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The Long, Guarana-Injected Red Bull Binge of the Democratic Party
Gosling
Looking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, ProbablyWatertown, WIRegistered User regular
Looking Up Soccer In Mongolia Right Now, ProbablyWatertown, WIRegistered User regular
In order to combat the increasing problem of the GOP thread slowly morphing into the general 'politics' thread, I've made the call to make a Democratic-themed thread so we can keep the blue thread blue and the red thread red.
Like a thermos, but you throw it at people who disagree with you.
The article that kicked that off came from Emanon, and it was this, concerning a Pennsylvania state senator convicted on corruption charges. I got a better one, though.
So, now we have one thread per party. Please keep things party-appropriate regarding the two threads.
Like a thermos, but you throw it at people who disagree with you.
The article that kicked that off came from Emanon, and it was this, concerning a Pennsylvania state senator convicted on corruption charges. I got a better one, though.
Politico wrote:Unity '09: Dem groups quietly align
By: Ben Smith
March 14, 2009 07:45 PM EST
A broad coalition of left-leaning groups is quietly closing ranks into a new coalition, "Unity '09," aimed at helping President Barack Obama push his agenda through Congress.
Conceived at a New York meeting before the November election, two Democrats familiar with the planning said, Unity '09 will draw together money and grassroots organizations to pressure lawmakers in their home states to back White House legislation and other progressive causes.
The online-based MoveOn.org is a central player in the nascent organization, but other groups involved in planning Unity '09 span a broad spectrum of interests, from the American Civil Liberties Union to the National Council of La Raza to Planned Parenthood, as well as labor unions and environmental groups.
The group is still in its early stages, and its organizers have adopted a secretive posture: Several of the people involved did not respond to emails over the last two days, even though one of them, former MoveOn executive director Eli Pariser, has programmed his MoveOn email account to assure correspondents that he is using the account for messages "including Unity '09 work."
People familiar with the planning said that the White House is not directly involved in the group's formation, though Unity '09's main day-to-day staffer, Aaron Pickrell, was a senior aide on Obama's presidential campaign. Aides to Obama and to Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel didn't respond to inquiries about whether they were familiar with the group.
Unity '09 comes at a time of increasing coordination on the left, including an effort this week by the Democratic National Committee, Obama's grassroots network and other groups to defend Obama's budget and attack the GOP as obstructionists.
But Unity '09 is setting a broader, and longer-term agenda, aiming to exert grassroots pressure on lawmakers in their home states over the next several years on the entire spectrum of political issues.
"When progressive activists are working in concert and the right is forming a circular firing squad, you know it's a new day," said consultant Paul Begala, who said he's not involved in the new organization.
Unity '09 is, informally, the field organizing compliment to another new organization, Progressive Media , which launched a month ago to coordinate the liberal groups' messages and their attacks on Republicans and on critics of Obama's policies. That group's 8:45 a.m. daily conference call has helped bring such unlikely groups as the League of Conservation Voters into an effort to cast Rush Limbaugh as the leader of the Republican Party, and has coordinated attacks on two leading critics of Obama's health care plans.
But while Progressive Media is an in-house project of two existing organizations, the Center for American Progress and Media Matters, Unity '09 requires more commitment from its members in the form of a $25,000 contribution to the group's future organizing campaigns, a source said.
Unity '09 is conceived as ultimately including 20 to 30 organizations, people familiar with the planning said. The groups have overlapping, but different, groups of members and financial resources at their disposal, and the idea behind the organization is that they can share resources to fill in geographical and organizational gaps. Labor unions could, for instance, put their weight behind environmental campaigns in regions where environmental groups are relatively weak, and vice versa.
Along with the groups previously mentioned, others involved in planning discussions include the Sierra Club, Media Matters for America, and Health Care for America Now.
Unity '09 is not to be confused with Unity '08, a bipartisan group of political operatives that sought to nominate New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg as the top of an independent presidential ticket last year.
The new organization is likely to stir fears among conservatives already feeling organizationally outgunned and flatly alarmed by the new progressive infrastructure.
"This, ladies and gentlemen is, a threat to America," Fox News's Bill O'Reilly said, responding Saturday night to POLITICO's report on the birth of Progressive Media and its morning conference call. "The Obama administration would be wise to avoid this crew. If the new administration gets involved in this, it would be like the Nixon dirty tricks squad."
So, now we have one thread per party. Please keep things party-appropriate regarding the two threads.
I have a new soccer blog The Minnow Tank. Reading it psychically kicks Sepp Blatter in the bean bag.
Gosling on
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For now, I will state that I think the Dems biggest challenge is keeping the disaffected ex-moderates and -Pubs that are just now showing interest in their party. There are people who are fiscally conservative and socially moderate who are repulsed by what they see as the lunacy of the GOP, and they're looking for a new home. This does not mean we're suddenly a nation of nascent Chomskyites. If the Dems mistakenly assume it does, then their recent gains will only last a couple cycles. If they decide they wish to accomodate these new folks, though, if they show interest in balancing the budget and reining in spending a bit and monitoring security adequately and showing their empathy for religious concerns while still fundamentally pushing for progressive policies, then they will not only keep these people, they will force an adaptation by the GOP.
It is a fine line, and it will take finesse and savvy to walk it. I think Obama potentially has that finesse and savvy, but even so it will be difficult to do so. But if he does, this will be an era that history books will devote entire chapters to.
May I suggest: Dude, Where's My Spineless Cowards? (Democrats thread)
EDIT: Yeah, I didn't have much. I just wanted the thread made.
dot-dot-dot, DNC
They also have to be careful as to how they define 'dead weight'. John Murtha and Maxine Waters should probably be among the first on the chopping block. Blue Dogs shouldn't be hounded out just for being Blue Dogs.
The Democratic party has this infuriating tendency to let Republicans/conservatives in power get away with a lot more than they should, especially liberal newscasters; this could mean that Democrats are more polite, but it could just as easily mean that Democrats are more passive.
Now, it's somewhat of a moot point at the current moment, because we have a Democratic President, Senate, and Congress, but the point stands: why is that Democrats seem happier to take abuse, rather than attack the Republicans whenever they do something stupid?
@ElJeffe: I think you're totally right here; this is absolutely what's happening, and that's absolutely what the Democratic party needs to do, not just to maintain the power it has right now, but also to make changes and improvements to this country, because let's face it: we're in kind of a bad way right now.
Hopefully, Obama is as awesome as we all thought he was, and he'll be able to make the above improvements.
Should be an interesting couple years here.
EDIT: After looking at those billboards, I think they're all fail. There should just be one that says "SHUT THE FUCK UP RUSH."
Because not only is he annoying, but he's going to do a lot of damage to the GOP (and America) if he keeps saying stupid shit and trying to divide the country along imaginary lines.
Since when was corruption what made the Dems lose many elections?
Since 1994
I don't think even endemic corruption can necessarily take down an entire party. Both parties have their fair share, and even as the GOP instances were mounting over the last half-decade, that was only a small factor in their fall from power. It was less GOP corruption and more the consistent failure of their message combined with their policies uniformly failing (at least in the public eye).
If we'd won Iraq three years ago and if the economy was doing well, McCain would be president right now. This in spite of Plamegate, Torturegate, Lawyergate, and every other scandal and instance of corruption we saw come out of the last administration and the 2000-2008 GOP.
The public doesn't care if you're an unscrupulous, blatantly corrupt, lying fuckweasel - as long as you get the job done. We've grown cynical. If Nixon had wound up in Watergate in this modern environment, he'd have been able to shrug it off.
Tie Em's statement to the one below:
Give them a single, high-profile, easily-assailable target and they will focus-fire to bring him, and anyone who defends him, down. I shudder to think what would have happened if Edwards or Richardson had gotten the VP nod.
Long and short, the Pubs are good at selling an image of the Dems, but they have to have fuel for that first.
It's been 15 years.
Except that NO.
Federally, not many, although the association didn't help Harold Ford, Jr.
Yeah, it's counterproductive at best. I'm still hopeful that the party is going to expand and be more engaging with the plains states and desert south-west and less enamored with the rust belt. Which would basically go along the line that you described, only with a better social safety net. Environmentalism can be the cause that manages to unite all the disparate factions within the Democrats provided they play it right. Good union jobs, money to modernize, say, Pittsburgh, conservation of our natural wonders that we can enjoy and also shoot at, and then just plain environmentalism.
So, not many?
They've been trying to unite everyone through environmentalism for the past twenty years. Greenpeace and PETA and the ELF keep fucking it up for them, and the party has no control over those organizations.
Don't say that around Salvation or he'll explain the history of Tennessee politics to us all again and say that interpretation is blatantly incorrect.
Corruption is common on both sides of the aisles and is always a risk to either party if poorly handled. Where dems failed was in complete loss of control of the message and being utterly ineffectual in actually doing anything useful for a long span of time. Their last foray into power from 92-00 was repub-lite in most respects. One of the major acts of deregulation (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) that set us up for the fall was passed under Clinton for crying out loud.
Unfortunately lots of those useless senators and representatives are still with us. And they are still as useless as ever.
Though at this point unless Obama fucks up really bad, I don't see much of a threat coming from the GOP. At least until they remove the stupid from their party and try to actually get back to what they were supposed to be standing for all along.
It certainly doesn't help people get elected, but it rarely is the sole reason they get kicked out of office. Who's that guy in NOLA with cash in his freezer? Yeah, didn't he get re-elected?
Actually he got his ass kicked in a ridiculously pro-Dem district. I think Obama won by 40 and he lost his seat to I think Joseph Cao (might be wrong on the first name). The Republican who the whips basically had to stand over and intimidate into voting against the stimulus and is now fucked because of it unless he changes parties.
Except that 20 years ago environmentalism wasn't producing anything and could get shoved off as spotted owls. Now you have a wind turbine plant that you can shake people's hands at which can produce 20% of the national grid. Western libertarians who like their unspoiled hinterlands are more open to listening to what the Dem's have to say after the GOP shot themselves in the foot with this group. &c. You can pick up a few states if you become more Jon Tester and less hippie, which is where the DNC is going.
Goddamnit, I'm not breaking that fucking ad down line for line again. Every nasty attack in that ad was drawing a line between Harold Ford, Jr, Rep from Memphis, and his crazy corrupt utter fucking failure as a human being uncle, John Ford, Sr, state Senator from Memphis. Kickbacks from porn producers, affairs with models, his uncle did all that shit and the name Ford in connection with it was well-known within the state. It was a dirty fucking ad, but it played to a very Tennessee-specific message that people who have not lived there do not pick up on. If you want to slam someone's race in Tennessee, it is far cheaper to get some random campaign volunteer to call one of the local radio talk shows and slam it, and you'll get absolutely zero blowback.
The Dems definitely have an issue with their loonier members. The Pubs have loons too, but those loons are either less organized, or are loony in a way that doesn't offend the general public as much, or is considered taboo to really tear apart because of religious connotations.
I mean, okay, the NRA goes overboard sometimes, but at its core the message is "we like our guns", and that core message resonates. There are a ton of crazy fringe religious groups on the right, but nobody wants to call them out because that means you hate Jesus. And the really crazy folks, like women's clinic bombers, don't exactly have an organized front.
Compared with PETA and ELF, which have, as their core messages, things like "animals are better than people" or "modern civilization is evil". Even their most respectable showings highlight sentiments that just don't resonate with the average guy, who feels that animals exist principally for our use and pleasure, and that modern consumerism is at worst perhaps a little excessive.
The Dems should really work on marginalizing these groups, because every time PETA puts out a new ad, the Dems lose support.
Only superficially.
The crazy Dems think that we should stop buying SUVs and go have an orgy, as long as everyone uses condoms.
The crazy Pubs think we should stop having orgies and go buy some SUVs before having unenjoyable, procreative missionary sex.
I guess the common link is that they all think people should get to fucking.
See, I told you guys.
Yeah, I saw your post after I made mine and laughed.
In fairness, it wasn't the three-page wall o'text with a dozen links it has been the past three times I've done it.
And for that we all thank you.