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The ACA is at best a center-right approach to healthcare policy.
It honestly surprises that you point to a regulated but privatized healthcare system as the example of how progressive the DNC is. This perspective (which I would say is dominant in the Democratic Party) reminds me of why I supported Sanders.
You get that half the country is opposed to deprivatizing any industry right? That a notable section of that group is violently opposed to it?
Like as much as I'm down for public control of many sectors I can understand that 1 some people are opposed to it and 2 some of those opposed to it do so not for personal gain but due to ideological purity.
Regulated, but privatized, is like the best we can do here as of right now.
We'll never know because "single payer" was never even mentioned in hushed whispers
we might have even gotten the public option if it had been, but we'll never know (although I'm sure you're going to say that without a shadow of a doubt it was a good idea to start with a compromise)
Wouldn't have mattered, aside from being a stronger argument to bargain down with. We barely got the ACA, we were never going to get single payer.
Like I said, I'm not sure, but one thing's for sure, Democrats have the ability to see all possible timelines and this is why they never stake out a position that might be controversial within their own electorate - because it would clearly be ruinous to do so
it's why they weren't sure about whether or not gays were people until a few years ago
I will again state how much I dislike straight leftists using this as a talking point.
The vast majority of American gays are not interested in bashing the Democratic party because they only now support gay marriage etc.
I, on the other hand, am pretty sick of straight leftists using recent progress on LGBT rights as a talking point for why any criticism of the Democratic party needs to get stuffed.
I remember the election returns in 2008. The rest of my (straight) friends were sending elated mass-texts about Obama and I was watching the Proposition 8 returns come in. We lost, boys. Could we complain? Both Obama and Hillary were against gay marriage at the time. They went to the HRC-hosted LGBT debate and both told the moderator, point blank, no. Out of the eight then-candidates, the only Democrat on the stage I can remember endorsing it was Dennis fkin Kucinich, who said that all love is wonderful and all love is equal.
I also remember how criticism of the Democrats on gay issues was received, no matter how measured, tempered, or mild that criticism was in its ambitions. We have a war on!; the economy is in shambles!; social security is under threat!; how dare you focus on your petty bullshit. Your hospital rights, your inheritance, your piece of paper is small scale bullshit and it's just going to throw the election to the Republicans. You spoiled brats. I mean, Jeeps, I'm sure you remember Scalfin's tantrum. Who could forget?
Things have changed a lot in the last 8 years, including in the Democratic party. That change is attributable to any number of things, but one of them must be the work of rich gay donors, media personalities, and activists who were not satisfied with the Democratic party and sought to remake it—rejecting the perpetual demand to fall in line, and the perpetual threat that anything less than complete obedience, however mild, would throw politics to the REAL bad guys, the Republicans. So, yeah, hearing some straight person piously telling me about how no one can dare criticize mainline Democrats because doing so is anti-gay leaves me with a pretty bad taste in my mouth. It obliterates the very recent history I remember, and in a quite self-serving way.
Yes I think it's fair to say that we can agree that neither of us enjoys gays being used as a political football.
And of course I remember the insipid "be quiet we don't have the political capital to care about gays right now" of yesteryear. Nothing wrong with remembering that, of course.
But there is no value in beating people up about it now after they have already been forced to change to our viewpoint. You don't win or keep allies by showing yourselves to be a group who will never forgive never forget.
Near as I can tell MrMister isn't saying that we should never forgive, never forget. It's not about beating the Party up about things it has already changed to. He's saying that pressure to move the party on issues it is resisting is a positive thing to do, and Democrats certainly do resist shifting on important issues.
The point isn't, "Why should we vote D when they had to be coerced into supporting gay rights". It's, "Coercing the Democrats to support gay rights resulted in them openly supporting gay rights. We should continue pushing our party to support other positions because that results in them shifting in a positive direction, and having an awful Republican as an electoral possibility is no excuse to not push our politicians to be better."
YMMV on whether Bernie is pushing the Democrats in a direction you agree with, or how successful he is at it, but MrMister's point that we can and should demand better, even of good politicians that are on our side, is well taken.
If somebody finally starts moving the way you want them to do you A> punish them for doing it to slowly thus discouraging them from continuing this trend. B> reward them for starting to come out of their shell and move the right direction.
Or the alternative to the party stops moving, once rewarded, because the support makes them think they are exactly where the constituents want them to be.
Just because you reward them doesn't mean that you stop pushing.
UHC is nowhere near as popular among voters as basic gun control measures.
And, yeah, no doubt we would all like Democratic party to do things with different order of priority. But just because they are unwilling to mash their head against the wall for your pet issue, is not the same as not wanting it.
I guess I must have personally answered this poll so many times that I'm 73% of democrats
Not sure how this is relevant to the bolded?
Pretty much everyone to the left of center (and lot of people right of center) want to improve ACA.
That does not make it any more viable legislation in the congress.
And as i already talked about, gun control (of some sort) is even more popular, and not just among democrats.
And back to my point: If viability in congress, not what Democrats actually believe, was the sole motivator of what they support
Why the fuck are Democratic senators so pro gun control? It's certainly not an issue that moves the needle in actual votes and it'll be a cold day in hell before they pass another assault weapons ban
I'm taking the bold stand that the things say they support are the things they actually support
Or is there some certain threshhold of popularity between 73% and 90% where Democrats feel comfortable saying what they actually think?
I think it's more likely they just don't support universal healthcare (Single payer or not)
Gun control costs next to nothing, which means republicans don't get to whine about taxes.
The ACA is at best a center-right approach to healthcare policy.
It honestly surprises that you point to a regulated but privatized healthcare system as the example of how progressive the DNC is. This perspective (which I would say is dominant in the Democratic Party) reminds me of why I supported Sanders.
You get that half the country is opposed to deprivatizing any industry right? That a notable section of that group is violently opposed to it?
Like as much as I'm down for public control of many sectors I can understand that 1 some people are opposed to it and 2 some of those opposed to it do so not for personal gain but due to ideological purity.
Regulated, but privatized, is like the best we can do here as of right now.
We'll never know because "single payer" was never even mentioned in hushed whispers
we might have even gotten the public option if it had been, but we'll never know (although I'm sure you're going to say that without a shadow of a doubt it was a good idea to start with a compromise)
Wouldn't have mattered, aside from being a stronger argument to bargain down with. We barely got the ACA, we were never going to get single payer.
Like I said, I'm not sure, but one thing's for sure, Democrats have the ability to see all possible timelines and this is why they never stake out a position that might be controversial within their own electorate - because it would clearly be ruinous to do so
it's why they weren't sure about whether or not gays were people until a few years ago
I will again state how much I dislike straight leftists using this as a talking point.
The vast majority of American gays are not interested in bashing the Democratic party because they only now support gay marriage etc.
I, on the other hand, am pretty sick of straight leftists using recent progress on LGBT rights as a talking point for why any criticism of the Democratic party needs to get stuffed.
I remember the election returns in 2008. The rest of my (straight) friends were sending elated mass-texts about Obama and I was watching the Proposition 8 returns come in. We lost, boys. Could we complain? Both Obama and Hillary were against gay marriage at the time. They went to the HRC-hosted LGBT debate and both told the moderator, point blank, no. Out of the eight then-candidates, the only Democrat on the stage I can remember endorsing it was Dennis fkin Kucinich, who said that all love is wonderful and all love is equal.
I also remember how criticism of the Democrats on gay issues was received, no matter how measured, tempered, or mild that criticism was in its ambitions. We have a war on!; the economy is in shambles!; social security is under threat!; how dare you focus on your petty bullshit. Your hospital rights, your inheritance, your piece of paper is small scale bullshit and it's just going to throw the election to the Republicans. You spoiled brats. I mean, Jeeps, I'm sure you remember Scalfin's tantrum. Who could forget?
Things have changed a lot in the last 8 years, including in the Democratic party. That change is attributable to any number of things, but one of them must be the work of rich gay donors, media personalities, and activists who were not satisfied with the Democratic party and sought to remake it—rejecting the perpetual demand to fall in line, and the perpetual threat that anything less than complete obedience, however mild, would throw politics to the REAL bad guys, the Republicans. So, yeah, hearing some straight person piously telling me about how no one can dare criticize mainline Democrats because doing so is anti-gay leaves me with a pretty bad taste in my mouth. It obliterates the very recent history I remember, and in a quite self-serving way.
Yes I think it's fair to say that we can agree that neither of us enjoys gays being used as a political football.
And of course I remember the insipid "be quiet we don't have the political capital to care about gays right now" of yesteryear. Nothing wrong with remembering that, of course.
But there is no value in beating people up about it now after they have already been forced to change to our viewpoint. You don't win or keep allies by showing yourselves to be a group who will never forgive never forget.
Near as I can tell MrMister isn't saying that we should never forgive, never forget. It's not about beating the Party up about things it has already changed to. He's saying that pressure to move the party on issues it is resisting is a positive thing to do, and Democrats certainly do resist shifting on important issues.
The point isn't, "Why should we vote D when they had to be coerced into supporting gay rights". It's, "Coercing the Democrats to support gay rights resulted in them openly supporting gay rights. We should continue pushing our party to support other positions because that results in them shifting in a positive direction, and having an awful Republican as an electoral possibility is no excuse to not push our politicians to be better."
YMMV on whether Bernie is pushing the Democrats in a direction you agree with, or how successful he is at it, but MrMister's point that we can and should demand better, even of good politicians that are on our side, is well taken.
Regina Fong is talking directly in response to override367's comments about how the Democrats "weren't sure about whether or not gays were people" by saying there's no point in getting bitter and angry at progress that's already been made. Even his second response isn't arguing against what MrMr said, he's saying "Yeah, I dislike that kind of thing too, but it still stands that there's no reason to get angry at the Democrats when you already pulled them to the right spot on the issue".
This example is of limited applicability to anything Sanders is talking about though since it's neither as sweeping in scope nor as difficult in implementation as anything he's been on about.
Like, the biggest thing the Democratic party did was really just help to normalise the stance that gays are AOK by doing things like having the President come out and say "Yeah, gays are cool".
Which is the other side of the issue with this attempt at analogy because what happened with that is that public support shifted enough that the party felt it didn't need to hedge on the issue anymore. Not because of some insurgency within the party led by committed interest groups.
Satisfaction with premiums and deductibles and satisfaction with ACA as a whole are two very different things.
Addressing those problems are an example of passable, incremental improvements.
Maybe this is more suited to the now-dead ACA thread, but those problems aren't easily fixed. In fact I would argue that they are almost unfixable. The high premiums and deductibles are due to market forces and the realities of the high costs of care. With the rise of healthcare conglomerates reducing insurance company's negotiating power, reduced ability to limit insured pools (as it should be, nobody should have to go without healthcare) which creates a nightmare for the actuarial tables, and the increased demand on the healthcare system in general, there's only so much that the private insurance companies can do without skyrocketing the out-of-pocket costs.
Hillary's plans are bandaids at best, as all she advocates doing is lowering people's actual out of pocket costs with a series of tax credits. At some point though the costs will get too high to be able to subsidize.
The problems are fixable. The problem is that they keep getting viewed as health insurance issues, not health care issues. And this is another place where Sanders' rhetoric was a massive part of the problem, because he was more than happy to demonize the insurers, instead of pointing out that there are other places to look to fix things.
So the problems are *handwave* fixable? How so? Even Hillary's answer is just tax credits. Even then that's a poor solution. Tax credits do you no good if you don't have the money to cover the bill in the first place.
You're also right that this is a health care issue rather than a health insurance issue. But again, that doesn't prevent the lowest common denominator from conflating these problems with all government healthcare. Hell, the only real solution to the skyrocketing helathcare costs is either single-payer or a Maryland style Bluebook that sets caps on what can be charged for any given procedure.
The way I see it is people are saying about Bernie's ideas that "Perfect is the enemy of good". The way I see it is the flip side of the coin as well, and that "Adequate is also the enemy of good."
Satisfaction with premiums and deductibles and satisfaction with ACA as a whole are two very different things.
Addressing those problems are an example of passable, incremental improvements.
Maybe this is more suited to the now-dead ACA thread, but those problems aren't easily fixed. In fact I would argue that they are almost unfixable. The high premiums and deductibles are due to market forces and the realities of the high costs of care. With the rise of healthcare conglomerates reducing insurance company's negotiating power, reduced ability to limit insured pools (as it should be, nobody should have to go without healthcare) which creates a nightmare for the actuarial tables, and the increased demand on the healthcare system in general, there's only so much that the private insurance companies can do without skyrocketing the out-of-pocket costs.
Hillary's plans are bandaids at best, as all she advocates doing is lowering people's actual out of pocket costs with a series of tax credits. At some point though the costs will get too high to be able to subsidize.
Satisfaction with premiums and deductibles and satisfaction with ACA as a whole are two very different things.
Addressing those problems are an example of passable, incremental improvements.
Indeed, don't conflate dissatisfaction with the current state of insurance and health care (which is still utterly fucked) with dissatisfaction with the ACA
I agree that they are separate things, what I said, and what I continue to say though is that the lowest common denominator voter won't make that differentiation. To them, it's Obamacare and it's run by the government. Like it or not, but in their minds, the dissatisfaction with their Marketplace offered plans will apply equally to their opinion of government healthcare in general.
Sanders is a millionaire, but no obvious scandals. That's all I expect; there's almost no way he doesn't have seven figures net worth on a 180k/year salary plus his wife's severence from a highly paid academic position.
Sanders is a millionaire, but no obvious scandals. That's all I expect; there's almost no way he doesn't have seven figures net worth on a 180k/year salary plus his wife's severence from a highly paid academic position.
That severance could be the scandal, considering what happened there.
Things have changed a lot in the last 8 years, including in the Democratic party. That change is attributable to any number of things, but one of them must be the work of rich gay donors, media personalities, and activists who were not satisfied with the Democratic party and sought to remake it—rejecting the perpetual demand to fall in line, and the perpetual threat that anything less than complete obedience, however mild, would throw politics to the REAL bad guys, the Republicans. So, yeah, hearing some straight person piously telling me about how no one can dare criticize mainline Democrats because doing so is anti-gay leaves me with a pretty bad taste in my mouth. It obliterates the very recent history I remember, and in a quite self-serving way.
I very much agree with this. I voted for Clinton in the California primary but I understand what Sanders is doing. Many people have used the word "ingratiate" to describe what they think he should be doing - that he'll have more power and influence if he "ingratiates" himself to mainstream democrats.
In my experience watching politics, trading leverage for gratitude is a losing deal.
Bringing a shit load of Progressives into the party means that people have to take their values and interests into account and campaign accordingly, thus moving the party to the right.
Choosing to die on your hill of ideals means that ~much like occupy wall street~ all you did was make a lot of noise.
The ACA is at best a center-right approach to healthcare policy.
It honestly surprises that you point to a regulated but privatized healthcare system as the example of how progressive the DNC is. This perspective (which I would say is dominant in the Democratic Party) reminds me of why I supported Sanders.
You get that half the country is opposed to deprivatizing any industry right? That a notable section of that group is violently opposed to it?
Like as much as I'm down for public control of many sectors I can understand that 1 some people are opposed to it and 2 some of those opposed to it do so not for personal gain but due to ideological purity.
Regulated, but privatized, is like the best we can do here as of right now.
We'll never know because "single payer" was never even mentioned in hushed whispers
we might have even gotten the public option if it had been, but we'll never know (although I'm sure you're going to say that without a shadow of a doubt it was a good idea to start with a compromise)
Wouldn't have mattered, aside from being a stronger argument to bargain down with. We barely got the ACA, we were never going to get single payer.
Like I said, I'm not sure, but one thing's for sure, Democrats have the ability to see all possible timelines and this is why they never stake out a position that might be controversial within their own electorate - because it would clearly be ruinous to do so
it's why they weren't sure about whether or not gays were people until a few years ago
I will again state how much I dislike straight leftists using this as a talking point.
The vast majority of American gays are not interested in bashing the Democratic party because they only now support gay marriage etc.
Dan Savage probably has the best take on this matter:
It's fucking moronic—it's political malpractice—to attack a politician for coming around on your issues. There are lots of other issues the queer community is going to be pressing politicians on, from passing equal rights bills and trans rights bills to defeating anti-trans bathroom legislation and RFRAs. If pols who are currently on the wrong side of any of those issues see no benefit to changing their positions—if they see no political benefit—they're going to be harder to persuade. Why should they come around on our issues, why should they switch sides or change their votes, if we're going to go after them hammer and tongs for the positions they used to hold? ("Please change your mind and support us." "No." "Pretty please?" "OK, I've changed my mind and I'll vote to support you." "FUCK YOU FOR NOT ALWAYS AGREEING WITH ME! I'M NOT VOTING FOR YOU! FUCK YOU SOME MORE!")
Satisfaction with premiums and deductibles and satisfaction with ACA as a whole are two very different things.
Addressing those problems are an example of passable, incremental improvements.
Maybe this is more suited to the now-dead ACA thread, but those problems aren't easily fixed. In fact I would argue that they are almost unfixable. The high premiums and deductibles are due to market forces and the realities of the high costs of care. With the rise of healthcare conglomerates reducing insurance company's negotiating power, reduced ability to limit insured pools (as it should be, nobody should have to go without healthcare) which creates a nightmare for the actuarial tables, and the increased demand on the healthcare system in general, there's only so much that the private insurance companies can do without skyrocketing the out-of-pocket costs.
Hillary's plans are bandaids at best, as all she advocates doing is lowering people's actual out of pocket costs with a series of tax credits. At some point though the costs will get too high to be able to subsidize.
The problems are fixable. The problem is that they keep getting viewed as health insurance issues, not health care issues. And this is another place where Sanders' rhetoric was a massive part of the problem, because he was more than happy to demonize the insurers, instead of pointing out that there are other places to look to fix things.
So the problems are *handwave* fixable? How so? Even Hillary's answer is just tax credits. Even then that's a poor solution. Tax credits do you no good if you don't have the money to cover the bill in the first place.
You're also right that this is a health care issue rather than a health insurance issue. But again, that doesn't prevent the lowest common denominator from conflating these problems with all government healthcare. Hell, the only real solution to the skyrocketing helathcare costs is either single-payer or a Maryland style Bluebook that sets caps on what can be charged for any given procedure.
The way I see it is people are saying about Bernie's ideas that "Perfect is the enemy of good". The way I see it is the flip side of the coin as well, and that "Adequate is also the enemy of good."
Except that Sanders wasn't really promoting any realistic ideas with regards to fixing health care either. Remember, the original version of his plan actually said that it would save more money on pharmaceuticals than the US actually spends.
As for fixing health care, here are a few points:
* Greater usage of PAs/NPs for first line health care.
* End the ridiculous two tier system of medical education in the US, which no other major Western country uses.
* Expand residency slots, as well as government ability to choose what specialities it will fund residencies in.
* Crack down on healthcare consortiums.
* Encourage expansion of lower cost first line options.
The ACA is at best a center-right approach to healthcare policy.
It honestly surprises that you point to a regulated but privatized healthcare system as the example of how progressive the DNC is. This perspective (which I would say is dominant in the Democratic Party) reminds me of why I supported Sanders.
You get that half the country is opposed to deprivatizing any industry right? That a notable section of that group is violently opposed to it?
Like as much as I'm down for public control of many sectors I can understand that 1 some people are opposed to it and 2 some of those opposed to it do so not for personal gain but due to ideological purity.
Regulated, but privatized, is like the best we can do here as of right now.
We'll never know because "single payer" was never even mentioned in hushed whispers
we might have even gotten the public option if it had been, but we'll never know (although I'm sure you're going to say that without a shadow of a doubt it was a good idea to start with a compromise)
Wouldn't have mattered, aside from being a stronger argument to bargain down with. We barely got the ACA, we were never going to get single payer.
Like I said, I'm not sure, but one thing's for sure, Democrats have the ability to see all possible timelines and this is why they never stake out a position that might be controversial within their own electorate - because it would clearly be ruinous to do so
it's why they weren't sure about whether or not gays were people until a few years ago
I will again state how much I dislike straight leftists using this as a talking point.
The vast majority of American gays are not interested in bashing the Democratic party because they only now support gay marriage etc.
Dan Savage probably has the best take on this matter:
It's fucking moronic—it's political malpractice—to attack a politician for coming around on your issues. There are lots of other issues the queer community is going to be pressing politicians on, from passing equal rights bills and trans rights bills to defeating anti-trans bathroom legislation and RFRAs. If pols who are currently on the wrong side of any of those issues see no benefit to changing their positions—if they see no political benefit—they're going to be harder to persuade. Why should they come around on our issues, why should they switch sides or change their votes, if we're going to go after them hammer and tongs for the positions they used to hold? ("Please change your mind and support us." "No." "Pretty please?" "OK, I've changed my mind and I'll vote to support you." "FUCK YOU FOR NOT ALWAYS AGREEING WITH ME! I'M NOT VOTING FOR YOU! FUCK YOU SOME MORE!")
Exactly.
(with the addition that when it's not even gays doing the hammering but straight people, it's even more annoying)
Fuck off Sawant. Jesus Christ this person helps run my city.
From the link:
There is another danger if Bernie drops out to back Hillary. It would leave Trump, Cruz, or other right-wing Republicans a free hand to monopolize the growing anti-establishment anger, while most of the left is trapped behind Clinton, the crowning symbol of establishment, dynastic, Wall Street politics. Could the far-right even dream up a better scenario to build their forces? While Trump might not win the election, support for hard-right populist politics will grow if there no fighting left alternative offered.
If Bernie supporters start switching over to become Trump or Cruz supporters, that's your own damned fault for focusing your time instructing you time and effort on bashing Hillary where you agree with the GOP, and losing sight of actual progressive issues where you don't.
If you want big sweeping changes, then your best bet is to focus on local government, not national government.
It's basic statistics. The smaller your sample side, the easier it is to create an outlier.
Clinton won because she gained the support of a lot of red states and swing states. Sanders couldn't do that. The problem is, Sanders keeps thinking in terms of being president of the states where he won for the voters who voted for him, when the president needs to be the president for everyone.
If you think that the only opinions that matters are the people who live in the bluest of blue states, then go run a blue state. The republicans understand this -- look at Rick Scott or Rick Snyder, for example.
Bernie's main problem is that he's trying to run a national campaign based on localized support.
+7
MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
Fuck off Sawant. Jesus Christ this person helps run my city.
Socialist Alternative is a mixed bag. They've been at the forefront of fight for 15. And on the issues Sawant is, for the most part, pretty great. But they're also ideologically off the map--which is part of the reason they exist as a separate party in the first place. And I don't think these are independent facts, the fact that they are the vanguard of some great stuff and also the fact that they're deeply conflicted about their place within a two-party capitalist state. It's worth noting that they are, within their membership, deeply divided about whether to run national candidates.
I'm too much of a Democrat to really fit in the Socialist Alternative box; I'm the sort of person they would call a 'fellow traveler.' I still generally like them because they activate and organize elements of the very far-left that don't fit well within the Democratic party but can nonetheless be a positive force within the broader political system.
Personally I think that the public opinion shift on gays was a combination of factors that included celebrities coming out of the closet, normal gay people coming out of the closet (proven to change the opinion of even conservative politicians when it's their own child), several high-profile suicides of young gay people who had been bullied or harassed, and of course, the survey of all active duty military personnel at the behest of Congressional Republicans that blew up in their faces when it proved once and for all that even in the military, people just don't fucking care that much if other people are gay.
And then Democrats started to budge after Joe Biden tested the water for them and showed it wasn't as cold as they'd all thought.
I believe that all of these things were contributing factors. Some of them overlap with my list (e.g., the role gay media personalities). I also think that they are not independent of gay people agitating for change in all walks of life, cultural and political. I mean, take the high profile suicides you mention. Why did they play a role then? It's not like gay teens just started killing themselves in 2010. Gay suicide rates have been astronomical for as long as there exists data to measure it. But these suicides started getting attention at the point when the population was more sympathetic, the media was less reflexively hostile, and gay people were organized and pushing the issue.
In many ways, I don't think we see events that differently. I am not here to excoriate Democrats for having crept forward a half-step behind the median left wing voter, typically when given a little helpful shove. In that, I believe they are merely politicians and I expect no more and no less. And that is how I believe you ought to interact with them: try to move the median voter, and try to give the politicians helpful shoves. That's when they move. And this just seems sensible to me; nothing about it is some revenge quest against the Democratic party. In terms of the political upshot, I think joshofalltrades got it pretty well.
(It is worth noting that Biden reversed himself after a dinner party at the home of a pair of ultrawealthy gay donors; that I include a role for the gay donor class is one point where our lists differ).
That is not to say, though, that the political upshot for relating to politicians was my only point. Nor is it to say that I am free of any bitterness. I'm not. It's just that my bitterness is not against the mercenary politicians merely doing their job, but rather against some of their supporters. I am bitter against the mainline Democratic partisans who, halfway through the primary, discovered that LGBT rights are a useful cudgel in an intra-left fight and began to rally behind the subtext--and sometimes, text--that criticism of the Democratic party is anti-gay. People who say that criticizing the Democratic party ipso facto maligns LGBT rights; that LGBT rights are being trashed by petulant socialists who didn't get their pony, and so on.
It's not the first time I've been called a petulant child for expressing dissatisfaction with mainline Democrats. Allow me to actually repost the already-mentioned gem of Scalfin on gay rights activists who were critical of Obama in 2010:
Have you guys been paying attention to any of Obama's presidency? He can barely push anything through when concentrating on it exclusively, and you want him to push congress on something that has no chance of passing while he's already using everything he has simply keeping us from turning into Somalia.
Listen, I'm sorry that you can't always be the center of attention, the Times doesn't put your life on the front page, and sometimes there's something that's more important than what you want right now, but you guys need to grow the fuck up.
Sound familiar? Grow the fuck up, there are things more important than what you want right now, what you want can never pass, you're just obsessed with being the center of attention? I wonder if we've heard any of that rhetoric recently. Except then it wasn't about the petulant socialists throwing tantrums, it was about petulant LGBT whiners throwing tantrums.
So yeah, it frosts my cookies when I get the whole with-us-or-against-us, follow-the-leader routine and and it's wrapped up in a bow with sanctimony over LGBT rights on top. It makes me want to scream into a pillow. The people now patronizing me about how we need Democratic solidarity in all things because of the importance of gay rights are the same people who, in the very same voice, would have been patronizing me back then about how we need Democratic solidarity in all things because of the importance of absolutely everything except gay rights. That so many of them are straight and I am gay is just a beautiful extra.
So no, I'm not here to punish Democratic politicians for the sins of the past. I cannot say I am without any bad feelings, though.
Yeah be calm john spartan. Not to mention I'm pretty sure the % of people who would vote for a sanders independent run would be an incredibly small % of the people who voted for him in the primary as the anecdata from former sanders voters is already annoyed at his not conceeding and waffling.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
But now a Nevada Sanders delegate to the national convention, Angie Morelli, who was a key player in the convention foolishness, has issued a call to arms to the Berners that is nothing short of embarrassing. This comes after she and her friends tried to get Sanders on the Green Party ticket here but had half the signatures disqualified, according to Morelli. Those darn rules.
...
Then Morelli explains further: “While Bernie did state he would not run as an independent last year, the DNC and local party leaders also said they would run a fair election. I think everyone can agree this did not happen at this point. Since then, Bernie has changed his language on this topic suggesting he has no ‘current plans’, etc. We would like to ensure this is and (sic) option.”
Everyone can agree? No, only those who are delusional would concur and not, for Hillary Clinton’s sake, the majority of Sanders supporters. Sanders lost fair and square – and by a lot – and the Sore Loser Caucus seems determined not to accept it and believe any conspiracy theory inhabiting the internet.
Before listing various levels of participation – including one laughably labeled “I kinda want him on the ballot” – Morelli explains the process: “We need to collect at least 5,400 viable signatures before July 6, so we are actually going after over 10,000. We will also be independently verifying the signatures before sending them off. So we need your help."
I assume that will be as successful as that persons previous ventures. Sad, but again outlier crazy people who are the most vocal of the remaining sanders supporters now.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Personally I think that the public opinion shift on gays was a combination of factors that included celebrities coming out of the closet, normal gay people coming out of the closet (proven to change the opinion of even conservative politicians when it's their own child), several high-profile suicides of young gay people who had been bullied or harassed, and of course, the survey of all active duty military personnel at the behest of Congressional Republicans that blew up in their faces when it proved once and for all that even in the military, people just don't fucking care that much if other people are gay.
And then Democrats started to budge after Joe Biden tested the water for them and showed it wasn't as cold as they'd all thought.
I believe that all of these things were contributing factors. Some of them overlap with my list (e.g., the role gay media personalities). I also think that they are not independent of gay people agitating for change in all walks of life, cultural and political. I mean, take the high profile suicides you mention. Why did they play a role then? It's not like gay teens just started killing themselves in 2010. Gay suicide rates have been astronomical for as long as there exists data to measure it. But these suicides started getting attention at the point when the population was more sympathetic, the media was less reflexively hostile, and gay people were organized and pushing the issue.
In many ways, I don't think we see events that differently. I am not here to excoriate Democrats for having crept forward a half-step behind the median left wing voter, typically when given a little helpful shove. In that, I believe they are merely politicians and I expect no more and no less. And that is how I believe you ought to interact with them: try to move the median voter, and try to give the politicians helpful shoves. That's when they move. And this just seems sensible to me; nothing about it is some revenge quest against the Democratic party. In terms of the political upshot, I think override got it pretty well.
(It is worth noting that Biden reversed himself after a dinner party at the home of a pair of ultrawealthy gay donors; that I include a role for the gay donor class is one point where our lists differ).
That is not to say, though, that the political upshot for relating to politicians was my only point. Nor is it to say that I am free of any bitterness. I'm not. It's just that my bitterness is not against the mercenary politicians merely doing their job, but rather to some of their supporters. I am bitter against the mainline Democratic partisans who, halfway through the primary, discovered that LGBT rights are a useful cudgel in an intra-left fight and began to rally behind the subtext--and sometimes, text--that criticism of the Democratic party is anti-gay. People who say that criticizing the Democratic party ipso facto maligns LGBT rights; that LGBT rights are being trashed by petulant socialists who didn't get their pony, and so on.
It's not the first time I've been called a petulant child for expressing dissatisfaction with mainline Democrats. Allow me to actually repost the already-mentioned gem of Scalfin on gay rights activists who were critical of Obama 2010:
Have you guys been paying attention to any of Obama's presidency? He can barely push anything through when concentrating on it exclusively, and you want him to push congress on something that has no chance of passing while he's already using everything he has simply keeping us from turning into Somalia.
Listen, I'm sorry that you can't always be the center of attention, the Times doesn't put your life on the front page, and sometimes there's something that's more important than what you want right now, but you guys need to grow the fuck up.
Sound familiar? Grow the fuck up, there are things more important than what you want right now, what you want can never pass, you're just obsessed with being the center of attention? I wonder if we've heard any of that rhetoric recently. That exact rhetoric. Except then it wasn't about the petulant socialists throwing tantrums, it was about petulant LGBT whiners throwing tantrums.
So yeah, it frosts my cookies when I get the whole with-us-or-against-us, follow-the-leader routine and and it's wrapped up in a bow with sanctimony over LGBT right right on top. It makes me want to scream into a pillow. The people now patronizing me about how we need Democratic solidarity in all things because of the importance of gay rights are the same people who, in the very same voice, would have been patronizing me back then about how we need Democratic solidarity in all things because of the importance of absolutely everything except gay rights. That so many of them are straight and I am gay is just a beautiful extra.
So no, I'm not here to punish Democratic politicians for the sins of the past. I cannot say I am not without any bad feelings, though.
Of course it sounds familiar, I was there I read all the same types of posts as you did around that time. It was definitely "party line" for a large number of Democratic posters on this forum. You might have noticed I have been hugely disdainful of the phrase "political capital" pretty much ever since, when I realized it was code for "stfu and get in the back of the bus".
It's probably just selection bias, but I haven't noticed the type of comment you're complaining about, while I have noticed the type I complained about.
And while you seem to think override is basically correct, I find his argument paternalistic and unwanted.
Personally I think that the public opinion shift on gays was a combination of factors that included celebrities coming out of the closet, normal gay people coming out of the closet (proven to change the opinion of even conservative politicians when it's their own child), several high-profile suicides of young gay people who had been bullied or harassed, and of course, the survey of all active duty military personnel at the behest of Congressional Republicans that blew up in their faces when it proved once and for all that even in the military, people just don't fucking care that much if other people are gay.
And then Democrats started to budge after Joe Biden tested the water for them and showed it wasn't as cold as they'd all thought.
I believe that all of these things were contributing factors. Some of them overlap with my list (e.g., the role gay media personalities). I also think that they are not independent of gay people agitating for change in all walks of life, cultural and political. I mean, take the high profile suicides you mention. Why did they play a role then? It's not like gay teens just started killing themselves in 2010. Gay suicide rates have been astronomical for as long as there exists data to measure it. But these suicides started getting attention at the point when the population was more sympathetic, the media was less reflexively hostile, and gay people were organized and pushing the issue.
In many ways, I don't think we see events that differently. I am not here to excoriate Democrats for having crept forward a half-step behind the median left wing voter, typically when given a little helpful shove. In that, I believe they are merely politicians and I expect no more and no less. And that is how I believe you ought to interact with them: try to move the median voter, and try to give the politicians helpful shoves. That's when they move. And this just seems sensible to me; nothing about it is some revenge quest against the Democratic party. In terms of the political upshot, I think override got it pretty well.
(It is worth noting that Biden reversed himself after a dinner party at the home of a pair of ultrawealthy gay donors; that I include a role for the gay donor class is one point where our lists differ).
That is not to say, though, that the political upshot for relating to politicians was my only point. Nor is it to say that I am free of any bitterness. I'm not. It's just that my bitterness is not against the mercenary politicians merely doing their job, but rather to some of their supporters. I am bitter against the mainline Democratic partisans who, halfway through the primary, discovered that LGBT rights are a useful cudgel in an intra-left fight and began to rally behind the subtext--and sometimes, text--that criticism of the Democratic party is anti-gay. People who say that criticizing the Democratic party ipso facto maligns LGBT rights; that LGBT rights are being trashed by petulant socialists who didn't get their pony, and so on.
It's not the first time I've been called a petulant child for expressing dissatisfaction with mainline Democrats. Allow me to actually repost the already-mentioned gem of Scalfin on gay rights activists who were critical of Obama 2010:
Have you guys been paying attention to any of Obama's presidency? He can barely push anything through when concentrating on it exclusively, and you want him to push congress on something that has no chance of passing while he's already using everything he has simply keeping us from turning into Somalia.
Listen, I'm sorry that you can't always be the center of attention, the Times doesn't put your life on the front page, and sometimes there's something that's more important than what you want right now, but you guys need to grow the fuck up.
Sound familiar? Grow the fuck up, there are things more important than what you want right now, what you want can never pass, you're just obsessed with being the center of attention? I wonder if we've heard any of that rhetoric recently. That exact rhetoric. Except then it wasn't about the petulant socialists throwing tantrums, it was about petulant LGBT whiners throwing tantrums.
So yeah, it frosts my cookies when I get the whole with-us-or-against-us, follow-the-leader routine and and it's wrapped up in a bow with sanctimony over LGBT right right on top. It makes me want to scream into a pillow. The people now patronizing me about how we need Democratic solidarity in all things because of the importance of gay rights are the same people who, in the very same voice, would have been patronizing me back then about how we need Democratic solidarity in all things because of the importance of absolutely everything except gay rights. That so many of them are straight and I am gay is just a beautiful extra.
So no, I'm not here to punish Democratic politicians for the sins of the past. I cannot say I am not without any bad feelings, though.
Of course it sounds familiar, I was there I read all the same types of posts as you did around that time. It was definitely "party line" for a large number of Democratic posters on this forum. You might have noticed I have been hugely disdainful of the phrase "political capital" pretty much ever since, when I realized it was code for "stfu and get in the back of the bus".
It's probably just selection bias, but I haven't noticed the type of comment you're complaining about, while I have noticed the type I complained about.
And while you seem to think override is basically correct, I find his argument paternalistic and unwanted.
Errata (and original post edited to reflect it): in that line I meant to type joshofalltrades but accidentally typed override. Specifically I was trying to refer to this post, which I thought captured the immediate political upshot of what I was going for pretty well, in a way that clearly differentiated it from "burn them all for the sins of the past."
Personally I think that the public opinion shift on gays was a combination of factors that included celebrities coming out of the closet, normal gay people coming out of the closet (proven to change the opinion of even conservative politicians when it's their own child), several high-profile suicides of young gay people who had been bullied or harassed, and of course, the survey of all active duty military personnel at the behest of Congressional Republicans that blew up in their faces when it proved once and for all that even in the military, people just don't fucking care that much if other people are gay.
And then Democrats started to budge after Joe Biden tested the water for them and showed it wasn't as cold as they'd all thought.
I believe that all of these things were contributing factors. Some of them overlap with my list (e.g., the role gay media personalities). I also think that they are not independent of gay people agitating for change in all walks of life, cultural and political. I mean, take the high profile suicides you mention. Why did they play a role then? It's not like gay teens just started killing themselves in 2010. Gay suicide rates have been astronomical for as long as there exists data to measure it. But these suicides started getting attention at the point when the population was more sympathetic, the media was less reflexively hostile, and gay people were organized and pushing the issue.
In many ways, I don't think we see events that differently. I am not here to excoriate Democrats for having crept forward a half-step behind the median left wing voter, typically when given a little helpful shove. In that, I believe they are merely politicians and I expect no more and no less. And that is how I believe you ought to interact with them: try to move the median voter, and try to give the politicians helpful shoves. That's when they move. And this just seems sensible to me; nothing about it is some revenge quest against the Democratic party. In terms of the political upshot, I think joshofalltrades got it pretty well.
(It is worth noting that Biden reversed himself after a dinner party at the home of a pair of ultrawealthy gay donors; that I include a role for the gay donor class is one point where our lists differ).
That is not to say, though, that the political upshot for relating to politicians was my only point. Nor is it to say that I am free of any bitterness. I'm not. It's just that my bitterness is not against the mercenary politicians merely doing their job, but rather against some of their supporters. I am bitter against the mainline Democratic partisans who, halfway through the primary, discovered that LGBT rights are a useful cudgel in an intra-left fight and began to rally behind the subtext--and sometimes, text--that criticism of the Democratic party is anti-gay. People who say that criticizing the Democratic party ipso facto maligns LGBT rights; that LGBT rights are being trashed by petulant socialists who didn't get their pony, and so on.
It's not the first time I've been called a petulant child for expressing dissatisfaction with mainline Democrats. Allow me to actually repost the already-mentioned gem of Scalfin on gay rights activists who were critical of Obama in 2010:
Have you guys been paying attention to any of Obama's presidency? He can barely push anything through when concentrating on it exclusively, and you want him to push congress on something that has no chance of passing while he's already using everything he has simply keeping us from turning into Somalia.
Listen, I'm sorry that you can't always be the center of attention, the Times doesn't put your life on the front page, and sometimes there's something that's more important than what you want right now, but you guys need to grow the fuck up.
Sound familiar? Grow the fuck up, there are things more important than what you want right now, what you want can never pass, you're just obsessed with being the center of attention? I wonder if we've heard any of that rhetoric recently. Except then it wasn't about the petulant socialists throwing tantrums, it was about petulant LGBT whiners throwing tantrums.
So yeah, it frosts my cookies when I get the whole with-us-or-against-us, follow-the-leader routine and and it's wrapped up in a bow with sanctimony over LGBT rights on top. It makes me want to scream into a pillow. The people now patronizing me about how we need Democratic solidarity in all things because of the importance of gay rights are the same people who, in the very same voice, would have been patronizing me back then about how we need Democratic solidarity in all things because of the importance of absolutely everything except gay rights. That so many of them are straight and I am gay is just a beautiful extra.
So no, I'm not here to punish Democratic politicians for the sins of the past. I cannot say I am without any bad feelings, though.
But they did get on the bus and by doing so even if it did not seem like it pushed the median voter to a position where policy explicitly for LGBT could be enacted.
Punishing the party always moves the mean voter away from you and so hurts your cause. It's that simple.
And it's not moderate Dems who are against you on this. When the party platform moves left moderate Dems see the platform move closer towards them as conservative Dems lose out. (Basically everyone who isn't the median voter wins)
120 people, including 104 donors to Bernie Sanders’ campaign, have sued embattled Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the DNC for fraud, negligent misrepresentation, and breach of fiduciary duty, among other claims, alleging that Wasserman Schultz favored Hillary Clinton and misled DNC and Sanders donors into believing she was impartial.
Emphasizing that the DNC chair is expected to “exercise impartiality and even handedness” by Democratic Party bylaws, the lawsuit cites documents recently released by hacker “Guccifer 2.0,” which included an opposition research file on Donald Trump, information on Democratic Party donors, and a document that suggests an early assumption (circa May 2015) that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee. (The author of the document is unknown.)
“The DNC Memo presents, ‘a suggested strategy for positioning and public messaging around the 2016 Republican presidential field.’ It states that, ‘Our goals in the coming months will be to frame the Republican field and the eventual nominee early and to provide a contrast between the GOP field and HRC,’” the lawsuit reads.
120 people, including 104 donors to Bernie Sanders’ campaign, have sued embattled Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the DNC for fraud, negligent misrepresentation, and breach of fiduciary duty, among other claims, alleging that Wasserman Schultz favored Hillary Clinton and misled DNC and Sanders donors into believing she was impartial.
Emphasizing that the DNC chair is expected to “exercise impartiality and even handedness” by Democratic Party bylaws, the lawsuit cites documents recently released by hacker “Guccifer 2.0,” which included an opposition research file on Donald Trump, information on Democratic Party donors, and a document that suggests an early assumption (circa May 2015) that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee. (The author of the document is unknown.)
“The DNC Memo presents, ‘a suggested strategy for positioning and public messaging around the 2016 Republican presidential field.’ It states that, ‘Our goals in the coming months will be to frame the Republican field and the eventual nominee early and to provide a contrast between the GOP field and HRC,’” the lawsuit reads.
(facepalm)
This lawsuit was going to happen no matter what. It's not hard to find 120 people like this in a country of over 300 million. The real question is whether or not Bernie will disassociate himself from the crazies.
As mentioned in the previous thread, all this lawsuit really boils down to is "We do not believe that the DNC should plan for the general election while the primaries are still taking place." And since the primaries don't officially end until the convention, that means that the DNC shouldn't be allowed to plan for the general election until the last three months of the election.
In other words, the filers seem to believe that the GOP should be able to attack the DNC front runners as much as they want throughout the entire election season, and the DNC shouldn't be allowed to even PLAN a counter strategy.
Impartiality means equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. It certainly doesn't mean that you have to play dead and completely ignore the GOP until the elections are almost over.
Personally I think that the public opinion shift on gays was a combination of factors that included celebrities coming out of the closet, normal gay people coming out of the closet (proven to change the opinion of even conservative politicians when it's their own child), several high-profile suicides of young gay people who had been bullied or harassed, and of course, the survey of all active duty military personnel at the behest of Congressional Republicans that blew up in their faces when it proved once and for all that even in the military, people just don't fucking care that much if other people are gay.
And then Democrats started to budge after Joe Biden tested the water for them and showed it wasn't as cold as they'd all thought.
I believe that all of these things were contributing factors. Some of them overlap with my list (e.g., the role gay media personalities). I also think that they are not independent of gay people agitating for change in all walks of life, cultural and political. I mean, take the high profile suicides you mention. Why did they play a role then? It's not like gay teens just started killing themselves in 2010. Gay suicide rates have been astronomical for as long as there exists data to measure it. But these suicides started getting attention at the point when the population was more sympathetic, the media was less reflexively hostile, and gay people were organized and pushing the issue.
In many ways, I don't think we see events that differently. I am not here to excoriate Democrats for having crept forward a half-step behind the median left wing voter, typically when given a little helpful shove. In that, I believe they are merely politicians and I expect no more and no less. And that is how I believe you ought to interact with them: try to move the median voter, and try to give the politicians helpful shoves. That's when they move. And this just seems sensible to me; nothing about it is some revenge quest against the Democratic party. In terms of the political upshot, I think joshofalltrades got it pretty well.
(It is worth noting that Biden reversed himself after a dinner party at the home of a pair of ultrawealthy gay donors; that I include a role for the gay donor class is one point where our lists differ).
That is not to say, though, that the political upshot for relating to politicians was my only point. Nor is it to say that I am free of any bitterness. I'm not. It's just that my bitterness is not against the mercenary politicians merely doing their job, but rather against some of their supporters. I am bitter against the mainline Democratic partisans who, halfway through the primary, discovered that LGBT rights are a useful cudgel in an intra-left fight and began to rally behind the subtext--and sometimes, text--that criticism of the Democratic party is anti-gay. People who say that criticizing the Democratic party ipso facto maligns LGBT rights; that LGBT rights are being trashed by petulant socialists who didn't get their pony, and so on.
It's not the first time I've been called a petulant child for expressing dissatisfaction with mainline Democrats. Allow me to actually repost the already-mentioned gem of Scalfin on gay rights activists who were critical of Obama in 2010:
Have you guys been paying attention to any of Obama's presidency? He can barely push anything through when concentrating on it exclusively, and you want him to push congress on something that has no chance of passing while he's already using everything he has simply keeping us from turning into Somalia.
Listen, I'm sorry that you can't always be the center of attention, the Times doesn't put your life on the front page, and sometimes there's something that's more important than what you want right now, but you guys need to grow the fuck up.
Sound familiar? Grow the fuck up, there are things more important than what you want right now, what you want can never pass, you're just obsessed with being the center of attention? I wonder if we've heard any of that rhetoric recently. Except then it wasn't about the petulant socialists throwing tantrums, it was about petulant LGBT whiners throwing tantrums.
So yeah, it frosts my cookies when I get the whole with-us-or-against-us, follow-the-leader routine and and it's wrapped up in a bow with sanctimony over LGBT rights on top. It makes me want to scream into a pillow. The people now patronizing me about how we need Democratic solidarity in all things because of the importance of gay rights are the same people who, in the very same voice, would have been patronizing me back then about how we need Democratic solidarity in all things because of the importance of absolutely everything except gay rights. That so many of them are straight and I am gay is just a beautiful extra.
So no, I'm not here to punish Democratic politicians for the sins of the past. I cannot say I am without any bad feelings, though.
I think I lost the thread on this whole argument.
Originally it was being argued the Democrats had not been pushing progressive policies over the past 8 years, correct? Gay rights were mentioned as part of a long list of issues that many of us do believe were progressive policies being pushed within that timeframe.
Are you disagreeing with that? I'm just not understanding what this argument is about exactly.
Personally I think that the public opinion shift on gays was a combination of factors that included celebrities coming out of the closet, normal gay people coming out of the closet (proven to change the opinion of even conservative politicians when it's their own child), several high-profile suicides of young gay people who had been bullied or harassed, and of course, the survey of all active duty military personnel at the behest of Congressional Republicans that blew up in their faces when it proved once and for all that even in the military, people just don't fucking care that much if other people are gay.
And then Democrats started to budge after Joe Biden tested the water for them and showed it wasn't as cold as they'd all thought.
I believe that all of these things were contributing factors. Some of them overlap with my list (e.g., the role gay media personalities). I also think that they are not independent of gay people agitating for change in all walks of life, cultural and political. I mean, take the high profile suicides you mention. Why did they play a role then? It's not like gay teens just started killing themselves in 2010. Gay suicide rates have been astronomical for as long as there exists data to measure it. But these suicides started getting attention at the point when the population was more sympathetic, the media was less reflexively hostile, and gay people were organized and pushing the issue.
In many ways, I don't think we see events that differently. I am not here to excoriate Democrats for having crept forward a half-step behind the median left wing voter, typically when given a little helpful shove. In that, I believe they are merely politicians and I expect no more and no less. And that is how I believe you ought to interact with them: try to move the median voter, and try to give the politicians helpful shoves. That's when they move. And this just seems sensible to me; nothing about it is some revenge quest against the Democratic party. In terms of the political upshot, I think joshofalltrades got it pretty well.
(It is worth noting that Biden reversed himself after a dinner party at the home of a pair of ultrawealthy gay donors; that I include a role for the gay donor class is one point where our lists differ).
That is not to say, though, that the political upshot for relating to politicians was my only point. Nor is it to say that I am free of any bitterness. I'm not. It's just that my bitterness is not against the mercenary politicians merely doing their job, but rather against some of their supporters. I am bitter against the mainline Democratic partisans who, halfway through the primary, discovered that LGBT rights are a useful cudgel in an intra-left fight and began to rally behind the subtext--and sometimes, text--that criticism of the Democratic party is anti-gay. People who say that criticizing the Democratic party ipso facto maligns LGBT rights; that LGBT rights are being trashed by petulant socialists who didn't get their pony, and so on.
It's not the first time I've been called a petulant child for expressing dissatisfaction with mainline Democrats. Allow me to actually repost the already-mentioned gem of Scalfin on gay rights activists who were critical of Obama in 2010:
Have you guys been paying attention to any of Obama's presidency? He can barely push anything through when concentrating on it exclusively, and you want him to push congress on something that has no chance of passing while he's already using everything he has simply keeping us from turning into Somalia.
Listen, I'm sorry that you can't always be the center of attention, the Times doesn't put your life on the front page, and sometimes there's something that's more important than what you want right now, but you guys need to grow the fuck up.
Sound familiar? Grow the fuck up, there are things more important than what you want right now, what you want can never pass, you're just obsessed with being the center of attention? I wonder if we've heard any of that rhetoric recently. Except then it wasn't about the petulant socialists throwing tantrums, it was about petulant LGBT whiners throwing tantrums.
So yeah, it frosts my cookies when I get the whole with-us-or-against-us, follow-the-leader routine and and it's wrapped up in a bow with sanctimony over LGBT rights on top. It makes me want to scream into a pillow. The people now patronizing me about how we need Democratic solidarity in all things because of the importance of gay rights are the same people who, in the very same voice, would have been patronizing me back then about how we need Democratic solidarity in all things because of the importance of absolutely everything except gay rights. That so many of them are straight and I am gay is just a beautiful extra.
So no, I'm not here to punish Democratic politicians for the sins of the past. I cannot say I am without any bad feelings, though.
I think I lost the thread on this whole argument.
Originally it was being argued the Democrats had not been pushing progressive policies over the past 8 years, correct? Gay rights were mentioned as part of a long list of issues that many of us do believe were progressive policies being pushed within that timeframe.
Are you disagreeing with that? I'm just not understanding what this argument is about exactly.
He's saying that the Democratic party shouldn't take too much credit for the tidal shift on gay marriage because that change was created by gays not by the democratic party.
And he's not wrong.
(And I'm saying that I don't like it when leftists (straight ones, in particular) beat up on Democrats for not having the correct stance on this and other gays issues in the past when they've since come around. In case anyone was curious, but you didn't ask for my opinion)
Personally I think that the public opinion shift on gays was a combination of factors that included celebrities coming out of the closet, normal gay people coming out of the closet (proven to change the opinion of even conservative politicians when it's their own child), several high-profile suicides of young gay people who had been bullied or harassed, and of course, the survey of all active duty military personnel at the behest of Congressional Republicans that blew up in their faces when it proved once and for all that even in the military, people just don't fucking care that much if other people are gay.
And then Democrats started to budge after Joe Biden tested the water for them and showed it wasn't as cold as they'd all thought.
I believe that all of these things were contributing factors. Some of them overlap with my list (e.g., the role gay media personalities). I also think that they are not independent of gay people agitating for change in all walks of life, cultural and political. I mean, take the high profile suicides you mention. Why did they play a role then? It's not like gay teens just started killing themselves in 2010. Gay suicide rates have been astronomical for as long as there exists data to measure it. But these suicides started getting attention at the point when the population was more sympathetic, the media was less reflexively hostile, and gay people were organized and pushing the issue.
In many ways, I don't think we see events that differently. I am not here to excoriate Democrats for having crept forward a half-step behind the median left wing voter, typically when given a little helpful shove. In that, I believe they are merely politicians and I expect no more and no less. And that is how I believe you ought to interact with them: try to move the median voter, and try to give the politicians helpful shoves. That's when they move. And this just seems sensible to me; nothing about it is some revenge quest against the Democratic party. In terms of the political upshot, I think joshofalltrades got it pretty well.
(It is worth noting that Biden reversed himself after a dinner party at the home of a pair of ultrawealthy gay donors; that I include a role for the gay donor class is one point where our lists differ).
That is not to say, though, that the political upshot for relating to politicians was my only point. Nor is it to say that I am free of any bitterness. I'm not. It's just that my bitterness is not against the mercenary politicians merely doing their job, but rather against some of their supporters. I am bitter against the mainline Democratic partisans who, halfway through the primary, discovered that LGBT rights are a useful cudgel in an intra-left fight and began to rally behind the subtext--and sometimes, text--that criticism of the Democratic party is anti-gay. People who say that criticizing the Democratic party ipso facto maligns LGBT rights; that LGBT rights are being trashed by petulant socialists who didn't get their pony, and so on.
It's not the first time I've been called a petulant child for expressing dissatisfaction with mainline Democrats. Allow me to actually repost the already-mentioned gem of Scalfin on gay rights activists who were critical of Obama in 2010:
Have you guys been paying attention to any of Obama's presidency? He can barely push anything through when concentrating on it exclusively, and you want him to push congress on something that has no chance of passing while he's already using everything he has simply keeping us from turning into Somalia.
Listen, I'm sorry that you can't always be the center of attention, the Times doesn't put your life on the front page, and sometimes there's something that's more important than what you want right now, but you guys need to grow the fuck up.
Sound familiar? Grow the fuck up, there are things more important than what you want right now, what you want can never pass, you're just obsessed with being the center of attention? I wonder if we've heard any of that rhetoric recently. Except then it wasn't about the petulant socialists throwing tantrums, it was about petulant LGBT whiners throwing tantrums.
So yeah, it frosts my cookies when I get the whole with-us-or-against-us, follow-the-leader routine and and it's wrapped up in a bow with sanctimony over LGBT rights on top. It makes me want to scream into a pillow. The people now patronizing me about how we need Democratic solidarity in all things because of the importance of gay rights are the same people who, in the very same voice, would have been patronizing me back then about how we need Democratic solidarity in all things because of the importance of absolutely everything except gay rights. That so many of them are straight and I am gay is just a beautiful extra.
So no, I'm not here to punish Democratic politicians for the sins of the past. I cannot say I am without any bad feelings, though.
I think I lost the thread on this whole argument.
Originally it was being argued the Democrats had not been pushing progressive policies over the past 8 years, correct? Gay rights were mentioned as part of a long list of issues that many of us do believe were progressive policies being pushed within that timeframe.
Are you disagreeing with that? I'm just not understanding what this argument is about exactly.
He's saying that the Democratic party shouldn't take too much credit for the tidal shift on gay marriage because that change was created by gays not by the democratic party.
And he's not wrong.
(And I'm saying that I don't like it when leftists (straight ones, in particular) beat up on Democrats for not having the correct stance on this and other gays issues in the past when they've since come around. In case anyone was curious, but you didn't ask for my opinion)
Doesn't this implicitly assume a division between "the Democratic Party" and the individuals who can most credibly cited as directly/importantly/whatever responsible? There might be some that aren't politically active or who participate in some other party, but a large majority are at least affiliatedor allied with the relevant liberal party.
Personally I think that the public opinion shift on gays was a combination of factors that included celebrities coming out of the closet, normal gay people coming out of the closet (proven to change the opinion of even conservative politicians when it's their own child), several high-profile suicides of young gay people who had been bullied or harassed, and of course, the survey of all active duty military personnel at the behest of Congressional Republicans that blew up in their faces when it proved once and for all that even in the military, people just don't fucking care that much if other people are gay.
And then Democrats started to budge after Joe Biden tested the water for them and showed it wasn't as cold as they'd all thought.
I believe that all of these things were contributing factors. Some of them overlap with my list (e.g., the role gay media personalities). I also think that they are not independent of gay people agitating for change in all walks of life, cultural and political. I mean, take the high profile suicides you mention. Why did they play a role then? It's not like gay teens just started killing themselves in 2010. Gay suicide rates have been astronomical for as long as there exists data to measure it. But these suicides started getting attention at the point when the population was more sympathetic, the media was less reflexively hostile, and gay people were organized and pushing the issue.
In many ways, I don't think we see events that differently. I am not here to excoriate Democrats for having crept forward a half-step behind the median left wing voter, typically when given a little helpful shove. In that, I believe they are merely politicians and I expect no more and no less. And that is how I believe you ought to interact with them: try to move the median voter, and try to give the politicians helpful shoves. That's when they move. And this just seems sensible to me; nothing about it is some revenge quest against the Democratic party. In terms of the political upshot, I think joshofalltrades got it pretty well.
(It is worth noting that Biden reversed himself after a dinner party at the home of a pair of ultrawealthy gay donors; that I include a role for the gay donor class is one point where our lists differ).
That is not to say, though, that the political upshot for relating to politicians was my only point. Nor is it to say that I am free of any bitterness. I'm not. It's just that my bitterness is not against the mercenary politicians merely doing their job, but rather against some of their supporters. I am bitter against the mainline Democratic partisans who, halfway through the primary, discovered that LGBT rights are a useful cudgel in an intra-left fight and began to rally behind the subtext--and sometimes, text--that criticism of the Democratic party is anti-gay. People who say that criticizing the Democratic party ipso facto maligns LGBT rights; that LGBT rights are being trashed by petulant socialists who didn't get their pony, and so on.
It's not the first time I've been called a petulant child for expressing dissatisfaction with mainline Democrats. Allow me to actually repost the already-mentioned gem of Scalfin on gay rights activists who were critical of Obama in 2010:
Have you guys been paying attention to any of Obama's presidency? He can barely push anything through when concentrating on it exclusively, and you want him to push congress on something that has no chance of passing while he's already using everything he has simply keeping us from turning into Somalia.
Listen, I'm sorry that you can't always be the center of attention, the Times doesn't put your life on the front page, and sometimes there's something that's more important than what you want right now, but you guys need to grow the fuck up.
Sound familiar? Grow the fuck up, there are things more important than what you want right now, what you want can never pass, you're just obsessed with being the center of attention? I wonder if we've heard any of that rhetoric recently. Except then it wasn't about the petulant socialists throwing tantrums, it was about petulant LGBT whiners throwing tantrums.
So yeah, it frosts my cookies when I get the whole with-us-or-against-us, follow-the-leader routine and and it's wrapped up in a bow with sanctimony over LGBT rights on top. It makes me want to scream into a pillow. The people now patronizing me about how we need Democratic solidarity in all things because of the importance of gay rights are the same people who, in the very same voice, would have been patronizing me back then about how we need Democratic solidarity in all things because of the importance of absolutely everything except gay rights. That so many of them are straight and I am gay is just a beautiful extra.
So no, I'm not here to punish Democratic politicians for the sins of the past. I cannot say I am without any bad feelings, though.
I think I lost the thread on this whole argument.
Originally it was being argued the Democrats had not been pushing progressive policies over the past 8 years, correct? Gay rights were mentioned as part of a long list of issues that many of us do believe were progressive policies being pushed within that timeframe.
Are you disagreeing with that? I'm just not understanding what this argument is about exactly.
He's saying that the Democratic party shouldn't take too much credit for the tidal shift on gay marriage because that change was created by gays not by the democratic party.
And he's not wrong.
(And I'm saying that I don't like it when leftists (straight ones, in particular) beat up on Democrats for not having the correct stance on this and other gays issues in the past when they've since come around. In case anyone was curious, but you didn't ask for my opinion)
Doesn't this implicitly assume a division between "the Democratic Party" and the individuals who can most credibly cited as directly/importantly/whatever responsible? There might be some that aren't politically active or who participate in some other party, but a large majority are at least affiliatedor allied with the relevant liberal party.
There certainly is a division between gays who wanted Obama to move on gay issues and straight Democrats who told us to stop complaining because our concerns weren't important enough and Obama couldn't afford to waste precious political capital on our trivial concerns.
Fuck off Sawant. Jesus Christ this person helps run my city.
Socialist Alternative is a mixed bag. They've been at the forefront of fight for 15. And on the issues Sawant is, for the most part, pretty great. But they're also ideologically off the map--which is part of the reason they exist as a separate party in the first place. And I don't think these are independent facts, the fact that they are the vanguard of some great stuff and also the fact that they're deeply conflicted about their place within a two-party capitalist state. It's worth noting that they are, within their membership, deeply divided about whether to run national candidates.
I'm too much of a Democrat to really fit in the Socialist Alternative box; I'm the sort of person they would call a 'fellow traveler.' I still generally like them because they activate and organize elements of the very far-left that don't fit well within the Democratic party but can nonetheless be a positive force within the broader political system.
Capital L Left folks here in the US (and in other democracies) always seem to be torn over having a popular front (socialists, liberals, left-of-center moderates) vs. a united front (leftists only) approach of organizing for electoral politics. Socialist Alternative at a glance seem like they want to be united-fronters who can compete on the national stage, but that would inevitably lead to Green Party irrelevancy and a perpetual series of Ralph Nader/Jill Stein-like revolving door vanity campaigns.
Also Sawant telling Sanders to run 3rd party isn't anything new. I recall her and holier-than-thou reporter/commentator Chris Hedges were angling for this as far back as 2014 and Sanders still said no. He was called a traitor, or something equally petty, by Hedges for running in the Dem primary, and for all the flaws of Sanders' 2016 campaign, the fact that he has attracted ire on his right and left I think is indicative of something that was done correctly (i.e. not being yet another Nader).
As a complete diversion, I don't know if it's been said but the title of this thread is fucking delightful. If only because it makes me think of Sanders as a pissed off wizard.
As a complete diversion, I don't know if it's been said but the title of this thread is fucking delightful. If only because it makes me think of Sanders as a pissed off wizard.
As a Sanders supporter I refuse to accept him being compared to Goblet of Fire Dumbledore, aka the worst Dumbledore. He's Richard Harris Dumbledore or at least Michael Gambon-once-he-grew-into-the-role-after-a-few-movies Dumbledore.
Posts
Just because you reward them doesn't mean that you stop pushing.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Quoted from BOTP.
Gun control costs next to nothing, which means republicans don't get to whine about taxes.
Regina Fong is talking directly in response to override367's comments about how the Democrats "weren't sure about whether or not gays were people" by saying there's no point in getting bitter and angry at progress that's already been made. Even his second response isn't arguing against what MrMr said, he's saying "Yeah, I dislike that kind of thing too, but it still stands that there's no reason to get angry at the Democrats when you already pulled them to the right spot on the issue".
This example is of limited applicability to anything Sanders is talking about though since it's neither as sweeping in scope nor as difficult in implementation as anything he's been on about.
Like, the biggest thing the Democratic party did was really just help to normalise the stance that gays are AOK by doing things like having the President come out and say "Yeah, gays are cool".
Which is the other side of the issue with this attempt at analogy because what happened with that is that public support shifted enough that the party felt it didn't need to hedge on the issue anymore. Not because of some insurgency within the party led by committed interest groups.
So the problems are *handwave* fixable? How so? Even Hillary's answer is just tax credits. Even then that's a poor solution. Tax credits do you no good if you don't have the money to cover the bill in the first place.
You're also right that this is a health care issue rather than a health insurance issue. But again, that doesn't prevent the lowest common denominator from conflating these problems with all government healthcare. Hell, the only real solution to the skyrocketing helathcare costs is either single-payer or a Maryland style Bluebook that sets caps on what can be charged for any given procedure.
The way I see it is people are saying about Bernie's ideas that "Perfect is the enemy of good". The way I see it is the flip side of the coin as well, and that "Adequate is also the enemy of good."
I'm forced to agree with both points.
That severance could be the scandal, considering what happened there.
Bringing a shit load of Progressives into the party means that people have to take their values and interests into account and campaign accordingly, thus moving the party to the right.
Choosing to die on your hill of ideals means that ~much like occupy wall street~ all you did was make a lot of noise.
I'm thinking this is a pretty good olive branch that bernie will ultimatley ignore in favor of continuing to be an obnoxious old fart.
Dan Savage probably has the best take on this matter:
Except that Sanders wasn't really promoting any realistic ideas with regards to fixing health care either. Remember, the original version of his plan actually said that it would save more money on pharmaceuticals than the US actually spends.
As for fixing health care, here are a few points:
* Greater usage of PAs/NPs for first line health care.
* End the ridiculous two tier system of medical education in the US, which no other major Western country uses.
* Expand residency slots, as well as government ability to choose what specialities it will fund residencies in.
* Crack down on healthcare consortiums.
* Encourage expansion of lower cost first line options.
Exactly.
(with the addition that when it's not even gays doing the hammering but straight people, it's even more annoying)
From the link:
If Bernie supporters start switching over to become Trump or Cruz supporters, that's your own damned fault for focusing your time instructing you time and effort on bashing Hillary where you agree with the GOP, and losing sight of actual progressive issues where you don't.
It's basic statistics. The smaller your sample side, the easier it is to create an outlier.
Clinton won because she gained the support of a lot of red states and swing states. Sanders couldn't do that. The problem is, Sanders keeps thinking in terms of being president of the states where he won for the voters who voted for him, when the president needs to be the president for everyone.
If you think that the only opinions that matters are the people who live in the bluest of blue states, then go run a blue state. The republicans understand this -- look at Rick Scott or Rick Snyder, for example.
Bernie's main problem is that he's trying to run a national campaign based on localized support.
Socialist Alternative is a mixed bag. They've been at the forefront of fight for 15. And on the issues Sawant is, for the most part, pretty great. But they're also ideologically off the map--which is part of the reason they exist as a separate party in the first place. And I don't think these are independent facts, the fact that they are the vanguard of some great stuff and also the fact that they're deeply conflicted about their place within a two-party capitalist state. It's worth noting that they are, within their membership, deeply divided about whether to run national candidates.
I'm too much of a Democrat to really fit in the Socialist Alternative box; I'm the sort of person they would call a 'fellow traveler.' I still generally like them because they activate and organize elements of the very far-left that don't fit well within the Democratic party but can nonetheless be a positive force within the broader political system.
Can I just say that his constant requests for extensions come off as insulting, given his push for transparency?
He can't. Or he can't and get on ballots at this point.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Now to find a mop for the blood.
I believe that all of these things were contributing factors. Some of them overlap with my list (e.g., the role gay media personalities). I also think that they are not independent of gay people agitating for change in all walks of life, cultural and political. I mean, take the high profile suicides you mention. Why did they play a role then? It's not like gay teens just started killing themselves in 2010. Gay suicide rates have been astronomical for as long as there exists data to measure it. But these suicides started getting attention at the point when the population was more sympathetic, the media was less reflexively hostile, and gay people were organized and pushing the issue.
In many ways, I don't think we see events that differently. I am not here to excoriate Democrats for having crept forward a half-step behind the median left wing voter, typically when given a little helpful shove. In that, I believe they are merely politicians and I expect no more and no less. And that is how I believe you ought to interact with them: try to move the median voter, and try to give the politicians helpful shoves. That's when they move. And this just seems sensible to me; nothing about it is some revenge quest against the Democratic party. In terms of the political upshot, I think joshofalltrades got it pretty well.
(It is worth noting that Biden reversed himself after a dinner party at the home of a pair of ultrawealthy gay donors; that I include a role for the gay donor class is one point where our lists differ).
That is not to say, though, that the political upshot for relating to politicians was my only point. Nor is it to say that I am free of any bitterness. I'm not. It's just that my bitterness is not against the mercenary politicians merely doing their job, but rather against some of their supporters. I am bitter against the mainline Democratic partisans who, halfway through the primary, discovered that LGBT rights are a useful cudgel in an intra-left fight and began to rally behind the subtext--and sometimes, text--that criticism of the Democratic party is anti-gay. People who say that criticizing the Democratic party ipso facto maligns LGBT rights; that LGBT rights are being trashed by petulant socialists who didn't get their pony, and so on.
It's not the first time I've been called a petulant child for expressing dissatisfaction with mainline Democrats. Allow me to actually repost the already-mentioned gem of Scalfin on gay rights activists who were critical of Obama in 2010:
Sound familiar? Grow the fuck up, there are things more important than what you want right now, what you want can never pass, you're just obsessed with being the center of attention? I wonder if we've heard any of that rhetoric recently. Except then it wasn't about the petulant socialists throwing tantrums, it was about petulant LGBT whiners throwing tantrums.
So yeah, it frosts my cookies when I get the whole with-us-or-against-us, follow-the-leader routine and and it's wrapped up in a bow with sanctimony over LGBT rights on top. It makes me want to scream into a pillow. The people now patronizing me about how we need Democratic solidarity in all things because of the importance of gay rights are the same people who, in the very same voice, would have been patronizing me back then about how we need Democratic solidarity in all things because of the importance of absolutely everything except gay rights. That so many of them are straight and I am gay is just a beautiful extra.
So no, I'm not here to punish Democratic politicians for the sins of the past. I cannot say I am without any bad feelings, though.
Yeah be calm john spartan. Not to mention I'm pretty sure the % of people who would vote for a sanders independent run would be an incredibly small % of the people who voted for him in the primary as the anecdata from former sanders voters is already annoyed at his not conceeding and waffling.
pleasepaypreacher.net
There's a group in Nevada led by one of his delegates trying to get him on the ballot by petition as an independent right now.
http://www.rgj.com/story/news/politics/2016/06/26/ralston-reports-sanders-revolution-ending-bern-out/86360800/
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
pleasepaypreacher.net
I'd have to double check but the only place I know he can't is Texas which he'd never win anyways.
There is definitely time for him to get in and be a spoiler in important states though.
Wouldn't have previously thought he'd do that but he's doing a great job of cratering my opinion of him lately.
Of course it sounds familiar, I was there I read all the same types of posts as you did around that time. It was definitely "party line" for a large number of Democratic posters on this forum. You might have noticed I have been hugely disdainful of the phrase "political capital" pretty much ever since, when I realized it was code for "stfu and get in the back of the bus".
It's probably just selection bias, but I haven't noticed the type of comment you're complaining about, while I have noticed the type I complained about.
And while you seem to think override is basically correct, I find his argument paternalistic and unwanted.
Errata (and original post edited to reflect it): in that line I meant to type joshofalltrades but accidentally typed override. Specifically I was trying to refer to this post, which I thought captured the immediate political upshot of what I was going for pretty well, in a way that clearly differentiated it from "burn them all for the sins of the past."
But they did get on the bus and by doing so even if it did not seem like it pushed the median voter to a position where policy explicitly for LGBT could be enacted.
Punishing the party always moves the mean voter away from you and so hurts your cause. It's that simple.
And it's not moderate Dems who are against you on this. When the party platform moves left moderate Dems see the platform move closer towards them as conservative Dems lose out. (Basically everyone who isn't the median voter wins)
(facepalm)
This lawsuit was going to happen no matter what. It's not hard to find 120 people like this in a country of over 300 million. The real question is whether or not Bernie will disassociate himself from the crazies.
As mentioned in the previous thread, all this lawsuit really boils down to is "We do not believe that the DNC should plan for the general election while the primaries are still taking place." And since the primaries don't officially end until the convention, that means that the DNC shouldn't be allowed to plan for the general election until the last three months of the election.
In other words, the filers seem to believe that the GOP should be able to attack the DNC front runners as much as they want throughout the entire election season, and the DNC shouldn't be allowed to even PLAN a counter strategy.
Impartiality means equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. It certainly doesn't mean that you have to play dead and completely ignore the GOP until the elections are almost over.
I think I lost the thread on this whole argument.
Originally it was being argued the Democrats had not been pushing progressive policies over the past 8 years, correct? Gay rights were mentioned as part of a long list of issues that many of us do believe were progressive policies being pushed within that timeframe.
Are you disagreeing with that? I'm just not understanding what this argument is about exactly.
He's saying that the Democratic party shouldn't take too much credit for the tidal shift on gay marriage because that change was created by gays not by the democratic party.
And he's not wrong.
(And I'm saying that I don't like it when leftists (straight ones, in particular) beat up on Democrats for not having the correct stance on this and other gays issues in the past when they've since come around. In case anyone was curious, but you didn't ask for my opinion)
Doesn't this implicitly assume a division between "the Democratic Party" and the individuals who can most credibly cited as directly/importantly/whatever responsible? There might be some that aren't politically active or who participate in some other party, but a large majority are at least affiliatedor allied with the relevant liberal party.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
There certainly is a division between gays who wanted Obama to move on gay issues and straight Democrats who told us to stop complaining because our concerns weren't important enough and Obama couldn't afford to waste precious political capital on our trivial concerns.
Yes.
Capital L Left folks here in the US (and in other democracies) always seem to be torn over having a popular front (socialists, liberals, left-of-center moderates) vs. a united front (leftists only) approach of organizing for electoral politics. Socialist Alternative at a glance seem like they want to be united-fronters who can compete on the national stage, but that would inevitably lead to Green Party irrelevancy and a perpetual series of Ralph Nader/Jill Stein-like revolving door vanity campaigns.
Also Sawant telling Sanders to run 3rd party isn't anything new. I recall her and holier-than-thou reporter/commentator Chris Hedges were angling for this as far back as 2014 and Sanders still said no. He was called a traitor, or something equally petty, by Hedges for running in the Dem primary, and for all the flaws of Sanders' 2016 campaign, the fact that he has attracted ire on his right and left I think is indicative of something that was done correctly (i.e. not being yet another Nader).
At this point, he's more like a pissed off squib.