Inaccurate. The Democrats would sit down, scribble up some half-assed slogan, and then they’d take a half-day off at the beach.
It is correct in illustrating the white guys ignoring the brown person with objections, though.
(Note also: if they had just gotten their asses kicked in an election, they’d also ignore the brown person and take a half-day off at the beach, so this is kind of a universally applicable cartoon.)
See also Chuck Schumer:
Fuck that guy.
Hey, maybe they should use that as the new Democratic slogan!
Also see:
● The Democrats’ performance as an opposition party? Pathetic.
● Hillary Clinton is more unpopular than Donald Trump. Let that sink in.
> Fuck that guy.
This is a slogan I can get behind!
(Alas, not ‘murican. Though, at this point I’m actually not *that* sorry. Wtf, guys/gals?)
It still boggles the mind that they think that they can pursue centrists by positioning themselves as the centrist party, when most centrists voters seem to define themselves not by an actual political position, but as whatever position lies between the “extremes” of the mainstream Democratic and Republican positions. The U.S. desperately needs a left-wing party to (at minimum) serve as an anchor, and keep those “centrists” in the actual center.
How about, “Fuck corporations, PEOPLE are people, my friend”?
What the US needs is a true multi-party political system. What we currently have is a façade of political discourse polarized around two pseudo-extremes. It’s largely kayfabe. Both sides have a lot of corrupted members. Both sides have virtually no ideological position except what is expedient for the privileged and wealthy. The fear is that if the parties split up, the causality would be anyone with a rational, humanistic or even slightly “liberal” agenda who would be more marginalized than they currently are by a coalition of conservative parties.
For results, see: “New Labour”
The only thing that gets us out of the mess, is something like Instant run-off voting, where one can vote on the outside edge of typical politics, but still allow a more a centrist position, but in your leaning, to get 50%. Since this must be implemented by the states, I don’t see it happening. *but I can dream, can’t I?*
I doubt we will have any appreciable change in the way things are functioning as long as the media’s coverage continues to tend to focus on personalities and shies away from issues that have any taint of the “evil of socialism”.
any time the focus strays toward real issues of concern to working people enough to be the leading story it is deemed to be boring and too complicated for the sound bites and sloganeering so favored to capture the eyeballs that pay the bills it is mentioned then swiftly they move on to some more animated issue or character who can help the ratings.
those who have risen to the top and are in the controlling positions are those who can succeed in the manipulation of the spot light and succeed in wining for winning’s sake and are light on issues resulting in what we have at present.
it is not a unique time though, the majority are likely be blind sided by the changes history has in store, they often have been.
uncle frogy
The Democrats are like Nike or MTV. They are not about selling specific things, they are about branding.
Back in 2008 and again in 2012, Democrats were crowing about how Obama’s victories meant the end of conservatism and the GOP. It was going to be smooth sailing for Hillary the Annointed in 2016. They didn’t want to see the obvious: that the Right wing didn’t vanish and that the middle-of-the-road policies of the Democrats were turning off liberal voters who were hoping to see significant reforms after Dubbya’s administration and blue collar Americans who were missed in the post-recession bailouts that instead went to the very robber barons who created the mess.
They still haven’t gotten the message. They have to stop being afraid of having contraversial positions and offending the fickle whims of the centrists.
“Fewer than four in ten say the Democratic Party currently stands for something.”
Well, gee, maybe that’s because the chair of the DNC, who was basically nominated and pushed into the position at the last possible moment by Obama and Clinton to keep Sanders’ preferred choice from winning, was asked at a press conference what the Democratic Party stood for, and was unable to answer the question. It’s not just perception, the party does not actually stand for anything. (And this is exactly what to expect when all the highest positions of the party had their occupants installed by the triangulating Clintons; the whole point of triangulation is that you do not take a firm stand on any issue, in case you have to give that position up in favor of a more popular one. A perfect triangulator has no moral or ethical center at all.)
Why are the dems being so centrists? The progressive movement and its ideas and solutions are common sense and very popular. To be fair though the dems do stand for many things but a lot of the media prefers to let republicans spew out incoherent nonsense.
PZed, I have to disagree with your contention that “It is correct in illustrating the white guys ignoring the brown person with objections, though.”. I can see in the lower left corner of the upper right frame a hand whose skin tone is at least as brown as what you call “the brown person” (which again, I think is a rather dehumanizing phrase to be honest with you). Anyway, original point: “a brown person” was also included in with the “white guys”, so not as clear cut as presented.
Establishment democrats are just as entranced by donor money as rethugs are, they just have different donors. Progressive politics are a threat to them getting bribes and kickbacks from their donors, so they have a vested interest in keeping things as “centrist” as possible.
I say “centrist” because our centrist policies would be considered far-right in a good portion of the world.
@robro #6
Amen.
But that will not happen in our lifetime. Anyone who even proposes any change to American dysfunctioning democracy will be declared un-patriotic by both parties and wil not get anything done as a result. And it seems that even most of Americans live under the delusion that they have the best democracy ever and would not vote for that change either.
@13 Pablo Campos
Insider-ism is really strong in the Democratic Party leadership. The minority leadership in the House and Senate doesn’t change up much except with retirement, the DNC is full of insiders who pick its guiding committee, and it’s all interwoven with connected lobbying and campaigning firms with longstanding connections to the party leadership. It means they have very little desire to make serious changes, as opposed to trying out the old strategies again (resurrecting the mostly annihilated “Blue Dogs”) and hoping they can win power again just off an anti-Trump wave*.
The only way it’s going to change is if that party leadership and Democratic politicians in general start feeling heavy pressure from the left, in the way that most Republican politicians genuinely have to fear a primary threat from the right.
all i see here is a WHOLE FUCKTON of ignorance.
none of you have learned a goddamn thing, or even bothered to look up what the dem platforms or issues are on national OR candidate by candidate basis.
but hey, go ahead and keep complaining. it helps, surely.
I mean, don’t actually fucking DO anything, FFS. don’t help the effort at redistricting, don’t get involved in politics yourselves.
oh no, sooo much easier to just whinge.
have fun!
I second <strong.robro. Having a de facto two part system is not good for a country.
Sorry, here it comes again:
I second robro. Having a de facto two party system is not good for a country.
Actually, a lot of the time, they’re exactly the same donors…
@#18, Ichthyic
In 2008, I voted for Obama, in both the primary and the general, on the basis of his platform.
In 2012, I was one of those who complained because Obama had not actually acted on that platform — indeed, he had definitely acted against it. (Remember how the Democrats were going to do things about the Too Big To Fail banks and the Wall Street traders who crashed the economy via an out-of-control derivatives market? The rhetoric about bringing a knife to a gun fight — remember that? Obama did essentially nothing about all that — but he did give us a nice flowing speech about how it was okay for banks which had been bailed out by the taxpayers to give their executives bonuses for their job performance.)
In 2012, the Democratic Establishment told people like me that we were naive and stupid for believing that a candidate would act on their platform.
Those same people ran Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016, and are in control of the party now.
So, tell me, who’s the fool: me, for ignoring words which I have been told mean nothing, or you for insisting that we pretend those words are meaningful anyway? Who’s the one who doesn’t learn: me, who refuse to trust the Democratic leadership when it has repeatedly demonstrated that it will betray that trust, or you, who blindly support a party which is always just waiting for the right time to throw you under the bus?
@18
“Complaining about things on the internet” and “taking part in the political process” aren’t mutually exclusive, and the latter is a privilege not everyone can access.
For starters, complaining about things on the internet is taking part in the political process.
Clinton wrote many excellent white papers. Pity her pitch was “Trump is bad.”
In terms of capturing the popular psyche it went over as well as Kerry’s “Bush is bad” or Romney’s “Obama is bad” — or up here Ignatieff’s or Mulcair’s “Harper is bad”.
The democrats refuse to publicly stand behind their platform, and they suffer for it.
Ichthyic is partly right, the Dems do have a platform other than “Trump is bad”. How many times have Clinton made a speech about the working middle class only for it to get ignored in favor of some other bullshit? How many times have she talked about systemic bigotry, only for it to be ignored because emails, Clinton Foundation, or the many other garbage news that went no where? Dems have a stance, they have policies, its just that no one cares because the Dems lack PASSION, and the whole democrats stand for nothing is a meme and memes control information nowadays. Bernie had passion, Obama had passion, hell Trump had passion. Clinton does not (not even allowed to really), and seeing other Dems lack of passion is cringe worthy whenever they try to do anything(like Pelosi in a protest).
Democrats have a platform, its just that no one cares to look.
Having two parties sucks, but it not going to change with a government filled with conservative republicans.
When Trump won, my biggest fear what that the Democrats would shift to the right, because that’s what they’ve always done. They have to in order to stay competitive. This country elects a new right wing idiot, and the entire mess shifts on the grid. The left is now regarded as the far left and what was the right is now the new center. The center line gets the most votes (not counting cheating like voter suppression and what not) so in order for Dems to remain at all relevant, they gotta shift. Having Trump lose could have prevented it, but he didn’t. Now its Bush Era 2.0.
@Vicar.
The fool is the one who doesn’t recognize “own goal”.
The country needed a back to back Democrat win to shift the country to the left instead of the right.
Boy, nothing ever changes.
Like Will Rogers said, “I am not a member of any organized political party, I am a Democrat.”
It can’t have a multi-party system as long as its constitution doesn’t get a really large-scale overhaul that separates the offices of head of state and head of government. And the US constitution is the hardest one in the world to amend; has been ever since Yugoslavia broke down in 1991.