Lurker > HeroDelTiempo17

The Trump admin has made me extremely paranoid about politics and even then I still don't think this is civil war territory. Texas wouldn't destroy its own economy over some fucking judge picks.

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masterplum posted...

Correct. They couldn't in 1861 either

Right! Now you're getting it. Abraham Lincoln being elected led to the civil war, if you are being literalist about cause and effect. But was he the primary actor? Do you assign the bulk of the blame to Lincoln?

masterplum posted...

Lol no. You think Republicans are going to retaliate to that by making it even again? What universe are you living in? They would pack it so full that every liberal didn't matter

When did I say they'd make it even? They'd expel liberal judges. They don't need MORE judges to stack the court.

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masterplum posted...

So you are ok with Republicans putting in another 10 judges 5 years from now?

Because this is being pragmatic here

Of course not, but if that's the battle we have to fight then so be it.

Also they wouldn't add more judges, they'd more likely shrink it back down to the original size.

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masterplum posted...

It is also completely in the law for Trump to be elected president if the electoral college elects him through faithless electors.

I will ask you if you think that happened if you think we would have one country any more, because I would put the odds of california seceding in that case over 50%

Well, states can't secede, so in this scenario the onus for breakdown is on California seceding, or people rioting, or whatever. I get your point though. But I also don't see any state attempting to secede because there are more judges than they like. No one gives enough of a shit about it.

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red sox 777 posted...

Court packing would be the end of the rule of law in this country.

When red sox is chiming in to agree with you, always a sign you need to double check your stance.

Rule of law will completely break down once there are more judges enforcing it. Real galaxy brain hours

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masterplum posted...

Sometimes people mistreat you and the best course of action isn't to get revenge as badly as you want it.

Maybe tell this to the GOP?

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Peace___Frog posted...

But if this is your fear, then I think you've been too inundated with bad faith arguments by those on the right. In what world is democrats taking back stolen court seats worse than anything that the Republicans have already done?

Even if you drop the retaliatory framing, it doesn't make sense.

Congress controlling the makeup of the Supreme Court is literally in the Constitution. Expanding it is following the powers it has by law. How would that lead to a constitutional crisis? You can complain that it'll escalate tensions, but the fact of the matter is that the structure of government remains completely intact.

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StartTheMachine posted...

There IS a significant difference between Trump and the neocons, but not in how many wars they continue. Only in democracy and truth versus authoritarianism and lies.

The neocons of the George W Bush era didn't have authoritarianism and lies?

If anything this past discussion has just revealed the false dichotomy between the two. Trumpism is just fascism wrapped up in Trump's specific cult of personality. He was still engaging in a bunch of neocon shit behind the curtain. Likewise, neocons can eventually ditch the Trump branding and continue to do authoritarianism shit on their own terms. That's why Lincoln Project is a joke.

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Conservatives absolutely do protest, it's just less often and not always covered by the media when it's small-scale. I've seen some local QAnon anti-pedophile ones in my city. For major ones, just this year there were the COVID lockdowns and the election ones. Also, the Tea Party? It happens.

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foolm0r0n posted...

If there really are 1000 votes that need to be invalidated

There aren't. It's all pedantic shit like ballots not being in the right envelope or being received on Election Day but after polls were officially closed. This is posturing for the sake of bureaucracy, not any legitimate procedural improvement on the part of the government. Again, context.

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Jakyl25 posted...

Andrew Yang is moving to Georgia so he can vote in the runoffs

I appreciate it but I have to admit I would be incensed by Republicans doing this

This is incredibly stupid but I really do have to hand it to him for committing to the bit so hard. "jUsT mOvE tO rEd StaTeS" is one of the worst political strategy takes I've ever seen but props to him putting his money where his mouth is.

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foolm0r0n posted...

But to your general point about the lawsuits not actually improving the process - waiting multiple days to get results counted DOES reduce confidence in the election. Having to disqualify even 1000 votes DOES reduce confidence in the count. This is clearly one thing that the feds and the states have the responsibility to improve. I don't get why statists want government to do every job except the ones their are explicitly assigned.

...the lawsuits are the ones slowing things down and attempting to disqualify votes in the first place. If you want to make this argument, you should be in favor of changing laws to allow states to count early votes in advance of the general and either not federally challenging state election procedures or at least doing so beforehand to speed up the process instead of slowing it down. EVEN IF delays reduce confidence, the answer is certainly not to intentionally reduce that confidence as a matter of political strategy. Once again you are ignoring context so you can blindly adopt an "anti-statist" position out of sheer contrarianism.

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Foolmo what the fuck are you rambling about? This isn't a "narrative," this is the objective fact of the lawsuits. Over half of the ones the Trump campaign filed did not hold up in court. Of the remaining ones, the two that he seems to have won standing on were about increased access to observation (essentially meaningless in terms of actual security) and a few where they seem to be entertaining the basis for disqualifying some ballots. Feel free to disagree, but being extremely pedantic about what votes count and timing deadlines just increases the amount of bureaucracy in our elections without a substantial increase in election quality and at the expense of disenfranchising voters, so it's a waste of time. Again, not a "narrative," that's a political stance based on reality. You're waxing poetic about how we should be able to challenge the process to improve the quality of our elections while failing to account for these specific challenges not improving the quality of our elections. I repeat: NO ONE here has advocated against challenging the count on grounds that actually have merit.

Second, while I will gladly take the L on the judges not falling for Trump's obvious bullshit in this scenario, the idea that you can extrapolate this to us not having a partisan issue in the courts is also not grounded in reality. Just because there are some high profile cases where conservative judges rule against the party line due to very specific technicalities of the case does not absolve this issue. A good example is during the federal investigations over the past 4 years where Trump picked up a few losses but the broad trend there was for Trump to dress up his personal interests as ones of the state, and for conservative judges to shield him by ceding authority and executive privilege to the Presidency (small government btw).

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foolm0r0n posted...

The corollaries to both of these allegations is the investigation will lead to a better process for our country. The Russian investigation improved our national security, and Trump's vote count lawsuits will improve our voting processes. People cry about how these things cost a whopping 0.01% of the national budget, but these things are unambiguously the job of the federal government.

I mean, Trump's lawsuits would improve the process, if the judges weren't deciding most of them would not and have no basis, and consequently throwing them out. So it's not really equivalent? No one is saying we shouldn't verify the election by legitimate means.

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foolm0r0n posted...

Ah yes the neolib position. Government needs to tie up trillions of taxpayer dollars in the military industrial complex in order to temporarily make it through a recession, or else it's doing "nothing".

what if the government could do things BESIDES the military and prison industrial complexes

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Jakyl25 posted...

Thats because I dont actually have a plan and havent thought this out. Isnt that obvious?

I just WANT a peaceful, forceful revolution that destroys the nation of America conceptually and rebuilds something radically different and better in its place. Is that too much to ask?

Careful Jakyl, if you keep this up they're going to revoke your comrade card and come for you in the revolution too

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Jakyl25 posted...

What do we think should morally (NOT LEGALLY) be the punishment assuming these guys are guilty?

Banned from firearm ownership would be my vote

That and some therapy

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Jakyl25 posted...

https://twitter.com/vanityfair/status/1324852450109624322?s=21

Corrik: hes conceding

Is it just my perception or has the media just collectively decided it's now okay to go in this hard on Trump now that he's lost and started going on election damage control? Maybe it's just oversaturated right now or maybe it's bugging me that some people seem to be taking his postelection meltdown as the the last straw even though he's always been this way

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In theory the President could institute a DACA-like program and institute a policy to not prosecute certain federal drug offenses. In fact, some individual cities already do this for weed on a local level.

Also sweeping pardons I guess.

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Looks like the MATH is on the Democrats' side in Georgia

https://twitter.com/AndrewYang/status/1324809476940189698?s=19

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Mac Arrowny posted...

Hmm, I didn't realize there were multiple TERFs working on this. Who are they all?

So I actually remembered the details wrong, I thought the main actor was defending JKR but it was more speaking out against toxic criticism she got. Really just trying to have his cake and eat it too by defending both trans people and JKR which is more "both sides" bullshit than TERF bullshit. Still some apologism worthy of side-eye but my bad.

Hagrid's actor actually defended her comments and I mixed it up.

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Can they get rid of the TERFs too? If they have to scrap the series that's fine.

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Wanglicious posted...

sure that can happen, though that's usually something that begins to really occur on the fourth gen. first gen's the native, second's the child who usually will be bilingual, third tends to barely have the secondary language, and fourth on tends to rapidly shave away the identity while keeping some basic stuff like a flag, a little language, or pride of some kind.

it doesn't mean you aren't that ethnicity anymore though! you still are. what you're describing just sounds like you'd erase it instead of acknowledging what they are. you may not identify that much with your ethnic background but it still is your ethnic background. they aren't some mystical, other variation of latino that doesn't exist, the ethnic background of a border county with mexico that's over 90% latino is literally mexican. it's just a more specific take than "from one of 19 countries."

You're getting really caught up on my "third-generation" phrase I just tossed out as an example, and also conflating ethnicity with nationality or ancestry. The actual number of generations can be a lot higher. Not to get too into the history lesson here, but the history of Latino people in Texas literally starts when Texas starts, when white immigrants from America convinced Tejanos that slaves were cool actually and they should all rebel against Mexico. So you can see how this might have seeped into the culture and Tejano and Latino integration.

At any rate I've realized we're mainly arguing about definitions now and I have to apply my rule of thumb here. This isn't gonna be productive.

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Wanglicious posted...

and that's normal. you're the one being weird on this one, being part of an ethnicity doesn't mean you have super strong personal ties to the country it's from, it takes its own americanized identity.

Okay let me attempt to meet you in the middle on this one, I guess, since you aren't getting my point.

The "Americanized" identity of "Mexican" includes much more than "Mexican-American." You can, in fact, get so Americanized (or just Texanized) that you drop the qualifier.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

Im not saying Biden didnt need progressives in general. And sorry if I was wrong about Tlaib, but Im like 95% sure I remember reading that she declined to endorse.

She did, and literally in the same interview she refused to endorse she talked about how she was planning to campaign to get out the vote for him and why she didn't endorse him to not alienate her progressive base.

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Wanglicious posted...

what.
i'd totally call a third gen Italian. that's... normal.

Even if they no longer strongly identified with their country of ancestry? You're being willfully obtuse.

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Dancedreamer posted...

So yeah, don't act like you didn't need us now that it looks like Biden might win. Moderates don't get to do that. It was a joint effort, and without us Trump probably has 4 more years to run rampant.

Yeah I think the idea here is that she convinced the progressive Biden naysayers to vote Biden, explaining the margin. Possibly others too. Would love to see a deeper dive on it and would eat my words, but with how close this election turned out it's something to consider.

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Wanglicious posted...

i'm specifically talking about zapata county, which is literally a border county with mexico.
was something like a 55 point swing in trump's favor.

Yeah dude and I'm telling you that just because Texas is physically close to Mexico doesn't make people here identify as Mexicans. Some Latinos in the valley even hate Mexicans! I've met them!

They're multigenerational families and communities that have lived in Texas and America for a while. It's like how you wouldn't automatically classify a third-generation child of Italian immigrants as "Italian."

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Wanglicious posted...

it would certainly be burning money.
it ain't flipping red and instead mexicans are voting red there too.

For the last time, "Latino" is not automatically "Mexican" in Texas (or anywhere else)

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Suprak the Stud posted...

Texas is at least trending in the right direction. If you want to burn money burn it there.

While I'd like to agree with this, 2020 was a blowout at the state level. THIS was the year they needed heavy investment and good strategy. They failed. This means Republicans keep the state house, get to redraw maps from the new census, and it will get even harder to flip.

They still need to invest in Texas but mostly to stem the bleeding from the mess that's gonna get made. Would be great if they would actually do outreach here, especially now that they are panicking about the Latino vote. And would be really fucking nice if they had control of the federal legislature and could combat voter suppression and gerrymandering. Sucks to suck!

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I know other things are happening right now but in the subject of the progressives vs moderates debate from yesterday I'm just gonna drop this thread from the woman herself who articulates some things better than I could ever hope to

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1324694301234921474?s=19

Also makes a great point that Tlaib contributed to delivering MI to Biden, and Omar MN.
https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1324696915196416000?s=19

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xp1337 posted...

I still have no idea what Pelosi meant by "arrows in the quiver" when it came to stalling the Barrett hearings and think it was mistake to say.

The only idea I heard floated that sounded like it might actually be able to interfere with the Senate calender was just flooding the Senate with impeachment trials to deal with... but my understanding is that if it came to that McConnell could have those run super quickly so even that likely couldn't do much, certainly not enough to successfully block her. And I think Dems would suffer if Pelosi just kept impeaching people - even if there are no lack of individuals in the administration who absolutely deserve it. I think she probably could have gotten by with DeJoy and perhaps Barr but if she kept going the public would have turned on Dems.

No evidence though, just speculation.

The galaxy brain move is to stall by saying ACB is fine but in that case you have to impeach Gorsuch

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Suprak the Stud posted...

I was specifically talking about healthcare though. Your initial post made it sound like it was democrats fault they ran on healthcare and then didn't improve it. And it's like...it was impossible. They protected your healthcare. They stopped Republicans from completely dismantling it like they had been trying the previous two years. That is the extent of their power in regards to healthcare though.

That's fair. Short of shutting down the government as the nuclear option they don't have too much influence on Senate legislature

A tangent, but Bernie promised a "political revolution" to put pressure on Senators but even he didn't have the balls to outright say "as President I'll just call for a general strike until I get what I want"

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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Theres also we have many arrows in our quiver about ACB, and then she skated comfortably to the Supreme Court, and in fact the Republicans were complimented for their handling of it lol

Oh yeah and the kicker on that one is it might have even cost them Maine's senate seat.

They don't have to pick every fight but they should be picking more, since people don't seem to know what the rules are let alone care if they're followed

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Suprak the Stud posted...

This makes no sense legislatively when they don't hold the presidency. They can't magically do anything at the federal level.

Again, place the blame where it really belongs.

Look your mistake here is thinking that not having total power means they don't have any power.

Off the top of my head, they waffled on the Mueller Report, they capitulate to Republicans to avoid government shutdowns, and during impeachment proceedings they did not even try at any point to have Trump's accomplices arrested for contempt of congress which they would have been well within their rights to do! They're just scared of looking divisive, which is a separate issue. They still have powers.

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Suprak the Stud posted...

bruh then blame republicans and elect more democrats if you want them to fucking do something.

Like I get it but I'm not going to blame the democrats because people are morons. They passed COVID relief like seven months ago, which is wildly popular, and the senate sat on it forever. That isn't the democrats fault, either. Blame republicans. Blame democrats when they suck, but I'm not blaming them when Mitch holds the senate and doesn't want to do anything.

I do blame Republicans for this!

I'm blaming Democrats for different reasons: they also know people are morons, they also know it's Republican's fault, but they - the Democrats themselves - SUCK at getting people to vote for them, despite their money, influence, and power. THAT is their fault. After 2018 they haven't capitalized on it at all, and I think it's fair to call them out for that.

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Related to "how were Democrats supposed to do anything with only the House" is that Democrats insist on playing by the rules, which is another way they deliberately handicap themselves. They gotta start playing hardball.

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Inviso posted...

Did the Dems run on healthcare, or did they run on checking Trump's power? Because a lot of those flipped seats were moderates.

Both, the thing is that they had a pretty unified vision. Republicans are trying to take your healthcare, we'll protect it and make it better.

Suprak the Stud posted...

........

...how?

bruh literally my next point is that it doesn't fucking matter that they can't, voters DO NOT CARE about you if they don't think you're helping them

The GOP manages to get votes while actively fucking their voters over, the Democrats also need to learn how to spin doing nothing positively, because the competition is incredible at it

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Inviso posted...

I really think you're overestimating the American public. As much as you think it doesn't go far enough, the ACA was a massive piece of progressive legislation that the Democratic Party had to expend ALL political capital just to get it passed. And what was the reward? The Democrats lost 63 House seats and control of the House for the rest of Obama's term, and after getting a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate, at the first possible opportunity, they lost a Senate seat in MASSACHUSETTS, and then lost 6 more Senate seats in the 2010 election (including one in ILLINOIS).

People love to shit on the Dems for neglecting down ballot races after Obama won in 2008, but the ACA was something the Congressional Dems FOUGHT FOR, and by all measures, it bit them in the ass in a massive way. It doesn't matter how good it is (for example, Kentucky loves Kynect), because all the GOP needs to do is say "Obamacare", and suddenly that policy is HATED by half the country. Hell, Trump can run on repealing it (which he failed to do for four years), offer no replacement plan, and he's still going to finish this election with over 70 million votes.

Despite the GOP's sabotage, the preexisting conditions bit of the ACA is very popular across party lines, to the point where Republicans were too afraid to repeal the ACA outright and now have to go around back through the courts to do so. Basically the idea should be to keep doing these very popular things, and to attach popular things to things that WILL become popular and need time for people to come around on, and build goodwill.

Obamacare also had a terrible rollout, which was awful PR. Going back to 2018, the Dems ran on healthcare and won, but didn't actually do anything with it. You and I know why this is, but voters don't care about stupid excuses like "our government is a nightmare of obstructionism specifically designed to prevent progress." If you don't help them, they'll drop you. Democrats don't need analysis and meticulously crafted plans, they need a god damn PR firm.

For all his faults, Trump understands the value of good PR. Literally everything he does is for optics. Even when he tried to use his office to undermine his political opponents, he didn't want Ukraine to actually investigate Joe Biden. That doesn't matter, he wanted them to announce an investigation so he'd look good!

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Man

Maybe if 2020 wasn't preceded by a YEAR AND A FUCKING HALF LONG PRIMARY SEASON of Democrats tearing each other to shreds over dumb bullshit this wouldn't be such a blowout

The world will never know

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Yesmar_ posted...

Part of the problem with the "threat" of progressive candidates is social media. It doesn't matter what a more moderate candidate, or even party leadership, actually says about police reform if voters in their district are reading "Defund the police"all over Twitter and don't like it. They are blaming their Democratic candidates for it. It's unfair and stupid, but voters are unfair and stupid. Short of completely condemning progressives in harsh enough terms and public enough venues for it to break through consistently to voters (which to be clear I don't think is right for a variety of personal as well as strategic reasons.), I don't know what can be done. Are there ways to communicate and argue for a progressive policy to voters that might be more initially resistant? Absolutely, however the problem is that due to social media, those people are hearing different arguments that they aren't receptive to, and tuning out any related argument when it comes up later.

How do you fix this? Honestly, I don't know.

This isn't just "social media," by the way, the more specific problem here is propaganda

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Inviso posted...

Compare this election to 2016 and 2018. 2016 had Bernie, but he was regarded as more of a tool to weaponize against Hillary. Then 2018 rolled around, and the GOP had no real unifying message. They'd held complete control of all three branches of government for two years and only had a tax cut to show for it, really. A blue wave occured in the House, some visible and vocal progressives (socialists, even) took House seats. Suddenly, the GOP had a boogeyman they could bandy about in a way they hadn't really been able to make stick with Obama or Hillary (Hillary lost for a variety of reasons, but "She's a socialist!" certainly wasn't one of them, given how much Trump stoked the hatred of Bernie supporters). And it's entirely possible that the looming threat of socialism drove GOP turnout to defend the country against the communist invasion. It doesn't seem like it was enough to help Trump, but it definitely helped down ballot. And this interpretation COULD be just as valid as yours.

Well, there's a lot going on here. And I do agree that the Republican turnout is probably a response to Democrats being energized to beat Trump. I think there's little way around that, unless you can actually convince people to switch sides to whatever extent you can, and I don't think they did.

On messaging, 2018 is actually a great example for what I'm talking about. The Dems ran on a unified message of healthcare! They got big gains with it, AND this was before they really had to be specific. As soon as they had to differentiate themselves in the 2019 primary, as soon as they had to start thinking about their general strategy, it all went to shit.

Beto really exemplifies this - he ran on a whole bunch of really vague progressive-ish policies in Texas. He waffled on specific healthcare plans but vaguely supported single payer (including Bernie's bill) while also not ruling out a public option as a compromise to get there (shoutouts mayor pete). But in 2018, for a Senate run, IN TEXAS, he could afford to do that, and got within 3% of Ted Cruz just being generally likable and promising some good shit. His base (and political consultants) convinced him to run for president. So what changed that made a vague "medicare for all" platform nearly good enough for Texas but not the rest of the country? The Democrats get extremely cowardly at a national level, and start fighting with each other to see who can be the most moderate. I bet the consultants told Beto he could have won Texas if he was a little more moderate on a few more issues. Maybe they're right! And I bet the consultants told most of the candidates similar things about their primary and general opponents. And so the entire party waters down their winning 2018 message to appeal to the center.

And then, like you say, they have to go on the defensive when the GOP comes after them as socialists. This is interesting because Biden and Harris are definitely prepared for being attacked this way and they're confident when they shrug it off. But they can do this because they threw out a lot of good progressive policy to make absolutely sure there's nothing remotely socialist in there. If they do adopt some, they bury it on their policy page that only us liberal elites read instead of loudly running on it. They got so focused on convincing people that they weren't radical leftists that they forgot to also convince people that they'll help. So why would any skeptics believe them?

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LordoftheMorons posted...

This seems to cut pretty strongly against the idea that Biden was a weak candidate:

https://twitter.com/mattgrossmann/status/1324575100260274178?s=21

Ok, so in actuality the entire Democratic party is ridiculously unpopular, and Biden can just barely offset it

Great news

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Inviso posted...

So you ask me what would convince me that progressive policies can win nationally, and I just say "win the national primaries" or "win primaries or elections outright in purple states/districts". I'm not saying progressive policy is bad, and I'm not even saying "oh no, progressive policy can never win elections". I'm saying that, at the moment, progressives need to demonstrate that they CAN win elections. They need to adjust their messaging so they get primary VOTERS to vote for them.

You bring up Obama. Obama was able to overcome Hillary Clinton. So obviously progressives (or at least surface-level progressives) are ABLE to win...but you still need to demonstrate the ability to do so in order to push your policy agenda.

I see what you're saying and even agree to an extent. I'm not going to compare the 08 and 2020 primaries because the 2020 primary was a complete fucking mess, but Bernie didn't run a campaign that was capable of winning the primary, sure. But you have to understand that progressives have to fight a war on two fronts, and Bernie (and Warren) having a difficult time winning primaries is directly related to the Democratic Party's strategy for the general.

And look at how good that strategy was! A complete fucking failure at the congressional level. So it's already clear that the entire party needs to change something. You can't move right, so........

Frankly we are out of time to do this the "fair" way of slowly winning primaries, too. 2022 is going to straight up be a disaster. Progressives have won a noticeable amount of House seats but the establishment generally hasn't caught on to that trend yet, and preferred the safe route while grumbling about the newcomers. The safe route just cost them the Senate, even though they went through great pains to distance themselves from the progressive wing. You can blame progressives for being "divisive" all you want, but the spooky shadow of progressivism will ALWAYS haunt the party, unless you kick all progressives out. If that's not what you want, the only remaining option is for the rest of the party to stop being scared of the progressive wing, move left, and work together to rebrand the party.

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Inviso posted...

I'm not denying that the DNC and the center and the moderates need to get their shit together, because 2016, and now this narrow margin are fucking embarrassing. But the attitude from progressives comes across as "The DNC needs to fix everything they're doing wrong because they're fucking up badly and losing over and over again. But WE don't need to change ANYTHING we're doing. We can just keep running the same losing campaigns over and over again and I'm sure the Democrats will eventually realize how brilliant we are and will adopt our campaign strategy accordingly." I just want progressives to TRY to win. That's all. I want them to TRY, so they maybe they actually CAN win.

Inviso I think I understand and can agree with the gist of what you're saying but I think you're mixing up the entire progressive movement with specifically Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign. Others have adapted and found success. And...the DNC is the one that keeps losing all on their own, without any help from progressives.

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NFUN posted...

I think a lot of the issue is something Eddv and Para have talked about. The progressive movement doesn't really have any original iconography to rely on, or American great thinkers, or a good name for their philosophies. "Socialism" is a no-go for the reasons stated, and with that any references to socialist (or worse, communist) symbols and writers go out the window. Plus, America has its own very strong identity, and I think a lot of the power of socialist messaging has to come from a perspective unique to the country. Russia had Lenin, China had Mao, Latin America had Guevara. The closest we have is... FDR?.. Sanders?? AOC??? Nothing really fits and there's no motto or symbology or name to build an identity off of. Even the Tea Party was more put together

Hot take: this is the Civil Rights Movement, which has all this and more. Distinctly an American movement, too, it's just that being racist as fuck is also distinctly American so people don't want to hear it. And its successor movement doesn't have an iconic leader.

Broadly speaking the labor movement could also qualify and has "traditional" Americana in spades if that's what you want.

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Ashethan posted...

Progressives need to work on their messaging more than their branding. The idea of party purity is just ridiculous. Politicians evolve on the issues (at least Democrats do) and as long as they show they are evolving they should be encouraged, not discouraged. Because then they will keep evolving. Maybe we won't get to where we want to be, but we can at least move in that direction under a Democrat. This isn't going to be easy. I know we live in the age of instant gratification, but progress takes time. We didn't get same sex marriage in a day, but we did get Obama to move from openly opposing Same Sex Marriage to SUPPORTING IT. That's a victory, even more so because he originally opposed it.

What do you mean by this? Progress obviously takes time but you also need a better plan of action besides that.

Right now the plan has been "progressives can primary elected Dems faster than they're evolving so let's speed up that process" while the establishment gets very upset about it.

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Inviso posted...

On the subject of branding, while I agree that the DNC sucks at branding (admittedly, because Democratic-leaning voters tend not to easily fall for simple slogans the way Republican-leaning voters do), the progressive wing REALLY needs to fix their branding as well.

I'm going to tldr your post but this is the same problem

The Democratic party as a whole needs to figure out how to rebrand progressive policy. The end.

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fuming posted...

https://twitter.com/CarlBeijer/status/1324543242055131136

We are being watched

Cannot wait for the deep dives on Corrik and Ulti to appear in Jacobin

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KamikazePotato posted...

Democrats can be bad at branding but people never seem willing to admit that maybe voters are fucking stupid and branding is hard when dealing with a populace that runs on a single shared brain cell

It's easy for the GOP because all they have to do is appeal to hateful emotion. Democrats have to actually try

This may be true but I can still blame the political party with money and power that should know all this and sucks at winning elections

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