I had a really, really, really weird thought. What would have happened if Bernie Sanders had run as a Republican, claiming that all of his usual policies aligned with traditional conservative values? It'd be a blatant lie, of course, but Trump has shown that blatant lying doesn't matter, he'd have actually been able to hit back against Trump in debates, and he'd be able to reach all of the Republican voters who support progressive policies as long as they don't think that the Democrats are responsible for them.
Then he probably would have been even more demonized than the center-left than he already has been.
I had a really, really, really weird thought. What would have happened if Bernie Sanders had run as a Republican, claiming that all of his usual policies aligned with traditional conservative values? It'd be a blatant lie, of course, but Trump has shown that blatant lying doesn't matter, he'd have actually been able to hit back against Trump in debates, and he'd be able to reach all of the Republican voters who support progressive policies as long as they don't think that the Democrats are responsible for them.
Then he probably would have been even more demonized than the center-left than he already has been.
He would have lost quickly, *and* despite that used against the Dems somehow.
In a lot of the ways that actually matter, the party is very weak. And has been for a while.
The issue on "the left" wasn't how strong the party was, so much as how insular it seemed from the outside.
I don't agree. There was loud, repeated complaints about closed primaries for instance. There were many complaints about "establishment" candidates, and not just Clinton. For a party to be strong, it has to have some power, which means they have to be able to make decisions that actually are relevant. The two biggest jobs of the DNC and the national party infrastructure are fundraising and candidate recruitment. The former resulted in explicit complaints and literal protests. The latter requires the party itself to have some influence in candidate selection, which results in "rigged" complaints.
I had a really, really, really weird thought. What would have happened if Bernie Sanders had run as a Republican, claiming that all of his usual policies aligned with traditional conservative values? It'd be a blatant lie, of course, but Trump has shown that blatant lying doesn't matter, he'd have actually been able to hit back against Trump in debates, and he'd be able to reach all of the Republican voters who support progressive policies as long as they don't think that the Democrats are responsible for them.
I had a really, really, really weird thought. What would have happened if Bernie Sanders had run as a Republican, claiming that all of his usual policies aligned with traditional conservative values? It'd be a blatant lie, of course, but Trump has shown that blatant lying doesn't matter, he'd have actually been able to hit back against Trump in debates, and he'd be able to reach all of the Republican voters who support progressive policies as long as they don't think that the Democrats are responsible for them.
They wouldn't have let him run.
They didn't want DJT to run either and look where he is now?
I had a really, really, really weird thought. What would have happened if Bernie Sanders had run as a Republican, claiming that all of his usual policies aligned with traditional conservative values? It'd be a blatant lie, of course, but Trump has shown that blatant lying doesn't matter, he'd have actually been able to hit back against Trump in debates, and he'd be able to reach all of the Republican voters who support progressive policies as long as they don't think that the Democrats are responsible for them.
Then he probably would have been even more demonized than the center-left than he already has been.
Ok, no. There has been some real heated debates both online and offline but we haven't reached demonizing him just yet.
I had a really, really, really weird thought. What would have happened if Bernie Sanders had run as a Republican, claiming that all of his usual policies aligned with traditional conservative values? It'd be a blatant lie, of course, but Trump has shown that blatant lying doesn't matter, he'd have actually been able to hit back against Trump in debates, and he'd be able to reach all of the Republican voters who support progressive policies as long as they don't think that the Democrats are responsible for them.
They wouldn't have let him run.
They didn't want DJT to run either and look where he is now?
They were fine letting him run because they didn't think he'd win and he was a right winger. Sanders would have been excluded from Iowa, where its entirely party run, and probably NH, where you need to be a registered member of the party to participate as a candidate.
In a lot of the ways that actually matter, the party is very weak. And has been for a while.
The issue on "the left" wasn't how strong the party was, so much as how insular it seemed from the outside.
I don't agree. There was loud, repeated complaints about closed primaries for instance. There were many complaints about "establishment" candidates, and not just Clinton. For a party to be strong, it has to have some power, which means they have to be able to make decisions that actually are relevant. The two biggest jobs of the DNC and the national party infrastructure are fundraising and candidate recruitment. The former resulted in explicit complaints and literal protests. The latter requires the party itself to have some influence in candidate selection, which results in "rigged" complaints.
And those complaints were, in almost every example, about the perception that the party was doing something to keep the rank and file from having their say. Closed primaries and arcane registration rules kept those on the periphery out of the process. Double primaries made it look like voting didn't actually matter and the party was just going to pick their own candidate from within. Super delegates were the party essentially signposting their intent to do so. Etc.
The party can be plenty strong without looking like it's dictating results. The left doesn't want weakness, just to feel like it's got a fair shake when compared to political insiders.
In a lot of the ways that actually matter, the party is very weak. And has been for a while.
The issue on "the left" wasn't how strong the party was, so much as how insular it seemed from the outside.
I don't agree. There was loud, repeated complaints about closed primaries for instance. There were many complaints about "establishment" candidates, and not just Clinton. For a party to be strong, it has to have some power, which means they have to be able to make decisions that actually are relevant. The two biggest jobs of the DNC and the national party infrastructure are fundraising and candidate recruitment. The former resulted in explicit complaints and literal protests. The latter requires the party itself to have some influence in candidate selection, which results in "rigged" complaints.
And those complaints were, in almost every example, about the perception that the party was doing something to keep the rank and file from having their say. Closed primaries and arcane registration rules kept those on the periphery out of the process. Double primaries made it look like voting didn't actually matter and the party was just going to pick their own candidate from within. Super delegates were the party essentially signposting their intent to do so. Etc.
The party can be plenty strong without looking like it's dictating results. The left doesn't want weakness, just to feel like it's got a fair shake when compared to political insiders.
So you want a strong party, just one that doesn't have any power. The party officials are the political insiders. Those "on the periphery" are those who refuse to be in the party. Anything the party does can be spun to "keep[ing] the rank and file from having their say." You're proving my point by implicitly asserting that anything that gets away from direct democracy in terms of party decisions is something that garners legitimate complaint.
In what world is 48%-46% "overwhelmingly voting for our candidate"?
In a world where about an extra 2-3% of people who showed up to vote democrat were turned away because their 'ID's weren't right', or just couldn't reach the front of the lines because all but three of the cities polling places had been closed.
In a world where sectioned voting blocks pack Democratic voters into highly concentrated ultra blue states which naturally have low turnout.
In a world where the 46% is composed entirely of those for whom voting is easiest, fastest and least penalized, and there exist many members of the 48% who likely risked losing their jobs to vote.
In that world, 48-46 is an overwhelming show of support.
In what world is 48%-46% "overwhelmingly voting for our candidate"?
In a system as polarized as ours is, that is a major difference.
In the presidential elections over the past 100 years only 2000 Bush, Carter, 1968 Nixon and Kennedy have a smaller popular vote margin. And carter is only smaller by 0.04% (the others are sub-1%)
SurfpossumA nonentitytrying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered Userregular
edited January 2017
Ehhhhhhh I think there's a bunch of stuff that could be done without abdicating everything to direct democracy.
Like, I've spent some time poking around the local sites and still only have a very poor idea of the local organizations. It seems like the best way to get informed is to actually go to meetings, but what kind of weirdo does that?
And there often doesn't feel like there's any convenient hub for ways to communicate or see what's going on; people really, really want to provide input and see what's going on.
I'm losing my train of thought but I think there's improvements to be made in simplification and accessibility.
addendum: I think this would address many of the complaints about the national level despite being mostly about the local level; if people feel like they're involved and on the same team as the local leaders, they're more likely to trust their opinion about the national stuff. So the national level wouldn't have to cater to everybody, just coordinate with the local ones, who will handle us unwashed masses. This, of course, assumes the national level makes the local levels happy.
In what world is 48%-46% "overwhelmingly voting for our candidate"?
In a world where about an extra 2-3% of people who showed up to vote democrat were turned away because their 'ID's weren't right', or just couldn't reach the front of the lines because all but three of the cities polling places had been closed.
In a world where sectioned voting blocks pack Democratic voters into highly concentrated ultra blue states which naturally have low turnout.
In a world where the 46% is composed entirely of those for whom voting is easiest, fastest and least penalized, and there exist many members of the 48% who likely risked losing their jobs to vote.
In that world, 48-46 is an overwhelming show of support.
I'm curious as to what the margin is when that overwhelming victory turns into a moderate one, a narrow one and an oiutright loss. Because it really sounds like you'd say the same things if the margin was the other way around too
Edit: and iirc the polls predicted C+3 and that's pretty much what we got
In what world is 48%-46% "overwhelmingly voting for our candidate"?
In a world where about an extra 2-3% of people who showed up to vote democrat were turned away because their 'ID's weren't right', or just couldn't reach the front of the lines because all but three of the cities polling places had been closed.
In a world where sectioned voting blocks pack Democratic voters into highly concentrated ultra blue states which naturally have low turnout.
In a world where the 46% is composed entirely of those for whom voting is easiest, fastest and least penalized, and there exist many members of the 48% who likely risked losing their jobs to vote.
In that world, 48-46 is an overwhelming show of support.
I'm curious as to what the margin is when that overwhelming victory turns into a moderate one, a narrow one and an oiutright loss. Because it really sounds like you'd say the same things if the margin was the other way around too
Edit: and iirc the polls predicted C+3 and that's pretty much what we got
When the party who faces every obstacle manages to win, then it's evidence that their true popular support is overwhelming.
Effectively, the US political structure means you can add like, 5% to the Democratic vote at this point to get their true level of support. All those C+3 polls took the suppression factors into account, which is why they weren't C+8.
In a lot of the ways that actually matter, the party is very weak. And has been for a while.
The issue on "the left" wasn't how strong the party was, so much as how insular it seemed from the outside.
I don't agree. There was loud, repeated complaints about closed primaries for instance. There were many complaints about "establishment" candidates, and not just Clinton. For a party to be strong, it has to have some power, which means they have to be able to make decisions that actually are relevant. The two biggest jobs of the DNC and the national party infrastructure are fundraising and candidate recruitment. The former resulted in explicit complaints and literal protests. The latter requires the party itself to have some influence in candidate selection, which results in "rigged" complaints.
And those complaints were, in almost every example, about the perception that the party was doing something to keep the rank and file from having their say. Closed primaries and arcane registration rules kept those on the periphery out of the process. Double primaries made it look like voting didn't actually matter and the party was just going to pick their own candidate from within. Super delegates were the party essentially signposting their intent to do so. Etc.
The party can be plenty strong without looking like it's dictating results. The left doesn't want weakness, just to feel like it's got a fair shake when compared to political insiders.
So you want a strong party, just one that doesn't have any power. The party officials are the political insiders. Those "on the periphery" are those who refuse to be in the party. Anything the party does can be spun to "keep[ing] the rank and file from having their say." You're proving my point by implicitly asserting that anything that gets away from direct democracy in terms of party decisions is something that garners legitimate complaint.
Authoritarianism isn't the only measure of strength.
I want a party that contests more seats. That organizes properly so we don't lose blue states in an election. That can at least pretend to push the things we were sold on when we have control of two houses of Congress.
What I don't want is to have the presidential nominee dictated to me before the process even starts, then get told to fall in line for my own good. It's not the existence of insiders that is the problem, it's the impression that they're calling the shots come hell or high water and that it's incumbent on me to get on board rather than in them to sell a product that anyone actually wants.
You're not going to convince"the left" to line up with the party by taking the appearance of control away from them. But you can get them in board by making them feel heard. More than anything else, that's where the Democratic party is falling down on the job right now. Nobody believes they have anyone's interests at heart but their own, specifically their own desire to hold power. The primary was just that feeling bubbling over and coalescing behind the most awkward avatar ever.
Yeah, too many postmortems completely ignore the effects of the VRA being gutted. I think the voter disenfranchisement campaign the Republicans waged was one of the largest--if not the largest--negative effects on Clinton's chances.
This is a good post-mortem on the whole Hillary and Comey debacle, as part of the larger context of conflicts between the FBI and politicians in the past
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
I'm confused as to why we're suddenly conflating "Bernie Sanders let this pass" with
I'm not sure Ellison is the guy for the job not because he's a Muslim, or black or that his primary job will be Congressman but because I think DNC chair is a very weak office and I don't know who would do well at it. That doesn't mean I oppose Ellison. I like Ellison and Perez and if this was a race for guys I like both would get my vote. For the actual position in question I might be convinced someone like Buckley, the NH Democratic party chair, has more expertise. But since I don't really know what the fuck the DNC chair is expected to do except get blamed if the party does poorly when the actual party leaders are too beloved, I'm not sure who the best person for the job is.
With various degrees of seriousness, people have suggested running a celebrity in 2020. If the DNC is just a face to put on CNN once a week, we might as well put Martin Sheen up there with Beyonce and Paul Rudd acting as chief deputies. If its someone to recruit and fund raise and party build, then maybe Ellison and Perez would do well maybe not. I'm not confident they have the pull or competency to do those things. Ellison is going to be spending time being a sitting Representative and Perez has never really run for office.
For it to be a stronger job, the voters would also have to accept a stronger party. That's diametrically opposed to what we saw from the left in the last 18 months. Maybe Trump changes that.
Ellison has said he would step down if he wins.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
This is a good post-mortem on the whole Hillary and Comey debacle, as part of the larger context of conflicts between the FBI and politicians in the past
The article strongly suggests that Comey is just a principled guy who doesn't get politics and was between a rock and a hard place when it came to the new cache of emails.
But it's also clear that even if you buy into that framework, Comey jumped the gun, sending his letter to Congress about evidence the FBI didn't yet even have access to. Meanwhile it reflects poorly on his leadership that he felt his actions were dictated by fear of leaks out of his own organization.
Plus, the rock and the hard place were "country" and "self-interest," so excuse me if this violin is too tiny to be heard.
This is a good post-mortem on the whole Hillary and Comey debacle, as part of the larger context of conflicts between the FBI and politicians in the past
The article strongly suggests that Comey is just a principled guy who doesn't get politics and was between a rock and a hard place when it came to the new cache of emails.
But it's also clear that even if you buy into that framework, Comey jumped the gun, sending his letter to Congress about evidence the FBI didn't yet even have access to. Meanwhile it reflects poorly on his leadership that he felt his actions were dictated by fear of leaks out of his own organization.
Plus, the rock and the hard place were "country" and "self-interest," so excuse me if this violin is too tiny to be heard.
In everything I've read he seems to strike me as someone who mows the lawn in the snow because it's Sunday, and Sunday the lawn gets mowed.
In a lot of the ways that actually matter, the party is very weak. And has been for a while.
The issue on "the left" wasn't how strong the party was, so much as how insular it seemed from the outside.
I don't agree. There was loud, repeated complaints about closed primaries for instance. There were many complaints about "establishment" candidates, and not just Clinton. For a party to be strong, it has to have some power, which means they have to be able to make decisions that actually are relevant. The two biggest jobs of the DNC and the national party infrastructure are fundraising and candidate recruitment. The former resulted in explicit complaints and literal protests. The latter requires the party itself to have some influence in candidate selection, which results in "rigged" complaints.
And those complaints were, in almost every example, about the perception that the party was doing something to keep the rank and file from having their say. Closed primaries and arcane registration rules kept those on the periphery out of the process. Double primaries made it look like voting didn't actually matter and the party was just going to pick their own candidate from within. Super delegates were the party essentially signposting their intent to do so. Etc.
The party can be plenty strong without looking like it's dictating results. The left doesn't want weakness, just to feel like it's got a fair shake when compared to political insiders.
So you want a strong party, just one that doesn't have any power. The party officials are the political insiders. Those "on the periphery" are those who refuse to be in the party. Anything the party does can be spun to "keep[ing] the rank and file from having their say." You're proving my point by implicitly asserting that anything that gets away from direct democracy in terms of party decisions is something that garners legitimate complaint.
Authoritarianism isn't the only measure of strength.
I want a party that contests more seats. That organizes properly so we don't lose blue states in an election. That can at least pretend to push the things we were sold on when we have control of two houses of Congress.
What I don't want is to have the presidential nominee dictated to me before the process even starts, then get told to fall in line for my own good. It's not the existence of insiders that is the problem, it's the impression that they're calling the shots come hell or high water and that it's incumbent on me to get on board rather than in them to sell a product that anyone actually wants.
You're not going to convince"the left" to line up with the party by taking the appearance of control away from them. But you can get them in board by making them feel heard. More than anything else, that's where the Democratic party is falling down on the job right now. Nobody believes they have anyone's interests at heart but their own, specifically their own desire to hold power. The primary was just that feeling bubbling over and coalescing behind the most awkward avatar ever.
No. The strength of an office (head of the DNC) is directly related to its authority. That's literally the definition of an office's strength.
Decentralized control of a party is not a fundamental characteristic of "the left." Indeed, its generally been antithetical to its approach in government, political action and labor negotiation. "No one believes they have anyone's interest at heart" is massive projection form certain segments on the left. Do you think Obama doesn't have other people's interest at heart? He's been the head of the party 8 years. Its that very narrative that fucks us.
I can not respect for anything except their organizational ability. I don't understand how with most media at least marginally at our side that we haven't been able to combat this. As for the monetary funds, I've been thinking that maybe we should just start running activists for office. They already have a set base, probably have experience fundraising, and havethe purity all the far left desire.
I've been unimpressed from what I've seen with the Far Left on fundraising, sure they make some inroads with donations (which is what modern Dems do regardless, some do this better then others of course) but do they really have the money to stand up to the GOP? That said, I think your idea has merit. Now, the difficulty is if they refuse to take funds from donors from the party structure (rather than just rely on themselves entirely) or if their base will be turned off if they do. They're going to need all the help they can if one of them goes up against a well organized, financially backed Republican. Not every rival they go up against will be poor.
One hopeful thing about the current election is we see that you really just need to have media publicity to win, more than ground game or money. It's further down-ballot where you need money to generate that visibility, but the idea that the Dems need to stay close enough on the good side of the billionaires to just compete is false.
Further, i think there are plenty of business sectors who would be willing to throw in with Democrats, even if we must be cautious about that becoming a cozy long-term relationship (we don't need to replace King Koch with King Musk, for instance), but the GOP is going to be bad for Silicon Valley on net neutrality and probably bringing back an even crazier version of SOPA, they're going to actively fuck with Tesla in trying to suppress electric cars, they're going to try to pass some sort of nationwide "protect the power grid" law that bans anyone who's doing home solar from hooking into the electric grid and fuck with a lot of solar industries, not to mention what they're about to do to the entire healthcare business, which is huge (UPMC is the new steel in Western Pennsylvania).
There's a lot of inroads for corporate partnership without selling out to Wall Street, although the issue is labor relations and all of these guys are bad on that front (UPMC is in a big unionization fight with SEIU presently).
Don't expect any candidate to repeat that easily, Trump so far is a one off deal. If the GOP are able to repeat that trick we are really fucked.
This is why Democrats capturing the media needs to be a high priority, the media is not a Democrat's friend.
I'm not sure Ellison is the guy for the job not because he's a Muslim, or black or that his primary job will be Congressman but because I think DNC chair is a very weak office and I don't know who would do well at it. That doesn't mean I oppose Ellison. I like Ellison and Perez and if this was a race for guys I like both would get my vote. For the actual position in question I might be convinced someone like Buckley, the NH Democratic party chair, has more expertise. But since I don't really know what the fuck the DNC chair is expected to do except get blamed if the party does poorly when the actual party leaders are too beloved, I'm not sure who the best person for the job is.
With various degrees of seriousness, people have suggested running a celebrity in 2020. If the DNC is just a face to put on CNN once a week, we might as well put Martin Sheen up there with Beyonce and Paul Rudd acting as chief deputies. If its someone to recruit and fund raise and party build, then maybe Ellison and Perez would do well maybe not. I'm not confident they have the pull or competency to do those things. Ellison is going to be spending time being a sitting Representative and Perez has never really run for office.
For it to be a stronger job, the voters would also have to accept a stronger party. That's diametrically opposed to what we saw from the left in the last 18 months. Maybe Trump changes that.
Martin Sheen isn't interested in running for office, otherwise he'd be doing that rather then being an activist.
This is a good post-mortem on the whole Hillary and Comey debacle, as part of the larger context of conflicts between the FBI and politicians in the past
The article strongly suggests that Comey is just a principled guy who doesn't get politics and was between a rock and a hard place when it came to the new cache of emails.
But it's also clear that even if you buy into that framework, Comey jumped the gun, sending his letter to Congress about evidence the FBI didn't yet even have access to. Meanwhile it reflects poorly on his leadership that he felt his actions were dictated by fear of leaks out of his own organization.
Plus, the rock and the hard place were "country" and "self-interest," so excuse me if this violin is too tiny to be heard.
Yeah
A very charitable interpretation of Comey's behavior is that he didn't, as his high-level goal, desire to ruin the integrity of the presidential election with a series of illegal partisan statements, but that he did it to cover his own ass when he lost control of fanatics in his agency
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In what world is 48%-46% "overwhelmingly voting for our candidate"?
In a world where about an extra 2-3% of people who showed up to vote democrat were turned away because their 'ID's weren't right', or just couldn't reach the front of the lines because all but three of the cities polling places had been closed.
In a world where sectioned voting blocks pack Democratic voters into highly concentrated ultra blue states which naturally have low turnout.
In a world where the 46% is composed entirely of those for whom voting is easiest, fastest and least penalized, and there exist many members of the 48% who likely risked losing their jobs to vote.
In that world, 48-46 is an overwhelming show of support.
I'm curious as to what the margin is when that overwhelming victory turns into a moderate one, a narrow one and an oiutright loss. Because it really sounds like you'd say the same things if the margin was the other way around too
Edit: and iirc the polls predicted C+3 and that's pretty much what we got
When the party who faces every obstacle manages to win, then it's evidence that their true popular support is overwhelming.
Effectively, the US political structure means you can add like, 5% to the Democratic vote at this point to get their true level of support. All those C+3 polls took the suppression factors into account, which is why they weren't C+8.
They do not take polling day suppression into account. Maybe decreased enthusiasm from districting but even that is speculative. Long lines do not translate into likely voter models
In a lot of the ways that actually matter, the party is very weak. And has been for a while.
The issue on "the left" wasn't how strong the party was, so much as how insular it seemed from the outside.
I don't agree. There was loud, repeated complaints about closed primaries for instance. There were many complaints about "establishment" candidates, and not just Clinton. For a party to be strong, it has to have some power, which means they have to be able to make decisions that actually are relevant. The two biggest jobs of the DNC and the national party infrastructure are fundraising and candidate recruitment. The former resulted in explicit complaints and literal protests. The latter requires the party itself to have some influence in candidate selection, which results in "rigged" complaints.
Open primaries aren't the answer, though I agree they need to make voting easier to understand and to join. Open primaries would be a green light for Republicans to openly fuck with the party to a huge degree than they already do.
The Left need to do a better job of getting involved in the party, too. They can't be Democrats half the time - a strong party has loyal voting blocs.
Authoritarianism isn't the only measure of strength.
I want a party that contests more seats. That organizes properly so we don't lose blue states in an election. That can at least pretend to push the things we were sold on when we have control of two houses of Congress.
What I don't want is to have the presidential nominee dictated to me before the process even starts, then get told to fall in line for my own good. It's not the existence of insiders that is the problem, it's the impression that they're calling the shots come hell or high water and that it's incumbent on me to get on board rather than in them to sell a product that anyone actually wants.
You're not going to convince"the left" to line up with the party by taking the appearance of control away from them. But you can get them in board by making them feel heard. More than anything else, that's where the Democratic party is falling down on the job right now. Nobody believes they have anyone's interests at heart but their own, specifically their own desire to hold power. The primary was just that feeling bubbling over and coalescing behind the most awkward avatar ever.
That's not authoritarianism, it's having centralized leadership - which every mainstream party does because it works.
It's not up to the party itself, strictly for contesting seats - this is about factions working for their goals and the Left is not good at this. That's about the Left itself, not the Democratic party. Party leaders are neither standing in your way, nor stopping them from getting organized.
Your argument about front runners has a two fold answer: what Hillary did this time was unprecedented and no one has any idea what controls to put in place within the organization to obstruct a power move like that. If you can find a solution, and get the leadership to green light that then you'll get your wish. The second part is that's how front runners work, you want your candidate to have the best shot at winning a primary, then make them the front runner! Or have them be so powerful that they take it by force, like Trump did.
The time for challenging candidates is in the primary, and the time for getting in line is for the general - any candidate with a weak coalition behind them because their candidate didn't win is vulnerable to losing and now you're going to have a Republican in office because you decided not to show up at the voting booth. Discipline is required for a strong party, a party who can't hold its factions together behind candidates is weak.
This isn't about an appearance of control, it's about actual control and right now the establishment is ruled by the centrists. They're able to get things done because they hold the keys to the kingdom, they're not figureheads. It's reasonable for them to get a seat at the table and get a voice, which they got last election btw - it's unreasonable for them to think just because they have a voice in the party they can override the leadership's decisions. If they want that responsiblity than they need to get their ducks in a row and take the Iron Throne from the centrists. Until then they are a member in a coalition, and that requires listening to the leadership on decisions. No, they won't like every decision and occasionally they fuck up, every faction who leads an organization does this. If their positions were reversed and it was the centrists trying to undermine their leadership you bet they wouldn't take that shit lying down.
Also, the Far Left needs to treat this as serious business, rather than a hobby. Being casual Democrats only keeps them as outsiders, if they want to effect the party more they need to be insiders.
The party got the majority of the Far left votes IIRC, and Hillary won the popular vote in the general so I think you're underestimating how bad the part is doing. It's just not doing what you want, which is another matter entirely. The ultimate failure was not being able to capture specific votes to get the EC on board.
Plenty of people believe in the party, don't assume everyone agrees with you. Sure, your opinion may be in higher numbers on the Far Left, but the Far Left isn't the entire party structure. A key reason why the centrists have power is that they make it a priority to keep and maintain it, or someone else will take that from them and they're very good at this. Yes, they can be dicks about it but so would anybody else in leadership who wants to have that responsibility. If the far left want their voices to overwhelm the leadership they need to want power, as well. This isn't Gollum's ring here.
The primary was the first time the Far Left has had a big voice in the running of the party since who knows how long. It put in a good game, but it's silly to expect the Far left to win everything first time out, they need to focus on organization, discipline, connections and funding for the next primaries - all over the nation and the presidential. Good the Far Left is involved, but it needs to maintain that alliance, the centrists can't hold their hand for everything. Solid alliances like the Far left wants in take time to build and they need to want to be loyal Dem insiders for this to work.
A lack of strong centralized leadership leads liberal causes like BLM and OWS to suffer greatly and end up weak and impotent instead of being able to drive the narrative.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
A lack of strong centralized leadership leads liberal causes like BLM and OWS to suffer greatly and end up weak and impotent instead of being able to drive the narrative.
Actually, changing the narrative is the only thing that kind of organization is good at. BLM has certainly helped to sustain and guide the national conversation about police-on-minority violence, and the political mainstream ended up adopting a lot of the basic ideas behind OWS--arguably this helped shape the campaign against Romney.
Where they fall down is in implementing policy, and that's because a leaderless, decentralized organization has no agreed-upon policy and no single figure who can band together their supporters and then use that support to negotiate with politicians. At the end of the day, you need a human being in room who is able to say "My people will vote the way I tell them to, and I'll tell them to vote for you if you give me enough of what we want."
To be quite fair, these organizations don't eschew leaders simply out of a sense of democratic fairness but as a responsive tactic to the lightning rod issues that arise when individuals come to stand for movements. Leaders live under constant scrutiny and their personal flaws can be used against the movement; they get ratfucked or even assassinated; they become divisive figures of hate in a way that can obscure what they're trying to do. There may not be a good answer to the problem, or even necessarily a better one than these movements we're talking about have tried. Perhaps you need a Tyler Durden figure who somehow marshalls support from the shadows without needing to be a public person, or a Trump type too Teflon to tar. Either way there's a certain level of fanaticism required that you just don't find on the left in large quantities.
Briefly: two FBI investigations into the Presidential candidates. In one every detail is publicly stated by the director in a way to make the candidate look as nefarious as possible. In the other, the FBI leaks that the investigation is baseless, contrary to reality. That's a soft coup d'etat by the domestic intelligence agency.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
In a lot of the ways that actually matter, the party is very weak. And has been for a while.
The issue on "the left" wasn't how strong the party was, so much as how insular it seemed from the outside.
I don't agree. There was loud, repeated complaints about closed primaries for instance. There were many complaints about "establishment" candidates, and not just Clinton. For a party to be strong, it has to have some power, which means they have to be able to make decisions that actually are relevant. The two biggest jobs of the DNC and the national party infrastructure are fundraising and candidate recruitment. The former resulted in explicit complaints and literal protests. The latter requires the party itself to have some influence in candidate selection, which results in "rigged" complaints.
And those complaints were, in almost every example, about the perception that the party was doing something to keep the rank and file from having their say. Closed primaries and arcane registration rules kept those on the periphery out of the process. Double primaries made it look like voting didn't actually matter and the party was just going to pick their own candidate from within. Super delegates were the party essentially signposting their intent to do so. Etc.
The party can be plenty strong without looking like it's dictating results. The left doesn't want weakness, just to feel like it's got a fair shake when compared to political insiders.
So you want a strong party, just one that doesn't have any power. The party officials are the political insiders. Those "on the periphery" are those who refuse to be in the party. Anything the party does can be spun to "keep[ing] the rank and file from having their say." You're proving my point by implicitly asserting that anything that gets away from direct democracy in terms of party decisions is something that garners legitimate complaint.
Authoritarianism isn't the only measure of strength.
I want a party that contests more seats. That organizes properly so we don't lose blue states in an election. That can at least pretend to push the things we were sold on when we have control of two houses of Congress.
What I don't want is to have the presidential nominee dictated to me before the process even starts, then get told to fall in line for my own good. It's not the existence of insiders that is the problem, it's the impression that they're calling the shots come hell or high water and that it's incumbent on me to get on board rather than in them to sell a product that anyone actually wants.
You're not going to convince"the left" to line up with the party by taking the appearance of control away from them. But you can get them in board by making them feel heard. More than anything else, that's where the Democratic party is falling down on the job right now. Nobody believes they have anyone's interests at heart but their own, specifically their own desire to hold power. The primary was just that feeling bubbling over and coalescing behind the most awkward avatar ever.
No. The strength of an office (head of the DNC) is directly related to its authority. That's literally the definition of an office's strength.
Decentralized control of a party is not a fundamental characteristic of "the left." Indeed, its generally been antithetical to its approach in government, political action and labor negotiation. "No one believes they have anyone's interest at heart" is massive projection form certain segments on the left. Do you think Obama doesn't have other people's interest at heart? He's been the head of the party 8 years. Its that very narrative that fucks us.
It's not even about de-centralized power, though. It's about a lack of dictatorial nature.
There are so very many things that the DNC needs to be doing that are essentially candidate agnostic. Voter outreach, organizing, etc. I don't want Ellison picking winners anymore than I wanted DWS doing that, because that's not their job. Build the party. This is the part of the game that has been neglected for far too long in favor of elevating specific candidates.
And whether you think it's projection or not, it's the Democrats' problem with big chunks of their base right now. And people who would be voting Democrat if they didn't feel like they were being disrespected by the process. The whole primary this year was one long story of people feeling like everything was shady and unfair, whether that was true or not. We need to fix that impression, or we're going to have this same fight every time out and Trump is just the start of our problems.
Also, the Far Left needs to treat this as serious business, rather than a hobby.
Ok. This, right here? Fuck off with this.
It's leftists that are out there fighting for this shit between election years. It's leftists that pushed the stuff that's going away thanks to centrists fucking up this election.
I'm so tired of people lecturing at the activist left when they're the ones that don't treat this stuff like a football game that happens every 4 years.
Also, the Far Left needs to treat this as serious business, rather than a hobby.
Ok. This, right here? Fuck off with this.
It's leftists that are out there fighting for this shit between election years. It's leftists that pushed the stuff that's going away thanks to centrists fucking up this election.
I'm so tired of people lecturing at the activist left when they're the ones that don't treat this stuff like a football game that happens every 4 years.
Who's treating this like a football game? I'm not.
The reason I said that is because too often I get from the Far Left is that they want to be outsiders and don't want to be "in" yet want the entire party itself to do what they want and if they don't they take their ball and go home. The threats are tiresome, and contradictory - Bernie Sander's being the poster boy for this behavior.
Does the Far Left want to be full time Democrats or not? Keeping their independent cred will only weaken the Democratic coalition as a whole.
The leftists have been fighting for their causes, but as far as I can tell they haven't exactly been wanting in on the Democrats until recently. Seriously, who was the champion for the Far Left in '08 presidential primaries?
edit: Another thing is the Far Left don't have "the Left" term on lockdown, the liberal/progressive wing and even the centrist wing are leftists too.
edit: What stuff are you talking about that the centrists lost? Sure they failed, so what? Everyone does eventually, and it wasn't a rout. Losing is not a solid complaint against the centrists, and it'd be hypocritical when the Far Left lost themselves to Hillary in the primaries. And yet when the centrists do it it's a great sin the can't be forgiven.
Most of the Far Left people I know are incredibly active within the party. They're just foot soldiers instead of command.
The idea that leftists are johnny come latelies that want power handed to them is purely false. We've been here all along, manning the ramparts. We put Obama in the Whitehouse, for god's sake.
Most of the Far Left people I know are incredibly active within the party. They're just foot soldiers instead of command.
The idea that leftists are johnny come latelies that want power handed to them is purely false. We've been here all along, manning the ramparts. We put Obama in the Whitehouse, for god's sake.
So why did it take this long to get their voice heard in the primaries then? Sure, it's good that they were in the trenches, but I wouldn't say the Far Left is exactly better than centrists are organizing. I've got a huge bone to pick for centrists, they have massive faults in leadership but they are not your real enemy - the GOP is.
edit: Bernie's primary didn't do a good job branding them as team players, which they need to be if they want to be a vital part in the party.
Does the Far Left want to be full time Democrats or not? Keeping their independent cred will only weaken the Democratic coalition as a whole.
The leftists have been fighting for their causes, but as far as I can tell they haven't exactly been wanting in on the Democrats until recently. Seriously, who was the champion for the Far Left in '08 presidential primaries?
This, right here, is rather illustrative of the disconnect with what's going on here.
There was no "champion" for the Far Left in this primary. Bernie Sanders was the closest thing to that, and he definitely wasn't anyone that would have been picked by an organic process.
As for "weakening the Democratic coalition", whatever. Seriously. If the Democratic coalition wants us, they need to ask for our input. A lot of people felt like that didn't really happen this time out, and we're not really joiners so much as doers. I don't really feel the need to appologize for that, particularly since I've spent much of my professional life directly supporting the politics of the "Democratic coalition" and the party specifically. This getting lectured to about how the game works by people who haven't actually played the game gets old fast, and it's the reason I've been avoiding this thread for so long.
Most of the Far Left people I know are incredibly active within the party. They're just foot soldiers instead of command.
The idea that leftists are johnny come latelies that want power handed to them is purely false. We've been here all along, manning the ramparts. We put Obama in the Whitehouse, for god's sake.
So why did it take this long to get their voice heard in the primaries then? Sure, it's good that they were in the trenches, but I wouldn't say the Far Left is exactly better than centrists are organizing. I've got a huge bone to pick for centrists, they have massive faults in leadership but they are not your real enemy - the GOP is.
Because the party apparatus didn't really want to run anyone from that wing of the party? And when they (sorta, kinda) did, we get to spend months hearing about how he wasn't a "real" Democrat.
My own mother, who knows full well my history with the party and who I was voting for this time out, said to my face that she didn't see how anyone who voted for Bernie Sanders could actually call themselves a Democrat. That stuff doesn't come from nowhere. The culture within the party has gotten toxic to engagement out on that wing, and we need to clean house.
There was no "champion" for the Far Left in this primary. Bernie Sanders was the closest thing to that, and he definitely wasn't anyone that would have been picked by an organic process.
Which is part of the problem and why the Far Left is weak politically. And yes, Bernie was definitely the Far Left's champion, the other being Jill Stein. To get what you want means the Far Left needs dozens and/or hundreds of Bernie's and Stein's. Can the Far Left do this?
As for "weakening the Democratic coalition", whatever. Seriously. If the Democratic coalition wants us, they need to ask for our input. A lot of people felt like that didn't really happen this time out, and we're not really joiners so much as doers. I don't really feel the need to appologize for that, particularly since I've spent much of my professional life directly supporting the politics of the "Democratic coalition" and the party specifically. This getting lectured to about how the game works by people who haven't actually played the game gets old fast, and it's the reason I've been avoiding this thread for so long.
You don't care about the Dems having a weak coalition? Really? In a prior post you scolded me for not taking politics seriously, yet this is acceptable? The Dems are the only political party standing between the GOP and America tearing it apart, it sure isn't the Greens. That's why it's important that the party recover and be able to face the future at their peak, and for that we need the Far Left fully on board. This type of attitude is why I bought up the Far Left being part timers. Not all of them are this, of course, but this is very disappointing since you're working in the organization itself and involved in activism for the Left. They listen to you.
For this to work requires the Left to be joiners, otherwise the alliance will always be a hairbreadth away from shattering - leaving the Dems weaker during elections.
And do what, exactly? I know what you do, but are you talking about the people you know or the entire Far Left? To do the things required to fix this country requires them to join the party, not sit on the sidelines and complain when they won't be listened to because they didn't bother to participate in what the Dems are doing. You can't have a voice in an organization if you don't show up to a meeting, after all.
Yeah, I'm not exactly an activist or work for the party itself, so what? You don't have to be a foot soldier to know what's going on or how organizations work, or how politics work in America.
You're a valuable asset in these threads due to your connections and insight into the Far Left, I just disagree with your opinions is all. Which is fine. We need different points of view for the party to grow.
Another thing is that the Far left can't leave the centrists or the party to make all the first moves to get them to the table. Not everything is up to the centrists or the party, if the far left wants in all they have to do is show up and speak - no one is turning them away. The question - do they want to? I keep getting wavering opinions on what they really want from this alliance, or of they want an alliance at all. The Dems do want you guys in, but this requires team work and to play by the rules - this applies to every faction. Of the Far Left posters in this forum you above all else should know this.
edit: And I'm curious, about my post upthread did you disagree with all of what I said? If so, how?
Because the party apparatus didn't really want to run anyone from that wing of the party? And when they (sorta, kinda) did, we get to spend months hearing about how he wasn't a "real" Democrat.
You'll get this from any political party, and yes of course the leadership are going to bet on their horse for obvious reasons. (This is why it's good to have your candidate be the front runner.) It's terrible, but that's politics. That is the time for the outsiders to prepare ahead of time and bring their A game. It's a challenge they have to win, it won't be given freely. Every candidate also must successfully stave off jibes from their opponents, those who can't fail. It's a trial by fire, and it's practice for candidates who get to the general because the GOP will be 100x nastier.
My own mother, who knows full well my history with the party and who I was voting for this time out, said to my face that she didn't see how anyone who voted for Bernie Sanders could actually call themselves a Democrat. That stuff doesn't come from nowhere. The culture within the party has gotten toxic to engagement out on that wing, and we need to clean house.
This is complicated. Yes, she shouldn't have done that and the party should have been more welcoming to Bernie. However, this didn't exactly come from nowhere. Bernie's spent his career defining himself as an independent and has made it pretty clear he isn't 100% with being a Demorat. Which is going to make people reluctant to accept him at face value. To fix this requires both sides to come together, which is why I and other posts have been trying to court the Far Left into getting deeper into the party.
edit: The thing with this is that intends to be two ways, it's not only on the centrists to make things right the Far Left has to pull their weight too. That builds trust and a stronger coalition.
Being told to sit down, shut up and vote Democrat is a monumentally terrible way to get people on the far left on board. It just is, for reasons that have been covered at length. We can talk endlessly about how this is a moral failing on their part, and accomplish nothing besides solidifying that divide, or we actually can work the frickin' problem.
I don't expect women's health advocates to join up to a coalition that's lukewarm on their reproductive rights, and willing to sell them out when it's convenient. I don't expect black folks to sign up for a party that looks like it's going to sell them down the river when it's politically expedient (and yes, I'm aware of the irony in how often that's happened and I feel for those folks, I truly do). I don't expect environmentalists to get in line for a party that's going to expand oil drilling.
I don't expect groups to line up with people who aren't going to fight for their interests, is the thing. Because they won't. So why should economic leftists jump in line behind a party that is more concerned with big corporate donations than protecting the working class. A party that abandoned the labor movement. A party that has shown it's just as happy to be looking out for the big guy as it is the little guy if the political blowback seems managable.
There's also the issue that the Far Left (as it keeps getting described here) isn't even remotely monolithic. It isn't a floating mass of voters looking to attach itself to a party, or not, based on checking off some boxes. It's a highly individualistic group of people who are also very motivated by disparate issues, between which there is often little connection. Some are global warming and net neutrality voters. Some are anti-bankster and anti-war. Treating them like they're a pre-school class that can be berated into falling into the Democratic line for election-lunch is misunderstanding them at the core. This is why we win when we're excited and lose when we're not, because mass excitement is the only way to get this many different types of people moving in the same direction at once.
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Then he probably would have been even more demonized than the center-left than he already has been.
He would have lost quickly, *and* despite that used against the Dems somehow.
I don't agree. There was loud, repeated complaints about closed primaries for instance. There were many complaints about "establishment" candidates, and not just Clinton. For a party to be strong, it has to have some power, which means they have to be able to make decisions that actually are relevant. The two biggest jobs of the DNC and the national party infrastructure are fundraising and candidate recruitment. The former resulted in explicit complaints and literal protests. The latter requires the party itself to have some influence in candidate selection, which results in "rigged" complaints.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
They wouldn't have let him run.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
They didn't want DJT to run either and look where he is now?
Ok, no. There has been some real heated debates both online and offline but we haven't reached demonizing him just yet.
They were fine letting him run because they didn't think he'd win and he was a right winger. Sanders would have been excluded from Iowa, where its entirely party run, and probably NH, where you need to be a registered member of the party to participate as a candidate.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
And those complaints were, in almost every example, about the perception that the party was doing something to keep the rank and file from having their say. Closed primaries and arcane registration rules kept those on the periphery out of the process. Double primaries made it look like voting didn't actually matter and the party was just going to pick their own candidate from within. Super delegates were the party essentially signposting their intent to do so. Etc.
The party can be plenty strong without looking like it's dictating results. The left doesn't want weakness, just to feel like it's got a fair shake when compared to political insiders.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
So you want a strong party, just one that doesn't have any power. The party officials are the political insiders. Those "on the periphery" are those who refuse to be in the party. Anything the party does can be spun to "keep[ing] the rank and file from having their say." You're proving my point by implicitly asserting that anything that gets away from direct democracy in terms of party decisions is something that garners legitimate complaint.
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In a system as polarized as ours is, that is a major difference.
In a world where about an extra 2-3% of people who showed up to vote democrat were turned away because their 'ID's weren't right', or just couldn't reach the front of the lines because all but three of the cities polling places had been closed.
In a world where sectioned voting blocks pack Democratic voters into highly concentrated ultra blue states which naturally have low turnout.
In a world where the 46% is composed entirely of those for whom voting is easiest, fastest and least penalized, and there exist many members of the 48% who likely risked losing their jobs to vote.
In that world, 48-46 is an overwhelming show of support.
In the presidential elections over the past 100 years only 2000 Bush, Carter, 1968 Nixon and Kennedy have a smaller popular vote margin. And carter is only smaller by 0.04% (the others are sub-1%)
Like, I've spent some time poking around the local sites and still only have a very poor idea of the local organizations. It seems like the best way to get informed is to actually go to meetings, but what kind of weirdo does that?
And there often doesn't feel like there's any convenient hub for ways to communicate or see what's going on; people really, really want to provide input and see what's going on.
I'm losing my train of thought but I think there's improvements to be made in simplification and accessibility.
addendum: I think this would address many of the complaints about the national level despite being mostly about the local level; if people feel like they're involved and on the same team as the local leaders, they're more likely to trust their opinion about the national stuff. So the national level wouldn't have to cater to everybody, just coordinate with the local ones, who will handle us unwashed masses. This, of course, assumes the national level makes the local levels happy.
I'm curious as to what the margin is when that overwhelming victory turns into a moderate one, a narrow one and an oiutright loss. Because it really sounds like you'd say the same things if the margin was the other way around too
Edit: and iirc the polls predicted C+3 and that's pretty much what we got
When the party who faces every obstacle manages to win, then it's evidence that their true popular support is overwhelming.
Effectively, the US political structure means you can add like, 5% to the Democratic vote at this point to get their true level of support. All those C+3 polls took the suppression factors into account, which is why they weren't C+8.
I want a party that contests more seats. That organizes properly so we don't lose blue states in an election. That can at least pretend to push the things we were sold on when we have control of two houses of Congress.
What I don't want is to have the presidential nominee dictated to me before the process even starts, then get told to fall in line for my own good. It's not the existence of insiders that is the problem, it's the impression that they're calling the shots come hell or high water and that it's incumbent on me to get on board rather than in them to sell a product that anyone actually wants.
You're not going to convince"the left" to line up with the party by taking the appearance of control away from them. But you can get them in board by making them feel heard. More than anything else, that's where the Democratic party is falling down on the job right now. Nobody believes they have anyone's interests at heart but their own, specifically their own desire to hold power. The primary was just that feeling bubbling over and coalescing behind the most awkward avatar ever.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a51446/what-was-comey-thinking/
Ellison has said he would step down if he wins.
The article strongly suggests that Comey is just a principled guy who doesn't get politics and was between a rock and a hard place when it came to the new cache of emails.
But it's also clear that even if you buy into that framework, Comey jumped the gun, sending his letter to Congress about evidence the FBI didn't yet even have access to. Meanwhile it reflects poorly on his leadership that he felt his actions were dictated by fear of leaks out of his own organization.
Plus, the rock and the hard place were "country" and "self-interest," so excuse me if this violin is too tiny to be heard.
In everything I've read he seems to strike me as someone who mows the lawn in the snow because it's Sunday, and Sunday the lawn gets mowed.
No. The strength of an office (head of the DNC) is directly related to its authority. That's literally the definition of an office's strength.
Decentralized control of a party is not a fundamental characteristic of "the left." Indeed, its generally been antithetical to its approach in government, political action and labor negotiation. "No one believes they have anyone's interest at heart" is massive projection form certain segments on the left. Do you think Obama doesn't have other people's interest at heart? He's been the head of the party 8 years. Its that very narrative that fucks us.
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Don't expect any candidate to repeat that easily, Trump so far is a one off deal. If the GOP are able to repeat that trick we are really fucked.
This is why Democrats capturing the media needs to be a high priority, the media is not a Democrat's friend.
Martin Sheen isn't interested in running for office, otherwise he'd be doing that rather then being an activist.
Yeah
A very charitable interpretation of Comey's behavior is that he didn't, as his high-level goal, desire to ruin the integrity of the presidential election with a series of illegal partisan statements, but that he did it to cover his own ass when he lost control of fanatics in his agency
They do not take polling day suppression into account. Maybe decreased enthusiasm from districting but even that is speculative. Long lines do not translate into likely voter models
Open primaries aren't the answer, though I agree they need to make voting easier to understand and to join. Open primaries would be a green light for Republicans to openly fuck with the party to a huge degree than they already do.
The Left need to do a better job of getting involved in the party, too. They can't be Democrats half the time - a strong party has loyal voting blocs.
That's not authoritarianism, it's having centralized leadership - which every mainstream party does because it works.
It's not up to the party itself, strictly for contesting seats - this is about factions working for their goals and the Left is not good at this. That's about the Left itself, not the Democratic party. Party leaders are neither standing in your way, nor stopping them from getting organized.
Your argument about front runners has a two fold answer: what Hillary did this time was unprecedented and no one has any idea what controls to put in place within the organization to obstruct a power move like that. If you can find a solution, and get the leadership to green light that then you'll get your wish. The second part is that's how front runners work, you want your candidate to have the best shot at winning a primary, then make them the front runner! Or have them be so powerful that they take it by force, like Trump did.
The time for challenging candidates is in the primary, and the time for getting in line is for the general - any candidate with a weak coalition behind them because their candidate didn't win is vulnerable to losing and now you're going to have a Republican in office because you decided not to show up at the voting booth. Discipline is required for a strong party, a party who can't hold its factions together behind candidates is weak.
This isn't about an appearance of control, it's about actual control and right now the establishment is ruled by the centrists. They're able to get things done because they hold the keys to the kingdom, they're not figureheads. It's reasonable for them to get a seat at the table and get a voice, which they got last election btw - it's unreasonable for them to think just because they have a voice in the party they can override the leadership's decisions. If they want that responsiblity than they need to get their ducks in a row and take the Iron Throne from the centrists. Until then they are a member in a coalition, and that requires listening to the leadership on decisions. No, they won't like every decision and occasionally they fuck up, every faction who leads an organization does this. If their positions were reversed and it was the centrists trying to undermine their leadership you bet they wouldn't take that shit lying down.
Also, the Far Left needs to treat this as serious business, rather than a hobby. Being casual Democrats only keeps them as outsiders, if they want to effect the party more they need to be insiders.
The party got the majority of the Far left votes IIRC, and Hillary won the popular vote in the general so I think you're underestimating how bad the part is doing. It's just not doing what you want, which is another matter entirely. The ultimate failure was not being able to capture specific votes to get the EC on board.
Plenty of people believe in the party, don't assume everyone agrees with you. Sure, your opinion may be in higher numbers on the Far Left, but the Far Left isn't the entire party structure. A key reason why the centrists have power is that they make it a priority to keep and maintain it, or someone else will take that from them and they're very good at this. Yes, they can be dicks about it but so would anybody else in leadership who wants to have that responsibility. If the far left want their voices to overwhelm the leadership they need to want power, as well. This isn't Gollum's ring here.
The primary was the first time the Far Left has had a big voice in the running of the party since who knows how long. It put in a good game, but it's silly to expect the Far left to win everything first time out, they need to focus on organization, discipline, connections and funding for the next primaries - all over the nation and the presidential. Good the Far Left is involved, but it needs to maintain that alliance, the centrists can't hold their hand for everything. Solid alliances like the Far left wants in take time to build and they need to want to be loyal Dem insiders for this to work.
Actually, changing the narrative is the only thing that kind of organization is good at. BLM has certainly helped to sustain and guide the national conversation about police-on-minority violence, and the political mainstream ended up adopting a lot of the basic ideas behind OWS--arguably this helped shape the campaign against Romney.
Where they fall down is in implementing policy, and that's because a leaderless, decentralized organization has no agreed-upon policy and no single figure who can band together their supporters and then use that support to negotiate with politicians. At the end of the day, you need a human being in room who is able to say "My people will vote the way I tell them to, and I'll tell them to vote for you if you give me enough of what we want."
To be quite fair, these organizations don't eschew leaders simply out of a sense of democratic fairness but as a responsive tactic to the lightning rod issues that arise when individuals come to stand for movements. Leaders live under constant scrutiny and their personal flaws can be used against the movement; they get ratfucked or even assassinated; they become divisive figures of hate in a way that can obscure what they're trying to do. There may not be a good answer to the problem, or even necessarily a better one than these movements we're talking about have tried. Perhaps you need a Tyler Durden figure who somehow marshalls support from the shadows without needing to be a public person, or a Trump type too Teflon to tar. Either way there's a certain level of fanaticism required that you just don't find on the left in large quantities.
Briefly: two FBI investigations into the Presidential candidates. In one every detail is publicly stated by the director in a way to make the candidate look as nefarious as possible. In the other, the FBI leaks that the investigation is baseless, contrary to reality. That's a soft coup d'etat by the domestic intelligence agency.
It's not even about de-centralized power, though. It's about a lack of dictatorial nature.
There are so very many things that the DNC needs to be doing that are essentially candidate agnostic. Voter outreach, organizing, etc. I don't want Ellison picking winners anymore than I wanted DWS doing that, because that's not their job. Build the party. This is the part of the game that has been neglected for far too long in favor of elevating specific candidates.
And whether you think it's projection or not, it's the Democrats' problem with big chunks of their base right now. And people who would be voting Democrat if they didn't feel like they were being disrespected by the process. The whole primary this year was one long story of people feeling like everything was shady and unfair, whether that was true or not. We need to fix that impression, or we're going to have this same fight every time out and Trump is just the start of our problems.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Ok. This, right here? Fuck off with this.
It's leftists that are out there fighting for this shit between election years. It's leftists that pushed the stuff that's going away thanks to centrists fucking up this election.
I'm so tired of people lecturing at the activist left when they're the ones that don't treat this stuff like a football game that happens every 4 years.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Who's treating this like a football game? I'm not.
The reason I said that is because too often I get from the Far Left is that they want to be outsiders and don't want to be "in" yet want the entire party itself to do what they want and if they don't they take their ball and go home. The threats are tiresome, and contradictory - Bernie Sander's being the poster boy for this behavior.
Does the Far Left want to be full time Democrats or not? Keeping their independent cred will only weaken the Democratic coalition as a whole.
The leftists have been fighting for their causes, but as far as I can tell they haven't exactly been wanting in on the Democrats until recently. Seriously, who was the champion for the Far Left in '08 presidential primaries?
edit: Another thing is the Far Left don't have "the Left" term on lockdown, the liberal/progressive wing and even the centrist wing are leftists too.
edit: What stuff are you talking about that the centrists lost? Sure they failed, so what? Everyone does eventually, and it wasn't a rout. Losing is not a solid complaint against the centrists, and it'd be hypocritical when the Far Left lost themselves to Hillary in the primaries. And yet when the centrists do it it's a great sin the can't be forgiven.
The idea that leftists are johnny come latelies that want power handed to them is purely false. We've been here all along, manning the ramparts. We put Obama in the Whitehouse, for god's sake.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
So why did it take this long to get their voice heard in the primaries then? Sure, it's good that they were in the trenches, but I wouldn't say the Far Left is exactly better than centrists are organizing. I've got a huge bone to pick for centrists, they have massive faults in leadership but they are not your real enemy - the GOP is.
edit: Bernie's primary didn't do a good job branding them as team players, which they need to be if they want to be a vital part in the party.
This, right here, is rather illustrative of the disconnect with what's going on here.
There was no "champion" for the Far Left in this primary. Bernie Sanders was the closest thing to that, and he definitely wasn't anyone that would have been picked by an organic process.
As for "weakening the Democratic coalition", whatever. Seriously. If the Democratic coalition wants us, they need to ask for our input. A lot of people felt like that didn't really happen this time out, and we're not really joiners so much as doers. I don't really feel the need to appologize for that, particularly since I've spent much of my professional life directly supporting the politics of the "Democratic coalition" and the party specifically. This getting lectured to about how the game works by people who haven't actually played the game gets old fast, and it's the reason I've been avoiding this thread for so long.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Because the party apparatus didn't really want to run anyone from that wing of the party? And when they (sorta, kinda) did, we get to spend months hearing about how he wasn't a "real" Democrat.
My own mother, who knows full well my history with the party and who I was voting for this time out, said to my face that she didn't see how anyone who voted for Bernie Sanders could actually call themselves a Democrat. That stuff doesn't come from nowhere. The culture within the party has gotten toxic to engagement out on that wing, and we need to clean house.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Which is part of the problem and why the Far Left is weak politically. And yes, Bernie was definitely the Far Left's champion, the other being Jill Stein. To get what you want means the Far Left needs dozens and/or hundreds of Bernie's and Stein's. Can the Far Left do this?
You don't care about the Dems having a weak coalition? Really? In a prior post you scolded me for not taking politics seriously, yet this is acceptable? The Dems are the only political party standing between the GOP and America tearing it apart, it sure isn't the Greens. That's why it's important that the party recover and be able to face the future at their peak, and for that we need the Far Left fully on board. This type of attitude is why I bought up the Far Left being part timers. Not all of them are this, of course, but this is very disappointing since you're working in the organization itself and involved in activism for the Left. They listen to you.
For this to work requires the Left to be joiners, otherwise the alliance will always be a hairbreadth away from shattering - leaving the Dems weaker during elections.
And do what, exactly? I know what you do, but are you talking about the people you know or the entire Far Left? To do the things required to fix this country requires them to join the party, not sit on the sidelines and complain when they won't be listened to because they didn't bother to participate in what the Dems are doing. You can't have a voice in an organization if you don't show up to a meeting, after all.
Yeah, I'm not exactly an activist or work for the party itself, so what? You don't have to be a foot soldier to know what's going on or how organizations work, or how politics work in America.
You're a valuable asset in these threads due to your connections and insight into the Far Left, I just disagree with your opinions is all. Which is fine. We need different points of view for the party to grow.
Another thing is that the Far left can't leave the centrists or the party to make all the first moves to get them to the table. Not everything is up to the centrists or the party, if the far left wants in all they have to do is show up and speak - no one is turning them away. The question - do they want to? I keep getting wavering opinions on what they really want from this alliance, or of they want an alliance at all. The Dems do want you guys in, but this requires team work and to play by the rules - this applies to every faction. Of the Far Left posters in this forum you above all else should know this.
edit: And I'm curious, about my post upthread did you disagree with all of what I said? If so, how?
You'll get this from any political party, and yes of course the leadership are going to bet on their horse for obvious reasons. (This is why it's good to have your candidate be the front runner.) It's terrible, but that's politics. That is the time for the outsiders to prepare ahead of time and bring their A game. It's a challenge they have to win, it won't be given freely. Every candidate also must successfully stave off jibes from their opponents, those who can't fail. It's a trial by fire, and it's practice for candidates who get to the general because the GOP will be 100x nastier.
This is complicated. Yes, she shouldn't have done that and the party should have been more welcoming to Bernie. However, this didn't exactly come from nowhere. Bernie's spent his career defining himself as an independent and has made it pretty clear he isn't 100% with being a Demorat. Which is going to make people reluctant to accept him at face value. To fix this requires both sides to come together, which is why I and other posts have been trying to court the Far Left into getting deeper into the party.
edit: The thing with this is that intends to be two ways, it's not only on the centrists to make things right the Far Left has to pull their weight too. That builds trust and a stronger coalition.
I don't expect women's health advocates to join up to a coalition that's lukewarm on their reproductive rights, and willing to sell them out when it's convenient. I don't expect black folks to sign up for a party that looks like it's going to sell them down the river when it's politically expedient (and yes, I'm aware of the irony in how often that's happened and I feel for those folks, I truly do). I don't expect environmentalists to get in line for a party that's going to expand oil drilling.
I don't expect groups to line up with people who aren't going to fight for their interests, is the thing. Because they won't. So why should economic leftists jump in line behind a party that is more concerned with big corporate donations than protecting the working class. A party that abandoned the labor movement. A party that has shown it's just as happy to be looking out for the big guy as it is the little guy if the political blowback seems managable.
There's also the issue that the Far Left (as it keeps getting described here) isn't even remotely monolithic. It isn't a floating mass of voters looking to attach itself to a party, or not, based on checking off some boxes. It's a highly individualistic group of people who are also very motivated by disparate issues, between which there is often little connection. Some are global warming and net neutrality voters. Some are anti-bankster and anti-war. Treating them like they're a pre-school class that can be berated into falling into the Democratic line for election-lunch is misunderstanding them at the core. This is why we win when we're excited and lose when we're not, because mass excitement is the only way to get this many different types of people moving in the same direction at once.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.