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Hugo Stiglitz

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Do you centrist Dems seriously think that if AOC simply stopped calling herself a democratic socialist that the republicans would stop attacking her as an evil socialist and trying to tie moderate Dem candidates to her?

For fuck’s sake, Pelosi is one of the more conservative members of the entire caucus and they’ve successfully branded her as a far-left communist in a ton of people’s eyes. 

They say the same shit about every Democratic candidate. Why y’all want to validate their attacks on Dems is beyond me.

Edited by wildcat09
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43 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Do you centrist Dems seriously think that if AOC simply stopped calling herself a democratic socialist that the republicans would stop attacking her as an evil socialist and trying to tie moderate Dem candidates to her?

For fuck’s sake, Pelosi is one of the more conservative members of the entire caucus and they’ve successfully branded her as a far-left communist in a ton of people’s eyes. 

They say the same shit about every Democratic candidate. Why y’all want to validate their attacks on Dems is beyond me.

Yea if you think AOC is any part of the future of the party as a candidate or something you are as much of a issue as Trump was....  For real we need to come back together not keep going farther apart.   A AOC or Harris on the next Ticket would get killed I promise you.  No no don’t throw your Trump lover crap at me either I hate the man.  People are tired of the extreame bullshit and want normal again.  That’s not AOC she is basically a admitted socialist by her views and not what the party needs.

Edited by Hook1997
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"It's time to stop worrying about what the Republicans will say. It's true that if we embrace a far left agenda, they're going to say we're a bunch of crazy socialists. If we embrace a conservative agenda, you know what they're going to do? They're going to say we're a bunch of crazy socialists. Let's stand up for the right policy, go up there and defend it."

- Pete Buttigieg

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1 minute ago, berlinerbaer said:

"It's time to stop worrying about what the Republicans will say. It's true that if we embrace a far left agenda, they're going to say we're a bunch of crazy socialists. If we embrace a conservative agenda, you know what they're going to do? They're going to say we're a bunch of crazy socialists. Let's stand up for the right policy, go up there and defend it."

- Pete Buttigieg

Says the candidate who ran as a centrist option to Biden and as a counter to Bernie and Liz...... lol.  Just funny he said it.

 

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15 minutes ago, berlinerbaer said:

"It's time to stop worrying about what the Republicans will say. It's true that if we embrace a far left agenda, they're going to say we're a bunch of crazy socialists. If we embrace a conservative agenda, you know what they're going to do? They're going to say we're a bunch of crazy socialists. Let's stand up for the right policy, go up there and defend it."

- Pete Buttigieg

Let’s piss off the extremes on both sides and do what’s right I say...  cause neither extreme is right.  You all might laugh but a third party with liberal social views and economic republican views to a point would do good right now but it will never happen.  People need to actually follow what Joe is saying instead of fueling off and mirroring  the Trump hate that they are now.

Edited by Hook1997
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Tweets from the thread...

----------------------------------

After arriving in Miami, my first task was perfunctory: find out where and when candidates were speaking. For Republicans, this took around 15 minutes. For Democrats, it took five days.

What I found was a stunning level of disorganisation. No-one was in charge. No-one knew who was in charge. Even entry levels of enquiry like "who is your press contact" were unanswerable.

More senior staff (when people knew who they were) were AWOL, not on the trail but at home or on leave. I kept being told a particular individual "knew everything"; when I finally found him (it took several days), he was a backpacker volunteer who had been living in Spain.

(Needless to say, he didn't know anything). Meanwhile, GOP staff were sharing booth-by-booth early voting totals with me. Their granular understanding was impressive.

When I asked a Democratic staff member about this, she said (on the record!) that "Republicans are a lot more organised than we are".

When I finally heard Debbie Mucarsel-Powell speak, I was contacted by someone from the Democratic campaign in Washington. They were unhappy about my questions to the local campaign (after days of being messed around, I was also letting my frustration show).

I asked them questions about what I had seen, and was surprised when they berated me. The campaign was excellent, they were going to win, lawn signs don't matter, etc. They would speak to me after the election, and I would see they would win FL-26 and FL-27.

And they were right - they did win those seats. Only Andrew Gillum, the Demoractic candidate for Florida governor who had been a polling favourite, lost a narrow election because of weak turnout in... Miami-Dade.

----------------------------------

There's an adage: You don't get what you don't ask for.

You have to go ask people for their votes. You have to have a plan to do that. Your people have to be pushed to do that.

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I don't think this rift in the Dems is as powerful as the Trump rift for the GOP because the Dem rift is generational.

When Reagan smashed Carter the Democrats transitioned away from popular movements and towards corporate donors. The "New" Democrats rose up as a rebellion against a generation of Democrats raised on FDR visions and that has been the ruling force in the party from 1990 to today. Those people are ancient now and the generational rebellion against them will go back to FDR visions (where they should be and never should have left).

The Trump rift is cross-generational and it's centered around a single, highly-toxic, personality. It's not even going to stop when/if Trump finally concedes, because Trump will be Trump until he dies and after that he will, for a while at least, be some kind of spiritual totem for the freaks.

The center and right (and their media apparatus) want to portray AOC as some kind of left-wing Trump, but the enthusiasm for her isn't nearly the same and the organization around her isn't primarily motivated by allegiance to her personally (look at her Twitter replies whenever she does something shitlibby, her fans roast her).

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10 hours ago, Hook1997 said:

Let’s piss off the extremes on both sides and do what’s right I say...  cause neither extreme is right.  You all might laugh but a third party with liberal social views and economic republican views to a point would do good right now but it will never happen.  People need to actually follow what Joe is saying instead of fueling off and mirroring  the Trump hate that they are now.

What exactly do you think Republican economic views are? 

I'm not asking what they claim them to be, I'm asking what their actions prove them to be. 

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I don't know if there's time for bold change, but I'm on board if that's where we're going. Sometimes the party reminds me of an ocean liner trying to do a 180 when we need a jetski. Problem is, we could sink the jetski but at the same time, trying to turn a liner leaves one open to broadside attacks. Maybe a jetski army or a bunch of PT boats or something. Not a boater so I probably messed up the analogy and should stop while I'm behind. Or sinking. Or something.

This fellow has a take in the op ed, but the hate comes out pretty quick by the right.

 

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1 hour ago, bad_teammate said:

I don't think this rift in the Dems is as powerful as the Trump rift for the GOP because the Dem rift is generational.

When Reagan smashed Carter the Democrats transitioned away from popular movements and towards corporate donors. The "New" Democrats rose up as a rebellion against a generation of Democrats raised on FDR visions and that has been the ruling force in the party from 1990 to today. Those people are ancient now and the generational rebellion against them will go back to FDR visions (where they should be and never should have left).

The Trump rift is cross-generational and it's centered around a single, highly-toxic, personality. It's not even going to stop when/if Trump finally concedes, because Trump will be Trump until he dies and after that he will, for a while at least, be some kind of spiritual totem for the freaks.

The center and right (and their media apparatus) want to portray AOC as some kind of left-wing Trump, but the enthusiasm for her isn't nearly the same and the organization around her isn't primarily motivated by allegiance to her personally (look at her Twitter replies whenever she does something shitlibby, her fans roast her).

I think it’s generational but there’s two other demographics that are shifting strongly democratic and pushing the party: college and post grad education and non religious. So you have a younger, more educated party that isn’t constrained by religious dogma and they’re looking at things pragmatically and saying boy it sure seems like it makes a lot more sense to build a society from the bottom up that includes everyone and has its eyes on the future. 

I think some of that youthful exuberance comes with a bit of “fuck your we’re moving this country forward with or without you” and it leads to political missteps like embracing the term defund the police. That being the banner for police reform allowed Trump to scare a lot of people that were too stupid to see through it for what it was. Maybe it led to increased turnout in the base, but all of the data that I’ve seen seem to say that a lot of the country said “we don’t want Donald trump, but we’re scared of the caricature the left is allowing itself to be painted as. 

Edited by heso
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32 minutes ago, heso said:

.... political missteps like embracing the term defund the police.

List the politicians running for office in November 2020 that embraced the phrase "defund the police" and how they did in their races.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Winner
Ilhan Omar: Winner
Cori Bush: Winner
Rashida Tlaib: Winner

Add to the list if I'm missing someone. It seems to me that the people who lost specifically distanced themselves from Defund the Police or outright rejected/criticized it. Am I wrong?

Quote

That being the banner for police reform allowed Trump to scare a lot of people that were too stupid to see through it for what it was.

In what sense was Defund "the banner for police reform"?

In corporate media? In right-wing talking points? Why do the Democrats allow those two hostile forces to set their agenda? Why do the Democrats dance to their tune?

All the right-wing establishment and media class has to do is say "BOO!" at centrist Democrats and the centrist Democrats scatter like birds at a gunshot.

So if the reality is that politicians who "embraced defund the police" actually won their races, what does that tell you? I don't think it tells us that "defund the police" is the phrase every single candidate nationwide should embrace, but it DOES tell me that voters smell a coward and a weasel. When someone acts nervous we can sense it and we don't trust them.

I don't think people in purple districts should be pushed to run as leftists. Why do centrists demand absolute ideological purity? Why do centrists demand lockstep agreement with everything they believe (which, ironically, is essentially nothing)?

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52 minutes ago, heso said:

I think it’s generational but there’s two other demographics that are shifting strongly democratic and pushing the party: college and post grad education and non religious. So you have a younger, more educated party that isn’t constrained by religious dogma and they’re looking at things pragmatically and saying boy it sure seems like it makes a lot more sense to build a society from the bottom up that includes everyone and has its eyes on the future. 

I think some of that youthful exuberance comes with a bit of “fuck your we’re moving this country forward with or without you” and it leads to political missteps like embracing the term defund the police. That being the banner for police reform allowed Trump to scare a lot of people that were too stupid to see through it for what it was. Maybe it led to increased turnout in the base, but all of the data that I’ve seen seem to say that a lot of the country said “we don’t want Donald trump, but we’re scared of the caricature the left is allowing itself to be painted as. 

That was a huge problem and part of why the left needs to dial back their rhetoric.

Medicare for all needs to be the mantra until 11/22.  

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5 minutes ago, immamac said:

AOC gonna fuck around and find out. 

I'd put AOC and Pete up against anybody with regards to supporting and defending their positions... 

fuck around and have them on a ticket together and let them talk their way into winning.

 

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27 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

Always disturbing when people eagerly anticipate the crushing of popular movements by party machines.

Always disturbing to see people root against themselves and their families.

The caste system in American is largely not discussed, but remains a powerful framework for how individuals view themselves in society.  Nice read on the subject:

image.png.420c13b6541a158d8af09b8e842c55b2.png 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/running-deeper-than-race-americas-caste-system/2020/07/30/501af19a-c7a5-11ea-a99f-3bbdffb1af38_story.html

Quote

 

Wilkerson spent much of the 2010s researching and writing her book, just as the United States was moving in a direction that seemed to validate its thesis. A series of killings of African Americans, often by police officers, helped birth a new anti-racist social movement. Athletes knelt, monuments to slavery began to come down, reparations for enslavement and its long aftermath became a mainstream idea, and the politics of White grievance took over the White House. When she finished her book, she titled it “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.” Wilkerson’s thesis is that Americans’ current obsession with race is somewhat misplaced, for there is a deeper and more intractable system that hides behind the chimera of race, and that system is properly called American caste.

Caste, Wilkerson argues, is something we internalize unconsciously. “Race is fluid and superficial,” she asserts, joining the many scholars who have pointed out that race — with all its assumptions of the innate intellectual and moral superiority of one arbitrarily designated group of people over another — is an illusion. “Caste,” on the other hand, “is fixed and rigid.” “Caste, like grammar, becomes an invisible guide not only to how we speak, but to how we process information.” The caste system disguises itself by making us see race traits as real and immutable, and anti-racist work as simply the elimination of prejudiced thinking. The real problem, Wilkerson argues, goes deeper.

 

 

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Besides being giant pussies and not attacking the Rs and playing nice.

 

the Ds suck at getting their message address. They talk to ppl who they think are intelligent and rational. They need to figure out how to talk to full blown idiots and stupidfy their message for them.

the Rs have that figured out, they turned Benghazi into a story while the dems can’t make 240k Americans death stick 

 

stop being nice snd get on the offensive  

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10 hours ago, Gengs1 said:

Besides being giant pussies and not attacking the Rs and playing nice.

 

the Ds suck at getting their message address. They talk to ppl who they think are intelligent and rational. They need to figure out how to talk to full blown idiots and stupidfy their message for them.

the Rs have that figured out, they turned Benghazi into a story while the dems can’t make 240k Americans death stick 

 

stop being nice snd get on the offensive  

Simple , effective slogans sent out over and over and over again seems to be the only way to communicate with the great, unwashed electorate.

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1 hour ago, Firemans4Horn said:

Time for Perez to hit the road at the DNC and the dem leadership that were born before Pearl Harbor to get the fuck out of the way. 
 

 

They need to get rid of these losers and get some pit bulls in there who are ready to get dirty and go after someone 

of course they won’t And they go back to being nice 

 

This is like having a losing season under Strong and deciding, they let’s keep him more and maybe something changes 

Edited by Gengs1
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  • 2 weeks later...

Interesting twitter convo here. Started with an opinion on an opinion (piece) in WaPo and went from there...

 

I don't necessarily agree with lumping people together (for expediency and fundraising voting blocs I suppose I understand why), but one bit from this long string of words is IMO summed up best by the last reply to the original tweet (the coalition). Healthcare was and is something that many folks were rallying around, for example, and it seemed (to me) to transcend these 'monolithic' temptations. Or listening to what supporters were saying regarding racial justice and wages and so on. That was a strength of Bernie (male) and Warren (female) and though she wasn't a Presidential candidate, Stacey Abrams (black and female)--I didn't list Kamala mostly because she seemed (to me) to have a more difficult time expressing that in words that resonated in the same way, which could be unfair as I didn't have quite as much listening time to her as the others--I spent some time delving into Abram's talks and she is a damned good speaker.

Anyway, they could get voters excited about the truth behind what these platforms are about.

Maybe I'm taking the whole thing the wrong way, but instead of looking at it from the 'suburban moms' (that some see as a bloc) might get butthurt and vote GOP, look at it from the "a majority of our voters prefer X" and invite them to come along to make it happen. In addition to the suburbs being more diverse than in the past, there are still hardcore patriarchal voters in the suburbs that are going to stick with the GOP and (if they are cultish) let them. Like the Confederacy, they are likely a lost cause. Those suburbs exist all over the US (not just in the south) and I'm not sure how the best way to counter them is, but going all in on the crazy probably isn't the ideal way.

 

Thoughts?

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I don't know what you mean by "going all in on the crazy people" so I can't help there and I don't want to presume your meaning.

But Jill's question here is very instructive:
How is a cohort "monolithic" when it's divided nearly in half between Republicans and Democrats?

The answer is this: Because there are versions of "Republican" and "Democrat" that are almost identical.

- Hate or distrust BLM
- Love or at least like cops
- Never around poor people
- Never in majority-minority spaces
- Disconnected from popular political movements
- Nominally Christian
- Financially secure personally
- Thinks the economy is mostly fine as is just needs little tweaks

What is the real difference between Moderate Republican Karen and Conservative Democrat Karen? "D" and "R" are not significant distinctions, in my mind. To pundit-brains like Jill's, that distinction is all that matters, though.

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You're not wrong here; the crossover similarity is there.

 

 

The ref to 'crazy' was that some of them in the mushy middle are going to be drawn more and more to the authoritarian. It provides confident answers if you don't think too hard (now that Trump is gone). People who are comfortable in that way are weary and tired of thinking. Not sure how to go about countering that or if it is worthwhile. "It sounds reasonable," is going to be the thought process for some of those folks I guess?

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/11/2020 at 10:47 AM, SydneyCarton said:

I searched but couldn't find a Susan Collins thread, but this seemed like the next best place:

https://mainernews.com/how-sara-gideon-lost-to-collins-the-day-after-she-entered-the-race/

While there's a lot of truth in that article, this quote stuck out to me.

Quote

“Mainers could smell the disingenuousness a mile away and, frankly, I don’t think the top-dollar, out-of-state consultants who worked on the campaign did anything at all to mask it.”

And yet they found nothing disingenuous about Collins?

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1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

While there's a lot of truth in that article, this quote stuck out to me.

And yet they found nothing disingenuous about Collins?

I lived in Maine for a short while.

It was long enough to realize that they are, for the most part, dumber than aggy. Not as hypocritically vile, and definitely more hygienic, but still... thick as bricks.

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On 11/11/2020 at 9:41 PM, Gengs1 said:

Besides being giant pussies and not attacking the Rs and playing nice.

 

the Ds suck at getting their message address. They talk to ppl who they think are intelligent and rational. They need to figure out how to talk to full blown idiots and stupidfy their message for them.

the Rs have that figured out, they turned Benghazi into a story while the dems can’t make 240k Americans death stick 

 

stop being nice snd get on the offensive  

Very much this^

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On 11/12/2020 at 2:41 PM, Gengs1 said:

Besides being giant pussies and not attacking the Rs and playing nice.

 

the Ds suck at getting their message address. They talk to ppl who they think are intelligent and rational. They need to figure out how to talk to full blown idiots and stupidfy their message for them.

the Rs have that figured out, they turned Benghazi into a story while the dems can’t make 240k Americans death stick 

 

stop being nice snd get on the offensive  

for sure Gengs, if that is your real name.

the two sides of the D party are actually muting each other further, obviously. I'd vote they just say "yeah, we want healthcare as a universal right and best for economy. Absolutely a socialist policy we need now" paraphrased. just accept it. stop hiding and being giant pussies about it. IMO you make it worse when you let other people narrate for you.

the further you avoid a platform built on change - the further the democrats must take on all of the burden that they are the corrupt part of the federal government (giving cover to shit like trump). can't stress that enough. they need to push and not pull. 

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On 11/9/2020 at 8:22 AM, bad_teammate said:

I don't think this rift in the Dems is as powerful as the Trump rift for the GOP because the Dem rift is generational.

When Reagan smashed Carter the Democrats transitioned away from popular movements and towards corporate donors. The "New" Democrats rose up as a rebellion against a generation of Democrats raised on FDR visions and that has been the ruling force in the party from 1990 to today. Those people are ancient now and the generational rebellion against them will go back to FDR visions (where they should be and never should have left).

The Trump rift is cross-generational and it's centered around a single, highly-toxic, personality. It's not even going to stop when/if Trump finally concedes, because Trump will be Trump until he dies and after that he will, for a while at least, be some kind of spiritual totem for the freaks.

The center and right (and their media apparatus) want to portray AOC as some kind of left-wing Trump, but the enthusiasm for her isn't nearly the same and the organization around her isn't primarily motivated by allegiance to her personally (look at her Twitter replies whenever she does something shitlibby, her fans roast her).

I think Carter was actually the first "New" Democrat and his Presidency marked the death of the New Deal era.  Substantively, Reagan was just an amplification of things Carter had already started.

imo, the last real New Deal President is Richard Nixon.  He's certainly better than any President who has followed him.

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