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US Congressional Elections 2012: Scott Brown, Diviner of Ancestry!
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No shit, Sherlock. It's incredibly frustrating and condescending when party-line Democrats assume that anyone not repeating the party line verbatim must not actually be voting (or writing letters to our Congresspeople, or getting involved in any other way, because if you don't support the Democrats in everything then clearly you must not be supporting them in anything at all).
I didn't mean to imply you weren't, it was just a general statement about voter apathy. No offence was intended on my end.
Voter apathy can be cured by energizing the base. The party needs to care about energizing liberals long term, which doesn't happen much IMO.
Because you want to actually accomplish shit.
And frankly, I think progressives need to take a look in the mirror. Some of the attacks are without cause. But others are valid criticisms that need to be addressed.
Like AMFE said, the one of the big reasons for the DNC being centrist is because the whiny liberals don't show up and vote. It doesn't matter what your numbers are in the population in politics like this, what matters is who shows up to vote. If I were running for an office I wouldn't about the bitch that says home, hates how I vote but can't be bothered to even vote because that bitch has zero impact on my chances of winning (incidentally, I'm not going to give two shits about the people that always vote for the party that is backing me regardless of how terrible the candidate is - I have their vote already).
If more progressives voted in both the DNC primary and the general, their candidates and even the moderate GOP would have a greater incentive to compromise towards the left. Since that isn't happening and since the isn't left leaning, there isn't much of incentive for either party to move to the left for compromises or legislation.
@Dajian
Hard to say, who you should support. My gut instinct is if your district is fairly right leaning right now, would be to go with whoever has the better economic message because that's got a better shot at getting moderate republicans and independents this time around. A good rule of thump I've found with voting is narrow things down to the top 5-6 pressing issues that cause us problems now and then have a list of 7-10 issues that you'd like to see progress on. Then slightly weigh the pressing issues above the future issues, since it doesn't matter how good their future are if they can't fix the immediate problems well enough. That should make it a bit easier to pick someone; especially, since you should get some overlap in the two lists. Obviously, you should factor voting records (if any exist), endorsements, history and the possible make up of our next Congress in the mix.
Fair enough, no offense taken.
Thanks mate I had forgot about Kos that is a good resource.
Anecdotally, it seems that the current crop of elected Democrats are specifically targeting their energizing efforts directly at people who are already involved in Democratic campaigning and fundraising, and there seems to be a disturbing emphasis on the latter instead of the former. Merely playing to already-guaranteed Democratic voters isn't enough to win riskier state-by-state elections, where mobilizing the less-likely Democratic voters is key. Of course, it's only March; it's too early to gauge how things will be handled in the campaign season proper.
I agree liberals do need to increase their numbers with voting, but they won't do it just because the Republicans are worse. Give liberals a reason to vote and they'll come. And for the love of god the party needs to stop insulting them, even Republicans know not to do that to their voting blocs.
I disagree. Its centrist since the centrists were able to control it. Which is easy to do when liberals will get thrown to the wolves in the organization no matter how good they are at their jobs. How many liberals work in the DNC, anyway?
It's up to the Democrats to energize liberals to vote. Give them good reasons to vote and they'll come.
Not that simple. More liberals would show up with more politicians who supported their beliefs.
Always vote for the most liberal person who can win both the primary and the general. In this case, that seems like Garagiola.
Now the demographics of the country are set to shift toward the left over the next ten years and then another shift mid century thanks to the hispanic population taking the lead (assuming they aren't completely disenfranchised before this). This is an opportunity for the progressive movement to grab the bull by the horns and start dominating the discourse, my feeling is this will happen naturally as the millennials start coming out to vote more (we outnumber the booms I think 3-2 or something like that).
However, the boomers are doing a pretty good job of suppressing that vote and keeping us infantilized while they make sure their medicare is taken care of.
The left could jump start this by pulling a Tea Party and taking control of primary races. My suggestion is similar to Mill's above, turn out in the primaries and run your mouth, take control of the conversation. Then tick Dem in the general because they will be the candidates who best represent your views. Eventually the Democrats will have to move to the left as time goes on.
The hard thing about that is by its nature the left is fractured much more than the right, so it's almost impossible to get a candidate that ticks even a majority of the boxes. Obama is pretty much the closest anyone has gotten and he's very much a center-left, almost right guy. And, though it may not apply to people on this board, there are a lot of liberals who just bitch and moan and whine instead of becoming active. That kind of apathy is the biggest killer to the progressive movement. If you're waiting for a party to start catering to you, it's going to be a long way.
TL;DR: US doesn't lean left so Democrats won't pander to them. To change this get informed and get involved.
Has it officially turned over then? I'm fully will to admit I'm wrong on assuming it's center right. But it's still center. I feel like we'll be happier self identifying correctly when all the boomers are dead.
Agreed.
You are aware that party leadership doesn't pick the candidates any more, right? The reason there are so few far left office holders for the dems is that none of the base wants them around.
Depends if you ask about issues or self-ID'd ideology. Which tells you the Democrats/liberals are very very bad at messaging.
We are. Our center left is basically the Tory party.
TBH I think that's crap. Even if we define the "center" as the middle ground between the poles of the electorate (which is almost a self-fulfilling prophesy), its not true. We are much closer to a bimodal country politically than a normal distribution. For the most part people have picked a side.
Hell, nearly 50% of Mississippi Republicans think that interracial marriage should be illegal and more than that Obama is a Muslim. There is no large hump in the middle with reasonable people on each side growing incrementally more liberal or conservative that can explain that. There are fundamentally different philosophies and the political parties that roughly map to these philosophies and people who clump to them. Republicans right now are decrying Cap and Trade and the Individual Mandate as Nazi Pinko Deviltry when it was the GOP position like 6 years ago. That's not because they have made a reasoned decision against it, its because their team says its bad now. Those positions aren't based on analysis... they're based on "My team says they are bad." And the GOP is the most right wing major political party in the first world.
You don't have a mass of people in the middle saying "both sides have a point equally" except for those who can't be bothered to pay attention. There is an incredibly stark contrast between the GOP and the Dems now (even if the Dems are lily livered about it at times) and you almost can't be in the middle.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I wasn't talking about parties, I was talking about demographics. The Republicans have lost the fucking plot, though, and they can be thanked for the polarization of OPINION EQUALS PARTY.
Actually, there's a pretty huge disconnect between policy polling and voting trends. Partly, this is because only conservatives show up to vote, but it's also in large part due to a disconnect between positions and party loyalty. The easiest way to see this is comparing polls for descriptions of the ACA, "the ACA," and "Obamacare." Actually, I can't think of any positions where the dems are behind in the polls. The rest of the gap is Europe not being nearly as liberal as everybody thinks it is (why did I think Iceland was part of North America?)
That's not really true, though; at least, not of people who actually show up to vote. Regardless of declared party affiliation, ~90% of voters typically vote for one party, or at least vote against the other one. When they say that they're not sure who they'll vote for, that really boils down to "will I vote for the candidate who's on my side, or will I just not vote at all?" The Republicans are better on average at getting these people out to vote, thanks in no small part to things like the big tent strategy. That's since turned around and bitten them on the ass with the fact that the true believers are more likely show up to primaries and, consequently, more likely to put Tea Partiers and other less-than-electable ideologues on the ballot. Both parties are perfectly willing to spend money against primary candidates to keep the party line pure, but the Republicans are in a catch-22 in that they've become dependent on the fact that those same ideologues to show up and vote Republican in every election, so the Republican establishment can't fight against the Tea Partiers to the extent that they'd like to.
The party leadership picks candidates by funding election campaigns. The most blatant example that comes to mind is the primary challenge against Blanche Lincoln (incumbent Dem) in 2010: The base (spearheaded by unions) primaried her for being opposed to essentially everything that they stood for, and the party establishment resisted the primary, funneled money to Lincoln's campaign that could have gone to contests against Republican opponents, and openly castigated the base for backing the challenger. Lincoln won the primary, only to lose to the Republican candidate by a ridiculous margin even by the standards of the 2010 midterms.
Sadly, the GOP is pretty fucking insane at this point. So if the dems are fielding a decent candidate, one is probably better served voting dem, even if they aren't close enough. At least the dems haven't reached the point of insanity yet, making them less likely to screw the county up long term.
I can't really stress the vote in the DNC primaries and the general enough. Hell, given my current status, I'm probably going to look into doing volunteer work on the DNC side. I'd totally jump on board an initiatives directed at getting people out the vote instead of sitting on their asses bitching about how they aren't be represented.
The GOP being crazy only helps conservative Democrats staying in power. They can do almost anything and where are the liberals going to go? Which is not laying groundwork for a good alliance between factions in the party. Nor does it always work, like Kerry proved. Conservative Dems need a strong opposition to get voters fearful enough to vote for them, too.
Democrats may not have reached the insanity, unfortunately they're going to continue going rightward anyway. They won't stop doing that until the conservative faction is pulled leftward. With the liberals in disarray politically (I agree this needs to change) it's up to the conservative wing to make sure they don't go too far or America's at risk of two crazy right wing parties not just Republican party. There are trustworthy conservative Democrats, but they sure as hell aren't backing the liberals (not to an extent they should be IMO) and they're barely controlling the DLC from driving the party off the cliff as it is. Until this changes the future for the party is the current Republican party. We all deserve better.
I'm also irritated with the party faithfuls of the GOP that know their party is fucking crazy but still insists on voting for them and backing the shit the party does instead of giving them the finger.
It's probably fair to say that their is plenty of blame to go around for things going rightward crazy town because the sane conservatives aren't doing their part to keep their party sane and too many liberals are being doing nothing bitches. The best people can do until either one of those groups gets their shit into gear is to not vote for the most leftward candidate which more often than not is going to be a dem (I'll concede in some raises it might be the republican but they seem pretty good with the purity party thing). Ideally, it would be nice for more liberals to step up to the plate before the sane conservatives do since that would get us further to the left; hopefully, moving politics away from accepting policies that restrict voter access, women reproduction issues and gay marriage. One can only hope when those cease being stables of conservative politics that we'll have moved away from the idiocy that views all taxes as evil and that a pure free market is a good thing.
Glenn Greenwald would probably say it's full of lies.
Agreed. The sooner the conservative Dems and liberals can become trustworthy allies with each other the better.
Unfortunately for him, he's not intimate with Cleveland politics.
A baseless conclusion.
Yes, the party rank and file ostensibly chooses the candidates, but you cannot conclude by this information alone that the rank and file selects the candidates they want. There are other concerns, most notably of which is the candidate's ability to defeat a Republican challenger given the region's voter demographics.
Allow me to illustrate:
I am a progressive liberal. Barack Obama was not the most liberal candidate participating the 2007 primary elections, but knowing 1) He had the best chance of defeating John McCain, coupled with the fact 2) I really, REALLY, didn't like John McCain, informed my decision to support him over a more liberal candidate who was less likely to win the election.
No, the Democrats are generally not liberal enough for my tastes. But I vote for them nonetheless, because the Republicans scare the bejeezus out of me.
Alternately, the centrists are fucking idiots when it comes to playing politics because they're pushing the party to the right of what the average Democratic voter considers acceptable. Escalating the War on Drugs even against legal medicinal marijuana clinics, extending the war in Afghanistan despite knowing that there are no plausible win conditions, doubling the rate of deportation of undocumented immigrants, refusing to take a stand on same-sex marriage, backing quasi-privatized charter schools in lieu of extant public schools, giving de facto blanket amnesty to the financial institutions that caused the housing market crash and the current recession... you think these are things that go over well with the base?
Often, yes. The base of the Democratic party is not as far left as you think.
You think it's a good long-term strategy for the party to actively fight against policies that have >50% approval among Democratic voters?
What are they "actively fighting against"?
Are we talking voters of self-identified members?
Remember, the GOP has been making wins for years on issues most of the US doesn't agree with.
The things I listed up there are things that elected Democrats are actively pushing for despite the fact that that the majority of self-identified likely Democratic voters are opposed to them. The majority of Democratic voters support same-sex marriage, medical marijuana, drawing down on Afghanistan, and so on (and in a few cases, the majority of likely voters regardless of party affiliation agree), but Congress and the Obama administration are fighting against these issues regardless of what their base wants. The party leadership is actively pursuing policies that are opposed by the Democratic base that voted them into office.
it's all well and good to stick to principles and never waver from your convictions. It's great on a lecture circuit. But you can't get much in done in government, responsibly, if all you do is cater to the 60% that only makes up 40% of your country/constituency.
Alan Grayson was great at riling up the liberal/progressive/angry lefty base. And then he lost an election.
You have to fight through some bad days, to earn the best days of your life.