Now official Dem leadership is not party to this plot. They are in fact the plot's targets. This is where the incompetence comes in. They are consistently unable to wrangle control over individual senators who have been coopted by moneyed interests.
I would like to know what they are supposed to do. They could throw Sinema and Manchin out of the party, which gets them nowhere. They could blackmail them illegally (does anyone support that?) They could primary them when they are up for election (I'm dead sure this will happen to Sinema, but Manchin has a lock on his local Democratic party) which will take a few years.
What exactly could they do right now?
Right now? Right now they are boned. They are reaping the consequences of decades of bad strategy. They picked bad positions. They backed bad candidates. What they should do now is resign in disgrace. But they won't because they are narcissistic gerontocrats who love being in a position of power even as they institution they allegedly lead is falling apart around them.
That's just a bunch of emotions, not a plan.
Are you under the illusion that the things we are saying on this forum are informing Democratic Party strategy?
what is the mechanism by which we can force a party to care about things they get paid a lot of money to not care about? how does this work on the ground?
In a democracy of 300 million, no-one gets very much say, as an individual. Just keep voting Democrat, and encourage others to vote Democrat. Then go volunteer at a little local charity where you can have a big influence and get something tangible done.
what is the mechanism by which we can force a party to care about things they get paid a lot of money to not care about? how does this work on the ground?
In a democracy of 300 million, no-one gets very much say, as an individual. Just keep voting Democrat, and encourage others to vote Democrat. Then go volunteer at a little local charity where you can have a big influence and get something tangible done.
On the other hand, demand things from anyone who wants your vote and tell them to go fuck themselves if they dont meet it.
what is the mechanism by which we can force a party to care about things they get paid a lot of money to not care about? how does this work on the ground?
In a democracy of 300 million, no-one gets very much say, as an individual. Just keep voting Democrat, and encourage others to vote Democrat. Then go volunteer at a little local charity where you can have a big influence and get something tangible done.
this isn't an answer. the democratic party is structured such that they are unwilling to accept the demands of the very large number of people who want things out of them that their donors don't, and they're very good at fending off attempts to change that structure. how does voting for them harder change this? how is that not just doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? why should i encourage people to vote for candidates that belong to a party that's openly hostile to almost everything i think is necessary?
also i mentioned this earlier in the thread but giving up on electoral politics is not giving up on politics in general
If you give up on electoral politics, the only methods available to effect change are not permitted to be discussed on this forum. Or local feelgood stuff like building houses for charities, which will do your soul a world of good and get you into heaven but will never help big picture stuff like climate change.
honestly, without heat, i think it's pretty fucked up to refer to local mutual aid as feelgood stuff. that shit saved my life once upon a time and the mutual aid work i've done is probably the most important anything i've ever done in my life. a couple years of helping get food to people who need it and fixing brake lights so people don't get pulled over and broken in half by fines (not to say potentially murdered by cops) has done more concrete good than a sporadic decade and a half of doing election work for democrats, and it sucks pretty bad to have that work minimized as Local Feelgood Stuff
This. Referring to mutual aid as "feelgood stuff" and dismissing it as something that will never help "big picture stuff" is the very misunderstanding that is rotting the Democratic Party's ability to win elections and their ability to be a force for positive change.
It shouldn't be surprising that voting is correlated with overall civic engagement, because people who have more time and money have more privilege to both vote and to practice other forms of civic engagement. However, it isn't merely correlative, it's also causal. Civic engagement drives voter turnout. When I speak to centrist Democrats about civic engagement, I find that many of them don't even know what civic engagement means. It means meeting with your neighbors and your community face-to-face, in physical spaces, and working together for the betterment of your community. Labor unions and churches are two major avenues for this, which is why both of those institutions are associated with higher voter turnout. But it can also happen through mutual aid, or even through community sports. In places where there are legal barriers to voting, mutual aid can take the form of helping people get the necessary IDs to vote... not to mention how Stacey Abrams's work in this space was instrumental in Georgia.
From one of those links above:
WV Can’t Wait recruited 397 Neighborhood Captains over about a month’s time; each took responsibility for corresponding with an assigned batch of one hundred voters in their county, a combination of Democrats and Independents, high and low frequency voters. Each volunteer sent introductory letters in hand-addressed envelopes, made follow-up calls a week later, texted reminders about absentee ballots, made another round of check-in calls, and sent handwritten postcards. Volunteers began their relationships with voters by offering to connect them to local aid and information, such as how to access food, medicine, or unemployment benefits, but they also attempted to build real relationships by asking voters open-ended questions about their lives. The program aimed not just to turn people out or help them through a pandemic but to craft new political relationships that could last beyond the election and the crisis.
The Neighborhood Captain program drove tens of thousands of West Virginia voters to online resources, and many of our captains offered food delivery and other direct services themselves. One of our Raleigh County captains helped a neighbor re-negotiate her electric bill.
In my prior post, I described how political polarization has led to a diminishing center. In order for the Democrats to win elections, we have to focus a lot less on trying to hungryhippo a dwindling number of undecided moderates, and a lot more on mobilizing new voters. That includes overcoming voter apathy, but more important than that is overcoming the material conditions that make it harder to vote (such as voter suppression) and distract from voting (such as having an overdue power bill).
Stacey Abrams gets it. From another link above.
Abrams’ team identified the need to tap into Georgia’s pool of Black voters, which make up 33% of all registered voters, the largest of any battleground state. But Democrats also need to reach out to about 1.7 million new voters, including young Georgians and those new to the state who are twice as likely to vote Democratic than Republican.
The people who are doing this work? They're leftists, in the 'labor unions and class solidarity' sense. The venn diagram between "people who support leftist politics" and "people who have the necessary skills and motivation to organize ground-level civic engagement" has an enormous overlap.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
I know this conversation is getting heated up past the point where this will be ignored but why is DSA the worst
Fundamental problem with DSA:
1. They believe (correctly, in my view) that the only hope for change is a solidaristic, working-class movement that makes mutual aid and labor action its main activity.
2. Very often their class consciousness arose from their personal experience failing to secure good careers in the academic-professional-managerial world.
Their disillusionment with capitalism is genuine and quite valid but their upbringing and education have culturally isolated them from the majority of the working class. This makes them come across as annoying and out of touch.
At least, this is based on observations I have made getting involved with DSA chapters in ye old coastal elite cities. My understanding is that the picture is different in DSA chapters elsewhere.
I'm not saying civic engagement is bad. It is obviously good. I'm just saying that it can't replace voting. You can in fact vote without giving a shit about it, it takes 10 minutes a year unless you live somewhere where Republicans would like you not to vote.
Now official Dem leadership is not party to this plot. They are in fact the plot's targets. This is where the incompetence comes in. They are consistently unable to wrangle control over individual senators who have been coopted by moneyed interests.
I would like to know what they are supposed to do. They could throw Sinema and Manchin out of the party, which gets them nowhere. They could blackmail them illegally (does anyone support that?) They could primary them when they are up for election (I'm dead sure this will happen to Sinema, but Manchin has a lock on his local Democratic party) which will take a few years.
What exactly could they do right now?
Right now? Right now they are boned. They are reaping the consequences of decades of bad strategy. They picked bad positions. They backed bad candidates. They have been completely checkmated by forces that want to see them fail, forces they have collaborated with all along the way.
What they should do now is resign in disgrace. But they won't because they are narcissistic gerontocrats who love being in a position of power even as they institution they allegedly lead is falling apart around them.
I feel like there's a broad array of bold executive action Biden could take, of a whole rainbow from "legal but breaks norms" to "???" to "probably not constitutional"
EG: cancel student loan debt
The perpetual reply "but Biden can't do anything SCOTUS will stop him"
okay fine, do it anyway, at least we'll slightly hamper the next Republican by more clearly defining executive authority. Bonus: if biden uses executive action and government agencies to strip debt or expand healthcare, and SCOTUS takes that way, it makes the voting public hate SCOTUS, which should be a goal, because SCOTUS is a corrupt extension of the Republican Party at this point and Warren had some good ideas about reform that we should nail the planks of into the party platform
this is all ignoring all the parts of government that are supposed to investigate fraud of various kinds from election to tax to criminal that probably could be employed against certain senators as a stick to go with the carrot of "you can have whatever you want + a pony if you vote with us and well even put your name on the thing if you want", but norms won't let us, despite the fact that the opposition party has no such qualms about going nuclear towards members who don't fall inline (I mean Republicans are generally afraid of being killed by terrorists if they step too far out of line)
override367 on
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
Now official Dem leadership is not party to this plot. They are in fact the plot's targets. This is where the incompetence comes in. They are consistently unable to wrangle control over individual senators who have been coopted by moneyed interests.
I would like to know what they are supposed to do. They could throw Sinema and Manchin out of the party, which gets them nowhere. They could blackmail them illegally (does anyone support that?) They could primary them when they are up for election (I'm dead sure this will happen to Sinema, but Manchin has a lock on his local Democratic party) which will take a few years.
What exactly could they do right now?
Right now? Right now they are boned. They are reaping the consequences of decades of bad strategy. They picked bad positions. They backed bad candidates. They have been completely checkmated by forces that want to see them fail, forces they have collaborated with all along the way.
What they should do now is resign in disgrace. But they won't because they are narcissistic gerontocrats who love being in a position of power even as they institution they allegedly lead is falling apart around them.
I feel like there's a broad array of bold executive action Biden could take, of a whole rainbow from "legal but breaks norms" to "???" to "probably not constitutional"
EG: cancel student loan debt
The perpetual "but Biden can't do anything SCOTUS will stop him"
okay fine, do it anyway, at least we'll slightly hamper the next Republican by more clearly defining executive authority
Oh yeah I think Biden could be doing a lot more stuff. But I was just talking about the congressional leadership, who seem thoroughly fucked.
I'm not saying civic engagement is bad. It is obviously good. I'm just saying that it can't replace voting. You can in fact vote without giving a shit about it, it takes 10 minutes a year unless you live somewhere where Republicans would like you not to vote.
I don’t think it replaces voting
I think for those with limited resources to put towards making the world a better place, it seems likelier to me that the return will be greater on local elections and mutual aid and labor than donating to/volunteering for state/fed candidates
Now official Dem leadership is not party to this plot. They are in fact the plot's targets. This is where the incompetence comes in. They are consistently unable to wrangle control over individual senators who have been coopted by moneyed interests.
I would like to know what they are supposed to do. They could throw Sinema and Manchin out of the party, which gets them nowhere. They could blackmail them illegally (does anyone support that?) They could primary them when they are up for election (I'm dead sure this will happen to Sinema, but Manchin has a lock on his local Democratic party) which will take a few years.
What exactly could they do right now?
Right now? Right now they are boned. They are reaping the consequences of decades of bad strategy. They picked bad positions. They backed bad candidates. What they should do now is resign in disgrace. But they won't because they are narcissistic gerontocrats who love being in a position of power even as they institution they allegedly lead is falling apart around them.
I'm not saying civic engagement is bad. It is obviously good. I'm just saying that it can't replace voting. You can in fact vote without giving a shit about it, it takes 10 minutes a year unless you live somewhere where Republicans would like you not to vote.
You're using phrases like "feelgood stuff" and "little local charity", which come across as dismissive. The much larger point here is that the 'feelgood stuff' and the 'little local charity' do more to mobilize voters (and, coincidentally, improve the lives of real human beings in material ways, which is the ultimate goal) than any amount of online cajoling.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
i've decided that the democratic party is a viable way forward for dealing with at least one or two of the half dozen society-ending cataclysms coming our way. i go to my congressional representative's websites and see that they're in favor of a carbon tax that i just read an article last week was basically designed so that small companies that don't actually produce anything can sell their carbon credits to bigger companies, thus solving nothing. this clearly isn't good enough, so i write a letter to my rep saying so, they need to get with the program and start treating this seriously
i never hear back until my third attempt when i get a form letter thanking me for being involved. six months pass and the carbon tax bill gets killed by the senate. clearly we need better representatives if there's any hope at fixing this problem, so i start working on a progressive upstart candidate's campaign to primary my rep who's been in office since before i was born. the state party says in no uncertain terms that we're not getting any help from them, in fact they're giving the incumbent millions of dollars to campaign on and they'll blacklist any consulting firms or what have you that we try to hire, so no one will work with us for fear of retribution. the candidate gets 20% of the primary vote and that's that. alternately we somehow pull out a win and get our candidate elected, and in six months the new rep has stopped taking our calls about when they're gonna start doing the shit we got them elected to do. neither option seems very productive!
what is the mechanism by which we can force a party to care about things they get paid a lot of money to not care about? how does this work on the ground?
Now official Dem leadership is not party to this plot. They are in fact the plot's targets. This is where the incompetence comes in. They are consistently unable to wrangle control over individual senators who have been coopted by moneyed interests.
I would like to know what they are supposed to do. They could throw Sinema and Manchin out of the party, which gets them nowhere. They could blackmail them illegally (does anyone support that?) They could primary them when they are up for election (I'm dead sure this will happen to Sinema, but Manchin has a lock on his local Democratic party) which will take a few years.
What exactly could they do right now?
Right now? Right now they are boned. They are reaping the consequences of decades of bad strategy. They picked bad positions. They backed bad candidates. They have been completely checkmated by forces that want to see them fail, forces they have collaborated with all along the way.
What they should do now is resign in disgrace. But they won't because they are narcissistic gerontocrats who love being in a position of power even as they institution they allegedly lead is falling apart around them.
I feel like there's a broad array of bold executive action Biden could take, of a whole rainbow from "legal but breaks norms" to "???" to "probably not constitutional"
EG: cancel student loan debt
The perpetual "but Biden can't do anything SCOTUS will stop him"
okay fine, do it anyway, at least we'll slightly hamper the next Republican by more clearly defining executive authority
Oh yeah I think Biden could be doing a lot more stuff. But I was just talking about the congressional leadership, who seem thoroughly fucked.
More to the point I think Biden could, in private, use the threat of bold executive action to coerce people like Manchin
Shit that one phone call alone should be enough for a "concerned" letter to DOJ expressing consternation about the people in that call apparently giving marching orders to senators
Now official Dem leadership is not party to this plot. They are in fact the plot's targets. This is where the incompetence comes in. They are consistently unable to wrangle control over individual senators who have been coopted by moneyed interests.
I would like to know what they are supposed to do. They could throw Sinema and Manchin out of the party, which gets them nowhere. They could blackmail them illegally (does anyone support that?) They could primary them when they are up for election (I'm dead sure this will happen to Sinema, but Manchin has a lock on his local Democratic party) which will take a few years.
What exactly could they do right now?
Right now? Right now they are boned. They are reaping the consequences of decades of bad strategy. They picked bad positions. They backed bad candidates. They have been completely checkmated by forces that want to see them fail, forces they have collaborated with all along the way.
What they should do now is resign in disgrace. But they won't because they are narcissistic gerontocrats who love being in a position of power even as they institution they allegedly lead is falling apart around them.
I feel like there's a broad array of bold executive action Biden could take, of a whole rainbow from "legal but breaks norms" to "???" to "probably not constitutional"
EG: cancel student loan debt
The perpetual "but Biden can't do anything SCOTUS will stop him"
okay fine, do it anyway, at least we'll slightly hamper the next Republican by more clearly defining executive authority
Oh yeah I think Biden could be doing a lot more stuff. But I was just talking about the congressional leadership, who seem thoroughly fucked.
More to the point I think Biden could, in private, use the threat of bold executive action to coerce people like Manchin
Shit that phone call alone should be enough for a "concerned" letter to DOJ asking for the people on that call to be looked into.
Yup totally agree. But the current generation of Democratic politicians are famously squeamish about playing hardball. Nevermind that every great president in our history has bent the law in times of crisis.
Now official Dem leadership is not party to this plot. They are in fact the plot's targets. This is where the incompetence comes in. They are consistently unable to wrangle control over individual senators who have been coopted by moneyed interests.
I would like to know what they are supposed to do. They could throw Sinema and Manchin out of the party, which gets them nowhere. They could blackmail them illegally (does anyone support that?) They could primary them when they are up for election (I'm dead sure this will happen to Sinema, but Manchin has a lock on his local Democratic party) which will take a few years.
What exactly could they do right now?
Right now? Right now they are boned. They are reaping the consequences of decades of bad strategy. They picked bad positions. They backed bad candidates. They have been completely checkmated by forces that want to see them fail, forces they have collaborated with all along the way.
What they should do now is resign in disgrace. But they won't because they are narcissistic gerontocrats who love being in a position of power even as they institution they allegedly lead is falling apart around them.
I feel like there's a broad array of bold executive action Biden could take, of a whole rainbow from "legal but breaks norms" to "???" to "probably not constitutional"
EG: cancel student loan debt
The perpetual "but Biden can't do anything SCOTUS will stop him"
okay fine, do it anyway, at least we'll slightly hamper the next Republican by more clearly defining executive authority
Oh yeah I think Biden could be doing a lot more stuff. But I was just talking about the congressional leadership, who seem thoroughly fucked.
More to the point I think Biden could, in private, use the threat of bold executive action to coerce people like Manchin
Shit that phone call alone should be enough for a "concerned" letter to DOJ asking for the people on that call to be looked into.
Yup totally agree. But the current generation of Democratic politicians are famously squeamish about playing hardball. Nevermind that every great president in our history has bent the law in times of crisis.
We never woulda gotten the 13th amendment or the civil rights act with the kind of politics that are being played by the Democratic party today
"hey i want you to do this, this and this. if you promise to do that i'll vote for you"
"no lol"
"okay, well i'm voting for you anyway"
I've mentioned this in D&D before. After the 2000 Presidential election and into the 2002 midterms, Karl Rove observed that evangelical voters weren't showing up to vote Republican, even though he thought he'd captured the religious right. So he, personally, and with his aides and employees, reached out to church leaders to talk to them about their concerns. The Bush administration's focus on faith-based initiatives was part of this plan (and Rove illegally used White House administrative resources for faith-based initiatives to do phone canvassing). This activity was a major contributor to the Republican party's rightward shift in the mid-00s on social issues.
I don't want the Democratic Party to use government resources for illegal canvassing, but otherwise, this is (among other things) exactly the sort of activity I want them to do. Identify demographic blocs that could potentially be mobilized into voting, and then mobilize them. Sometimes this will involve catering to policy preferences that they've neglected.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
+3
Options
HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
Now official Dem leadership is not party to this plot. They are in fact the plot's targets. This is where the incompetence comes in. They are consistently unable to wrangle control over individual senators who have been coopted by moneyed interests.
I would like to know what they are supposed to do. They could throw Sinema and Manchin out of the party, which gets them nowhere. They could blackmail them illegally (does anyone support that?) They could primary them when they are up for election (I'm dead sure this will happen to Sinema, but Manchin has a lock on his local Democratic party) which will take a few years.
What exactly could they do right now?
Right now? Right now they are boned. They are reaping the consequences of decades of bad strategy. They picked bad positions. They backed bad candidates. They have been completely checkmated by forces that want to see them fail, forces they have collaborated with all along the way.
What they should do now is resign in disgrace. But they won't because they are narcissistic gerontocrats who love being in a position of power even as they institution they allegedly lead is falling apart around them.
I feel like there's a broad array of bold executive action Biden could take, of a whole rainbow from "legal but breaks norms" to "???" to "probably not constitutional"
EG: cancel student loan debt
The perpetual "but Biden can't do anything SCOTUS will stop him"
okay fine, do it anyway, at least we'll slightly hamper the next Republican by more clearly defining executive authority
Oh yeah I think Biden could be doing a lot more stuff. But I was just talking about the congressional leadership, who seem thoroughly fucked.
More to the point I think Biden could, in private, use the threat of bold executive action to coerce people like Manchin
Shit that phone call alone should be enough for a "concerned" letter to DOJ asking for the people on that call to be looked into.
Yup totally agree. But the current generation of Democratic politicians are famously squeamish about playing hardball. Nevermind that every great president in our history has bent the law in times of crisis.
We never woulda gotten the 13th amendment or the civil rights act with the kind of politics that are being played by the Democratic party today
Nope not a chance.
And you know, there's no law against leaning on your attorney general. Fuck, George Dubya totally cleaned out the Justice Department and replaced all the US Attorneys with Christian fundamentalist hacks. Some liberals cried on CNN but he got away with it because there was no law against it and even if there were a sitting president is basically immune to accountability (didn't Trump prove that decisiviely?).
The only reason Biden isn't doing things is because he doesn't want to. That's it.
"hey i want you to do this, this and this. if you promise to do that i'll vote for you"
"no lol"
"okay, well i'm voting for you anyway"
or the even better alternative!
"hey i want you to do this, this and this. if you promise to do that i'll vote for you"
"yes i promise to do those things"
six months pass
"hey how about doing those things you promised to do"
"no lol"
"okay well you have my vote again when you're up for reelection"
My senators seem eager to do the things I voted for them to do. I am pleased with them. However, there are TWO in their party who do not want to do what I want them to do.
How would witholding my vote from my senators help?
Now official Dem leadership is not party to this plot. They are in fact the plot's targets. This is where the incompetence comes in. They are consistently unable to wrangle control over individual senators who have been coopted by moneyed interests.
I would like to know what they are supposed to do. They could throw Sinema and Manchin out of the party, which gets them nowhere. They could blackmail them illegally (does anyone support that?) They could primary them when they are up for election (I'm dead sure this will happen to Sinema, but Manchin has a lock on his local Democratic party) which will take a few years.
What exactly could they do right now?
Right now? Right now they are boned. They are reaping the consequences of decades of bad strategy. They picked bad positions. They backed bad candidates. They have been completely checkmated by forces that want to see them fail, forces they have collaborated with all along the way.
What they should do now is resign in disgrace. But they won't because they are narcissistic gerontocrats who love being in a position of power even as they institution they allegedly lead is falling apart around them.
I feel like there's a broad array of bold executive action Biden could take, of a whole rainbow from "legal but breaks norms" to "???" to "probably not constitutional"
EG: cancel student loan debt
The perpetual "but Biden can't do anything SCOTUS will stop him"
okay fine, do it anyway, at least we'll slightly hamper the next Republican by more clearly defining executive authority
Oh yeah I think Biden could be doing a lot more stuff. But I was just talking about the congressional leadership, who seem thoroughly fucked.
More to the point I think Biden could, in private, use the threat of bold executive action to coerce people like Manchin
Shit that phone call alone should be enough for a "concerned" letter to DOJ asking for the people on that call to be looked into.
Yup totally agree. But the current generation of Democratic politicians are famously squeamish about playing hardball. Nevermind that every great president in our history has bent the law in times of crisis.
If I had a magic wand, the top priority of the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats right now would be to pass a Constitutional amendment reforming the SCOTUS nomination process, and use the threat of court-packing as a stick to pressure Republicans into playing ball.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
"hey i want you to do this, this and this. if you promise to do that i'll vote for you"
"no lol"
"okay, well i'm voting for you anyway"
or the even better alternative!
"hey i want you to do this, this and this. if you promise to do that i'll vote for you"
"yes i promise to do those things"
six months pass
"hey how about doing those things you promised to do"
"no lol"
"okay well you have my vote again when you're up for reelection"
My senators seem eager to do the things I voted for them to do. I am pleased with them. However, there are TWO in their party who do not want to do what I want them to do.
How would witholding my vote from my senators help?
if you're satisfied with the job they're doing then great, keep voting for them. i'm not talking about you, i'm talking about the millions of people that the democrats need voting for them that are not happy with the job their legislators are doing, and the structural barriers to getting people elected who actually want to do things people want done
"hey i want you to do this, this and this. if you promise to do that i'll vote for you"
"no lol"
"okay, well i'm voting for you anyway"
or the even better alternative!
"hey i want you to do this, this and this. if you promise to do that i'll vote for you"
"yes i promise to do those things"
six months pass
"hey how about doing those things you promised to do"
"no lol"
"okay well you have my vote again when you're up for reelection"
My senators seem eager to do the things I voted for them to do. I am pleased with them. However, there are TWO in their party who do not want to do what I want them to do.
How would witholding my vote from my senators help?
Are you enjoying this?
Do you have any solutions to offer with all of the snark?
"hey i want you to do this, this and this. if you promise to do that i'll vote for you"
"no lol"
"okay, well i'm voting for you anyway"
or the even better alternative!
"hey i want you to do this, this and this. if you promise to do that i'll vote for you"
"yes i promise to do those things"
six months pass
"hey how about doing those things you promised to do"
"no lol"
"okay well you have my vote again when you're up for reelection"
My senators seem eager to do the things I voted for them to do. I am pleased with them. However, there are TWO in their party who do not want to do what I want them to do.
How would witholding my vote from my senators help?
Then vote for them, are you not reading these posts?
But then Johnson was propelled into the White House and the man revealed himself for what he was. Kennedy had been struggling to get civil rights legislation through Congress. "What does Johnson do?" asks Caro. "He becomes president and everyone is saying to him – he's been president for four days, and these guys are all sitting around the table drafting his first speech and they're all saying: 'Don't use up your capital on civil rights; you're going to antagonise the southerners, they control everything – it's a noble cause but it's a lost cause.' Johnson says: 'What the hell's the presidency for then?'"
Johnson picked up the civil rights bill and within days he was working Congress once again, and it passed. "The civil rights bill was going nowhere. It was dead. Johnson comes in – and I just marvel – this is miraculous the way he picks up this bill in a matter of days and gets it moving towards passage. It's a use of political power such as you seldom see."
"hey i want you to do this, this and this. if you promise to do that i'll vote for you"
"no lol"
"okay, well i'm voting for you anyway"
or the even better alternative!
"hey i want you to do this, this and this. if you promise to do that i'll vote for you"
"yes i promise to do those things"
six months pass
"hey how about doing those things you promised to do"
"no lol"
"okay well you have my vote again when you're up for reelection"
My senators seem eager to do the things I voted for them to do. I am pleased with them. However, there are TWO in their party who do not want to do what I want them to do.
How would witholding my vote from my senators help?
My Senators are crooked pieces of shit who were ready to kill prescription drug price negotiations even if the other two weren't.
RedTide#1907 on Battle.net
Come Overwatch with meeeee
Now official Dem leadership is not party to this plot. They are in fact the plot's targets. This is where the incompetence comes in. They are consistently unable to wrangle control over individual senators who have been coopted by moneyed interests.
I would like to know what they are supposed to do. They could throw Sinema and Manchin out of the party, which gets them nowhere. They could blackmail them illegally (does anyone support that?) They could primary them when they are up for election (I'm dead sure this will happen to Sinema, but Manchin has a lock on his local Democratic party) which will take a few years.
What exactly could they do right now?
Right now? Right now they are boned. They are reaping the consequences of decades of bad strategy. They picked bad positions. They backed bad candidates. They have been completely checkmated by forces that want to see them fail, forces they have collaborated with all along the way.
What they should do now is resign in disgrace. But they won't because they are narcissistic gerontocrats who love being in a position of power even as they institution they allegedly lead is falling apart around them.
I feel like there's a broad array of bold executive action Biden could take, of a whole rainbow from "legal but breaks norms" to "???" to "probably not constitutional"
EG: cancel student loan debt
The perpetual "but Biden can't do anything SCOTUS will stop him"
okay fine, do it anyway, at least we'll slightly hamper the next Republican by more clearly defining executive authority
Oh yeah I think Biden could be doing a lot more stuff. But I was just talking about the congressional leadership, who seem thoroughly fucked.
More to the point I think Biden could, in private, use the threat of bold executive action to coerce people like Manchin
Shit that phone call alone should be enough for a "concerned" letter to DOJ asking for the people on that call to be looked into.
Yup totally agree. But the current generation of Democratic politicians are famously squeamish about playing hardball. Nevermind that every great president in our history has bent the law in times of crisis.
We never woulda gotten the 13th amendment or the civil rights act with the kind of politics that are being played by the Democratic party today
Nope not a chance.
And you know, there's no law against leaning on your attorney general. Fuck, George Dubya totally cleaned out the Justice Department and replaced all the US Attorneys with Christian fundamentalist hacks. Some liberals cried on CNN but he got away with it because there was no law against it and even if there were a sitting president is basically immune to accountability (didn't Trump prove that decisiviely?).
The only reason Biden isn't doing things is because he doesn't want to. That's it.
We have proof that Trump tried to get his Attorney General to overturn the election FFS
The Democratic party is arguing why process is important while someone is trying to stab us with a knife
Like, DeJoy is still postmaster! This was an election issue for a lot of people and I honestly don't know if ANYTHING has been done on this front. The guy's obviously a criminal too. This guy was deliberately put in place to destroy one of America's institutions while he rakes in personal profits from doing so. The other side gives not a shit for process, tradition, or legality, and when our party dies, it's tombstone will say "They were the criminals all along" anyway because it will be written by fascists
"hey i want you to do this, this and this. if you promise to do that i'll vote for you"
"no lol"
"okay, well i'm voting for you anyway"
or the even better alternative!
"hey i want you to do this, this and this. if you promise to do that i'll vote for you"
"yes i promise to do those things"
six months pass
"hey how about doing those things you promised to do"
"no lol"
"okay well you have my vote again when you're up for reelection"
My senators seem eager to do the things I voted for them to do. I am pleased with them. However, there are TWO in their party who do not want to do what I want them to do.
How would witholding my vote from my senators help?
Are you enjoying this?
Do you have any solutions to offer with all of the snark?
No, I'm fucking terrified. I'm scared that people will vote the Republicans back in and they give every impression of wanting me dead. I'm not enjoying this at all. It seems like Germany before the 2nd world war where the choice was the Nazis or the lousy regular politicians, and everyone is moving towards Nazi.
+10
Options
HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
No, I'm fucking terrified. I'm scared that people will vote the Republicans back in and they give every impression of wanting me dead. I'm not enjoying this at all. It seems like Germany before the 2nd world war where the choice was the Nazis or the lousy regular politicians, and everyone is moving towards Nazi.
I believe you're scared. The situation is very scary! I think that your fear is driving you to defend authority figures in the Dem party because they seem to be the most powerful people around who are on "your side" and the idea that they might just really suck at their jobs makes you feel completely exposed to the barbarous future.
Unfortunately the truth is they really suck at their jobs and you are completely exposed to the barbarous future.
But then Johnson was propelled into the White House and the man revealed himself for what he was. Kennedy had been struggling to get civil rights legislation through Congress. "What does Johnson do?" asks Caro. "He becomes president and everyone is saying to him – he's been president for four days, and these guys are all sitting around the table drafting his first speech and they're all saying: 'Don't use up your capital on civil rights; you're going to antagonise the southerners, they control everything – it's a noble cause but it's a lost cause.' Johnson says: 'What the hell's the presidency for then?'"
Johnson picked up the civil rights bill and within days he was working Congress once again, and it passed. "The civil rights bill was going nowhere. It was dead. Johnson comes in – and I just marvel – this is miraculous the way he picks up this bill in a matter of days and gets it moving towards passage. It's a use of political power such as you seldom see."
"hey i want you to do this, this and this. if you promise to do that i'll vote for you"
"no lol"
"okay, well i'm voting for you anyway"
or the even better alternative!
"hey i want you to do this, this and this. if you promise to do that i'll vote for you"
"yes i promise to do those things"
six months pass
"hey how about doing those things you promised to do"
"no lol"
"okay well you have my vote again when you're up for reelection"
My senators seem eager to do the things I voted for them to do. I am pleased with them. However, there are TWO in their party who do not want to do what I want them to do.
How would witholding my vote from my senators help?
Are you enjoying this?
Do you have any solutions to offer with all of the snark?
No, I'm fucking terrified. I'm scared that people will vote the Republicans back in and they give every impression of wanting me dead. I'm not enjoying this at all. It seems like Germany before the 2nd world war where the choice was the Nazis or the lousy regular politicians, and everyone is moving towards Nazi.
this isn't a binary two-option thing, the main important lesson to take from the nazis taking power was that they wouldn't have been able to do it without feckless lousy regular politicians helping them along, intentionally or not. they took advantage of a weak government where everyone else held themselves constrained by norms and laws while they just did whatever they wanted
you're absolutely right to be scared about this very thing, but the answer is not to keep supporting enablers
Posts
Are you under the illusion that the things we are saying on this forum are informing Democratic Party strategy?
In a democracy of 300 million, no-one gets very much say, as an individual. Just keep voting Democrat, and encourage others to vote Democrat. Then go volunteer at a little local charity where you can have a big influence and get something tangible done.
On the other hand, demand things from anyone who wants your vote and tell them to go fuck themselves if they dont meet it.
Poor leadership, to reduce it to a fixed point. Its no coincidence that the DSA was wildly more productive while Sanders was running.
They're the kind of people that tell you to "go read the literature" in mi-conversation without realizing that ends the conversation.
this isn't an answer. the democratic party is structured such that they are unwilling to accept the demands of the very large number of people who want things out of them that their donors don't, and they're very good at fending off attempts to change that structure. how does voting for them harder change this? how is that not just doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? why should i encourage people to vote for candidates that belong to a party that's openly hostile to almost everything i think is necessary?
hitting hot metal with hammers
This. Referring to mutual aid as "feelgood stuff" and dismissing it as something that will never help "big picture stuff" is the very misunderstanding that is rotting the Democratic Party's ability to win elections and their ability to be a force for positive change.
It shouldn't be surprising that voting is correlated with overall civic engagement, because people who have more time and money have more privilege to both vote and to practice other forms of civic engagement. However, it isn't merely correlative, it's also causal. Civic engagement drives voter turnout. When I speak to centrist Democrats about civic engagement, I find that many of them don't even know what civic engagement means. It means meeting with your neighbors and your community face-to-face, in physical spaces, and working together for the betterment of your community. Labor unions and churches are two major avenues for this, which is why both of those institutions are associated with higher voter turnout. But it can also happen through mutual aid, or even through community sports. In places where there are legal barriers to voting, mutual aid can take the form of helping people get the necessary IDs to vote... not to mention how Stacey Abrams's work in this space was instrumental in Georgia.
From one of those links above:
In my prior post, I described how political polarization has led to a diminishing center. In order for the Democrats to win elections, we have to focus a lot less on trying to hungryhippo a dwindling number of undecided moderates, and a lot more on mobilizing new voters. That includes overcoming voter apathy, but more important than that is overcoming the material conditions that make it harder to vote (such as voter suppression) and distract from voting (such as having an overdue power bill).
Stacey Abrams gets it. From another link above.
The people who are doing this work? They're leftists, in the 'labor unions and class solidarity' sense. The venn diagram between "people who support leftist politics" and "people who have the necessary skills and motivation to organize ground-level civic engagement" has an enormous overlap.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Fundamental problem with DSA:
1. They believe (correctly, in my view) that the only hope for change is a solidaristic, working-class movement that makes mutual aid and labor action its main activity.
2. Very often their class consciousness arose from their personal experience failing to secure good careers in the academic-professional-managerial world.
Their disillusionment with capitalism is genuine and quite valid but their upbringing and education have culturally isolated them from the majority of the working class. This makes them come across as annoying and out of touch.
At least, this is based on observations I have made getting involved with DSA chapters in ye old coastal elite cities. My understanding is that the picture is different in DSA chapters elsewhere.
Yeah I've done that before and the literature explained nothing except that a certain thing would be good, but not how it would work.
"no lol"
"okay, well i'm voting for you anyway"
hitting hot metal with hammers
I feel like there's a broad array of bold executive action Biden could take, of a whole rainbow from "legal but breaks norms" to "???" to "probably not constitutional"
EG: cancel student loan debt
The perpetual reply "but Biden can't do anything SCOTUS will stop him"
okay fine, do it anyway, at least we'll slightly hamper the next Republican by more clearly defining executive authority. Bonus: if biden uses executive action and government agencies to strip debt or expand healthcare, and SCOTUS takes that way, it makes the voting public hate SCOTUS, which should be a goal, because SCOTUS is a corrupt extension of the Republican Party at this point and Warren had some good ideas about reform that we should nail the planks of into the party platform
this is all ignoring all the parts of government that are supposed to investigate fraud of various kinds from election to tax to criminal that probably could be employed against certain senators as a stick to go with the carrot of "you can have whatever you want + a pony if you vote with us and well even put your name on the thing if you want", but norms won't let us, despite the fact that the opposition party has no such qualms about going nuclear towards members who don't fall inline (I mean Republicans are generally afraid of being killed by terrorists if they step too far out of line)
Oh yeah I think Biden could be doing a lot more stuff. But I was just talking about the congressional leadership, who seem thoroughly fucked.
I don’t think it replaces voting
I think for those with limited resources to put towards making the world a better place, it seems likelier to me that the return will be greater on local elections and mutual aid and labor than donating to/volunteering for state/fed candidates
Resign is disgrace absolutely is a plan
You're using phrases like "feelgood stuff" and "little local charity", which come across as dismissive. The much larger point here is that the 'feelgood stuff' and the 'little local charity' do more to mobilize voters (and, coincidentally, improve the lives of real human beings in material ways, which is the ultimate goal) than any amount of online cajoling.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Oh man how did I forget when the DCCC pulled that blacklisting firms that assist in primary challenges thing
Healthy party structure, blackballing people who help democrats running in primaries just because they’re not the incumbent
More to the point I think Biden could, in private, use the threat of bold executive action to coerce people like Manchin
Shit that one phone call alone should be enough for a "concerned" letter to DOJ expressing consternation about the people in that call apparently giving marching orders to senators
or the even better alternative!
"hey i want you to do this, this and this. if you promise to do that i'll vote for you"
"yes i promise to do those things"
six months pass
"hey how about doing those things you promised to do"
"no lol"
"okay well you have my vote again when you're up for reelection"
hitting hot metal with hammers
Yup totally agree. But the current generation of Democratic politicians are famously squeamish about playing hardball. Nevermind that every great president in our history has bent the law in times of crisis.
We never woulda gotten the 13th amendment or the civil rights act with the kind of politics that are being played by the Democratic party today
The one and only real solution to your specific issue is for you to run for office and become the decision maker
I've mentioned this in D&D before. After the 2000 Presidential election and into the 2002 midterms, Karl Rove observed that evangelical voters weren't showing up to vote Republican, even though he thought he'd captured the religious right. So he, personally, and with his aides and employees, reached out to church leaders to talk to them about their concerns. The Bush administration's focus on faith-based initiatives was part of this plan (and Rove illegally used White House administrative resources for faith-based initiatives to do phone canvassing). This activity was a major contributor to the Republican party's rightward shift in the mid-00s on social issues.
I don't want the Democratic Party to use government resources for illegal canvassing, but otherwise, this is (among other things) exactly the sort of activity I want them to do. Identify demographic blocs that could potentially be mobilized into voting, and then mobilize them. Sometimes this will involve catering to policy preferences that they've neglected.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Nope not a chance.
And you know, there's no law against leaning on your attorney general. Fuck, George Dubya totally cleaned out the Justice Department and replaced all the US Attorneys with Christian fundamentalist hacks. Some liberals cried on CNN but he got away with it because there was no law against it and even if there were a sitting president is basically immune to accountability (didn't Trump prove that decisiviely?).
The only reason Biden isn't doing things is because he doesn't want to. That's it.
you don't want me making decisions, i promise you
hitting hot metal with hammers
My senators seem eager to do the things I voted for them to do. I am pleased with them. However, there are TWO in their party who do not want to do what I want them to do.
How would witholding my vote from my senators help?
If I had a magic wand, the top priority of the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats right now would be to pass a Constitutional amendment reforming the SCOTUS nomination process, and use the threat of court-packing as a stick to pressure Republicans into playing ball.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
if you're satisfied with the job they're doing then great, keep voting for them. i'm not talking about you, i'm talking about the millions of people that the democrats need voting for them that are not happy with the job their legislators are doing, and the structural barriers to getting people elected who actually want to do things people want done
hitting hot metal with hammers
Are you enjoying this?
Do you have any solutions to offer with all of the snark?
Then vote for them, are you not reading these posts?
AOC did that, and she's fucking amazing, and she's still only one vote in several hundred.
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/10/lyndon-b-johnson-robert-caro-biography
I think about Johnson frequently these days.
My Senators are crooked pieces of shit who were ready to kill prescription drug price negotiations even if the other two weren't.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
We have proof that Trump tried to get his Attorney General to overturn the election FFS
The Democratic party is arguing why process is important while someone is trying to stab us with a knife
Like, DeJoy is still postmaster! This was an election issue for a lot of people and I honestly don't know if ANYTHING has been done on this front. The guy's obviously a criminal too. This guy was deliberately put in place to destroy one of America's institutions while he rakes in personal profits from doing so. The other side gives not a shit for process, tradition, or legality, and when our party dies, it's tombstone will say "They were the criminals all along" anyway because it will be written by fascists
A good leader delegates.
No, I'm fucking terrified. I'm scared that people will vote the Republicans back in and they give every impression of wanting me dead. I'm not enjoying this at all. It seems like Germany before the 2nd world war where the choice was the Nazis or the lousy regular politicians, and everyone is moving towards Nazi.
I believe you're scared. The situation is very scary! I think that your fear is driving you to defend authority figures in the Dem party because they seem to be the most powerful people around who are on "your side" and the idea that they might just really suck at their jobs makes you feel completely exposed to the barbarous future.
Unfortunately the truth is they really suck at their jobs and you are completely exposed to the barbarous future.
This goes even deeper because Johnson was a flagrant racist.
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/lyndon-johnson-civil-rights-racism-msna305591
(Content warning: uncensored n-word.)
https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/reckoning-structural-racism-research-lbjs-legacy-and-urbans-next-50
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
this isn't a binary two-option thing, the main important lesson to take from the nazis taking power was that they wouldn't have been able to do it without feckless lousy regular politicians helping them along, intentionally or not. they took advantage of a weak government where everyone else held themselves constrained by norms and laws while they just did whatever they wanted
you're absolutely right to be scared about this very thing, but the answer is not to keep supporting enablers
hitting hot metal with hammers