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BradInATX

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by BradInATX

  1. 8 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

    Eggo, that passage you posted is absolute horseshit. All of it. 

     

    The gist of that passage is literally the foundation of every great book ever written on communication, business, and sales. 

    Elections are sales processes.

  2. 22 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

     

    Brad, 

    After reading these items again, I think we'd get along very well in a political discussion face-to-face.

    What you've posted above should be "center" positions IMO. But the GOP and hardcore Republicans would look at you as a hippie liberal and a political enemy.  You believe you are a centrist but the reality of this current political atmosphere is you are not. 

    The GOP has moved this country right of center over the last 30-40 years. The list of positions above only come to fruition with a President and party that feel STRONGLY about these issues. We have to stop worrying about capturing ANY voters who disagree with those beliefs if it means toning down the rhetoric. 

    Here are our values. We believe deeply in them. We welcome you to join us. I believe there are a lot of Americans that would cross the aisle and vote for a candidate who has conviction and acts in good faith, even if they don't necessarily agree on certain policies. The fact is health care is a WINNING debate for Democrats, so is climate change, and so is gun control. 

    I highly recommend you check out Pete Buttigieg, as I think you'd really like him. I'm basically parroting a lot of his thoughts. 

     

     

     

    I like what I've seen of Buttigieg. If he's a valid contender by the time our primary rolls around, I'll give him a serious look.

    And I completely agree about the GOP moving right - I think upthread I mentioned that I think the more moderate wing of the Democratic party is really the political center of the country, once strip away all of the wedge issues. It's funny, you said "you believe you are a centrist", where I don't think I've ever actually said that here. I generally consider myself to be a left-leaning independent. It's just that the "you're either Bernie Sanders or a Republican!!" crowd spends so much effort trying to label anyone not extreme left as a "centrist" and then proceeds to stigmatize the word that the "centrist" thing has stuck to anyone on this thread who doesn't pass the Bernie Bro purity test. 

    Regarding gun control - it's definitely a nuanced issue. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx. The majority is for "stricter gun control laws" but the majority is also against semi-auto rifle bans. The majority stance mirrors mine pretty well - 92% in favor of better background checks, but not in favor of banning semi-autos. 

    But I digress - appreciate the conversation and we'd definitely have a good time over some beer and a discussion. And I'll be voting for whoever it is, even if it's my least favorite D candidate, who will still be light years better than Trump and co.

     

    • Like 1
  3. 41 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

    So what are D candidates saying that could keep them from getting your vote?

     

    Nothing. I'll vote for whoever the nominee is. I've been pretty clear about that. I'm not bad teammate or Js1 who's going to go off and vote for Stein if Bernie loses the primary again.

  4. 5 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

    I'm no fan of Hillary and you have valid points. But it's in the past and the game continues to change. The GOP and Trump administration will go scorched earth on any D candidate and will lie/cheat/do anything to win the 2020 election. IMO the only successful counter to that is a candidate that strongly stands behind their ideas/values, instead of finding ways to get mythical votes from "centrists."  Counter Trump's insincerity with authenticity and conviction. Then if a D wins the presidency, real positive change has a chance. 

     

     

     

     

    People are people and perception is everything - those attacks are going to stick to some candidates much more than they will to others. "Binders full of women" deeply cut Romney, but "grab em by the pussy" slid right off of Trump. They flailed and flailed at Obama with Marxist, birth certificate, coming for your guns, etc. and the electorate wasn't having it.

    I don't disagree with the notion that standing by your values will resonate much more than Hillary's ever-changing chameleon act. But I'm not confident that any of the current candidates have the star power or charisma (ala Bill or Obama) to go full tilt left while deflecting the GOP barrage of bullshit well enough to win the general. Without a rock star candidate, some pragmatism is in order if you want to win. JMHO, of course, but we all saw 2016.

  5. 9 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

    We need clear cut ideas that promote American values. 

    The center needs to be moved to the left.

     

     

     

    Agree and agree but I think the clear-cut ideas that promote American values will address the bigger picture (Republicans and their terribleness) and at the same time win elections are:

    - Addressing massive wealth disparity and shrinking opportunity for upward mobility
    - Anti corruption
    - Reducing the burden for families from things like healthcare, child care, and housing that have dramatically increased over the past 20 years to the point where they're even squeezing the upper tiers of middle class
    - Personal freedoms, LGBTQ rights, marijuana legalization, etc.
    - Closing tax loopholes for the rich that the lower classes don't have access to, and using the proceeds for the above and/or infrastructure (projects that create jobs)

    Look, I'm not saying that things like the GND are things that the party shouldn't support. I'm fully in favor of it. But I'd like to see more focus on the above things that the majority of America supports and that win elections, and less focus on vanity projects that appeal to the further-left folks in the party. Go campaign on the above, take the W, and once you're in go nuts with all of the liberal dream projects. But campaigning on things that California loves but the Obama->Trump voters hate like gun control, reparations, "Green New Deal", etc. is going to put the election in Jeopardy.

    You can't have your Green New Deal or reparations if Trump wins again. 

  6. 1 minute ago, Hank Scorpio said:

    Oh, so you're a republican. That explains it. Thanks Brad. 

    Yep. I support:

    - The ACA
    - Reasonable gun control
    - Affirmative Action
    - Pro-choice
    - More stringent regulation of financial instituations and business in general
    - Clean energy and subsidies 
    - Criminal justice reform
    - Campaign finance reform and elimination of Citizens United
    - LGBTQ rights, gay marriage, and every variation thereof
    - Legalization of pot
    - The majority of social programs
    - Religious freedom and separation of the state and Christianity
     

    But I'm against free college and magazine restrictions, so  I'm definitely a Republican.

    This is why you keep losing. Big tent, huh?

    • Like 1
  7. 22 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

    Can the centrists on here explain what problems they have with the major ideas/policies that Democrats are pitching right now? Let's get into specifics. 

     

    I can only speak for myself but in the majority of cases my issues with the ideas being pitched is not that I'm against them on principle, but that they are general election losers and are exposing us to the risk of four more years of Trump.

    I'm not really interested in a policy debate, but I appreciate the fair question and attempt at some civil discussion, so I'll give it a shot. I realize that some of these are things that have only been pitched by one or two candidates, and are not necessarily pillars of the Democratic platform.

    - Not in favor of reparations (though I support Affirmative Action and other similar measures). I realize this is an extremely unimportant issue and I don't even really care that much about it, but it's topical
    - Not in favor of free college for everyone 
    - I'm fully supportive of more extensive background checks and closing certain gun law loopholes, but not in favor of banning any specific sort of weapon that is currently legal. Also not in favor of magazine restrictions, etc. 
    - I think charter schools are appropriate and probably a better option in some places than public schools are. New Orleans would be one example where the charter system has done a much better job of educating kids than the public school system
    - Undecided on M4A. Support the ACA in the way it was originally intended to work before Obama bent the knee to the Republicans and allowed "compromise" to kneecap the entire premise. I do have reservations about putting the entire system in the hands of the government.
    - Generally pro-choice but think there need to be limitations to it
    - I'm iffy on minimum wage increases. Certainly support lower-end workers making more money, but I tend to think on a national level that it's just going to increase inflation/COL which makes it a zero-sum for said lower-end workers and squeezes the middle class even further. But I'm generally open to seeing the results from localized efforts on this one. Specifically I'd like to see it done in a "real" city and not a technology-utopia like Seattle or California where money grows on trees and you can get a six figure job just by saying the word "STEM" in an interview.
     

    Probably could go on but I have work to do.

     

    • Like 1
  8. 3 minutes ago, GSU&UT said:

    We can have discussions, but these aren't in good faith when y'all are posting twitter links believing that GND, reparations are the main things these candidates are talking about at every rally regardless of location

    The GND and reparations are what we're talking about. It's what the news and TV talking heads are talking about.

    What percentage of people would you say are exposed to mainstream news and Twitter vs. those that are exposed to localized campaign rallies?

  9. Just now, longhornmatt said:

    Hillary had 25 years of being Rush Limbaugh’s Public Enemy Number 1 to deal with.  It really probably never even mattered how she campaigned.  She obliterated Trump in the debate and nobody cared.  She was ultra damaged goods before the campaign even started.

    It would be like the Republicans trying to nominate W again and wondering why people didn’t respond to his message.  Was he too centrist?  Too right wing?  Surely it couldn’t be because 50+% of the country already hated him and had dug in on that decades ago, right? 

    And this. Hillary was a terrible, doomed candidate from the beginning. Some of it of her own doing, and some of it from the 25 years of Fox News bile. 

    You can't really prescribe a philosophy to Hillary because she didn't really have one, unless you count going from moderate to liberal to moderate and ultimately adopting the majority of Bernie's platform in the general. 

    But I don't think it's a surprise that more moderate Democrats cleaned up in the midterms whereas the more far-left-leaning candidates did not.

  10. 2 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

    "I really hope we can get a Dem candidate who will generate enthusiasm and interest so we can beat Trump."

    *a candidate raises $6M (4x the record) in campaign donations from 220k small donors and signs up more than 1 million volunteers in 24 hours*

    "Uh... I said... I REALLY HOPE WE CAN..."

    It's almost... it's almost like they don't actually care about any of it. Weird. Weird Weird Weird.

    You don't have to become a Bernie Bro, but to actively fight against that momentum is insanity if you actually care about beating Trump.

    How is anyone fighting the momentum? I'm not going to show up to the polling locations for the primaries and stop people from voting for Bernie.

    4 minutes ago, Js1 said:

    BradinATX, Longhornmatt, Eggo and Sublime the centrist brigade here to tell you why every candidate running on the Democrat side is bad because they don't communicate centrist ideas to the Democratic primary electorate that isn't at all centrist anymore.

    Just a reminder - none of these people are the nominee yet.  None of them will be the nominee until summer 2020 at the earliest.  They are all chasing votes in the primary electorate that is going to vote for them to be the nominee, which is to the left of all these highly-revered centrist voters in the Midwest.  Trump going 100% balls to the wall far right didn't alienate these mythical centrist voters in 2016.

    And thankfully, Fozz the Libertarian is also here to tell you to vote for Gabbard in the primary or the badass Libertarian candidate in 2020! 

     

    Wow, thanks for explaining how primaries work. Fascinating stuff. 

    And Trump didn't go far right in 2016. At least not in every area. Protectionism was not a right-wing ethos in 2016, but it's one of the reasons he won the rust belt. Don't be disingenuous. 

    However, Hillary trying to ride the coastal far-left technocrat wave instead of traditional union/every-man democrat certainly did hurt her in that area.

  11. 2 minutes ago, Fozzz said:

    They have beliefs, just highly unpopular ones.

    Or they have beliefs that hit both sides of the political spectrum depending on the issue, because they're humans who have nuanced thoughts and beliefs and are able to comprehend that not everything in the world is black/white or red/blue. Most children have a need to see the world in right/wrong, black/white, etc. and are unable to understand complexities and nuance.

  12. 2 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

    You think charisma is a necessity because you don't actually have beliefs. You're a child waiting for a commercial to be loud and bright enough to grab your attention.

    There it is!

    "Anyone who isn't far left or far right has no beliefs and is a child!"

    Big tent.

     

    And I think charisma is necessary because the most charismatic candidate has won the general in every election since the majority of households had televisions.

  13. 4 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

     


    Yupppppppp.

    Trump = much too long list of every horrible thing he has said and done

    Democrat candidates = we should look into investing in marginalized communities

    RW Twitter and FOX News = REpaRAtiOnS

    Democrat candidates = Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that

    Swing centrist who’s totally not really a Republican who agrees with Trump’s policies but just doesn’t like that he has bad manners = Welp, that candidate once alluded to something that could be labeled reparations so I guess I have to “reluctantly” vote for Trump. AGAIN.

     

     

    Those people are not centrists. Those people are "independents" who are reliable R voters in that same sense that I'm an "independent" who hasn't voted for a R since Bush's first term and won't for the foreseeable future.

    There are true centrists out there. Villianizing them and trying to turn the word "centrist" into a negative is yet another line item on a long list of terrible, stupid strategy by the left. You should stop.

  14. 2 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

     

    Holy shit did you seriously not just see a Dem enter the field, raise $6M and get 1 million volunteers in 24 hours? Turn on your god damned monitor, son.

    Obviously Bernie is your guy and you'll never agree with me here, but Bernie, while charming and somewhat charismatic, has nowhere near the star power of Obama or Clinton. He has a really energized group of followers who hang on his every word, which is far different than someone with the chops to get 50+ percent of the country to vote for him.

  15. 7 minutes ago, GSU&UT said:

    These poor factory workers do nothing but spend time on twitter mulling over every single thing a candidate says?

     

    Kamala Harris is asked something: "Yeah that sounds like a good idea if we implement it this reasonable way."
    Twitter: Kamala Harris supports reparations!!
    Michigan Auto Worker: THAT'S IT, TIME TO VOTE FOR TRUMP AGAIN!

    ------------- 8 months later Kamala is in Michigan at an auto-factory ------------------

    Kamala: We need to protect unions and hold employers to a higher standard of paying a living wage!

    Workers: NO NO NO, I did nothing but think about a tweet I saw 8 months ago because I do nothing but spend time on the internet all day every day. You Ma'am have lost my vote!!


    Is this how it plays out in your mind?

    They don't own TVs?

  16. 3 minutes ago, Js1 said:

    Liberals don't hate the left.

    Centrists hate the left more than they hate the right.  They have no problem holding their noses and voting for Republicans.  But when it comes to Democrats, they better be PERFECT.

    False. Stop with the "woe is me" nonsense. People hold their friends to higher standards than their enemies - doesn't mean they're suddenly going to cast off their friends and buddy up to the enemy. I want the D candidate to win and I'm deathly afraid of another 2016 where the party 1) picks a bad candidate and 2) pushes policies and rhetoric that will alienate the same group that was alienated in 2016 and swung the election to Trump.

     

    7 minutes ago, Js1 said:

    I already said I will vote for a rotten eggplant over Trump.  I'm not going to pout because my candidate didn't get enough votes to win the nomination.  

    Well, at least we agree on something.

  17. 7 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

     

    Again, if you simply concede those points to FOX you'll lose. If you believe they are good for America you can sell them. This is why centrists need to get the fuck out, because they don't actually believe in this shit; they're woke Republicans.

    You don't know how to sell them because you don't believe in them.

    People can be led. We have to have leaders to lead them.

    Why do you think an entire region of Union loyalists went to Trump? In the 1970s genius brain pundits would've said, "You can't sell deregulation, union-busting, and shipping jobs overseas in the Rust Belt! Are you insane!?"

    Look what happened. The right believed in those causes and sold it with conviction and consistent effort.

    The good guys can do the same thing.

    "Only if you allow FOX to frame it and sell it that way. The Green New Deal is the promise of a revitalization in the midwest, and any Dem worth a shit will sell it that way."

    Just calling it the "Green New Deal" gives Fox an opening to frame it that way. In 2016 we saw a polarization where "Green" became the enemy of "blue-collar", largely due to Hillary's gaffes. And the term "New DeaL" just opens the door for socialist attacks. Why not call it something else? I'm not in marketing so I have no idea what you'd call it, but "Green New Deal" certainly isn't it, if you're trying to frame it as revitalization of middle America. It's a branding issue, and branding continues to be a huge flaw in the Democrats' strategy. I think even a hardcore D like you would concede that the Rs are far better at branding than the Ds. They need to close that gap.

    "Why do you think an entire region of Union loyalists went to Trump? In the 1970s genius brain pundits would've said, "You can't sell deregulation, union-busting, and shipping jobs overseas in the Rust Belt! Are you insane!?"

    Look what happened. The right believed in those causes and sold it with conviction and consistent effort.

    The good guys can do the same thing."

    Completely agree. Do you see someone in the D field that has the charisma and personality to sell those things and overcome the spin machine? In that regard, I don't see anyone even remotely close to Obama in that regard. Those charismatic dynamos only come along so often, and I don't think anyone in the field has the Clinton/Obama magic. If I did, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. Obama/Clinton could sell the GND. And they wouldn't be stupid enough to try to sell reparations.

  18. 2 minutes ago, GSU&UT said:

    Again, captain dipshit, are you seriously believing candidates are going to show up to factories in the midwest to pitch reparations to white lower-middle class voters? How stupid are you?

    Are you of the belief that factory workers are too poor to own TVs and internet service?

  19. Just now, Bama Chick said:

    But they don’t feel alienated by a lying, traitorous, racist orange shitbag?

    That says more about those voters than it does about “the leftists”.

    I agree. There are aspects of the Democratic party (see: Js1) that irritate the hell out of me. But that stuff is background noise to the thunderous shitbaggery of Trump, and personally this long-time independent (albeit left-leaning mostly) will vote with the D for the foreseeable future until every scumbag who supported or enabled Trump is out of office. 

    There are lots like me, but there are lots that are not. Those folks might not be smart, but we need their votes. 

  20. 11 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

    I'll let the Boss lead off.

    We win by leading. We win by giving them hope for a better tomorrow for themselves and their children.

    These people are not all irredeemable idiots. Some of them are, but not all of them. Not even most of them. Coastal elites and suburbanites (aka, the DNC) want to dismiss them as a horde of slavering racist morons, but these people want what everyone else wants. And what they want is the promise of what we all believe America should be. They have been cheated and robbed, and they know it. They bought into the hatred and lies of Trump's demagoguery because that was the only story anyone was telling them. Their choice was between a vampire telling them to go fuck themselves and a bloated bag of lies who told them they were great and had a bright future.

    And now the pseudo-pundits want to pretend that they didn't vote for Hillary because simply they're racist? The same people who voted for a man named Hussein? Fuck off. Fuck anyone who still leans on that, because people who feel that way (Hugo, et al) would rather lose this country to fascism than step down off their moralistic high horse.

    There are Dem 2020 candidates who could easily bring back Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Those 3, plus the existing blue states, are all we need to take the White House back.

    It's kinda crazy how much you and I actually agree on from a purely philosophical standpoint, and how far apart we are in the way we distill it into action and who/what we back. It's pretty fascinating.
     

    They voted for Trump because they felt abandoned by the Democratic party and they felt the Democratic party was morphing from the union-backing party of the people to a technocratic coastal cool kids club. This has been parsed and hashed through ad nauseum, and there are countless studies, polls and analytics that show this is the case. This is not even up for debate.

    Things like Warren's wealth tax that leads into child care credits/ceilings are the types of policies that will pull those voters back in. Warren's not my ideal candidate, but I'll give her credit for that one. A Green New Deal, which again, I don't have any issue with, is not. It smacks of California elites. It does nothing for the midwest/rust belt. And reparations/gun control are just beyond stupid if you want to win back that area. Just abysmal strategy, yet again, from the Democrats. 

    If you can't see why things like the GND, gun control, and mother fucking reparations won't play up there and will alienate those swing voters we need up there, then you've either never spent significant time in the area, or you're being intentionally obtuse.

  21. 25 minutes ago, Js1 said:

    Hey guys, we can't talk about things because some people might not like it.  

    I mean, this is how elections work.

     

    15 minutes ago, Js1 said:

    The Green New Deal - 

    Yeah, people in the Midwest would hate new jobs, universal health care and fair minimum wage. Gross.

    You tailor your message to different communities.  You can talk about high speed rail, better public transportation to the city and universal healthcare to suburbanites; you can talk about new jobs, improving impoverished community through direct investment in infrastructure and fair minimum wage to the working class.  All under the same "Green New Deal" umbrella.

    Conflating it as "omg you can't talk to people in the Midwest about the Green New Deal because only coastal libs like it" tells me you don't know anything about it other than what you heard on TV.  

    Also, responsible gun control is a nationwide issue.  You can talk about it with voters in the Midwest, the South, the coasts, anywhere.  Suburban women in Minneapolis, Grand Rapids, Houston. Phoenix, etc. have the same hopes that their kids aren't going to be gunned down in a movie theater or 11th grade biology. 

    I've read enough to know what the Green New Deal is, and I understand that there are aspects of job creation, etc. 

    However what percentage of swing voters, particularly those Obama->Trump voters (most of whom are dumb as shit) are going to know more than what they heard on TV? You've got an idealistic view of how politics work, where everyone researches everything and reads detailed policy outlines, etc. Unfortunately that's not the world we live in.

    Gun control has been proven to be a losing issue almost everywhere. 

    Your desire to see the country shaped to the ideal utopia that you hope for prevents you from seeing reality. Which is exactly why the Democrats get outplayed by the Republicans almost every time. You are a microcosm of the entire problem. 

  22. 40 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

    Obama is.

    He won the White House and lost the national Congress to powerful Republican majorities and let the party wither so badly that by 2016 nationwide, the Republicans were a couple of state legislatures away from being able to amend the Constitution. They were content to let state parties wither because they had the Golden Child that people liked even as their own party's favorability sunk.

    They did not build a motivated, mobile, and active volunteer base. People like Beto had nothing to count on, and Beto had to build his own structure to run in Texas because the Democrats had no ground game outside of getting Obama elected.

    The structure that existed is the one behind the Hillary 2016 campaign, a campaign that ignored the South and Midwest and focused its efforts almost exclusively in upper-middle-class suburbs, which was, as you rightly say, "running up the score" in terms of popular votes by bringing in suburbanites but losing in terms of electoral votes by ignoring the Midwest and South.

    "Where it matters", where the Dems actually lost the 2016 presidential election, are the places where working class whites were either outright insulted or at least ignored by the DNC and candidate. Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Indiana.

    1) Build a durable base out in the nation that will volunteer in campaigns, push Congressmen once they're in the office, and generate a bench of future candidates.
    2) Rebuild ties with the labor unions and their historical constituencies (including the white working class).

    It's amazing that some of you look at 2016 and what you take away is, "Well... we didn't go centrist hard enough."

    I don't disagree with what you're saying about Obama (except that he's most certainly not an idiot) or his strategy, but I'm not sure how that's relevant to the conversation here.

    And you're completely right about "where it matters". So before I write a long response to this, I'd like to hear your thoughts. How do you think the swing voters in that area, the Obama->Trump voters in the midwest and rust belt that threw the election to Trump, will react to things like the Green New Deal, reparations, and gun control?

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