letting them have control for a time, I’d be thrilled but considering the way much of the left coddled Obama and considering that the pushback against right-wing Democrats didn’t start until Trump took over, I fear that may be wishful thinking.
Since that premise is false, everything that comes after it is meaningless.
That’s the trouble with straw men. You should try addressing the argument I’ve actually made, not the absurd positions that Straw Republican Harban is making in your mind.
That said, I’ll highlight this:
Are you a Democratic tribalist? Because one of the hallmarks of tribalists is that they assume everyone is a tribalist, so if I’m not working for Team Democrat, I must be working for Team Someone Else. (See: Nerd, who seems to have deluded himself into believing I’m on Team Green.)
Or maybe you’re just busy shredding scarecrows.
The truth is that if we want to unseat Trump in (or, ideally, before) 2020, we will need the votes of people who believe different things from us, even if those beliefs are ignorant and in some cases irrational. And that means we’ll need to run candidates who can actually earn their votes, not candidates who merely “deserve” their votes based on facts they might not have or arguments they might not find convincing.
You seriously need to learn how to see things from other people’s perspective.
Your post at #77 indicates you’re still misreading it.
So far, so good.
No, see, the problem is that when I said “Democrats,” I meant the politicians and officials that make up the Democratic Party structure itself, while you read it as the vast multitudes of people who tend to vote Democratic.
Except that the score for the Democrats relative to society is -1, which is a negative number.
When evaluating whether a politician is liberal or conservative is largely a function of their beliefs relative to society— society sets the zero point. If society moves two steps to the left and the Democratic candidate moves one, then that Democrat is one step to the right of you, and you wouldn’t accept “they’re a product of their time” as an excuse.
A rightward shift among the Democrats means a decreasing number relative to society. It means a decreasing number on a scale that defines society’s position as the zero point, not on an absolute scale where it’s reasonable to view Ronald Reagan favorably because he’s far more liberal than Abraham Lincoln.
If society moves two steps to the left and the Democrats move one step to the left, then society is at 0 because society’s position defines the zero point while the Democrats have moved from 0 to -1 which, last time I checked, is a decreasing number.
Almost… you’re so close…
Yes, you almost figured it out…
Aw, and you were so close too.
But yes, the point of the analogy is that our expectations for a child change over time— and our expectations for a politician change over time as well. We wouldn’t back a politician with regressive views simply because the regressive views they hold now are more liberal than the views they held that were considered very liberal many decades ago. In fact, we might even describe that politician as moving to the right even as their views technically shifted left in absolute terms.
What do you suggest we do Harban?
Again I might reiterate that there are real world examples (Tea Part, Alt-Right) of having the establishemnt taken hostage by a determined group of outsiders despite the parties wishing against it. So you want proggressives to actualy control the DNC and be the new democrats? What do you think we should do?
Sorry for the triple post. I should have put more thought into these to avoid triple posting, but just going to remind everyone that the DNC just had two progressives running against each other, and the progressive that the establishment picked decided to put the runner up who was more beloved by sanders demoracts as second in command. THAT is living up to your promise that the party aims to be more progressive, even if its only a small part. THIS is us holding them by the balls, becuase they didnt have to do that, did they? They didnt have to appoint Ellis as co-chair, but they did. They know that they need us, and they have to listen to us. SEIZE IT.
Have been reading the discussion with interest.
I consider myself a fence sitter and I don’t live nor vote in the US, but the issue is interesting to me because 1) the US is a major power and its actions affect the whole world and 2) every “Western” country is experiencing similar issues.
The situation seems similar to a kidnap: if you pay you get the victim back, but you create an incentive for more kidnapping.
I don’t think there is one right solution.
However, given that Trump did win, we will be in condition to evaluate what seems to be the central hypothesis:
“Trump’s victory will cause the Democratic establishment into moving to the left.”
Seconding PZ’s sentiment, I’m not too hopeful about this one.
Trump might just well be a stronger incentive to play the lesser evil.
We might have to endure four more years to see who actually gets the nomination.
Regardless, one thing IS changing for the better: more people are engaging and becoming activists.
This is happening already, it might or might not be enough and might or might not be the start of a civil movement that could replace or renew the Dems.
Most importantly, it might or might not be worth the cost of a Trump presidency.
But it might be the more important change.
Amen Logicalcat. And Harban, being a purist, doesn’t understand what was done….
Also, politics is the art of the possible.
You can’t be pure when you need to find agreement among several millions people.
This means that often times you have to vote for the lesser evil and often times you have to listen to the grievances of selfish assholes.
On the bright side, things are not mutually exclusive.
You *can* take a very strong stance on economic policies to appease the above mentioned selfish assholes, and this will benefit also oppressed groups.
And even if you do the above, you still *can* take a very strong stance on social justice.
(Given the extent of the Black Lives Matter movement, both Sanders and Clinton failed miserably here).
@Nerd
To be fair, I sympathize with Jessie Harban. I think she is, in a very slight way, doing what she is suppose to be doing. And that is holding their feet to the fire for not being progressive enough. Holding them accountable. My problem is that she is more concerned with that, than actual successfull change. Never realizing that progression requires…progression. Just like how the right wing did not become overtly fascist overnight, neither will the democrats become progressive liberals.
Jessie Harban, when I said do not play the purity game, i mean realize the change. I found out through here…
https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2017/02/25/tom-perez-was-the-wrong-choice-for-dnc-chair/#more-3180
…that Perez is not progressive enough on certain key issues, but you know what? At least he put the runner up as co chair. And their recent behavior suggest that they are real close and plan to be working together. Thats a win on YOUR side. Take it. Should it have been a bigger win? Yes, maybe. Dont stop trying for that bigger win, but at the very least acknowledge that shit is happening. Our job now is to keep it going.
As several people have pointed out, Bernie was simply the candidate more likely to win the general election. The polls proved this. Clinton could perfectly well have been a better President, but it didn’t even matter; she was an awful campaigner and her *image* was wrong. Pragmatically, she was not the right candidate to put up. Sanders was far from ideal, but he had a better chance of beating any Republican (and the polls showed this consistently).
Wasserman-Shultz at the DNC repeatedly stacked the deck in favor of Clinton, particulary with the debate schedule, and it seems to have largely hurt the party. The shenanigans committed by the DNC local in Nevada were disgraceful and disgusted even Clinton supporters. Thank goodness Wasserman-Shultz is *out*. Perez and Ellison are both improvements.
I don’t have a problem with anyone who voted for Clinton over Sanders on principle. What drives me mad is people who voted for Clinton because they thought she was more “electable” based on nothing more than bias and intuition, when we already had substantial, actual, hard evidence that she was the less electable primary candidate. Those people’s *ignorance* handed us President Trump.
Let’s see. Democratic primary results.
Clinton 16,914,722, 55.2%
Sanders 13,206,428, 43.1%
Looks to me like Clinton won the democratic vote, and the nomination, fair and square.
What evidence do you offer to back up your claims?
What evidence is there that the DNC actually stacked the deck in her favor? A question I always ask and yet never get anything in return other than those emails which are evidence of bias, but not evidence of execution. I think Clinton was a victim of an epic strawmanning campaign that swallowed up the DNC along with it and was also (shamefully) bipartison.