After the 2020 election we started the "Quo Vadis, GOP?" thread. Well, the question has been resoundingly answered, I guess. Further into Trumpland.
So what's next for Democrats? It seems several red states voted in favor of liberal policies (e.g. abortion rights) last week, so it seems some policies might be popular even if the party isn't.
What's next for the Dems? And who can be the next figure to gather the party's support for the elections 2028 (if they still happen :P )?
Add another minority bingo characteristic to the candidate. Paraplegic African American Lady. Eventually they'll please everyone :P
Too early to tell if they'll learn anything, but they didn't apparently learn since 2016 so who knows if another Trump term will teach them. They're just as likely to think it's a purely Trump based phenomenon and then lose to Vance in 4 years.
So back in 2012 the GOP was convinced that Mitt Romney was going to win. Fun fact - he didn't.
So they responded with the "Growth and Opportunity Project" (aka the RNC Autopsy) to study what the GOP should do differently.
It largely looked at the growth of minority, in particular Latino, voters, and called on the party to moderate it's language and positions with respect to immigration.
Trump famously went in the opposite direction and won 4 years later.
Trump did in the end wind up doing what the 2012 autopsy said Republicans should do - attract more Latino voters - but in an entirely different way than was suggested.
So when it comes to the Democrats, the basic answer is fairly obvious - they need to win back votes from non-college educated whites. In particular males. The question is how to do it.
Bernie (of course) says the Dems just need to double and triple down on his brand of socialism. That to me feels like it's the equivalent to the GOP 2012 report - the party needs to do what the donor base wants it to do anyways.
Quote from: Barrister on November 13, 2024, 01:28:23 PMthe party needs to do what the donor base wants it to do anyways.
Pretty sure the party already does that :P
But seriously, what did you mean by this?
I think the lesson that the Democrats should learn from this is: run full primaries and just let the voters decide who they think should run. Even if it seems like a terrible idea. The Republicans were freaking out about Trump but clearly their voters knew the sort of candidate they should have.
Trying to anoint people doesn't work so great. And I understand the anxiety because Democratic voters are scary with their wacky opinions and all, but it may work out.
But then that was my opinion all along, so not too surprising I think the lesson is something I already think.
Quote from: Valmy on November 13, 2024, 01:31:08 PMQuote from: Barrister on November 13, 2024, 01:28:23 PMthe party needs to do what the donor base wants it to do anyways.
Pretty sure the party already does that :P
But seriously, what did you mean by this?
Double down on the culture war, double down on more government spending, and keep lecturing working class whites about what's best for them.
Now I want to admit that my prescription for the Democrats is basically what I personally would want them to do also - dial back on the "wokeism", not spend so much money. I also thought the GOP 2012 autopsy was heading in the right direction, so clearly I'm no oracle.
Quote from: HVC on November 13, 2024, 01:03:07 PMAdd another minority bingo characteristic to the candidate. Paraplegic African American Lady. Eventually they'll please everyone :P
I know you were only joking, but I'd say to that--au contraire; go for as white a guy as possible. That seems to be whom Americans want. But knowing the Dems they will go with that, or even better paraplegic African American non-binary
Quote from: Josephus on November 13, 2024, 01:46:19 PMQuote from: HVC on November 13, 2024, 01:03:07 PMAdd another minority bingo characteristic to the candidate. Paraplegic African American Lady. Eventually they'll please everyone :P
I know you were only joking, but I'd say to that--au contraire; go for as white a guy as possible. That seems to be whom Americans want. But knowing the Dems they will go with that, or even better paraplegic African American non-binary
I think they should run a Primary election and let the voters decide. Last time they did that, they got a white guy.
Quote from: Barrister on November 13, 2024, 01:41:02 PMDouble down on the culture war, double down on more government spending, and keep lecturing working class whites about what's best for them.
Do you really think this is what the *donor base* wants? Sounds more like what the primary voting, volunteering, noisy on the internet base wants.
Valmy: I think the Democrats have already learned the lesson about geriatric mushy brained office holders with speech issues.
Quote from: Barrister on November 13, 2024, 01:41:02 PMQuote from: Valmy on November 13, 2024, 01:31:08 PMQuote from: Barrister on November 13, 2024, 01:28:23 PMthe party needs to do what the donor base wants it to do anyways.
Pretty sure the party already does that :P
But seriously, what did you mean by this?
Double down on the culture war, double down on more government spending, and keep lecturing working class whites about what's best for them.
Now I want to admit that my prescription for the Democrats is basically what I personally would want them to do also - dial back on the "wokeism", not spend so much money. I also thought the GOP 2012 autopsy was heading in the right direction, so clearly I'm no oracle.
I don't understand what you mean here. What does the Democrat's donor base want it to do exactly?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 13, 2024, 01:53:38 PMValmy: I think the Democrats have already learned the lesson about geriatric mushy brained office holders with speech issues.
Hey, if it is what the people want!
I think one the main things they should do is come up with an actual position on immigration. Guest worker program or whatever. Just whatever it is, have it be coherent and address the concerns people have on this issue.
Trump's policies, if enacted, would be disastrous so be ready to come out with an alternative.
Amen
Maybe some thought should be given to free speech. And humor.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 13, 2024, 02:39:57 PMMaybe some thought should be given to free speech. And humor.
Comedian canceling seems to have passed the peak. Even the guy that mocked PR didn't suffer backlash for long.
Though their attempts to stifle Russian agents gets portrayed as anti-Free Speech. Should they just stop doing that and let Russian propaganda run wild?
Maybe.
It's a plural so it's Quo Vadistis, Democrats?
:smarty: :nerd:
That, or Quo Vadis, Democrat Party? To keep the original reference.
Quote from: Valmy on November 13, 2024, 01:37:58 PMI think the lesson that the Democrats should learn from this is: run full primaries and just let the voters decide who they think should run. Even if it seems like a terrible idea. The Republicans were freaking out about Trump but clearly their voters knew the sort of candidate they should have.
Trying to anoint people doesn't work so great. And I understand the anxiety because Democratic voters are scary with their wacky opinions and all, but it may work out.
But then that was my opinion all along, so not too surprising I think the lesson is something I already think.
Yes - 100% this. Don't be afraid of your voters.
I think there's something to the line of spending less time talk about MAGA voters and more talking to them. I'm not saying bring back Howard Dean but I'd definitely speak to him about the 50 state strategy when he was at the DNC which I think was a big part of their subsequent victories - and they need a party builder like that in and of every state and community.
Maybe semi-seriously...maybe fire all the Clinton era consultants and legacy jobs and start again :lol: :ph34r: And no-one cares about celebrity endorsements anymore - any time spent talking about that is not being spent talking about what people care about. So, no more concerts.
As Johnathan Martin has pointed out, fire anyone who uses "center" as a verb, or talks about "uplift" or about not being "burdened by the past" etc. Get out of the language of academia and therapy and prioritise people who say, bluntly and simply, what you mean.
I missed his name but I think the guy on Rest is Politics who's been touring Trump rallies for the last years speaking to people as part of a project on how progressives can beat populism was right. There is a swamp and it needs draining: the last twenty years have had a financial crisis which hurt ordinary people (banks were saved), pointless wars, falling state capacity and increasingly failing infrastructure and public services. Becoming the conservative voice of not disrupting the political order that produced those series of failures is a really bad idea. So think about how to disrupt. Similarly he mentioned, which is currently academic thinking, work on "belonging while not othering" and I think that will be really important. People want to belong.
This isn't something the party can do but is key for their future candidate is work out what their analysis and strategy is as everything else flows from that (I know Yi thinks all slogans are just surface froth, but I think they reflect this thinking and if they're not clear, it's because the thinking isn't). Any candidate needs a story: where we are, how we got here and where we're going. If they don't have an answer to that but offer a pot-pourri of policy ideas instead, then dump them and move on.
Quote from: Sheilbh on November 13, 2024, 03:32:43 PMAnd no-one cares about celebrity endorsements anymore - any time spent talking about that is not being spent talking about what people care about. So, no more concerts.
that reminds me of that Ricky Gervais speech at the whatever awards it was where he basically told all those celebs that they don't have the moral capital to wag their finger at the normal people.
Any Democrat states considering leaving the Union?
Quote from: The Brain on November 13, 2024, 03:49:55 PMAny Democrat states considering leaving the Union?
too early, and it's not like many individuals left last time either
Quote from: The Brain on November 13, 2024, 03:49:55 PMAny Democrat states considering leaving the Union?
I haven't heard anything like this right now.
But remember on DC is really a single party space. Even the most partisan states still have about a 1/4th of their population supporting the other party. So for California, or whomever, to try to secede would be a shitshow.
From faraway Norway, I think the Democratic Party needs to decide if they are liberals, leftist, semi-conservative or even deserve to be a party. The political distance from the leftist(er) wing of the Dems to those who, well, manage to get elected seems like a whole spectrum of European politics. Big tent politics are great when when compromises are made. I see very few compromises being made in US politics the next few years. So, the Democratic party should maybe start to listen to working people, the disenchanted and re-invent that American Dream so many of "the poor, huddled masses" came to seek.
I want zombie Eugene Debs to run against Vance in 2028. Debs at least didn't fuck sofas. Well. He may have. While in prison.
In any case, what I think is sort of moot. I do not understand the Dems. It used to be a party of visions for a "better world", and so was the GOP. At least we know that the movie "No Country For Old Men" is a misnomer.
Quote from: Valmy on November 13, 2024, 01:31:08 PMQuote from: Barrister on November 13, 2024, 01:28:23 PMthe party needs to do what the donor base wants it to do anyways.
Pretty sure the party already does that :P
But seriously, what did you mean by this?
Yeah, that is actually the main problem with the Dems. Their donor base now is not primarily related to labour organizations or causes.
Quote from: Norgy on November 13, 2024, 04:26:28 PMFrom faraway Norway, I think the Democratic Party needs to decide if they are liberals, leftist, semi-conservative or even deserve to be a party. The political distance from the leftist(er) wing of the Dems to those who, well, manage to get elected seems like a whole spectrum of European politics. Big tent politics are great when when compromises are made. I see very few compromises being made in US politics the next few years. So, the Democratic party should maybe start to listen to working people, the disenchanted and re-invent that American Dream so many of "the poor, huddled masses" came to seek.
I want zombie Eugene Debs to run against Vance in 2028. Debs at least didn't fuck sofas. Well. He may have. While in prison.
In any case, what I think is sort of moot. I do not understand the Dems. It used to be a party of visions for a "better world", and so was the GOP. At least we know that the movie "No Country For Old Men" is a misnomer.
What do you think the "working people" are going to say?
They need to frame progressive causes a lot more in terms of self interest.
Yes yes the world is on fire and the everyone is screwed if we don't de carbonise... But what has that got to do with Dwayne In Cousinlove, Georgia?
What does he care about dead kids in eastern Europe?
He's busy working 2 awful jobs to just barely keep his kids fed.
Highlight at the forefront of everything how policies will help working people - that they Incidentally also help the country and world at large is a nice footnote.
Quote from: Barrister on November 13, 2024, 01:28:23 PMSo back in 2012 the GOP was convinced that Mitt Romney was going to win. Fun fact - he didn't.
So they responded with the "Growth and Opportunity Project" (aka the RNC Autopsy) to study what the GOP should do differently.
It largely looked at the growth of minority, in particular Latino, voters, and called on the party to moderate it's language and positions with respect to immigration.
Trump famously went in the opposite direction and won 4 years later.
Trump did in the end wind up doing what the 2012 autopsy said Republicans should do - attract more Latino voters - but in an entirely different way than was suggested.
So when it comes to the Democrats, the basic answer is fairly obvious - they need to win back votes from non-college educated whites. In particular males. The question is how to do it.
Bernie (of course) says the Dems just need to double and triple down on his brand of socialism. That to me feels like it's the equivalent to the GOP 2012 report - the party needs to do what the donor base wants it to do anyways.
... Huh?
Democrat donors want socialism?
Pretty sure that's the last thing they want.
Theyre key to keeping the dems a conservative party and why the super delegates so strongly came out for Clinton.
Sanders is way too old. And then America the term socialism has ridiculous baggage. But Sandersesque policies from the mouth of someone who resonates with working people and has enough of an edge to smack down culture war crap... That could do well.
Dwayne is a black name so that's racist.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 14, 2024, 03:10:16 AMDwayne is a black name so that's racist.
Seriously?
To me its associations are very much counter to that. Very white bread, white as white can be, bordering on hillbilly- which makes The Rock's existence pretty funny.
I've no view on the race itself, but saw that House Democrats elected Gerry Connolly over AOC as ranking member of the House Oversight Committee. Again, no view on the election, but struck by a a comment from one of Connolly's strong supporters: "Gerry's a young 74, cancer notwithstanding" :lol:
As I say no view on this particular race at all, but "young 74, cancer notwithstanding" does feel very much like the logic of getting behind Biden, "nothing to see here" approach despite concerns about his age.
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 19, 2024, 06:38:26 AMI've no view on the race itself, but saw that House Democrats elected Gerry Connolly over AOC as ranking member of the House Oversight Committee. Again, no view on the election, but struck by a a comment from one of Connolly's strong supporters: "Gerry's a young 74, cancer notwithstanding" :lol:
As I say no view on this particular race at all, but "young 74, cancer notwithstanding" does feel very much like the logic of getting behind Biden, "nothing to see here" approach despite concerns about his age.
The man who said that is 74 himself.
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 19, 2024, 06:38:26 AM"Gerry's a young 74, cancer notwithstanding" :lol:
Appearances may deceive, but to my eyes Gerry looks old enough to have served in grumbler's cohort.
BTW isn't AOC kind of divisive?
Quote from: garbon on December 19, 2024, 10:08:33 AMBTW isn't AOC kind of divisive?
Oh yeah - and as I say no views on the actual race.
My point was more that they just need to get away from the "young 74, cancer notwithstandings". But it maybe hints at another problem that the more establishment/less divisive parts of the Democrats in Congress maybe don't have many good candidates unless they use the seniority argument? Was there not a solid 50-something, 40-something candidate they could have run or is their only argument seniority, or is seniority still such an expectation that it would end up dividing that anti-AOC bloc so they just give in?
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 19, 2024, 10:18:38 AMQuote from: garbon on December 19, 2024, 10:08:33 AMBTW isn't AOC kind of divisive?
Oh yeah - and as I say no views on the actual race.
My point was more that they just need to get away from the "young 74, cancer notwithstandings". But it maybe hints at another problem that the more establishment/less divisive parts of the Democrats in Congress maybe don't have many good candidates unless they use the seniority argument? Was there not a solid 50-something, 40-something candidate they could have run or is their only argument seniority, or is seniority still such an expectation that it would end up dividing that anti-AOC bloc so they just give in?
Yeah I was just thinking of that, I think member of the squad, who had a viral, verbal spat with MTG earlier this year. That sort of junior high school behavior is not the sort of stuff that inspired confidence in handing over reins to the next generation.
Quote from: Valmy on November 13, 2024, 01:54:50 PMQuote from: Admiral Yi on November 13, 2024, 01:53:38 PMValmy: I think the Democrats have already learned the lesson about geriatric mushy brained office holders with speech issues.
Hey, if it is what the people want!
Dude got the most votes in the history of your country, guys. 81 million.
Quote from: garbon on December 19, 2024, 10:08:33 AMBTW isn't AOC kind of divisive?
More than Trump? :P If she was a man I'd say run her next time, people are clearly after charisma and entertainment value over policies or even coherence. But, being a woman, she cannot win.
Quote from: Zoupa on December 19, 2024, 10:46:03 AMQuote from: Valmy on November 13, 2024, 01:54:50 PMQuote from: Admiral Yi on November 13, 2024, 01:53:38 PMValmy: I think the Democrats have already learned the lesson about geriatric mushy brained office holders with speech issues.
Hey, if it is what the people want!
Dude got the most votes in the history of your country, guys. 81 million.
Oh that was okay as he wasn't 80 yet...
Quote from: garbon on December 19, 2024, 10:08:33 AMBTW isn't AOC kind of divisive?
Government Oversight is presumably where they're going to be investigating what the Trump Whitehouse is doing. I suspect "divisive" is part of the job description.
If the past few years have taught us anything, it's that energy more than compensates for divisiveness. Movie characters which are perfectly inoffensive are not too compelling, and in the age of Joe Rogan, neither are politicians.
Quote from: Josquius on November 14, 2024, 03:51:45 AMQuote from: Admiral Yi on November 14, 2024, 03:10:16 AMDwayne is a black name so that's racist.
Seriously?
To me its associations are very much counter to that. Very white bread, white as white can be, bordering on hillbilly- which makes The Rock's existence pretty funny.
No, Yi's right, it's a black name. Still, you are illustrating an important point, with your "cousin-love" comment. A large number of leftists hold the working class in contempt. For the most part the working class holds different cultural values than the left, and as a result the Left tends to write them off as racist, homophobic, transphobic etc. So they turn to Trump, who at least doesn't hold them in as much contempt. This doesn't apply to just white people, but to black and Hispanics who are increasingly turning to the GOP.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 19, 2024, 01:14:08 PMQuote from: Josquius on November 14, 2024, 03:51:45 AMQuote from: Admiral Yi on November 14, 2024, 03:10:16 AMDwayne is a black name so that's racist.
Seriously?
To me its associations are very much counter to that. Very white bread, white as white can be, bordering on hillbilly- which makes The Rock's existence pretty funny.
No, Yi's right, it's a black name. Still, you are illustrating an important point, with your "cousin-love" comment. A large number of leftists hold the working class in contempt. For the most part the working class holds different cultural values than the left, and as a result the Left tends to write them off as racist, homophobic, transphobic etc. So they turn to Trump, who at least doesn't hold them in as much contempt. This doesn't apply to just white people, but to black and Hispanics who are increasingly turning to the GOP.
...inbreeding is not a part of working class identity.
And trump absolutely holds working people in absolute contempt.
Though this is a typical trick the right play these days. Trying to pass off being a lazy good for nothing racist shit head as being the only way to be authentically working class.
Yeah, maybe don't call members of the working class inbred.
Nevermind. Misunderstood an earlier post.
I'm not sure how the presumed reference to working class became "inbred." In Georgia, it is perfectly legal to marry a first cousin. Clearly, Dwayne doesn't consider that inbreeding.
And Dwayne is a standard name of Irish origin. Names lack color.
Quote from: grumbler on December 19, 2024, 01:44:21 PMI'm not sure how the presumed reference to working class became "inbred." In Georgia, it is perfectly legal to marry a first cousin. Clearly, Dwayne doesn't consider that inbreeding.
And Dwayne is a standard name of Irish origin. Names lack color.
While I can think of at least one white Dwayne I know, I do think Dwayne is coded as being a fairly black name.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 19, 2024, 01:22:41 PMYeah, maybe don't call members of the working class inbred.
:lmfao:
You don't do that in America? Make fun of really shitty rural places by saying they've all got six toes and one surname?
I'm obviously not speaking about working class people here. In case you forgot I'm working class. I'm talking about a specific hick cliche.
Quote from: grumbler on December 19, 2024, 01:44:21 PMI'm not sure how the presumed reference to working class became "inbred." In Georgia, it is perfectly legal to marry a first cousin. Clearly, Dwayne doesn't consider that inbreeding.
And Dwayne is a standard name of Irish origin. Names lack color.
Indeed, I've known many a white and Asian La'Kisha :P
While no ethnicity "owns" a name*, I don't think you can go so far as to say that certain names aren't tied to certain ethnicities.
*Although with the whole cultural appropriation thing that might change .
Quote from: Josquius on December 19, 2024, 01:54:39 PMQuote from: Razgovory on December 19, 2024, 01:22:41 PMYeah, maybe don't call members of the working class inbred.
:lmfao:
You don't do that in America? Make fun of really shitty rural places by saying they've all got six toes and one surname?
"dammit, why can't liberals win the rural vote? They must all be fascist ."
Quote from: HVC on December 19, 2024, 01:59:08 PMQuote from: Josquius on December 19, 2024, 01:54:39 PMQuote from: Razgovory on December 19, 2024, 01:22:41 PMYeah, maybe don't call members of the working class inbred.
:lmfao:
You don't do that in America? Make fun of really shitty rural places by saying they've all got six toes and one surname?
"dammit, why can't liberals win the rural vote? They must all be fascist ."
I'm a socialist so....
And I note you excluded the word "shitty" there.
There also usually needs to be a super remoteness involved. Here you most often hear it of Cornwall and Norfolk for some reason.
I'm amazed the hillbilly stereotype seems to no longer exist to such an extent
The most famous Dwayne is a white person, Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson, from Die Hard.
Quote from: Josquius on December 19, 2024, 01:54:39 PMQuote from: Razgovory on December 19, 2024, 01:22:41 PMYeah, maybe don't call members of the working class inbred.
:lmfao:
You don't do that in America? Make fun of really shitty rural places by saying they've all got six toes and one surname?
I'm obviously not speaking about working class people here. In case you forgot I'm working class. I'm talking about a specific hick cliche.
No, you are an elite, and your attitude is common among elites, and in the US it doesn't really help.
Quote from: Josquius on December 19, 2024, 02:42:21 PMQuote from: HVC on December 19, 2024, 01:59:08 PMQuote from: Josquius on December 19, 2024, 01:54:39 PMQuote from: Razgovory on December 19, 2024, 01:22:41 PMYeah, maybe don't call members of the working class inbred.
:lmfao:
You don't do that in America? Make fun of really shitty rural places by saying they've all got six toes and one surname?
"dammit, why can't liberals win the rural vote? They must all be fascist ."
I'm a socialist so....
And I note you excluded the word "shitty" there.
There also usually needs to be a super remoteness involved. Here you most often hear it of Cornwall and Norfolk for some reason.
I'm amazed the hillbilly stereotype seems to no longer exist to such an extent
You know, "socialist" is generally an elite political position these days...
So say the conspiracy nuts.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 19, 2024, 03:24:59 PMQuote from: Josquius on December 19, 2024, 01:54:39 PMQuote from: Razgovory on December 19, 2024, 01:22:41 PMYeah, maybe don't call members of the working class inbred.
:lmfao:
You don't do that in America? Make fun of really shitty rural places by saying they've all got six toes and one surname?
I'm obviously not speaking about working class people here. In case you forgot I'm working class. I'm talking about a specific hick cliche.
No, you are an elite, and your attitude is common among elites, and in the US it doesn't really help.
:lol:
A middle class twit says I'm not working class and I'm part of the elite. OK then that proves it.
If only my view was common then the dems wouldn't have lost.
Quote from: Josquius on December 19, 2024, 02:42:21 PM:lmfao:
You don't do that in America? Make fun of really shitty rural places by saying they've all got six toes and one surname?
I'm obviously not speaking about working class people here. In case you forgot I'm working class. I'm talking about a specific hick cliche.
I sort of did in the past as a joke. You know, the joking rivalry between the urban and rural folks.
But nothing is really fucking funny anymore. Shit is getting serious. And it sucks.
QuoteNo, you are an elite, and your attitude is common among elites, and in the US it doesn't really help.
See? Nothing is allowed to be funny anymore. You say a joke like that and everybody is like "YOU ARE WHY TRUMP WON YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE."
So...yeah. Shit is serious.
This is not a joke.
Josquis is an elite.
No, not "top 1%" elite, but an elite. He's university educated (Erasmus program no less), lived abroad, owns his own home.
I get his family and upbringing is working class, but there's no definition that doesn't put him in the upper middle class.
Not that there's something wrong with that! He should celebrate it! Nor should he forget his working class roots.
I was just listening to a podcast describing the modern educated intellectual class, who always thinks of themselves as being the working poor, and always defines "the elites" as making just a tiny amount more than they are making. It was US-focused but 100% could have been describing Jos.
Quote from: Barrister on December 19, 2024, 04:37:42 PMThis is not a joke.
Josquis is an elite.
No, not "top 1%" elite, but an elite. He's university educated (Erasmus program no less), lived abroad, owns his own home.
I get his family and upbringing is working class, but there's no definition that doesn't put him in the upper middle class.
Not that there's something wrong with that! He should celebrate it! Nor should he forget his working class roots.
I was just listening to a podcast describing the modern educated intellectual class, who always thinks of themselves as being the working poor, and always defines "the elites" as making just a tiny amount more than they are making. It was US-focused but 100% could have been describing Jos.
As someone who came from a working class family and is now part of the elite, I agree with and endorse the entirety of this post.
Quote from: Barrister on December 19, 2024, 04:37:42 PMI was just listening to a podcast describing the modern educated intellectual class, who always thinks of themselves as being the working poor, and always defines "the elites" as making just a tiny amount more than they are making. It was US-focused but 100% could have been describing Jos.
I thought that was an excellent conversation, and worth listening to for others:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/elite-envy/id1291144720?i=1000680940495
Quote from: Habbaku on December 19, 2024, 05:00:19 PMQuote from: Barrister on December 19, 2024, 04:37:42 PMI was just listening to a podcast describing the modern educated intellectual class, who always thinks of themselves as being the working poor, and always defines "the elites" as making just a tiny amount more than they are making. It was US-focused but 100% could have been describing Jos.
I thought that was an excellent conversation, and worth listening to for others:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/elite-envy/id1291144720?i=1000680940495
I just read [color=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.92)]
Musa al-Gharb's book. Very interesting [/color]
Quote from: Josquius on December 19, 2024, 04:18:50 PMSo say the conspiracy nuts.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 19, 2024, 03:24:59 PMQuote from: Josquius on December 19, 2024, 01:54:39 PMQuote from: Razgovory on December 19, 2024, 01:22:41 PMYeah, maybe don't call members of the working class inbred.
:lmfao:
You don't do that in America? Make fun of really shitty rural places by saying they've all got six toes and one surname?
I'm obviously not speaking about working class people here. In case you forgot I'm working class. I'm talking about a specific hick cliche.
No, you are an elite, and your attitude is common among elites, and in the US it doesn't really help.
:lol:
A middle class twit says I'm not working class and I'm part of the elite. OK then that proves it.
If only my view was common then the dems wouldn't have lost.
You know I live on welfare right? You make more money than me.
QuoteI was just listening to a podcast describing the modern educated intellectual class, who always thinks of themselves as being the working poor, and always defines "the elites" as making just a tiny amount more than they are making. It was US-focused but 100% could have been describing Jos.
I'm not sure how much you think I'm making... But it's really not in the hundreds of thousands.
I think we've gone over this before. It's a NA/British difference.
In my book current income has very little to do with class. Grab an uneducated nobody from a sink estate and stick him on a million a year and he doesn't suddenly become an elite. He's a working (or hell, maybe lumpen or sometimes these days middle) class person on a ridiculous salary.
QuoteThis is not a joke.
Josquis is an elite.
No, not "top 1%" elite, but an elite. He's university educated (Erasmus program no less), lived abroad, owns his own home.
I get his family and upbringing is working class, but there's no definition that doesn't put him in the upper middle class.
Not that there's something wrong with that! He should celebrate it! Nor should he forget his working class roots.
If I'm an elite then we are even more fucked than we already seemed to be.
What shitty low qualifications are those? Working abroad? Owning a house? Countless working class people tick those boxes.
As to education... It's 2024. Half of the country went to uni.
If half of the country are elites the word clearly means something very different to you.
My family and upbringing matter as they made me. They are why I am who I am.
They are why I would willingly take considerably higher tax for myself if it meant an uplift for the country as a whole.
They are why as a straight cis white guy with a degree, injustice and inequality in all it's forms still boils my piss.
Check back in 25 years and if life has stayed on track then maybe I can hold up my hands and say I'm middle class as I'd have lived the majority of my life under a decent salary.
As things stand right now though the shadow of poverty still looms. The lessons it brought are hard to break.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 19, 2024, 05:34:22 PMYou know I live on welfare right? You make more money than me.
You said your dad was a programmer.
And when you were a kid that was an even better job than today. Not to mention the education it needs which was there for you.
You have a solidly middle class upbringing.
Jos, "Countless" working class families rent, they do not own. Your estimate of how many people have a university degree is also inflated.
Congratulations, you just confirmed your out of touch elite credentials.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 19, 2024, 05:32:18 PMQuote from: Habbaku on December 19, 2024, 05:00:19 PMQuote from: Barrister on December 19, 2024, 04:37:42 PMI was just listening to a podcast describing the modern educated intellectual class, who always thinks of themselves as being the working poor, and always defines "the elites" as making just a tiny amount more than they are making. It was US-focused but 100% could have been describing Jos.
I thought that was an excellent conversation, and worth listening to for others:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/elite-envy/id1291144720?i=1000680940495
I just read [color=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.92)]Musa al-Gharb's book. Very interesting [/color]
I'm outed as a listener to Jonah Goldberg's The Remnant. :blush:
I found it very interesting though.
53 % of UK adults own their homes. 51 % of UK adults have higher education.
Y'all are jumping on Jos as an elite based on those criteria is strange.
Quote from: Josquius on December 19, 2024, 05:45:52 PMIf I'm an elite then we are even more fucked than we already seemed to be.
What shitty low qualifications are those? Working abroad? Owning a house? Countless working class people tick those boxes.
As to education... It's 2024. Half of the country went to uni.
If half of the country are elites the word clearly means something very different to you.
My family and upbringing matter as they made me. They are why I am who I am.
They are why I would willingly take considerably higher tax for myself if it meant an uplift for the country as a whole.
They are why as a straight cis white guy with a degree, injustice and inequality in all it's forms still boils my piss.
Check back in 25 years and if life has stayed on track then maybe I can hold up my hands and say I'm middle class as I'd have lived the majority of my life under a decent salary.
As things stand right now though the shadow of poverty still looms. The lessons it brought are hard to break.
This was the first link I could find - only 22% of Britons graduate from university.
https://www.futurefit.co.uk/blog/graduation-statistics-and-facts/
Which very much matches what Musa al-Gharb was talking about. You can blame the "top 1%" all you want - they have 28% of all wealth. Which is alot - but still nowhere close to the majority. But once you get to the top 20% - that's where the large majority of wealth is owned.
I looked up my salary once. I think I'm top 5% of household incomes. But I still worry quite a lot about money and even poverty. I think very few people or families are at a point where they don't.
And of course your family and upbringing made you who you are. You should be proud of your upbringing and heritage, and the lessons it taught you. But don't make it blind to the position and privilege you have now. Not because you should forget your upbringing, but to put it in context.
Seriously if you have an hour to kill that podcast Habs posted was really, really good.
Quote from: Zoupa on December 19, 2024, 06:26:45 PM53 % of UK adults own their homes. 51 % of UK adults have higher education.
Y'all are jumping on Jos as an elite based on those criteria is strange.
Look at how many graduate.
I thought BB was referring to Paul Wells' interview with him
It is also worth listening to
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-paul-wells-show/id1643176656?i=1000679197949
Quote from: Zoupa on December 19, 2024, 06:26:45 PM53 % of UK adults own their homes. 51 % of UK adults have higher education.
Y'all are jumping on Jos as an elite based on those criteria is strange.
What percentage in his age group own their own home, and where did you get that percentage of people who have university educations?
Josq, has a good European citizen, is applying class war vocabulary to a culture war argument. The former is something Americans refuse to acknowledge exist.
Quote from: Zoupa on December 19, 2024, 06:26:45 PM53 % of UK adults own their homes.
That's actually too low. I think the correct stat that's normally used (and takes account of couples etc) is "households" and about 63% of households own their own home. That's a decline from the peak in 2007 when just over 70% of households owned their own home.
QuoteWhat percentage in his age group own their own home, and where did you get that percentage of people who have university educations?
The age at which 50%+ are homeowners is about 36. So I think Jos and I are basically in the same age group (a little older than that) and we're in the majority in owning our home. I think 35-44 year olds in general are about 60% - again in the 90s-00s that number was over 70%.
Quote51 % of UK adults have higher education.
[...]
This was the first link I could find - only 22% of Britons graduate from university.
[...]
Look at how many graduate.
About a third of adults (over 16s) have a higher education qualification according to the last census. This could be a Bachelors or higher professional qualifications, or Higher National Certificates or Degrees. The latter are broadly offered by universities through more vocational training/courses, often effectively as foundation years leading to an undergrad degree. For statistical purposes they are considered the equivalent of an undergrad (both are "Level 4") in part because they're normally quite linked.
I think the 22% figure is possibly the proportion of the population with a degree. Obviously that includes children which feels like unfair expectations. But the other reason the figure is 22% across the population is partly because there has been a big generational shift. So the participation rate in higher education was under 5% in 1950, under 10% in 1970, up to just under 20% in 1990 and 33% in 2000 (New Labour had a goal of 50%). The participation rate now (by age 25 because there's a big chunk who start later but not very late) is about 49% in higher education, in degrees specifically it's about 45%.
It's one of the reasons age and education are such big divides politically in the UK (and that one can often be read for the other). If you're a boomer chances are you're in the 90% that didn't go to university. If you're a millenial it's almost 50/50. It's worth noting this also plays into race, class and geography (inevitably). So the group least likely to go to unversity are white kids, particularly white boys. In part this is geography. There's been a huge improvement in high school education over the last 20 years (caused by New Labour reforms that the Tories then picked up - and the new government is possibly inclined to unpick), but within that schools in cities (and particularly London) have improved more and faster. This intersects with race and class in interesting ways (British Bangladeshis are particularly striking on this) but broadly cities are more ethnically diverse. But the cities are also very unequal and include some of the most deprived areas of the country.
But generally this means the cities are younger, are more educated and becoming more educated. But they are also changing - for example, broadly in the last census the areas with the largest increase in ethnic diversity are basically classic suburban areas around cities which I think reflects those other trends of communities in cities benefiting from the improvement in education, going to university and increasing income and wealth and moving to the suburbs.
QuoteJosq, has a good European citizen, is applying class war vocabulary to a culture war argument. Something Americans refuse to acknowledge exist.
:lol: But as bad Europeans we don't really have some of those concepts. So we just use working, middle and upper (and mean literally upper) class which are very broad (although we may have upper, middle and lower middle class), while good Europeans can bring in the bourgeois, the intelligentsia, the peasants etc.
I always remember many years ago talking to Marti and he described a Polish political party as a "typical peasant party" and I had no idea what that is because England wiped out the peasant class with the enclosures (and moved to landowning gentry farmers and landless employees or tenant farmers - according to one Canadian academic, incidentally, this is the start of capitalism).
As a total aside I know I've mentioned nihilism and echoes of the 1890s before - can't help but wonder if the US and UK could usefully use and explore the role of the intelligentsia and Russian and Eastern European theory right now.
Quote from: Josquius on December 19, 2024, 05:45:52 PMQuoteI was just listening to a podcast describing the modern educated intellectual class, who always thinks of themselves as being the working poor, and always defines "the elites" as making just a tiny amount more than they are making. It was US-focused but 100% could have been describing Jos.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 19, 2024, 05:34:22 PMYou know I live on welfare right? You make more money than me.
You said your dad was a programmer.
And when you were a kid that was an even better job than today. Not to mention the education it needs which was there for you.
You have a solidly middle class upbringing.
He was a programmer. Unfortunately it was with the state. They didn't pay well. We were on food stamps.
Quote from: Barrister on December 19, 2024, 06:34:57 PMQuote from: Josquius on December 19, 2024, 05:45:52 PMIf I'm an elite then we are even more fucked than we already seemed to be.
What shitty low qualifications are those? Working abroad? Owning a house? Countless working class people tick those boxes.
As to education... It's 2024. Half of the country went to uni.
If half of the country are elites the word clearly means something very different to you.
My family and upbringing matter as they made me. They are why I am who I am.
They are why I would willingly take considerably higher tax for myself if it meant an uplift for the country as a whole.
They are why as a straight cis white guy with a degree, injustice and inequality in all it's forms still boils my piss.
Check back in 25 years and if life has stayed on track then maybe I can hold up my hands and say I'm middle class as I'd have lived the majority of my life under a decent salary.
As things stand right now though the shadow of poverty still looms. The lessons it brought are hard to break.
This was the first link I could find - only 22% of Britons graduate from university.
https://www.futurefit.co.uk/blog/graduation-statistics-and-facts/
Which very much matches what Musa al-Gharb was talking about. You can blame the "top 1%" all you want - they have 28% of all wealth. Which is alot - but still nowhere close to the majority. But once you get to the top 20% - that's where the large majority of wealth is owned.
I looked up my salary once. I think I'm top 5% of household incomes. But I still worry quite a lot about money and even poverty. I think very few people or families are at a point where they don't.
Others covered the numbers on home ownership and uni.
Quickly checking up I'm apparently around the top 30% or so for income. Which is honestly lower than I thought- I think those kids have dragged me down.
QuoteAnd of course your family and upbringing made you who you are. You should be proud of your upbringing and heritage, and the lessons it taught you. But don't make it blind to the position and privilege you have now. Not because you should forget your upbringing, but to put it in context.
I'm not. I make no secret of the fact I'm not the poorest person in the world, I'm currently saving 4 figures as standard, I don't really have to watch my spending anymore when I go to the supermarket and that sort of thing.
But this doesn't change the fact I'm working class, where I came from and still have deep inner and outer ties to.
I know how hard it is for working class people. I know why "Just work harder!" doesn't work as guidance. And this is why I support policies that help the working class.
QuoteSeriously if you have an hour to kill that podcast Habs posted was really, really good.
I'm listening to it. Its meh.
It sounds like it very much gels with all I've been saying- there's not enough focus on the bottom line and raising living standards for working people. Progressive culture warriors though their heart is in the right place aren't helping, they way to get the outcomes they want is by focussing on the basics. A culture war is exactly what the hard right want as they know fine well they have nothing to materially offer working people, so all the better they can offer phantom threats of trans people and immigrants.
Ranting about people dismissing the views of working people...no. Thats the complete opposite of what I say we should do. This is literally my job.
You talk to people, you perform studies, you figure out their concerns and what they say.
But you don't take this completely at face value and flip your views to match.
So you have a large chunk of the working class saying its the muslims that are to blame for the state of the country?
Why do they think that? Why? Why? Why? Why?
You don't just take the surface answer, you keep digging, its not what they say which matters, its why they say it.
Dig into things and the anti-immigration hysteria is usually down to shit conditions for working people which are down to a variety of other reasons that have nothing to do with immigration.
Quote from: Josquius on December 20, 2024, 11:27:14 AMI'm listening to it. Its meh.
It sounds like it very much gels with all I've been saying- there's not enough focus on the bottom line and raising living standards for working people. Progressive culture warriors though their heart is in the right place aren't helping, they way to get the outcomes they want is by focussing on the basics. A culture war is exactly what the hard right want as they know fine well they have nothing to materially offer working people, so all the better they can offer phantom threats of trans people and immigrants.
Ranting about people dismissing the views of working people...no. Thats the complete opposite of what I say we should do. This is literally my job.
You talk to people, you perform studies, you figure out their concerns and what they say.
But you don't take this completely at face value and flip your views to match.
So you have a large chunk of the working class saying its the muslims that are to blame for the state of the country?
Why do they think that? Why? Why? Why? Why?
You don't just take the surface answer, you keep digging, its not what they say which matters, its why they say it.
Dig into things and the anti-immigration hysteria is usually down to shit conditions for working people which are down to a variety of other reasons that have nothing to do with immigration.
Jos, you irritate me enormously. But I did not expect you to listen to The Remnant podcast on my recommendation so I have to give you a lot of respect for doing so. :bowler:
Despite my recommendation, and the fact he was on a right-ish podcast, al-Gharbi (from the podcast) appears to be fairly leftist (although in the podcast itself he bristles at the term, and refers to himself as a centrist). I mean - he's a columnist at The Guardian. So not surprised you do agree with at least some of what he was saying.
Maybe it's the specific word "elite" that triggered you. al-Gharbi uses the weird term "symbolic capitalists". But in any event both you and I are highly educated knowledge workers. We do not work with our hands, and have incomes nicely above the average or median. But whether you want to use the term "elite", "symbolic capitalist", "Bobo" (also referenced in the podcast), or any other term you want - I think you know the category of people I'm talking about.
And for emphasis - I include myself in that category.
I really think though you missed the primary message - it doesn't matter if someone's heart is in the right place. People still, almost inevitably, tend to pursue their own self-interests. You can argue that Lenin's heart was in the right place - he still introduced a murderous dictatorship that enormously enriched the Communist Party elites.
So we have an entire class of people who loudly proclaim how they're for the working people, how they support equality - and who pursue policies that do nothing of the sort.
You do it again in your post. Working class people are against muslim immigration - but you're utterly convinced there must be some other hidden reason. Presumably that only you (or others like you) know.
Maybe people just think there's too much immigration? They're entitled to that belief you know.
Quote from: Barrister on December 20, 2024, 12:19:33 PM:
Despite my recommendation, and the fact he was on a right-ish podcast, al-Gharbi (from the podcast) appears to be fairly leftist (although in the podcast itself he bristles at the term, and refers to himself as a centrist). I mean - he's a columnist at The Guardian. So not surprised you do agree with at least some of what he was saying.
I've never heard of this podcast before. I had no idea it was right wing and just took it at face value.
Writing in the guardian doesn't mean much. They have Simon Jenkins and Owen Jones amongst their numbers. One of the things that is good about the guardian is that it prints a variety of different views, even the stupid ones.
QuoteMaybe it's the specific word "elite" that triggered you. al-Gharbi uses the weird term "symbolic capitalists". But in any event both you and I are highly educated knowledge workers. We do not work with our hands, and have incomes nicely above the average or median. But whether you want to use the term "elite", "symbolic capitalist", "Bobo" (also referenced in the podcast), or any other term you want - I think you know the category of people I'm talking about.
And for emphasis - I include myself in that category.
Using elite just to mean "middle class job and has no trouble paying the bills" is really watering down the meaning of the word elite yes.
Even completely ignoring my background I am far closer to those on minimum wage than those who actually have the power.
QuoteI really think though you missed the primary message - it doesn't matter if someone's heart is in the right place. People still, almost inevitably, tend to pursue their own self-interests. You can argue that Lenin's heart was in the right place - he still introduced a murderous dictatorship that enormously enriched the Communist Party elites.
So we have an entire class of people who loudly proclaim how they're for the working people, how they support equality - and who pursue policies that do nothing of the sort.
If say having your heart in the right place is a bare minimum starting point...
As to the policies people like me want doing nothing to help working people - yes. But that's because we aren't the elite. We have very little power. The policies we'd like to see absolutely would help working people... But they don't get enacted.
And yes. I remember the podcast blowing that "elite universities so left wing!" whistle. I've never been in an American University, it could well be different there, but as far as British ones go that's an absolute joke.
I think part of the problem here could also be the typical issue here of parsing left wing views through a right wing lens.
We are not exactly the same only supporting the red team instead of the blue team (or the reverse in the US. Which is silly). Our fundamental outlook on things is different.
As I said - you want to raise my taxes? And this is to fund policies that will help the poorest? Awesome. Have at it.
QuoteYou do it again in your post. Working class people are against muslim immigration - but you're utterly convinced there must be some other hidden reason. Presumably that only you (or others like you) know.
Maybe people just think there's too much immigration? They're entitled to that belief you know.
They're "entitled" to think the moon is made of cheese if they really want to.
Taking people's first comment and calling it a day is terrible research. There's nothing sinister about this. Often people themselves aren't actively aware of why they have the surface thoughts and feelings the they do.
You've no doubt heard it before but there's a famous and sadly fictional Henry Ford quote "if I'd asked people what they wanted they would have said faster horses".
You seem to have the belief that this means people are idiots and we shouldn't listen to them at all. We should just dictate to them what we think is best.
What it actually means is you don't take the surface comment verbatim but you dig into it a bit more and find out what people need - in this case there's the word "faster" clearly standing out as one to follow up on.
Populism at its core is about promising to deliver the surface asks.
This is an area where people today definitely have gotten dumber - there's this huge unearned confidence amongst so many people that they know better than the experts.
That they can safely ignore all those scientists saying to vaccinate our kids because their own research (reading some crap online) says different.
Labour, on paper at least, seems to have actually gotten this message lately. Focusing on actually delivering what people need, the core underlying issues behind brekshit.
Whether they're actually on track to be succesful with this.... Well....
But hopefully the dems can learn from it and follow a similar approach next election.
Rather than trying to out scum maga, playing professional victim and seeking to harm others,
come up with a plan to actually deliver positive change that will benefit working people the most.
On immigration you'll still get that solid 10% or so who are just racist shitheads whose core reasoning is foreigners =bad.
But solve housing problems, the cost of living, job opportunities, etc... Then immigration becomes quite the minor fringe issue with most who previously reported it as a key issue no longer seeing it the same way.
You can join the fight for how to share the pie... Or you can make more pie.
Anyway, I think it's settled. Josq is the reason Democrats lost. Not people like Josq, just him. By himself.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 20, 2024, 03:17:26 PMAnyway, I think it's settled. Josq is the reason Democrats lost. Not people like Josq, just him. By himself.
Yes and add me to that, I had some quite dark thoughts about US politics this year. :P
Jos, fyi, 33% of women and 26% of men have a university degree in Quebec.
I figure it's similar in other OECD countries, give or take a few percent.
And you don't do much with a simple bachelor degree because it's too common.
So of course I note you snipped the one part where I was complementary of you. Your choice.
I don't think there's much point to continuing this discussion much further, so just a couple of points:
Quote from: Josquius on December 20, 2024, 02:57:51 PMI've never heard of this podcast before. I had no idea it was right wing and just took it at face value.
Not trying to trick you into anything here. Jonah Goldberg was previously with National Review (a perhaps famously right-wing magazine founded by William F Buckley). He quit/was forced out over opposition to Trump, founded his own news site (The Dispatch). So like I said - right-ish. And I thought the conversation was interesting not just to right-wingers.
QuoteEven completely ignoring my background I am far closer to those on minimum wage than those who actually have the power.
That's the thing - you really, really aren't. Even accepting your assertion you're in the top third of income - that still makes you closer to the top than the bottom.
I'm not saying you're out lighting cigars with $100 bills (or 100 pound bills) but you're pretty far from working minimum wage jobs.
QuoteBut solve housing problems, the cost of living, job opportunities, etc... Then immigration becomes quite the minor fringe issue with most who previously reported it as a key issue no longer seeing it the same way.
You can join the fight for how to share the pie... Or you can make more pie.
Poor people have agency. Poor people have the right to their public policy preferences.
Henry Ford was a businessman. Of course he makes money by trying to predict what people will want tomorrow, not what they want today. Steve Jobs made similar comments.
But the role of a politician is different than a businessman.
I just find it incredibly condescending to hear you say "people are complaining about immigration. Well I happen to know that what they're actually upset about is housing."
Which, to loop around back to the podcast, is probably an issue that you are actually concerned about, but are going to claim that you're only concerned because of the lower classes.
This is something that Democrats have had a real problem with. Pollsters have tried to interpret people being concerned with illegal immigration as concern for something else and to the extent we will lose some votes we will more than make up for it by picking up Hispanic votes. Turns out that no, people really are concerned about illegal immigrants, including Hispanics. Trump picked up about 40% of the Hispanic vote. Instead of telling people what they want, or trying to teach them to want the right things we need to listen to what people say they want.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 21, 2024, 12:24:01 PMThis is something that Democrats have had a real problem with. Pollsters have tried to interpret people being concerned with illegal immigration as concern for something else and to the extent we will lose some votes we will more than make up for it by picking up Hispanic votes. Turns out that no, people really are concerned about illegal immigrants, including Hispanics. Trump picked up about 40% of the Hispanic vote. Instead of telling people what they want, or trying to teach them to want the right things we need to listen to what people say they want.
Up to a degree, yes.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 21, 2024, 12:24:01 PMThis is something that Democrats have had a real problem with. Pollsters have tried to interpret people being concerned with illegal immigration as concern for something else and to the extent we will lose some votes we will more than make up for it by picking up Hispanic votes. Turns out that no, people really are concerned about illegal immigrants, including Hispanics. Trump picked up about 40% of the Hispanic vote. Instead of telling people what they want, or trying to teach them to want the right things we need to listen to what people say they want.
Or, radical idea, they could try actually acting on these core concerns.
It shouldn't be about just dodging talking about immigration. It should be about actually identifying a course of action.
Quote from: Barrister on December 20, 2024, 04:15:04 PMSo of course I note you snipped the one part where I was complementary of you. Your choice.
I don't think there's much point to continuing this discussion much further, so just a couple of points:
Don't overthink it. I was on my phone and must have just cut that bit off with the quote of me.
There was no specific reply needed there.
Though worth noting it wasn't a particularly subtle backhanded complement...
QuoteThat's the thing - you really, really aren't. Even accepting your assertion you're in the top third of income - that still makes you closer to the top than the bottom.
I'm not saying you're out lighting cigars with $100 bills (or 100 pound bills) but you're pretty far from working minimum wage jobs.
This is the old trick the hard right have long used predating Trump even. The man who took the whole plate full of cookies telling the man with one cookie "Watch out for the guy with two, he wants to steal your cookie"
People on 20, 30, 50, even 100k a year... they are far more alike than any of them are to the people bringing in millions.
They went to the same schools, they live in the same streets, their kids go to the same schools, very often they even live together.
Its definitely true that this
belief exists amongst a chunk of the people scraping by on zero hour contracts. Much like to a 10 year old kid £1000 is an unfathomably immense sum of money.
But it isn't the reality.
As much as folk like Trump and his predecessors are keen to fan these flames and build up a crabs in bucket zero sum worldview.
QuotePoor people have agency. Poor people have the right to their public policy preferences.
Where are you getting the idea that poor people don't have agency?
Of course they do. Everyone does.
However some people have a lot more of this than others do. The poor person technically has the right to seek out private healthcare if they're sick and aren't getting anywhere with the NHS, but in reality their economic situation means they don't have that agency.
A randomer who read an article online is perfectly free to believe vaccines are all a conspiracy by the new world order... but its clear he has been failed very badly to get to this point. And do we really value his views over those of top doctors?
QuoteHenry Ford was a businessman. Of course he makes money by trying to predict what people will want tomorrow, not what they want today. Steve Jobs made similar comments.
But the role of a politician is different than a businessman.
Curious you say that here but in many other contexts right wingers are always going on about how the country should be ran like a business....
The role of a politician is different to that of a businessman absolutely. But a lot of the same principles apply.
The basic idea of doing your research is core to this.
QuoteI just find it incredibly condescending to hear you say "people are complaining about immigration. Well I happen to know that what they're actually upset about is housing."
Which, to loop around back to the podcast, is probably an issue that you are actually concerned about, but are going to claim that you're only concerned because of the lower classes.
This all sounds very familiar. Typical rightist strategy to avoid engaging with the point and try to smear anyone putting an ounce of brain power into an issue as condescending and with some sort of sinister ulterior motive.
So people are complaining about immigration.
What is it they're actually complaining about here then in your book?
Just...immigration? Even if there was plentiful housing, zero issues with the cost of living, plentiful good jobs, etc.... they'd still be saying the same thing? Every single person who puts down immigration as an issue doesn't like immigration just because? Nothing led to this belief. It just is?
You're a barrister, you should know better than that. Rarely does somebody commit a crime just because they wanted to commit a crime. There's always a plethora of motives feeding into this.
People say they are anti-racism, but let's do some research and find out what they really want. If we change X, Y, Z, are they still anti-racist?
Quote from: Razgovory on December 21, 2024, 06:00:46 PMPeople say they are anti-racism, but let's do some research and find out what they really want. If we change X, Y, Z, are they still anti-racist?
You think you've found a gotcha but nope.
You're going to need a better hypothesis than this.
What is your X, Y, Z?
What do people mean by racism?
How anti are they? - like will they actively speak up against it or they'd just rather not hear it?
Pretty sure this is a line of inquiry that the far right's researchers have delved into to find their wedges.
My point is you can dismantle anyone's ideas into something else, something more palatable to your own. Every time you get a little perturbed you start ranting on about the right and far-right. You really need to stop.
When I say "anti-racist" I'm talking about leftist protesters in the US who want to over turn statues and rename buildings and other things. But what do they really want? The people who do this are typically elite aspirants, who desire status that they can leverage to get better jobs. By showing that they are anti-racist they prove that they are worthy of power and wealth, moreso than the older generation they are chaffing to replace.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 21, 2024, 06:39:30 PMMy point is you can dismantle anyone's ideas into something else, something more palatable to your own. Every time you get a little perturbed you start ranting on about the right and far-right. You really need to stop.
When I say "anti-racist" I'm talking about leftist protesters in the US who want to over turn statues and rename buildings and other things. But what do they really want? The people who do this are typically elite aspirants, who desire status that they can leverage to get better jobs. By showing that they are anti-racist they prove that they are worthy of power and wealth, moreso than the older generation they are chaffing to replace.
It kind of reminds of a question I got during a lecture I gave on University governance. "What would be a best practise for the University's endowment fund to divest itself from anything to do with supporting Israel's war effort?" I explained that the people who administer the endowment fund have a fiduciary duty to ensure the viability of the fund, not to pursue the political objectives of individual members of the university community. I also explained the University's statutory objection of institutional neutrality.
The questioner was taken aback, surprised that their assumptions had been challenged, and I was a bit surprised I had to explain such a basic principle to the sort of audience I was addressing. But I am becoming less and less surprised when this sort of thing happens.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 21, 2024, 06:39:30 PMMy point is you can dismantle anyone's ideas into something else, something more palatable to your own.
Yes. This is a key part of the point. Not some sneaky hidden flaw.
A left wing party shouldn't be trying to out racist the racists.
They should instead be seeing what is leading to non racist people backing this stuff and seeking to tackle it.
Likewise the far right learned some time ago directly selling racism to normies doesn't usually work. They have to be a lot more subtle about it.
QuoteEvery time you get a little perturbed you start ranting on about the right and far-right. You really need to stop.
We are talking about modern politics and the challenge to the left of far right populists. How the hell do you do that without mentioning the far right?
Youre throwing a fit at someone actually assessing the point.
QuoteWhen I say "anti-racist" I'm talking about leftist protesters in the US who want to over turn statues and rename buildings and other things. But what do they really want? The people who do this are typically elite aspirants, who desire status that they can leverage to get better jobs. By showing that they are anti-racist they prove that they are worthy of power and wealth, moreso than the older generation they are chaffing to replace.
Again you're parsing left wing thinking through a right wing lens.
Assuming there must always be some cynical directly self serving motivation behind everything.
But it would be 100% valid to research what leads supporters of renaming a confederate street to supporting this.
There probably are other more important factors at play that show themselves in this way. I'd guess black people pissed off about how shit they have things in the modern day seeing this highly visible and easy to fix embodiment of inequality for instance - underlying factors being the general shit for black folk today.
The difference there vs immigration though is the surface demand of "rename jefferson davis avenue" is pretty easy to meet, doesn't really cause much harm, and any actual improvements it has in black people's lives are very abstract and hard to measure. Really long term changing mindsets sort of stuff.
On the other hand the surface demand of "stop all immigration" is impossibly difficult and stupid as fuck, bound to cause enormous damage. The underlying problems that feed into people holding this view often are easier to tackle than their surface demand.
Again, I'm not right wing. :rolleyes: What you keep doing is dismissing every argument as "typical of the far right". It's very tedious and dishonest.
I fully admit that "stop all immigration" is stupid, but that isn't what we are talking about. We are talking about what people want. People may want stupid things, but you take this paternalist viewpoint that what people really want is what you want. In the US context this has been a problem.
And sometimes an immigration system can be deeply flawed so that people who would be supportive of immigration are critical of the current system.
That is what has happened in Canada. We were a nation with broad support for our immigration system. It didn't take the Liberal government very long to flip that sentiment.
Quote from: Josquius on December 21, 2024, 05:44:21 PMQuote from: Barrister on December 20, 2024, 04:15:04 PMSo of course I note you snipped the one part where I was complementary of you. Your choice.
Don't overthink it. I was on my phone and must have just cut that bit off with the quote of me.
There was no specific reply needed there.
Though worth noting it wasn't a particularly subtle backhanded complement...
Subtle, no.
But backhanded, also no.
I said I don't like you but I'll give you full credit for listening to a podcast I recommended. Nothing backhanded about it.
QuoteQuoteI just find it incredibly condescending to hear you say "people are complaining about immigration. Well I happen to know that what they're actually upset about is housing."
Which, to loop around back to the podcast, is probably an issue that you are actually concerned about, but are going to claim that you're only concerned because of the lower classes.
This all sounds very familiar. Typical rightist strategy to avoid engaging with the point and try to smear anyone putting an ounce of brain power into an issue as condescending and with some sort of sinister ulterior motive.
So people are complaining about immigration.
What is it they're actually complaining about here then in your book?
Just...immigration? Even if there was plentiful housing, zero issues with the cost of living, plentiful good jobs, etc.... they'd still be saying the same thing? Every single person who puts down immigration as an issue doesn't like immigration just because? Nothing led to this belief. It just is?
Yes.
I can hardly speak for every person in every situation. But why is it so hard to believe that people might not like immigration - because they don't like immigration?
QuoteYou're a barrister, you should know better than that. Rarely does somebody commit a crime just because they wanted to commit a crime. There's always a plethora of motives feeding into this.
Putting aside that you seem to be comparing opposition to immigration with crime...
In my nearly 25 years as a barrister, I'll let you in on a secret.
Most poor, disadvantaged people don't commit crime. Nor do most minorities.
We can talk about "root causes" of crime all we want. There is absolutely something to it - there's a definite correlation between poverty and crime (to pick just one factor). But it is far from 100%.
Because criminals have agency too. They choose to commit crime.
We have a whole branch of law dealing with people who don't have such agency. If you literally can't choose to commit a crime (usually due to mental illness, but maybe due to coercion) then you're actually not guilty of a crime.
Many years ago, Pierre Bourdieu suggested that « capital » should/could be understood as financial capital, symbolic capital, cultural capital and social capital. To put it crudely, one could be rich in financial capital and cultural capital (old money), rich in financial capital and poor in cultural capital (nouveau riche), poor in financial capital and rich in cultural capital (artists, scholars), poor in financial capital and poor in cultural capital (workers). In each of these fields, you could find a different version of the « middle class », that is, people who aspire to and embrace the values of the upper class (whether money or culture), without fully commandeering all the necessary resources. For Bourdieu, each field polices its borders, so that things that are valued in one field don't translate well in another.
Yes. Of course I'd add that from the mid-20th century there was a left-wing march through the institutions. And on everything the left won unimaginable victories from, say, the perspective of 1960. Except the economic order which the left was designed to overthrow. And now as we watch billionaires disorder democracies and prepare to loot the accummulated social wealth of the post-war era, we're perhaps seeing which form of capital really matters (as someone who broadly thinks that culture reflects/is the ideology of the ruling class, we'll see what that becomes).
I'd add a slight complication in the British context is that our upper class are profoundly uncultured. The royals and aristos are not into art or culture or scholarship. They like country activities: walks, hunting, shooting, fishing, riding horses. They own art and inherit it but they're not connoisseurs. I very much doubt the late Queen would have anything to say about, for example, a Holbein in one of her palaces, but would have very detailed, informed opinions on the breeding stock of a stud farm. It is perhaps in that fact that they can be so careless and indifferent to cultural treasures that they're expressing their power. They have money and don't need to care about it, they have culture and don't need to care about it - they have no status anxiety on either of those fronts which the middle class do in both ends.
Quote from: Oexmelin on December 23, 2024, 11:45:54 AMMany years ago, Pierre Bourdieu suggested that « capital » should/could be understood as financial capital, symbolic capital, cultural capital and social capital. To put it crudely, one could be rich in financial capital and cultural capital (old money), rich in financial capital and poor in cultural capital (nouveau riche), poor in financial capital and rich in cultural capital (artists, scholars), poor in financial capital and poor in cultural capital (workers). In each of these fields, you could find a different version of the « middle class », that is, people who aspire to and embrace the values of the upper class (whether money or culture), without fully commandeering all the necessary resources. For Bourdieu, each field polices its borders, so that things that are valued in one field don't translate well in another.
In the lexicon of our age - treat me like I'm a grade schooler.
What is the point you're making here?
I know it's connected to what Jos and I were talked about because of the reference to "symbolic capitalists" (which was a phrase Musa al-Gharbi used). Bourdieu's point (that one can be rich in, say, financial capital, but poor in social capital) is one that seems obvious once it's pointed out but nevertheless bears repeating.
But what are you otherwise getting at?
(If you're trying to go all Socratic Method on me so be it, but I'm not getting it)
Nothing much. I am just reminded of this every time the discussion of Josquius's class comes up. It's usually a dead end because Jos wants his values to be working class, but his financial situation puts him middle class or upper middle class. And, whether we agree with Jos or whether we want to create "class consciousness" in Jos, we are in effect policing the borders of that field, about whether or not he truly is working class.
Al-Gharbi's work is based on Bourdieu's. Someone like Oex, who has symbolic capital could be an elite despite not having enormous sums of money or an inherited title.
Quote from: Oexmelin on December 23, 2024, 12:33:15 PMNothing much. I am just reminded of this every time the discussion of Josquius's class comes up. It's usually a dead end because Jos wants his values to be working class, but his financial situation puts him middle class or upper middle class. And, whether we agree with Jos or whether we want to create "class consciousness" in Jos, we are in effect policing the borders of that field, about whether or not he truly is working class.
:thumbsup:
The thing with Jos is I have zero interest in trying to change his politics or self-image. He can be a Labour voter and supporter. He can proudly have what he feels are "working class values".
I just wish he was more self-aware about what that meant, and why other people might feel differently (even as he thinks they're wrong).
As a self-identified conservative right-winger, the last 10 years or so have opened my eyes that other fellow travelers on the right are not who I thought they were. There's way more racism and conspiracy-mongering than I had ever thought. That revelation has in no way made me change my own fundamental beliefs, but has caused me to be much more (for lake of a better term) "woke" about the ways of politics.
I just wish Jos could wake up - just a little bit.
Quote from: Oexmelin on December 23, 2024, 11:45:54 AMMany years ago, Pierre Bourdieu suggested that « capital » should/could be understood as financial capital, symbolic capital, cultural capital and social capital. To put it crudely, one could be rich in financial capital and cultural capital (old money), rich in financial capital and poor in cultural capital (nouveau riche), poor in financial capital and rich in cultural capital (artists, scholars), poor in financial capital and poor in cultural capital (workers). In each of these fields, you could find a different version of the « middle class », that is, people who aspire to and embrace the values of the upper class (whether money or culture), without fully commandeering all the necessary resources. For Bourdieu, each field polices its borders, so that things that are valued in one field don't translate well in another.
That is a interesting way to think about it, and explains why there can be disagreement about who is "rich". And particularly amongst people who had no cultural capital. The one tweak I would suggest (and likely Bourdieu dealt with this) is that there is a strong correlation between cultural capital and financial capital. Sure there are stories we all love to hear about a generation squandering the capital given to them. But much more often the financially rich had the cultural capital to backstop them and allow them to take risks others could not afford to take.
I think that is why people who grew up without cultural capital have a hard time accepting they are "rich" even though they themselves have amassed significant financial capital and will be passing on cultural capital to the next generation.
QuoteAgain, I'm not right wing. :rolleyes: What you keep doing is dismissing every argument as "typical of the far right". It's very tedious and dishonest.
You keep saying you're not right wing yet you keep taking right wing positions.
We are literally talking about the far rights appeal to the working class. It's simply idiotic, beyond fingers in ears, to say you're not allowed to mention anything is right wing when discussing this topic.
QuoteI fully admit that "stop all immigration" is stupid, but that isn't what we are talking about. We are talking about what people want. People may want stupid things, but you take this paternalist viewpoint that what people really want is what you want. In the US context this has been a problem.
How has the point so completely flown over your head?
Stop all immigration is an example of the kind of nonsense far right populist policy that really appeals to a lot of working class people. I brought it up as it seemed to be an easy one we are all familiar with.
You're suggesting if that's what they say they want left and centrist parties have to promise to do this. They cannot investigate why people are saying this and seek to tackle the core problem from a more sensible angle.
It has fuck all to do with what I want. That's rule number one of doing effective research. You don't go in with a solution in mind.
If you have reached the stage where you do have something then you're actively seeking to poke holes in it.
Quote from: Barrister on December 23, 2024, 11:36:10 AMSubtle, no.
But backhanded, also no.
I said I don't like you but I'll give you full credit for listening to a podcast I recommended. Nothing backhanded about it.
I mean " I hate you but in this one instance you did ok" is quite the backhanded compliment.
There you have it.
I'm not going to get dragged down into slinging insults so best to just stick to the points.
QuoteI just find it incredibly condescending to hear you say "people are complaining about immigration. Well I happen to know that what they're actually upset about is housing."
Which, to loop around back to the podcast, is probably an issue that you are actually concerned about, but are going to claim that you're only concerned because of the lower classes.
Yes.
I can hardly speak for every person in every situation. But why is it so hard to believe that people might not like immigration - because they don't like immigration?
Putting aside that you seem to be comparing opposition to immigration with crime...
In my nearly 25 years as a barrister, I'll let you in on a secret.
Most poor, disadvantaged people don't commit crime. Nor do most minorities.
We can talk about "root causes" of crime all we want. There is absolutely something to it - there's a definite correlation between poverty and crime (to pick just one factor). But it is far from 100%.
Because criminals have agency too. They choose to commit crime.
We have a whole branch of law dealing with people who don't have such agency. If you literally can't choose to commit a crime (usually due to mental illness, but maybe due to coercion) then you're actually not guilty of a crime.
Yes but we've already established there's a solid chunk of people who just don't like immigrants.
The left attempting to win these people over isn't happening. They're always going to be voting the furthest right they can.
The main people we are looking at are the others. The majority of people supporting far right policies don't do so just because. Theres something that feeds into this.
I finger in air said 10% would hate immigration no matter what. Debate those numbers if you want. But no way is it 100%. The world does not work in such a neat black and white way as simple as that would be.
I think you have lost the plot if you think Raz is right wing.
And BB was trying to be complimentary.
I put it to you that you are the one lacking perspective, not them.
It's helpful to remember that Josq thinks that, despite about all his talk about avoiding black-and-white thinking, his world view is summed up as "left-wing good, right-wing". So when he talks about right wing thinking or a rightwing lens he's just saying that it is evil, defective and bad.
Quote from: crazy canuck on December 23, 2024, 01:52:59 PMI think you have lost the plot if you think Raz is right wing.
And BB was trying to be complimentary.
I put it to you that you are the one lacking perspective, not them.
It's up to him to identify how he wants.
I said he keeps saying right wing things. Far from uncommon for people to have a mix of views.
In this case his idea people can't actually be for equality and must have some sinister ulterior motive.... Yeah. Typical online rightist spleel that shows a fundmantal lack of comprehension of the idea people might have a different morality to them.
QuoteIt's helpful to remember that Josq thinks that, despite about all his talk about avoiding black-and-white thinking, his world view is summed up as "left-wing good, right-wing". So when he talks about right wing thinking or a rightwing lens he's just saying that it is evil, defective and bad.
As per usual rather than actually talking about the points it's an idiotic ad hom for you then.
What else could a failure to understand a left wing morality be but right wing thinking? I suppose it could just be apolitical idiocy.. But hey ho.
Good and evil doesn't come into this.
It's about difference.
I support freedom and equality because... They're good things in my book. Not because I stand to profit (which if I was the elite you think I am... Keep the status quo plz. Better let's roll it back a few years.) but because they're my fundamental moral values.
Quote from: Josquius on December 23, 2024, 01:30:57 PMI mean " I hate you but in this one instance you did ok" is quite the backhanded compliment.
There you have it.
I'm not going to get dragged down into slinging insults so best to just stick to the points.
Here's the thing.
If you told me "hey you should listen to this hour-long podcast so you can understand the point I'm making" - I wouldn't have done it. There would be no obligation on me to do it. No reason for me to do it.
So the fact you actually did it - that's more than just "you did ok". It's a sign of respect I didn't expect, and I wouldn't have shown you in turn. Hence why I tried to compliment you.
But I've had you on ignore for awhile, yet I keep making the mistake of clicking through to see your posts. This exchange shows my why I am mistaken to do so.
I like you Josq ( :hug: ), but you can be very frustrating. Also, ironically given it's your favourite catch phrase, you do have very black and white thinking :lol: .
My thinking is black and white that the world isn't black and white and I get very frustrated when I see people who do see the world this way yes.
Quote from: Barrister on December 23, 2024, 03:18:35 PMQuote from: Josquius on December 23, 2024, 01:30:57 PMI mean " I hate you but in this one instance you did ok" is quite the backhanded compliment.
There you have it.
I'm not going to get dragged down into slinging insults so best to just stick to the points.
Here's the thing.
If you told me "hey you should listen to this hour-long podcast so you can understand the point I'm making" - I wouldn't have done it. There would be no obligation on me to do it. No reason for me to do it.
So the fact you actually did it - that's more than just "you did ok". It's a sign of respect I didn't expect, and I wouldn't have shown you in turn. Hence why I tried to compliment you.
But I've had you on ignore for awhile, yet I keep making the mistake of clicking through to see your posts. This exchange shows my why I am mistaken to do so.
I had no idea you were such a horrible cunt.
Have a miserable Christmas.
Quote from: Josquius on December 23, 2024, 03:28:08 PMMy thinking is black and white that the world isn't black and white and I get very frustrated when I see people who do see the world this way yes.
Quote from: Barrister on December 23, 2024, 03:18:35 PMQuote from: Josquius on December 23, 2024, 01:30:57 PMI mean " I hate you but in this one instance you did ok" is quite the backhanded compliment.
There you have it.
I'm not going to get dragged down into slinging insults so best to just stick to the points.
Here's the thing.
If you told me "hey you should listen to this hour-long podcast so you can understand the point I'm making" - I wouldn't have done it. There would be no obligation on me to do it. No reason for me to do it.
So the fact you actually did it - that's more than just "you did ok". It's a sign of respect I didn't expect, and I wouldn't have shown you in turn. Hence why I tried to compliment you.
But I've had you on ignore for awhile, yet I keep making the mistake of clicking through to see your posts. This exchange shows my why I am mistaken to do so.
I had no idea you were such a horrible cunt.
Have a miserable Christmas.
Quoted for posterity.
Josquis I wish nothing to do with you in the future, yet hope you have a very nice Christmas.
Quote from: Barrister on December 23, 2024, 03:30:08 PMQuoted for posterity.
Josquis I wish nothing to do with you in the future, yet hope you have a very nice Christmas.
I mean you kind of started it :whistle:
Although using Santa's holiday was a tad mean :D
Quote from: Josquius on December 23, 2024, 03:28:08 PMMy thinking is black and white that the world isn't black and white and I get very frustrated when I see people who do see the world this way yes.
Quote from: Barrister on December 23, 2024, 03:18:35 PMQuote from: Josquius on December 23, 2024, 01:30:57 PMI mean " I hate you but in this one instance you did ok" is quite the backhanded compliment.
There you have it.
I'm not going to get dragged down into slinging insults so best to just stick to the points.
Here's the thing.
If you told me "hey you should listen to this hour-long podcast so you can understand the point I'm making" - I wouldn't have done it. There would be no obligation on me to do it. No reason for me to do it.
So the fact you actually did it - that's more than just "you did ok". It's a sign of respect I didn't expect, and I wouldn't have shown you in turn. Hence why I tried to compliment you.
But I've had you on ignore for awhile, yet I keep making the mistake of clicking through to see your posts. This exchange shows my why I am mistaken to do so.
I had no idea you were such a horrible cunt.
Have a miserable Christmas.
My recommendation is that you take some time away from this place. When you come back, reread what BB said to you. I think you will likely want to apologize.
Quote from: HVC on December 23, 2024, 03:31:11 PMAlthough using Santa's holiday was a tad mean :D
That would be Jesus's holiday. :goodboy:
Quote from: Barrister on December 23, 2024, 03:40:18 PMQuote from: HVC on December 23, 2024, 03:31:11 PMAlthough using Santa's holiday was a tad mean :D
That would be Jesus's holiday. :goodboy:
Not anymore :lol: Coca Cola won the culture war
Quote from: Josquius on December 23, 2024, 02:57:25 PMQuote from: crazy canuck on December 23, 2024, 01:52:59 PMI think you have lost the plot if you think Raz is right wing.
And BB was trying to be complimentary.
I put it to you that you are the one lacking perspective, not them.
It's up to him to identify how he wants.
I said he keeps saying right wing things. Far from uncommon for people to have a mix of views.
In this case his idea people can't actually be for equality and must have some sinister ulterior motive.... Yeah. Typical online rightist spleel that shows a fundmantal lack of comprehension of the idea people might have a different morality to them.
QuoteIt's helpful to remember that Josq thinks that, despite about all his talk about avoiding black-and-white thinking, his world view is summed up as "left-wing good, right-wing". So when he talks about right wing thinking or a rightwing lens he's just saying that it is evil, defective and bad.
As per usual rather than actually talking about the points it's an idiotic ad hom for you then.
What else could a failure to understand a left wing morality be but right wing thinking? I suppose it could just be apolitical idiocy.. But hey ho.
Good and evil doesn't come into this.
It's about difference.
I support freedom and equality because... They're good things in my book. Not because I stand to profit (which if I was the elite you think I am... Keep the status quo plz. Better let's roll it back a few years.) but because they're my fundamental moral values.
sigh. It's not about sinister motives. It's about self interest, everyone acts in self-interest in some regard. It's not out of the ordinary for someone's self-interest and their fundamental moral values to be aligned. Someone can hold an elite position and justify it by thinking that they are helping the less fortunate or for being for freedom and equality. In fact, people can and do justify their position by believing they are for things that are good.
Look, people may hold views you don't like. Views that you find objectionable. They are still your fellow citizens, and you still need to work with them. It's possible to give them some of what they want without tainting yourself. Conceding to some restrictions on immigration now would be better than facing a landslide defeat and having all immigration banned in the future. Simply writing them off as "far-right" or dismissing their views as really being about something else isn't helpful.
Quote from: crazy canuck on December 23, 2024, 03:31:37 PM]
My recommendation is that you take some time away from this place. When you come back, reread what BB said to you. I think you will likely want to apologize.
I have been thinking of doing a lot more than just leaving for a while. But that would be an over reaction despite all the other shit.
But no. I had no beef with him but in he comes saying he hates my guts, ignoring what I actually say in favour ofprojection, and thinking so little of me that I wouldn't listen to something on the topic a few people have recommended because.... I'm shit or something.
I've just learned there's an ignore list and I'm going to use it.
But seriously. Fuck this drama.
Quote from: Josquius on December 23, 2024, 03:51:36 PMBut no. I had no beef with him but in he comes saying he hates my guts, ignoring what I actually say in favour ofprojection, and thinking so little of me that I wouldn't listen to something on the topic a few people have recommended because.... I'm shit or something.
Not sure if this is better or worse:
Josquis I do not hate your guts.
I do not however respect your opinions. I find you to be a lazy black-and-white thinker with no self-awareness. That being said I do wish you all the best in your future.
If you put me on ignore and didn't read this that's probably for the best.
Just to flag for context migration has been at (very high) record levels in the last few years
(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standard/800/cpsprodpb/0fb9/live/e2d857f0-ad76-11ef-8ab9-9192db313061.jpg.webp)
It's falling sharply now following policies introduced by Sunak, Starmer intends to cut it further and has been accusing the previous government of conducting a "one-nation experiment in open borders" through its policies. There is something to this, his point is that fundamentally it wasn't a lot of accidents or shocked that led to those numbers (though some, like Hong Kong and Ukraine were exceptional), instead this was the result of policies introduced by Johnson's government after which Brexit which massively liberalised immigration for the rest of the world.
In part that's because British people have for decades said they'd like an "Australian style points system", which was introduced about 15 years ago but quite restrictively. Johnson then expanded it so we have an Australian style points system. What people had, perhaps, not noticed was that Australia has historically had quite significantly higher migration than the UK :lol: It's also slightly challenging because basically people think the overall numbers are too high - but also don't really agree with cutting any of the individual categories. So a lot of the numbers are visas for people who want to work in the health or social care sectors, there's lots of students, Ukraine, Hong Kong - these are all individual forms of migration with broad public support, but in the aggregate is too high.
(This is, I think, the issue with a lot of British politics right now - there's an unwillingness to confront the public with actual difficult choices. See also we want to get to net zero and to keep the lights on and cheaper energy and no building pls - something has to give. Instead politicians won't lead and confront with difficult truths so make false promises that everyone knows are false and then further disappoint and disillusion when they're not delivered.)
Edit: I'd add, obsessively, that in the difficult choices on immigration that no building pls is an issue there too.... :ph34r:
Your charts are obviously far right and thus wrong :contract:
So the thing about the points system (at least in Canada) - is that's not how most people come into the country.
I have no real objection to the existing points system. It seems perfectly valid.
How most immigrants come to Canada however is through either a temporary foreign worker visa, a student visa, or family re-unification.
Putting aside family re-unification, if you are resident in Canada for the specified amount of time (through a TFW visa or student visa) you're eligible to apply to permanent residence. Once you've then had PR status for long enough you're entitled to citizenship (although for some/many getting PR status is good enough).
Quote from: Razgovory on December 23, 2024, 03:45:37 PMQuote from: Josquius on December 23, 2024, 02:57:25 PMQuote from: crazy canuck on December 23, 2024, 01:52:59 PMI think you have lost the plot if you think Raz is right wing.
And BB was trying to be complimentary.
I put it to you that you are the one lacking perspective, not them.
It's up to him to identify how he wants.
I said he keeps saying right wing things. Far from uncommon for people to have a mix of views.
In this case his idea people can't actually be for equality and must have some sinister ulterior motive.... Yeah. Typical online rightist spleel that shows a fundmantal lack of comprehension of the idea people might have a different morality to them.
QuoteIt's helpful to remember that Josq thinks that, despite about all his talk about avoiding black-and-white thinking, his world view is summed up as "left-wing good, right-wing". So when he talks about right wing thinking or a rightwing lens he's just saying that it is evil, defective and bad.
As per usual rather than actually talking about the points it's an idiotic ad hom for you then.
What else could a failure to understand a left wing morality be but right wing thinking? I suppose it could just be apolitical idiocy.. But hey ho.
Good and evil doesn't come into this.
It's about difference.
I support freedom and equality because... They're good things in my book. Not because I stand to profit (which if I was the elite you think I am... Keep the status quo plz. Better let's roll it back a few years.) but because they're my fundamental moral values.
sigh. It's not about sinister motives. It's about self interest, everyone acts in self-interest in some regard. It's not out of the ordinary for someone's self-interest and their fundamental moral values to be aligned. Someone can hold an elite position and justify it by thinking that they are helping the less fortunate or for being for freedom and equality. In fact, people can and do justify their position by believing they are for things that are good.
So I'm super duper rich. Why I pay my bills on time every month.
I also happen to have a lot of contacts with tradespeople. I can get work done cheap.
Pretty sure my "credit" is good.
I've actually given thought to becoming a landlord. With things as they are it could be a sensible way to gain secure income.
... But I support policies that heavily discourage private landlords. I support policies that will damage house price rises (already an issue for me even without the theoretical landlording).
I support heavy investment in social housing.
All things that are directly harmful to landlords.... But which I believe are the right thing to do.
Oh sure. There's a bit of an aspect of self interest in my unstable wealth and what if things go wrong (I'm working class remember you're always one slip away from doom), and then there's self interest in a more equal country being a more pleasant place for everyone.
But this not the direct self interest of having my fingers in the pie (as far right always insist) or somehow looking good and getting laid/jobs/whatever for supporting these things.
QuoteLook, people may hold views you don't like. Views that you find objectionable. They are still your fellow citizens, and you still need to work with them. It's possible to give them some of what they want without tainting yourself. Conceding to some restrictions on immigration now would be better than facing a landslide defeat and having all immigration banned in the future. Simply writing them off as "far-right" or dismissing their views as really being about something else isn't helpful.
Except we weren't talking about sensible immigration policies. We were talking about banning all immigration.
Far right isn't an insult. It's a pretty accurate descriptor of such a populist policy.
Sensible workable immigration policies would actually be one thing researching what these people really want would likely throw up- but the bother with making your campaign all about that is you're up against the nutter with the populist ban em all.
This is where figuring out appeals beyond immigration in order to tackle anti immigration feeling is so important for the left and centre.
Reality must be faced. There absolutely are some people who the left and centre are never going to win around.
Same too for the right and centre.
The key is those who do not have such strong affiliations and winning them around. Swaying them away from the simple answers to complex problems and offering them a genuine believable alternative.
I never once said we should dismiss their views. That's literally the opposite of what I said. I said we should try to understand their views. Understand why they've come to the conclusions they have. Dig deeper than the surface.
To go off this topic and loop right back to the original point a big problem of the dems is that their policies are too centrist/right leaning whilst the perception of them is too left wing (in ways that will annoy a lot of people but won't actually win many people around)
There's a big disconnect here.
And I say the optimum solution lies not in turning to hate and competing against maga on that front, but rather in offering something more practical and making sure the message of what they're about matches this.
Nobody has brought up banning all immigration but you, I don't think even Trump is proposing that. Maybe it's a UK thing, but it's not on the table in the US.
Question: Would it be appropriate for a person from the far-right to have your job? To do the research you do?
Quote from: Razgovory on December 23, 2024, 04:36:43 PMNobody has brought up banning all immigration but you, I don't think even Trump is proposing that. Maybe it's a UK thing, but it's not on the table in the US.
Theoreticals usually work best if you make them extreme. Helps to have a element of "ok so we all agree this is bad right". The reality is of course more subtle.
I would expect there are some out there who actually say they want this though. I've definitely ran into them in Britain.
QuoteQuestion: Would it be appropriate for a person from the far-right to have your job? To do the research you do?
Depends how good they are at self control.
I have definitely on more than one occasion ran into people with unsavoury views and successfully held my tongue.
It's part of the job.
Quote from: Barrister on December 23, 2024, 04:16:56 PMSo the thing about the points system (at least in Canada) - is that's not how most people come into the country.
I have no real objection to the existing points system. It seems perfectly valid.
How most immigrants come to Canada however is through either a temporary foreign worker visa, a student visa, or family re-unification.
Putting aside family re-unification, if you are resident in Canada for the specified amount of time (through a TFW visa or student visa) you're eligible to apply to permanent residence. Once you've then had PR status for long enough you're entitled to citizenship (although for some/many getting PR status is good enough).
Very similar here - so it's not truly Aussie style as it is linked to a skilled worker visa. But it applies for five years and after five years you can apply for indefinite leave to remain (which sounds like permanent resident - basically you become a British resident). After a year of ILR (assuming you've had 5 years of residency including on the skilled worker) you can become a citizen (subject to some tests etc). Johnson's big reforms were basically a massive liberalisation of that system such that about 50% of the labour market would basically be eligible for skilled workers (and he removed the pre-Brexit requirement to basically say there were no qualified workers within the EU).
The other categories are similar. Students have a slightly different route, but again Johnson increased the amount of time they can stay in the UK and work before getting a skilled worker visa. Then, as you say, there's family reunification. Plus in the UK Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghan resettlement routes which are varied (and practically very difficult for Afghans) but uncapped. As I say the challenge is the public object to immigration in the abstract - when questioned about each of those groups, especially broken down by types of worker, I think the only people the British public actually reject are bankers :lol:
Similarly here ILR is often enough for many people - they have a right to reside, broadly they have recourse to public funds (entitled to benefits) and (if they're Commonwealth citizens) can vote.
There is a separate temporary worker route but that is really very temporary/seasonal work.
Easiest fix is to break the student visa to PR link. Can use student visa to add some points to the point system if necessary (school lobbying, they make a lot of money), but not enough points to automatically qualify. Will actually help drive students to useful studies(as deemed by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship ). Theres only so many immigrant IT and hospitality students we need.
Quote from: Josquius on December 23, 2024, 04:44:10 PMQuote from: Razgovory on December 23, 2024, 04:36:43 PMNobody has brought up banning all immigration but you, I don't think even Trump is proposing that. Maybe it's a UK thing, but it's not on the table in the US.
Theoreticals usually work best if you make them extreme. Helps to have a element of "ok so we all agree this is bad right". The reality is of course more subtle.
I would expect there are some out there who actually say they want this though. I've definitely ran into them in Britain.
QuoteQuestion: Would it be appropriate for a person from the far-right to have your job? To do the research you do?
Depends how good they are at self control.
I have definitely on more than one occasion ran into people with unsavoury views and successfully held my tongue.
It's part of the job.
Do theoretical work best if you use extremes? I don't think they do. The other extreme is to let anyone into the country at anytime no matter what. I don't think that many people hold that opinion. Does that theoretical help much? Not that I can see.
This is about what the Democratic party should do. I will note that the Labor party shifted to the right when Corbyn lost and has since won. The Democrats lost big, and to a convicted criminal. We need to rethink how we do things. It might surprise you, but I think the Dems need to move left on some issues, the economic ones.
For as long as I can remember Dems have pushed an idea that education will lift up minorities, the working class and the poor. In practice you can't pull everyone up into good job through education. There are only so many positions and not everyone is really good at school. We can't all be gifted. So we lift up a few people into a comfortable life style but leave the rest to rot. Not being bright is not a good enough reason to live in poverty.
Instead, our goal should be to lift up the working class and poor as a whole to a better standard of living. Maybe we should look into the stuff Bernie Sanders is saying. What we are doing now isn't working.
Well, this is a thread I regret starting. :(
Quote from: Razgovory on December 23, 2024, 06:36:55 PMFor as long as I can remember Dems have pushed an idea that education will lift up minorities, the working class and the poor. In practice you can't pull everyone up into good job through education. There are only so many positions and not everyone is really good at school. We can't all be gifted. So we lift up a few people into a comfortable life style but leave the rest to rot. Not being bright is not a good enough reason to live in poverty.
Does education strictly mean college+ to you?
My understanding of education in the US is that it is very unequal from the beginning, being mostly funded at country level, mostly, right? Rich neighborhoods get better primary and high school education, poorer neighborhoods lack basic services like enough speech therapists and psycho educators, along with typical criminal problems related to these neighborhoods. Richer people can afford private education, poorer people can not, and poorer people have less chances to complete their high school, even if they would have the talent for it.
Also, even if you don't have academic talent, education can mean access to decent professional schools, or technical college. Outside of military.
Or you know, having a decent healthcare system. Not that the Dems tried to fix this a couple of times and got flatly rejected for it by their electors (see Clinton's mid terms, Obama's mid terms).
At some point, the left will have to stop acting stupid too. They can't get 100% of what they want. They either settle for 80% or they get the GOP to worsen the situation of most who aren't born rich.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 23, 2024, 06:36:55 PMDo theoretical work best if you use extremes? I don't think they do. The other extreme is to let anyone into the country at anytime no matter what. I don't think that many people hold that opinion. Does that theoretical help much? Not that I can see.-
They do. Its how you establish common ground with somebody on the other side.
The opposite extreme of complete open borders is certainly something the far right believe is a common belief among their opponents but its really not. It would be one you'd use when discussing with someone who wants very lax immigration controls. But the issue with the populist right is over the top xenophobia not phillia so...
Plus of course it usually makes it obvious you're not talking about a real policy and just illustrating a theoretical.
QuoteThis is about what the Democratic party should do. I will note that the Labor party shifted to the right when Corbyn lost and has since won. The Democrats lost big, and to a convicted criminal. We need to rethink how we do things.
Quite a opposite situation there though. Labour in 2019 running with someone drab and not offering much would likely have led to them winning. Contrary someone more to the left and with something about them in the US would have won.
Also worth noting the factor with Corbyn wasn't his platform was too far left, as it broadly wasn't. It was two factors.
1: It was too broad and disorganised. They seemed to just keeping throwing out promises with no central messaging. This hurt credability.
2: Corbyn is a protest politician. He was a shit party leader. He has too much baggage and his whole approach of giving actual answers rather than hammering home the message was absolute gold to the papers. When you're being attacked for links to terrorists you don't try and give an honest account of yourself and keep a balanced view, you say you think those terrorist are awful and you condemn. But he couldn't.
QuoteIt might surprise you, but I think the Dems need to move left on some issues, the economic ones.
Yes. Which is what I've been saying seems the best idea.
QuoteFor as long as I can remember Dems have pushed an idea that education will lift up minorities, the working class and the poor. In practice you can't pull everyone up into good job through education. There are only so many positions and not everyone is really good at school. We can't all be gifted. So we lift up a few people into a comfortable life style but leave the rest to rot. Not being bright is not a good enough reason to live in poverty.
Again though this is a key tactic that the populist right like to hammer in. This zero sum view of the world. That there are only a fixed amount of good jobs to go around and someone else having one means you don't.
In reality it is possible to create more jobs and a more educated population tends to do this better.
More education is absolutely something to support and prioritise.
Further policies are needed to support this and make it happen more often. Better safety nets and less dire consequences for failure are key.
Part of what you say though is a problem we have in the UK too , an over the top focus on academic education. But lifting people up through education need not be through just academic education. More support and focus on practical education is good too.
QuoteInstead, our goal should be to lift up the working class and poor as a whole to a better standard of living. Maybe we should look into the stuff Bernie Sanders is saying. What we are doing now isn't working.
Yes. This is what I've been saying.
As said Labour have recognised this and are really making noises about it. Time will tell if they're succesful.
That Corbyn wasn't too left is typical of Stalinist, antisemitic far-left.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 27, 2024, 03:55:47 PMThat Corbyn wasn't too left is typical of Stalinist, antisemitic far-left.
:lmfao:
Learn to read.
And what bizarre insults. I represent none of these things.
Corbyn is very far left. But his problem is more that he was shit at his job.
Labour under Corbyn was not Corbyns dictatorship. One good thing that can be said about him is he did compromise on his views giving the party a manifesto far more towards its centre - though Corbyn then did a rubbish job of pretending to actually support this.
Also well done on completely ignoring basically everything to try and pick at a minor point you would like to have seen.
Jesus Christ Languish is just terrible sometimes.
Hang in there Josq.
His brush with Stalinism was his proposal of "activist committees" at some level of government.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 28, 2024, 03:30:52 AMHis brush with Stalinism was his proposal of "activist committees" at some level of government.
I am very anti-Corbyn but I'm not sure what you're talking about here? Don't think I've heard of this.
There were definitely proposals along those lines among the Trotskyist groups to the left of Labour (who fully expected some form of conflict, possibly bloody with existing bureaucracies/institutions). Corbyn's open to them in a "no enemies to the left" style or popular front approach - and that is the division between hard and soft left is your attitude to groups who want a non-parliamentary road to socialism - but I don't think Labour ever really went down that path.
Quote from: Josquius on December 28, 2024, 03:01:56 AMQuote from: Razgovory on December 27, 2024, 03:55:47 PMThat Corbyn wasn't too left is typical of Stalinist, antisemitic far-left.
:lmfao:
Learn to read.
And what bizarre insults. I represent none of these things.
Corbyn is very far left. But his problem is more that he was shit at his job.
Labour under Corbyn was not Corbyns dictatorship. One good thing that can be said about him is he did compromise on his views giving the party a manifesto far more towards its centre - though Corbyn then did a rubbish job of pretending to actually support this.
Also well done on completely ignoring basically everything to try and pick at a minor point you would like to have seen.
Well, how am I suppose to respond to when your statement is typical of the antisemitic far-left?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 28, 2024, 03:30:52 AMHis brush with Stalinism was his proposal of "activist committees" at some level of government.
Josq response to a statement he doesn't like is "this is typical of the racist far-right", so I just turned it around. A Stalinist antisemite wouldn't think that Corbyn is "too far left".
Quote from: Syt on December 24, 2024, 12:32:35 AMWell, this is a thread I regret starting. :(
Don't worry the worst-ness (intentional spelling) will transfer to another thread in a few days. :hug:
Quote from: Razgovory on December 28, 2024, 03:21:03 PMQuote from: Josquius on December 28, 2024, 03:01:56 AMQuote from: Razgovory on December 27, 2024, 03:55:47 PMThat Corbyn wasn't too left is typical of Stalinist, antisemitic far-left.
:lmfao:
Learn to read.
And what bizarre insults. I represent none of these things.
Corbyn is very far left. But his problem is more that he was shit at his job.
Labour under Corbyn was not Corbyns dictatorship. One good thing that can be said about him is he did compromise on his views giving the party a manifesto far more towards its centre - though Corbyn then did a rubbish job of pretending to actually support this.
Also well done on completely ignoring basically everything to try and pick at a minor point you would like to have seen.
Well, how am I suppose to respond to when your statement is typical of the antisemitic far-left?
:lol:
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 28, 2024, 01:19:59 PMI am very anti-Corbyn but I'm not sure what you're talking about here? Don't think I've heard of this.
There were definitely proposals along those lines among the Trotskyist groups to the left of Labour (who fully expected some form of conflict, possibly bloody with existing bureaucracies/institutions). Corbyn's open to them in a "no enemies to the left" style or popular front approach - and that is the division between hard and soft left is your attitude to groups who want a non-parliamentary road to socialism - but I don't think Labour ever really went down that path.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-37466034
Oh okay. That's not really to do with government - it's within the Labour Party.
It's another long-standing demand of the hard left, who are often organised around groups with names like "Campaign for Party Democracy". Basically it's about turning MPs into delegates/intimidating the parliamentary Labour Party largely by "open selections". At the minute if you're an MP you are automatically selected as candidate for MP at the next election. Local parties can remove MPs as their candidate but it takes a lot of organising and votes.
Open selections would mean that sitting MPs were not automatically selected. Given that 80% of Corbyn's MP's voted against him in a vote of no confidence and 66% of Labour members voted for him in the subsequent leadership election the assumption was the left would be able to replace anti-Corbyn MPs with loyalists at the next election (because the leadership and membership were united against the MPs).
It didn't go ahead and as it turns out Corbyn and the hard left were very poor at actually imposing their (and the membership's) will on MPs - not least because a lot of critical MPs just went very quiet after the surprisingly good results in 2017 (this was their weakness of their argument being tactical about how Corbyn was unelectable, not fundamental). As it turned out Starmer was very, very effective at using the powers the leadership already has to purge the left in the last five years.
He's also talking about more of a role for the party membership in policy formation via party conference. Again a long-standing demand of the hard left. It really boils down to which smoke-filled rooms you want policy made in because the hard left is very, very good at organising, working through a rule book and going to every meeting - the Labour right (and normally leadership) on the other hand rig things behind the scenes.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 28, 2024, 03:21:03 PMQuote from: Josquius on December 28, 2024, 03:01:56 AMQuote from: Razgovory on December 27, 2024, 03:55:47 PMThat Corbyn wasn't too left is typical of Stalinist, antisemitic far-left.
:lmfao:
Learn to read.
And what bizarre insults. I represent none of these things.
Corbyn is very far left. But his problem is more that he was shit at his job.
Labour under Corbyn was not Corbyns dictatorship. One good thing that can be said about him is he did compromise on his views giving the party a manifesto far more towards its centre - though Corbyn then did a rubbish job of pretending to actually support this.
Also well done on completely ignoring basically everything to try and pick at a minor point you would like to have seen.
Well, how am I suppose to respond to when your statement is typical of the antisemitic far-left?
So you're just being a trolling little shit and aren't actually interested in the topic. Shame.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 28, 2024, 03:24:21 PMQuote from: Admiral Yi on December 28, 2024, 03:30:52 AMHis brush with Stalinism was his proposal of "activist committees" at some level of government.
Josq response to a statement he doesn't like is "this is typical of the racist far-right", so I just turned it around. A Stalinist antisemite wouldn't think that Corbyn is "too far left".
:lol:
"you just call everything you don't like far right!" is ironically something far right folk love to say. They always trot it out even before the term has been said.
It's a key part of how they go about shutting down conversation and dodge engaging with different viewpoints.
Ya know, I did actually address the topics whilst correctly pointing out where your talking points are popular with the main problem we are discussing here though.
Not like your thing of ignoring basically everything to focus on a sentence you think you can twist into something that let's you "win".
As again,as I know you struggle with literacy: I never said Corbyn wasn't far left.
Quote from: Josquius on December 29, 2024, 05:30:46 PMQuote from: Razgovory on December 28, 2024, 03:21:03 PMQuote from: Josquius on December 28, 2024, 03:01:56 AMQuote from: Razgovory on December 27, 2024, 03:55:47 PMThat Corbyn wasn't too left is typical of Stalinist, antisemitic far-left.
:lmfao:
Learn to read.
And what bizarre insults. I represent none of these things.
Corbyn is very far left. But his problem is more that he was shit at his job.
Labour under Corbyn was not Corbyns dictatorship. One good thing that can be said about him is he did compromise on his views giving the party a manifesto far more towards its centre - though Corbyn then did a rubbish job of pretending to actually support this.
Also well done on completely ignoring basically everything to try and pick at a minor point you would like to have seen.
Well, how am I suppose to respond to when your statement is typical of the antisemitic far-left?
So you're just being a trolling little shit and aren't actually interested in the topic. Shame.
If you can't face the inverse of your own argument style you should probably stop doing it yourself :D
Quote from: HVC on December 29, 2024, 05:31:50 PMQuote from: Josquius on December 29, 2024, 05:30:46 PMQuote from: Razgovory on December 28, 2024, 03:21:03 PMQuote from: Josquius on December 28, 2024, 03:01:56 AMQuote from: Razgovory on December 27, 2024, 03:55:47 PMThat Corbyn wasn't too left is typical of Stalinist, antisemitic far-left.
:lmfao:
Learn to read.
And what bizarre insults. I represent none of these things.
Corbyn is very far left. But his problem is more that he was shit at his job.
Labour under Corbyn was not Corbyns dictatorship. One good thing that can be said about him is he did compromise on his views giving the party a manifesto far more towards its centre - though Corbyn then did a rubbish job of pretending to actually support this.
Also well done on completely ignoring basically everything to try and pick at a minor point you would like to have seen.
Well, how am I suppose to respond to when your statement is typical of the antisemitic far-left?
So you're just being a trolling little shit and aren't actually interested in the topic. Shame.
If you can't face the inverse of your own argument style you should probably stop doing it yourself :D
I call a spade a spade as I talk about the spade.
I don't out of nowhere go "nerr you're a Stalinist" to avoid actually talking about the topic at hand.
Quote from: Josquius on December 29, 2024, 05:44:17 PMI call a spade a spade as I talk about the spade.
I don't out of nowhere go "nerr you're a Stalinist" to avoid actually talking about the topic at hand.
Well it does seem a bit odd to call you a Stalinist, leaving aside the near lack of 'evidence', there really aren't many in the West, maybe a few old members of the British Communist party I used to know, but they'll mostly be dead now, plus the odd paid shill working for N.K.in the UK; And that's about it.
Stalinist was probably overegging the pudding. After all, Josq has said the thinks that Stalin is a right winger. Still, he has zero self-awareness. He still can't figure out that I simply reversed what he said to me and Barrister. I complained that he simply dismissed concerns with the thought-ending cliche "that's typical of what the right-wing says". If he has a problem with that sort of thing, he should stop doing it. That was the point I was making.
Quote from: Josquius on December 29, 2024, 05:44:17 PMQuote from: HVC on December 29, 2024, 05:31:50 PMQuote from: Josquius on December 29, 2024, 05:30:46 PMQuote from: Razgovory on December 28, 2024, 03:21:03 PMQuote from: Josquius on December 28, 2024, 03:01:56 AMQuote from: Razgovory on December 27, 2024, 03:55:47 PMThat Corbyn wasn't too left is typical of Stalinist, antisemitic far-left.
:lmfao:
Learn to read.
And what bizarre insults. I represent none of these things.
Corbyn is very far left. But his problem is more that he was shit at his job.
Labour under Corbyn was not Corbyns dictatorship. One good thing that can be said about him is he did compromise on his views giving the party a manifesto far more towards its centre - though Corbyn then did a rubbish job of pretending to actually support this.
Also well done on completely ignoring basically everything to try and pick at a minor point you would like to have seen.
Well, how am I suppose to respond to when your statement is typical of the antisemitic far-left?
So you're just being a trolling little shit and aren't actually interested in the topic. Shame.
If you can't face the inverse of your own argument style you should probably stop doing it yourself :D
I call a spade a spade as I talk about the spade.
I don't out of nowhere go "nerr you're a Stalinist" to avoid actually talking about the topic at hand.
Oh come on now, your go to retort is "right wing fascist talking points " without actually discussing the point made. To most people, but especially Raz. Although I do appreciate that you stopped using "projecting" so much, it was a giant pet peeve of mine :P
I have recently read that people who are well-educated, sophisticated thinkers are the least likely to change their opinions when presented with new facts. These people are the best equipped to find ways to dismiss new information that conflicts with their opinions.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 29, 2024, 06:52:21 PMI have recently read that people who are well-educated, sophisticated thinkers are the least likely to change their opinions when presented with new facts. These people are the best equipped to find ways to dismiss new information that conflicts with their opinions.
I don't know if it's really true, or just yet another study that would turn out to be non-reproducible or worse, but I do agree that no one is immune from confirmation bias. Judging from my experience, though, I do think that educated people are somewhat more likely to be aware of confirmation bias and take steps to not fall victim to it.
EDIT: Another thing that I thought of is that this conclusion can also be a function of educated people being exposed to much more information. Statistically speaking, the more information you're exposed to, the less influence on your conclusion each additional piece should have. If you're trying to figure out whether a coin is fair, the first 10 flips give you a lot of information to go on, whereas flips 511-520 are far less valuable.
Some people are just intrinsically more stubborn than others. The more you push a mule the more it pushes back. I don't personally think that's tied to intelligence
Quote from: mongers on December 29, 2024, 05:50:54 PMWell it does seem a bit odd to call you a Stalinist, leaving aside the near lack of 'evidence', there really aren't many in the West, maybe a few old members of the British Communist party I used to know, but they'll mostly be dead now, plus the odd paid shill working for N.K.in the UK; And that's about it.
There'll be some splitters but I think you're right Stalinists are really just the Communist Party (inheritor of Harry Pollit's CPGB).
The fringe of the left that Corbyn is open to are more the the Trots. Not really the Stalinist, Soviet-aligned wing which has basically been irrelevant (even within the very fringe relevance of hard-left sects) since 1956. There's a few Trot groups here who all hate each other (they agree on every single thing in terms of their political goals but passionately disagree on analysis and practically how to do it). I think Corbyn's wing of the party is open to the Militant style bits of the left (who believe in entryism), Corbyn was President of the Stop the War Coalition which was one of the SWP's front organisations (like Stand up to Racism etc - again their big tactic is front organisations).
QuoteI don't know if it's really true, or just yet another study that would turn out to be non-reproducible or worse, but I do agree that no one is immune from confirmation bias. Judging from my experience, though, I do think that educated people are somewhat more likely to be aware of confirmation bias and take steps to not fall victim to it.
I disagree - because I think they're more likely to have strong views on issues and just enough knowledge to keep digging. I think there was a study on this from a political perspective that basically highly educated people who closely follow the news are most likely to suffer confirmation bias - because they are the people with priors.
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 29, 2024, 07:57:15 PMI disagree - because I think they're more likely to have strong views on issues and just enough knowledge to keep digging. I think there was a study on this from a political perspective that basically highly educated people who closely follow the news are most likely to suffer confirmation bias - because they are the people with priors.
You said the same thing I did, but came to an opposite conclusion. Being exposed to more information is the same as having stronger priors. If you were exposed to a lot of information but don't have any priors because of it, then you're probably just not processing it, which definitely doesn't seem like a good thing.
I think it's also a mistake to equate having priors with having confirmation bias. Having confirmation bias means just not considering information that contradicts the priors, or flipping it in your mind so that by the time you process it it's consistent with your priors. Having strong priors means that any new information is not going to change your overall conclusion, unless it's so incompatible with your priors that you just have to discard all your priors. That's not a bad thing. What makes new information necessarily better than all the older information that built up your priors to begin with? Should you forget everything that you learned in your life the moment you learn something new?
Maybe - I think people selectively process information because we're swamped by it. I think a lot of people dip in and out of what they need to know for their own lives and interests.
So in the context of politics 95% of people are really not interested in it (and arguably that's a sign of a well-functioning society, if you need to take an interest in politics is probably because politics is taking an interest in you). The extent of their exposure will be just be the passive intake of what they see on the evening news or listen to in the ride home.
As an aside I think it's the biggest mistake people interested in politics (like consultants and historians) make that I think they assume a far higher level of interest and engagement than is really there. The overwhelming majority of people aren't and don't really come to it with a strong set of ideas beyond what might be constructed from their social and economic context (e.g. a middle class white churchgoer is likely to have a set of assumptions from that background, even if they don't really "care" about politics, which will inform them).
I think educated people have both that social construction from their education (which they could follow or consciously rebel against) but also are more likely to be interested, to have a stake and a set of views and look for information, including subsconsciously information that mainly reinforces confirms their views. I do not think education or cultural sophistication provides any protection against that - look at the conspiracy theories espoused by some Supreme Court justices' wives for example, or for that matter the conspiracy-mindedness of the liberal left in the last 8 years to explain why it's the children who are wrong. Educated, smart people moving in sophisticated circles and having absolute brain rot on some issues.
Quote from: Razgovory on December 29, 2024, 06:52:21 PMI have recently read that people who are well-educated, sophisticated thinkers are the least likely to change their opinions when presented with new facts. These people are the best equipped to find ways to dismiss new information that conflicts with their opinions.
Recently read where?
I have changed my opinion many times based on new information. Hell even due to just different ways of thinking about old information, without any new facts presented at all. I must be a real poorly educated dumbass.
If a person bases his opinion on WW2 on rational weighing of 100 facts, then one new fact is unlikely to be enough to change the position. A person who bases his opinion on WW2 on unsophisticated weighing of 2-3 facts seems more likely to be swayed by a single new fact.
Quote from: The Brain on January 06, 2025, 01:50:40 PMIf a person bases his opinion on WW2 on rational weighing of 100 facts, then one new fact is unlikely to be enough change the position. A person who bases his opinion on WW2 on unsophisticated weighing of 2-3 facts seems more likely to be swayed by a single new fact.
I think Germany was bad in WWII.
'What if I told you Hitler was a vegetarian?'
Oh...well I guess I was wrong. Germany was good after all.
Quote from: Valmy on January 06, 2025, 01:45:30 PMQuote from: Razgovory on December 29, 2024, 06:52:21 PMI have recently read that people who are well-educated, sophisticated thinkers are the least likely to change their opinions when presented with new facts. These people are the best equipped to find ways to dismiss new information that conflicts with their opinions.
Recently read where?
I have changed my opinion many times based on new information. Hell even due to just different ways of thinking about old information, without any new facts presented at all. I must be a real poorly educated dumbass.
In a book. I'll have to dig through to foot notes to find it though.
Quote from: Razgovory on January 06, 2025, 02:16:40 PMQuote from: Valmy on January 06, 2025, 01:45:30 PMQuote from: Razgovory on December 29, 2024, 06:52:21 PMI have recently read that people who are well-educated, sophisticated thinkers are the least likely to change their opinions when presented with new facts. These people are the best equipped to find ways to dismiss new information that conflicts with their opinions.
Recently read where?
I have changed my opinion many times based on new information. Hell even due to just different ways of thinking about old information, without any new facts presented at all. I must be a real poorly educated dumbass.
In a book. I'll have to dig through to foot notes to find it though.
Thanks, I would appreciate it.
Quote from: Valmy on January 06, 2025, 01:45:30 PMQuote from: Razgovory on December 29, 2024, 06:52:21 PMI have recently read that people who are well-educated, sophisticated thinkers are the least likely to change their opinions when presented with new facts. These people are the best equipped to find ways to dismiss new information that conflicts with their opinions.
Recently read where?
I have changed my opinion many times based on new information. Hell even due to just different ways of thinking about old information, without any new facts presented at all. I must be a real poorly educated dumbass.
I think I could see Raz's point, although no idea if it's true or not.
Someone who is more educated, more well read - is much more likely to be more confident in their positions, and less likely therefore to change their opinion.
Quote from: Barrister on January 06, 2025, 04:13:37 PMQuote from: Valmy on January 06, 2025, 01:45:30 PMQuote from: Razgovory on December 29, 2024, 06:52:21 PMI have recently read that people who are well-educated, sophisticated thinkers are the least likely to change their opinions when presented with new facts. These people are the best equipped to find ways to dismiss new information that conflicts with their opinions.
Recently read where?
I have changed my opinion many times based on new information. Hell even due to just different ways of thinking about old information, without any new facts presented at all. I must be a real poorly educated dumbass.
I think I could see Raz's point, although no idea if it's true or not.
Someone who is more educated, more well read - is much more likely to be more confident in their positions, and less likely therefore to change their opinion.
And people develop egos and have careers based around certain things being true. The Max Planck Principle on scientific advancement for example:
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it ...
An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth."
But that is very specifically about a subject one is an expert in and has a whole career built around something. Once somebody's self-identity gets involved, it can blind one to a lot. But that is hardly unique to just the highly educated. Even peasants were always extremely resistant to adopting new farming techniques, preferring their traditional ways.
I am not so sure it is true that just in general the better educated one is, the more resistant one is to new information. If that was true, how would you even become educated to begin with? Surely to become educated and become a "sophisticated thinker" one must have some intellectual curiosity.
But we will see what Raz's book has to say.
Quote from: Barrister on January 06, 2025, 04:13:37 PMQuote from: Valmy on January 06, 2025, 01:45:30 PMQuote from: Razgovory on December 29, 2024, 06:52:21 PMI have recently read that people who are well-educated, sophisticated thinkers are the least likely to change their opinions when presented with new facts. These people are the best equipped to find ways to dismiss new information that conflicts with their opinions.
Recently read where?
I have changed my opinion many times based on new information. Hell even due to just different ways of thinking about old information, without any new facts presented at all. I must be a real poorly educated dumbass.
I think I could see Raz's point, although no idea if it's true or not.
Someone who is more educated, more well read - is much more likely to be more confident in their positions, and less likely therefore to change their opinion.
Quote from: Barrister on January 06, 2025, 04:13:37 PMQuote from: Valmy on January 06, 2025, 01:45:30 PMQuote from: Razgovory on December 29, 2024, 06:52:21 PMI have recently read that people who are well-educated, sophisticated thinkers are the least likely to change their opinions when presented with new facts. These people are the best equipped to find ways to dismiss new information that conflicts with their opinions.
Recently read where?
I have changed my opinion many times based on new information. Hell even due to just different ways of thinking about old information, without any new facts presented at all. I must be a real poorly educated dumbass.
I think I could see Raz's point, although no idea if it's true or not.
Someone who is more educated, more well read - is much more likely to be more confident in their positions, and less likely therefore to change their opinion.
No, quite the opposite. If somebody is well educated, then they know question their assumptions.
This actually sounds more like Pop psychology that plays well on social media
Quote from: Valmy on January 06, 2025, 04:33:45 PMAnd people develop egos and have careers based around certain things being true. The Max Planck Principle on scientific advancement for example:
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it ...
An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth."
But that is very specifically about a subject one is an expert in and has a whole career built around something. Once somebody's self-identity gets involved, it can blind one to a lot. But that is hardly unique to just the highly educated. Even peasants were always extremely resistant to adopting new farming techniques, preferring their traditional ways.
I am not so sure it is true that just in general the better educated one is, the more resistant one is to new information. If that was true, how would you even become educated to begin with? Surely to become educated and become a "sophisticated thinker" one must have some intellectual curiosity.
But we will see what Raz's book has to say.
I'm sure you could think of some right-wing examples, but take Noam Chomsky. I'm not qualified to analyze his findings in the field of linguistics, but given how many times he's been wrong in the field of politics over the decades you'd think he might gain a certain amount of humility - but no.
Or take Naomi Wolf. She has degrees from Yale and Oxford, but she infamously got some very basic facts wrong in a 2019 book She was confused over the Victorian legal term "death recorded" and said it represented numerous gay men being put to death - when in fact it actually meant that the death penalty was not being applied. She accepted a "minor correction" to one particular story but despite her entire book being pulped in the US just still went on to have a "corrected" version published in the UK despite numerous other factual errors.
Re scientific theories and holdouts to new ones, Fred Hoyle is a good example of someone who never believed in the Big Bang theory, preferring the Steady State theory, right up to his death in 2001.
The three works cited are:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2779567
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-04786-005
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ajps.12624
I don't know if I can access them though. The quote from the book
"Moreover, those who are highly educated, intelligent, or rhetorically skilled are significantly less likely than most others to revise their beliefs or adjust their positions when confronted with evidence or arguments that contradict their preferred narratives or preexisting beliefs. Precisely in virtue of knowing more about the world or being better at arguing, we are equipped to punch holes in data or narratives that undermine our priors, come up with excuses to "stick to our guns" irrespective of the facts, or else interpret threatening information in a way that flatters our existing worldview. And we typically do just that."
-We Have Never Been Woke by Musa Al-Gharbi pg 199.
Here is an educated person had to say about questioning one's beliefs
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DEaUll3IBjA/?igsh=MTQ3azJnZjVvOXJjNw==
Quote from: Razgovory on January 06, 2025, 05:25:28 PMThe three works cited are:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2779567
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-04786-005
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ajps.12624
I don't know if I can access them though. The quote from the book
"Moreover, those who are highly educated, intelligent, or rhetorically skilled are significantly less likely than most others to revise their beliefs or adjust their positions when confronted with evidence or arguments that contradict their preferred narratives or preexisting beliefs. Precisely in virtue of knowing more about the world or being better at arguing, we are equipped to punch holes in data or narratives that undermine our priors, come up with excuses to "stick to our guns" irrespective of the facts, or else interpret threatening information in a way that flatters our existing worldview. And we typically do just that."
-We Have Never Been Woke by Musa Al-Gharbi pg 199.
Unfortunately, the citations don't support the quote in the book. Those citations stand for the proposition that once somebody identifies with a particular political party or ideology. It is difficult to get them to change their views about their political beliefs.
The second citation is particularly interesting in that regard as it dispelled the myth that the right was much less likely to change their views, and it turns out it is a problem with those who strongly identify with both right and left.
Quote from: Razgovory on January 06, 2025, 05:25:28 PMI don't know if I can access them though. The quote from the book
"Moreover, those who are highly educated, intelligent, or rhetorically skilled are significantly less likely than most others to revise their beliefs or adjust their positions when confronted with evidence or arguments that contradict their preferred narratives or preexisting beliefs. Precisely in virtue of knowing more about the world or being better at arguing, we are equipped to punch holes in data or narratives that undermine our priors, come up with excuses to "stick to our guns" irrespective of the facts, or else interpret threatening information in a way that flatters our existing worldview. And we typically do just that."
My problem with this assertion is it doesn't distinguish between true and untrue new information. If someone had data that the highly educated ignored true new information at a higher rate I would worry.
Quote from: Razgovory on January 06, 2025, 05:25:28 PM-We Have Never Been Woke by Musa Al-Gharbi pg 199.
How is that book? Sounds like you're reading it.
From the Amazon summary:
QuoteHow a new "woke" elite uses the language of social justice to gain more power and status—without helping the marginalized and disadvantaged
Society has never been more egalitarian—in theory. Prejudice is taboo, and diversity is strongly valued. At the same time, social and economic inequality have exploded. In We Have Never Been Woke, Musa al-Gharbi argues that these trends are closely related, each tied to the rise of a new elite—the symbolic capitalists. In education, media, nonprofits, and beyond, members of this elite work primarily with words, ideas, images, and data, and are very likely to identify as allies of antiracist, feminist, LGBTQ, and other progressive causes. Their dominant ideology is "wokeness" and, while their commitment to equality is sincere, they actively benefit from and perpetuate the inequalities they decry. Indeed, their egalitarian credentials help them gain more power and status, often at the expense of the marginalized and disadvantaged.
We Have Never Been Woke details how the language of social justice is increasingly used to justify this elite—and to portray the losers in the knowledge economy as deserving their lot because they think or say the "wrong" things about race, gender, and sexuality. Al-Gharbi's point is not to accuse symbolic capitalists of hypocrisy or cynicism. Rather, he examines how their genuine beliefs prevent them from recognizing how they contribute to social problems—or how their actions regularly provoke backlash against the social justice causes they champion.
A powerful critique, We Have Never Been Woke reveals that only by challenging this elite's self-serving narratives can we hope to address social and economic inequality effectively.
So I can see how the section Raz quoted fits in with the general thesis - see the bolded section.
Quote from: Barrister on January 06, 2025, 05:12:13 PMI'm sure you could think of some right-wing examples, but take Noam Chomsky.
Or just take a look at social media. I can't think of any professions whose respect in the public eye has possibly suffered more from social media than academics and lawyers. Very clever people in their very specific area routinely committed to showing themselves up on literally any other issue (with the quite grace and humility we all associate with lawyers and academics :lol:) - often taking the very strong confidence of their expertise in one area and applying it to another.
QuoteUnfortunately, the citations don't support the quote in the book. Those citations stand for the proposition that once somebody identifies with a particular political party or ideology. It is difficult to get them to change their views about their political beliefs.
But also educated people are more likely to identify with political parties or ideologies or have strong views.
QuoteHow is that book? Sounds like you're reading it.
Yeah interested to hear.
I have Olufemi Taiwo's Elite Capture on my shelf which sounds like it covers similar territory but from a slightly different angle. Also interesting to see what it's doing with that title and Latour's We Have Never Been Modern.
Quote from: crazy canuck on January 06, 2025, 05:48:32 PMQuote from: Razgovory on January 06, 2025, 05:25:28 PMThe three works cited are:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2779567
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-04786-005
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ajps.12624
I don't know if I can access them though. The quote from the book
"Moreover, those who are highly educated, intelligent, or rhetorically skilled are significantly less likely than most others to revise their beliefs or adjust their positions when confronted with evidence or arguments that contradict their preferred narratives or preexisting beliefs. Precisely in virtue of knowing more about the world or being better at arguing, we are equipped to punch holes in data or narratives that undermine our priors, come up with excuses to "stick to our guns" irrespective of the facts, or else interpret threatening information in a way that flatters our existing worldview. And we typically do just that."
-We Have Never Been Woke by Musa Al-Gharbi pg 199.
Unfortunately, the citations don't support the quote in the book. Those citations stand for the proposition that once somebody identifies with a particular political party or ideology. It is difficult to get them to change their views about their political beliefs.
The second citation is particularly interesting in that regard as it dispelled the myth that the right was much less likely to change their views, and it turns out it is a problem with those who strongly identify with both right and left.
You read the papers?
Quote from: Barrister on January 06, 2025, 06:05:16 PMQuote from: Razgovory on January 06, 2025, 05:25:28 PM-We Have Never Been Woke by Musa Al-Gharbi pg 199.
How is that book? Sounds like you're reading it.
From the Amazon summary:
QuoteHow a new "woke" elite uses the language of social justice to gain more power and status—without helping the marginalized and disadvantaged
Society has never been more egalitarian—in theory. Prejudice is taboo, and diversity is strongly valued. At the same time, social and economic inequality have exploded. In We Have Never Been Woke, Musa al-Gharbi argues that these trends are closely related, each tied to the rise of a new elite—the symbolic capitalists. In education, media, nonprofits, and beyond, members of this elite work primarily with words, ideas, images, and data, and are very likely to identify as allies of antiracist, feminist, LGBTQ, and other progressive causes. Their dominant ideology is "wokeness" and, while their commitment to equality is sincere, they actively benefit from and perpetuate the inequalities they decry. Indeed, their egalitarian credentials help them gain more power and status, often at the expense of the marginalized and disadvantaged.
We Have Never Been Woke details how the language of social justice is increasingly used to justify this elite—and to portray the losers in the knowledge economy as deserving their lot because they think or say the "wrong" things about race, gender, and sexuality. Al-Gharbi's point is not to accuse symbolic capitalists of hypocrisy or cynicism. Rather, he examines how their genuine beliefs prevent them from recognizing how they contribute to social problems—or how their actions regularly provoke backlash against the social justice causes they champion.
A powerful critique, We Have Never Been Woke reveals that only by challenging this elite's self-serving narratives can we hope to address social and economic inequality effectively.
So I can see how the section Raz quoted fits in with the general thesis - see the bolded section.
I found it really interesting. I don't care the for the title, but it apparently it references a classic in sociology. Democrats have basically lost the working class. The question is why. Rather than blaming Trump, or the media, or Elon Musk or racism or sexism I think we should instead examine ourselves. The book takes a very critical look at the main demographic of Democrats, what he calls symbolic capitalists, and it while it isn't pretty, he makes a point not to judge. The negative reviews of the book mostly came from conservatives who were expecting a political screed not an academic text.
Well I thought I knew why, that they abandoned the working class to cozy up to big business.
But Biden did a lot of pretty pro-worker things and that didn't seem to do the Dems that much good.
Or maybe it just wasn't enough to overcome inflation. Or just didn't go far enough in general.
But if I knew for sure what the answer is I would probably be out having my lucrative political consulting career.
I do think they need to develop a policy on the border and immigration and aggressively sell it to the American people just because that seems to be a winning issue for the right. But, again, what do I know?
I think it's hard for professional class to identify with the working class. The more the left became identified with the professional class, the more the working class became alienated, and the more the left became incapable of perceiving that the working class is alienated from them.
Quote from: DGuller on January 07, 2025, 09:09:34 AMI think it's hard for professional class to identify with the working class. The more the left became identified with the professional class, the more the working class became alienated, and the more the left became incapable of perceiving that the working class is alienated from them.
Maybe we need to reinforce maintaining larger familial networks? Like there is a wide range of different experiences within my extended family.
Quote from: DGuller on January 07, 2025, 09:09:34 AMI think it's hard for professional class to identify with the working class. The more the left became identified with the professional class, the more the working class became alienated, and the more the left became incapable of perceiving that the working class is alienated from them.
That is a very good summary of what has occurred.
Quote from: garbon on January 07, 2025, 09:19:47 AMQuote from: DGuller on January 07, 2025, 09:09:34 AMI think it's hard for professional class to identify with the working class. The more the left became identified with the professional class, the more the working class became alienated, and the more the left became incapable of perceiving that the working class is alienated from them.
Maybe we need to reinforce maintaining larger familial networks? Like there is a wide range of different experiences within my extended family.
My strong gut feeling is that the alienation is a matter of cultural exclusion much more so than economics. That's one reason why I think that people touting Biden's accomplishments or Harris's proposals are not getting at the core of it. People may say that they care about economics, but whether they realize it or not, most people really value feeling included above most everything else.
Quote from: DGuller on January 07, 2025, 09:09:34 AMI think it's hard for professional class to identify with the working class. The more the left became identified with the professional class, the more the working class became alienated, and the more the left became incapable of perceiving that the working class is alienated from them.
Well maybe. That is all very vague and theoretical though. I am not sure what to do with that.
And since we have two big tent parties, if the Democrats ever become solely a leftwing party they are going to lose anyway. Presuming there currently exists something called the center.
Quote from: DGuller on January 07, 2025, 09:58:53 AMQuote from: garbon on January 07, 2025, 09:19:47 AMQuote from: DGuller on January 07, 2025, 09:09:34 AMI think it's hard for professional class to identify with the working class. The more the left became identified with the professional class, the more the working class became alienated, and the more the left became incapable of perceiving that the working class is alienated from them.
Maybe we need to reinforce maintaining larger familial networks? Like there is a wide range of different experiences within my extended family.
My strong gut feeling is that the alienation is a matter of cultural exclusion much more so than economics. That's one reason why I think that people touting Biden's accomplishments or Harris's proposals are not getting at the core of it. People may say that they care about economics, but whether they realize it or not, most people really value feeling included above most everything else.
I don't know man. This kind of "hope! joy! togetherness!" stuff seems to be losing out to "THE BAD PEOPLE ARE COMING FOR YOU!" message the Republicans are using. I mean we are in a country where a scary amount of people are cheering on the murder of a health care CEO.
But again, what do I know? I guess it worked for Obama. But last I checked Harris tried to do this. But maybe she just didn't go far enough. I thought she should have gone on Joe Rogan for example.
I think it still works, Valmy. The right has recognize early that the traditional media & marketing strategies don't work anymore.
Going on Rogan for Trump was a masterstroke. His endorsement delivered for Trump millions of vote.
Quote from: Valmy on January 07, 2025, 02:17:54 AMWell I thought I knew why, that they abandoned the working class to cozy up to big business.
How did they abandon the working class?
Quote from: DGuller on January 07, 2025, 09:58:53 AMQuote from: garbon on January 07, 2025, 09:19:47 AMQuote from: DGuller on January 07, 2025, 09:09:34 AMI think it's hard for professional class to identify with the working class. The more the left became identified with the professional class, the more the working class became alienated, and the more the left became incapable of perceiving that the working class is alienated from them.
Maybe we need to reinforce maintaining larger familial networks? Like there is a wide range of different experiences within my extended family.
My strong gut feeling is that the alienation is a matter of cultural exclusion much more so than economics. That's one reason why I think that people touting Biden's accomplishments or Harris's proposals are not getting at the core of it. People may say that they care about economics, but whether they realize it or not, most people really value feeling included above most everything else.
That's right up there with Musa al gharbi's "cultural capitalists" - it describes people who have cultural capital, if not monetary capital. They're people who know the right words, go to the right schools, have the right experiences, to be able to succeed.
YOu can imagine a blue collar family. Maybe they're doing well financially, or maybe they're not - it kindof doesn't matter. But while they personally like the Honduran family next door they're against so many immigrants coming in, they don't understand how men can become women, and don't like how their kid got suspended for just saying some rap lyrics the other kids were using. They just don't have the cultural capital, and that can make all the difference.
Quote from: Grey Fox on January 07, 2025, 11:24:15 AMI think it still works, Valmy. The right has recognize early that the traditional media & marketing strategies don't work anymore.
Going on Rogan for Trump was a masterstroke. His endorsement delivered for Trump millions of vote.
The ability to manipulate social networks is now essential.
I'm quite frankly amazed at how easily people around me start parroting the shit they are fed. And I'm not talking about blue-collar workers. The folks I discuss politics with - family, friends and colleagues - are college educated.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on January 07, 2025, 11:46:25 AMQuote from: Valmy on January 07, 2025, 02:17:54 AMWell I thought I knew why, that they abandoned the working class to cozy up to big business.
How did they abandon the working class?
Ok now I am not a working class person so I don't pretend to claim to know the answer.
But that has been the claim for a long time. My understanding of it was that it was a result of the Democrats adopting right wing economic policies in the 1990s and 2000s. Free trade and all that. Seeking the support of corporations and big business instead of relying on Union support. Though the idea today that one can rely on Union support or small donors when Corporations, or even certain individuals, can donate hundreds of millions is perhaps cute.
But Biden going out there and being more protectionist and supporting Unions more didn't seem to make him popular among those working class groups. Though I did notice that the Republicans did not really criticize him for that either, at least not publicly. They very much focused on inflation, culture war stuff, border panic, and so forth not that he was anti-business.
So I don't know, maybe Biden had the right idea but it is too little too late to have a real impact but the Democrats need to keep going in that direction. Or maybe this whole idea that it is economic policies at all is nonsense and the Democrats need to do things differently in some other way.
Again, what the fuck do I know? There is about a zero percent chance I vote for the Republicans in the near future so I am clearly not the demographic giving them issues.
Quote from: Iormlund on January 07, 2025, 02:15:44 PMQuote from: Grey Fox on January 07, 2025, 11:24:15 AMI think it still works, Valmy. The right has recognize early that the traditional media & marketing strategies don't work anymore.
Going on Rogan for Trump was a masterstroke. His endorsement delivered for Trump millions of vote.
The ability to manipulate social networks is now essential.
I'm quite frankly amazed at how easily people around me start parroting the shit they are fed. And I'm not talking about blue-collar workers. The folks I discuss politics with - family, friends and colleagues - are college educated.
Maybe the Democrats need to be like the Russian government and just employ a propaganda troll army somewhere. Probably be a better use of all the hundreds of millions they raise currently.
Meanwhile,
The Democrats Show Why They LostAt a meeting of the DNC, the party seemed to be at pains to demonstrate that it learned nothing from its 2024 defeat.By Jonathan Chait
QuoteSpeaking to the Democratic National Committee, which met to select its new leadership this weekend, the outgoing chair, Jaime Harrison, attempted to explain a point about its rules concerning gender balance for its vice-chair race. "The rules specify that when we have a gender-nonbinary candidate or officer, the nonbinary individual is counted as neither male nor female, and the remaining six officers must be gender balanced," Harrison announced.
As the explanation became increasingly intricate, Harrison's elucidation grew more labored. "To ensure our process accounts for male, female, and nonbinary candidates, we conferred with our [Rules and Bylaws Committee] co-chair, our LGBT Caucus co-chair, and others to ensure that the process is inclusive and meets the gender-balance requirements in our rules," he added. "To do this, our process will be slightly different than the one outlined to you earlier this week, but I hope you will see that in practice, it is simple and transparent."
The Democratic Party, at least in theory, is an organization dedicated to winning political power through elected office, though this might seem hard to believe on the evidence provided by its official proceedings. The DNC's meetings included a land acknowledgement, multiple shrieking interruptions by angry protesters, and a general affirmation that its strategy had been sound, except perhaps insufficiently committed to legalistic race and gender essentialism.
The good news about the DNC, for those who prefer that the country have a politically viable alternative to the authoritarian personality cult currently running it, is that the official Democratic Party has little power. The DNC does not set the party's message, nor will it determine its next presidential candidate.
The bad news is that the official party's influence is so meager, in part because the party has largely ceded it to a collection of progressive activist groups. These groups, funded by liberal donors, seldom have a broad base of support among the voting public but have managed to amass enormous influence over the party. They've done so by monopolizing the brand value of various causes. Climate groups, for instance, define what good climate policy means, and then they judge candidates based on how well they affirm those positions. The same holds true for abortion, racial justice, and other issues that many Democrats deem important. The groups are particularly effective at spreading their ideas through the media, especially (but not exclusively) through the work of progressive-leaning journalists, who lean on both the expertise that groups provide and their ability to drive news (by, say, scolding Democratic candidates who fall short of their standards of ideological purity).
The 2020 Democratic primary represented the apogee, to that point, of the groups' influence. The gigantic field of candidates slogged through a series of debates and interviews in which journalists asked if they would affirm various positions demanded by the groups. That is how large chunks of the field wound up endorsing decriminalization of the border, reparations, and other causes that are hardly consensus positions within the Democratic Party, let alone the broader electorate. It is also how Kamala Harris came out for providing free gender-reassignment surgery to prisoners and migrant detainees, which became the basis of the Trump campaign's most effective ad against her.
The ongoing influence of the groups can be seen in a new New York Times poll. Asked to list their top priorities, respondents cited, in order, the economy, health care, immigration, taxes, and crime. Asked what they believed Democrats' priorities were, they cited abortion, LGBTQ policy, climate change, the state of democracy, and health care. That perception of the party's priorities may not be an accurate description of the views of its elected officials. But it is absolutely an accurate description of the priorities of progressive activist groups.
The poll is a testament to how well the groups have done their job. They have set out to raise public awareness of a series of issues their donors care about, and to commit the party to prioritizing them, and they have done so. Democrats in public office may be mostly engaged in fighting about the economy, health care, and other issues, but they lack the communications apparatus controlled by the groups, which have blotted out their poll-tested messages in favor of donor-approved ones.
Over the past year or so, and especially since Harris's defeat, some centrist commentators have begun to question the groups' influence. But the DNC meetings offered no evidence that their thinking has gone out of style.
If Democrats learned from Harris's campaign that they should try to stop holding events that are easily repurposed as viral Republican attack ads, they showed no sign of it over the weekend. When activists repeatedly interrupted speakers, they were met supportively. "Rather than rebuff the interruptions," observed the Wall Street Journal reporter Molly Ball, "those onstage largely celebrated them, straining to assure the activists they were actually on the same side and eagerly giving them the platform they broke the rules to demand."
Neither Harrison nor his successor, Ken Martin, has questioned Joe Biden's decision to run for a second term, nor any of the messaging or policy that contributed to his dismal approval ratings. When MSNBC's Jonathan Capehart asked one panel of candidates if they believed racism and misogyny contributed to Harris's defeat, every panelist agreed. "That's good, you all pass," he said. (Note that this diagnosis of the election result has no actionable takeaway other than that perhaps the party should refrain from nominating a woman or person of color.)
The most sadly revealing outcome of the meeting may be the elevation of David Hogg as vice chair. Hogg, a 24-year-old activist, rose to prominence as a survivor of the Parkland, Florida, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, and then quickly assimilated the full range of progressive stances—defund ICE, abolish the police, etc.—into his heavily online persona. And despite the horrific experience he endured, he does not seem to be notably wise beyond his years. After the far-right activist and pillow peddler Mike Lindell gained prominence as an election denier, I joked online that progressives needed their own pillow company. (The joke, of course, is that there is obviously no need for your pillow company to endorse your political views.) The next month, Hogg went ahead and turned this joke into reality, founding Good Pillow before resigning a few months later.
Hogg's takeaway from the 2024 presidential race is that Democrats lost because they failed to rally the youth vote with a rousing message on guns, climate, and other issues favored by progressive activists. Polling, in fact, showed that young voters had similar issue priorities as older voters, but Hogg's elevation was a tribute to the wish masquerading as calculation that Democrats can gain vote share without compromising with the electorate.
Some Democrats observed the events of the weekend with wry fatalism. At one point, a protester in a Sunrise Movement T-shirt interrupted by shouting, "I am terrified!"
She was not alone.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/dnc-meeting/681548/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=true-anthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawIM9ItleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHcRsMR5BdgpAtRuvcbXeUPuYlmfToGO18A9eZ5xPwkir9T_S4fPkdAidxw_aem_hah_we1yCp8Ce7WiXm3HxA
Maybe Dguller is right :D
Ok but the Democrats actually increased police funding, and did nothing about abolishing ICE, and didn't really do much to help secure rights for trans people. At least not via any legislation. They did pass the gay marriage law so that was a thing, but they did it with some bipartisan support.
So I don't know. On these issues they didn't do much.
But it's the other issues that aren't mentioned here that baffle me. These are supposedly progressive people but nothing to reform immigration? Nothing about the minimum wage? Nothing about trade? Nothing about labor unions? Affordable housing? Addressing homelessness? Or those were addressed but not mentioned in the article.
I mean it isn't that I don't want LGBT issues addressed or whatever. But unlike most of those issues, which the Democrats either did the opposite or just ignored, the Democrats did actually come very close to raising the minimum wage a few years ago. Weird nobody was talking about that.
Kind of makes it seem like these activists are placated but don't actually get much legislation put out there.
But I guess we will see if this Hogg person does anything.
A few months back I've been listening to a podcast about intelligence agencies, and the guest claimed that Russian intelligence has always punched above its weight. Their specialty has often been agent provocateurs, who infiltrated enemy organizations and derailed them. Ever since then I've always wondered how many agent provocateurs there are on the left, because surely this kind of effective sabotage can't be purely organic.
Also I hope the lesson the Democrats take is have full open Primaries and get candidates the voters support. But first let's make sure we get another election.
Quote from: DGuller on February 02, 2025, 11:25:48 PMA few months back I've been listening to a podcast about intelligence agencies, and the guest claimed that Russian intelligence has always punched above its weight. Their specialty has often been agent provocateurs, who infiltrated enemy organizations and derailed them. Ever since then I've always wondered how many agent provocateurs there are on the left, because surely this kind of effective sabotage can't be purely organic.
Well they do have a long history of doing that and being very good at it.
I mean during the election Harris was getting up there with Liz and Dick Cheney showing how very centrist she was. I missed all the big climate change ads she was putting out.
Democratic controlled cities have been increasing police funding. Say what you want about Eric Adams but the police are well taken care of under his watch if nothing else.
So I guess we'll see.
Quote from: Valmy on February 02, 2025, 11:21:39 PMOk but the Democrats actually increased police funding, and did nothing about abolishing ICE, and didn't really do much to help secure rights for trans people. At least not via any legislation. They did pass the gay marriage law so that was a thing, but they did it with some bipartisan support.
So I don't know. On these issues they didn't do much.
But it's the other issues that aren't mentioned here that baffle me. These are supposedly progressive people but nothing to reform immigration? Nothing about the minimum wage? Nothing about trade? Nothing about labor unions? Affordable housing? Addressing homelessness? Or those were addressed but not mentioned in the article.
I mean it isn't that I don't want LGBT issues addressed or whatever. But unlike most of those issues, which the Democrats either did the opposite or just ignored, the Democrats did actually come very close to raising the minimum wage a few years ago. Weird nobody was talking about that.
Kind of makes it seem like these activists are placated but don't actually get much legislation put out there.
But I guess we will see if this Hogg person does anything.
My impression is that activists are controlling the messaging, they are small but loud. As for immigration, the I read another article recently that immigration activists had long been pressuring Democrats to take a softer stance on the border with the understanding that any blow back would be offset by picking up Hispanic votes. When it became clear that this was not happening Biden reversed course, but it was too late.
Article on that
Why Democrats Got the Politics of Immigration So Wrong for So LongThey spent more than a decade tacking left on the issue to win Latino votes. It may have cost them the White House—twice.By Rogé Karma
QuoteThe election of Donald Trump this year shattered a long-standing piece of conventional wisdom in American politics: that Latinos will vote overwhelmingly for whichever party has the more liberal approach to immigration, making them a reliable Democratic constituency. This view was once so pervasive that the Republican Party's 2012 post-election autopsy concluded that the party needed to move left on immigration to win over more nonwhite voters.
If that analysis were true, then the nomination of the most virulently anti-immigration presidential candidate in modern history for three straight elections should have devastated the GOP's Latino support. Instead, the opposite happened. Latinos, who make up about a quarter of the electorate, still lean Democratic, but they appear to have shifted toward Republicans by up to 20 points since 2012. According to exit polls, Trump—who has accused South American migrants of "poisoning the blood of our country" and called for the "largest deportation effort in American history"—won a greater share of the Latino vote than any Republican presidential candidate ever. At the precinct level, some of his largest gains compared with 2020 were in heavily Latino counties that had supported Democrats for decades. And polling suggests that Trump's restrictionist views on immigration may have actually helped him win some Latino voters, who, like the electorate overall, gave the Biden administration low marks for its handling of the issue.
For more than a decade, Democrats have struck an implicit electoral bargain: Even if liberal immigration stances alienated some working-class white voters, those policies were essential to holding together the party's multiracial coalition. That bargain now appears to have been based on a false understanding of the motivations of Latino voters. How did that misreading become so entrenched in the first place?
Part of the story is the rise of progressive immigration-advocacy nonprofits within the Democratic coalition. These groups convinced party leaders that shifting to the left on immigration would win Latino support. Their influence can be seen in the focus of Hillary Clinton's campaign on immigration and diversity in 2016, the party's near-universal embrace of border decriminalization in 2020, and the Biden administration's hesitance to crack down on the border until late in his presidency.
The Democratic Party's embrace of these groups was based on a mistake that in hindsight appears simple: conflating the views of the highly educated, progressive Latinos who run and staff these organizations, and who care passionately about immigration-policy reform, with the views of Latino voters, who overwhelmingly do not. Avoiding that mistake might very well have made the difference in 2016 and 2024. It could therefore rank among the costliest blunders the Democratic Party has ever made.
The notion that Latinos are single-issue immigration voters became something like conventional wisdom thanks to the 2012 presidential election. Barack Obama had won more than two-thirds of the Latino vote four years prior, only to see his approval ratings plummet with these voters over the first few years of his presidency. Then, in the summer of 2012, he signed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order promising legal protections for Dreamers—undocumented immigrants who had been brought to the country as children. This, the story goes, galvanized Latino voters just as Obama's opponent, Mitt Romney, was busy alienating them with calls for "self-deportation." Obama went on to win more than 70 percent of the Latino vote that fall, and this was widely attributed to DACA. "A crucial piece of Mr. Obama's winning strategy among Latinos was an initiative he announced in June to grant temporary reprieves from deportation to hundreds of thousands of young immigrants here illegally," The New York Times reported in a post-election analysis.
But Fernand Amandi, the lead Latino-focused pollster and strategist for both of Obama's presidential campaigns, told me that Obama won over Latino voters through a relentless focus on the issue they cared about above all others: the economy. Contrary to some media narratives, "the one issue we really didn't touch was immigration," Amandi told me. "It never registered as a top issue for Latinos. What they really cared about was pocketbook issues." For most of his first term, Obama resisted activist demands to embrace more liberal immigration policies because he believed that doing so would cost Democrats crucial votes—a stance that eventually earned him the nickname "deporter-in-chief" from activists. Even so, by the time Obama signed DACA, Amandi said, internal campaign polls showed him polling in the high 60s with Latinos; the executive order might have contributed a few percentage points, at best.
That version of events tracks closely with decades of polling data showing that Latinos—80 percent of whom lack a college degree—view the economy as the most important issue when voting, typically followed by other "pocketbook" concerns such as health care. "In all my years polling this issue, immigration has never been close to the top issue for Latinos," Mark Hugo Lopez, the director of race and ethnicity research at Pew Research Center, told me. "It rarely even breaks the top five."
Why, then, did so many political experts conclude otherwise? As Mike Madrid, a longtime political strategist who specializes in the Latino electorate, points out in his book, The Latino Century, nonwhite voters are typically assumed to be hyperfocused on ethnic-identity-related policies, such as affirmative action for Black voters and immigration for Latinos. This is so even though the "Latino" category covers an immensely diverse group of people with different cultures, migration histories, and national origins. "The media, politicians, the public—we've all been primed to think about the Latino electorate this way for decades," Madrid told me. So when Obama signed DACA in 2012 and then performed strongly with Latinos, political brains were hardwired to infer causation from correlation. And survey data seemed to back that interpretation up. According to polls released by Latino Decisions, at the time a relatively new firm, DACA had indeed contributed to a spike in Latino support for Obama.
This perception provided an opening for immigration-advocacy organizations. Following the 2012 election, Latino Decisions continued to churn out polls on their behalf showing that—contrary to a large body of public-opinion research—immigration was actually the top issue for Latino voters, and that Latinos had far more liberal views on immigration policy than the rest of the electorate.
Latino Decisions claimed that it understood the electorate in a way that traditional pollsters did not. Matt Barreto, one of the firm's co-founders, told me that traditional polling outfits had long made a series of methodological errors, such as conducting too few interviews in Spanish and relying on outdated methods to reach voters, that caused them to overrepresent third- and fourth-generation Latino Americans. When these problems were fixed, Barreto argued, a far more accurate portrait came into view.
Critics make the opposite case: The firm, they argue, greatly overrepresents first- and second-generation Latinos, creating the impression of a far more immigration-focused electorate than actually exists. According to Lopez, at Pew, high-quality mainstream pollsters that offer to conduct interviews in either English or Spanish typically find that about 20 percent of Latinos choose Spanish. Latino Decisions, by contrast, regularly conducted closer to 35 percent of its interviews in Spanish, sometimes even more—a signal that it might be oversampling Spanish-speaking households. Several pollsters also complained to me that Latino Decisions isn't fully transparent about its methodology, including how it defines Latino in the first place.
But Barreto dismisses these and other criticisms, arguing that he is simply better than other pollsters at weighting the various subgroups of the Latino electorate. He pointed out that in 2010, while most polls showed Harry Reid losing his Senate seat, Latino Decisions accurately predicted that a surge of Latino support would deliver him a victory. Barreto, who is also a professor of political science at UCLA, believes that his academic expertise gives him an edge. "Most of these other pollsters haven't published 83 academic articles on polling methodology and don't have Ph.D.s," he told me. "I would invite them to attend the graduate seminar I teach on the subject."
Within the Democratic Party, Barreto's side won the debate. In 2015, leaders and allies of the immigration groups that had once sparred with Obama were tapped to help run Hillary Clinton's campaign. Barreto and his co-founder, Gary Segura, became her pollsters. Their influence showed: From the outset of her campaign, Clinton leaned hard into pro-immigration rhetoric and embraced an immigration agenda well to the left of Obama's, including a dramatic rollback of enforcement.
That same year, Republican voters nominated Trump. For those operating under the theory that immigration was the wedge issue for Latinos, this was seen as a political gift. Latino Decisions' pre-election polling found that Latino voters supported Clinton in record-breaking numbers. ("Latino Voters Poised to Cast Most Lopsided Presidential Vote on Record," it predicted in a blog post.) If that came to pass, Florida would turn from a swing state to solidly blue, and even Texas would be in play. Latino support would drive a landslide victory.
Needless to say, that isn't what happened. In fact, exit polls suggested that Trump had received a slightly higher share of the Latino vote than Romney had four years earlier. The president-elect's anti-immigrant rhetoric had not alienated huge swaths of Latinos, and Clinton's pro-immigration agenda hadn't won them over. However, the increased salience of immigration did push working-class white voters to support Trump, helping him secure a narrow victory in the Electoral College.
These counterintuitive findings ought to have prompted some soul-searching within the Democratic Party. Instead, they were almost immediately memory-holed. Exit polls are just as error-prone as any other survey, and many of the most influential groups and pollsters within the party spent the weeks and months following the election disputing the surprising results. "The national exit surveys' deeply flawed methodology distorts the Latino vote," wrote Barreto in a Washington Post op-ed. A Latino Decisions poll taken just before the election, which showed Clinton winning Latinos by a historic 79–18 margin, was more accurate, he argued. Other advocacy groups followed suit. "It is an insult to us as Latinos to keep hearing the media ignoring the empirical data that was presented by Latino Decisions," Janet Murguía, the president of National Council of La Raza (now called UnidosUS), a leading Latino advocacy group, said in a press conference days after the election.
It wasn't until years later that post-election analyses based on validated voter information would be released, confirming that the exit polls had been basically accurate: Trump had won a similar or slightly higher share of Latinos than Romney had in 2012. (Barreto disputes the accuracy of these studies, arguing that they suffer from the same biases as the rest of the competition's polling.) But by then, it was too late. The narrative that Latinos had rejected Trump because of his anti-immigration positions had taken hold.
During the first Trump presidency, Democrats shifted sharply to the left on immigration. This was in part a response to the moral atrocity of family separation, but it went beyond just a backlash to Trump. Heading into the 2020 Democratic primary, nearly 250 progressive groups signed a letter urging politicians to endorse positions once considered beyond the pale, including decriminalizing crossing the border. In contrast to the Obama years, party leaders mostly did not push back. At a debate just a few weeks later, eight of the 10 Democratic presidential candidates onstage, including then-Senator Kamala Harris, raised their hands in support of decriminalizing the border.
Although multiple polls found this position deeply unpopular with the public at large, Latino Decisions released its own poll showing that 62 percent of Latino debate-viewers said the decriminalization proposal made them more likely to vote for Democrats. The poll also found that Harris and Julián Castro, the candidates who had taken the most liberal immigration positions to that point, were the top choices for Latino voters. (Neither candidate would come remotely close to winning the nomination.)
Rogé Karma: The truth about immigration and the American worker
The eventual winner of that primary was one of the two Democrats who did not support decriminalization: Joe Biden. Still, after the primary, he hired many of the same operatives and pollsters from the Clinton 2016 campaign, and in the general election, he ran on an immigration platform well to the left of Obama's—one that included promises to reverse Trump's border policies, place a moratorium on deportations, and expand legal immigration. A September 2020 poll by Latino Decisions found that Biden was leading Trump by 42 points nationally with Latinos, a greater margin than Clinton had achieved.
Biden, of course, won that election—but not thanks to improved Latino support. In fact, according to post-election studies based on validated voter information, Trump won about 38 percent of Latino voters, about nine points more than he had in 2016 and 14 points more than the Latino Decisions polling had predicted. Yet even this failed to convince Democrats that their theory of the case was wrong. Instead, a new rationalization emerged: Trump in 2020 talked about immigration much less than he had in 2016; therefore, his improved performance among Latinos could be attributed to the lower salience of the immigration issue. The coronavirus pandemic "allowed a window for President Trump to be able to talk about other issues and move away from immigration, which was clearly something that really impacted his prospects for the Latino vote," explained Gabriel Sanchez, then the director of research at Latino Decisions, in a post-election interview. Besides, Democrats had won the presidency and both houses of Congress. The party had not paid a big electoral price for its slippage with Latino voters. Yet.
The Biden administration entered office with conflicting impulses on immigration. According to a former senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are still in government, the president and some of his closest advisers worried that rolling back Trump-era restrictions too quickly could result in a surge of migrants that would overwhelm an already dysfunctional system. And they believed that strict border enforcement was needed to prevent a political backlash from swing voters. But some more progressive staffers, many of whom had come directly from the immigration-advocacy world, insisted that the White House had both a moral and political obligation to swiftly liberalize border policy. (This description of the administration's divisions has been confirmed by numerous reports.)
The result was an incoherent immigration policy. In the early months of the Biden presidency, the administration would sometimes keep existing restrictions in place or implement new ones; at other times, it would roll restrictions back, often without any cogent explanation.
Perhaps the purest distillation of this dynamic was the administration's treatment of Title 42, a provision implemented by Trump in 2020 that allowed the administration to turn away asylum-seekers at the border on public-health grounds. When Biden entered office, he decided to keep Title 42 in place over objections from more than 100 outside groups and plenty of his own staff. A year later, as the progressive pressure continued to mount, the administration announced that it would end the policy. When a federal judge blocked that decision, the administration assured its allies that it would appeal the decision and fight it in court. A few months later, however, in October 2022, the administration reversed course and expanded the use of Title 42. Then, in May 2023, the administration rolled all of that back, allowing Title 42 to expire without any clear plan to replace it. In the following months, border crossings spiked to all-time highs.
Meanwhile, public opinion was taking a right turn against immigration. In 2020, 28 percent of Americans told Gallup that immigration should decrease. Just four years later, that number has risen to 55 percent, the highest level since 2001.
Rogé Karma: The most dramatic shift in U.S. public opinion
Latinos were no exception. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Latinos' views on border security have long been similar to the general population's. During the Biden administration, Latinos have lurched to the right along with the rest of the country. A Pew poll in March 2024 found that 75 percent of Latinos described the recent increase in border crossings as a "major problem" or a "crisis." In June, a survey found that Latino voters in battleground states were more likely to trust Trump to handle immigration than Biden. And in focus groups, many Latino immigrants expressed resentment toward what they saw as preferential treatment for recent migrants. Immigration, long believed to be Democrats' secret weapon with Latino voters, had become an outright liability.
Eventually, the administration realized its mistake. In June, over the loud objections of progressive immigration groups, Biden signed a series of executive actions to stem the flow of migrants. Within months, border crossings reached their lowest levels since Trump was in office. When Kamala Harris took over from Biden as the Democratic nominee, she tacked to the right on immigration, touting her prosecutorial background and promising to "fortify" the southern border.
"The idea that Kamala Harris lost this election because she caved to progressive immigration groups is completely false," said Barreto, who in 2021 left Latino Decisions with Segura to co-found a new firm, BSP Research, and who served as a pollster for both the Biden and Harris 2024 campaigns. "They were pushing us to run to the left on immigration to win over Latinos. And we ignored them because our internal polling was showing the opposite."
But Democrats had spent the better part of a decade listening to those groups—and to Barreto's polling done on their behalf. With just over 100 days to campaign, the vice president couldn't distance herself from the policies of the administration she had helped run. In one post-election survey, Blueprint, a Democrat-aligned firm, found that the second most important reason that voters (including Latinos) offered for not voting for Harris was "too many immigrants illegally crossed the border under the Biden-Harris administration." (The top issue, by a single-point margin, was inflation.) Another Blueprint survey found that 77 percent of swing voters who chose Trump believed that Harris would decriminalize border-crossing—perhaps because she had endorsed that position during the 2020 campaign. "Both the Biden and Harris campaigns eventually realized that they had been sold a bag of goods by these immigration groups," Madrid tells me. "But it was too late. You can't reverse years of bad policy and messaging in a few months."
Progressive groups argued for years that increasing the salience of immigration would help Democrats win the Latino vote. In 2024, they got exactly what they'd wished for: Immigration soared toward the top of the list of voter priorities, while Donald Trump centered his campaign around rabidly anti-migrant policies and rhetoric. But instead of winning Latino votes in a landslide, Democrats won their smallest share of them in at least 20 years, if not ever. Some of the statistics are hard to believe. Take Starr County, Texas, which is 98 percent Latino. In 2012, Barack Obama carried the county by 73 points. In 2024, Trump won it by 16 points.
We will never know whether the outcome of last month's election would have been different if Biden had acted sooner on the border, or if Democrats hadn't become seen as the weak-on-immigration party over the previous decade. But given how close the final margin was—Trump won Pennsylvania, the tipping-point state, by just 1.7 percentage points—the possibility can't be ruled out. "There's a Shakespearean element to all of this," said Fernand Amandi, the former Obama pollster: Well-intentioned activists, fighting to make immigration policy more humane, "inadvertently helped return to power the most anti-immigration president in modern history."
Simply blaming "the groups" would be unfair. Activists are supposed to push the boundaries of the politically possible, even when that means embracing positions deemed unpopular. The job of politicians and parties is to understand what their constituents want, and to say no when those desires don't match up with activists' demands. Over the past decade, Democratic leaders appear to have lost the ability to distinguish between the two categories. They seem to have assumed that the best way to represent Latino voters would be to defer to the groups who purported to speak for those voters. The problem is that the highly educated progressives who run and staff those groups, many of whom are themselves Latino, nonetheless have a very different set of beliefs and preferences than the average Latino voter.
Democrats have begun to correct this error, and some liberal immigration advocates have taken the 2024 results as a prompt for an internal reckoning. "It's imperative that the immigration movement comes together to reflect about the path forward and the kinds of policies that are realistic in the near term for our community," Vanessa Cárdenas, the executive director of America's Voice, an immigration-reform nonprofit, told me. "For a very long time, if candidates even bothered to reach out to Latino voters, they would focus on immigration, even though economic issues have always been the top issue," Clarissa Martínez de Castro, the vice president of the Latino Vote Initiative at UnidosUS, a Latino civil-rights organization, told me. "That was a mistake."
The 2024 election might have finally disabused Democrats of the notion that they can take the Latino vote for granted. Their job now is to do what democracy requires: earn it.
Another area where activists seem to have gotten it wrong is abortion.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 03, 2025, 12:19:50 AMAnother area where activists seem to have gotten it wrong is abortion.
Yeah, that amounted to absolutely nothing, didn't it? I do wonder if the true Pyrrhic victory would be the death of wokeness. I bet the majority of the left secretly wants it to die just as much as the right does, and once it's done away with, the right will lose its most effective recruitment tool.
QuoteQuoteThe 2024 election might have finally disabused Democrats of the notion that they can take the Latino vote for granted. Their job now is to do what democracy requires: earn it.
That's a weird conclusion to make. The article suggests the Democrats failed by trying to earn the Latino vote, if they had just stuck to Obama's policies and taken the Latino vote for granted they would have done better. But if Julian Castro, a popular Tejano San Antonio politician can be so wrong what chance did the rest of the party have?
But really I think it just shows that maybe the border policy should be coherent and in the interests of the US and not designed to earn Latino votes since they clearly don't care about it.
I know people get on the Democrats for being too technocratic sometimes but sometimes that does do better than trying to selectively pander. Especially with an issue this vital to our economy.
Quote from: DGuller on February 03, 2025, 01:44:46 AMQuote from: Admiral Yi on February 03, 2025, 12:19:50 AMAnother area where activists seem to have gotten it wrong is abortion.
Yeah, that amounted to absolutely nothing, didn't it? I do wonder if the true Pyrrhic victory would be the death of wokeness. I bet the majority of the left secretly wants it to die just as much as the right does, and once it's done away with, the right will lose its most effective recruitment tool.
I guess it depends on what you mean. We are always going to have nutty activists. That is just the nature of politics.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 03, 2025, 12:19:50 AMAnother area where activists seem to have gotten it wrong is abortion.
I don't know. Abortion ballot initiatives do well. But you need more than that.
Quote from: Valmy on February 03, 2025, 02:35:23 AMQuote from: DGuller on February 03, 2025, 01:44:46 AMQuote from: Admiral Yi on February 03, 2025, 12:19:50 AMAnother area where activists seem to have gotten it wrong is abortion.
Yeah, that amounted to absolutely nothing, didn't it? I do wonder if the true Pyrrhic victory would be the death of wokeness. I bet the majority of the left secretly wants it to die just as much as the right does, and once it's done away with, the right will lose its most effective recruitment tool.
I guess it depends on what you mean. We are always going to have nutty activists. That is just the nature of politics.
Not all nutty activists have such an outsized influence, or use such influence with such disastrous results.
Quote from: DGuller on February 02, 2025, 11:25:48 PMA few months back I've been listening to a podcast about intelligence agencies, and the guest claimed that Russian intelligence has always punched above its weight. Their specialty has often been agent provocateurs, who infiltrated enemy organizations and derailed them. Ever since then I've always wondered how many agent provocateurs there are on the left, because surely this kind of effective sabotage can't be purely organic.
I think one of the problems is that many Democrats have adopted Standpoint theory, which, among other things, leads them to defer to whichever "marginalized" person is in the room, particularly in issues that are seen as salient to marginalized peoples. So with issues like immigration, Democrats would defer to Hispanics, or policing issues would defer to Blacks. The problem is that the rooms where these discussions happen, the Hispanics and Blacks there are not very representative of Hispanic and Black people in general and certainly not "marginalized". They tend to come from middle to upper class backgrounds, went to elite universities and are quite affluent. That doesn't describe the majority of Hispanic and Black people. So while well verse in Foucault and Derrida, they have a much weaker grasp of what actually marginalized people want. As a result you get stuff like Defund the Police and Open Borders. Things that the majority of Black and Hispanic people don't actually want.
Suggestions that out of touch progressives have been controlling the DNC seem laughable to me. None of the strong progressive voices are close to the inner circles of the party. None of them were close to Biden, or Harris' inner circles either. If their voices seem louder, it's because the "official message" from the DNC is muddled, weak, or inexistant. In that vacuum, some more progressive voices get heard more.
My experience isn't that the DNC leadership confuses activist from voter/supporter. Quite the contrary. The leadership is utterly convinced that activists aren't their core supporters. They have done their best to silence, muffle, or water down the message from progressives, while hoping that some cosmetic changes could do the job.
This could maybe work, if there was at least some strong message, or sense of what the DNC stood for, or if the party's strategists had succeeded in inspiring confidence in their capacities. Instead of figuring out how to harness that energy, the DNC has done its best to kill it, in fear that it would drive the mythical moderate voter away.
So much of the Democratic leadership likes to imagine themselves as the voice of reason, the master negotiators, the rational, moral actor - the good guys who win in the end. If only the messaging was better. The data better presented. With a better smile, against that vile hatred from the other side.
I don't think any of that works now. I think it hadn't been working well for quite some time, and the greatest failure of Obama's presidency was in ignoring all signs of a profound shift. The DNC is still fighting not even the last war, but the war before that. They seem utterly incapable of meeting the current moment.
I think where I disagree most profoundly with the moderate approach isn't because of its moderation. I have done enough student activism in my youth to recognize the virtues of pragmatism. But pragmatism only works if you have strong principles from the start, and a clear sense of what, exactly, it is that you are compromising over. Policy details aren't it.
Where I disagree mostly is on the idea that voters have a set of hard coded preferences, and that a party message ought to approximate those preferences. I think this is abdicating the job of politics. You have to have convictions, and be able to articulate them strongly, concisely, and with fire and yes, charisma. Progressives I knew within the DNC weren't averse to moderate messaging. They were angry that the only conviction that seemed to have traction within the DNC was caution.
I don't even know how you could respond to that, you have me on block.
Quote from: DGuller on February 03, 2025, 01:44:46 AMQuote from: Admiral Yi on February 03, 2025, 12:19:50 AMAnother area where activists seem to have gotten it wrong is abortion.
Yeah, that amounted to absolutely nothing, didn't it? I do wonder if the true Pyrrhic victory would be the death of wokeness. I bet the majority of the left secretly wants it to die just as much as the right does, and once it's done away with, the right will lose its most effective recruitment tool.
That feels like a woeful misunderstanding of the right. They don't actually need the Democratic Party to be doing much of anything to spin a narrative. See: The Emails, Pizzagate, Q, 'They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats', "crisis actors", drag queen story hour, trans people, voter fraud, unreliability of vaccines...
Quote from: Oexmelin on February 03, 2025, 03:10:10 AMSuggestions that out of touch progressives have been controlling the DNC seem laughable to me. None of the strong progressive voices are close to the inner circles of the party. None of them were close to Biden, or Harris' inner circles either. If their voices seem louder, it's because the "official message" from the DNC is muddled, weak, or inexistant. In that vacuum, some more progressive voices get heard more.
My experience isn't that the DNC leadership confuses activist from voter/supporter. Quite the contrary. The leadership is utterly convinced that activists aren't their core supporters. They have done their best to silence, muffle, or water down the message from progressives, while hoping that some cosmetic changes could do the job.
This could maybe work, if there was at least some strong message, or sense of what the DNC stood for, or if the party's strategists had succeeded in inspiring confidence in their capacities. Instead of figuring out how to harness that energy, the DNC has done its best to kill it, in fear that it would drive the mythical moderate voter away.
So much of the Democratic leadership likes to imagine themselves as the voice of reason, the master negotiators, the rational, moral actor - the good guys who win in the end. If only the messaging was better. The data better presented. With a better smile, against that vile hatred from the other side.
I don't think any of that works now. I think it hadn't been working well for quite some time, and the greatest failure of Obama's presidency was in ignoring all signs of a profound shift. The DNC is still fighting not even the last war, but the war before that. They seem utterly incapable of meeting the current moment.
I think where I disagree most profoundly with the moderate approach isn't because of its moderation. I have done enough student activism in my youth to recognize the virtues of pragmatism. But pragmatism only works if you have strong principles from the start, and a clear sense of what, exactly, it is that you are compromising over. Policy details aren't it.
Where I disagree mostly is on the idea that voters have a set of hard coded preferences, and that a party message ought to approximate those preferences. I think this is abdicating the job of politics. You have to have convictions, and be able to articulate them strongly, concisely, and with fire and yes, charisma. Progressives I knew within the DNC weren't averse to moderate messaging. They were angry that the only conviction that seemed to have traction within the DNC was caution.
I think it is both true that activists freak out people like DGuller and what you have said here. It is the incoherence that is a problem, because without the Democrats saying "ok here is our plan for a better border policy that will bring rainbows and unicorns to all!" or "here is exactly what our policies are regarding trans people" or whatever. So that allows both activists and Republicans propaganda to just sort of say whatever and the Democrats cannot really effectively counter that.
Or not. I have no actual idea what the Democrats should do. I wanted stronger support for workers and labor unions, basically got a surprising amount of that from the Biden administration, and it achieved exactly nothing politically.
Quote from: Razgovory on February 03, 2025, 03:04:15 AMAs a result you get stuff like Defund the Police and Open Borders. Things that the majority of Black and Hispanic people don't actually want.
Ok look I never noticed ever the Democrats call for decriminalizing the border, I follow this stuff pretty close and that was news to me. But they certainly never did anything of the sort in practice. The only thing I have seen any practical impact was maybe a confused policy on the border by Biden for the very beginning of his Presidency but surely with the end of the COVID-19 Pandemic we were going to see a surge from pent up demand for labor anyway?
But defund the police? The Democrats have been increasing funding for the police and bending over backwards saying they love the police.
And yeah it is bad if prominent Latino leaders are completely out of touch with their own supporters, but is that something that really means "marginalized" peoples are being catered to? If important Democratic leaders within important voting blocks have it so wrong what difference does it make if they are "marginalized" or not? I don't understand your point there or what my take away should be beyond you don't like the term "marginalized".
I have to say it is enormously frustrating for me that the Republicans can openly call for dismantling the justice system and destruction of the FBI and be fine. Whereas for Democrats activists can say something FIVE FUCKING YEARS AGO before Biden was even elected and Raz insists that is official government policy adopted by the Democrats in order to please "marginalized" groups.
I mean in a political situation where somebody who is not even in your party years and years ago says something and it sticks like glue and the other party can call for insane policies and actually do them and it slips right off, what chance do you have? None. Zero.
So I got nothing Raz. I don't know how you overcome that kind of bizarre playing field.
I am certainly not for listening to extreme activists, but even if you don't listen to them, it clearly makes no difference. Whereas the Republicans can put their extreme activists in charge and pretty much purge the party of every centrist and moderate element and they are doing great.
The Republican Party can be completely taken over by anti-vaccine activists. This is great.
An activist says something five years ago and never actually shapes any policy and that is devastating to the Democrats.
I don't know. It is obviously hopeless.
Obviously when you disagree they're activists, and when you agree it's just common sense.
Politics is all sorts of messed up right now in the states. No idea what the answer is.
*edit* you the plural pronoun, not *you* specifically, Valmy.
Quote from: Valmy on February 02, 2025, 11:21:39 PMNothing about the minimum wage?
I can't search about everything else, but:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/23/politics/federal-minimum-wage-harris-trump/index.html
The rest is at State level, don't have time for that either.
Isn't the answer to all this capital? The Republican capital class wants and needs those crazy policies while the Democrat capital class wants nothing to do with the policies of their extremists.
Quote from: garbon on February 03, 2025, 03:49:29 AMQuote from: DGuller on February 03, 2025, 01:44:46 AMQuote from: Admiral Yi on February 03, 2025, 12:19:50 AMAnother area where activists seem to have gotten it wrong is abortion.
Yeah, that amounted to absolutely nothing, didn't it? I do wonder if the true Pyrrhic victory would be the death of wokeness. I bet the majority of the left secretly wants it to die just as much as the right does, and once it's done away with, the right will lose its most effective recruitment tool.
That feels like a woeful misunderstanding of the right. They don't actually need the Democratic Party to be doing much of anything to spin a narrative. See: The Emails, Pizzagate, Q, 'They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats', "crisis actors", drag queen story hour, trans people, voter fraud, unreliability of vaccines...
They don't need it, but it helps a lot. The two are also synergetic: some people become open to the nonsense from the right when they become disenchanted with the left. Wokeness is a very potent repulser.
Quote from: DGuller on February 03, 2025, 09:11:32 AMThey don't need it, but it helps a lot. The two are also synergetic: some people become open to the nonsense from the right when they become disenchanted with the left. Wokeness is a very potent repulser.
Clearly. Somebody said something five years ago, it never became policy, and that decides everything for years.
But beyond going out and hunting down everybody that might say something bad and having them shot I am not sure how to handle that.
Quote from: Grey Fox on February 03, 2025, 09:05:05 AMIsn't the answer to all this capital? The Republican capital class wants and needs those crazy policies while the Democrat capital class wants nothing to do with the policies of their extremists.
Isnt it the same class? Pay both sides and they both give you what you want, just in different ways.
Quote from: Oexmelin on February 03, 2025, 03:10:10 AMSuggestions that out of touch progressives have been controlling the DNC seem laughable to me. None of the strong progressive voices are close to the inner circles of the party. None of them were close to Biden, or Harris' inner circles either. If their voices seem louder, it's because the "official message" from the DNC is muddled, weak, or inexistant. In that vacuum, some more progressive voices get heard more.
Oex is on to something.
When the Dems lost, everyone said it was because they weren't progressive enough, not bold enough, not radical enough.
Even a few days ago as we were discussing the DNC leadership, it was said they were too mainstream.
Now you're all saying they're too far to the left...
So either these people have the ears of Pelosi & all or they're all chatting for the people who want to ear them without any kind of real influence.
Otherwise, you have a party of extreme centrists... governed by far left idiots? Doesn't really make sense to me. ;)
Quote from: Valmy on February 03, 2025, 09:12:58 AMQuote from: DGuller on February 03, 2025, 09:11:32 AMThey don't need it, but it helps a lot. The two are also synergetic: some people become open to the nonsense from the right when they become disenchanted with the left. Wokeness is a very potent repulser.
Clearly. Somebody said something five years ago, it never became policy, and that decides everything for years.
But beyond going out and hunting down everybody that might say something bad and having them shot I am not sure how to handle that.
Charisma. Last charismatic leader the dems had was Obama. Bush wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but seemed like someone who you could share a beer with. With new media it's harder to hide behind press releases and journalist doing your work for you.
People are dumb, as a general rule, get them to follow and once they're along for the ride they rarely question why they're on the bandwagon.
Quote from: HVC on February 03, 2025, 09:17:46 AMCharisma. Last charismatic leader the dems had was Obama. Bush wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but seemed like someone who you could share a beer with. With new media it's harder to hide behind press releases and journalist doing your work for you.
People are dumb, as a general rule, get them to follow and once they're along for the ride they rarely question why they're on the bandwagon.
Sure. But guys like him don't show up very often, which is why the second it was obvious Obama had charisma he was shoved to the front of the line even though he might not have been ready for prime time.
But if another Obama or whomever shows up I agree, we need to get that person out in front. But who was the charismatic leader before Obama? Kennedy? That is quite a long gap between charismatic leaders.
Quote from: Valmy on February 03, 2025, 09:12:58 AMQuote from: DGuller on February 03, 2025, 09:11:32 AMThey don't need it, but it helps a lot. The two are also synergetic: some people become open to the nonsense from the right when they become disenchanted with the left. Wokeness is a very potent repulser.
Clearly. Somebody said something five years ago, it never became policy, and that decides everything for years.
But beyond going out and hunting down everybody that might say something bad and having them shot I am not sure how to handle that.
You keep saying it never became policy, but that crazy thinking has reflected on many policies, often on a local level. I don't want to rehash the same conversation we had after election, but the BLM protests and the groupthink that followed had a lasting impact on NYC, for example. Also, it wasn't an activist who limited his choices for veep to women and thus left us with a poor choice for a candidate 4 years later.
Apart from that, it seems to assume that people vote for policy proposals, which seems like an unrealistic assumption to me. It seems more likely that people vote for ideals they believe politicians represent, because that would guide them in what they actually do. After all, Trump claimed explicitly he didn't run on Project 2025, but people who understand the ideals GOP was running on knew better.
You need to wait for your old guard to die. Or implement age limits. The Pelosi's and Clinton's* of your party won't step aside to give them room.
* no idea how they're still influential.
*edit* before Obama was Clinton, then Reagan, then some duds and the Kennedy. Duds can fight duds on equal footing.
Quote from: DGuller on February 03, 2025, 09:23:53 AMYou keep saying it never became policy, but that crazy thinking has reflected on many policies, often on a local level. I don't want to rehash the same conversation we had after election, but the BLM protests and the groupthink that followed had a lasting impact on NYC, for example.
Ok well I don't live there, but I thought Eric Adams was this big cop dude.
QuoteAlso, it wasn't an activist who limited his choices for veep to women and thus left us with a poor choice for a candidate 4 years later.
Well I 100% agree that was a disastrous decision.
QuoteApart from that, it seems to assume that people vote for policy proposals, which seems like an unrealistic assumption to me. It seems more likely that people vote for ideals they believe politicians represent, because that would guide them in what they actually do. After all, Trump claimed explicitly he didn't run on Project 2025, but people who understand the ideals GOP was running on knew better.
Yep. But it didn't hurt him, or at least not enough to lose.
And that is pretty depressing.
Eric Adams is an ineffective politician, so it's not that relevant what he's for or against. The city council is much more relevant. That said, at the time I said that Adams's election should've been a warning sign that even New Yorkers would prefer an obviously corrupt cop to a woke candidate, but unfortunately people that matter didn't see it as such.
Quote from: DGuller on February 03, 2025, 09:11:32 AMQuote from: garbon on February 03, 2025, 03:49:29 AMQuote from: DGuller on February 03, 2025, 01:44:46 AMQuote from: Admiral Yi on February 03, 2025, 12:19:50 AMAnother area where activists seem to have gotten it wrong is abortion.
Yeah, that amounted to absolutely nothing, didn't it? I do wonder if the true Pyrrhic victory would be the death of wokeness. I bet the majority of the left secretly wants it to die just as much as the right does, and once it's done away with, the right will lose its most effective recruitment tool.
That feels like a woeful misunderstanding of the right. They don't actually need the Democratic Party to be doing much of anything to spin a narrative. See: The Emails, Pizzagate, Q, 'They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats', "crisis actors", drag queen story hour, trans people, voter fraud, unreliability of vaccines...
They don't need it, but it helps a lot. The two are also synergetic: some people become open to the nonsense from the right when they become disenchanted with the left. Wokeness is a very potent repulser.
Sure, you can always blame an amorphous concept for all the ills. Sort of like how political correctness used to be to blame.
Quote from: DGuller on February 03, 2025, 09:32:12 AMEric Adams is an ineffective politician, so it's not that relevant what he's for or against. The city council is much more relevant. That said, at the time I said that Adams's election should've been a warning sign that even New Yorkers would prefer an obviously corrupt cop to a woke candidate, but unfortunately people that matter didn't see it as such.
I am just glad New York has limits to how far they will go. Texas clearly does not.
Quote from: HVC on February 03, 2025, 09:17:46 AMCharisma. Last charismatic leader the dems had was Obama. Bush wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but seemed like someone who you could share a beer with. With new media it's harder to hide behind press releases and journalist doing your work for you.
Sure, charisma is something, and it's very important. But charismatic people also need to be given some room to breathe; they need to be attuned to the zeitgeist in some way and they need to be ready to exercise power.
In a way, I agree with the DNC's diagnosis that the messaging wasn't good enough. But I think they are drawing the wrong lessons. They mean they didn't explain their position well enough - and whenever I hear that, I think of Elizabeth Warren's thirty-one detailed plans. They need less to explain, and more to embody. At the Congress level, they need to develop the necessary politics for a moment of anger, confrontation, and corruption - which means that all of those past high school presidents are utterly unprepared for that sort of thing.
They also need to invest - and invest considerably - in grassroots politics, which I feel they have utterly abandonned.
My sense of the current moment is that we are in a crisis of disempowerment. People who used to traditionally feel empowered are feeling things slipping out of their control. In a way, that's reflected in the rise of "living by proxy" that is so prevalent on social networks, that accompanied the rise of the superhero movie and its associated power fantasies. That is what people like Musk, and Trump embody. They act, and people have to do their bidding. They can cut through the government bullshit - which people associate with their frustrations with the DMV, or their health insurers. For years, people have been told the remedy to their sense of disenfranchisement was to make money - and now, even that seems to slip. That fuels resentment. That's why the celebration of strength, wealth, and obedience, and finding scapegoats sustains fascistic tendencies. What the right does, is promise some measure of empowerement through retribution and proxy: you may not have a lot of power, but your team does. And you may even be able to partake in it, by saying horrible things without consequences, or by denouncing your neighbour, or by being guaranteed some measure of impunity. Where I agree with Guller's woke obsession is that whenever people feel disempowered, it's rarely a good idea to shut them up by saying other people have been historically disempowered, and for much longer. Where I disagree is when being antiwoke is the sum total of the political proposition they wish for the left, and for it to return to "explaining my comprehensive plan one more time".
Quote from: Grey Fox on February 03, 2025, 09:05:05 AMIsn't the answer to all this capital? The Republican capital class wants and needs those crazy policies while the Democrat capital class wants nothing to do with the policies of their extremists.
There are different "Republican capital class".
For the Demos, yes, for the GOP, it's more nuanced.
The old conservative capital class like Murdoch and Walton want and need it.
Lazy Blacks, AIDS giving gays, pedophiles transgenders, it's all to rise up public support on a cause to support the party that will tax them less and give them less regulations.
The financial sector want less regulation while at the same time knowing that they will become too big to fail and be rescued, along with their bonus and golden parachutes.
And you have the tech bros, who can read your mind, thanks to all the spying of their network. They can read the writing on the wall and observe social tendencies in real time. They switch their support accordingly.
Quote from: Valmy on February 03, 2025, 08:46:34 AMRaz insists that is official government policy adopted by the Democrats in order to please "marginalized" groups.
Raz would prefer to see MedicAID ends so long as it lets him beat him a few Muslims. It's a fair compromise.
Quote from: Valmy on February 03, 2025, 09:27:23 AMWell I 100% agree that was a disastrous decision.
It might not have been so bad if Biden had retire himself as was the plan and there had been a true primary, with enough time for each candidates to express their ideas & vision of the party, where it should go, where they erred, where they did good, and then all members chose a candidate which would have had about a year to campaign everywhere in the US.
It might have been Harris, it might have been someone else, but at least he/she would have stood a chance.
And there would have been no party infighting between the old guard and the new guard.
Quote from: viper37 on February 03, 2025, 10:33:38 AMQuote from: Valmy on February 03, 2025, 08:46:34 AMRaz insists that is official government policy adopted by the Democrats in order to please "marginalized" groups.
Raz would prefer to see MedicAID ends so long as it lets him beat him a few Muslims. It's a fair compromise.
Come on now, it's getting old ;)
Quote from: viper37 on February 03, 2025, 10:38:01 AMQuote from: Valmy on February 03, 2025, 09:27:23 AMWell I 100% agree that was a disastrous decision.
It might not have been so bad if Biden had retire himself as was the plan and there had been a true primary, with enough time for each candidates to express their ideas & vision of the party, where it should go, where they erred, where they did good, and then all members chose a candidate which would have had about a year to campaign everywhere in the US.
It might have been Harris, it might have been someone else, but at least he/she would have stood a chance.
And there would have been no party infighting between the old guard and the new guard.
It was still bad, because a veep is not just a default next candidate, but also the person who can become a president at any moment. I truly believe that Biden believed everything he said about Trump being a threat to democracy, which just shows how much hold identity politics had over the mainstream Democratic politicians that they still took this risk to check the demographic box, while knowing what was at stake.
Quote from: HVC on February 03, 2025, 10:39:08 AMQuote from: viper37 on February 03, 2025, 10:33:38 AMQuote from: Valmy on February 03, 2025, 08:46:34 AMRaz insists that is official government policy adopted by the Democrats in order to please "marginalized" groups.
Raz would prefer to see MedicAID ends so long as it lets him beat him a few Muslims. It's a fair compromise.
Come on now, it's getting old ;)
Nah. I do not rejoice in his suffering, unlike he does in other.
But I won't stop putting his own sociopath nose in his own shit.
Quote from: DGuller on February 03, 2025, 11:00:07 AMIt was still bad, because a veep is not just a default next candidate, but also the person who can become a president at any moment. I truly believe that Biden believed everything he said about Trump being a threat to democracy, which just shows how much hold identity politics had over the mainstream Democratic politicians that they still took this risk to check the demographic box, while knowing what was at stake.
And the voters still chose to vote for the fascist despite the threat to Democracy. Far left voters, Black voters, Hispanic/Latino voters, Muslim voters, on top of deeply religious Republican voters who really want a theocracy for the US.
At some point, if voters are too stupid to make the good choice, you can't blame everyone else around but their own stupidity.
In Canada, people were warned about the stupidity of Justin Trudeau and how he was unqualified to run this country. They were warned of the danger of his policies. They refused to listen, they voted him in office thrice. Then they complained the results of his policies gave exactly what we warned them against. And we almost got our own Trump because of this. It's still a risk.
Quote from: viper37 on February 03, 2025, 11:31:18 AMQuote from: HVC on February 03, 2025, 10:39:08 AMQuote from: viper37 on February 03, 2025, 10:33:38 AMQuote from: Valmy on February 03, 2025, 08:46:34 AMRaz insists that is official government policy adopted by the Democrats in order to please "marginalized" groups.
Raz would prefer to see MedicAID ends so long as it lets him beat him a few Muslims. It's a fair compromise.
Come on now, it's getting old ;)
Nah. I do not rejoice in his suffering, unlike he does in other.
But I won't stop putting his own sociopath nose in his own shit.
Then at least contain it to the Israel Hamas thread, pretty please. Right now it like you're a kid chasing a girl all over the place and pulling her pigtails. It's distracting :D
Quote from: viper37 on February 03, 2025, 11:32:55 AMAnd the voters still chose to vote for the fascist despite the threat to Democracy. Far left voters, Black voters, Hispanic/Latino voters, Muslim voters, on top of deeply religious Republican voters who really want a theocracy for the US.
At some point, if voters are too stupid to make the good choice, you can't blame everyone else around but their own stupidity.
No argument there, it was truly depressing to realize that the pundits saying that "threat to democracy" message doesn't sell were correct. The abdication of civic responsibility by citizens has been breathtaking. That said, you have to take the voters as they are, even if what they are is stupid.
Quote from: HVC on February 03, 2025, 09:24:16 AMThe Pelosi's and Clinton's* of your party won't step aside to give them room.
Pelosi did step aside, she is just an ordinary member of Congress now.
No Clinton has run for office since 2016.
Quote from: Valmy on February 03, 2025, 08:14:59 AMQuote from: Razgovory on February 03, 2025, 03:04:15 AMAs a result you get stuff like Defund the Police and Open Borders. Things that the majority of Black and Hispanic people don't actually want.
Ok look I never noticed ever the Democrats call for decriminalizing the border, I follow this stuff pretty close and that was news to me. But they certainly never did anything of the sort in practice. The only thing I have seen any practical impact was maybe a confused policy on the border by Biden for the very beginning of his Presidency but surely with the end of the COVID-19 Pandemic we were going to see a surge from pent up demand for labor anyway?
But defund the police? The Democrats have been increasing funding for the police and bending over backwards saying they love the police.
And yeah it is bad if prominent Latino leaders are completely out of touch with their own supporters, but is that something that really means "marginalized" peoples are being catered to? If important Democratic leaders within important voting blocks have it so wrong what difference does it make if they are "marginalized" or not? I don't understand your point there or what my take away should be beyond you don't like the term "marginalized".
My point is that marginalized people aren't being catered to, it's that Democrats defer to elites that share some characteristics with marginalized people. Simply being Black doesn't give you special insight into the lives of all Black people. So deferring to wealthy Black scion from Colorado who attended Columbia University when crafting policy for poor Black people in Mississippi is counterproductive.
Quote from: Oexmelin on February 03, 2025, 03:10:10 AMSuggestions that out of touch progressives have been controlling the DNC seem laughable to me. None of the strong progressive voices are close to the inner circles of the party. None of them were close to Biden, or Harris' inner circles either. If their voices seem louder, it's because the "official message" from the DNC is muddled, weak, or inexistant. In that vacuum, some more progressive voices get heard more.
The DNC's role is to raise money for campaigns and run primaries. It's not their job to message.
Quote from: Razgovory on February 03, 2025, 12:07:29 PMMy point is that marginalized people aren't being catered to, it's that Democrats defer to elites that share some characteristics with marginalized people. Simply being Black doesn't give you special insight into the lives of all Black people. So deferring to wealthy Black scion from Colorado who attended Columbia University when crafting policy for poor Black people in Mississippi is counterproductive.
Well that's true.
But still one might expect a politician who operates in San Antonio would know something about the priorities of southern Texas Tejanos.
But nope.
Perhaps there's something I'm missing, but by far the biggest problem I see with the Democratic Party is their last significant piece of legislation passed almost 15 years ago.
And even that (ACA) was a watered-down piece of shit.
No amount of messaging will help with that.
Quote from: Iormlund on February 03, 2025, 06:16:01 PMPerhaps there's something I'm missing, but by far the biggest problem I see with the Democratic Party is their last significant piece of legislation passed almost 15 years ago.
And even that (ACA) was a watered-down piece of shit.
No amount of messaging will help with that.
So the biggest problem with Democratic party is they have not controlled both houses of Congress for a long time.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 03, 2025, 06:17:36 PMQuote from: Iormlund on February 03, 2025, 06:16:01 PMPerhaps there's something I'm missing, but by far the biggest problem I see with the Democratic Party is their last significant piece of legislation passed almost 15 years ago.
And even that (ACA) was a watered-down piece of shit.
No amount of messaging will help with that.
So the biggest problem with Democratic party is they have not controlled both houses of Congress for a long time.
Well not since 2022.
Is that right? My bad.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on February 03, 2025, 06:32:21 PMIs that right? My bad.
Yeah. It was how they were able to pass all that stuff in Biden's first two years. The Republicans weren't going to help them.
Well except for that gay marriage bill, which was appreciated.
Quote from: Iormlund on February 03, 2025, 06:16:01 PMPerhaps there's something I'm missing, but by far the biggest problem I see with the Democratic Party is their last significant piece of legislation passed almost 15 years ago.
And even that (ACA) was a watered-down piece of shit.
No amount of messaging will help with that.
CHIPS Act?
Build Back Better?
ACA also seemed pretty impactful. Must have been for all those efforts to repeal it.
Quote from: Iormlund on February 03, 2025, 06:16:01 PMPerhaps there's something I'm missing, but by far the biggest problem I see with the Democratic Party is their last significant piece of legislation passed almost 15 years ago.
And even that (ACA) was a watered-down piece of shit.
No amount of messaging will help with that.
Biden passed a lot of stuff that I find significant.
The latest Trump rant that he wants Ukraine rare-Earth minerals in exchange for US protection? Biden's deal.
Canada's border deal by Trump? Same as Biden's deal.
Quote from: Barrister on February 04, 2025, 04:17:38 PMQuote from: Iormlund on February 03, 2025, 06:16:01 PMPerhaps there's something I'm missing, but by far the biggest problem I see with the Democratic Party is their last significant piece of legislation passed almost 15 years ago.
And even that (ACA) was a watered-down piece of shit.
No amount of messaging will help with that.
CHIPS Act?
Build Back Better?
ACA also seemed pretty impactful. Must have been for all those efforts to repeal it.
Yeah I disagree. I thought the Biden administration passed a lot of very impactful legislation during his first two years. Much more than I ever thought he could pull off actually.
Not that he got any political credit for any of it. Which I found rather frustrating. But ultimately any good he did was overshadowed by inflation.
But his last two years were rather miserable, but that isn't uncommon for Presidencies to get derailed by bad midterms. Some damned foolish thing in the
Balkans Middle East was also rather disastrous.
Quote from: Valmy on February 04, 2025, 04:45:08 PMYeah I disagree. I thought the Biden administration passed a lot of very impactful legislation during his first two years. Much more than I ever thought he could pull off actually.
Not that he got any political credit for any of it. Which I found rather frustrating. But ultimately any good he did was overshadowed by inflation.
But his last two years were rather miserable, but that isn't uncommon for Presidencies to get derailed by bad midterms. Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans Middle East was also rather disastrous.
I could have a lot to say about how beneficial any of that legislation was.
But Iormlund say they didn't pass anything "significant", which just doesn't seem accurate or fair.
Quote from: Barrister on February 04, 2025, 04:49:20 PMQuote from: Valmy on February 04, 2025, 04:45:08 PMYeah I disagree. I thought the Biden administration passed a lot of very impactful legislation during his first two years. Much more than I ever thought he could pull off actually.
Not that he got any political credit for any of it. Which I found rather frustrating. But ultimately any good he did was overshadowed by inflation.
But his last two years were rather miserable, but that isn't uncommon for Presidencies to get derailed by bad midterms. Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans Middle East was also rather disastrous.
I could have a lot to say about how beneficial any of that legislation was.
But Iormlund say they didn't pass anything "significant", which just doesn't seem accurate or fair.
Well I was agreeing with you. I disagreed with Iormlund. I understand me phrasing it like I meant the opposite created some misunderstanding :blush:
Quote from: Valmy on February 04, 2025, 04:51:03 PMQuote from: Barrister on February 04, 2025, 04:49:20 PMQuote from: Valmy on February 04, 2025, 04:45:08 PMYeah I disagree. I thought the Biden administration passed a lot of very impactful legislation during his first two years. Much more than I ever thought he could pull off actually.
Not that he got any political credit for any of it. Which I found rather frustrating. But ultimately any good he did was overshadowed by inflation.
But his last two years were rather miserable, but that isn't uncommon for Presidencies to get derailed by bad midterms. Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans Middle East was also rather disastrous.
I could have a lot to say about how beneficial any of that legislation was.
But Iormlund say they didn't pass anything "significant", which just doesn't seem accurate or fair.
Well I was agreeing with you. I disagreed with Iormlund. I understand me phrasing it like I meant the opposite created some misunderstanding :blush:
Gotcha. :thumbsup:
None of that stuff meaningfully improved the life of Americans.
Healthcare overhaul, education reform, worker rights (say maternity leave), bringing some sanity to electoral and judicial systems.
That's the sort of legislation I'm talking about.
Quote from: Iormlund on February 04, 2025, 05:24:04 PMNone of that stuff meaningfully improved the life of Americans.
Healthcare overhaul, education reform, worker rights (say maternity leave), bringing some sanity to electoral and judicial systems.
That's the sort of legislation I'm talking about.
Healthcare overhaul was attempted by Obama, and the courts, after Trump nominated his cronies, rescinded most of the act.
Education is primarily a State responsibility. They don't intervene directly in the way you suggest:
https://www.ed.gov/about/ed-overview/federal-role-in-education
Workers rights is shared between States and Federal.
https://uniontrack.com/blog/federal-and-state-labor-laws
It's unclear up to where can the Federal govt legally go without the Supreme court backing. But Kamala Harris did promise to raise the minimum wage to 15$. There's only so much things you can do in 2 years of a congressional session.
Quote from: viper37 on February 04, 2025, 05:56:05 PMQuote from: Iormlund on February 04, 2025, 05:24:04 PMNone of that stuff meaningfully improved the life of Americans.
Healthcare overhaul, education reform, worker rights (say maternity leave), bringing some sanity to electoral and judicial systems.
That's the sort of legislation I'm talking about.
Healthcare overhaul was attempted by Obama, and the courts, after Trump nominated his cronies, rescinded most of the act.
Education is primarily a State responsibility. They don't intervene directly in the way you suggest:
https://www.ed.gov/about/ed-overview/federal-role-in-education
Workers rights is shared between States and Federal.
https://uniontrack.com/blog/federal-and-state-labor-laws
It's unclear up to where can the Federal govt legally go without the Supreme court backing. But Kamala Harris did promise to raise the minimum wage to 15$. There's only so much things you can do in 2 years of a congressional session.
Excuses.
It took fundies almost 50 years to overthrow RvW. It seemed impossible, but they did it.
What have the Democrats done that is comparable in investment, planning and impact in the past 30 years?
Quote from: Iormlund on February 04, 2025, 06:11:37 PMQuote from: viper37 on February 04, 2025, 05:56:05 PMQuote from: Iormlund on February 04, 2025, 05:24:04 PMNone of that stuff meaningfully improved the life of Americans.
Healthcare overhaul, education reform, worker rights (say maternity leave), bringing some sanity to electoral and judicial systems.
That's the sort of legislation I'm talking about.
Healthcare overhaul was attempted by Obama, and the courts, after Trump nominated his cronies, rescinded most of the act.
Education is primarily a State responsibility. They don't intervene directly in the way you suggest:
https://www.ed.gov/about/ed-overview/federal-role-in-education
Workers rights is shared between States and Federal.
https://uniontrack.com/blog/federal-and-state-labor-laws
It's unclear up to where can the Federal govt legally go without the Supreme court backing. But Kamala Harris did promise to raise the minimum wage to 15$. There's only so much things you can do in 2 years of a congressional session.
Excuses.
It took fundies almost 50 years to overthrow RvW. It seemed impossible, but they did it.
What have the Democrats done that is comparable in investment, planning and impact in the past 30 years?
The Affordable Care Act was a lifetime achievement. From this, the US could have evolved toward universal health care.
Undone by stupid voters who considered Clinton worst than Trump, mostly. Helped by Russian propaganda and complacent social networks, but mostly stupid voters from the left who decided to snub their candidate. And the re-did it with Harris leading to the current situation.
The left expect perfection. If it's not perfect, they're angry and they reject their candidate, either not voting or voting for worst.
The right is often very patient and willing to compromise. Best example is probably Trump. Don't tell me the Christian Right voted for him because he's God's chosen. He got them the Judges to repeal Roe v. Wade. He wasn't perfect but he could get them there. He was morally and financially corrupt, he would destroy the US, but he would bring forward their Christian conservative agenda with the Justice they wanted.
When did the leftwing voters acted this way? Never, they just keep whining that their candidat is flawed.
Roe was under siege from the day it was handed down until the day it was struck down. There were a number of close calls but some conservative justice would always switch at the last minute. With Trump, the fundies finally found someone willing to put in enough true believers who wouldn't flinch.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 04, 2025, 07:05:40 PMRoe was under siege from the day it was handed down until the day it was struck down. There were a number of close calls but some conservative justice would always switch at the last minute. With Trump, the fundies finally found someone willing to put in enough true believers who wouldn't flinch.
There were a number of decisions from that time that were heavily opposed. Obviously Roe, Bakke has been under fire forever, and probably most profoundly Swann.
Quote from: Iormlund on February 04, 2025, 06:11:37 PMIt took fundies almost 50 years to overthrow RvW. It seemed impossible, but they did it.
What have the Democrats done that is comparable in investment, planning and impact in the past 30 years?
I guess. They came close but failed time after time after time.
And due to cruel fate, or maybe God's will, virtually all Supreme Court Justices since 1968 have been appointed by Republican Presidents. Jimmy Carter appointed zero. Clinton appointed two. Obama appointed two. Biden appointed one.
Five. Five in 57 years. That is some pretty remarkably shitty luck.
Whereas Nixon appointed 4, Ford appointed 1, Reagan appointed 4, HW Bush appointed 2, W Bush appointed 2, and Trump got 3.
So 16-5. Just on pure luck. The Republicans had it handed to them.
So unless the Democrats should have sent out specially trained Supreme Court justice assassins I am not sure what they could have done about that. It was a damn miracle Roe held on as long as it did.
What the Democrats should have done was what they ended up doing on Gay marriage and codify Roe into law. But oh well.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/09/democrats-aggressive-stand-against-trump
QuoteUS Democrats call for more aggressive tactics against Trump and Musk: 'We're going to be the opposition'
As Trump aims to dismantle large swaths of US government, growing outcry from Democrats appears to be having an effect
When organizers announced a "Nobody Elected Elon" protest at the treasury department's headquarters in Washington – in response to the revelation that Elon Musk's "department of government efficiency" (Doge) had accessed sensitive taxpayer data – not a single Democratic lawmaker had agreed to attend.
But as public outrage mounted over Donald Trump's brazen assault on the federal government, the speaking list grew. In the end, more than two dozen Democratic members of Congress including Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, spoke at the event, which drew hundreds of protesters outside on a frigid Tuesday last week. In speech after speech, they pledged to do everything in their power to block Trump from carrying out his right-wing agenda.
"We might have a few less seats in Congress," Maxwell Frost, a Representative from Florida, thundered into the microphone. "But we're not going to be the minority. We're going to be the opposition."
In the weeks since Trump took office, Democrats in Washington have been under increasing pressure from the left to get tougher as the president, with Musk at his side, defies Congress and possibly the constitution. Their phone lines have been inundated with angry callers imploring the opposition party to "do something". And on Wednesday, progressive activists staged protests outside of their Congressional offices, demanding Democrats in Washington "treat this as the constitutional crisis it is".
"Nobody is going to hear your boring message about the price of tomatoes when a coup is going on," said Ezra Levin, co-founder of the activist group Indivisible, which helped organized the treasury department action. "You've got to fight back."
Relegated to the minority in both chambers of Congress, Democrats have limited powers to stop Trump. But Levin said there is more they could be doing to stand in the way, especially in the Senate.
He has urged Democrats to channel Mitch McConnell, the former Republican leader who built a reputation as a ruthless tactician by stonewalling much of Barack Obama's agenda.
"Mitch McConnell was the leader of a much smaller minority than Chuck Schumer leads today. And you know what, he never said, 'I'm in the minority. I'm powerless. What do you want me to do?'" he noted, challenging Democrats to "pretend you're Mitch McConnell ... and use the powers that he would use."
On Wednesday, Senate Democrats held the floor in an all-night protest against Russell Vought, Trump's nominee to lead the White House budget office and the architect of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump's second term. The office was behind a now-rescinded Trump administration order freezing all federal loans and grants, which drew legal challenges and united Democrats in opposition. Vought was ultimately confirmed along party lines, but activists were pleased to see Democrats jolted into action.
"What we are seeing from members is a very strong desire for Democrats to show some resolve and meet the moment," said Britt Jacovich, spokesperson for MoveOn, a progressive group that helped organize Tuesday's protest. "They want Senate leadership and House leadership to use every tool at their disposal to fight back."
Some Democratic senators – Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware – have said they will vote against all of Trump's nominees, citing the president's "unacceptable and dangerous" actions. Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii said he will put a "blanket hold" on all of Trump's state department nominees until the administration restores funding to USAid, which Musk moved to eliminate.
"We should not be complicit in approving Trump's nominees or Trump's legislation," Murphy told the Guardian, arguing that doing so sends the wrong message to Americans whom Democrats are asking to rise up against the Trump administration's "dangerous slide towards corruption".
In the House Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, has vowed to use Democrats' leverage in the narrowly divided chamber to protect federal programs that Trump has tried to defund. On Thursday, he introduced legislation that would shield taxpayers' personal data from the Doge team, denouncing Musk as an "unelected, unaccountable, out-of-control billionaire puppet master".
Democrats are also attempting to seize the spotlight. Last week, groups of House and Senate Democrats turned up at government agencies targeted by Doge. On Monday, they protested outside of USAid's headquarters in solidarity with fired and furloughed workers, after being denied entry from the agency's building. Similar standoffs unfolded at the treasury department and the education department.
Trump, with Musk's help, has acted with astonishing speed. The president's blitz of executive actions is part of a deliberate effort to "flood the zone" – a tactic that former Trump administration strategist Stephen Bannon said was designed to overwhelm the opposition and the media.
"It's important for you to understand that the paralysis and shock that you feel right now is the point," Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told followers during an Instagram live last week. "They are trying to induce a state of passivity among the general public."
But she said Democrats could flood the zone as well, and encouraged supporters to keep making calls to members of Congress, including to Republicans in vulnerable districts who may be persuaded to vote against the president's agenda if they fear a political backlash in their district.
While Democrats in Washington adjust to a new political reality, many on the left are placing their hopes in local and state leaders.
"On everything from immigration to climate change to abortion access and education, they are going to be able to do so much, whether it's harm mitigation or actually advancing progressive policies that we're just not going to get in DC," said Amanda Litman, the executive director of Run For Something, a progressive group that helps young people run for local office.
One of their recruits, Alyshia Dyer, was elected in November to serve as sheriff of Washtenaw County, Michigan. Last month Dyer said her office would not assist federal immigration authorities.
There are also early signs that the next four years could yield a new class of Democratic leaders, as happened during Trump's first term. Since election day, Run for Something has had more than 17,000 people express interest in running for office, Litman said, including 4,000 since inauguration day.
Shocking power grabs by Trump and Musk have rekindled the anti-Trump resistance. Democratic attorneys general, liberal groups and non-profits have already brought dozens of lawsuits against the Trump administration and Doge, notching a series of favorable rulings. Meanwhile, thousands joined demonstrations across the country this week, stretching from Los Angeles city hall to the US Capitol in Washington.
Protesters carried signs denouncing everything from Trump's crackdown on immigrants to his attack on transgender people and his proposal for the United States to take ownership of Gaza. Motivating many of the actions was the fear that American democracy was in peril.
"These are not normal times," said Isabel Storey, a member of Indivisible Westside LA, who helped organize a protest outside of California Senator Alex Padilla's office this week. "Our message to them was that they need to shut down business as usual."
Since Trump took office, Storey said she has been "swamped" with inquiries from people asking how they can get involved and make a difference. She even had someone who had joined a letter-writing event at her house years ago during Trump's first administration knock on her door to ask: "Are you doing anything now?"
That is the same question progressive activists are posing back to their party's leaders in Washington. Storey said she is a strong supporter of both of California's Democratic senators but on Wednesday she and her daughter stood outside Padilla's office demanding he and his colleagues "do everything they can to impede this coup that is happening".
At one point, she nearly became emotional as she considered the stakes if they do not succeed. "I almost started crying because I'm looking at my daughter thinking, I don't want her to grow up in a dictatorship."
Quote from: Iormlund on February 04, 2025, 05:24:04 PMHealthcare overhaul, education reform, worker rights (say maternity leave), bringing some sanity to electoral and judicial systems.
Socialism, wokeism, socialism, tyranny.
Quote from: Iormlund on February 04, 2025, 06:11:37 PMExcuses.
It took fundies almost 50 years to overthrow RvW. It seemed impossible, but they did it.
What have the Democrats done that is comparable in investment, planning and impact in the past 30 years?
Gay marriage.
Quote from: Valmy on February 04, 2025, 10:36:46 PMAnd due to cruel fate, or maybe God's will, virtually all Supreme Court Justices since 1968 have been appointed by Republican Presidents. Jimmy Carter appointed zero. Clinton appointed two. Obama appointed two. Biden appointed one.
No. Not just fate. Political ineptitude as well. Bader Ginzburg may have been a great jurist, but her political acumen during her last few years was terrible, and no one thought it important enough to put pressure on her to retire.
Republicans blocked the appointment of milquetoast supreme Garland, though one has to wonder if that would have made a difference - still, it may have given the US someone more competent as Attorney General.
Then, there was also the possibility of treating the corruption of the Supreme Court seriously, and pack the courts - but of course, that never happened either - holding on to the nonexistent chance that Republicans somehow would come to their senses, or for fear that it would discredit the institution. Thank god that institution's reputation is preserved...
You are being overly critical of RBG. She held on because she was certain that the Republicans would bloke her replacement in the Senate. She was waiting for a Dems to be able to do that. And assuming she had the knowledge that Trump would win, when every poll said otherwise, is not fair.
I thought that was the prevailing thought. Her legacy is tarnished by current generations. Perhaps later history will be more kind.
Quote from: garbon on February 10, 2025, 03:07:13 PMI thought that was the prevailing thought. Her legacy is tarnished by current generations. Perhaps later history will be more kind.
That was certainly a narrative the cropped up, despite all the facts to the contrary.
But I recall a past in which everyone was cheering her on as she went to the gym to stay in shape, because we all realized it was not politically possible to replace her. Now that she is gone, she is a convenient scapegoat.
I did not expect her to know that Trump would win, but to know that she would eventually die. I would have expected her to at least get a reading on the changing political climate - or, at least, for others to get it, and push her aside. Gently, preferably; forcefully, if need be.
I had the chance to hear her speak. I have tremendous respect for what she did, but her political acumen struck me as being stuck in the 90s. Somewhat like Biden.
Quote from: Oexmelin on February 10, 2025, 03:09:44 PMI did not expect her to know that Trump would win, but to know that she would eventually die. I would have expected her to at least get a reading on the changing political climate - or, at least, for others to get it, and push her aside. Gently, preferably; forcefully, if need be.
I had the chance to hear her speak. I have tremendous respect for what she did, but her political acumen struck me as being stuck in the 90s. Somewhat like Biden.
We all die, and what reading of the changing political climate did you expect her to read? How is it logical for you to suggest both that she should not have realized Trump would win and she should have somehow have sensed that the political climate was changing? Up until election night it looked certain that the Dems would win not just the white house but congress, and then it would have been an easy thing to replace her.
It is a folly of hindsight to suggest that RBG should have been able to see otherwise.
The important thing when your democracy is under siege is to point fingers and lay blame at the people who may have been imperfect. Don't get distracted by trying to figure out how to fight back, you have to focus on what actually matters - that is, tearing down allies and compatriots who are insufficiently pure or were insufficiently wise in the decisions they made in the past.
Quote from: Jacob on February 10, 2025, 03:14:59 PMThe important thing when your democracy is under siege is to point fingers and lay blame at the people who may have been imperfect. Don't get distracted by trying to figure out how to fight back, you have to focus on what actually matters - that is, tearing down allies and compatriots who are insufficiently pure or were insufficiently wise in the decisions they made in the past.
Truly the liberal way. One people more dangerous then your enemies are your allies :(
Quote from: Jacob on February 10, 2025, 03:14:59 PMThe important thing when your democracy is under siege is to point fingers and lay blame at the people who may have been imperfect. Don't get distracted by trying to figure out how to fight back, you have to focus on what actually matters - that is, tearing down allies and compatriots who are insufficiently pure or were insufficiently wise in the decisions they made in the past.
Well she is dead so I don't think she really gets much chatter.
Quote from: garbon on February 10, 2025, 03:07:13 PMPerhaps later history will be more kind.
QuoteTrump fires National Archives chief
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/07/trump-fires-national-archives-chief-00203246
Quote from: Jacob on February 10, 2025, 03:14:59 PMThe important thing when your democracy is under siege is to point fingers and lay blame at the people who may have been imperfect. Don't get distracted by trying to figure out how to fight back, you have to focus on what actually matters - that is, tearing down allies and compatriots who are insufficiently pure or were insufficiently wise in the decisions they made in the past.
I think you have hit on an important point. The Dems are in disarray and fighting amongst themselves. It would make a good Monty Python script if the consequences were not so serious.
The NYTimes ran a story today about how Trump is musing about not stepping aside in four years, and that notion has gained a lot of traction amongst the Republican party. It won't get much of a mention amongst all other unconstitutional acts that happened today. Partly because the Dems are more concentrated on having their faction of the party prevail over the other factions within their party.
One of the podcasts I have enjoyed listening to, since Sheilbh told us about it, is "Know your Enemy". It has struck me that they keep saying they will talk about what Trump is doing in later episodes, but right now they seem to think there are more important, more ideologically pure things, to talk about. What greater Enemy is there folks?
Quote from: Jacob on February 10, 2025, 03:14:59 PMThe important thing when your democracy is under siege is to point fingers and lay blame at the people who may have been imperfect. Don't get distracted by trying to figure out how to fight back, you have to focus on what actually matters - that is, tearing down allies and compatriots who are insufficiently pure or were insufficiently wise in the decisions they made in the past.
I don't get this attitude. Don't people owe a duty to the truth?
I don't think RBG cares what we say about her, you know with being dead and all.
Quote from: Jacob on February 10, 2025, 03:14:59 PMThe important thing when your democracy is under siege is to point fingers and lay blame at the people who may have been imperfect. Don't get distracted by trying to figure out how to fight back, you have to focus on what actually matters - that is, tearing down allies and compatriots who are insufficiently pure or were insufficiently wise in the decisions they made in the past.
I have been banging the drum of direct action for a while now.
When I am finger pointing, it isn't about some purity test. I am not interested in adjudicating what sort of healthcare is best for the US right now. I am, however, concerned about people who are asking us (or, at this point, my American friends) to trust they will swing at the right time, or to trust the great moral arc of the universe, or that the pendulum will swing back on its own.
If people want to feel empowered, they need to think that their actions have meaningful consequences. Not that it was simply a matter of bad luck - it certainly was part of it - but also, of deliberate choices. They may have been wrong choices - but they at least need to be identified as wrong, not just "unlucky".
For me, it's about people clinging to a conception of politics that has been dead for a while - and one that, I believe, leads either to inaction, or to placing all of one's eggs in the same institutional basket. It's also about accountability. You may not have been subjected to the barrage of unrelenting texts asking for money by the Democrats. When a party is sitting on such a considerable war chest, and seems incapable of meeting the moment, one is tempted to ask "what's the plan"? I don't know if you've heard Hakeem Jeffries recently? It does not fill me with confidence. Rather, to me, it evokes the same sort of thinking that led the US in this mess.
My point isn't to say RBG was a terrible person. She wasn't. My point is that she did not understand how the times had changed. This is something we can all be guilty of. That sort of lesson should precisely be more impactful when the error is committed by someone you admire and respect.
Quote from: Oexmelin on February 10, 2025, 03:24:25 PMQuote from: garbon on February 10, 2025, 03:07:13 PMPerhaps later history will be more kind.
QuoteTrump fires National Archives chief
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/07/trump-fires-national-archives-chief-00203246
Odds now on literal burnings, not just wipping data from systems?
Quote from: mongers on February 10, 2025, 03:40:42 PMQuote from: Oexmelin on February 10, 2025, 03:24:25 PMQuote from: garbon on February 10, 2025, 03:07:13 PMPerhaps later history will be more kind.
QuoteTrump fires National Archives chief
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/07/trump-fires-national-archives-chief-00203246
Odds now on literal burnings, not just wipping data from systems?
I don't know, those people at NARA are the most fanatical (in a good way) archivists I've ever seen. You can hide things pretty well in a place like that.
Quote from: Maladict on February 10, 2025, 03:52:44 PMQuote from: mongers on February 10, 2025, 03:40:42 PMOdds now on literal burnings, not just wipping data from systems?
I don't know, those people at NARA are the most fanatical (in a good way) archivists I've ever seen. You can hide things pretty well in a place like that.
:thumbsup:
Good to know, well at least I hope.
Quote from: Oexmelin on February 10, 2025, 03:09:44 PMI did not expect her to know that Trump would win, but to know that she would eventually die. I would have expected her to at least get a reading on the changing political climate - or, at least, for others to get it, and push her aside. Gently, preferably; forcefully, if need be.
I had the chance to hear her speak. I have tremendous respect for what she did, but her political acumen struck me as being stuck in the 90s. Somewhat like Biden.
I think the RGB critics are missing the personal dimension. She was very close to her husband but he died in 2010. It is not always easy being an elderly widow in American society. The Court was a source of personal friendship and camaraderie for her and it provided meaning and social standing. Not an easy thing to give up.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on February 10, 2025, 04:56:14 PMQuote from: Oexmelin on February 10, 2025, 03:09:44 PMI did not expect her to know that Trump would win, but to know that she would eventually die. I would have expected her to at least get a reading on the changing political climate - or, at least, for others to get it, and push her aside. Gently, preferably; forcefully, if need be.
I had the chance to hear her speak. I have tremendous respect for what she did, but her political acumen struck me as being stuck in the 90s. Somewhat like Biden.
I think the RGB critics are missing the personal dimension. She was very close to her husband but he died in 2010. It is not always easy being an elderly widow in American society. The Court was a source of personal friendship and camaraderie for her and it provided meaning and social standing. Not an easy thing to give up.
I'm not sure a good defense is I was putting my personal needs ahead of service.
Quote from: garbon on February 10, 2025, 04:58:47 PMI'm not sure a good defense is I was putting my personal needs ahead of service.
I find your framing of this as a "defense" a bit strange.
Quote from: Jacob on February 10, 2025, 05:03:29 PMQuote from: garbon on February 10, 2025, 04:58:47 PMI'm not sure a good defense is I was putting my personal needs ahead of service.
I find your framing of this as a "defense" a bit strange.
Joan suggested it should be a mitigating factor.
Quote from: garbon on February 10, 2025, 05:06:13 PMQuote from: Jacob on February 10, 2025, 05:03:29 PMQuote from: garbon on February 10, 2025, 04:58:47 PMI'm not sure a good defense is I was putting my personal needs ahead of service.
I find your framing of this as a "defense" a bit strange.
Joan suggested it should be a mitigating factor.
He never said "mitigating factor".
I would phrase it as "Explanation, not excuse".
Quote from: Barrister on February 10, 2025, 05:09:50 PMQuote from: garbon on February 10, 2025, 05:06:13 PMQuote from: Jacob on February 10, 2025, 05:03:29 PMQuote from: garbon on February 10, 2025, 04:58:47 PMI'm not sure a good defense is I was putting my personal needs ahead of service.
I find your framing of this as a "defense" a bit strange.
Joan suggested it should be a mitigating factor.
He never said "mitigating factor".
I would phrase it as "Explanation, not excuse".
I think there can be many reasons to explain why she did what she did. I'm not sure why what Joan highlighted should spare her from her detractors.
Quote from: garbon on February 10, 2025, 05:11:02 PMI think there can be many reasons to explain why she did what she did. I'm not sure why what Joan highlighted should spare her from her detractors.
I don't think he said it should.
Quote from: Jacob on February 10, 2025, 03:14:59 PMThe important thing when your democracy is under siege is to point fingers and lay blame at the people who may have been imperfect. Don't get distracted by trying to figure out how to fight back, you have to focus on what actually matters - that is, tearing down allies and compatriots who are insufficiently pure or were insufficiently wise in the decisions they made in the past.
I'm totally with you in the spirit, but that said, I think it's more nuanced than this. US politics has been a cold civil war for a while, and in war, if one side has suffered a crushing blow, of course they have to regroup ASAP because otherwise capitulation is inevitable.
That said, you need to understand what went wrong to get you there, and that involves criticism of your own side. As far as RBG, definitely the one thing that went wrong for Democrats was not realizing they were in fact in a cold civil war, and they never stopped playing by norms when it was clear that their enemy was waiting for the most productive time to break them to gain the first-breaker advantage.
The problem with the RBG criticism is that the current destruction of democracy is coming about specifically because of Trump. Yes the Republicans allowed it, but any other candidate wouldn't have pushed the norms as fast or as hard as Trump. Trump wasn't even taken seriously until 2016, at which point there's no question that RBG retiring would not have resulted in getting a successful replacement in. That means RBG would have needed significant foresight to think that the situation would deteriorate so badly that her dying 5 years in the future would help lead to this crisis in 10 years.
To me RBG not retiring is only a peripheral problem, much worse was the Senate not removing Trump after January 6th, Obama not appointing Garland to the USSC when the Senate failed to fulfill their role to advise and consent, and the disinterest in the Democratic leadership to organize a coherent and consistent resistance to Trumpism from 2016 to today.
Agreed on all the last points. Though, again, Garland was a terrible choice to begin with.
So Hakeem Jefferies went to Silicon Valley to beg Elon's friends for help.
So frustrating.
:bleeding:
Seriously, that's also an actionable item: ask your local Democratic leadership to campaign for removing this guy.
Quote from: Oexmelin on February 10, 2025, 06:35:11 PM:bleeding:
Seriously, that's also an actionable item: ask your local Democratic leadership to campaign for removing this guy.
I will see what I can do.
Quote from: Oexmelin on February 10, 2025, 06:33:20 PMAgreed on all the last points. Though, again, Garland was a terrible choice to begin with.
Terrible choices have been all the Republican ones. Garland is definitely a cut above that.
Quote from: Oexmelin on February 10, 2025, 02:11:24 PMRepublicans blocked the appointment of milquetoast supreme Garland, though one has to wonder if that would have made a difference - still, it may have given the US someone more competent as Attorney General.
Are you claiming that the lack of a confirmation for Garland was a result of Democratic ineptitude? :unsure:
I think he was saying that Obama should have just put him on the Court anyway saying that Congress didn't do what it was supposed to do or something.
But there is no time limit in the Constitution. That was the loophole the Senate used.
Quote from: frunk on February 10, 2025, 06:28:58 PMThat means RBG would have needed significant foresight to think that the situation would deteriorate so badly that her dying 5 years in the future would help lead to this crisis in 10 years.
You don't need foresight to acknowledge that elections are sometimes won and sometimes lost.
She gambled. And you all lost.
Quote from: Iormlund on February 11, 2025, 02:58:49 PMQuote from: frunk on February 10, 2025, 06:28:58 PMThat means RBG would have needed significant foresight to think that the situation would deteriorate so badly that her dying 5 years in the future would help lead to this crisis in 10 years.
You don't need foresight to acknowledge that elections are sometimes won and sometimes lost.
She gambled. And you all lost.
Again, people who make this claim are forgetting that the Senate was preventing all judicial appointments. There was no gambling here. There was reality.
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 11, 2025, 03:03:56 PMQuote from: Iormlund on February 11, 2025, 02:58:49 PMQuote from: frunk on February 10, 2025, 06:28:58 PMThat means RBG would have needed significant foresight to think that the situation would deteriorate so badly that her dying 5 years in the future would help lead to this crisis in 10 years.
You don't need foresight to acknowledge that elections are sometimes won and sometimes lost.
She gambled. And you all lost.
Again, people who make this claim are forgetting that the Senate was preventing all judicial appointments. There was no gambling here. There was reality.
When Kagan was confirmed RBG was almost 80, and a twice cancer-survivor.
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 11, 2025, 03:03:56 PMQuote from: Iormlund on February 11, 2025, 02:58:49 PMQuote from: frunk on February 10, 2025, 06:28:58 PMThat means RBG would have needed significant foresight to think that the situation would deteriorate so badly that her dying 5 years in the future would help lead to this crisis in 10 years.
You don't need foresight to acknowledge that elections are sometimes won and sometimes lost.
She gambled. And you all lost.
Again, people who make this claim are forgetting that the Senate was preventing all judicial appointments. There was no gambling here. There was reality.
The Senate had never refused to hold a vote on a USSC candidate before.
That's how you got such odd figures as David Souter - a Republican nominee confirmed by a Democratic senate, who turned out to be a mostly-reliable left-wing vote. Bush 41 felt he needed to get a compromise candidate - which was what Garland was.
(You still had the filibuster back then, but the dynamic was the same)
Quote from: Barrister on February 11, 2025, 03:24:22 PMQuote from: crazy canuck on February 11, 2025, 03:03:56 PMQuote from: Iormlund on February 11, 2025, 02:58:49 PMQuote from: frunk on February 10, 2025, 06:28:58 PMThat means RBG would have needed significant foresight to think that the situation would deteriorate so badly that her dying 5 years in the future would help lead to this crisis in 10 years.
You don't need foresight to acknowledge that elections are sometimes won and sometimes lost.
She gambled. And you all lost.
Again, people who make this claim are forgetting that the Senate was preventing all judicial appointments. There was no gambling here. There was reality.
The Senate had never refused to hold a vote on a USSC candidate before.
That's how you got such odd figures as David Souter - a Republican nominee confirmed by a Democratic senate, who turned out to be a mostly-reliable left-wing vote. Bush 41 felt he needed to get a compromise candidate - which was what Garland was.
(You still had the filibuster back then, but the dynamic was the same)
You are now going full MAGA, either that or you have a bad memory.
Quote from: Iormlund on February 11, 2025, 03:16:50 PMQuote from: crazy canuck on February 11, 2025, 03:03:56 PMQuote from: Iormlund on February 11, 2025, 02:58:49 PMQuote from: frunk on February 10, 2025, 06:28:58 PMThat means RBG would have needed significant foresight to think that the situation would deteriorate so badly that her dying 5 years in the future would help lead to this crisis in 10 years.
You don't need foresight to acknowledge that elections are sometimes won and sometimes lost.
She gambled. And you all lost.
Again, people who make this claim are forgetting that the Senate was preventing all judicial appointments. There was no gambling here. There was reality.
When Kagan was confirmed RBG was almost 80, and a twice cancer-survivor.
That's true, but I don't think that you can blame her for taking the chance that she could survive into a new administration and provide at least the chance of a non-rightwing justice succeeding her, rather than retiring and giving the Republicans years to poison the well of any nominee to replace her.
I agree that, in hindsight, her decision turned out poorly. That wasn't at all clear to me at the time, though.
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 11, 2025, 03:28:20 PMQuote from: Barrister on February 11, 2025, 03:24:22 PMQuote from: crazy canuck on February 11, 2025, 03:03:56 PMQuote from: Iormlund on February 11, 2025, 02:58:49 PMQuote from: frunk on February 10, 2025, 06:28:58 PMThat means RBG would have needed significant foresight to think that the situation would deteriorate so badly that her dying 5 years in the future would help lead to this crisis in 10 years.
You don't need foresight to acknowledge that elections are sometimes won and sometimes lost.
She gambled. And you all lost.
Again, people who make this claim are forgetting that the Senate was preventing all judicial appointments. There was no gambling here. There was reality.
The Senate had never refused to hold a vote on a USSC candidate before.
That's how you got such odd figures as David Souter - a Republican nominee confirmed by a Democratic senate, who turned out to be a mostly-reliable left-wing vote. Bush 41 felt he needed to get a compromise candidate - which was what Garland was.
(You still had the filibuster back then, but the dynamic was the same)
You are now going full MAGA, either that or you have a bad memory.
I'm trying to defend RBG here...
Before Garland - had the Senate ever just refused to vote on a USSC nominee? Not that I can recall. That was a major change in the politics of of Supreme Court nominations. So while yes, you can think RBG maybe should have resigned earlier, I don't think anyone would have expected the Senate Republicans to simply refuse to vote on her successor.
Quote from: Barrister on February 11, 2025, 04:05:03 PMQuote from: crazy canuck on February 11, 2025, 03:28:20 PMQuote from: Barrister on February 11, 2025, 03:24:22 PMQuote from: crazy canuck on February 11, 2025, 03:03:56 PMQuote from: Iormlund on February 11, 2025, 02:58:49 PMQuote from: frunk on February 10, 2025, 06:28:58 PMThat means RBG would have needed significant foresight to think that the situation would deteriorate so badly that her dying 5 years in the future would help lead to this crisis in 10 years.
You don't need foresight to acknowledge that elections are sometimes won and sometimes lost.
She gambled. And you all lost.
Again, people who make this claim are forgetting that the Senate was preventing all judicial appointments. There was no gambling here. There was reality.
The Senate had never refused to hold a vote on a USSC candidate before.
That's how you got such odd figures as David Souter - a Republican nominee confirmed by a Democratic senate, who turned out to be a mostly-reliable left-wing vote. Bush 41 felt he needed to get a compromise candidate - which was what Garland was.
(You still had the filibuster back then, but the dynamic was the same)
You are now going full MAGA, either that or you have a bad memory.
I'm trying to defend RBG here...
Before Garland - had the Senate ever just refused to vote on a USSC nominee? Not that I can recall. That was a major change in the politics of of Supreme Court nominations. So while yes, you can think RBG maybe should have resigned earlier, I don't think anyone would have expected the Senate Republicans to simply refuse to vote on her successor.
Right, in the post I was responding to, you didn't make the caveat "before Garland". You claimed it had never happened. RBG didn't step down when her health started failing, because at that point the Senate definitely would have played games.
Quote from: crazy canuck on February 11, 2025, 05:14:48 PMRight, in the post I was responding to, you didn't make the caveat "before Garland". You claimed it had never happened. RBG didn't step down when her health started failing, because at that point the Senate definitely would have played games.
Great.
So maybe you can take it easy on the "you have gone full MAGA or have a bad memory" stuff.
I had thought it was obvious I was speaking about "before Garland", but glad we could clear up that confusion.
Quote from: grumbler on February 11, 2025, 04:03:04 PMQuote from: Iormlund on February 11, 2025, 03:16:50 PMQuote from: crazy canuck on February 11, 2025, 03:03:56 PMQuote from: Iormlund on February 11, 2025, 02:58:49 PMQuote from: frunk on February 10, 2025, 06:28:58 PMThat means RBG would have needed significant foresight to think that the situation would deteriorate so badly that her dying 5 years in the future would help lead to this crisis in 10 years.
You don't need foresight to acknowledge that elections are sometimes won and sometimes lost.
She gambled. And you all lost.
Again, people who make this claim are forgetting that the Senate was preventing all judicial appointments. There was no gambling here. There was reality.
When Kagan was confirmed RBG was almost 80, and a twice cancer-survivor.
That's true, but I don't think that you can blame her for taking the chance that she could survive into a new administration and provide at least the chance of a non-rightwing justice succeeding her, rather than retiring and giving the Republicans years to poison the well of any nominee to replace her.
I agree that, in hindsight, her decision turned out poorly. That wasn't at all clear to me at the time, though.
Also, I know a number of judges who are cancer survivors. That doesn't mean they are in an immediate danger medically. It has, thankfully, become fairly routine to survive cancer.
Quote from: Barrister on February 11, 2025, 05:17:43 PMQuote from: crazy canuck on February 11, 2025, 05:14:48 PMRight, in the post I was responding to, you didn't make the caveat "before Garland". You claimed it had never happened. RBG didn't step down when her health started failing, because at that point the Senate definitely would have played games.
Great.
So maybe you can take it easy on the "you have gone full MAGA or have a bad memory" stuff.
I had thought it was obvious I was speaking about "before Garland", but glad we could clear up that confusion.
Your dalliance with fascism in your posts today does not put me at ease.
Susan Collins may be another senator liable to pressure, since she's somehow built her brand on appearing thoughtful (but then folding).
Quote from: Oexmelin on February 11, 2025, 07:56:04 PMSusan Collins may be another senator liable to pressure, since she's somehow built her brand on appearing thoughtful (but then folding).
You're contradicting yourself.
I am a hopeless optimist.
I have a few thoughts beyond my initial take - don't be afraid of your voters, build party organisations in and of every state community, ditch the celebs and consultants, focus on an analysis of politics not policy wonkery.
But I read this substack essay by Ben Ansell who is an Oxford professor particularly on inequality. I basically agree with it (even if I'm more on the left but sympathetic to liberalism than he is - I do think concentrated political power is very important and we've already invented a great tool for harnessing and using it in the state). It makes points that I think are relevant here and expresses things brilliantly that are similar to stuff I've thought and failed to explain very well on here :lol: For example, this is in large part what I mean by we need more politics:
QuotePolitics with Proper Names
On Przeworski and Teune, Gove and "Rove"
Ben Ansell
Mar 3
Last week I committed sins in the eyes of both "X" and Bluesky. Different sins, of course. In our new Manichean social media environment, there is no middle path. Centrist dads lie like battered corpses in the no-mans land of the 2025 culture wars.
My sins could be attributed to hosting an episode of Rethink on liberalism and post-liberalism. It was tricky territory, I agree. To take seriously the critics of liberalism, without necessarily agreeing with their underlying assumptions. To underline the core merits of liberal thought, without dismissing the alternatives tout court.
My producer, Ben Cooper, and I thought the best way would be to start with defining liberalism - here we asked Edmund Fawcett to go over his four core principles from his brilliant Liberalism: The Life of an Idea. Here is a great review of that book by Jeremy Waldron.
The four principles are: (a) an acknowledgement that social conflict and disagreement are unavoidable; (b) a mistrust of concentrated power; (c) a belief in human progress; and (d) the importance of 'civic respect'.
Those might sound obvious but conservatives, socialists, and populists disagree. Many conservatives believe that tradition trumps perfectibility; that there is a natural and harmonious order; that not all groups or cultures deserve equal respect; and that humans are frail and sinful. Socialists believe that (class) conflict is inevitable before but not after socialism and that concentrated power is needed to overcome the inequalities of capitalism. Populists believe that conflict only arises because of a corrupt elite; that concentrated power is needed to overcome the establishment blob; and that only some groups (citizens, perhaps co-ethnic ones) deserve equal respect. And so on.
After setting out the tenets of liberalism, the show then turned to the post-liberal challenge to these principles. In the last third of the show, I upset the denizens of X by casting the (self-professedly) illiberal parties of the European right as opposed to these principles. Perhaps they were upset by my tone of implied critique or the general absence of uncritical support of illiberal parties. Who is to say?
But it was the middle third of the show that upset some respondents on Bluesky. And the reason was because I had interviewed two British politicians who came from non-liberal traditions but had some sympathy for liberals. On the left, I interviewed Jon Cruddas, until recently the MP for Dagenham and Rainham, and whose political views might be placed on the communitarian side of the Labour Party - somewhat but not entirely 'Blue Labour'. Jon's points about the experience of Dagenham during the era of liberal triumphalism in the first decade of the millennium are well worth listening to.
It wasn't interviewing Jon, though, that set the cat among the pigeons. It was my other interview - with Michael Gove, former Cabinet Minister and now editor of the Spectator. Gove was a minister during a more (right-leaning) liberal era under the Cameron government and also during the conservative/post-liberal governments of May, Johnson, and Sunak. I won't claim to have great insights into Gove's true beliefs but I think there is a mix of liberal ones - support for gay marriage, free markets, robust debate - and post-liberal ones - Brexit (as happened), tradition and custom, and suspicion of 'identity politics' (or at least some people's identity politics). I will say this, though: as many others have found, he was a pleasant and thoughtful interviewee, whether one agrees or disagrees with his politics.
For some people, the mere presence of Michael Gove was reason to avoid the show or be upset about it. That's fine - no-one owes me a listen. I hope in the future we can have a world in which voices from the left and right are on the same show and people are fine with it but I recognise this is a polarised time.
From my perspective, I was able to ask two questions I had rather wanted to ask Gove over the years. One was whether conservatives and liberals had switched roles - with the former now dismissive of establishment institutions and wanting reforms and the latter protective and cautionary. He appeared to agree, for whatever that's worth.
The second question - the one I am sure many of you have thought about a lot - is that when Gove famously claimed people had 'had enough of experts', was this really a critique of contemporary liberalism? Here is his response, as heard on the show:
Quote"Inviting people to defer to experts in every area and suggesting that the the common sense of the people should be superseded by the consensus of those at the centre who have the credentials and the qualifications to claim the title of expert, I do think that that was liberalism's fatal conceit. And I also think that the post liberal view is... that you cannot rule the country on a technocratic basis"
Gove's famous initial exchange about experts, with Faisal Islam, in 2016 was perhaps slightly misconstrued in popular memory. Here it is in full:
QuoteMichael Gove: I think the people in this country have had enough of experts, with organisations from acronyms, saying—
Faisal Islam: They've had enough of experts? The people have had enough of experts? What do you mean by that?
Michael Gove: People from organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong.
Faisal Islam: The people of this country have had enough of experts?
Michael Gove: Because these people are the same ones who got consistently wrong what was happening.
Faisal Islam: This is proper Trump politics this, isn't it?
Michael Gove: No it's actually a faith in the—
Faisal Islam: It's Oxbridge Trump.
Michael Gove: It's a faith, Faisal, in the British people to make the right decision.
The line that everyone remembers is just the first part, before Faisal's flabbergasted interruption. But it's fairly clearly a claim that technocrats should not have the sole responsibility for making political decisions, which should be left to the people. We can argue about whether the British public made a wise decision in this case - in my view, it is increasingly apparent that they did not - but I don't think this is an illegitimate view.
Indeed, it's one with a grand tradition dating back at least to Rousseau and including thinkers from Andrew Jackson to Maximilien Robespierre. Now there's an episode of Come Dine with Me. The argument is that expertise, past practice, and elite consensus should not override popular will. It is, I suppose, leaning on the democracy part of 'liberal democracy', rather than the liberal part.
It also reminded me of another much-derided quote from a decade or so earlier. A quote that the journalist Ron Suskind received in 2004 from a high-level Bush administration official, rumoured but never confirmed to be Karl Rove. Hence I have placed Rove in scare quotes in this piece's subtitle... Here's the quote from Suskind:
Quote"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [...] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'."
Liberals, of course, seized on the dismissal of the 'reality-based community'. Who would denounce people who cared about reality? Why, the same kinds of monsters who would dismiss "experts", I'd imagine.
But there is something in common with both this quote and that from Gove (be it to me or to Faisal Islam). A critique of a certain type of (liberal) thinking. A critique of a logic that goes something like this:
There is a social reality out there that has laws and regularities and that we can analyse objectively and, employing robust tools derived from social science, can use to infer from past experiences the 'right thing to do'.
In other words, listen to social scientists.
Now, as may have occurred to you, I am both a social scientist and, broadly speaking, a liberal (inasmuch as I am neither a conservative nor a socialist). So, I feel the temptation of this logic. My job could be described as trying to look past my subjective opinions and the fluctuations of contingent historical events to derive deeper 'truths' about how people behave, in order that we might make the world a better place.
But there's a lot going on in there. Can one ever truly look past their subjective opinions? Are there really deeper truths that are out there? Should we actually use those 'truths' to make the world better place? Who gets to decide on 'better'? And are historical events just jetsam on a sea of underlying structural social forces?
It would be comforting for us social scientists to be able to look at an uncontested set of past facts, use statistics or the logic of comparison to derive underlying patterns, and then make recommendations to policymakers about how to set policies to improve the world, and for those policymakers to faithfully follow those prescriptions.
I mean that's basically how my colleagues in economics think the world should work.
Ho ho ho... <Frank Lampard voice>... but seriously, this is a common refrain from the academy - especially the applied parts of social science and medicine. We saw it with public health scholarship during COVID; we saw it with the economics profession following the Great Recession; we see it with political scientists like me following polls around election time.
We have carefully adjudicated what's really going on. We have recommendations. Follow us.
But what if that doesn't work? Politically. Or even on its own terms.
Let's start with the political part. This is the essence of the Gove critique - that technocratic advice should not outweigh democratic choice. Even if the latter is 'wrong'. Because the 'wrong' is usually defined by the technocrats, who themselves do not have unimpeachable track records. I find myself ever more convinced by the argument that experts - and I guess I'm one too - have been too blithe about ignoring mass opinion when it conflicts with their advice - on the merits of free trade, on the costs of shutting schools during COVID, on the costs of net zero.
The experts might be 'right', in a narrow sense of that word - but if the advice is ignored, indeed if the public start to do the opposite of the advice in a backlash, then we are all worse off. So in part, this is a communications challenge for experts and importantly for the liberal politicians attracted to their recommendations. How to not condescend, how to listen, but how to still hold fast to some set of truths and advice beyond the immediate vagaries of public opinion.
One might say, how to lead.
This should not be viewed as 'giving in to populism' but as accepting that some of the strategies and skills populists have are worth mimicking - in particular, learning how to communicate effectively, simply, and engagingly. If we want to critique Gove's claim about the people having had enough of experts, 'we' experts need to up our game.
But let me go now to the second, more challenging critique. That the social scientist view of the world doesn't work even on its own terms. This is the 'reality based community' argument. Think back to that quote. Karl Rove, or someone very much like Rove, critiqued politicians and elites who engaged in the "judicious study of discernible reality" all while he and the Bush administration were creating their own new reality as "history's actors".
Set aside the sneering arrogance of the claim and there is an important insight here. There is something very limiting in thinking that all politics is foretold. That today's politics is simply an extension of previous events that can be studied. That today's world is a function of yesterday's world. That the lagged dependent variable explains everything.
For those of us from mainstream social science traditions this is a challenging critique.
Here is how I usually do analysis. I collect existing, observational data about the world - perhaps on inequality levels and measures of democracy, or survey data about party ID and attitudes towards government redistribution. I then look at the correlations across these variables. Or maybe I seek to make more causal claims and I run an experiment in a survey or in the lab, changing some variable randomly to see how it impacts some other outcome variable. Or I read a bunch of primary sources - I spent a week one summer sitting in the archives in Saskatchewan reading annual reports of mental asylums and sanatoria, trying to figure out how decentralised funding was or whether religious authorities were involved, all so I could code the province on a one to three score. Fun.
In these cases - including the one where I was reading about Weyburn Mental Hospital (once the second largest building in North America after the Pentagon!) - I am interested in (a) things that have already happened, or (b) how one social variable relates to another, or (c) both.
In other words, I am engaged in the "judicious study of discernible reality", and of things that have already happened. From which I draw conclusions about politics and then say, this is what you need to know to understand politics. It's all backward-looking analysis not forward looking action. Because that is how academics create knowledge in the social sciences.
I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that. That's my job. But that is a different job to either being a politician or advising one. Because political actors, especially those at the top of the tree, do create their own reality. Indeed, they create all of our realities. They do not do so solely relying on interpreting the past and adjusting it slightly. They are not Bayesian algorithms shunting us ever close to some optimum. They are not looking for marginal effects under some constraints. They are changing the very constraints themselves.
That means a fully technocratic liberal form of government misunderstands politics. It acts as if it is solving an equation within a set of given institutions. But the institutions can be changed by the very actors they are supposed to constrain. It is all, and here's a term, endogenous.
My last essay was on the perils and promise of disruption. In that essay I noted that disruption could often be damaging - breaking eggs in the promise of an omelette; forgetting that the eggs have jobs, families, lives.
But there is a reverse risk that I hope is coming through in this post - assuming that politics is about fixed rules and institutions, following the 'evidence', being bound by the social science laws of the past.
As the news reminds us daily - were it only so. I am no great fan of the Great Man theory of history. Structural forces do matter, do constrain to some degree, do shape incentives that leaders face. But leaders and democratic publics can act in ways that oppose, ignore, or even disgust expert consensus.
And that takes me to the image at the top of the post, which comes from a seminal work in political science - The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry by Adam Przeworski and Henry Teune. Przeworski remains perhaps the greatest contemporary thinker on democracy and I strongly advise reading his new Substack. But I am going to push back on one of his claims from over half a century ago.
Przeworski and Teune used this book to set out the modern 'comparative method' in political science and along the way they did so by advocating a 'variable-oriented' approach, as contrasted to a 'case-oriented' approach. That means that understanding politics is about understanding underlying social objects in general, not the real people and places that are instances of them. Let me quote from their 1966-67 article in Public Opinion Quarterly, which preceded the book:
Quote"In formal terms, cross-national analysis is an operation by which a relationship between two or more variables is stated for a defined population of countries. In analysis, no proper names of societies or cultures are mentioned. The goal is not to "understand" Ghana or Cuba, not to describe Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, or Churchill, but to see to what extent external crises and internal control, military prowess and economic frustration, nationalism and persecutions, are related, and to know the generality of each relationship. Whether variables are related depends on the observations of Ghana, or Hitler. But these are the observations that are means to an end-the end of testing relationships between variables, even at the cost of obscuring some differences between specific units." (p.554)
I have italicised the words "no proper names" because that is the advice that generations of social scientists took from Przeworski and Teune - real understanding on politics could only come from analysing social objects in their general, not their specific forms. The names of leaders, the names of countries, the names of regions were not relevant. What mattered was the type of leader, the wealth of a country, the size of a region, and so forth. David Laitin later termed this abandoning 'uppercase' letters - that is, the G of Ghana and the R of Roosevelt. Or to refer to the title of this post again - this is politics without proper names.
That has been the tradition of social scientific thought since that day, not just in economics, but in sociology, political science, international relations, even anthropology. We have learned a great deal through abstraction.
But I want to push back a little - that abstraction may help us understand past politics better, it may even help us predict regular, normal future politics. But it is extremely unhelpful in times of great tumult, where past practices fail to predict current or future events. Where leaders, with very recognisable 'proper names' - let's call them Trump or Netanyahu or Xi or Zelenskyy - can break our expectations from past practice. Where variables in normal times are sundered by contingent history with capital letters.
And this is where the advice of Michael Gove and (possibly) Karl Rove is important for those of us who are liberals to take seriously. Returning again and again to previous observations, to 'what works', to impregnable political institutions, will blind us to the very real political change going on around us. We will find ourselves permanently shocked and surprised by old patterns dissolving, social norms decaying, institutions collapsing. We might tie our hands to the institutional mast only to find it has been eaten through with woodworm.
The Cornell political scientist Tom Pepinsky recently wrote a series of posts on Bluesky that sum up the dilemma facing the liberal left in the US. I will quote them below:
QuoteA fundamental problem is the Democrats are utterly committed to the fallacy that public opinion polls are politics. This has destroyed their ability to actually do politics. 1/
Polls tell you what people like and dislike. This is important. But Democrats' obsession with poll-testing everything has led Dem leaders and pundits to completely misunderstand how politics works in a representative democracy. Winning in public opinion polls is not winning in politics. 2/
In short: for democracy to survive, our representatives must represent us. They cannot just declare that our views are more popular and wait for the world to turn. Democrats are losing because they are coming with spreadsheets and figures, when the opponent brings theater and muscle 3/
Democrats must abandon the belief that just standing for the more popular thing will create the right outcome. Public opinion will move wherever the leader directs it (watch what will happen on Russia in the coming days; negative polarization will dominate *any* GOP principles) 4/
Democrats will continue to lose until they realize that the rules have changed, that facts do not win elections, and that they must make a costly stand for what they believe in. Until then, we are ruled by a mad king and his billionaires, and the Democrats are but useful idiots /end
Set aside your views about how close democracy is to collapse in America - I remain on the more optimistic side of this debate, like Tom's old colleague Andrew Little - though I must admit to feeling increasingly like my bet won't come in.
What Tom is saying here is a helpful critique of the quasi-technocratic form of liberal politics besetting the Democrats. They are trying to analyse existing data - polling data on Americans' attitudes - in the hope it will provide evidence for what arguments they should make. They are tied to the past and are following in its wake. But they, like us all, live in the present! And yet they are strategising in the rearview mirror.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk, whatever else one can say about them, are not governing by polls. They are making the waves themselves, to continue my nautical analogy. They clearly do not care for the judgment of the "reality-based community" and certainly not for the edicts of experts. They are destroying the constraints that liberals thought bound all politics. They are changing the rules of the game, rather than optimising within them. Because they can.
And yes much of this behaviour is not democratic - but some of it is. Trump has every right to change tariffs or to withdraw military forces. And he is doing it because he can and because he wants to. That too, is politics.
Pretending that everything will just go back to normal - that politics will go back to being predictable, marginal shifts from past practice - that attitude will fail us today. That is not the politics of our time. And those of us who are social scientists will harm the prospects of politicians if we pretend otherwise for our own convenience.
This is not to say that all bets are off, that constraints will never bind, that nothing matters LOL. I suspect DOGE will collapse ignominiously in the next year because its form of disruption is so vast and so arbitrary that it will slice through the legs of the US economy. NATO is under threat, quite clearly, but I still think the US would respond to an invasion of Poland or some other classic Article 5 issue.
But politics today is fluid. And let me give you a rather unusual example of that fluidity - Sir Keir Starmer. Over the past very challenging week, Starmer and his team have shown flexibility and a willingness to understand that the ground is shifting and that following standard practice won't work. The apparently successful trip to the court of the MAGA king, with the surprise offering of a state visit, was one such move. But Friday's debacle at the White House - a setup of such pointless venom it is hard to fathom - showed the sheer unpredictability, sheer nonlinearity of global politics right now.
And yet this weekend Starmer shifted again, this time to leading a hastily organised summit of what can only be called NATO without the US. It is hard to imagine predicting such a summit ever occurring if we only followed past practice. And yet here it was, a manifestation of making, rather than following, reality.
So fellow liberals, this is the message to hear, even from those you might rather not listen to. One cannot simply hope judicious study of the past provides our salvation. Unpredictability is not a friend to liberalism. But it is not its doom. Arguably, liberals have thrived most in times of change - in the early Industrial Revolution, in the Second World War, in the fall of the Soviet Union. Those were moments when liberal leaders did what comes more naturally to followers of other philosophies that emphasise action and force, rather than evidence and rules - they chose to make history themselves for liberal ends. That road is still open. We can create, not merely study, the reality we live in.
Can't help but feel it's maybe why I find history more interesting generally but particularly in these times is it tends to force the contingency or the deep social and structural changes to the fore.
It's hard to take seriously the idea of giving social scientists the bully pulpit in political questions when the social sciences have probably lost more public trust than any other broad discipline.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 03, 2025, 06:14:16 AMI have a few thoughts beyond my initial take - don't be afraid of your voters,
'''snip '''
Can't help but feel it's maybe why I find history more interesting generally but particularly in these times is it tends to force the contingency or the deep social and structural changes to the fore.
The authors podcast you're quoting from his here:
Rethink - Liberalism (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0028bpc)
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 03, 2025, 06:14:16 AMQuoteNATO is under threat, quite clearly, but I still think the US would respond to an invasion of Poland or some other classic Article 5 issue.
Whistling in the dark.
MAYBE Trump responds to an invasion of Poland, depending on his calculation of the Polish-American vote and how his inner circle reacts.
But anyone who thinks that Trump would honor Article V if the Baltics were invaded hasn't been paying attention.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 03, 2025, 10:04:17 AMQuote from: Sheilbh on March 03, 2025, 06:14:16 AMQuoteNATO is under threat, quite clearly, but I still think the US would respond to an invasion of Poland or some other classic Article 5 issue.
Whistling in the dark.
MAYBE Trump responds to an invasion of Poland, depending on his calculation of the Polish-American vote and how his inner circle reacts.
But anyone who thinks that Trump would honor Article V if the Baltics were invaded hasn't been paying attention.
Poland shouldn't have started that war.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 03, 2025, 06:14:16 AMFor example, this is in large part what I mean by we need more politics:
From the immediate American perspective, it is hard to believe that the problem is insufficient politics.
Expertise in government can be seen in three different aspects:
1) The presence and use of subject matter experts in performing government functions that involve technical understanding. I.e. staffing budget offices with trained accountants, staffing food safety agencies with technical experts, staffing prosecutorial offices with trained lawyers.
2) Delineating limited areas of functions that while still subject to ultimate political control are nonetheless insulated from partisanship and day-to-day political meddling. For example, control of monetary policy or election commissions.
3) The effort to replace politics more broadly by technocratic governance, with experts making the key decisions and politicians either providing rubber stamp authorization of choosing among groups of competing experts. I.e. McNamara and his "whiz kids", the "best and the brightest". Dukakis ran on something like this kind of platform in 88 as well.
The populist Right in America has increasingly targeted category 2 - think the Paul family and the "audit the Fed" movement and the evolution of the theory of the "unitary executive". Thus, it is not surprising to see these agencies and functions targeted. However, liberal defense of these institutions is not some elitist defense of technocracy. It is an essential byproduct of the objective to forestall concentrated power and promote civil respect. A unitary executive that controls the mechanisms of political competition and spoils can entrench itself as a monopoly. That's not theory; we've seen it implemented several times by the so-called "managed democracies"
Of even more immediate concern, the populist Right in the USA is also targeting category 1. The ability to perform functions competently is viewed as undesirable, both because of the suspicion that competent professionals may be insufficiently "loyal," the understanding that competent professionals will resist unethical and illegal directives, and because reducing government competence and capacity serves the political goal of undermining faith in government.
Category 3 should be the one that is easiest to criticize. And indeed, I know of no substantial movement or faction in the Democratic Party today that embraces that model. But it fascinating to see that in Magaworld 2025, while expertise in categories 1 and 2 are under attack, we are witnessing an open bid for technocratic rule. McNamara and the whiz kids are long gone, but Elon and his "Big Balls" team have replaced both Congress and the political process of agency rulemaking with direct rule by Coder-in-Chief. The technobro supremacy is making the decisions on spending, program content, staffing, everything, with no political control or supervision other than a rubber stamp from the golf course. And populist Magaworld is lapping it up.
So it is difficult to take these thoughtful anti-elitist critiques fully seriously. Magaworld was never about anti-elitism in reality, not surprisingly given its worship of a notoriously celebrity-conscious billionaire. Rule by technocratic elite is fine as long as your team is in charge. Politics in America today is like politics in the age of Justinian; it's about which color is ascendant. We are rooting for the laundry.
The is where, as a francophone, English feels limited by having only one word for « politics ». In French, la politique is party politics game. This is what you are describing Minsky. What the author seems to be describing (and where I broadly agree) is the lack of « le politique » - that is, what aims to be the political being, where, in democratic polities, the political being is supposed to be coterminous with a sense of action and possibility invested in each of us, in relation to the others. Its much less present in the media, because it's more abstract, more principled, and less dramatic, but it's -more or less- the sort of invisible and unsaid rules that live in the interstices of constitutions rules and norms and make them work.
In the US, political party games have swallowed everything, but the political has been under attack for a while - the sense that what you should have control over, that should be of concern to you, is increasingly narrow, and inconsequential. The rest is the purview of experts, bosses, academics, college-degree kids, economists - who all purport to say that what they describe is always the constraints of reality over the possibilities of individual action (if you are a liberal or libertarian) or collective (if you are a progressive or populist).
I totally agree.
I've mentioned it before but I'd see that argument as more in line with Macron's point on post-modernism which I think has truth to it: "we need to develop a kind of political heroism. I don't mean that I want to play the hero. But we need to be amenable once again to creating grand narratives."
In term of where now for the Democrats - I think that is an additional thing I'd add of trying to grasp again a sense of politics as articulating the possible. We are in volatile, changing times - so the sort of 90s style approach that was hugely successful at its time, I think is redundant. People have a sense that things are up in the air and we're not in a period of optimising an established, entrenched, unassailable model. I think Democrats (but other parties round the world to) could do with working out what they want the world to look like when the dust settles - as Macron put it a bit of political heroism in trying to re-kindle grand narratives (and, of course, if you want an example of how even doing that constraints can foil you - look no further than Macron).
La politique in the meaning described by Oex is sometimes called la politique politicienne (sic) in political discourse and in the press.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 03, 2025, 12:42:42 PMI totally agree.
I've mentioned it before but I'd see that argument as more in line with Macron's point on post-modernism which I think has truth to it: "we need to develop a kind of political heroism. I don't mean that I want to play the hero. But we need to be amenable once again to creating grand narratives."
In term of where now for the Democrats - I think that is an additional thing I'd add of trying to grasp again a sense of politics as articulating the possible. We are in volatile, changing times - so the sort of 90s style approach that was hugely successful at its time, I think is redundant. People have a sense that things are up in the air and we're not in a period of optimising an established, entrenched, unassailable model. I think Democrats (but other parties round the world to) could do with working out what they want the world to look like when the dust settles - as Macron put it a bit of political heroism in trying to re-kindle grand narratives (and, of course, if you want an example of how even doing that constraints can foil you - look no further than Macron).
Interesting.
And yeah, (most) people need something to believe in. One of the shortcomings of the centre and left of centre may be that they (we) have failed to articulate a sufficiently compelling something to believe in compared to the populist right.
We have spent 40 years emphasizing the sins of America. Is it any wonder that people aren't that interested in saving it?
Quote from: Razgovory on March 03, 2025, 03:17:57 PMWe have spent 40 years emphasizing the sins of America. Is it any wonder that people aren't that interested in saving it?
Yet the 'rah rah America' crowd are the ones destroying it. Kind of puts us in a bind on which direction to go doesn't it?
Anyway I think more to the point decades of protesting hasn't born much fruit. And I think people are hesitant to do anything drastic that could potentially make things worse. At least at this point.
The left in Britain gave up on class struggle;all that they offer the remains of the working class is hectoring from the pov of the progressive upper middle class. Reform is the beneficiary of course.
Quote from: Jacob on March 03, 2025, 03:01:10 PMInteresting.
And yeah, (most) people need something to believe in. One of the shortcomings of the centre and left of centre may be that they (we) have failed to articulate a sufficiently compelling something to believe in compared to the populist right.
I'm struck at how few people are even able to defend liberalism itself - so often it gets stuck in a defence of the status quo, small-c conservatism. It's defending the formal institutions of politics rather than its substance.
My most pessimistic take is that we're not capable of it any more. That we are post-moderns. The grand narratives are gone, we have internalised the critique and the deconstruction and can't put that back together again. In the same way as we can't just re-create the other bits of the mid-twentieth century, the mass party politics or a military-welfare Keynesian state. Again I think Macron is a striking example of someone who absolutely tried a bit of political heroism and grand narrative-mongering (especially around hisvision of "Europe") - we'll need to wait until 2027 for final judgement but at this point it looks like that project has failed.
In part, ironically, it was perhaps a triumph of liberalism - it's a revolutionary force at dissolving constraints and ties (including those of inherited ideology) to allow the individual to thrive. But now the barbarians are in the gates and the looters are here. I think Trump is a mob boss basically - and it makes you think of when communities turn to a mob boss. I think the protection racket works in a low trust, cynical environment but I don't know - "yes he's killed people, but he'll protect us because we're in on it/paying him off".
Even with the far and radical right in the developed West I can't help but feel there's a degree of pastiche about it.
But I realise I'm in danger of basically just re-writing a Houellebecq novel so need to stop :lol: :ph34r:
Quote from: Jacob on March 03, 2025, 03:01:10 PMInteresting.
And yeah, (most) people need something to believe in. One of the shortcomings of the centre and left of centre may be that they (we) have failed to articulate a sufficiently compelling something to believe in compared to the populist right.
The left of center in the US let the extremist dominate the discourse, but they never game them any real power, unlike the populist right. And that created frustration, because extremists, especially on the left, aren't content with slow, gradual change.
Talks of overthrowing democracy aren't anything new on the left. The right was just more numerous and able to do it before the left.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 03, 2025, 03:27:09 PMAgain I think Macron is a striking example of someone who absolutely tried a bit of political heroism and grand narrative-mongering (especially around hisvision of "Europe") - we'll need to wait until 2027 for final judgement but at this point it looks like that project has failed.
What constitutes a failed project in your view?
I feel like we're beginning to see a bit of a push back on this front. Some degrees of "liberal nationalism" perhaps. I feel like I'm seeing at least some signs of it in Canada - a rallying around the flag, progressives looking at joining the reserves, and the like. In Europe it feels like there's in increase in people embracing a European identity and the necessity of collaborating across national boundaries.
I don't know if it will be "enough", and to what degree it's a "project", but the current is there isn't it?
Quote from: viper37 on March 03, 2025, 03:59:46 PMThe left of center in the US let the extremist dominate the discourse, but they never game them any real power, unlike the populist right. And that created frustration, because extremists, especially on the left, aren't content with slow, gradual change.
Talks of overthrowing democracy aren't anything new on the left. The right was just more numerous and able to do it before the left.
What discourse do they dominate? Not a single major media outlet. We don't really have a version of 'The Guardian' over here.
Quote from: Jacob on March 03, 2025, 04:19:19 PMWhat constitutes a failed project in your view?
Domestically I think his entire pitch was that France was needed to be "unblocked". The old parties were failing and could not deliver the reforms and change needed - which was what created space for the extremes. So you needed a new alternative - which he suggested (with all the humility of a man giving his political party his initials :lol:) might be him. He would break through the deadlock which would banish the extremes. He did break the deadlock and there were significant changes.
But I think a lot now depends on 2027 - and there's a lot of time until then. But Le Pen is very possible. It's also not outside the realm of possibilities that you have a hard left v hard right run off. If your project was to break the political mold in order to secure the centre, then I think their eventual triumph (and the collateral damage of destroying the mainstream centre-right and centre-left) has to be a failure. If you look at what he set out to achieve it's hard to see Le Pen succeeding him as anything but a negation of it all.
Internationally I think it's more difficult - I think he's had grand ideas and a bad habit of sounding off. But there's a consistent vision there around Europe, whether in his Sorbonne speech or declaring the "braindeath" of NATO. I think the sad reality is he called Germany's bluff and they weren't actually interested. For years Germany had been suggesting that the key to deeper integration was like-minded, reformist partners particularly in France. They got one - he did pension reform, brought the budget under control (until covid), set out an ambitious vision for more Europe. Berlin's response was to note it.
QuoteI feel like we're beginning to see a bit of a push back on this front. Some degrees of "liberal nationalism" perhaps. I feel like I'm seeing at least some signs of it in Canada - a rallying around the flag, progressives looking at joining the reserves, and the like. In Europe it feels like there's in increase in people embracing a European identity and the necessity of collaborating across national boundaries.
I don't know if it will be "enough", and to what degree it's a "project", but the current is there isn't it?
Maybe and I think there probably is something. And there'll always be a reaction. I think what makes it a "project" is probably when you have a politician or a party articulating it so there's a route to doing it as a social level - something to turn it from a vibe into a fact. To be honest I sort of thought climate might be it - as a global, shared challenge. One of the reasons I like the idea of "Green New Deal" or similar was precisely its rhetorical/idea power to bind several things together.
With Europe I think embracing European identity and cross-border collaboration is a twin-edged sword (in that sense it's just like a bigger nationalism: powerful liberation but also potentially very dangerous). I think there's a lot of that going on in the far-right too, as Europeans with a common European heritage defending Europe against outsiders of various sorts.
I think a certain degree of nationalism is necessary and desirable. Sure it's a double-edged sword, but everything is. Leaving an effective sword in the hands of Putinists is more dangerous than handling it with care, IMO.
Quote from: Jacob on March 03, 2025, 05:02:03 PMI think a certain degree of nationalism is necessary and desirable. Sure it's a double-edged sword, but everything is. Leaving an effective sword in the hands of Putinists is more dangerous than handling it with care, IMO.
Yeah, there was this Spanish socialist, one of the fathers of the constitution, that said the same. Wish I could find the exact quote because he was very articulate, but essentially it was down to "we may not like it but the tribalist sentiment is there, and it's always going to be there. So we should acknowledge it and acommodate it, because others will use it against democracy".
Agreed - but my family's Irish :lol:
And more seriously I do think that nationalism has been the way society's repel or liberate themselves from imperialism. So I fully get why there's a bit of it in Canada right now - feel like the Quebecois were probably already ahead of everyone else on this.
Quote from: Valmy on March 03, 2025, 04:22:53 PMQuote from: viper37 on March 03, 2025, 03:59:46 PMThe left of center in the US let the extremist dominate the discourse, but they never game them any real power, unlike the populist right. And that created frustration, because extremists, especially on the left, aren't content with slow, gradual change.
Talks of overthrowing democracy aren't anything new on the left. The right was just more numerous and able to do it before the left.
What discourse do they dominate? Not a single major media outlet. We don't really have a version of 'The Guardian' over here.
In the past.
Project 1619, White privilege, Bernie bros, the Black Lives matter riots, all that stuff.
The Democrats gave the appearance of going way too far to the left, but never actually gave any power to the extremists - which is a good thing. But that created resentment inside the party, and still does. The Republicans caved in to their extremists, and in the end the Tea Party took over the Republicans.
I don't know how the Dems could/should have handled it.
Quote from: viper37 on March 03, 2025, 05:34:18 PMI don't know how the Dems could/should have handled it.
They defanged and co-opted all of those things.
Black Lives Matter got turned into a vague slogan.
Defund the police? Actually they means fund the police.
Though they never did that with Bernie Bros, though Democratic Party supporting media attacked them brutally. The term 'Bernie Bros' itself is a slur designed to discredit Bernie Sanders and his supporters.
Maga ad Trump are not "nationalist"; or at least it is in only the sense that Nazis were nationalist. When fighting the "enemy within" takes priority over external threats, that is a clue that the "nation" is just being used an Orwellian stand-in for the tribal subset of the national population that seeks dominance over, and potentially the destruction of, the others. That is why Trump will always side with Putin and other foreign powers he sympathizes with over the majority of Americans who oppose him. Better Putin than Harris.
Quote from: Oexmelin on March 03, 2025, 11:19:42 AMIn the US, political party games have swallowed everything, but the political has been under attack for a while - the sense that what you should have control over, that should be of concern to you, is increasingly narrow, and inconsequential. The rest is the purview of experts, bosses, academics, college-degree kids, economists - who all purport to say that what they describe is always the constraints of reality over the possibilities of individual action (if you are a liberal or libertarian) or collective (if you are a progressive or populist).
This is a common criticism, but I don't think it is solidly based. It ascribes a monolithic view to the "experts" that does not comport with reality, as you are probably in a better position to observe than I am. The reality is that the diversity of "expert" views is probably greater and broader than general views of society. Trump in his first terms experimented with tariffs, admittedly against the view of most professional economists, but with the support of a core group of academics. Similarly, on the Left, MMT theory got a hearing in the Biden administration. The idea that some restrictive professional and academic consensus is strangling political discourse is just not correct; it's closer to the truth to see that many "expert" ideas and innovations never get a hearing because they are too far from the accepted mainstream for politicians relentlessly chasing the median voter under the Amercian two party system.
Trump has flipped the script in that he is the first American politician since the emergence of the party system to pursue a minoritarian political strategy of mobilizing a minority base and exploiting a combination of the electoral college distortions and programmatic demoralization of opposition voters. He has shown that such a minoritarian strategy, when it succeeds, can smash through conventional political limitations because there is no need to secure majority support. The downside is such a method can sustain itself only by deepening authoritarian rule and suppressing dissent.
The Electoral Consequences of Ideological Persuasion: Evidence from a Within-Precinct Analysis of U.S. Elections
QuoteMost research on the electoral penalty of candidate ideology relies on betweendistrict or longitudinal comparisons, which are confounded by turnout and ballot composition effects. We employ a within-precinct design using granular precinct-level election data from the MIT Election Data and Science Lab (2016-2022) alongside comprehensive data on candidate ideology. By analyzing within-precinct variation in two-party vote shares for contests simultaneously appearing on the same ballot, we isolate the effect of ideology on vote choice among a fixed electorate. We estimate how voters respond to candidate ideology in terms of vote choice across diverse electoral contexts, holding turnout fixed. A standard deviation change in the midpoint between candidates results in an average vote share penalty of 0.6 percentage points. The effect varies with office type, information availability, incumbency status, and partisan geography. Overall, we find that gains associated with ideological moderation are relatively modest and likely secondary to turnout effects.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5172049
Btw, if you live in a blue state/blue district, this is the time to call to urge your representatives and senators to grow a fucking spine and stop trying to negotiate (poorly) for crumbs, as Republicans seek a blank check to fund the White House's agenda.
Can someone explain to me the potential gvt shutdown? I saw some senate democrats are wondering if they should vote for the republican house bill to avert a shutdown.
Isn't the senate 53 r 47 d or something? Why would Democrat votes be needed to fund the gvt?
QuoteEight Democrats are needed to back the year-long CR. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) is the lone member of the conference to indicate support for it.
If others don't follow, Republicans have made clear they will make this painful for the minority party.
"If Democrats choose to shut down the government, they're going to own it lock, stock and barrel," Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said.
You need 60 votes I guess.
Also it must be nice to be a republican politician. Even when you control all branches of government, nothing bad is ever your fault.
...unless they vote for cloture of debate, in which case only a simple majority is needed. Then Democrats could say they didn't vote for the CR, but still allow it to pass.
Quote from: Zoupa on March 12, 2025, 07:09:21 PMQuoteEight Democrats are needed to back the year-long CR. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) is the lone member of the conference to indicate support for it.
If others don't follow, Republicans have made clear they will make this painful for the minority party.
"If Democrats choose to shut down the government, they're going to own it lock, stock and barrel," Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said.
You need 60 votes I guess.
Also it must be nice to be a republican politician. Even when you control all branches of government, nothing bad is ever your fault.
Yeah? Well you can go fuck yourself lock, stock, and barrel Senator Barrasso.
The Democrats made it very clear what their conditions were to pass it and the House gave them zero of them.
The days of acting like the Republicans are acting in good faith and the Democrats should cooperate for the good of the country are over. This bill gives way too much power to the President, who has shown himself disastrously unfit to wield it. The Republicans must meet the Democrats conditions if they want Democratic votes. Period.
At least the fucking Democrats are giving conditions the Republicans can do. Fucking a lot more than those motherfuckers ever gave them who just vote shit down for no reason other than "not give the Democrats a win."
Quote from: Sophie Scholl on March 12, 2025, 07:41:38 PM...unless they vote for cloture of debate, in which case only a simple majority is needed. Then Democrats could say they didn't vote for the CR, but still allow it to pass.
The cloture vote is the very vote that needs 60 yeas to pass. Once cloture is granted the subsequent vote on adoption needs only be a majority vote.
Quote from: grumbler on March 12, 2025, 09:18:44 PMThe cloture vote is the very vote that needs 60 yeas to pass. Once cloture is granted the subsequent vote on adoption needs only be a majority vote.
Ah! Gotcha. Appreciate the clarification.
(https://i.imgur.com/QUMDvzo.jpeg)
Stop. With. The. Fucking. Bridge. Building.
I don't know why politicians the world over keep making that mistake over and over again. It never worked out. They are only giving a platform and legitimizing these fucktards.
Sounds like they've been legitimized plenty, with getting presidency and Congress and everything.
Not a reason to continue.
I think talking to the other side is a useful exercise for Democrats, if you do it with an open mind. Not to build a bridge to the person you're talking to, but to avoid burning a bridge with people who are not yet on the other side. Another benefit of talking to the people on the right is that you can't spend this time talking to the people on the far left, which for a Democrat is very healthy in its own right.
Quote from: dist on March 13, 2025, 03:39:58 AM(https://i.imgur.com/QUMDvzo.jpeg)
I thought he'd knew better. Especially with that fucking Nazi.
Quote from: DGuller on March 13, 2025, 08:13:16 AMI think talking to the other side is a useful exercise for Democrats, if you do it with an open mind. Not to build a bridge to the person you're talking to, but to avoid burning a bridge with people who are not yet on the other side. Another benefit of talking to the people on the right is that you can't spend this time talking to the people on the far left, which for a Democrat is very healthy in its own right.
Depends whom you're talking to.
There are conservatives, former Republicans who believe in democracy. People like the Lincoln Project.
Talk to this people, build bridges with these people, sure, go ahead. You share an interest.
Don't go an talk with people who make Nazi salute to build bridges.
From abroad it seems like the Democrats have just gone into hiatus and ended themselves. I am fairly sure it wasn't the loss of righteous citizen Robert F. Kennedy junior IV that did it.
Maybe we're not reporting it right.
Wait.
We are.
Fuck.
Its almost lile the democratic doners are rich and can weather the storm so there's no urgency on the politicians part... Oh wait.
Pity Lewinski spilt the seed. We might have seen a William Buttgump Horatio Grilliam JFK Clinton junior now.
Quote from: viper37 on March 13, 2025, 08:37:40 AMQuote from: DGuller on March 13, 2025, 08:13:16 AMI think talking to the other side is a useful exercise for Democrats, if you do it with an open mind. Not to build a bridge to the person you're talking to, but to avoid burning a bridge with people who are not yet on the other side. Another benefit of talking to the people on the right is that you can't spend this time talking to the people on the far left, which for a Democrat is very healthy in its own right.
Depends whom you're talking to.
There are conservatives, former Republicans who believe in democracy. People like the Lincoln Project.
Talk to this people, build bridges with these people, sure, go ahead. You share an interest.
Don't go an talk with people who make Nazi salute to build bridges.
Many people's descent into insanity started out with a gateway sane gripe. When you talk to such people, obviously you should ignore all the Fox News garbage that they let into their brains once they opened themselves up, but you should try to understand what alienated them from your own side in the first place. If you think that nothing could've alienated them, then you really, really should talk to such people.
Quote from: DGuller on March 13, 2025, 09:07:59 AMQuote from: viper37 on March 13, 2025, 08:37:40 AMQuote from: DGuller on March 13, 2025, 08:13:16 AMI think talking to the other side is a useful exercise for Democrats, if you do it with an open mind. Not to build a bridge to the person you're talking to, but to avoid burning a bridge with people who are not yet on the other side. Another benefit of talking to the people on the right is that you can't spend this time talking to the people on the far left, which for a Democrat is very healthy in its own right.
Depends whom you're talking to.
There are conservatives, former Republicans who believe in democracy. People like the Lincoln Project.
Talk to this people, build bridges with these people, sure, go ahead. You share an interest.
Don't go an talk with people who make Nazi salute to build bridges.
Many people's descent into insanity started out with a gateway sane gripe. When you talk to such people, obviously you should ignore all the Fox News garbage that they let into their brains once they opened themselves up, but you should try to understand what alienated them from your own side in the first place. If you think that nothing could've alienated them, then you really, really should talk to such people.
It's because he's a Nazi. He wants a white supremacy dictatorship and the Democrats do not. That's what alienated him from the Democrats.
Quote from: DGuller on March 13, 2025, 09:07:59 AMMany people's descent into insanity started out with a gateway sane gripe. When you talk to such people, obviously you should ignore all the Fox News garbage that they let into their brains once they opened themselves up, but you should try to understand what alienated them from your own side in the first place. If you think that nothing could've alienated them, then you really, really should talk to such people.
I have no problem talking to people on the other side. Debate them and really get into the issues, maybe you get their fans to reconsider some of the issues. And yeah maybe they have some points you haven't considered before.
But that wasn't was Newsome did, he basically praised Charlie Kirk to high heaven and made nice with him all the while Kirk is insulting him to his face. And Kirk is considerably more far right than Fox News. And Michael Savage? Steve Bannon? These are very fringe far right people. Granted more and more mainstream as the far right takes over the country. That doesn't do anything productive.
QuoteAnother benefit of talking to the people on the right is that you can't spend this time talking to the people on the far left, which for a Democrat is very healthy in its own right.
Yeah. Don't spend anytime trying to win over your core supporters. Don't bring on AOC or Bernie or any leftwing media people to try to convince them that the centrist Democratic way is correct. Don't try to unite the party or have a discussion with the people you need to vote for you. Just cancel them and ignore them. Kind of a hypocritical position Mr. no cancel culture.
Quote from: DGuller on March 13, 2025, 08:13:16 AMI think talking to the other side is a useful exercise for Democrats, if you do it with an open mind. Not to build a bridge to the person you're talking to, but to avoid burning a bridge with people who are not yet on the other side. Another benefit of talking to the people on the right is that you can't spend this time talking to the people on the far left, which for a Democrat is very healthy in its own right.
No, I think Oex is right. We need to go all in on extremism. I think our next thing is go with the "Land Back" campaign. Try to turn over all land in the United States to it's original owners, the native Americans. Take property from 99% of the population and give it too 2% of the population. That will really help turn out with the far-left.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 09:25:44 AMNo, I think Oex is right. We need to go all in on extremism. I think our next thing is go with the "Land Back" campaign. Try to turn over all land in the United States to it's original owners, the native Americans. Take property from 99% of the population and give it too 2% of the population. That will really help turn out with the far-left.
Nobody on the left is saying this. What a bunch of garbage.
Oh and having Kirk, Newsome, and Savage on IS going all in on extremism.
Quote from: viper37 on March 13, 2025, 08:37:40 AMQuote from: DGuller on March 13, 2025, 08:13:16 AMI think talking to the other side is a useful exercise for Democrats, if you do it with an open mind. Not to build a bridge to the person you're talking to, but to avoid burning a bridge with people who are not yet on the other side. Another benefit of talking to the people on the right is that you can't spend this time talking to the people on the far left, which for a Democrat is very healthy in its own right.
Depends whom you're talking to.
There are conservatives, former Republicans who believe in democracy. People like the Lincoln Project.
Talk to this people, build bridges with these people, sure, go ahead. You share an interest.
Don't go an talk with people who make Nazi salute to build bridges.
Hell, you can have extremists on your show. Just have them on to debate them and challenge them. Show that you are the leader of the Democrats with solid progressive values not afraid to really get into it. That would be impressive.
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 09:30:17 AMQuote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 09:25:44 AMNo, I think Oex is right. We need to go all in on extremism. I think our next thing is go with the "Land Back" campaign. Try to turn over all land in the United States to it's original owners, the native Americans. Take property from 99% of the population and give it too 2% of the population. That will really help turn out with the far-left.
Nobody on the left is saying this. What a bunch of garbage.
Oh and having Kirk, Newsome, and Savage on IS going all in on extremism.
Yeah, there are people on the Left interested in the "Land Back" campaign. Oex just posted something about how moderation doesn't work, it's about turn out.
Is Raz still claiming to be a Democrat?
Another one pulled from magas greatest hits there.
Lets ignore all the actual issues the dems could go left on and insist any look towards that direction has to mean some loopy culture wars shit about five people on the left care about and would be absolute gold for magas tactics.
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 09:30:17 AMQuote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 09:25:44 AMNo, I think Oex is right. We need to go all in on extremism. I think our next thing is go with the "Land Back" campaign. Try to turn over all land in the United States to it's original owners, the native Americans. Take property from 99% of the population and give it too 2% of the population. That will really help turn out with the far-left.
Nobody on the left is saying this. What a bunch of garbage.
That's not true. People are saying it. I've even seen it referenced in context to Quebec's independance.
"Only first nations people can decide what to do with the North American territory"
So fucking stupid from my side.
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 09:30:17 AMQuote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 09:25:44 AMNo, I think Oex is right. We need to go all in on extremism. I think our next thing is go with the "Land Back" campaign. Try to turn over all land in the United States to it's original owners, the native Americans. Take property from 99% of the population and give it too 2% of the population. That will really help turn out with the far-left.
Nobody on the left is saying this. What a bunch of garbage.
It's a real thing, but it's a pretty tiny movement that is really only popular with Indians who stand to gain and the sort of blue-haired white-guilt liberal who tops out as a city councilor at best. It's not a serious political movement. Imagine where that whole 'free city' libertarian nonsense would be if the techbros weren't pumping cash into it, and that's pretty much the same energy.
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 13, 2025, 09:37:43 AMQuote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 09:30:17 AMQuote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 09:25:44 AMNo, I think Oex is right. We need to go all in on extremism. I think our next thing is go with the "Land Back" campaign. Try to turn over all land in the United States to it's original owners, the native Americans. Take property from 99% of the population and give it too 2% of the population. That will really help turn out with the far-left.
Nobody on the left is saying this. What a bunch of garbage.
That's not true. People are saying it. I've even seen it referenced in context to Quebec's independance.
"Only first nations people can decide what to do with the North American territory"
So fucking stupid from my side.
Yeah, that was Raz who said it to goad Viper :P
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 13, 2025, 09:37:43 AMQuote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 09:30:17 AMQuote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 09:25:44 AMNo, I think Oex is right. We need to go all in on extremism. I think our next thing is go with the "Land Back" campaign. Try to turn over all land in the United States to it's original owners, the native Americans. Take property from 99% of the population and give it too 2% of the population. That will really help turn out with the far-left.
Nobody on the left is saying this. What a bunch of garbage.
That's not true. People are saying it. I've even seen it referenced in context to Quebec's independance.
"Only first nations people can decide what to do with the North American territory"
So fucking stupid from my side.
Isn't that a real and very specific quebec independence issue though? That in case of independence the Cree want to remain in Canada and the whole legal setup there means they have a case?
Quite a different thing to the loony hippy turtle island nosense Raz likes to go on about and pretend is a mainstream view (and I've only ever heard from him)
Quote from: Josquius on March 13, 2025, 09:56:08 AMQuote from: Grey Fox on March 13, 2025, 09:37:43 AMQuote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 09:30:17 AMQuote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 09:25:44 AMNo, I think Oex is right. We need to go all in on extremism. I think our next thing is go with the "Land Back" campaign. Try to turn over all land in the United States to it's original owners, the native Americans. Take property from 99% of the population and give it too 2% of the population. That will really help turn out with the far-left.
Nobody on the left is saying this. What a bunch of garbage.
That's not true. People are saying it. I've even seen it referenced in context to Quebec's independance.
"Only first nations people can decide what to do with the North American territory"
So fucking stupid from my side.
Isn't that a real and very specific quebec independence issue though? That in case of independence the Cree want to remain in Canada and the whole legal setup there means they have a case?
Quite a different thing to the loony hippy turtle island nosense Raz likes to go on about and pretend is a mainstream view (and I've only ever heard from him)
That's a different issue tho. The Cree nations have lands that they control and resolving how independance would work for them needs to be resolved.
What the crazy Land back left wants is that only persons of First Nations status get to have a voice in how Quebec territory is handled. Ignoring everyone else that lives here in the past 400+ years.
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 13, 2025, 09:37:43 AMThat's not true. People are saying it. I've even seen it referenced in context to Quebec's independance.
"Only first nations people can decide what to do with the North American territory"
So fucking stupid from my side.
Ok fair enough. Nobody who is a prominent leftwing podcaster out there is making this a serious issue. I am not talking about getting some fringe twitter person. I am talking about voices with huge audiences.
Quote from: Josquius on March 13, 2025, 09:56:08 AMQuite a different thing to the loony hippy turtle island nosense Raz likes to go on about and pretend is a mainstream view (and I've only ever heard from him)
The native Americans only very rarely come up in leftwing discussions in the United States. And the majority of Native Americans vote Republican anyway.
Quote from: Josquius on March 13, 2025, 09:33:20 AMIs Raz still claiming to be a Democrat?
Another one pulled from magas greatest hits there.
Lets ignore all the actual issues the dems could go left on and insist any look towards that direction has to mean some loopy culture wars shit about five people on the left care about and would be absolute gold for magas tactics.
30 years ago, you could have said the same thing about Trans issues. Nobody cares. But now they do. I think if we work to normalize this, work to cancel anyone who disagrees, we can put this plank on the party platform. If that doesn't tickle your pickle, we could go all in on reparations. Spend 14 trillion on giving every Black American 800,000 bucks. That is a surefire way to win an election.
Yes, by all means, let's both-side this thing. We all know how the power of the American State pales in comparison with what that one fringe leftist you once read on reddit can muster.
Hey, you're the one who dunks on moderates.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 10:37:53 AM30 years ago, you could have said the same thing about Trans issues. Nobody cares. But now they do. I think if we work to normalize this, work to cancel anyone who disagrees, we can put this plank on the party platform. If that doesn't tickle your pickle, we could go all in on reparations. Spend 14 trillion on giving every Black American 800,000 bucks. That is a surefire way to win an election.
We have always cared about that. Did you not notice it was LGBT, the T there? Were you under some kind of impression that trans people just didn't exist, and had no support, before the right wing started panic mongering about it?
Just before everybody agreed to just kind of leave them alone. I worked in a call center 30 years ago and they had separate bathrooms for all the trans people working there. The 1990s were woker than you remember.
Don't fall for all this right wing panic mongering. Once they lost the gay marriage debate they shifted to panic mongering over trans people so they could shift the country right so they could eventually undo the gay marriage thing.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 10:46:56 AMHey, you're the one who dunks on moderates.
All five of them.
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 10:49:25 AMQuote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 10:37:53 AM30 years ago, you could have said the same thing about Trans issues. Nobody cares. But now they do. I think if we work to normalize this, work to cancel anyone who disagrees, we can put this plank on the party platform. If that doesn't tickle your pickle, we could go all in on reparations. Spend 14 trillion on giving every Black American 800,000 bucks. That is a surefire way to win an election.
We have always cared about that. Did you not notice it was LGBT, the T there? Were you under some kind of impression that trans people just didn't exist, and had no support, before the right wing started panic mongering about it?
Just before everybody agreed to just kind of leave them alone. I worked in a call center 30 years ago and they had separate bathrooms for all the trans people working there. The 1990s were woker than you remember.
Don't fall for all this right wing panic mongering. Once they lost the gay marriage debate they shifted to panic mongering over trans people so they could shift the country right so they could eventually undo the gay marriage thing.
I had never even seen a Trans person until like 2014, now they are fairly common. Nobody told me I could choose me gender when I was a kid. You're going to tell me things haven't changed since then?
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 10:50:47 AMQuote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 10:46:56 AMHey, you're the one who dunks on moderates.
All five of them.
I suspect that there are more than that. I suspect there are quite a few Democrats who aren't really that left-wing. But no, let's go all in on radicalism. Let's do the reparations thing.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 10:56:57 AMQuote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 10:49:25 AMQuote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 10:37:53 AM30 years ago, you could have said the same thing about Trans issues. Nobody cares. But now they do. I think if we work to normalize this, work to cancel anyone who disagrees, we can put this plank on the party platform. If that doesn't tickle your pickle, we could go all in on reparations. Spend 14 trillion on giving every Black American 800,000 bucks. That is a surefire way to win an election.
We have always cared about that. Did you not notice it was LGBT, the T there? Were you under some kind of impression that trans people just didn't exist, and had no support, before the right wing started panic mongering about it?
Just before everybody agreed to just kind of leave them alone. I worked in a call center 30 years ago and they had separate bathrooms for all the trans people working there. The 1990s were woker than you remember.
Don't fall for all this right wing panic mongering. Once they lost the gay marriage debate they shifted to panic mongering over trans people so they could shift the country right so they could eventually undo the gay marriage thing.
I had never even seen a Trans person until like 2014, now they are fairly common. Nobody told me I could choose me gender when I was a kid. You're going to tell me things haven't changed since then?
My neighbour was a trans lady back in the late 80's. I'll admit I was confused as a kid.
And trans people have been part of the fight for equality since forever in the us. Look up the riots in New York.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 10:56:57 AMI had never even seen a Trans person until like 2014, now they are fairly common. Nobody told me I could choose me gender when I was a kid. You're going to tell me things haven't changed since then?
What I was told as a kid was that some people are just born in the wrong bodies. We wouldn't say it exactly that way today, but it is kind of the same concept. And yeah I saw trans people all over the place as a kid, but I grew up in a city.
The big difference today and way back in the ancient times of the 1900s is that we have concepts like gender fluid and non-binary. That wasn't around, at least not as explicitly.
But also back then people weren't super weird about it. trans women used the bathroom and nobody seemed to care. At least not where I lived. In fact it was almost kind of a joke, today we take it a little too seriously but probably understandable in the context of all the trans panic going around. When Texas is passing anti-trans laws making it a crime to not out yourself as trans things become less funny.
Quote from: DGuller on March 13, 2025, 09:07:59 AMQuote from: viper37 on March 13, 2025, 08:37:40 AMQuote from: DGuller on March 13, 2025, 08:13:16 AMI think talking to the other side is a useful exercise for Democrats, if you do it with an open mind. Not to build a bridge to the person you're talking to, but to avoid burning a bridge with people who are not yet on the other side. Another benefit of talking to the people on the right is that you can't spend this time talking to the people on the far left, which for a Democrat is very healthy in its own right.
Depends whom you're talking to.
There are conservatives, former Republicans who believe in democracy. People like the Lincoln Project.
Talk to this people, build bridges with these people, sure, go ahead. You share an interest.
Don't go an talk with people who make Nazi salute to build bridges.
Many people's descent into insanity started out with a gateway sane gripe. When you talk to such people, obviously you should ignore all the Fox News garbage that they let into their brains once they opened themselves up, but you should try to understand what alienated them from your own side in the first place. If you think that nothing could've alienated them, then you really, really should talk to such people.
The year is 1930.
Would it be a good idea for mainstream politicians to engage in public debates with NSDAP politiicians and close advisors on the radio in a friendly manner?
There's a difference in debating with some people about their views on piblic governance and debating with someone who wants to destroy democracy.
Would you organize a tv show with or a podcast with Zelensky and Vladimir Putin to discuss their views?
I'm just saying there are limits.
As much as I'm concerned, the Republicans have sold themselvesz and it's not a matter of ideology.
It's pointless for Dems to reach across the aisle.
Discussing with so called RINO, unlike what Oex may believe (?) and some people on the far left certainly don't like, that, I don't mind the left doing.
It's not abnormal in Quebec to see Federalist Liberals and Seperatists PQ voting together on many issues. it's abnormal for MNAs, or political advisors, to develop certain friendship/respect over the years.
Not everyone is an enemy because he has different beliefs. But some views are simply too extreme. When you stop believing in democracy and good governance and you're there just to line your pockets, I wouldn't bother.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 10:56:57 AMI had never even seen a Trans person until like 2014,
They didn't show Dog Day Afternoon in Missouri?
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 10:59:25 AMQuote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 10:50:47 AMQuote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 10:46:56 AMHey, you're the one who dunks on moderates.
All five of them.
I suspect that there are more than that. I suspect there are quite a few Democrats who aren't really that left-wing. But no, let's go all in on radicalism. Let's do the reparations thing.
Well it is part of the overton window shifting around. If being moderate means let's cooperate with Trump, that's just being right wing.
Reparations are a noble idea, but ultimately I think would fail. The system as it currently exists is still incredibly racist, just look at all the anti-DEI panic and the rising general acceptance of race-realism in right wing circles. If anything doing a reparations program would likely only make the situation worse. Granted it never occurred to to for it to be something like $800,000 but the practical considerations always seemed like something so far from political reality I never considered it. I mean how would that even work? You can't just give every black person money right? What about white people who are descended from black slaves?
But I don't think being a leftist just means going all in identity issues. You can also want higher minimum wage or universal health care or something.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 09:32:55 AMYeah, there are people on the Left interested in the "Land Back" campaign. Oex just posted something about how moderation doesn't work, it's about turn out.
It is all about turn-out. Harris '24 got 6 million less votes than Biden '20.
Do you think Newsom '28 is gonna turn out the D vote by talking to Charlie Kirk? :lol:
Quote from: viper37 on March 13, 2025, 11:06:10 AMDiscussing with so called RINO, unlike what Oex may believe (?) and some people on the far left certainly don't like, that, I don't mind the left doing.
I am all for talking to anybody. Just don't compromise your principles in doing so. If Donald Trump wants to come and talk to you, talk to him but let him know exactly why he is wrong and how he is destroying the country. And absolutely have discussions with never-Trump Conservatives.
Again...all five of them.
I haven't heard reparations mentioned in years. I haven't heard anyone talking about defunding the police in years, except for the current Deputy Director of the FBI, who proposed defunding the FBI.
Why are we even talking about this? It's like German liberals in 1933 spending all their time worrying about balancing the budget.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 13, 2025, 11:17:02 AMI haven't heard reparations mentioned in years.
It seems like I heard it brought up very early on in the 2020 Democratic Primaries. That is the last time I have heard anything about it.
Quote from: Zoupa on March 13, 2025, 11:12:18 AMQuote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 09:32:55 AMYeah, there are people on the Left interested in the "Land Back" campaign. Oex just posted something about how moderation doesn't work, it's about turn out.
It is all about turn-out. Harris '24 got 6 million less votes than Biden '20.
Do you think Newsom '28 is gonna turn out the D vote by talking to Charlie Kirk? :lol:
I think "it's all about turnout" explanation is horribly flawed in many ways, but let's take it on the face value. What you're saying is that in order for Democrats to turn out, they have to nominate the least "progressive" option?
Quote from: DGuller on March 13, 2025, 11:19:32 AMI think "it's all about turnout" explanation is horribly flawed in many ways, but let's take it on the face value. What you're saying is that in order for Democrats to turn out, they have to nominate the least "progressive" option?
I think they should be mobilizing and promoting leftwing media to get those media outlets and their fans to back them instead of sidelining them and praising right wing reactionary ones.
When you have TYT and other outlets with millions of viewers eventually give up on the Democrats that is not helping turnout and support.
Charlie Kirk is not going to do anything but rip Newsom to shreds if he ever runs for President. He is not going to care that Gavin once had him on his show.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 13, 2025, 11:17:02 AMI haven't heard reparations mentioned in years. I haven't heard anyone talking about defunding the police in years, except for the current Deputy Director of the FBI, who proposed defunding the FBI.
Why are we even talking about this? It's like German liberals in 1933 spending all their time worrying about balancing the budget.
Because apparently the key to winning is not to appeal to a broad swath of the electorate, but to get turn out from the base. We need to listen to the youth and the activists! From what I've seen the activists are really big on decolonization and fighting white supremacy. So Landback and Reparations.
The extreme right wing has been winning because they're all in on the propaganda game. It'd be nice if the left wing caught up a bit here. Though, it'll be hard as there's a lot of lost ground to make up for.
Actually the last time I heard the Democrats talk about gun control was also early on in the 2020 Democratic Primaries, when Beto was talking about how he was coming for everybody's Assault Rifles.
In 2024 we had Walz and Harris talking about how they were gun owners and loved their guns.
Lots of former mainstream Democratic issues have been brushed aside this decade. Without much in the way of positive results I might add.
Quote from: Jacob on March 13, 2025, 11:39:22 AMThe extreme right wing has been winning because they're all in on the propaganda game. It'd be nice if the left wing caught up a bit here. Though, it'll be hard as there's a lot of lost ground to make up for.
We actually have a pretty robust propaganda network, but it is all grass roots. The Democratic Party works very hard to ignore and distance themselves from it. They don't want to appear leftwing.
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 11:41:09 AMWe actually have a pretty robust propaganda network, but it is all grass roots. The Democratic Party works very hard to ignore and distance themselves from it. They don't want to appear leftwing.
That's good to hear.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 11:34:04 AMQuote from: The Minsky Moment on March 13, 2025, 11:17:02 AMI haven't heard reparations mentioned in years. I haven't heard anyone talking about defunding the police in years, except for the current Deputy Director of the FBI, who proposed defunding the FBI.
Why are we even talking about this? It's like German liberals in 1933 spending all their time worrying about balancing the budget.
Because apparently the key to winning is not to appeal to a broad swath of the electorate, but to get turn out from the base. We need to listen to the youth and the activists! From what I've seen the activists are really big on decolonization and fighting white supremacy. So Landback and Reparations.
You must be blind. And even to the extent the youth and activists care about those things, they also care about lots of other things.
But I am very cynical about those issues. I don't think those are grassroots issues. The reason they are so prominent in Democratic circles is because the corporate donors are fine with them. Target is happy to have a gay pride parade, but don't you dare do anything to increase the wages of their workers or the taxes they have to pay.
Quote from: Jacob on March 13, 2025, 11:42:05 AMQuote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 11:41:09 AMWe actually have a pretty robust propaganda network, but it is all grass roots. The Democratic Party works very hard to ignore and distance themselves from it. They don't want to appear leftwing.
That's good to hear.
Well it's the good news and the bad news.
Joe Rogan is well known and Republican politicians and supporters will go on his show. But the Medias Touch Podcast is currently getting more listens on Spotify. But do any Democrats go on their show? Do they amplify it and work to make it a big deal? Does Democratic friendly mainstream media cover them? Nope.
So having a big show with tons of views doesn't really matter if the Democrats won't use it.
The Democrats have so many issues at their disposition that they could rally their troops around at the moment. They should harness the current energy and anger, and then use it to mobilize people. There is no need to play nice with the other side and invite it for a civil debate.
Walz's idea of going to do town halls in Republican counties since the GOP is refusing to do it is much more pertinent than Newsom's podcastings.
Quote from: DGuller on March 13, 2025, 11:19:32 AMQuote from: Zoupa on March 13, 2025, 11:12:18 AMQuote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 09:32:55 AMYeah, there are people on the Left interested in the "Land Back" campaign. Oex just posted something about how moderation doesn't work, it's about turn out.
It is all about turn-out. Harris '24 got 6 million less votes than Biden '20.
Do you think Newsom '28 is gonna turn out the D vote by talking to Charlie Kirk? :lol:
I think "it's all about turnout" explanation is horribly flawed in many ways, but let's take it on the face value. What you're saying is that in order for Democrats to turn out, they have to nominate the least "progressive" option?
I don't understand what you're saying. Is/was Harris running on a more progressive platform than Biden? If so I missed that part.
Platform don't matter anyways. You need "vibes" in this day and age. Rizz. I'm pretty sure AOC would have done better than Harris. Bernie would have done better than Clinton. The general public is busy, uninterested and politically dumb. That goes for all democracies, increasingly, but especially the US.
You need simple messaging, true or not, and you need vibes. Obama '08 hope & change posters.
The problem with progressive social issues is that the vast majority of people don't care. And unfortunately a plurality of those that do care are like Raz and are against it. So you're not winning votes, if anything you're losing them. Hello, how much of a majority did the dems get in woman voters? Barely above half? And that's with reproductive rights on the line. And while not all dems were out there hawking progressive social issues, enough were that the GOP could twist it. Things like we had that sTory someone posted here not long ago about the fiasco of the democratic caucus* identity politics shit. It doesn't matter they have no power, it's the optics.
You want votes, go economics. Hardcore MAGA like him because he's a xenophobic nazi, but the rest of the votes were from idiots believing the lies about cheap eggs and a better life. And if the dems can't (or won't) do anything economically progressive then at least learn to lie as well as the cons. Then once you have the votes and the power you can champion whatever pet project you want. Want sex changes for all? Apparently you can make an executive order for it because checks and balances don't actually exist. You just need to win. They've got the donkey ass backwards with the cart facing the wrong way.
*edit* *That's not the right term, but I can't remember the right one? DNC?
Quote from: dist on March 13, 2025, 11:47:32 AMWalz's idea of going to do town halls in Republican counties since the GOP is refusing to do it is much more pertinent than Newsom's podcastings.
This! Look, I would qualify as an unhinged extremist Leftist to a lot of you folks here, but that doesn't mean I don't think there is value in some outreach to folks I disagree or strongly disagree with. If someone is open enough to attend a Town Hall held by a Democrat in a Republican district, they aren't full-on Trump folks. I *do* think it is a wasted effort at present to appeal to the far Right and dedicated MAGA folks, though. They aren't reachable from everything I've seen and heard, including people in my own family. Once again, Democrats are treating MAGA as a political movement and party when it is very much not at this point. It is an entire way of life. It cannot be reached using traditional methods and only enables and legitimizes it by doing so. Legitimate compromise requires both parties to be willing to give and take and to meet in the roughly the middle. MAGA has zero interest in compromise, only in conquest.
Quote from: Zoupa on March 13, 2025, 11:50:21 AMI don't understand what you're saying. Is/was Harris running on a more progressive platform than Biden? If so I missed that part.
I think his was in theory much less progressive. Biden was promising big things, and delivered on them to an extent though considerably less than he promised. But saying you are going to do something on the campaign trail and actually getting the political capital to do them are two different things. Harris was sort of...non committal on specifics except to just generally stay the course. So obviously much less progressive on the issues.
But just running for President and being non-white and female made her run appear more progressive than old uncle Joe.
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 11:45:47 AMQuote from: Jacob on March 13, 2025, 11:42:05 AMQuote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 11:41:09 AMWe actually have a pretty robust propaganda network, but it is all grass roots. The Democratic Party works very hard to ignore and distance themselves from it. They don't want to appear leftwing.
That's good to hear.
Well it's the good news and the bad news.
Joe Rogan is well known and Republican politicians and supporters will go on his show. But the Medias Touch Podcast is currently getting more listens on Spotify. But do any Democrats go on their show? Do they amplify it and work to make it a big deal? Does Democratic friendly mainstream media cover them? Nope.
So having a big show with tons of views doesn't really matter if the Democrats won't use it.
MeidasTouched has been going hard the past few weeks. also on youtube
edit: fixed spelling. (fine motorskills are still not fully back)
Quote from: dist on March 13, 2025, 11:47:32 AMThe Democrats have so many issues at their disposition that they could rally their troops around at the moment. They should harness the current energy and anger, and then use it to mobilize people. There is no need to play nice with the other side and invite it for a civil debate.
Walz's idea of going to do town halls in Republican counties since the GOP is refusing to do it is much more pertinent than Newsom's podcastings.
Bernie Sanders is getting huge crowds in purple areas right now doing exactly that.
And if Hakeem Jeffries and company want to know what I want them to do, it is exactly this. Hit the road. Hit the podcast circuit. Hit the mainstream media circuit. Deliver the Democratic message to the people, what they promise to do. Remind everybody what Trump has done, is doing, and promises to do that will hurt them and the country.
That is what I want you to do Democrats.
That and vote for absolutely nothing the Republicans want unless you first extract some concessions.
Tired watching some meidastouch. Don't like the delivery. Maybe to hyperbolic? Liberal fox news style I guess. Not sure, but can't hold my attention.
I do like the British presenter more. I do love the British accent (here's looking at you sheilbh ;) :wub:), but still can't get into it. He was the sports guy on TYT I think, too.
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 12:00:40 PMBernie Sanders is getting huge crowds in purple areas right now doing exactly that.
And if Hakeem Jeffries and company want to know what I want them to do, it is exactly this. Hit the road. Hit the podcast circuit. Hit the mainstream media circuit. Deliver the Democratic message to the people, what they promise to do. Remind everybody what Trump has done, is doing, and promises to do that will hurt them and the country.
That is what I want you to do Democrats.
That and vote for absolutely nothing the Republicans want unless you first extract some concessions.
That's absolutely what they should be doing. And it seems amazing that they aren't. Or aren't doing it more.
Quote from: dist on March 13, 2025, 12:26:14 PMThat's absolutely what they should be doing. And it seems amazing that they aren't. Or aren't doing it more.
Yeah. It is just common sense politics. I am not demanding anything unrealistic, just doing politics.
But they are not doing it. It is either gross incompetence or...I don't know. But in any case I think Jeffries and Schumer need to be replaced as leaders by people who are willing to, you know, do politics.
I mean, Jeffries and Schumer are doing politics, just not good politics or politics that actually benefit their constituents, the country, or the world. They're still playing and preaching the value of Pong in a world that plays and needs Fortnite concepts.
Schumer at least has the excuse of being old. I don't know what Jeffries' deal is. He is generation X.
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 12:39:19 PMSchumer at least has the excuse of being old. I don't know what Jeffries' deal is. He is generation X.
Wow, he's 54. While not that old, he looks younger. I guess they really don't crack.
My personal crackpot theory is that they're not out there because they have nothing to say. Their patrons are making money off this shit same as the conservatives. Rich always come out better after a recession.
Quote from: HVC on March 13, 2025, 12:42:45 PMMy personal crackpot theory is that they're not out there because they have nothing to say.
Yeah needless to say I have all kinds of sinister conspiracy reasons why they are doing what they are doing :lol: :blush:
Quote from: HVC on March 13, 2025, 12:42:45 PMQuote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 12:39:19 PMSchumer at least has the excuse of being old. I don't know what Jeffries' deal is. He is generation X.
Wow, he's 54. While not that old, he looks younger. I guess they really don't crack.
My personal crackpot theory is that they're not out there because they have nothing to say. Their patrons are making money off this shit same as the conservatives. Rich always come out better after a recession.
We have a winner...
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 09:30:17 AMQuote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 09:25:44 AMNo, I think Oex is right. We need to go all in on extremism. I think our next thing is go with the "Land Back" campaign. Try to turn over all land in the United States to it's original owners, the native Americans. Take property from 99% of the population and give it too 2% of the population. That will really help turn out with the far-left.
Nobody on the left is saying this. What a bunch of garbage.
(snip)
The goal of the Land Back movement (which is global, not North American) according to those who espouse it, is to force governments to honor their treaties with the natives. That would require the return of relatively small amounts of land or compensation for its loss. Seeking to enforce treaty (property) rights does not strike me as an extreme leftwing proposition, nor does it seem to justify embracing a Big Lie with the enthusiasm Raz has for it.
Is there even a "left" left? No pun intended. During my 50 plus years on this planet, politics have definitely moved right with the Washington consensus and the end of the Cold War. The left is not the left, it is a disunited bunch of intellectuals assuming to be some sort of Leninist cadre or popular movements popping up and disintegrating quickly and Quixotically.
The right has become centrist and the fringe has become the right. There is nothing conservative about Trump and the GOP now, it is radical and destructive.
So what are the Democrats now? From my point of view, there is very little left of enthusiastic support for, well, anyone. No leaders emerging. Newsom is possible, but seems a bit of a cunt, really. Sanders is the same age as Lenin and Hitler, Biden is a robot, Harris lost an election, and Walz, well, he is Walz.
Quote from: Norgy on March 13, 2025, 02:13:06 PMSo what are the Democrats now? From my point of view, there is very little left of enthusiastic support for, well, anyone. No leaders emerging. Newsom is possible, but seems a bit of a cunt, really. Sanders is the same age as Lenin and Hitler, Biden is a robot, Harris lost an election, and Walz, well, he is Walz.
They are in a transition period. Which is why it is so important they get out there and do politics. New leaders will emerge organically. Even in their current zombiefied state, the Republicans are just barely beating them.
When you are just sitting around, hard for leadership to take place.
Mondale 2028!
Quote from: Norgy on March 13, 2025, 02:22:08 PMMondale 2028!
Mondale would cruise to victory these days.
What's Chelsea up to?
Quote from: HVC on March 13, 2025, 02:25:13 PMWhat's Chelsea up to?
What? Oh no.
We need to change the name of the Democratic Party to the Ancient Secret Order of No Clintons.
Quote from: grumbler on March 13, 2025, 01:53:19 PMThe goal of the Land Back movement (which is global, not North American) according to those who espouse it, is to force governments to honor their treaties with the natives. That would require the return of relatively small amounts of land or compensation for its loss.
Based on that description, the most prominent individual in American politics espousing that view is Justice Gorsuch, who authored the opinion on McGirt v. Oklahoma holding that much of the State of Oklahoma remains Indian Country.
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 02:26:05 PMQuote from: HVC on March 13, 2025, 02:25:13 PMWhat's Chelsea up to?
What? Oh no.
We need to change the name of the Democratic Party to the Ancient Secret Order of No Clintons.
Aren't they still movers and shakers? Might as well put them up front and get it over with :D
Quote from: HVC on March 13, 2025, 02:28:19 PMAren't they still movers and shakers? Might as well put them up front and get it over with :D
If they are, they are definitely an éminence grise because you don't hear from them much.
Hell even Obama seems to rarely show up. I have no idea why he isn't used more.
Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 02:32:51 PMQuote from: HVC on March 13, 2025, 02:28:19 PMAren't they still movers and shakers? Might as well put them up front and get it over with :D
If they are, they are definitely an éminence grise because you don't hear from them much.
Hell even Obama seems to rarely show up. I have no idea why he isn't used more.
If tabloids are to be believed he's too busy trying to save his marriage.
Online noise about the need to call Senate Democrats to vote No on the cloture.
Quote from: Rebecca SolnitI had to look up cloture, but AOC says we should be against it or rather urging our senators to take a stand against it re the budget bill stuff. There's a running tally in Talking Points Memo, and this graph of where your senator stands (California, we need to yell at Schiff and Padilla; PA, you need to get Fetterman a brain transplant or something). Indivisible, unsurprisingly, breaks it down really well as follows, and I've posted their link, where you can tell your senator to vote no on cloture.
Indivisible: The government shuts down on March 14 unless Congress passes a new spending bill.
Senate Republicans need Democratic votes to pass anything, but instead of negotiating in good faith, they're pushing for an MAGA continuing resolution (CR) that makes extreme cuts that will jeopardize Social Security, leave tens of thousands of families without homes or food, and slashes benefits to veterans.
To be clear, this isn't a "clean" continuing resolution that would keep the government open while they negotiate, it's a slush fund that gives Trump and Elon Musk even more power over federal spending. Instead of trying to rein in the Trump and Musk power grab, this CR legitimizes it.
Almost every House Democrat stood united and voted NO on this CR. Now it's time for Senate Dems to take a stand and oppose this outrageous bill.
They must use their leverage, hold the line, and insist on a clean, short-term CR that keeps the government open without giving Trump and Musk a blank check.
If Democrats are unified in support of a short-term CR and Republicans choose to shut down the government rather than agree to their reasonable demands, Republicans will own the shutdown. Then, we can use the March recess to hold those Republicans accountable and make their time in-district as painful as possible, so that they're forced to negotiate a funding bill that includes ironclad safeguards to rein in Trump and Musk and protects essential programs.
But we need Democrats to stay strong and not flinch. They must vote NO on cloture, which ends debate and allows for a simple-majority vote on final passage of the bill, until they have guaranteed they have enough votes to actually win a clean 30 day CR.
Fill out this form now, and we'll connect you to your senator. Tell them they must use their leverage in the funding fight and vote NO on cloture for this CR unless they have a clear path to passing a clean short-term bill instead. Let them know you expect them to reject the Republican CR at every stage, even if Republicans won't play ball on a clean bill.
https://indivisible.org/resource/call-now-tell-senate-democrats-hold-line-against-extreme-maga-continuing-resolution?source=bluesky&fbclid=IwY2xjawJAIi5leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHfkTqqPaZnNYZeutpHuuFkP9-i-Fk2PVe8nBQEVJmqGh-wUeHQg3FPT1qw_aem_brLspcdvx7NSy4TJL4kSFQ
Quote from: grumbler on March 13, 2025, 01:53:19 PMQuote from: Valmy on March 13, 2025, 09:30:17 AMQuote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 09:25:44 AMNo, I think Oex is right. We need to go all in on extremism. I think our next thing is go with the "Land Back" campaign. Try to turn over all land in the United States to it's original owners, the native Americans. Take property from 99% of the population and give it too 2% of the population. That will really help turn out with the far-left.
Nobody on the left is saying this. What a bunch of garbage.
(snip)
The goal of the Land Back movement (which is global, not North American) according to those who espouse it, is to force governments to honor their treaties with the natives. That would require the return of relatively small amounts of land or compensation for its loss. Seeking to enforce treaty (property) rights does not strike me as an extreme leftwing proposition, nor does it seem to justify embracing a Big Lie with the enthusiasm Raz has for it.
Big Lie? I don't know what you are talking about.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 13, 2025, 05:28:51 PMBig Lie? I don't know what you are talking about.
I'm not surprised. You don't know what
you are talking about, either.
Um, okay. So you're just full of nonsense today.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
Quote from: Jacob on March 13, 2025, 10:19:54 PMhttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
Yeah I know, I'm pretty sure he's not talking about the treaty of Versailles.
In my experience, it is easier for other people to understand what you're trying to say when you're actually trying to say it.
Quote from: DGuller on March 13, 2025, 10:37:45 PMIn my experience, it is easier for other people to understand what you're trying to say when you're actually trying to say it.
What are you trying to say here? I don't want to presume...
I'm reading that Pelosi published a public statement asking Senate Democrats to reject the House funding bill, thus going against Schumer.
Too late, it's over. Apart from Schumer, the Democrats who voted to advance the measure included Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), and Angus King (Maine).
If MAGA is a death cult, those ten are a suicide pact.
I guess the Republicans are not only one that are going to have to avoid doing town halls in their circumscriptions.
Quote from: Zoupa on March 14, 2025, 04:33:27 PMToo late, it's over. Apart from Schumer, the Democrats who voted to advance the measure included Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), and Angus King (Maine).
It's always just enough traitors to ruin the party's agenda and no more. Odd that. Makes you wonder who else would have been willing to vote yes if they were needed. Funny how Schumer couldn't do shit to whip up support for Biden bills but he can turn all these no votes into yes in less than a day to help Trump.
This was a historically disastrous vote.
The GOP went all in on an empty hand. The Dems knew the GOP were holding nothing, and still folded
So now what is the rallying cry for the midterms? We are brave sir Robin who runs away?
Part of Putin's playbook (and Orban's?) is to have tame "opposition" parties who can channel opposition sentiment, while never becoming truly dangerous. When push comes to shove, they line up and/ or undermine organized opposition.
Given the big tent nature of American parties, the analogue is not fake opposition parties but rather factions or individuals within the Democrats who can serve the same purpose.
The Trumpist destruction of democracy becomes more effective if the opposition party is kept in disarray and infighting, in addition to undermining the rule of law and the various instutions and processes required to carry out the practices of democracy.
I suppose that's what we're seeing here.
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 14, 2025, 05:35:24 PMThe GOP went all in on an empty hand. The Dems knew the GOP were holding nothing, and still folded
So now what is the rallying cry for the midterms? We are brave sir Robin who runs away?
Dems in the House are pushing on AOC to primary Schumer.
Quote from: viper37 on March 14, 2025, 05:39:19 PMQuote from: crazy canuck on March 14, 2025, 05:35:24 PMThe GOP went all in on an empty hand. The Dems knew the GOP were holding nothing, and still folded
So now what is the rallying cry for the midterms? We are brave sir Robin who runs away?
Dems in the House are pushing on AOC to primary Schumer.
Yeah but even if that happens no way she will be the leader.
Besides look at the random collection of people they got to vote yes? It doesn't even make any sense. They found a few people in super safe seats who were able to take the hit so everybody else could safely vote no to save themselves from retribution so even if we somehow kept the voters thinking about this for years and primaries all these people whenever their seats come up again, we don't know who else was in on it.
Apparently, the Senate Democrats reneged on an agreement with the House Dems. At the moment, Schumer selling the Dems out for nothing obvious as all the ingredients to potentially start a leadership and internal fight, which could lead the party to finally coalesce into an opposition force. We will see. In any case, the fallout of yesterday vote will be interesting to follow. The stakes and passions are high and I cannot imagine nothing will come out of it.
Quote from: crazy canuck on March 14, 2025, 05:35:24 PMThe GOP went all in on an empty hand. The Dems knew the GOP were holding nothing, and still folded
So now what is the rallying cry for the midterms? We are brave sir Robin who runs away?
After so many Dems in swing states in the house went out on a limb and voted no. Just stabbed them in the back.
I hope AOC primaries him.
The rallying cry is "we didn't shut the government down, all this economic distress you're feeling is because of Trump."
I was curious about Squeeze's claim so I looked it up. Interesting blend of safe Democratic seats and battleground seats.
"The Democrats who voted to advance the measure were: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.), John Fetterman (Pa.), Gary Peters (Mich.), Brian Schatz (Hawaii), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) and Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.). Angus King (Maine), an independent who caucuses with Democrats, also voted to advance the measure. "
from The Hill
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 16, 2025, 07:09:10 AMThe rallying cry is "we didn't shut the government down, all this economic distress you're feeling is because of Trump."
That's not nearly as powerful as "we are willing to vote for a clean CR, and if the Republicans won't, then it can't pass." If that has been the Democratic rallying cry, the blame for the shutdown would have fallen on the Republicans.
Those ten Democrats did a lot of damage.
Schumer has to go.
Who'd replace him?
I'm sure we can find a young, 73 year old Senator to take over from him somewhere.
"Columbia didn't do enough [to respond to pro-Palestinian agitation]. I criticized them . . .[W]hen it shades over to violence and antisemitism, the colleges had to do something, and a lot of them didn't do enough. They shrugged their shoulders, looked the other way. Columbia among them. So what did they do? They took away $400 million."
Schumer, quoted in the NYT.
At this point Howdy Doody would be a step up as a replacement.
Trump admin has followed up on its easy success and lack of pushback to pull funding from Penn. They are systematically destroying the academic independence of the entire American university system, institution by institution. The appeasers need to be shoved aside.
Columbia is caving per the WSJ. According to the report, the demand to place an entire academic department in receivership on Presidential demand is on the table for active consideration.
Battle lost before it was fought.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 19, 2025, 03:30:26 PMBattle lost before it was fought.
Which is the entire feeling I get from the US at the moment. And I still don't think it's just a problem of leadership.
They are cunningly making plans for winning the 2026 and 2028 elections. They will be as successful for the opposition as the 1936 and 1938 German elections, you'll see.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 19, 2025, 03:27:05 PMTrump admin has followed up on its easy success and lack of pushback to pull funding from Penn. They are systematically destroying the academic independence of the entire American university system, institution by institution. The appeasers need to be shoved aside.
The detail that the university is "negotiating with the administration to call the receivership something more agreeable and present it as a win-win, according to people familiar with the school's thinking" feels grimly exemplary of many - not least Schumer.
As I say I've got my views on what the Democrats should do - don't be afraid of your voters, build party organisations in and of every state and community, particularly working people, ditch the celebs and consultants, focus on an analysis of politics not policy wonkery (ie the humanities: history, philosophy, cultural criticism not the social sciences, policy experts or lawyers).
But sometimes I read things like Schumer or the "good billionaire"/"bad billionaire" distinction or party leaders heading to Silicon Valley to "mend fences" ("These donors are also pissed, watching former and current colleagues have unlimited, unchecked power, and getting richer off of this and they're not") - and I just think the party's broken. It is not capable of doing politics anymore. In fairness that maybe goes back to point one and what they really need are party (and coalition and movement) builders - a modern van Buren - but then I go back to those points and I just think they're allergic to that idea.
Edit: Also, to be really blunt on Columbia, what is the point of a $15 billion endowment and budget of over $6 billion if not to maintain your independence? It's so craven.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 19, 2025, 05:25:26 PMAs I say I've got my views on what the Democrats should do - don't be afraid of your voters, build party organisations in and of every state and community, particularly working people, ditch the celebs and consultants, focus on an analysis of politics not policy wonkery (ie the humanities: history, philosophy, cultural criticism not the social sciences, policy experts or lawyers).
The Democrat party voters are almost entirely college-educated whites at this point in suburbs and black women. You could lure lower socioeconomic strata to the banner with some radical (compared to today) universal healthcare promise. If juicy enough it would maybe overcome the rotten stench of...Tumblr, pronouns-in-bio, fetishist perverts seeking access to our children/trans...
Play dead and let time do it's thing it is then.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 19, 2025, 05:25:26 PMBut sometimes I read things like Schumer or the "good billionaire"/"bad billionaire" distinction or party leaders heading to Silicon Valley to "mend fences" ("These donors are also pissed, watching former and current colleagues have unlimited, unchecked power, and getting richer off of this and they're not") - and I just think the party's broken. It is not capable of doing politics anymore. In fairness that maybe goes back to point one and what they really need are party (and coalition and movement) builders - a modern van Buren - but then I go back to those points and I just think they're allergic to that idea.
It's the two-party system that is fundamentally broken. I think what we're seeing today is a direct result of a system that forces two big-tent parties to form; one was usurped by a well-organized faction and bent to its will, while the other is schizophrenic and disorganized because it keeps trying to either make all the factions happy or meld them into some kind of melting pot platform. Meanwhile, both actions drive an increasing number of voters to either political apathy or the nebulous "independent voter" bucket.
Fixing that is obviously much harder than fixing the current Democratic Party, but my likely futile hope is that we can actually make some progress on that front to reduce the chances of this happening again.
On the subject of fixing the Democratic Party, and to some degree on the subject of loosening the big tent nature, I think the Party needs to tear down the machine. I know Bernie Bros have been squealing about it for a decade, but I think it's the root cause of the Democrats' problems post-Obama (and even to some degree in the latter half of his Presidency).
Specifically, I think the party needs to decentralize, and allow its factions to operate more as quasi-independent parties under the banner of the Democratic Party. Remove the detailed, rigid platform and replace it with a more concise, more flexible set of guiding principles. Allow the partilets to develop non-comprehensive platforms under these guiding principles, platforms with can otherwise disagree on details. Weaken the Party leadership such that the Party is no longer in a position to bless particular candidates in particular races until after they have been selected by Party voters. Essentially, turn each primary into a mini election where the partilets explicitly endorse particular candidates for Party nomination.
This is a tricky proposition, as it requires good coalition leadership to manage the components. It also needs to come with a willingness to disengage with factions that stray too far away from the core principles. I don't think it would require much more out of leadership than just unfucking the current Party would, though.
This is only a semi-informed opinion, though, so there are probably some large holes in it I'm not considering. :P
I think the problem is exactly the opposite. There is no centralized power in the Democrats. There's a centralized platform, but that's as far as it goes. In the face of an authoritarian takeover there needs to be a coherent and strong resistance, and the Democrats are not the ones providing it.
I do agree there needs to be more effort for "grass roots" initiatives and making greater strides to compete in areas that the Democrats have given up, but a big part of that requires coordination, centralization and long term planning/propaganda to provide the funds and support to those candidates.
The problem with decentralizing the Democrats is that it becomes a political nightmare from a messaging standpoint. When you have a large part of the party that is broadly aligned with the American voter, but you have headline-grabbing pronouncements from the 'Squad' sub-party about how when they seize power they're going to open the borders, eliminate the police, ban guns, gasoline and heterosexuality, they end up tainting the whole brand. Kind of like what happens now. Because many of the stances of the smug college kid wing of the party are anathaema to most voters, the insane wing of the Democrats hurts them more than the insane wing of the Republicans hurts that party. The Democrats are held to a higher standard, and have been probably since 1968, which means that they need more discipline, not less.
I disagree. Unsurprisingly.
The Democrats' messaging has been abysmal for the last twenty years or so, allowing the Republicans to dominate the narrative while Democrats meekly attempted to perpetually counter it through technocratic appeasement. Regardless of whether or not this made for good policy, it made for mediocre messaging.
Regardless of what one may think of the progressive wing of the party, this will always be spun in the most extreme ways by the propaganda arm of the Republican party. I think the last 20 years are testament to the idea that trying to spin a moderate message - *in the absence of any other strong commitment to anything else other than pragmatism* - is bound for failure, or, at the very best, is going to win thin margins that won't be enough to render Republicans impotent.
On the other end of the spectrum, one of the core issues with online activism is that it never has to be confronted with actual politics. It's much easier to be pure from behind your computer than when comes the need to build coalitions and reach out to people. Centralizing the message (and the campaigning) has led the Democrats to basically abandon middle America, and has made those voices liable to be heard, precisely because there is no space, no infrastructure, no venue, to accommodate people who would like to be heard about local issues. This has been part of a deliberate strategy by the Democratic leadership to strangle a base they *do not want* in favor of the reasonable people molded in the shape of Clintonian politics from thirty-five years ago.
Either the Democrats (and other non-authoritarian people) wait for a political messiah that will not come, a reckoning that will come too late, or continue to lose themselves in endlessly intricate centralized messaging concocted by a committee made up of people who will never feel a sense of urgency; or they maybe, harbor dozens of varied initiatives - this is the primordial soup from which political messaging is born, and leaders are honed.
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on March 20, 2025, 09:03:39 AMQuote from: Sheilbh on March 19, 2025, 05:25:26 PMBut sometimes I read things like Schumer or the "good billionaire"/"bad billionaire" distinction or party leaders heading to Silicon Valley to "mend fences" ("These donors are also pissed, watching former and current colleagues have unlimited, unchecked power, and getting richer off of this and they're not") - and I just think the party's broken. It is not capable of doing politics anymore. In fairness that maybe goes back to point one and what they really need are party (and coalition and movement) builders - a modern van Buren - but then I go back to those points and I just think they're allergic to that idea.
It's the two-party system that is fundamentally broken. I think what we're seeing today is a direct result of a system that forces two big-tent parties to form; one was usurped by a well-organized faction and bent to its will, while the other is schizophrenic and disorganized because it keeps trying to either make all the factions happy or meld them into some kind of melting pot platform. Meanwhile, both actions drive an increasing number of voters to either political apathy or the nebulous "independent voter" bucket.
Fixing that is obviously much harder than fixing the current Democratic Party, but my likely futile hope is that we can actually make some progress on that front to reduce the chances of this happening again.
On the subject of fixing the Democratic Party, and to some degree on the subject of loosening the big tent nature, I think the Party needs to tear down the machine. I know Bernie Bros have been squealing about it for a decade, but I think it's the root cause of the Democrats' problems post-Obama (and even to some degree in the latter half of his Presidency).
Specifically, I think the party needs to decentralize, and allow its factions to operate more as quasi-independent parties under the banner of the Democratic Party. Remove the detailed, rigid platform and replace it with a more concise, more flexible set of guiding principles. Allow the partilets to develop non-comprehensive platforms under these guiding principles, platforms with can otherwise disagree on details. Weaken the Party leadership such that the Party is no longer in a position to bless particular candidates in particular races until after they have been selected by Party voters. Essentially, turn each primary into a mini election where the partilets explicitly endorse particular candidates for Party nomination.
This is a tricky proposition, as it requires good coalition leadership to manage the components. It also needs to come with a willingness to disengage with factions that stray too far away from the core principles. I don't think it would require much more out of leadership than just unfucking the current Party would, though.
This is only a semi-informed opinion, though, so there are probably some large holes in it I'm not considering. :P
I am reading that Bernie Sanders proposes the solution that candidates on the left run is independents. But I guess the problem is that they miss out on the funding the party would've otherwise given them and not everybody can raise money the way Bernie can.
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on March 20, 2025, 09:03:39 AMQuote from: Sheilbh on March 19, 2025, 05:25:26 PMBut sometimes I read things like Schumer or the "good billionaire"/"bad billionaire" distinction or party leaders heading to Silicon Valley to "mend fences" ("These donors are also pissed, watching former and current colleagues have unlimited, unchecked power, and getting richer off of this and they're not") - and I just think the party's broken. It is not capable of doing politics anymore. In fairness that maybe goes back to point one and what they really need are party (and coalition and movement) builders - a modern van Buren - but then I go back to those points and I just think they're allergic to that idea.
It's the two-party system that is fundamentally broken. I think what we're seeing today is a direct result of a system that forces two big-tent parties to form; one was usurped by a well-organized faction and bent to its will, while the other is schizophrenic and disorganized because it keeps trying to either make all the factions happy or meld them into some kind of melting pot platform. Meanwhile, both actions drive an increasing number of voters to either political apathy or the nebulous "independent voter" bucket.
Fixing that is obviously much harder than fixing the current Democratic Party, but my likely futile hope is that we can actually make some progress on that front to reduce the chances of this happening again.
On the subject of fixing the Democratic Party, and to some degree on the subject of loosening the big tent nature, I think the Party needs to tear down the machine. I know Bernie Bros have been squealing about it for a decade, but I think it's the root cause of the Democrats' problems post-Obama (and even to some degree in the latter half of his Presidency).
Specifically, I think the party needs to decentralize, and allow its factions to operate more as quasi-independent parties under the banner of the Democratic Party. Remove the detailed, rigid platform and replace it with a more concise, more flexible set of guiding principles. Allow the partilets to develop non-comprehensive platforms under these guiding principles, platforms with can otherwise disagree on details. Weaken the Party leadership such that the Party is no longer in a position to bless particular candidates in particular races until after they have been selected by Party voters. Essentially, turn each primary into a mini election where the partilets explicitly endorse particular candidates for Party nomination.
This is a tricky proposition, as it requires good coalition leadership to manage the components. It also needs to come with a willingness to disengage with factions that stray too far away from the core principles. I don't think it would require much more out of leadership than just unfucking the current Party would, though.
This is only a semi-informed opinion, though, so there are probably some large holes in it I'm not considering. :P
Well, what you are describing is the way the party already is. The leadership of the party doesn't have much say in most elections. What the more radical elements of the party have never understood is that they are a minority, not because they are being held back by the party elites, but because they fundamentally unpopular. They represent maybe a third of the Democrats, who in turn make up less than half the voting public.
That's a fair rebuttal, Oex. I'm sympathetic to your point about how it's impossible to build new leadership up if you cut back on the score of political discourse. Indeed, that's kind of what you see in Canada, where tight party discipline has generally made Cabinet ministers more or less irrelevant compared to where they were sixty years ago. And it also holds some explanatory power about how the Democratic Party has failed to develop new leadership over the last few decades, saving only the political messiah Obama, who was poorly suited to be president.
Jim Jordan is a honking loon, and he is Chairman of a House power committee. The Speaker of House has publicly advocated bonkers things up to and including the US annexing Gaza. The GOP does not give a shit whether and how letting the extreme voices out affects their electability = they use it to appeal to their base, and then get on Fox Business to wink at Wall Street and assure everyone that they don't really mean this. And they have parlayed that strategy into control of every facet of the federal government.
I am and always have been a moderate Democrat in the Clinton-Obama mold. But that kind of wonkery works in a properly functioning constitutional Republic. It does not play when the Republic itself is under threat. Passion and energy are needed and even misguided passion is better than holding seminars on triangulation, lobbying the Senate cloakroom to make minor changes to horrific bills, responding to core institutions under existential threat by stabbing them in the back with weaponized bothsideisms, and occasionally emerging into daylight to participate in a half-hearted demonstration and white-man rap out a few tired and trite slogans.
OSC may be too left for my personal taste, but she is one the few that seems to grasp the urgency of the situation. If she primaried Schumer tomorrow, she'd have my virtual vote. And if some more radical proposals get thrown out - it's about time the Democrats start pushing the Overton window back there way. I'm not saying do it stupid like "defund the police" - which is the GOP platform now anyways. But how about send out Bernie or some younger firebrand to advocate a "Patriot Tax" - a one-time 100% tax on all personal wealth over $100 million, used to fund tax cuts for the working stiffs and expanded health care and childcare coverage? Stir shit up. Seize the agenda. Flood their fucking zone.
The fact that the electorate is more forgiving of Republican insanity than Democratic insanity is something that the Democrats will have to overcome. But it's a political reality nonetheless. They've spent the last decade trying to dunk of Trump being a lunatic that says crazy things, and he's gotten stronger. It's crazy reading an interview with the head of Blue Rose Research, and he's saying that the numbers have shifted to the point that increased turnout is now a boon to Republicans, not Democrats.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 20, 2025, 12:37:36 PMBut how about send out Bernie or some younger firebrand to advocate a "Patriot Tax" - a one-time 100% tax on all personal wealth over $100 million, used to fund tax cuts for the working stiffs and expanded health care and childcare coverage? Stir shit up. Seize the agenda. Flood their fucking zone.
Indeed. A recent town hall in Wyoming (Wyoming!) had people chanting "Tax the Rich!" with the incredulous Republican saying "So that's your solution? Tax the Rich?" to applause.
In other news, Obama is tweeting about his March Madness picks. Nothing about Trump in months.
:mellow:
I was just gonna ask if Obama is doing anything. The same for Bush on the other side. But I guess neither is interested in fighting the dismantling of democracy and rule of law.
Quote from: The Brain on March 20, 2025, 02:29:35 PMI was just gonna ask if Obama is doing anything. The same for Bush on the other side. But I guess neither is interested in fighting the dismantling of democracy and rule of law.
The Dem leadership and never trumpers lose all credibility when they say democracy is at stake during an election, and then when democracy really is at stake they go silent
Quote from: Zoupa on March 20, 2025, 02:09:27 PMIn other news, Obama is tweeting about his March Madness picks. Nothing about Trump in months.
:mellow:
At least put "Columbia Faculty and Students" in every single bracket slot FFS.
Which remainds me:
Call your alumni office in your universities, and ask them to stand up against the Trump attacks on higher education.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 20, 2025, 11:31:38 AMWell, what you are describing is the way the party already is. The leadership of the party doesn't have much say in most elections. What the more radical elements of the party have never understood is that they are a minority, not because they are being held back by the party elites, but because they fundamentally unpopular. They represent maybe a third of the Democrats, who in turn make up less than half the voting public.
I think the frame of radical v moderate is wrong in this case - and I think it's wrong in a really interesting way.
So first of all the the identitarian turn I think starts in 2016 with Clinton's campaign, and I think it's a way of outflanking an attack from the left. It starts with (often justifiable) attacks on "Bernie bros" and Sanders' very bad record on racial diversity in the staffers he's hired. There was a very celebrated (loads of articles written about it) attack line Clinton used that "breaking up the banks won't end racism". I really distinctly remember even at the time (and at this point I had too much faith in Americans) being struck by the last ad I think her campaign released being entirely about who was supporting her rather than any sense of what she wanted to do (I think it was a riff on "I'm with her").
In that DNC Chair Forum that Jonathan Chait wrote about in the article you posted about - the one candidate for DNC Chair who refused to commit to increasing at-large DNC seats for transgender people or creating a Muslim caucus was Faiz Shakir. He was the "populist left" candidate and formerly of Sanders campaign. The reason was that he was "frustated by the way in which we utilise identity to break ourselves apart". He wanted the DNC to focus on people who are "driven by program and mission [who can bring] identities to the problems we need to solve [...] let's get into that, not separate ourselves out, give pats on the head for being in various identity groups." The guy who won backed both of those proposals and quite strongly pushed back on that line of argument. He's also the guy making the "good billionaire"/"bad billionaire" distinction and is reaching out to "mend fences" with Silicon Valley plutocrats frustrated at their competitors seizure of power and rents. I don't think a moderate v radical framework explains things here.
And I'd go further than that. I'd love to see a US poll on this but there's been amazing polling in the UK on some of these issues. When you explain privilege in terms people understand well over 60% of people think it's an issue in Britain; when you talk about privilege that falls to under 30%. Some people just hate the phrase and swing from agreeing to disagreeing - but the big swing is lots of people move to "don't know", because they don't know what you're talking about. I've banged on about this for ages but I think most people basically agree with what is characterised as "wokness". But its been communicated in the language of a grad school seminar (again to go to your Chait article, watching the clip of Harrison breaking down the "intricate" rules on gender and non-binary candidates and it's very academic categorising); often it's been communicated by HR departments and corporate leaders; and it's been enforced by parts of the media as if it were already hegemonic. I think it's that combo more than the underlying issues or positions (as I always say policy is possibly the least important thing in party politics) that is the problem and is exceptionally alienating when politics needs to bring people in.
So I don't think it's moderates v radicals as Ken Martin, the Clinton campaign, Delta airlines and the NYT, for example, were intensely comfortable with this turn. I think a more useful frame is insurgents v establishment - and I think there are both within radical and moderate wings of the Democrats. I think there are times when the establishment works - when a dominant order has been established, is well-functioning and it's basically about sharing the proceeds of growth (you think of the high ideal days of the New Deal order, or the neo-liberal/end of history peak in the 90s). But I don't think that describes the current moment or need.
I also think there's a series of decisions that have been made by establishment Democratic leaders that have been consequential failure. Obama's deal with the Clintons and pressuring not to stand in 2016 (an election I think Biden would have won, ending Trump then), changing the primary rules and times to prevent a challenge to Biden and sticking by him as the candidate for far too long, seamlessly swinging to Harris and then in that campaign the, as someone, put it Liz Cheney Eras Tour. There's political incompetence there from consultants and party leaders and apparatchiks behind the scenes that should be really unforgivable if you're a partisan. But what I find really striking is that at the same time their message was: "the republic, constitutional government and democracy is in danger" and I think there's just a profound mismatch between the seriousness of that message and the callowness of those decisions. At best people think they don't really mean it, at worst that they don't care.
QuoteOSC may be too left for my personal taste, but she is one the few that seems to grasp the urgency of the situation. If she primaried Schumer tomorrow, she'd have my virtual vote. And if some more radical proposals get thrown out - it's about time the Democrats start pushing the Overton window back there way. I'm not saying do it stupid like "defund the police" - which is the GOP platform now anyways. But how about send out Bernie or some younger firebrand to advocate a "Patriot Tax" - a one-time 100% tax on all personal wealth over $100 million, used to fund tax cuts for the working stiffs and expanded health care and childcare coverage? Stir shit up. Seize the agenda. Flood their fucking zone.
I think AOC is a really impressive political talent - even if I'm not actually sure on her politics.
But I agree - and I'd also look at the progressive era (if we're in a Gilded Age time of imperialism, praise for President McKinly and obscene wealth) and rabble rouse about good government, trust-busting, political reform. For example it's been proposed by AOC and Matt Gaetz (bizarrely) in the past but I'd look at proposals to restrict share purchases by members of Congress and their families. Instead of mending fences with Silicon Valley and talking about good or bad billionaires - I'd say no billionaires in government.
It ties to the establishment v insurgent frame that I think matters - but I think it's really important that the alternative to Trump (or radical or far right wherever else you're looking at) must not be a defence of the status quo.
Again I'm not actually a massive fan of Bernie, but this is what I mean. Him and AOC doing a "stop oligarchy" rally in Denver:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gmm3B90XUAQq302?format=jpg&name=small)
34,000 attendees - according to the Sanders team over half of the people who signed up to attend were not from Sanders' (very large) supporter list. I saw a clip of Sanders saying lots of nice things about AOC but also making this point:
QuoteSanders: She worked hard, and she pulled off a major upset. The reason I say all of that is not just to praise Alexandria, but to tell you—and the people of America—that what Alexandria did, you can do. There are millions of young people out there who love this country, who are disgusted with what they are seeing, and who are prepared to get involved in the political process.
When you've got 30,000+ people turning up for a rally in a non-election year there's an appetite and demand out there for politics and they're not getting it from a lot of Democrats right now.
Quote from: Sheilbh on March 22, 2025, 06:10:29 PMAgain I'm not actually a massive fan of Bernie, but this is what I mean. Him and AOC doing a "stop oligarchy" rally in Denver:
34,000 attendees - according to the Sanders team over half of the people who signed up to attend were not from Sanders' (very large) supporter list. I saw a clip of Sanders saying lots of nice things about AOC but also making this point:
QuoteSanders: She worked hard, and she pulled off a major upset. The reason I say all of that is not just to praise Alexandria, but to tell you—and the people of America—that what Alexandria did, you can do. There are millions of young people out there who love this country, who are disgusted with what they are seeing, and who are prepared to get involved in the political process.
When you've got 30,000+ people turning up for a rally in a non-election year there's an appetite and demand out there for politics and they're not getting it from a lot of Democrats right now.
The democratic project needs a modern Tom Paine to step forward now, otherwise the forces of democracy in the USA are shut up in a valley forge till when?
Reading the stories from books about Biden's administrations, for example Ron Klain talking to writer of this book:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/apr/02/biden-ron-klain-trump-debate-prep-book-chris-whipple
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/apr/03/biden-white-house-meeting-trump-debate-photoshoot
And the Democrats need to clear house. The approach of insisting Biden is actually very sharp, attacking people for raising questions about his age to smoothly moving to acknowledging that of course we all knew Biden wasn't in great shape and I can reveal all the gory details in my upcoming book is not edifying. Anyone involved needs to go.
I'd add that I think there are genuine constitutional and national security questions from all of this - I genuinely wonder who was running things. In a very practical way, what happened with decisions when Biden was not having a good day? Were they just being pushed until he was on form, were they being made by subordinates in the White House, by the relevant cabinet members? No doubt we'll get all the details after years of fierce denial in, say, Jake Sullivan's memoir.
The problem with purging anyone who was aware of the fraudulent state of Biden's capacity is that means poleaxing much of the senior figures of the Democratic Party. And while I know that's appealing due to the incompetence of those people, there's some talent in there that you'd like to have on side. And by that, I'm mostly thinking of Buttigieg and Granholm. Maybe Lloyd Austin too. You do want to preserve some of the history and knowledge of the institution, even while you're chucking Schumer and Pelosi into the woodchipper of history. That's the sort of thing that gets you the Trumpublican Party.
Joe Biden Was "a Shell of Himself" by End of Term. Hunter Biden Didn't Help. (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/joe-biden-was-a-shell-of-himself-hunter-didnt-help?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us)
QuoteVeteran political journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes share details from their new book about Joe Biden's decline; his relationship with Hunter Biden, his "closest political adviser"; and his campaign's attempt to undermine Kamala Harris.
Quote from: Sheilbh on December 19, 2024, 06:38:26 AMI've no view on the race itself, but saw that House Democrats elected Gerry Connolly over AOC as ranking member of the House Oversight Committee. Again, no view on the election, but struck by a a comment from one of Connolly's strong supporters: "Gerry's a young 74, cancer notwithstanding" :lol:
As I say no view on this particular race at all, but "young 74, cancer notwithstanding" does feel very much like the logic of getting behind Biden, "nothing to see here" approach despite concerns about his age.
Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia dies after battling cancer
(https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/21/gerry-connolly-dies-cancer.html)
He died in his prime. Still so much potential at such a young age :(
Quote from: viper37 on April 07, 2025, 08:58:14 AMJoe Biden Was "a Shell of Himself" by End of Term. Hunter Biden Didn't Help. (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/joe-biden-was-a-shell-of-himself-hunter-didnt-help?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us)
QuoteVeteran political journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes share details from their new book about Joe Biden's decline; his relationship with Hunter Biden, his "closest political adviser"; and his campaign's attempt to undermine Kamala Harris.
Yeah well, the Presidency ages even the young and energetic.
Quote from: viper37 on May 21, 2025, 12:39:21 PMQuote from: Sheilbh on December 19, 2024, 06:38:26 AMI've no view on the race itself, but saw that House Democrats elected Gerry Connolly over AOC as ranking member of the House Oversight Committee. Again, no view on the election, but struck by a a comment from one of Connolly's strong supporters: "Gerry's a young 74, cancer notwithstanding" :lol:
As I say no view on this particular race at all, but "young 74, cancer notwithstanding" does feel very much like the logic of getting behind Biden, "nothing to see here" approach despite concerns about his age.
Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia dies after battling cancer
(https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/21/gerry-connolly-dies-cancer.html)
He died in his prime. Still so much potential at such a young age :(
Shocker. Might be time for the 60 year olds to take over.
The more I read about Biden, the more maddening it gets. What a perfectly organized dysfunction it was to have a guy clearly unfit to be a president sail through to try to be the president again. How ironic that a party that is our best hope of combatting authoritarianism gave a very textbook example of catastrophic failure mode that can come about from falling in line no matter what.
Quote from: DGuller on May 22, 2025, 09:15:37 AMThe more I read about Biden, the more maddening it gets. What a perfectly organized dysfunction it was to have a guy clearly unfit to be a president sail through to try to be the president again. How ironic that a party that is our best hope of combatting authoritarianism gave a very textbook example of catastrophic failure mode that can come about from falling in line no matter what.
It is pretty crazy. It was so obviously a bad idea and obviously disastrous that it isn't like any of these new revelations really change much. Nobody should have needed any special insider information to see what was right in front of us. I think my posts at the time speak for themselves.
However there is nothing really ironic about it. It was fear of the Republicans and Trump that got so many Democrats to just put their blinders on and go along with it. They were afraid that any fuss they raised could help the Republicans and undermine Democratic efforts. I got it, I just thought it was wrong headed and disastrous. Because outside of Democratic loyalists and never Trumpers, who was going to vote for Biden a second time? Especially as many of us had voted for him in 2020 on the agreement that he was going to be a bridge, a stop-gap candidate.
The issue was though, if the voters had all joined me in protest voting against Biden in the Primary, the Party had made sure that no viable candidates were going to run. They really went out of their way to claw the way open for Biden and for what? His approval numbers were not good. It made perfect political sense to replace him. Sort of like how it makes perfect political sense to replace Chuck Schumer now. But they won't...for mysterious reasons. The authoritarianism on display doesn't even make sense. I might accept strict party discipline if it the party wasn't making moronic choices for no clear reason.
There are different degrees of obviously bad decisions, and there are different degrees of mental decline. At no point did I think it was a good idea for Biden to run again, but at the time I didn't think it was a criminally incompetent idea, just a stupid one. However, if the extent of Biden's mental decline was as it is presented now, and that it was known to enough people in its full extent, then that cross the line from a bad to an unfathomably reckless idea. You can't have a nuclear superpower be run by an unofficial regency council.
And compounding this issue is that as bad as the two parties are, the other options are even worse. None of the third parties in the US are serious parties. And besides the Libertarians, who at least believe in things, they barely even qualify as fringe. They stand for nothing and only seem to exist as cynical spoilers propped up by political operatives trying to draw voters from the main parties.
So we have one choice really. And that lack of competition for the anti-Republican vote makes the Democrats stupid and arrogant and complacent even as they continually fail.
Quote from: Valmy on May 22, 2025, 09:26:18 AMThe authoritarianism on display doesn't even make sense. I might accept strict party discipline if it the party wasn't making moronic choices for no clear reason.
Authoritarianism from Democrats makes sense to me in some way. Democrats thinks that not being decisive is a weakness of theirs, so they feel tempted to act differently. However, the problem with doing things out of character is that you don't have a lifetime experience of acting in such a way, so you get all the negatives with none of the positives out of that.
Quote from: DGuller on May 22, 2025, 09:34:13 AMThere are different degrees of obviously bad decisions, and there are different degrees of mental decline. At no point did I think it was a good idea for Biden to run again, but at the time I didn't think it was a criminally incompetent idea, just a stupid one. However, if the extent of Biden's mental decline was as it is presented now, and that it was known to enough people in its full extent, then that cross the line from a bad to an unfathomably reckless idea. You can't have a nuclear superpower be run by an unofficial regency council.
And it is now becoming clear that it was the latter.
You might find this interesting. An interview with Tapper.
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id1548604447?i=1000709243197
Quote from: DGuller on May 22, 2025, 09:34:13 AMThere are different degrees of obviously bad decisions, and there are different degrees of mental decline. At no point did I think it was a good idea for Biden to run again, but at the time I didn't think it was a criminally incompetent idea, just a stupid one. However, if the extent of Biden's mental decline was as it is presented now, and that it was known to enough people in its full extent, then that cross the line from a bad to an unfathomably reckless idea. You can't have a nuclear superpower be run by an unofficial regency council.
Yeah man, I don't know. But you see this all over the party. Obviously physically and mentally incapable leaders being kept in office. It seems crazy they would try it with the President just due to how the Presidential election works. He has to get out there and give speeches and travel the country and do debates. And he was starting from a really bad place. This isn't 1944 and Roosevelt is so obviously going to win you don't need him to do much so the country won't notice his bad health. There is no way they thought he would win in that state. Even if they had some irresponsible plan to manage him via a robust technocratic staff doing the work.
Quote from: DGuller on May 22, 2025, 09:36:55 AMAuthoritarianism from Democrats makes sense to me in some way. Democrats thinks that not being decisive is a weakness of theirs, so they feel tempted to act differently. However, the problem with doing things out of character is that you don't have a lifetime experience of acting in such a way, so you get all the negatives with none of the positives out of that.
Sure. Sometimes you have to be ruthless to win political power, especially in this crazy country where the stakes are high for everybody in the world. But be ruthless in ways that win, not lose.
I have yet to see these positives. If anything whenever the Democrats have stepped back and let the voters choose the candidates they want, like Obama in 2008 for example, they tend to do better.
My subscription to the Atlantic is running out and I haven't renewed because I don't have money anymore, so I won't be posting many articles from there unless they are posted on MSN or something. So here is the last one:
American RealignmentThe country is sliding from an era of politics forged by social connections at the neighborhood level to one where cultural and ideological polarization dominates.By Patrick Ruffini
QuoteAlong the banks of the Rio Grande River lies Starr County, Texas, a key to understanding the political realignment that sent Donald Trump back to the White House. Both the most Hispanic county in the nation and one of the poorest, Starr was also once one of the most resoundingly Democratic; Barack Obama won it by 73 points in 2012. In 2020, the county swung harder rightward than any other county in the U.S., by 55 points. And in 2024, it voted Republican for the first time in 132 years: Trump was on top by 16 points.
Two years before, on the eve of the 2022 midterm elections, I decided to pay Starr County a visit. As someone who's worked in professional politics for more than two decades, most recently as a pollster studying realignment, I expected to see a pitched two-party fight in this newly minted political battleground.
In Rio Grande City, the county seat, I instead found a politics more parochial than anywhere else I've visited in America: Elections for the school board capture the public's attention far more than elections for governor or Congress. And this parochialism is a big part of the reason Starr County's politics shifted so far so fast.
Politics throughout much of the country used to be like Starr County's, a patchwork of localized traditions only tangentially connected to voters' ideological leanings. In many cases defined by ethnicity and religion, these "ancestral" local party attachments produced quirky and random results—a Democratic West Virginia, a Republican Vermont. And although Hispanics had been a solidly Democratic group until recently, the one-party nature of Democratic rule along the Rio Grande Valley was an outlier—especially in relation to other Texas regions with large concentrations of Hispanic residents, who were always a competitive voting bloc.
The realignments of recent years—the midwestern white working class toward Trump's GOP and the suburbs toward the Democrats—can be understood as the process of ideological and education sorting coming for groups that were the most out of place in the new political realm: rich suburban Republicans and culturally conservative working-class Democrats. In 2020 and 2024, this realignment came for the nonwhite voters once at the center of Barack Obama's coalition, especially working-class Hispanics, and most especially those in the rural outskirts of the Rio Grande Valley.
Starr County's tradition of machine politics, manifest in an unusually strong preoccupation with local elections, marked a place ripe for a sudden political shift. Not unlike the Democratic majorities in the big cities of mid-century, which continue at some level into the present day, political dominance in the region was built not through allegiance to liberal ideals but through political machines that delivered tangible benefits and shaped the political identity of new immigrant groups. This is evident in polling today showing that nonwhite Democrats are much more moderate and conservative than their white counterparts. For a time, ideological differences were subsumed to the work of advancing group interests through machine politics. But in an era of declining party organization and an emptying out of majority-minority cities in favor of more integrated suburbs, the tide of ideological voting could be held at bay for only so long. Once it poured in, America shifted into a new era of politics, from one forged by social connections at the neighborhood level to today's cultural and ideological polarization, where you vote Republican if you have conservative cultural beliefs, regardless of race.
For Black voters, voting for Democrats as an act of group solidarity didn't require urban machines like Tammany Hall. A Republican Party that was viewed as leading the backlash to civil rights was summarily dismissed—and those who strayed were subject to social sanction. In South Texas, the rationale revolved around class; the Democrats were viewed simply as the party that would do right by the poor.
As these old partisan ties begin to weaken, it's worth remembering that something similar has happened before, when the white working class's status as the bulwark of the old Democratic Party began to unravel in the 1960s. That was also a time of rapid social change, when a politics once focused on meeting the material needs of the working class instead started to revolve around questions more abstract: of war and peace, of race and sex. And on key points, the working class—meaning the white working class early on and a more diverse group today—was not on board with the Democrats' growing cultural liberalism.
The realignment of the working class, which helped Trump win in 2016, would not stop with white voters. In 2020 and 2024, the realignment came for nonwhite voters. A basic tenet of the Democratic Party—that of being a group-interest-based coalition—was abandoned as the party's ideologically moderate and conservative nonwhite adherents began to peel off in a mass re-sorting of the electorate. The Democratic analyst David Shor estimates that Democrats went from winning 81 percent of Hispanic moderates in 2016 to just 58 percent in 2024. And these voters were now voting exactly how you would expect them to, given their ideologies: conservatives for the party on the right, moderates split closer to either party.
This explanation for political realignment should concern Democrats deeply, because it can't be fixed by better messaging or more concerted outreach. The voters moving away from the Democrats are ideologically moderate to conservative. Their loyalty to the Democratic Party was formed in a time of deep racial and inter-ethnic rivalry, when throwing in with one locally dominant political party could help a once-marginalized group secure political power. The system worked well when local politics was relatively insulated from ideological divides at the national level. But this wouldn't last forever—and national polarization now rules everything around us.
Starr County was one of the last holdouts from ideological sorting, and I could feel the tension between new and old-school politics when I visited. The early- voting centers I visited in the Rio Grande Valley's urban areas were plastered with signs for congressional races that were competitive for the first time in generations. But the farther I ventured out into rural areas—places such as Starr County—the less voters seemed to care about national races. Here, the focus was close to home, and the smiling faces of school-board and county-office candidates covered nearly every available public surface.
From his office—a clubhouse on the main drag in Rio Grande City—Ross Barrera led the nascent county Republican organization. When we met, I asked him why local elections here seemed to garner such outsized attention.
His answer helped me solve a piece of the puzzle of Starr County's sudden political shift.
Rio Grande City is run not so much by parties, Barrera explained, but by rival factions with a strong resemblance to the machines of old. School-board elections are officially nonpartisan, but the voting is organized around competing candidate slates. The slates are like parallel political parties, but able to endorse across party lines for partisan races. These factional operations are far more sophisticated than the formal party structures. Candidates for the statehouse in Austin will simply pay these slates to serve as their get-out-the-vote operation, forgoing traditional campaign activity.
Why do the slates matter so much? In many of the poorest counties in the nation, with little private industry, the No. 1 employer is the local school district. And whoever wins the school-board elections decides who gets the relatively well-paying patronage jobs that come with those seats. That means the school-board races are uniquely high-stakes; incumbents will go to extreme lengths to safeguard their power.
The area outside the county courthouse where people were already casting their ballots was abuzz with activity from the candidate slates. Each had its own tent where volunteers were cooking up chicken dishes for voters passing by. Which tent a voter went to and spent time at signaled their loyalty. Confrontations between the two camps were not uncommon.
In the Rio Grande Valley, whom you vote for is a secret, but the list of who voted is scrutinized by political bosses doling out jobs. The same goes for primary elections, when your choice to pull a Democratic or Republican ballot is public. In 2018, all but 13 voters countywide who participated in the primary pulled a Democratic ballot. One Republican told me he was once handed a Democratic ballot in the primary—and was refused a Republican ballot when he requested one. Because all of the local officials were Democrats and general elections were frequently uncontested, people saw no point voting in the Republican primary.
Elections in this part of the state had not been free in the fullest sense of the word, unfolding in an atmosphere of persistent surveillance. After the 2012 elections in the nearby town of Donna, several area campaign workers, known locally as politiqueras, pleaded guilty for bribing voters with cash and dime bags of cocaine. South Texas has a long history of this kind of activity, going back to the notorious political boss George Parr, who, in 1948, manufactured the votes that put Lyndon B. Johnson in the Senate.
Although national politics was something of an afterthought, the region's default was enduring loyalty to a Democratic Party known simply as a tribune for the region's poor. Republicans, meanwhile, were dismissed as the party of the white person and the rich, something Barrera called "our own form of racism." As McAllen Mayor Javier Villalobos, a Republican elected in 2021, explained it to me, at the dinner table growing up, he would hear about the necessity of voting for the Democrats as the "party of the poor." His response: "We don't have to be poor."
Something seemed to break in 2020. That pandemic year, candidates had to improvise new ways to reach voters. Barrera recalls locals' reactions when a "Trump train"—a caravan of cars and trucks flying Trump flags—one day drove down the main county highway. People emerged quietly from their homes to witness the spectacle. And then, much to Barrera's surprise, they started applauding.
This small display was an early warning of the political sea change that would take Trump from winning 19 percent of the county's vote in 2016 to 58 percent in 2024. Although Trump made gains across the country with Hispanic voters, a shift of this magnitude signals something much bigger than changes in policy or positioning; it's a preference cascade that comes about when social norms dictating group loyalty to a single party start to crumble. The Republican Party did not somehow persuade people to switch their votes with new policy positions. In areas where political machines long reigned supreme, like Starr County and the South Bronx, Republicans needed to switch votes by showing voters that their neighbors were switching as well. Two previous cycles of working-class shifts, combined with Trump campaigning in urban areas and in media popular with young nonwhite men, appeared to do the trick.
Beyond South Texas, the Democratic Party in America's old industrial cities was built by political machines that delivered tangible benefits to working-class and immigrant voters, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood. One day in the life of George Washington Plunkitt, the famed Tammany Hall district leader in New York, revealed the work it took to secure votes: At 2 a.m., he aroused from sleep to bail out a saloon keeper; at 6 a.m., he awakened to the sound of fire trucks and rose to give assistance and arrange housing for those affected; at 8:30 a.m., he went to the courthouse and secured the release of several "drunks"; at 9 a.m., he paid the rent for a poor family about to be evicted; at 11 a.m., he met with four men seeking employment and "succeeded in each case"; at 3 p.m., he attended the funerals of constituents; at 7 p.m., he presided over a district meeting; at 8 p.m., he attended a church fair and took the men out for a drink after; at 9 p.m., he was back at the office, attending to various constituent matters; at 10:30 p.m., he attended a Jewish wedding.
Today, machine politics are not held in high esteem. But they did have a way of finding overlooked voting blocs and putting them under protection. Other such examples of political organization and advocacy are remembered more fondly, such as the migration of Black voters into the Democratic Party following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which cemented a more than 9-to-1 Democratic advantage in many Black neighborhoods. But more recently, this political solidarity has been held together by social forces—the expectation by other Black Americans that their friends and neighbors will support Democrats—than by an ideological affinity for the party, as documented in the political scientists Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird's book, Steadfast Democrats.
In an era of nationalized politics and growing polarization, the social basis for Democratic majorities is looking more and more tenuous. Yes, the particular appeal with which Trump was able to attract Hispanics and young Black men may last for only an election cycle or two, but the fact that those communities are realigning to a party that matches their views on issues, particularly on cultural issues such as gender, means that many are likely to stick around.
A populist shift in the form of Donald Trump's larger-than-life persona was enough to make many nonwhite voters shed decades-long partisan loyalties. Absent a big change in how these voters perceive the Democratic Party, they aren't going back.
Look man we are never going to persecute people on the basis of gender better than the Republicans. We are never going to be anti-immigrant to the extent Republicans can be. We will never be white nationalist to the extent Republicans are.
If it just comes down to be extremely right wing culturally, well I guess it is over. We can never beat the Republicans on that field.
Obama tried by doing massive deportations, and Biden continued that for the most part and even advanced some of Trump's border policies. But the Democrats still get killed for being "open borders" and the effect is not to reduce the pressure but to make everything far worse for everybody. Nevermind the fact that being anti-immigrant is a irrational and economically disastrous policy. Doing stupid things to try to win popular support and then not even winning that support is doubly bad.
If the problem is everybody just naturally loves far right wing cultural values then the Democrats are in a tough spot.
But they have been in this very tough spot since 1968. Unless the Republicans really fuck up they are going to win every time. And pretty much have. They just fuck up more than you would think.
This article could have been written in the the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, or 2010s talking about similar problems with different communities.
And of course if the Democrats could somehow out extreme right wing the Republicans well...people like me would flee the party in droves. So there is that to.
I don't think black people are moving to the Republican party to be White Nationalists. White democrats have moved quite a bit to the left since 2010 or so. People holding the same positions as they did 20 years ago doesn't qualify as extreme or far-right. Democrats weren't far-right back then. We've embraced post material politics, because they appeal to the core democratic constituency: Affluent, well-educated professionals. But they don't appeal to most other people, and the result is we are losing elections. The cost may be the loss of a Democratic form of government.
Quote from: Razgovory on May 29, 2025, 11:43:01 AMI don't think black people are moving to the Republican party to be White Nationalists. White democrats have moved quite a bit to the left since 2010 or so.
Bullshit. On what? What have they moved left on? Nothing. Name a leftwing policy or set of laws they have passed. Come on. They didn't even raise the minimum wage. I just gave an example, immigration, where they have become enormously more right wing since then. Not that it matters.
Democrats from decades ago were more leftwing on tons of issues. This is nonsense.
QuotePeople holding the same positions as they did 20 years ago doesn't qualify as extreme or far-right. Democrats weren't far-right back then. We've embraced post material politics, because they appeal to the core democratic constituency: Affluent, well-educated professionals.
Right and the reason they embraced "post-material" things was because they moved to the right on economic issues. That was the Clinton/Obama strategy. It did make the Republicans start embracing crazy communist ideas like autarky in response, so it made the country far worse without actually delivering long term electoral victories. It did eventually get the affluent suburban vote to some extent. But it came at a cost didn't it?
QuoteBut they don't appeal to most other people, and the result is we are losing elections. The cost may be the loss of a Democratic form of government.
This has been the same critique for 60 years. If the Democrats just embrace this mythical center and conservative voter, things can go back to the mythical time of Democratic dominance...that nobody under 70 can remember.
If we just do the same failed idea for 60 more years maybe someday it will work. I don't know man. LBJ won a landslide in 1964 by doing radical leftwing things that nobody in today's party would touch (well and dirty tricks...).
No, it's not Bullshit. Black people are not becoming White Nationalists! I swear to you. As for the Democrats moving left:
QuoteIn April 2022, Elon Musk tweeted a cartoon made by US evolutionary biologist Colin Wright. The image shows a stick figure representing Wright, a self-described "centre-left liberal", becoming politically stranded as the American left shifts ever further leftward during the 2010s, leaving him closer to the right despite his ideology not changing. The graphic was mocked at the time. But recent events suggest it may have a grain of truth to it.
To be clear: the main reason the Democrats lost the US election is that inflation kills political incumbents. But that doesn't mean there are not other lessons in the results.
Data suggests the Democrats lost ground with moderates, while holding steady among progressives. Charges that racism propelled voters to Donald Trump are at odds with the rightward swing among Black and Hispanic voters, and with a raft of data showing that racial prejudice is in steady decline among Americans of all political stripes.
Instead, the data shows Democrats taking a sharp turn leftward on social issues over the past decade. This has distanced them from the median voter, just as Wright's cartoon depicted. We see this not only in Democratic voters' self-reported ideology, but in their views on issues including immigration and whether or not minorities need extra help to succeed in society. Notably, the shift began in 2016. This suggests that Trump's election radicalised the left, not the right.
(https://i.imgur.com/HdjZEgg.jpeg)
Some counter that this is simply what progressive politics is, but the evidence suggests otherwise. America's decades-long progress towards racial and sexual tolerance and equality has been a gradual shift, led by progressives with the centre and right quickly following.
The pivots of the past decade, by contrast, have been abrupt and are leaving the majority behind. They are better characterised not as moves towards greater tolerance and equality but as shifts in rhetoric or proposed solutions for addressing disparities, where there is plenty of room for disagreement without bigotry.
Many of these pivots originated with the activists and non-profit staffers that surround the Democratic party. In an invaluable piece of research carried out in 2021, political scientists Alexander Furnas and Timothy LaPira at the think-tank Data for Progress found that these "political elites" or tastemakers hold views often well to the left of the average voter — and even the average Democratic voter — on cultural issues.
(https://i.imgur.com/Qq7dAeY.jpeg)
This can create situations where policies and rhetoric alienate the very groups they're aimed at. While 73 per cent of white progressive Democrats favour cutting the size and scope of police forces, only 37 per cent of Black Americans agree. A new study by Amanda Sahar d'Urso and Marcel Roman, at Georgetown and Harvard universities respectively, found that the use of the gender-neutral term "Latinx" used by some progressives was not only deeply unpopular with many Hispanic Americans but may have actively pushed some towards Trump.
Political party leaders may counter that such gestures come from activists, not politicians. But there is now widespread concern about speech-policing among every group of Americans apart from the progressive left.
There was a graphic here, but it would not let me save it. Basically White progressive have moved far to the left of minorities on issues of immigration and policing
US voters also perceive the Democrats as having moved much further left than the Republicans have shifted right in recent years.
These shifts, layered on top of increasing education polarisation, are changing the image of the Democratic party in voters' minds. Survey data shows that in every election from 1948 to 2012, American voters' image of the Democrats was as the party that stood up for the working class and the poor. In 2016 that flipped. Now it is seen primarily as the party of minority advocacy.
(https://i.imgur.com/COvD5mh.jpeg)
This evolution has reduced the salience of class and economic solidarity — a domain in which Furnas and LaPira find Democratic elites more in tune with the public than their Republican counterparts — and elevated sociocultural issues, where the GOP is on firmer ground.
As predicted, this resulted in racial realignment on November 5, with Hispanic and Black conservatives voting increasingly in line with their social values rather than their economic priorities.
(https://i.imgur.com/8y9xvzb.jpeg)
Whether or not progressives are ready to accept it, the evidence all points in one direction. America's moderate voters have not deserted the Democrats; the party has pushed them away.
https://www.ft.com/content/73a1836d-0faa-4c84-b973-554e2ca3a227
The reason they embraced post material things is because they had their material needs met. They have moved right on economics because the base of the party is now affluent. They aren't competing for the working class jobs, so those interests don't interest them that much. The people it does interest are leaving the Democrats.
Quote from: Razgovory on May 29, 2025, 12:30:03 PMNo, it's not Bullshit. Black people are not becoming White Nationalists! I swear to you.
Ok this is the second time you have launched this bizarre bullshit at me. What is this shit about black people becoming white nationalist? What is this garbage? Ok we have Kanye but come on.
What I said was that Democrats cannot go further right wing than Republicans on issues like gender and white nationalism. What I meant was that to the extent a voter is going to vote on those things with a right wing bias there is nothing the Democrats can do to win those people...at least on those issues. So when the article mentioned those black people were going to stay Republicans because of gender...well the Democrats could call for all trans people to be shot, they probably still wouldn't be more preferable to people with strong right wing views on that issue. Probably not the way to get them back.
QuoteWhether or not progressives are ready to accept it, the evidence all points in one direction. America's moderate voters have not deserted the Democrats; the party has pushed them away.
Ok well I see polls and vibes but I don't see anything of substance. The Democratic Party have been supporting expanded funding for police forces. They aren't cutting police funding. The Democratic Party has not done anything to re-introduce affirmative action. The Democratic Party has gone very right wing on immigration issues by policy, though granted they are not gathering up people and shipping them to foreign gulags without trial. The Democratic party has not taken the position that 'Latinx' is a term anybody should use that I am aware of.
But generally this is the kind of bullshit I hear all the time. White progressives are out there saying things in social media and therefore the Democratic Party is far left. And of course only rich white people are progressive, which is a bizarre assumption...but anyway. Meanwhile the Republicans are actually passing far right wing LAWS and POLICIES. I am not judging them based on what weirdos post on social media. I am judging them based on the LAWS THEY PASS. There is a difference between what people loosely associated with you online say and the actual laws and policies of the party.
QuoteThe reason they embraced post material things is because they had their material needs met. They have moved right on economics because the base of the party is now affluent. They aren't competing for the working class jobs, so those interests don't interest them that much. The people it does interest are leaving the Democrats.
Well that shift happened in the 1990s. But there is something really ridiculous in you telling me that they shifted far left and that explains why they shifted far right. What are we even talking about here?
And the answer is always go right, always right. But it doesn't work. And why I think you have perfectly explained. It does not matter at all what the Democrats do because they will always be perceived as the party of the left and whatever random leftists do, whether the Democrats like it or not.
So maybe they should stop this fruitless effort and actually fight for those issues. Why not explain why the brutal and inhumane persecution of gender minorities is anti-American and bad? Why not explain how immigration is vital for our country's future and economy and is good? Because people are just going assume you support those issues anyway, no matter how many people you deport. So you might as well make those positions as popular as possible.
And yes take leftwing views on the economy. All going right here did was turn off working class voters. And seem to have made the Republicans embrace bizarre autarkic positions.
Democrats feel fake and corrupt because they are not being leftwing.
You say that Republicans are white nationalist, but I don't think that black people are joining the Republican party to become White nationalists.
We do put our beliefs into policy and laws. After the George Floyd protests did cut police funding. Many cities are sanctuary cities, Democrats do have policies that celebrate Trans individuals. It's not just vibes. We actually do things sometimes. I think you hold a double standard here, Republicans haven't passed laws that endorse white Nationalism, but you still ascribe that belief to them.
Look, we lost the last election. We lost to a felon and a racist. We are losing black and Hispanics voters to a racist. Maybe we need to take a look at what we are doing wrong.
My 2cents is that progressive politics has been slipping into permissive politics. People want progress towards solutions on issues like drugs, crime, immigration but they don't want to be permissive of them.
In the Canadian election I saw an interview with Chrétien talking about restoring the liberal party as the "radical right", ie progressive conscience but practical...
I don't think Democrats need to out-right the right. I think they just need to realize that the extremes on the right often have a root in legitimate grievance, and take positions that acknowledge rather than inflame them.
The idea the Democrats lost because they are far left is certifiably insane. Nonsense clearly pulled from vichy-twitter.
All indications are the complete opposite is the reality. They lost because they offered nothing but business a usual. Little to clearly make working people's lives better.
Out righting the far right isn't going to happen and just defending against fascists favourite topics is a bad move.
The Democrats need to move left.
Especially in light of America's recent Truss on acid experiences.
QuoteI don't think Democrats need to out-right the right. I think they just need to realize that the extremes on the right often have a root in legitimate grievance, and take positions that acknowledge rather than inflame them.
They do. But this grievance usually isn't what it surfaces as. It's clear to be seen that paranoia about immigrants tends to be stronger in economically struggling areas rather than in areas with higher immigration.
Quote from: DGuller on May 30, 2025, 12:43:27 AMI don't think Democrats need to out-right the right. I think they just need to realize that the extremes on the right often have a root in legitimate grievance, and take positions that acknowledge rather than inflame them.
I don't think we are even talking about extremes here. If the majority of people in the country believe there are too many illegal immigrants I don't think it qualifies as an extreme view. The idea that we should take extreme positions because we will never win over fascists is stupid.
Quote from: Josquius on May 30, 2025, 02:19:26 AMThey do. But this grievance usually isn't what it surfaces as. It's clear to be seen that paranoia about immigrants tends to be stronger in economically struggling areas rather than in areas with higher immigration.
Yeah, we saw that with the grooming gang scandal in your country.
"Help! There are people gangs of men raping women and the police will do nothing"
"This person is clearly suffering from economic anxiety."
Quote from: Razgovory on May 30, 2025, 06:45:13 AMQuote from: Josquius on May 30, 2025, 02:19:26 AMThey do. But this grievance usually isn't what it surfaces as. It's clear to be seen that paranoia about immigrants tends to be stronger in economically struggling areas rather than in areas with higher immigration.
Yeah, we saw that with the grooming gang scandal in your country.
"Help! There are people gangs of men raping women and the police will do nothing"
"This person is clearly suffering from economic anxiety."
A weird non-sequitur but its roots nonetheless were socio-economic rather than racial or religious as your guys claimed.
Who are my guys? The problem Josq, is that you refuse to take what people say at face value and try to twist it in a way that suits your purpose. Instead of trying to find a way to interpret what other people say as already agreeing with you, try listening.
Quote from: Razgovory on May 30, 2025, 09:13:20 AMWho are my guys? The problem Josq, is that you refuse to take what people say at face value and try to twist it in a way that suits your purpose. Instead of trying to find a way to interpret what other people say as already agreeing with you, try listening.
The problem with you Raz. Is that you insist on always taking what people say at face value when it suits your purpose. Rather than realising people often look for simple answers to complex problems and seeking to dig deeper into what you see on the surface you just accept the explanation that we live in a simple world.
Eg if I say to you "let's go have a beer?" what's your take away from that? What possible explanations are there?
Is it just "this guy loves beer"?
Quote from: Razgovory on May 30, 2025, 09:13:20 AMWho are my guys? The problem Josq, is that you refuse to take what people say at face value and try to twist it in a way that suits your purpose. Instead of trying to find a way to interpret what other people say as already agreeing with you, try listening.
Now apply that wisdom to the war in Gaza thread
Quote from: crazy canuck on May 30, 2025, 09:54:07 AMQuote from: Razgovory on May 30, 2025, 09:13:20 AMWho are my guys? The problem Josq, is that you refuse to take what people say at face value and try to twist it in a way that suits your purpose. Instead of trying to find a way to interpret what other people say as already agreeing with you, try listening.
Now apply that wisdom to the war in Gaza thread
Sure. When Hamas members call on people to kill Jews where ever you find them, I believe them. I do not dismiss it as rhetoric or some sort of cultural difference.
Quote from: Josquius on May 30, 2025, 09:33:41 AMQuote from: Razgovory on May 30, 2025, 09:13:20 AMWho are my guys? The problem Josq, is that you refuse to take what people say at face value and try to twist it in a way that suits your purpose. Instead of trying to find a way to interpret what other people say as already agreeing with you, try listening.
The problem with you Raz. Is that you insist on always taking what people say at face value when it suits your purpose. Rather than realising people often look for simple answers to complex problems and seeking to dig deeper into what you see on the surface you just accept the explanation that we live in a simple world.
Eg if I say to you "let's go have a beer?" what's your take away from that? What possible explanations are there?
Is it just "this guy loves beer"?
My first interpretation is "This person wants to have a beer with me". I wouldn't come to some sort of weird conclusion about socio-economic conditions. When people complain that gangs are raping women it doesn't necessarily mean that they are irredeemable racists, or that they are really concerned about housing, or that they are uncertain about their economic situation, or that they want to nationalize the rail roads. Sometimes they are actually concerned about actual gangs that rape people.
Quote from: Razgovory on May 29, 2025, 08:24:25 PMYou say that Republicans are white nationalist, but I don't think that black people are joining the Republican party to become White nationalists.
No. black people are not joining the Republican Party to become white nationalists. Well except weirdos like Kanye West. Look I don't know if it is possible to enact more white nationalist policies than Donald Trump, I am sure it is possible in some theoretical way, like bringing back the citizenship laws of the 19th century, but he is a white nationalist to a rather absurd degree. But that is just my understanding. You clearly have some other consideration of what white nationalism is and I am really not interested in some semantic discussion.
Donald Trump, and his policies, are just about the most extreme example of this I have seen in my lifetime. If he and his policies aren't white nationalist then I am not sure what is.
QuoteWe do put our beliefs into policy and laws.
Ok you might have me here. I was talking about national politics. Things the Democrats have done in Congress and with the Presidency. I am not familiar with thousands of local and municipal and state jurisdictions across the country. Some of them have done some things.
QuoteAfter the George Floyd protests did cut police funding.
No it didn't. Police funding went way up afterwards. I think it was cut temporarily in some local areas but that is not the norm.
QuoteMany cities are sanctuary cities,
Sanctuary cities, at least here in Texas, is a Republican construction and not a real thing. There is no "sanctuary city" set of policies. But again I am not familiar with all 50 states and hundreds of cities and hundreds of county governments. The last time this was really an issue in Texas was way back during the 2010 Governor's race where Rick Perry called Democrat Mayor Bill White, his Democratic challenger, for running a sanctuary city in Houston. Of course the policies of Houston were basically the same as the State of Texas law enforcement at the time. Nothing particularly sanctuary-ish about Houston. Link: https://www.texastribune.org/2010/05/04/houston-state-cops-have-similar-immigrant-policy/
And it still sticks. People still say Houston is a "sanctuary city" despite never doing anything that would distinguish it from any other city in Texas. So as a smear it works. Substance wise? Not so much. At least not that I can see in Texas. Maybe in Missouri it is different.
QuoteDemocrats do have policies that celebrate Trans individuals.
Policies? Such as? Though these days simply claiming they are human beings with rights and not brainwashed evil child molesters celebrates I guess.
QuoteIt's not just vibes. We actually do things sometimes.
Please be specific then. Because all I see is vibes.
QuoteI think you hold a double standard here, Republicans haven't passed laws that endorse white Nationalism, but you still ascribe that belief to them.
Virtually every policy Donald Trump has enacted about immigration and foreigners is white nationalism. I am not sure what a law that endorses something looks like. Only to the extent fugitive slave laws endorsed slavery. So I don't know what you are talking about here. Some semantic nonsense I have no time for.
QuoteLook, we lost the last election. We lost to a felon and a racist. We are losing black and Hispanics voters to a racist. Maybe we need to take a look at what we are doing wrong.
Sure. I agree we need to change course. I am just a little tired of the same old proscription being suggested.
And to your point, the national democratic party cannot change course on most of these issues. If somebody on the internet saying or some local jurisdiction the national party has no control over passing some kind of pro-trans resolution is going to stick to the national party, then simply changing to a more centrist or conservative position on transness will simply fail. Nobody will buy it because of what that county/state/municipal government did or what that person on social media said. It feels fake and disingenuous.
So it has to be managed a different way.
Quote from: DGuller on May 30, 2025, 12:43:27 AMI don't think Democrats need to out-right the right. I think they just need to realize that the extremes on the right often have a root in legitimate grievance, and take positions that acknowledge rather than inflame them.
Sure. It seems like the national policy is as meek and cautious and conciliatory to those issues as it can be. And what is the legitimate grievance? Are these economic issues? Because I am all for taking more strident course on those. That is very concrete and direct.
The sort of wishy-washy "such and such demographic feels sad" stuff is harder to address. Especially for demographics where the Democrats are just always going to be at a disadvantage.
I would have thought that "white nationalism" would be things like segregation or laws that put white people first in all consideration, or stuff like that. It's clear that we live in separate worlds, after the election I tried to move out of my comfort zone and take a critical look at the things we believe in and say.
Quote from: Razgovory on May 30, 2025, 05:39:52 PMI would have thought that "white nationalism" would be things like segregation or laws that put white people first in all consideration, or stuff like that.
Ok. Are Trump's anti-diversity and anti-DEI and doing weird stuff like that not pointing in that direction? And all the other things I mentioned? I agree that obviously re-enforcing hard segregation would be something that is white nationalism as well of course. But it doesn't really matter.
Just whatever all those things I mentioned are, that was what I meant. I don't have to call it white nationalism. Tell me what term I should be using. I don't really care about the semantics. I am just trying to communicate.
QuoteIt's clear that we live in separate worlds, after the election I tried to move out of my comfort zone and take a critical look at the things we believe in and say.
We live in separate worlds? Because we have a slight semantic difference? Ok. Sorry for using different words. Tell me the words. I do not care.
Anyway I just was skeptical of the position that article took. But hey I would accept it if the Democrats took a strong stand, any stand, about anything in opposition to this Republican Party. And I pretty much have. So if that Atlantic article leads to the big winning strategy I will support it...you know to some extent. I am not really interested in doing horrible things to people like Sophie.
It's like genocide and ethnic cleansing. Either you can measure it or it's just blah blah blah.
Quote from: Razgovory on May 30, 2025, 11:38:20 AMQuote from: Josquius on May 30, 2025, 09:33:41 AMQuote from: Razgovory on May 30, 2025, 09:13:20 AMWho are my guys? The problem Josq, is that you refuse to take what people say at face value and try to twist it in a way that suits your purpose. Instead of trying to find a way to interpret what other people say as already agreeing with you, try listening.
The problem with you Raz. Is that you insist on always taking what people say at face value when it suits your purpose. Rather than realising people often look for simple answers to complex problems and seeking to dig deeper into what you see on the surface you just accept the explanation that we live in a simple world.
Eg if I say to you "let's go have a beer?" what's your take away from that? What possible explanations are there?
Is it just "this guy loves beer"?
My first interpretation is "This person wants to have a beer with me".
Yes. And why do I want to have a beer with you?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 31, 2025, 02:27:22 AMIt's like genocide and ethnic cleansing. Either you can measure it or it's just blah blah blah.
What would be the appropriate metrics?
Quote from: Oexmelin on May 31, 2025, 04:03:56 AMWhat would be the appropriate metrics?
In the case of white nationalism I don't have the slightest idea.
Quote from: Josquius on May 31, 2025, 02:36:55 AMQuote from: Razgovory on May 30, 2025, 11:38:20 AMQuote from: Josquius on May 30, 2025, 09:33:41 AMQuote from: Razgovory on May 30, 2025, 09:13:20 AMWho are my guys? The problem Josq, is that you refuse to take what people say at face value and try to twist it in a way that suits your purpose. Instead of trying to find a way to interpret what other people say as already agreeing with you, try listening.
The problem with you Raz. Is that you insist on always taking what people say at face value when it suits your purpose. Rather than realising people often look for simple answers to complex problems and seeking to dig deeper into what you see on the surface you just accept the explanation that we live in a simple world.
Eg if I say to you "let's go have a beer?" what's your take away from that? What possible explanations are there?
Is it just "this guy loves beer"?
My first interpretation is "This person wants to have a beer with me".
Yes. And why do I want to have a beer with you?
Can't make that determination without further information. You might be trying to seduce me, you might want to sell me something, you might be just friendly, you be an alcoholic.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 31, 2025, 04:41:16 AMQuote from: Oexmelin on May 31, 2025, 04:03:56 AMWhat would be the appropriate metrics?
In the case of white nationalism I don't have the slightest idea.
I would measure it in number of times per day Stephen Miller advises or makes a political decision for you.
Quote from: Razgovory on May 31, 2025, 05:49:50 AMQuote from: Josquius on May 31, 2025, 02:36:55 AMQuote from: Razgovory on May 30, 2025, 11:38:20 AMQuote from: Josquius on May 30, 2025, 09:33:41 AMQuote from: Razgovory on May 30, 2025, 09:13:20 AMWho are my guys? The problem Josq, is that you refuse to take what people say at face value and try to twist it in a way that suits your purpose. Instead of trying to find a way to interpret what other people say as already agreeing with you, try listening.
The problem with you Raz. Is that you insist on always taking what people say at face value when it suits your purpose. Rather than realising people often look for simple answers to complex problems and seeking to dig deeper into what you see on the surface you just accept the explanation that we live in a simple world.
Eg if I say to you "let's go have a beer?" what's your take away from that? What possible explanations are there?
Is it just "this guy loves beer"?
My first interpretation is "This person wants to have a beer with me".
Yes. And why do I want to have a beer with you?
Can't make that determination without further information. You might be trying to seduce me, you might want to sell me something, you might be just friendly, you be an alcoholic.
Exactly. Lots of possibilities. You need to look towards further research - am I looking to scam you? Do I genuinely want to help you with something? Do I have alcohol problems?
It surfaced as just "let's go have a beer" but there is actually a lot more to it.
And it could well be the explanation is that it's not about having a beer at all.
Maybe I'm just desperately lonely and want to hang out - inviting me to a D&D session could do the trick without any alcohol needing to be involved.
You just don't know. And jumping to assuming alcoholism/beer connoisseur/something else focussed on the beer could well be a mistake.
Indeed if I am an alcoholic just going along with my initial ask could be the opposite of what you should do.
Quote from: Josquius on May 31, 2025, 10:03:24 AMExactly. Lots of possibilities. You need to look towards further research ...
It's hard to misinterpret someone saying they want to destroy Israel and kill all Jews. Especially when, given the opportunity, they will indeed kill all Jews they come across.
And it's hardly an isolated phenomenon. Surveys make clear most Palestinians are more interested in having another go at 1948 than coexistence.
[edit] My bad, I thought this was the Hamas thread. :P
Quote from: Oexmelin on May 31, 2025, 04:03:56 AMQuote from: Admiral Yi on May 31, 2025, 02:27:22 AMIt's like genocide and ethnic cleansing. Either you can measure it or it's just blah blah blah.
What would be the appropriate metrics?
Maybe ratio of Maya Angelou books to Adolph Hitler books allowed in the nation's military academy?
Percentage of pictures of black military heroes/personnel scrubbed from DoD websites as compared to white military heroes/personnel?
The Trump administration is not trying to hide it.
Quote from: Josquius on May 31, 2025, 10:03:24 AMQuote from: Razgovory on May 31, 2025, 05:49:50 AMQuote from: Josquius on May 31, 2025, 02:36:55 AMQuote from: Razgovory on May 30, 2025, 11:38:20 AMQuote from: Josquius on May 30, 2025, 09:33:41 AMQuote from: Razgovory on May 30, 2025, 09:13:20 AMWho are my guys? The problem Josq, is that you refuse to take what people say at face value and try to twist it in a way that suits your purpose. Instead of trying to find a way to interpret what other people say as already agreeing with you, try listening.
The problem with you Raz. Is that you insist on always taking what people say at face value when it suits your purpose. Rather than realising people often look for simple answers to complex problems and seeking to dig deeper into what you see on the surface you just accept the explanation that we live in a simple world.
Eg if I say to you "let's go have a beer?" what's your take away from that? What possible explanations are there?
Is it just "this guy loves beer"?
My first interpretation is "This person wants to have a beer with me".
Yes. And why do I want to have a beer with you?
Can't make that determination without further information. You might be trying to seduce me, you might want to sell me something, you might be just friendly, you be an alcoholic.
Exactly. Lots of possibilities. You need to look towards further research - am I looking to scam you? Do I genuinely want to help you with something? Do I have alcohol problems?
It surfaced as just "let's go have a beer" but there is actually a lot more to it.
And it could well be the explanation is that it's not about having a beer at all.
Maybe I'm just desperately lonely and want to hang out - inviting me to a D&D session could do the trick without any alcohol needing to be involved.
You just don't know. And jumping to assuming alcoholism/beer connoisseur/something else focussed on the beer could well be a mistake.
Indeed if I am an alcoholic just going along with my initial ask could be the opposite of what you should do.
What isn't a mistake is assuming that person is willing to drink beer with you. Likewise, someone who says "there are gangs raping women but the police won't act" is really concerned about gangs the police won't act against. Tell you what, why not try to find what ulterior motives a person who says "I support worker's rights" or "I'm a member of the working class" or "Trans women are women" has.
Quote from: grumbler on May 31, 2025, 05:37:49 PMQuote from: Oexmelin on May 31, 2025, 04:03:56 AMQuote from: Admiral Yi on May 31, 2025, 02:27:22 AMIt's like genocide and ethnic cleansing. Either you can measure it or it's just blah blah blah.
What would be the appropriate metrics?
Maybe ratio of Maya Angelou books to Adolph Hitler books allowed in the nation's military academy?
Percentage of pictures of black military heroes/personnel scrubbed from DoD websites as compared to white military heroes/personnel?
The Trump administration is not trying to hide it.
If he is planning to bring back segregation, and this is the context in which the term "White Nationalist" was coined, he's doing a fairly good job of it. I'm really not seeing that happening.
Quote from: Razgovory on May 31, 2025, 06:22:08 PMWhat isn't a mistake is assuming that person is willing to drink beer with you. Likewise, someone who says "there are gangs raping women but the police won't act" is really concerned about gangs the police won't act against.
Rather they
believe that there are gangs raping women and the police are doing nothing.
Why do they believe this?
How big of a problem do they believe this to be?
Is there any truth to this?
Is it really just about this one case they read about on facebook or, is it a surfacing of their broader anger about the crappy state of policing?
Is it really even all about policing or do they have broader worries about the state of society?
I'm leading you down a path here, but of course when actually doing this research if its anyone halfway competent doing it they wouldn't include assumptions in questions like so. They'd take a more neutral path of just asking why, tell me more about this thing you mentioned, etc...
QuoteTell you what, why not try to find what ulterior motives a person who says "I support worker's rights" or "I'm a member of the working class" or "Trans women are women" has.
You think you've found a gotcha here, but you haven't. There are indeed a myriad reasons why people land on supporting positive stuff just as much as negative stuff. And the far right is only too keen to try and hijack this for themselves- "workers rights are being undermined by immigrants!", "Trans women having rights means cis women don't have rights!"
Quote from: Iormlund on May 31, 2025, 10:50:34 AMQuote from: Josquius on May 31, 2025, 10:03:24 AMExactly. Lots of possibilities. You need to look towards further research ...
It's hard to misinterpret someone saying they want to destroy Israel and kill all Jews. Especially when, given the opportunity, they will indeed kill all Jews they come across.
And it's hardly an isolated phenomenon. Surveys make clear most Palestinians are more interested in having another go at 1948 than coexistence.
[edit] My bad, I thought this was the Hamas thread. :P
Its irrelevant to this but even there you do have a lot more to it than meets the eye and it can be well worth digging into it.
To the Raz's of the world this can only be motivated by antisemitism. As is the case with sane criticism of Israel.
But could it not just be basic nationalism, no matter who the enemy is, combined with a healthy dose of Jews=Israel idiocy?
Does the person saying it actually mean this or are they just an absolute moron speaking out of frustration at Israel's actions?
Do they actually not give a shit about Israel at all and their hatred for Jews is proper olde worlde bigotry, they'd be for killing them all even if (or hell, especially if) Israel didn't exist?
Even pretty overt evil shit has deeper motivations behind it than cartoon supervillain "I will destroy the world mwa ha ha".
Its rare that all supporters of something have the same logic behind them either. Examining why people come to supporting the really nasty stuff can help to identify those who land there through a chain of thought that can be intercepted with more positive policies.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/dermatologists-say-marines-tightened-shaving-waiver-hurt-black-members-rcna208090
Hegseth drumming out soldiers suffering from a skin condition that entirely coincidentally disproportionately effects Blacks. Move along, nothing to see here.
This is an administration run by people who proclaim themselves nationalists, and who all happen to be white except for two light skinned Hispanics. They are white and nationalist but we can't call them white nationalists. Because.
They have targeted non-white immigrants for the most cruel and brutal treatment but their race is entirely coindental, right? All non documented immigrants are being treated with equal cruelty, regardless of race, right? Except for white South Africans - we roll out the red (white?) carpet for them. But not because they are white, but because they are uh - wait, no it is because they are white. But it's not about race. I mean it is literally about race, but not "about race".
One could fill pages with this. There are of course open fascists and white nationalists in America, all cheering for Trump and his policies. More coincidence, more meaning we must treat as meaningless.
After all Trump is the least racist person in the world, he told us so.
One's head must be extremely deep in the sand to ignore what is going on. Does saying this offend some hypothetical swing voters out there? I honestly don't know. I leave that to that professional politicians and spin doctors to decide.
I'm just a citizen who doesn't like walking around with his head in the sand or up his own ass. It's uncomfortable, unhygenic, and bad for my back. I'm going to have to stick to telling it how it is. I've heard that's what Americans like to hear, no?
The Democrats are shuffling chairs around while the country burns? This is not a real controversy and not something that anyone outside of their narrow group cares about. :wacko:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5340930-dnc-david-hogg-controversy/
QuoteDemocratic frustration reaches boiling point over David Hogg
Tensions are reaching a boiling point between David Hogg and Democratic National Committee (DNC) leadership as the organization moves to potentially redo Hogg's election as vice chair.
Leaked audio revealed DNC Chair Ken Martin venting his frustration with Hogg, who has come under fire from some within the party for his efforts to oust certain incumbents while serving as a DNC vice chair.
The leak occurred the day before DNC officials were set to vote virtually on whether to redo the vice chair elections, a move technically unrelated to the controversy surrounding Hogg. And it has underscored the frustrations many in the party feel toward the 25-year-old gun control activist.
"David Hogg is one of the biggest distractions we've had and seen in our party," said Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright, who advised former DNC Chair Jaime Harrison and hopes Hogg loses his seat. "I don't trust him and I don't think a lot of other people who are associated with the party should trust him."
Hogg is rattling members of the party as he's showed no signs of reversing course on getting involved in Democratic primaries as a sitting DNC officer, despite Martin and members of the party making clear their opposition to it.
That conflict came to a head last month when Martin expressed frustration with Hogg during a Zoom call with DNC officers, audio of which was leaked and subsequently reported by Politico over the weekend.
"I'm just quite frustrated to be in this position, because what you've done, whether you like it or not or know it or not, David, is I'm trying to — no one knows who the hell I am, right?" Martin said on the call, apparently addressing Hogg, according to audio published by the news outlet.
"I'm trying to get my sea legs underneath me and actually develop any amount of credibility so I can go out there and raise the money and do the job I need to, to put ourselves in a position to win," he continued. "And again, I don't think you intended this, but you essentially destroyed any chance I have to show the leadership that I need to, so it's really frustrating."
Martin also suggested he had considered stepping down as chair several months into his tenure.
"I'm not going anywhere," he later said in a statement following the publication of the audio. "I took this job to fight Republicans, not Democrats. As I said when I was elected, our fight is not within the Democratic Party, our fight is and has to be solely focused on Donald Trump and the disastrous Republican agenda. That's the work that I will continue to do every day."
A number of DNC officers have also expressed their support for Martin following the Politico report, with some criticizing Hogg over the controversy.
"We have a lot of work to do as a party, and Chair Martin is doing it," Stuart Appelbaum, a DNC associate chair, said in a statement. "I have total confidence in his leadership."
Meanwhile, Hogg has sought to distance himself from the leaked audio and its release in a post on the social platform X. In a separate post, he suggested the call is a distraction that would only help Republicans.
"Republicans want us turning on each other so they can continue getting away with this. While Chair Martin and I have had our disagreements we are both in this to build the strongest party possible," Hogg wrote. "Our nation is in a moment of crisis and the people are looking for us to lead. This is a distraction that prevents us from doing that. Do not help the GOP."
A representative for Hogg did not respond to The Hill's request for comment.
The situation has left Democrats feeling frustrated and furious, with some saying the controversy is creating a distraction just as party officials are grappling with how to respond to Trump's deployment of the military to California amid immigration-related protests. Meanwhile, the party is gearing up for the midterms, when it hopes to flip the House and possibly even the Senate.
"It shows that we're no different than [Republicans], and it shows that we haven't learned lessons from the past," Seawright said. "We've seen what happens when you are not unified. We've seen what happens when there's in-party fighting. We've seen what happens when selfish people try to poke their selfish heads up to make headlines instead of headway."
And while some members of the party agree with the idea the party needs to make room for generational change or challenge ineffective members, they take issue with Hogg's decision to try to do so as an officer of the national party.
"By and large, even the most hardcore centrist, moderate Democrats, in [a] roundabout way, agree with what he's doing. There are some Democrats that need to get primaried or at [least] challenged, right? That's fine," said John Verdejo, a DNC member from North Carolina. "Everyone agrees with him on paper, but now ... you're a DNC vice chair."
One Democratic strategist who spoke on condition of anonymity said Hogg is "over his skis."
"We are relying on the experience of a gun violence prevention activist, now Democratic Party leader, three years out of college," the strategist said. "[Hogg] does not have the shared experience of Ken and others on that call."
"It's hard to not look at this and say this is someone who is clearly trying to build their profile," the strategist added.
Hogg explicitly noted his group Leaders We Deserve would not target front-line members in competitive districts.
Happening in tandem is the vote over whether the DNC should redo its vice chair elections after Oklahoma DNC member Kalyn Free contested the way the initial vice chair elections were conducted in February. The challenge over the DNC vice chair election was initiated before Hogg announced he would be wading into Democratic primaries.
The virtual vote is taking place between Monday and Wednesday of this week; if DNC members decide to redo the vote, two separate virtual votes will be held for the spots currently held by Hogg and Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta.
Some members are reconsidering how they might cast their vote in light of the leaked audio and the controversy that's ensued.
Michael Kapp, a DNC member from California who sits on the DNC Credentials Committee, noted that he was one of the most vocal members of the committee to protect Hogg's and Kenyatta's seats and was against the resolution to consider redoing the vice chair election.
"Up until yesterday, I've been very consistent that I was going to vote no on the Credentials Committee report. I voted no on it in committee, I was planning on voting against it," Kapp said.
"Now, I'm reconsidering that position, because I don't believe that we should have officers who are leaking private conversations between officers," he added.
The anonymous Democratic strategist warned that voting Hogg out of his post could elevate him as a martyr of sorts.
"There is going to be a lot of backlash if he's forced out of his position," the strategist said. "You think he's making noise now? Holy cow, we're not going to hear the end of it."
Quote from: garbon on June 10, 2025, 09:24:20 AMThe Democrats are shuffling chairs around while the country burns? This is not a real controversy and not something that anyone outside of their narrow group cares about. :wacko:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5340930-dnc-david-hogg-controversy/
QuoteDemocratic frustration reaches boiling point over David Hogg
Tensions are reaching a boiling point between David Hogg and Democratic National Committee (DNC) leadership as the organization moves to potentially redo Hogg's election as vice chair.
Leaked audio revealed DNC Chair Ken Martin venting his frustration with Hogg, who has come under fire from some within the party for his efforts to oust certain incumbents while serving as a DNC vice chair.
The leak occurred the day before DNC officials were set to vote virtually on whether to redo the vice chair elections, a move technically unrelated to the controversy surrounding Hogg. And it has underscored the frustrations many in the party feel toward the 25-year-old gun control activist.
"David Hogg is one of the biggest distractions we've had and seen in our party," said Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright, who advised former DNC Chair Jaime Harrison and hopes Hogg loses his seat. "I don't trust him and I don't think a lot of other people who are associated with the party should trust him."
Hogg is rattling members of the party as he's showed no signs of reversing course on getting involved in Democratic primaries as a sitting DNC officer, despite Martin and members of the party making clear their opposition to it.
That conflict came to a head last month when Martin expressed frustration with Hogg during a Zoom call with DNC officers, audio of which was leaked and subsequently reported by Politico over the weekend.
"I'm just quite frustrated to be in this position, because what you've done, whether you like it or not or know it or not, David, is I'm trying to — no one knows who the hell I am, right?" Martin said on the call, apparently addressing Hogg, according to audio published by the news outlet.
"I'm trying to get my sea legs underneath me and actually develop any amount of credibility so I can go out there and raise the money and do the job I need to, to put ourselves in a position to win," he continued. "And again, I don't think you intended this, but you essentially destroyed any chance I have to show the leadership that I need to, so it's really frustrating."
Martin also suggested he had considered stepping down as chair several months into his tenure.
"I'm not going anywhere," he later said in a statement following the publication of the audio. "I took this job to fight Republicans, not Democrats. As I said when I was elected, our fight is not within the Democratic Party, our fight is and has to be solely focused on Donald Trump and the disastrous Republican agenda. That's the work that I will continue to do every day."
A number of DNC officers have also expressed their support for Martin following the Politico report, with some criticizing Hogg over the controversy.
"We have a lot of work to do as a party, and Chair Martin is doing it," Stuart Appelbaum, a DNC associate chair, said in a statement. "I have total confidence in his leadership."
Meanwhile, Hogg has sought to distance himself from the leaked audio and its release in a post on the social platform X. In a separate post, he suggested the call is a distraction that would only help Republicans.
"Republicans want us turning on each other so they can continue getting away with this. While Chair Martin and I have had our disagreements we are both in this to build the strongest party possible," Hogg wrote. "Our nation is in a moment of crisis and the people are looking for us to lead. This is a distraction that prevents us from doing that. Do not help the GOP."
A representative for Hogg did not respond to The Hill's request for comment.
The situation has left Democrats feeling frustrated and furious, with some saying the controversy is creating a distraction just as party officials are grappling with how to respond to Trump's deployment of the military to California amid immigration-related protests. Meanwhile, the party is gearing up for the midterms, when it hopes to flip the House and possibly even the Senate.
"It shows that we're no different than [Republicans], and it shows that we haven't learned lessons from the past," Seawright said. "We've seen what happens when you are not unified. We've seen what happens when there's in-party fighting. We've seen what happens when selfish people try to poke their selfish heads up to make headlines instead of headway."
And while some members of the party agree with the idea the party needs to make room for generational change or challenge ineffective members, they take issue with Hogg's decision to try to do so as an officer of the national party.
"By and large, even the most hardcore centrist, moderate Democrats, in [a] roundabout way, agree with what he's doing. There are some Democrats that need to get primaried or at [least] challenged, right? That's fine," said John Verdejo, a DNC member from North Carolina. "Everyone agrees with him on paper, but now ... you're a DNC vice chair."
One Democratic strategist who spoke on condition of anonymity said Hogg is "over his skis."
"We are relying on the experience of a gun violence prevention activist, now Democratic Party leader, three years out of college," the strategist said. "[Hogg] does not have the shared experience of Ken and others on that call."
"It's hard to not look at this and say this is someone who is clearly trying to build their profile," the strategist added.
Hogg explicitly noted his group Leaders We Deserve would not target front-line members in competitive districts.
Happening in tandem is the vote over whether the DNC should redo its vice chair elections after Oklahoma DNC member Kalyn Free contested the way the initial vice chair elections were conducted in February. The challenge over the DNC vice chair election was initiated before Hogg announced he would be wading into Democratic primaries.
The virtual vote is taking place between Monday and Wednesday of this week; if DNC members decide to redo the vote, two separate virtual votes will be held for the spots currently held by Hogg and Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta.
Some members are reconsidering how they might cast their vote in light of the leaked audio and the controversy that's ensued.
Michael Kapp, a DNC member from California who sits on the DNC Credentials Committee, noted that he was one of the most vocal members of the committee to protect Hogg's and Kenyatta's seats and was against the resolution to consider redoing the vice chair election.
"Up until yesterday, I've been very consistent that I was going to vote no on the Credentials Committee report. I voted no on it in committee, I was planning on voting against it," Kapp said.
"Now, I'm reconsidering that position, because I don't believe that we should have officers who are leaking private conversations between officers," he added.
The anonymous Democratic strategist warned that voting Hogg out of his post could elevate him as a martyr of sorts.
"There is going to be a lot of backlash if he's forced out of his position," the strategist said. "You think he's making noise now? Holy cow, we're not going to hear the end of it."
Yeah, in a Parliamentary system when a party fails, the people in charge (both political and party) at the time essentially get nuked from orbit and new blood takes over. Under the American system there isn't much opportunity for renewal. The blame really just goes to whoever the Presidential candidate is, and everyone else holds on to their positions until they die of old age.
On the one hand, new blood is definitely needed. On the other hand, Hogg comes across as the kind of naive class president type that has failed the Democratic party over and over.
Quote from: HisMajestyBOB on June 10, 2025, 11:14:47 AMOn the one hand, new blood is definitely needed. On the other hand, Hogg comes across as the kind of naive class president type that has failed the Democratic party over and over.
Hey Obama got two terms. :whistle:
Would have hoped for more deviousness from Boss Hogg.
Quote from: garbon on June 10, 2025, 11:31:02 AMQuote from: HisMajestyBOB on June 10, 2025, 11:14:47 AMOn the one hand, new blood is definitely needed. On the other hand, Hogg comes across as the kind of naive class president type that has failed the Democratic party over and over.
Hey Obama got two terms. :whistle:
Obama has the #1 most important thing in a politician, charisma. Hogg, otoh, is cringe. Imo, of course.
Quote from: garbon on June 10, 2025, 09:24:20 AMThe Democrats are shuffling chairs around while the country burns? This is not a real controversy and not something that anyone outside of their narrow group cares about. :wacko:
This is exactly what Shelf and others have been bitching and bellyaching about ever since Bernie shot his wad.
:lol: You keep saying this but I have literally no idea where you got the idea I am/was a Bernie enthusiast :blink:
He's not the person I'd necessarily want leading the charge (everyone is right about him and his limitations), but I'm not sure Hogg is wrong.
Quote from: Sheilbh on June 10, 2025, 05:10:59 PM:lol: You keep saying this but I have literally no idea where you got the idea I am/was a Bernie enthusiast :blink:
He's not the person I'd necessarily want leading the charge (everyone is right about him and his limitations), but I'm not sure Hogg is wrong.
I don't recall saying you are a Bernie enthusiast. I recall you saying Teh Democrats(tm) treated Bernie unfairly. I recall you saying Teh Democrats(tm) need to kick out their dinosaurs. I recall you saying Teh Democrats shielded Biden and saddled us with an Alzheimer's executive.
What have I said the Democrats treated Bernie unfairly over - I don't remember that?
I totally stand by the rest - it's right :P
But I'd add I've always been a very big Biden fan - I wanted him to run in 2016. I think several times here I've said I think he was legislatively a genuinely consequential president and the big question was always if there would be time to see the pay-off (and this is where I have a fair amount of sympathy with the abundance critique).
I don't think he should have run again and that decision profoundly overshadows the historic record of his presidency and raises very serious (I think still unanswered) questions of who had what power when Biden had a bad day. I think everyone close to him and in a position of power should have had the conversation they finally had in June 2024 in June 2023. I don't think the DNC should have enabled that decision and the delusion that Biden should run again by rearranging the primary schedule to prevent challengers. I also don't think they should have rushed into swinging in behind Harris given the only evidence we had of a national campaign from her in 2020 - it didn't seem to me like an open and shut case that she was the right or best candidate. In each case (each a consequence of previous decisions) I think the Democrats' conflict avoidance/prioritising of party unity hurt them.
And I get Valmy's view on this:
QuoteHowever there is nothing really ironic about it. It was fear of the Republicans and Trump that got so many Democrats to just put their blinders on and go along with it. They were afraid that any fuss they raised could help the Republicans and undermine Democratic efforts. I got it, I just thought it was wrong headed and disastrous. Because outside of Democratic loyalists and never Trumpers, who was going to vote for Biden a second time? Especially as many of us had voted for him in 2020 on the agreement that he was going to be a bridge, a stop-gap candidate.
But I think it reads in the opposite way. I think it doesn't come across as so focused on beating Trump so much as at best complacent and arrogant, and at worst not really believing their own rhetoric about Trump. I think that's still playing out in how Congressional Democrats are responding to Trump. I don't think these "will this do?" decisions seem to match the urgency of Democrats' rhetoric - and, in my view, of the moment and threat presented by Trump 2.
Meanwhile...:x
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/10/how-trump-is-elevating-newsom-00398546
QuoteNewsom gains a step in brawl with Trump: 'It'll help Gavin — especially if he gets arrested'
President Donald Trump has catapulted Gavin Newsom to the front of the Democratic resistance.
The California governor had faded from national prominence as public attention shifted to Washington and, in his home state, the deliberations over Kamala Harris' political future. But as Trump and his allies make Newsom their foil in a brawl over immigration unrest in Los Angeles and the president's unilateral deployment of the National Guard and Marines, they are also elevating his stature on the left.
No longer is Newsom responding to criticism, often from fellow Democrats, over aligning with Republicans on transgender athletes or proposing to scale back health insurance for undocumented immigrants. Instead, as Trump turns California into a test of his power to impose his will on blue states, Newsom is the Democrat standing in his way.
"We're at an inflection point in the country's history," said South Carolina state Rep. JA Moore, a lawmaker who has been deeply involved in his state's early presidential primary politics. "I see in this moment that the governor is fighting like hell, not just for the people of LA or the people of California or even the country. He's fighting for democracy itself."
In the span of several days, Newsom has become a ubiquitous antagonist, excoriating Trump administration officials on social media and on television. He has personalized the conflict by daring the administration to follow through on a threat by Trump's border czar Tom Homan to arrest him. (On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson said he should be "tarred and feathered" as an alternative). He is forcing a legal reckoning by suing to block Trump's deployment of the National Guard and Marines.
On Tuesday, Newsom's press office mocked Trump with an X post casting Trump as a Star Wars villain. The governor's response to his threatened arrest — "come and get me, tough guy" — turned into a rallying cry that's getting noticed by Democrats nationally and in states that will be key to his potential 2028 prospects.
In an address Tuesday night, Newsom lit into Trump's deportation agenda and his decision to use the military to quell unrest.
"California may be first — but it clearly will not end here," he said. "Other states are next."
Democrats have united behind Newsom, with top party officials echoing his warnings that Trump is unnecessarily thrusting the nation into crisis. The party's official social media account posted a glam shot of a stoic-looking Newsom emblazoned with his "come and get me" quote. Democratic governors began reaching out over the weekend to see how they could assist, according to multiple people with knowledge of the developments granted anonymity to speak about private discussions, producing a statement lambasting the Trump administration.
...
I just hope that him getting his moment now means he'll fade away by the time the Primary arrives. :yucky:
Quote from: Sophie Scholl on June 11, 2025, 06:57:50 AMI just hope that him getting his moment now means he'll fade away by the time the Primary arrives. :yucky:
:cheers:
Quote from: garbon on June 10, 2025, 11:31:02 AMQuote from: HisMajestyBOB on June 10, 2025, 11:14:47 AMOn the one hand, new blood is definitely needed. On the other hand, Hogg comes across as the kind of naive class president type that has failed the Democratic party over and over.
Hey Obama got two terms. :whistle:
Two terms of failing to counter Republican obstructionism and Russian disinformation campaigns.
Are Liberals to Blame for the New McCarthyism?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/are-liberals-to-blame-for-the-new-mccarthyism/ar-AA1GwJfW?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=f3fcf83764964076a135e7046e656717&ei=8
QuoteThe Trump administration is carrying out a brazen crackdown on academic freedom: deporting students for writing op-eds, withholding funds from colleges that defy his control, and justifying it all as a response to anti-Semitism. Who is to blame for this? According to one popular theory on the left, the answer is liberals who have consistently supported free speech and opposed Donald Trump.
The logic of this diagnosis has a certain superficial appeal. Many of President Trump's authoritarian moves have been justified in terms of arguments that originated on the center-left. Liberals condemned the far left for fostering an intolerant atmosphere in academia. They criticized the message and methods of some pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Trump has seized on these complaints as a pretext to extort universities and target student demonstrators for deportation.
According to many left-wing critics, this sequence of events shows that, as David Klion writes in The Nation, "erstwhile free speech champions" have "helped lay the groundwork for Trump's second term." An April article in Liberal Currents directs contempt toward "the infamous Harper's letter," an open letter defending free speech from threats on the left and the right, and blames mainstream Democrats for having "laid the groundwork for where we are now." These are just two examples of a very well-developed genre.
The implication of these arguments is that Trump would not have won, or would now be having a harder time carrying out his neo-McCarthyite campaign of repression, if liberals had only refrained from denouncing left-wing cancel culture and the excesses of the post–October 7 protests. But to the extent that these events are connected, the responsibility runs the other way. It was the left's tactics and rhetoric that helped enable Trump's return to power as well as his abuse of it. The liberal critics of those tactics deserve credit for anticipating the backlash and trying to stop it.
A similar dynamic is playing out now, as liberals warn about the danger of violent infiltrators disrupting immigration protests while some leftists demand unconditional solidarity with the movement. The debate, as ever, is whether the left is discredited by its own excesses or by criticism of those excesses.
The bitter divide between liberals and leftists over Trump's neo-McCarthyism has deep historical roots. The two camps fought over the same set of ideas, making many of the same arguments, in response to the original McCarthyism of the 1950s. The lessons of that period, properly understood, offer helpful guidance for defeating the Trumpian iteration.
What made liberals vulnerable to McCarthyism was the fact that some communists really did insinuate themselves into the government during the New Deal. Communists accounted for a tiny share of the population, but they had a visible presence among intellectuals, artists, and political activists. The American Communist Party enthusiastically cooperated with Moscow. It managed to plant Soviet spies in the State Department, the Manhattan Project, and other important government institutions. The 1950 perjury trial of Alger Hiss, a high-ranking diplomat who spied on Roosevelt's administration for the Soviet Union, was a national spectacle vividly illustrating the Soviet spy network's reach. (Many American leftists maintained Hiss's innocence for decades, until the opening of the Soviet archives conclusively proved his guilt.)
In the face of this espionage threat, most liberals severed all ties with American communists. The AFL-CIO expelled communists from its ranks. "I have never seen any reason to admire men who, under the pretense of liberalism, continued to justify and whitewash the realities of Soviet Communism," the prominent intellectual Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote at the time.
The synthesis these liberal anti-communists arrived at was to oppose McCarthyism and communism simultaneously. They would defend the free-speech rights of accused communists (though not their right to hold sensitive government jobs) while denouncing communist ideas.
But they found themselves squeezed in a vise. The right was trying to use communist espionage to discredit the entire New Deal. Many leftists, meanwhile, bitterly castigated their former allies for their betrayal, and adopted a posture of anti-anti-communism—not endorsing communism per se, but instead directing all their criticism at the excesses of anti-communism, so as to avoid a rupture on the left. Still, as difficult as their position might have seemed, liberals managed to beat back McCarthyism and retain public confidence in their ability to handle the Cold War.
Many on the American left never surrendered their resentment of the center-left's anti-communist posture. In their eyes, liberals empowered McCarthy by validating the notion that communists were an enemy in the first place. And now they see the same thing happening again. By denouncing the illiberal left, they argue, the center-left has opened the door to right-wing repression.
To be fair, some free-speech advocates who criticized the left for shutting down debate have revealed themselves to be hypocritical when it comes to anti-Israel speech. An especially ugly episode transpired in late 2023, when the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT refused to crack down broadly on anti-Zionist speech on campus, only for members of Congress in both parties to smear them as anti-Semitic. But the complaints on the left are not limited to liberals who betray their commitment to free-speech norms. Their critique is aimed at liberals who uphold those values. And that is because they oppose liberal values themselves.
When the Harvard psychologist and Harper's-letter signatory Steven Pinker wrote a long New York Times essay assailing the Trump administration's campaign against academic freedom, online leftists castigated him for having supposedly cleared the way for Trump by critiquing groupthink in the academy. "Lot of good push back here from Pinker but at the same time his critiques of higher ed helped open the door for the attacks on the university he now dreads, and especially those directed at where he works," wrote Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, a social-studies professor at Wesleyan. Pinker has never endorsed Trump or Trumpism. But the mere fact of his having opposed left-wing illiberalism supposedly makes him complicit in the right-wing version.
Likewise, many leftists consider it self-evident that criticizing campus protesters' use of violent pro-Hamas messages, such as "Globalize the Intifada," was akin to fascism. Liberals of course had good reason to worry about violent, apocalyptic rhetoric, and the ideas inspiring it, which more recently has contributed to a spate of terror attacks on domestic Jewish targets. But to some leftist critics, raising those concerns was functionally a vote for Trump.
"Even those [Democrats] issuing mild statements of concern can't help but front-load their polite chiding of the White House with pointless, preening condemnations of the target of Trump's arrests and harassment regime," Adam Johnson and Sarah Lazare write in the left-wing In These Times. Jeet Heer, writing in The Nation, likewise argues, "Biden's slander of pro-Palestinian activists helped splinter the Democratic coalition during the 2024 election" and, yes, "laid the groundwork for the current crackdown on dissent."
The left is not alone in seeking to erase the liberal middle ground between the political extremes. The dynamic is identical to that of the 1950s, when the right tried to paint all opponents of McCarthyism as communists (just as the left wished to paint all anti-communists as McCarthyists). Trump's allies are attacking pro-free-speech liberals for having supposedly enabled radicalism. When Harvard faculty signed a letter denouncing Trump's threats against academic freedom, conservatives sneered that professors had only themselves to blame. "Many of these signatories have been entirely silent for years as departments purged their ranks of conservatives to create one of the most perfectly sealed-off echo chambers in all of higher education," wrote the pro-Trump law professor Jonathan Turley.
Both the far right and far left have a good reason to erase the liberal center: If the only alternative to their position is an equally extreme alternative, then their argument doesn't look so out-there. The liberal answer is to resist this pressure from both sides.
A decade ago, illiberal discourse norms around race and gender began to dominate progressive spaces, leaving a pockmarked landscape of cancellations and social-media-driven panics. Even as many skeptics on the left insisted that no such phenomenon was occurring—or that it was merely the harmless antics of college students—those norms quickly spread into progressive politics and the Democratic Party.
The 2020 Democratic presidential campaign took place in an atmosphere in which staffers, progressive organizations, journalists, and even the candidates themselves feared that speaking out against unpopular or impractical ideas would cause them to be labeled racist or sexist. That was the identity-obsessed climate in which Joe Biden first promised to nominate a female vice president, and then committed to specifically choosing a Black one. This set of overlapping criteria narrowed the field of candidates who had the traditional qualification of holding statewide office to a single choice whose own campaign had collapsed under the weight of a string of promises to left-wing groups who were out of touch with the constituencies they claimed to represent, as well as her limited political instincts. Kamala Harris herself was cornered into endorsing taxpayer-financed gender-reassignment surgery for prisoners and detained migrants, a promise that Trump blared on endless loop in 2024. Her own ad firm found that Trump's ad moved 2.7 percent of voters who watched it toward Trump, more than enough to swing the outcome by itself.
Trump's election had many causes. One of them was very clearly a backlash against social-justice fads, and the Democratic ecosystem's failure, under fear of cancellation, to resist those fads. If either party to this internal debate should be apologizing, it's not the liberals who presciently warned that the left risked going off the rails and enabling Trump to win.
The political gravity of the campus debate after October 7 tilts in the same direction. Some progressives decided that the plight of Palestinians was so urgent and singular as to blot out every other political cause. The effect was to elevate the salience of an issue that split the Democratic coalition: Both the most pro-Israel constituents and the most anti-Israel constituents in the Democratic coalition moved heavily toward Trump's camp. Many pro-Palestine activists openly argued that the stakes were high enough to justify risking Trump's election. That is precisely the direction in which their actions pushed.
Trump's election, and his subsequent campaign to crush demonstrations, is precisely the scenario that liberal critics warned would occur. That this outcome is being used to discredit those same liberals is perverse, yet oddly familiar.
Quote from: Sophie Scholl on June 11, 2025, 06:57:50 AMI just hope that him getting his moment now means he'll fade away by the time the Primary arrives. :yucky:
He's your next President. Search your feelings. You know it to be true. :ph34r:
Ironically, he's now taking a stand against deportation, while a few weeks ago, he was telling his fellow Democrats that they were letting themselves be distracted by such issues while they should concentrate on the much more important tariff issue.
I don't disagree that that issue of tariff is important, but the violation of human rights and standoff against the courts on immigration is equally important, imho.
I liked him at first for his apparent fierce resistance to Trump. Then there were these podcasts with Bannon and other far right figures.
I understand why some politicians should try to reach across the aisle, and I don't disagree that confrontation for the sake of confrontation is bad, but there are limits.
I haven't really followed Newsomes career but he seems ok to me from a distance. I know right wing media hates on him a lot, but what's the knock on him anyways?
Quote from: Bauer on June 11, 2025, 08:49:24 PMI haven't really followed Newsomes career but he seems ok to me from a distance. I know right wing media hates on him a lot, but what's the knock on him anyways?
He lies. He tells Californians he is going to do these progressive things but when elected he just tends to do whatever the rich donors of California tell him to do. So he ends up slashing programs and so forth. I don't know for sure, that is just my understanding.
He seems to create similar feelings as Starmer over in the UK.
But opposing Republicans is something he is ok with doing.
Probably worth an update on David Hogg.
He was removed in a 294 - 99 vote. The bureaucratic justification:
QuoteThe DNC had voted hours earlier to accept a recommendation from its Credentials Committee that the party hold two new vice chair elections because it found the DNC mistakenly created an advantage for the two male candidates, Hogg and Kenyatta, as it managed the internal elections at the end of a marathon February party meeting in Washington.
[...]
Because DNC rules require equal gender representation on its executive committee, not including the party chair, the results of elections in February meant the DNC had to elect at least one man to its final two vice chair slots. But instead of holding individual votes for each position, one to be filled by a man and one by a candidate of any gender, the party decided to hold one vote to decide who took the final two slots.
The challenge to this was then used by Martin and his supporters to remove Hogg's position. Kenyatta critcised Hogg for distracting from the parties work, and is expected to be re-elected as the only candidate for the male vice chair slot.
As I said earlier in the thread I don't think the split within the Democrats - including on diversity rules or things like that - is between a left and a centre but between an establishment and insurgents. There are people of all backgrounds and politics within those camps.
I'm not a massive fan of David Hogg and think people's comments here are (sadly) a little fair about him. But again the side that's won is the side that just wants things to go as they are, that prioritises conflict avoidance and party unity. They're also the side of the party looking to re-build relationships with Silicon Valley and wanting to keep working with "good billionaires". I think the problem isn't their politics but how they think you should do politics which I think still seems stuck in a permanent 1990s. It's an old guard that is incapable or unwilling to change.
Hogg's statement on Twitter:
QuoteI'm not running for the new DNC Vice Chair election:🧵
I started Leaders We Deserve for a simple purpose: to be the Emily's List for progressive young Democrats.
We've sought to find the best of the best of our generation and do everything we can to help them run the best campaigns possible and get the financial support they need to win.
We spent millions last year fighting to elect incredible young people: Molly Cook, Mo Jenkins, Averie Bishop and Kristian Carranza in Texas; Bryce Berry and Ashwin Ramaswami in Georgia;
Dante Pittman in North Carolina, Nadarius Clark in Virginia, Christine Cockley in Ohio, Sarah McBride in Delaware, Nate Douglas in FL, Oscar De Los Santos in Arizona and others
We focused on open blue seats and defeating incumbent Republicans, hoping that these open seats would be space enough to achieve what we wanted.
After seeing a serious lack of vision from Democratic leaders, too many of them asleep at the wheel, and Democrats dying in office that have helped to hand Republicans an expanded majority,
it became clear that Leaders We Deserve had to start primarying incumbents and directly challenging the culture of seniority politics that brought our party to this place to help get our party into fighting shape again.
We have a real challenge ahead of us. We lost voting share with almost every demographic across the board, and despite all that Trump has done, our approvals remain at 27%.
If we don't show our country how we are dramatically changing and provide an alternative vision for the future as a party, we will continue to lose.
Not because we don't have money, but because we don't have a compelling vision for the future and we lack the courage we used to have to take on massive policy fights that have helped millions like the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, the first Assault Weapons ban and more.
Even if we had gained a three seat Congressional majority, the three deaths this session would have once again put millions of Americans on the line.
Let me be clear: this is not solely an issue of age, it's an issue of effectiveness that at times is compounded by age. This is not a call for every older person to leave government.
There are lots of great older people who we need, there's lots of terrible younger people we don't. But it's clear this culture of staying in power until you die or simply fail to do a good job but don't need to worry about a challenge because you are in a safe seat has become an existential threat to the future of this party and nation that must be addressed.
This crisis of competence and complacency has already cost us an election and millions of Americans their rights. Let's not let it cost us the country.
This culture simply will not change by only focusing on open seats or just throwing half a billion dollars into 30 competitive House seats. We must change the culture of our party that has brought us here and if there is anything activism or history teaches us it's that comfortable people, especially comfortable people with power, do not change.
In this moment of crisis, comfort is not an option.
The American people are looking for an answer for how to revive the American Dream that they feel has become more of a fiction than a possibility. We have a crisis of faith in this country, in our elected leaders and in our parties. So far Donald Trump has convinced many people that the answer is to look backward instead of forward.
At this moment of darkness we have a sacred obligation not to this party, but to this country as a party, in his 1960 acceptance speech to the DNC to accept the democratic nomination to become president, John F. Kennedy said: "The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high--to permit the customary passions of political debate. We are not here to curse the darkness; we are here to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future."
We relight that candle by providing a new vision for the future and leaders to bring us there. That new vision will come from new leaders. Building a future where voters vote for us not because of who we aren't but because of who we are.
That is why it is important we not only defeat Republicans but we use a healthy competitive primary process to make us a stronger party. The alternative is a continuation of the politics that brought our party to this place. That is unacceptable. We must embrace a healthy culture of competitive primaries to build the strongest party possible.
Being a Democrat means believing in the politics of the possible like we did after Parkland. It's about believing in who we could be not only as a party but as a country. If we put our minds to it and we work hard enough, we can do anything, no matter what stands in our way. That's why I'm a Democrat.
I came into this role to play a positive role in creating the change our party needs. It is clear that there is a fundamental disagreement about the role of a Vice Chair — and it's okay to have disagreements. What isn't okay is allowing this to remain our focus when there is so much more we need to be focused on.
Ultimately, I have decided to not run in this upcoming election so the party can focus on what really matters. I need to do this work with Leaders We Deserve, and it is going to remain my number one mission to build the strongest party possible.
I'm thankful to everyone who has supported me in this role. I'm proud to have travelled to 10 states to do 30+ events, raising money for state parties, organizing with young Democrats, and getting out the vote for special elections in Wisconsin and Florida.
I have nothing but admiration and respect for my fellow officers. Even though we have disagreements, we all are here to build the strongest party possible.
Let me be extremely clear: Yes, we need to defeat Republicans. Leaders We Deserve will have many candidates challenging Republican incumbents.
But we also need to build a party not defined by not being the less bad of two options in voters' eyes. We need to be the best option period at every level of government.
That change can only come through a full embrace of Democracy not only to defeat Republicans but to elect new Democrats to show voters how we are changing and regain their trust by listening to them, doing all we can to give them the best representation possible. Leaders We Deserve exists to do just that.
I think the polling point is really important. Democrats will probably do well in the mid-terms (quite possibly well enough that they stop worrying) - but the approval rating of the Democrats is currently at the lowest rating ever for as long as that question has been asked. And that's a huge part of the problem and it won't just fix itself with more of the same.
The problem has been that the Republicans are so terrible than even this corrupt, old, and out of touch version of the Democrats can still win. But not do well enough to safe guard the country from danger.
And for these motherfuckers running the party that is good enough. They get upset when somebody insists they do better.
I think it's up for debate as to which wing on the left is out of touch. I'm not at all sure that the Reddit wing of the party is the one in touch.
Quote from: DGuller on June 12, 2025, 02:20:48 PMI think it's up for debate as to which wing on the left is out of touch. I'm not at all sure that the Reddit wing of the party is the one in touch.
I wasn't talking about ideological wings. I would be perfectly happy with a moderate energized party.
The problem with the mythical center, is that it doesn't really radiate the sort of energy that a crisis requires. But, by all means, if centrists are willing to be out there, demonstrate, put continuous pressure on their representatives, get active in local politics, that's awesome.
Waiting to be adequately courted by electoral politics doesn't strike me as a viable strategy right now. And that is as true of self-appointed reasonable silent majority, as it is of young keyboard activists.
Quote from: DGuller on June 12, 2025, 02:20:48 PMI think it's up for debate as to which wing on the left is out of touch. I'm not at all sure that the Reddit wing of the party is the one in touch.
That's fair I think the point I'd be making is that the way to test is through argument and competition not constantly circling the wagons.
And I think this ties to a point you've often made more on the "woke" side of things - I saw this from a recent European research paper on US attitudes:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GtMyYOjWsAANvEi?format=jpg&name=small)
The point here is not that the Republicans/the right are more tolerant or that they're better at handling disputes, but instead that it seems like Democrats have a more tightly bound attitude around a set of beliefs. Deviating on any one of those beliefs is enough to be seen as outside the group, while Republicans are (inevitably with Trump) more flexible. A degree of heterodoxy on x issue does not put your place in the Republican coalition into doubt (this may also just be an inheritance of the way modern conservatism has formed of often slightly opposed views allying). To an extent it's a re-statement of the old, the right welcomes converts while the left looks for heretics line - but I think it's also part of the conflict averse approach.
But it also makes me think of John Ganz's recent book on the 90s because part of his argument, I think, is that fundamentally the Democrats were better at party discipline. They were able to largely expel and keep out a lot of their fringes in a way that the Republicans weren't able to. The Republicans were more porous, more exposed to flare-ups of a populist energy within the party (though, generally, at least until either 2010 or 2016 the party was always able to restore control). In the short-term that was incredibly effective - I think looking at the last 40 years though it has made the Democrats more brittle, more conservative/seniority based and, I think, less able to imagine alternatives. In a way both parties are being shaped by the forces of the 90s - the Democrats because they're unable to get past that political moment and the Republicans by the crazies who were proposing radical (and to my eyes often alarming) alternatives.
Obviously I've my own views which I've said before on what the answer is for the Democrats - party-building in and of every state and community, building up from (and actively recruiting) working class communities, an openness to people who disagree with you and old-school American populism.
It's striking that inequality is at historically high levels, you look at the people in and around Trump and just the sheer "loot the place" stage of extraction from very rich people in or close to government (Musk is only the most extreme). It is the political world of the Gilded Age and I think you could do a lot worse than look at the populism of that era: no billionaires in government, no stockholding for Congressional representatives or their family (put it into an independently approved blind trust), good government and reform. Obviously I think that is more challenging if the party wants to win back Silicon Valley or includes in Congress people like, say, Nancy Pelosi (even though I think she's a very effective politician).
Hell I would happily line up behind that Senator Slotkin, who seems to be a massive Ronald Reagan fan, if she was competent politically and had tons of momentum behind her.
Give me a right wing Democrat if that is what is on pace to win.
Kamala Harris was openly campaigning with the Cheneys. I am not sure how more tolerant of offending views one can get.
Quote from: Sheilbh on June 12, 2025, 11:17:57 AMQuoteI'm not running for the new DNC Vice Chair election:🧵
I started Leaders We Deserve for a simple purpose: to be the Emily's List for progressive young Democrats.
Maybe, instead of trying to put in progressive people they should try to put in effective people that get out the voters.
Quote from: Valmy on June 12, 2025, 03:36:41 PMKamala Harris was openly campaigning with the Cheneys. I am not sure how more tolerant of offending views one can get.
I think both of those points are more about specific politicians - and I'm not really sure it's necessarily the problem. I think the problem is more at the party level.
So what I mean is if you're going to try and build a party and work with people all over the country there'll be some people you really disagree with on some things because they're regular voters in a state that's voted Republican for 80 years - ignore the points of difference, try to find the common ground and build from there. You think of the campaigns that have helped really protect and in some cases expand Medicaid in really red states like Idaho through local campaigns - that's the type of energy I think Democrats should be looking at trying to generate.
On the Cheney thing I said I thought was a mistake at the time and still do :P
I think that's the sort of thing that communicates within Washington and to political obsessives. For those communities it reads as an impressive display of bipartisan unity on this single issue, putting country before party etc - I think 99% of those people have already made up their mind and are convinced (or not) on the issue of Trump's fitness for office. I think outside of those groups campaigning with Sanders and AOC one day and the Cheneys the next, instead communicates that you don't actually stand for anything - with the added bonus of associating your campaign with two failed wars.
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on June 12, 2025, 03:52:39 PMMaybe, instead of trying to put in progressive people they should try to put in effective people that get out the voters.
The problem is that people confuse effectiveness with their preferences. You can have effective progressives, and you can have effective moderates. It's the expectation that finding the right set of ideas that meshes with the zeitgeist constitutes effectiveness that, in my view, is wrong.
Quote from: Oexmelin on June 12, 2025, 03:01:16 PMThe problem with the mythical center, is that it doesn't really radiate the sort of energy that a crisis requires. But, by all means, if centrists are willing to be out there, demonstrate, put continuous pressure on their representatives, get active in local politics, that's awesome.
Waiting to be adequately courted by electoral politics doesn't strike me as a viable strategy right now. And that is as true of self-appointed reasonable silent majority, as it is of young keyboard activists.
Energy is a tool, not a goal in and of itself. A tool can be productive or it can be counterproductive. I am not convinced the energy being displayed right now is doing much to convince Trump voters to switch their vote. More like the opposite.
Quote from: Oexmelin on June 12, 2025, 04:56:56 PMThe problem is that people confuse effectiveness with their preferences. You can have effective progressives, and you can have effective moderates. It's the expectation that finding the right set of ideas that meshes with the zeitgeist constitutes effectiveness that, in my view, is wrong.
I don't really have issues with a progressive (as Hogg views himself), moderate or conservative person in politics trying to promote candidates who share his views - I sort of think that's the point. I don't really agree with positioning of being effective and having political opinions as opposites in a democratic political system (I can see prioritising technical effectiveness in a depoliticised state like Russia or in filling the Chinese state which is subordinated to the party).
Also effectiveness is slightly contextually neutral - so a lot depends on not just your preference but both the actual context and your analysis of it.
It's an extreme example but I often think about it with Zelenskiy who is clearly an extraordinary leader. I think he would always possess those qualities and capacity but it would never have been revealed to the world without the extreme pressure of leading at a time of invasion. This is often the case with successful or effective leaders during a crisis - and, from my reading, I think it's really difficult to predict.
But also what makes an effective, consensus building consolidating leader is often very different from an effective, transformative leader. People will often disagree on what's needed at any given time and some people are probably guilty of thinking every time requires their preferred solution (I am guilty :blush:).
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 12, 2025, 04:58:54 PMI am not convinced the energy being displayed right now is doing much to convince Trump voters to switch their vote. More like the opposite.
I think one of the major dividing issues between your perspective and mine is that you seem to envision mostly politics as electoral politics.
Quote from: Oexmelin on June 12, 2025, 05:34:36 PMI think one of the major dividing issues between your perspective and mine is that you seem to envision mostly politics as electoral politics.
I am aware of other kinds of politics, royal court and one party state jockeying for power for example. And of course Clauswitz claimed that war was an extension of politics.
Quote from: Sheilbh on June 12, 2025, 05:11:39 PMBut also what makes an effective, consensus building consolidating leader is often very different from an effective, transformative leader. People will often disagree on what's needed at any given time and some people are probably guilty of thinking every time requires their preferred solution (I am guilty :blush:).
I don't disagree with any of this.
My point was mostly that often, when people ask for an "effective leader", they mean someone whose views are those which, they think, align with already existing preferences in the electorate, and are able to "sell them".
To me this has always been a reductive view of politics, and I think one that leaves us defenseless when what you need to defend is less "views" than principles of a democratic polity.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 12, 2025, 05:39:12 PMQuote from: Oexmelin on June 12, 2025, 05:34:36 PMI think one of the major dividing issues between your perspective and mine is that you seem to envision mostly politics as electoral politics.
I am aware of other kinds of politics, royal court and one party state jockeying for power for example. And of course Clauswitz claimed that war was an extension of politics.
This could be the beginning of a great conversation.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 12, 2025, 05:39:12 PMI am aware of other kinds of politics, royal court and one party state jockeying for power for example. And of course Clauswitz claimed that war was an extension of politics.
Fairly sure it's not what Oex is meaning, but don't forget office politics.
Quote from: Oexmelin on June 12, 2025, 05:42:07 PMI don't disagree with any of this.
My point was mostly that often, when people ask for an "effective leader", they mean someone whose views are those which, they think, align with already existing preferences in the electorate, and are able to "sell them".
To me this has always been a reductive view of politics, and I think one that leaves us defenseless when what you need to defend is less "views" than principles of a democratic polity.
Totally agree.
I think there's at least a couple of levels of politics. My view of maybe capital P politics or perhaps politics as technique (at which you can be effective) is that it's basically about creating the conditions for delivering what you want - that can be at any level from the office or local church, up to nation states and beyond. This is why I wouldn't actually draw distinctions between a royal court or one party state from a democratic society - the form and how you do it will be shaped by your context but it's fundamentally the same. And I think that's where Clausewitz comes in that war is (or should be) merely a tool to achieve political ends and is within the scope of politics - if war is for its own ends then you're already screwed. I think there's differences around the edges from cultural context, or the structures involved but fundamentally this type of politics is the same everywhere.
That's very different from maybe the lower case politics of what society you want - what's the purpose behind it - and what your rights and duties and obligations are as a citizen, especially in a democratic society. I think this is where the big difference is with an absolutist royal or a one party state because I think they very often (though not always) narrow the scope of this politics - and we should, in a democratic society, be looking to expand it. But I think we're in a time when many things, issues, institutions etc have been de-politicised - they're beyond (or have been put beyond) our debate, ownership, rights, obligations. Obviously I would say this but I think very often we have been reduced to users or consumers. We need more politics of that type not just because I think it's how we defend the principles of a democratic society but because it's the stuff of a democratic society - not to get too philosophical but I think it's how we interact with and experience each other (as others) in a democratic society.
Quote from: Razgovory on June 11, 2025, 04:11:41 PMAre Liberals to Blame for the New McCarthyism?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/are-liberals-to-blame-for-the-new-mccarthyism/ar-AA1GwJfW?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=f3fcf83764964076a135e7046e656717&ei=8
No, but the author of this article is to be blamed for erecting a truly epic strawman argument.
However, liberals (and I count myself among them) are to blame for indulging in the self-important delusion that the key to changing political outcomes is the precision with which they calibrate their criticism of their left flank. Their opponents on the right couldn't give a crap; liberal, socialist, communist, antifa, "radical left" is all the same.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 12, 2025, 07:23:32 PMQuote from: Razgovory on June 11, 2025, 04:11:41 PMAre Liberals to Blame for the New McCarthyism?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/are-liberals-to-blame-for-the-new-mccarthyism/ar-AA1GwJfW?ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&cvid=f3fcf83764964076a135e7046e656717&ei=8
No, but the author of this article is to be blamed for erecting a truly epic strawman argument.
However, liberals (and I count myself among them) are to blame for indulging in the self-important delusion that the key to changing political outcomes is the precision with which they calibrate their criticism of their left flank. Their opponents on the right couldn't give a crap; liberal, socialist, communist, antifa, "radical left" is all the same.
So we shouldn't criticize the burning of cars by the "Hamas Marxist Army"? We may as well give into the worst impulses of the left?
You shouldn't burn cars. Protests need to be peaceful.
There we go Raz.
Quote from: Sheilbh on June 12, 2025, 03:16:59 PMAnd I think this ties to a point you've often made more on the "woke" side of things - I saw this from a recent European research paper on US attitudes:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GtMyYOjWsAANvEi?format=jpg&name=small)
Each dot is a survey answer option, not a person. All eight questions were phrased from a conservative angle, so any agreement clusters red; only "strongly disagree" shows blue. The graphic only illustrates how answers co-occur & predict party ID.
Lüders et al 2023
https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjso.12665
According to the authors :"The pattern does not imply that Republicans are more tolerant than Democrats".
They suggest that while sharing a set of ideas is essential to be a Democrat, Republicans tend to coalesce around a shared identity (e.g., Being white and/or Christian).
Quote from: Valmy on June 12, 2025, 11:32:08 PMYou shouldn't burn cars. Protests need to be peaceful.
There we go Raz.
The only cars I saw burning were those waymo things. I'm fine with it.
Protests should be done in a peaceful and orderly manner, like these fine gentlemen in NYC.
(https://i.imgur.com/kE1pe93.png)
Quote from: Zoupa on June 13, 2025, 01:31:47 AMQuote from: Valmy on June 12, 2025, 11:32:08 PMYou shouldn't burn cars. Protests need to be peaceful.
There we go Raz.
The only cars I saw burning were those waymo things. I'm fine with it.
Well, yeah. You are the one who wants violence.
Quote from: Zoupa on June 13, 2025, 01:31:47 AMThe only cars I saw burning were those waymo things. I'm fine with it.
Where is your line?
Quote from: Solmyr on June 13, 2025, 12:58:52 AMEach dot is a survey answer option, not a person. All eight questions were phrased from a conservative angle, so any agreement clusters red; only "strongly disagree" shows blue. The graphic only illustrates how answers co-occur & predict party ID.
Lüders et al 2023
https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjso.12665
According to the authors :"The pattern does not imply that Republicans are more tolerant than Democrats".
They suggest that while sharing a set of ideas is essential to be a Democrat, Republicans tend to coalesce around a shared identity (e.g., Being white and/or Christian).
Yeah I thought I'd slightly touched on that on my next paragraph.
So I think there's two sides one is that I explicitly think Democrats should go back to being a party coalition of shared identities.
I think part of it on the GOP side may be the way the modern Republican party emerges - the whole three-legged stool/fusionism stuff of binding together libertarians, evangelical Christians and basically neocons (or foreign policy conservatives). There is an argument that was through a few principles etc etc - I don't buy that. I think if you boil it down the glue was anti-communism (which is why the GOP has subsequently slightly bounced back and forth on different ideas since the Cold War) - I also think the key political project was judges and entrenching counter-majoritarian/blocking power.
My theory of part of what's happening on the GOP now is a new fusionism of libertarians (tech bros), evangelical Christians and paleocons/populists/nationalists. I think the core binding agent is basically "anti-woke" (this is not total or true and BB has pointed out some issues, but I still think there's something to it). In terms of their political project - I think they aspire to being a majority.
This is why I say I think Democrats need to focus on party building in every state, in all communities and particularly with working people. Because if you think about the importance of being white or the whitelash theory of the Republicans at the minute - we also need an explanation for why the GOP have done better with non-white voters in every election since 2016 and that, I believe, 2024 was their best result with those voters ever (and, conversely, the Democrats worst). Paradox might be too strong but I think it's a tension that needs to be thought through. I think part of the problem has been that they have that tightly bound attitude around specific beliefs or issues - basically an enforced consensus - and if you're wrong on x issue you are out of the group because you're beyond the pale of our shared consensus. That's why I think they should be trying to work on every state where there may be many people who disagree with one or more bits of the consensus but you use the common interest to build a bigger political argument.
I'd also suggest that those tightly bound attitudes and beliefs are not identity neutral. They reflect the views of one social group in particular which is the only group the Democrats have consistently improved their performance with over the last eight years: the college educated. I think that is a problem. If I was being more of a thorough-going Marxist on this I'd note that the issues that have increased in salience for Democrats and progressives in especially elite universities broadly avoid issues that actually affect the rich or the financialised and often slightly predatory business model of those universities. And, to go full Marx, they're a controlled opposition which is also reproducing the ideology of the current regime: you can have liberal, radical, progressive ideas which distract from and legitimate a very conservative, exploitative financial and economic model. Just like you can pump out students with a knowledge of Frantz Fanon with exciting careers in McKinsey ahead of them.
It's why I think Democrats should focus on party building in all states and communities. They should prioritise working people again to break out of the epistemic trap they've ended up in through a more tightly bound consensus that often reflects only one specific identity. I think this is also reflected in the shibboleths, neologisms or focus on "discourse" - I bang on about it and it's in the UK but a huge number of people think there's racial discrimination and advantage, that number halves when you talk about "privilege" because most people don't know what it means. I think that reflects the identity of the people you are used to talking to (as does "do the reading", frankly). So I think they need to go and encounter others looking for connection in every state, particularly workers. But I think it's similar with the young men issue of getting company going to and being in the spaces where young men are (online) and looking for points of contact. Then hopefully build parties in and of those communities.
FWIW I think the two Democrats I see regularly who I think are actually really good at this are Buttigieg and Sanders - and I can't help but wonder if part of it is that I get a sense that they kind of know who they are and what they think. There's less sense of them quickly mentally checking where we are on x issue today and making sure they're appropriately triangulated.
Edit: And I'd add I think that is why universities - and especially the humanities - have become a focus of attack for the right and for this administration. on all sorts of fronts. I do think, in part, especially elite American universities have helped dig their own graves in the move from I think traditions of academic self-management and a focus on research and higher education to becoming endowments and property companies and debt peddlers with some professors attached.
Quote from: Sheilbh on June 12, 2025, 05:44:12 PMFairly sure it's not what Oex is meaning, but don't forget office politics.
Band politics, family politics, club politics, really any group of people interacting. Languish politics.
I have no idea how to read that graphic.
Quote from: Razgovory on June 12, 2025, 07:46:23 PMSo we shouldn't criticize the burning of cars by the "Hamas Marxist Army"? We may as well give into the worst impulses of the left?
Respectfully Raz you missed the point. We should all treat the "Hamas Marxist Army" like the gang of violent loons that they are, all three of them. Along with the Marxist Army of Hamas, the Army of Hamas Marxists, and the Popular People's Front of Hamas Marxists. But liberals need to break with the solipsistic delusion that the entire future of American politics turns on the precise tone they use when criticizing some fringe group on the left. The reality is that almost no-one cares or is even listening other than a handful of other liberals.
BTW there is no surprise that diversity of opinion seems to increase as you get to the far right, because it's shot through with nutball conspiracy theories. You can't expect the Qanon, the Black Nazis, the flat earthers, the Tech Bro sea-steaders, the Bannonite Rohm wing to all get along nicely in the ideological sandbox. The Brownian motion of weird ideas rattling around in Taylor-Greene's head alone are sufficient to account for half those data points.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 13, 2025, 10:02:28 AMQuote from: Razgovory on June 12, 2025, 07:46:23 PMSo we shouldn't criticize the burning of cars by the "Hamas Marxist Army"? We may as well give into the worst impulses of the left?
Respectfully Raz you missed the point. We should all treat the "Hamas Marxist Army" like the gang of violent loons that they are, all three of them. Along with the Marxist Army of Hamas, the Army of Hamas Marxists, and the Popular People's Front of Hamas Marxists. But liberals need to break with the solipsistic delusion that the entire future of American politics turns on the precise tone they use when criticizing some fringe group on the left. The reality is that almost no-one cares or is even listening other than a handful of other liberals.
You're assuming their audience is the right. Their audience usually is and should be the left, to get it through their echo chamber that they are alienating bigger and bigger share of people. If you're going to be intolerantly dogmatic, then at least be intolerantly dogmatic in a way that appeals to people to people outside of your orbit rather than repel them.
Quote from: DGuller on June 13, 2025, 10:09:05 AMQuote from: The Minsky Moment on June 13, 2025, 10:02:28 AMQuote from: Razgovory on June 12, 2025, 07:46:23 PMSo we shouldn't criticize the burning of cars by the "Hamas Marxist Army"? We may as well give into the worst impulses of the left?
Respectfully Raz you missed the point. We should all treat the "Hamas Marxist Army" like the gang of violent loons that they are, all three of them. Along with the Marxist Army of Hamas, the Army of Hamas Marxists, and the Popular People's Front of Hamas Marxists. But liberals need to break with the solipsistic delusion that the entire future of American politics turns on the precise tone they use when criticizing some fringe group on the left. The reality is that almost no-one cares or is even listening other than a handful of other liberals.
You're assuming their audience is the right. Their audience usually is and should be the left, to get it through their echo chamber that they are alienating bigger and bigger share of people. If you're going to be intolerantly dogmatic, then at least be intolerantly dogmatic in a way that appeals to people to people outside of your orbit rather than repel them.
Why stop now? Obama had come out of nowhere, were it not for him they'd have lost the presidency in 2008, 2012, and 2020 as well.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 13, 2025, 04:59:06 AMQuote from: Zoupa on June 13, 2025, 01:31:47 AMThe only cars I saw burning were those waymo things. I'm fine with it.
Where is your line?
I don't know. I proceed in a case by case basis. I've seen no evidence that those waymo cars were set alight. EVs do have a tendency to combust on their own.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 13, 2025, 10:02:28 AMRespectfully Raz you missed the point. We should all treat the "Hamas Marxist Army" like the gang of violent loons that they are, all three of them. Along with the Marxist Army of Hamas, the Army of Hamas Marxists, and the Popular People's Front of Hamas Marxists. But liberals need to break with the solipsistic delusion that the entire future of American politics turns on the precise tone they use when criticizing some fringe group on the left. The reality is that almost no-one cares or is even listening other than a handful of other liberals.
My impression at the time is that more people cared about Bill Clinton throwiing Sister Souljah under the bus than a handful of liberals.
Quote from: Zoupa on June 13, 2025, 03:42:39 PMQuote from: Admiral Yi on June 13, 2025, 04:59:06 AMQuote from: Zoupa on June 13, 2025, 01:31:47 AMThe only cars I saw burning were those waymo things. I'm fine with it.
Where is your line?
I don't know. I proceed in a case by case basis. I've seen no evidence that those waymo cars were set alight. EVs do have a tendency to combust on their own.
What'd waymo do though, to illicit the ire of both you and the protesters? It's like there was a fight and one of the guys punched the bystander with glasses standing against the wall :D . I'd be more inclined to shrug if it was ice transports or something.
Quote from: HVC on June 13, 2025, 06:08:37 PMQuote from: Zoupa on June 13, 2025, 03:42:39 PMQuote from: Admiral Yi on June 13, 2025, 04:59:06 AMQuote from: Zoupa on June 13, 2025, 01:31:47 AMThe only cars I saw burning were those waymo things. I'm fine with it.
Where is your line?
I don't know. I proceed in a case by case basis. I've seen no evidence that those waymo cars were set alight. EVs do have a tendency to combust on their own.
What'd waymo do though, to illicit the ire of both you and the protesters? It's like there was a fight and one of the guys punched the bystander with glasses standing against the wall :D . I'd be more inclined to shrug if it was ice transports or something.
I'm not sure what waymo did, if anything. Could be a malfunction, foreign agents, Maga provocateurs, false flag actions etc. A thourough investigation is needed.
I assumed you thought it was the protesters since you were fine with it. But it's good to know you're fine with false flags and right wing provocations too :D
It's just a car. Unclutch your panties.
Quote from: Zoupa on June 13, 2025, 07:42:09 PMIt's just a car. Unclutch your panties.
I was just asking a question, you were the one that got weirdly defensive :console:
It's just terroristic arson who cares whatever.
Quote from: HVC on June 13, 2025, 08:01:31 PMQuote from: Zoupa on June 13, 2025, 07:42:09 PMIt's just a car. Unclutch your panties.
I was just asking a question, you were the one that got weirdly defensive :console:
I'm not sure he is. Trump is destroying people's lives but pearl clutch at some destroyed cars?
That said in this era, I'm not sure there's much fun in mocking Republicans by using their own rhetoric. Just depressing all the way down.
I don't think more colorful insults will change the minds of people who respect property.
"Won't someone think of the driverless cars owned by the multibillion corporation?" :lol:
But tired and stale insults just might do the trick. :hmm:
The only metric I care about is whether I'm amused. :frog:
Simple pleasures for simple minds.
Uh oh, someone's salty ^_^
Don't worry. Your sieg heiling buddy bowed down to Trump again, so I'm sure the stock will rebound.
Don't be butthurt, that's all you've got? I was hoping you had some game.
I've a simple mind, after all. Also isn't like 4 AM where your are? Go to bed granps.
Quote from: chipwich on June 13, 2025, 08:53:50 PMIt's just terroristic arson who cares whatever.
Last week it was just some Jews that were lit on fire.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 14, 2025, 02:31:22 AMI don't think more colorful insults will change the minds of people who respect property.
:yes:
In America, property is more important than lives.
We already have one lawless insurrectionist party, do we really need two?
Quote from: Razgovory on June 14, 2025, 04:30:34 AMWe already have one lawless insurrectionist party, do we really need two?
:yes:
Better to submit like meek lambs to the slaughter.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 14, 2025, 02:31:22 AMI don't think more colorful insults will change the minds of people who respect property.
I don't think anything will change the mind of people who prioritize property over everything else that is happening in your country.
Quote from: Zoupa on June 14, 2025, 03:13:24 AMThe only metric I care about is whether I'm amused. :frog:
There's your problem: Americans will use anything but metric. :P
Well, they are cleearly using imperial now...
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on June 14, 2025, 06:38:39 AMQuote from: Zoupa on June 14, 2025, 03:13:24 AMThe only metric I care about is whether I'm amused. :frog:
There's your problem: Americans will use anything but metric. :P
:secret: He's Canadian... although kind of reluctantly :lol:
Quote from: crazy canuck on June 14, 2025, 06:05:34 AMQuote from: Admiral Yi on June 14, 2025, 02:31:22 AMI don't think more colorful insults will change the minds of people who respect property.
I don't think anything will change the mind of people who prioritize property over everything else that is happening in your country.
Fortunately for us, none of those people post here, so I'm not sure why you think that your truism is relevant.
Quote from: grumbler on June 14, 2025, 08:43:39 AMQuote from: crazy canuck on June 14, 2025, 06:05:34 AMQuote from: Admiral Yi on June 14, 2025, 02:31:22 AMI don't think more colorful insults will change the minds of people who respect property.
I don't think anything will change the mind of people who prioritize property over everything else that is happening in your country.
Fortunately for us, none of those people post here, so I'm not sure why you think that your truism is relevant.
That doesn't seem true...
Quote from: garbon on June 14, 2025, 09:14:02 AMQuote from: grumbler on June 14, 2025, 08:43:39 AMQuote from: crazy canuck on June 14, 2025, 06:05:34 AMQuote from: Admiral Yi on June 14, 2025, 02:31:22 AMI don't think more colorful insults will change the minds of people who respect property.
I don't think anything will change the mind of people who prioritize property over everything else that is happening in your country.
Fortunately for us, none of those people post here, so I'm not sure why you think that your truism is relevant.
That doesn't seem true...
Really? Name me some names.
Snitches get stitches.
Quote from: garbon on June 14, 2025, 09:20:54 AMSnitches get stitches.
:lol: I knew you couldn't do so. This is so Languish.
Quote from: grumbler on June 14, 2025, 10:24:06 AMQuote from: garbon on June 14, 2025, 09:20:54 AMSnitches get stitches.
:lol: I knew you couldn't do so. This is so Languish.
Obviously CC was exaggerating ut we do seem to have several posters who appear overly concerned with other people's property. Similar to how I'd early noted about Languish wanting people to stand up in the US and when a few do, the condemnation was swift in favor of protecting property.
And that's not to say we should cheer on destruction but that shouldn't be the only thing up for discussion / used as a negation of legitimate grievances.
Quote from: garbon on June 14, 2025, 10:50:12 AMObviously CC was exaggerating ut we do seem to have several posters who appear overly concerned with other people's property. Similar to how I'd early noted about Languish wanting people to stand up in the US and when a few do, the condemnation was swift in favor of protecting property.
And that's not to say we should cheer on destruction but that shouldn't be the only thing up for discussion / used as a negation of legitimate grievances.
I'm not sure what you are arguing here. The reason destruction of property is under discussion right now is that Zoupa was cheering it on. He can't say why how thinks that helps the anti-ICE movement, because even he knows that it only hurts.
Luckily for the movement, it is pretty clear that Zoupas are rare on the ground in LA.
Currently, in the last few hours, the United States has:
an Executive branch that has federalized the National Guard, and sent Marines under the explicit pretext of "liberating" a city from its political leadership
a US Senator who was handcuffed and arrested for daring to interject in the lies of Noem
a military parade organized to celebrate the birthday of the President
two politically motivated murders of State legislators, legitimating abstaining from protests out of fear
the mobilization of the National Guard against the No Kings protests explicitly aimed at denouncing authritarian creep - with the implicit aim of preventing people from protesting.
Complaining about flags, and cars, seems to me to be the equivalent of the slowly boiled frog complaining that it is the other frog's agitation that is causing the water temperature to be slightly uncomfortable.
Quote from: Oexmelin on June 14, 2025, 01:19:51 PMComplaining about flags, and cars, seems to me to be the equivalent of the slowly boiled frog complaining that it is the other frog's agitation that is causing the water temperature to be slightly uncomfortable.
I think it's the equivalent of the first frog saying burning a car and waving a frog flag will not be helpful in reducing the water temperature.
The main problem I have is that the discerning frogs haven't suggested doing much, aside from complaining about other frogs, and trying to ascertain what is the reasonable amount of heat that should be applied to the boiling pot.
This is what I mean about impoverished politics. If the only possible answer is electoral politics, i.e., finding the right message, and waiting for the right herald to carry it, in the hopes that will somehow diffuse to the electorate in 4 years, I think you're done.
Quote from: Oexmelin on June 14, 2025, 05:23:12 PMThe main problem I have is that the discerning frogs haven't suggested doing much, aside from complaining about other frogs, and trying to ascertain what is the reasonable amount of heat that should be applied to the boiling pot.
This is what I mean about impoverished politics. If the only possible answer is electoral politics, i.e., finding the right message, and waiting for the right herald to carry it, in the hopes that will somehow diffuse to the electorate in 4 years, I think you're done.
The main problem I have with your implied richer, deeper politics is that it's the pussy version of civil war. Burn some cars, kick some cops, wave some flags and profit. Not only is it a pussy version of civil war, it's a civil war your side would prefer to lose.
We've also had an attempted assassination of a Governor, the assassinations of two members of a foreign diplomatic mission and the terrorists attack on unarmed protestors, and a lot of people seem to be cool with it. That's not really the left I want to be part of.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 14, 2025, 05:46:32 PMQuote from: Oexmelin on June 14, 2025, 05:23:12 PMThe main problem I have is that the discerning frogs haven't suggested doing much, aside from complaining about other frogs, and trying to ascertain what is the reasonable amount of heat that should be applied to the boiling pot.
This is what I mean about impoverished politics. If the only possible answer is electoral politics, i.e., finding the right message, and waiting for the right herald to carry it, in the hopes that will somehow diffuse to the electorate in 4 years, I think you're done.
The main problem I have with your implied richer, deeper politics is that it's the pussy version of civil war. Burn some cars, kick some cops, wave some flags and profit. Not only is it a pussy version of civil war, it's a civil war your side would prefer to lose.
I have no idea what you are talking about.
I'm not sure what left you're even talking about.
It's especially mind boggling on a day where 2 Democrat legislators were killed by a goptard.
Quote from: Zoupa on June 14, 2025, 06:24:12 PMI'm not sure what left you're even talking about.
It's especially mind boggling on a day where 2 Democrat legislators were killed by a goptard.
Raz Fetterman only care about one thing these days. Everything else is only useful as it connects to that.
Quote from: Oexmelin on June 14, 2025, 06:23:12 PMI have no idea what you are talking about.
I'm talking about impoverished politics and its opposite.
Ah.
I still have no idea what you are referencing. Pussy civil war? What?
Quote from: Sophie Scholl on June 14, 2025, 08:01:33 PMQuote from: Zoupa on June 14, 2025, 06:24:12 PMI'm not sure what left you're even talking about.
It's especially mind boggling on a day where 2 Democrat legislators were killed by a goptard.
Raz Fetterman only care about one thing these days. Everything else is only useful as it connects to that.
It seems the socialism of fools is socialism enough for some. Just hold your nose at the smell of burning flesh.
Quote from: Razgovory on June 14, 2025, 09:18:51 PMQuote from: Sophie Scholl on June 14, 2025, 08:01:33 PMQuote from: Zoupa on June 14, 2025, 06:24:12 PMI'm not sure what left you're even talking about.
It's especially mind boggling on a day where 2 Democrat legislators were killed by a goptard.
Raz Fetterman only care about one thing these days. Everything else is only useful as it connects to that.
It seems the socialism of fools is socialism enough for some. Just hold your nose at the smell of burning flesh.
Are you referencing a recent specific event? I'm so lost.
Quote from: Zoupa on June 14, 2025, 09:49:43 PMQuote from: Razgovory on June 14, 2025, 09:18:51 PMQuote from: Sophie Scholl on June 14, 2025, 08:01:33 PMQuote from: Zoupa on June 14, 2025, 06:24:12 PMI'm not sure what left you're even talking about.
It's especially mind boggling on a day where 2 Democrat legislators were killed by a goptard.
Raz Fetterman only care about one thing these days. Everything else is only useful as it connects to that.
It seems the socialism of fools is socialism enough for some. Just hold your nose at the smell of burning flesh.
Are you referencing a recent specific event? I'm so lost.
Yeah, some asshole set a bunch of Jews on fire. We had the assassination of two members of a two Israeli diplomatic staff and an attempt to burn down governor's mansion in Pennsylvanian while the governor was celebrating Passover. Your friends burning cars, Unity of Fields, previously known as Palestine Action, are quite happy with this.
I'm getting the impression that the assassination of the Democratic legislature is bad is not because murder is bad but the assassin targeted the wrong type of people.
I don't think the protests about ICE have anything to do with Jewish people or Israel :huh: . Believe what you will. Not every event in the world needs to be viewed through your single-issue prism.
Quote from: Zoupa on June 14, 2025, 10:24:20 PMI don't think the protests about ICE have anything to do with Jewish people or Israel :huh: . Believe what you will. Not every event in the world needs to be viewed through your single-issue prism.
Razlow's Hammer
You know Raz, there are Jewish hispanics too :Joos they're the cool ones too :D
Quote from: Zoupa on June 14, 2025, 10:24:20 PMI don't think the protests about ICE have anything to do with Jewish people or Israel :huh: . Believe what you will. Not every event in the world needs to be viewed through your single-issue prism.
No, but the car burning were. They appear to be have been called up and torched by the Unity of Fields guys.
Quote from: Sophie Scholl on June 14, 2025, 10:30:44 PMQuote from: Zoupa on June 14, 2025, 10:24:20 PMI don't think the protests about ICE have anything to do with Jewish people or Israel :huh: . Believe what you will. Not every event in the world needs to be viewed through your single-issue prism.
Razlow's Hammer
So were you cool with the assassination of the Diplomatic staff?
Quote from: Razgovory on June 14, 2025, 10:43:34 PMQuote from: Zoupa on June 14, 2025, 10:24:20 PMI don't think the protests about ICE have anything to do with Jewish people or Israel :huh: . Believe what you will. Not every event in the world needs to be viewed through your single-issue prism.
No, but the car burning were. They appear to be have been called up and torched by the Unity of Fields guys.
Ok?
Quote from: Oexmelin on June 14, 2025, 08:37:38 PMAh.
I still have no idea what you are referencing. Pussy civil war? What?
I don't know what Yi means exactly but it reminded me of the mindset I for long shaded with many. Every time a few thousand people would demonstrate against something the Orban government did (big demonstration by the scale of the times) I would be glued to the news and the livw feed if it got somewhat violent, hoping for... I not sure what. But obviously those protests didn't change the fact that Orban had taken over all branches of power and that a single night of tug of war with riot police in the big city would absolutely not affect his main support base in rural areas.
I still think the protesters deserve respect because they at least tried something, but also clearly without broader support and the willingness to fight (literally) until power is wrestled from the autocrat, the protests just ended up blending into the feedback loop of the Orban system - let the steam out, go home.
I have no idea what's the solution though. Sometimes you are just on the losing side I guess.
Quote from: Oexmelin on June 14, 2025, 08:37:38 PMAh.
I still have no idea what you are referencing. Pussy civil war? What?
In real civil war you accept the risk of dying in exchange for the chance of change that you favor. In the pussy version you engage in lesser levels of performative violence without the risk of dying.
I expect Americans are going to die during these protests soon enough.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 14, 2025, 11:55:48 PMIn real civil war you accept the risk of dying in exchange for the chance of change that you favor. In the pussy version you engage in lesser levels of performative violence without the risk of dying.
I fail to see what relevance this characterization has with anything.
If you start reading from post 589 and come to a point where the relationship between your post and my post is not clear, I will be happy to clarify.
Please clarify.
Please tell me at what point you were confused.
You seem to be ascribing a position to me that is entirely fictitious; you seem to be reading protests as existing only in binary form; your use of pussy war suggests a caricature; it seems to have nothing to do with what I was saying.
And just so we're clear: I am posting tersely because, as I have told you before, I find your mode of engagement unfair to your interlocutor.
Perhaps we should abort.
Your call.
My point was: keep things in perspective. In the face of what is happening, a couple of cars destroyed should not matter much. The current situation requires mobilization.
Your point seems to be: current protests are romantic cosplay bullshit if people aren't putting their lives on the line.
For what it's worth, I am genuinely interested in having that conversation. I just want it to be a conversation. I don't want to be the one writing a wall of text articulating my position with you writing one line asking me to clarify this or that point which you think is the weak point of my view. I know this is your modus operandi, but I don't think it makes for a fair exchange.
There's always going to be idiots at demonstration doing idiot things, left, right, whatever. Whatever fringe group of idiots that is burning Waymos is in no danger of capturing any public authority in the US.
The most powerful public authority in the US OTOH, is burning down the Constitution and the rights of the people with it, a matter rather more consequential than a few cars in LA, with all due apologies to the limited members of Waymo, LLC.
I haven't seen a substantive response to Oex's point above, and I don't think there is one.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 15, 2025, 06:50:18 PMThere's always going to be idiots at demonstration doing idiot things, left, right, whatever. Whatever fringe group of idiots that is burning Waymos is in no danger of capturing any public authority in the US.
The most powerful public authority in the US OTOH, is burning down the Constitution and the rights of the people with it, a matter rather more consequential than a few cars in LA, with all due apologies to the limited members of Waymo, LLC.
I haven't seen a substantive response to Oex's point above, and I don't think there is one.
Fringe idiots attacking the capital did fairly well.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 15, 2025, 06:50:18 PMThere's always going to be idiots at demonstration doing idiot things, left, right, whatever. Whatever fringe group of idiots that is burning Waymos is in no danger of capturing any public authority in the US.
The most powerful public authority in the US OTOH, is burning down the Constitution and the rights of the people with it, a matter rather more consequential than a few cars in LA, with all due apologies to the limited members of Waymo, LLC.
I haven't seen a substantive response to Oex's point above, and I don't think there is one.
I don't agree that the only two choices are
(1) to accept that it is unacceptable to criticize edgelords for being edgelords, or
(2) accept the Trump administration's power grabs and wanton cruelty.
For instance, I reject both the edgelords and the usurpation of power, and feel no cognitive dissonance whatsoever. Maybe that isn't a "substantive response to Oex's point," but I reject his premise and so cannot really respond to the argument that follows the premise.
Quote from: Razgovory on June 14, 2025, 09:57:08 PMYeah, some asshole set a bunch of Jews on fire. We had the assassination of two members of a two Israeli diplomatic staff and an attempt to burn down governor's mansion in Pennsylvanian while the governor was celebrating Passover. Your friends burning cars, Unity of Fields, previously known as Palestine Action, are quite happy with this.
I'm getting the impression that the assassination of the Democratic legislature is bad is not because murder is bad but the assassin targeted the wrong type of people.
:wacko:
Violence is bad. Destruction of property is bad. Both because it is morally wrong, but also because it is strategically bad and politically counter-productive.
Like Talleyrand said: it is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.
But considering how many millions of people were protesting it seemed like there was basically none of this kind of thing. Not sure why this is being discussed frankly.
Quote from: Razgovory on June 15, 2025, 08:00:34 PMFringe idiots attacking the capital did fairly well.
That is different. They are right wing. They can do that sort of thing and get away with it. Hitler can coup the government and get a slap on the wrist, if Karl Liebknecht does it his ass is going to be shot.
Quote from: Razgovory on June 15, 2025, 08:00:34 PMFringe idiots attacking the capital did fairly well.
Do I really need to point the differences?
Quote from: grumbler on June 15, 2025, 08:39:40 PMQuote from: The Minsky Moment on June 15, 2025, 06:50:18 PMThere's always going to be idiots at demonstration doing idiot things, left, right, whatever. Whatever fringe group of idiots that is burning Waymos is in no danger of capturing any public authority in the US.
The most powerful public authority in the US OTOH, is burning down the Constitution and the rights of the people with it, a matter rather more consequential than a few cars in LA, with all due apologies to the limited members of Waymo, LLC.
I haven't seen a substantive response to Oex's point above, and I don't think there is one.
I don't agree that the only two choices are
(1) to accept that it is unacceptable to criticize edgelords for being edgelords, or
(2) accept the Trump administration's power grabs and wanton cruelty.
For instance, I reject both the edgelords and the usurpation of power, and feel no cognitive dissonance whatsoever. Maybe that isn't a "substantive response to Oex's point," but I reject his premise and so cannot really respond to the argument that follows the premise.
You are not rejecting Oex's premise. You are rejecting Yi's superficial characterization.
Right, we aren't saying liberals shouldn't criticize vandalism. It's just that the obsessive focus on a few ruined autonomous taxis seems out of proportion in a context where the head of DHS is openly boasting about using federal military force to overthrow and discipline America's largest state government, while exerting shocking levels of violence, brutality, and deprivation of the civil rights of citizens and non-citizens alike, all for the purpose of scoring political points with their "base".
So sure this guy here burned those 3 trees, but then there's the fact that Trump and Noem are napalming the entire forest.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 16, 2025, 11:12:49 AMRight, we aren't saying liberals shouldn't criticize vandalism. It's just that the obsessive focus on a few ruined autonomous taxis seems out of proportion in a context where the head of DHS is openly boasting about using federal military force to overthrow and discipline America's largest state government, while exerting shocking levels of violence, brutality, and deprivation of the civil rights of citizens and non-citizens alike, all for the purpose of scoring political points with their "base".
So sure this guy here burned those 3 trees, but then there's the fact that Trump and Noem are napalming the entire forest.
The waymo subject started with Hillary posting with what I thought was a very innocuous post directed at Zoupa's indifference to (or support of) burning cars. Zoupa and garbon said in effect the opposite of what you did. Their position is in effect liberals shouldn't criticize vandalism. Your position is criticism of destruction of property is fine is long as it's not done obsessively. Was Hillary demonstrating an obsession with car burning?
I don't think Hillary is the person coming across as obsessive about car burning, no.
I think collectively, for whatever reason, we right here have spent a lot more time discussing attacks on drone taxis than the assaults on our fellow human beings in LA by the US federal government. And that's not the appropriate proportionality of attention.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 16, 2025, 11:12:49 AMRight, we aren't saying liberals shouldn't criticize vandalism. It's just that the obsessive focus on a few ruined autonomous taxis seems out of proportion in a context where the head of DHS is openly boasting about using federal military force to overthrow and discipline America's largest state government, while exerting shocking levels of violence, brutality, and deprivation of the civil rights of citizens and non-citizens alike, all for the purpose of scoring political points with their "base".
So sure this guy here burned those 3 trees, but then there's the fact that Trump and Noem are napalming the entire forest.
I'm not seeing this "obsessive focus on a few ruined autonomous taxis" to which you refer. Where are you seeing it?
Whoever came up with "No Kings" as the rallying cry for the protests this last weekend deserves a medal.
Quote from: grumbler on June 16, 2025, 07:21:45 PMWhoever came up with "No Kings" as the rallying cry for the protests this last weekend deserves a medal.
Yeah. That seems like a big political success.
However, like most things in Trump's America we barely have time to process it before rushing off to the next disaster instigated by our dear leader.
Quote from: grumbler on June 16, 2025, 07:21:45 PMWhoever came up with "No Kings" as the rallying cry for the protests this last weekend deserves a medal.
The Romans tried that too. but then the autocrats just used other terms. Loops holes, man, they suck. Grand Poobah Trump has a nice ring to it :D :(
Quote from: Valmy on June 16, 2025, 07:33:57 PMQuote from: grumbler on June 16, 2025, 07:21:45 PMWhoever came up with "No Kings" as the rallying cry for the protests this last weekend deserves a medal.
Yeah. That seems like a big political success.
However, like most things in Trump's America we barely have time to process it before rushing off to the next disaster instigated by our dear leader.
Now they just need to make these rallies a regular thing. Second and fourth Saturday of each month, say.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on June 16, 2025, 06:18:13 PMI think collectively, for whatever reason, we right here have spent a lot more time discussing attacks on drone taxis than the assaults on our fellow human beings in LA by the US federal government. And that's not the appropriate proportionality of attention.
I don't see the coherence in this position either. It's not an individual obsession, which would make Hillary the dickhead, it's a collective obsession. Yet you contribute to this collective obsession by continuing the discussion of attacks on drone taxis.
Point taken
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 16, 2025, 05:15:46 PMQuote from: The Minsky Moment on June 16, 2025, 11:12:49 AMRight, we aren't saying liberals shouldn't criticize vandalism. It's just that the obsessive focus on a few ruined autonomous taxis seems out of proportion in a context where the head of DHS is openly boasting about using federal military force to overthrow and discipline America's largest state government, while exerting shocking levels of violence, brutality, and deprivation of the civil rights of citizens and non-citizens alike, all for the purpose of scoring political points with their "base".
So sure this guy here burned those 3 trees, but then there's the fact that Trump and Noem are napalming the entire forest.
The waymo subject started with Hillary posting with what I thought was a very innocuous post directed at Zoupa's indifference to (or support of) burning cars. Zoupa and garbon said in effect the opposite of what you did. Their position is in effect liberals shouldn't criticize vandalism. Your position is criticism of destruction of property is fine is long as it's not done obsessively. Was Hillary demonstrating an obsession with car burning?
The waymo subject started by Raz mentioning how terrible it is. I found that position to be ridiculous in the grand scheme of things happening these days.
Quote from: Zoupa on June 16, 2025, 10:14:03 PMThe waymo subject started by Raz mentioning how terrible it is. I found that position to be ridiculous in the grand scheme of things happening these days.
I stand corrected as to the starting point but not the content. I can't find the word terrible in Raz's post.
I already know you found it ridiculous. I found your response to Hillary to be more than ridiculous. I found it to be odious and childish. That's where we're at.
Wait, who is Hillary again?
HVC
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 16, 2025, 10:24:07 PMQuote from: Zoupa on June 16, 2025, 10:14:03 PMThe waymo subject started by Raz mentioning how terrible it is. I found that position to be ridiculous in the grand scheme of things happening these days.
I stand corrected as to the starting point but not the content. I can't find the word terrible in Raz's post.
I already know you found it ridiculous. I found your response to Hillary to be more than ridiculous. I found it to be odious and childish. That's where we're at.
This response is odious and childish?
QuoteI'm not sure what waymo did, if anything. Could be a malfunction, foreign agents, Maga provocateurs, false flag actions etc. A thourough investigation is needed.
"It's just a car. Unclutch your panties. "
This one.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 16, 2025, 11:22:45 PM"It's just a car. Unclutch your panties. "
This one.
lol that's odious? Jeebus, how Languish has fallen. Somehow I think HVC's Piri Piri ass survived my repugnant attack.
Quote from: Zoupa on June 16, 2025, 11:28:09 PMQuote from: Admiral Yi on June 16, 2025, 11:22:45 PM"It's just a car. Unclutch your panties. "
This one.
lol that's odious? Jeebus, how Languish has fallen. Somehow I think HVC's Piri Piri ass survived my repugnant attack.
You are apparently not allowed to talk about panties during a pussy civil war.
Quote from: Zoupa on June 16, 2025, 11:28:09 PMlol that's odious? Jeebus, how Languish has fallen. Somehow I think HVC's Piri Piri ass survived my repugnant attack.
You are not a part of the serious discussion, you are a prop, an exhibit. Joan is making a heroic, well intentioned, and thankless effort to broker some sort of accomodation between the nutjobs (you) and the centrists. This discussion only has purpose to the extent that it informs Joan of the terrain in which he is operating.
Quote from: Jacob on June 16, 2025, 11:29:11 PMYou are apparently not allowed to talk about panties during a pussy civil war.
Unclutch your panties.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 16, 2025, 11:43:12 PMQuote from: Zoupa on June 16, 2025, 11:28:09 PMlol that's odious? Jeebus, how Languish has fallen. Somehow I think HVC's Piri Piri ass survived my repugnant attack.
You are not a part of the serious discussion, you are a prop, an exhibit. Joan is making a heroic, well intentioned, and thankless effort to broker some sort of accomodation between the nutjobs (you) and the centrists. This discussion only has purpose to the extent that it informs Joan of the terrain in which he is operating.
That's true. I am of simple mind, after all. Nothing like your towering intellect, with your one word responses and non-sequiturs. ^_^
Quote from: Zoupa on June 17, 2025, 12:05:37 AMThat's true. I am of simple mind, after all. Nothing like your towering intellect, with your one word responses and non-sequiturs. ^_^
Perhaps you are right. Perhaps dim witted people will invariably be drawn to romanticism over rationalism.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 17, 2025, 12:04:39 AMQuote from: Jacob on June 16, 2025, 11:29:11 PMYou are apparently not allowed to talk about panties during a pussy civil war.
Unclutch your panties.
You, sir, are no Zoupa :(
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 17, 2025, 12:14:54 AMQuote from: Zoupa on June 17, 2025, 12:05:37 AMThat's true. I am of simple mind, after all. Nothing like your towering intellect, with your one word responses and non-sequiturs. ^_^
Perhaps you are right. Perhaps dim witted people will invariably be drawn to romanticism over rationalism.
Condescension doesn't work on me. It also doesn't work coming from you.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9w8uLjWkAA2wlj?format=jpg&name=small)
Quote from: Zoupa on June 17, 2025, 12:39:08 AMCondescension doesn't work on me. It also doesn't work coming from you.
It's not condescension. It's the subversion of treating your feeble, dim witted attempts at sarcasm as literal.
Quote from: Zoupa on June 16, 2025, 11:28:09 PMQuote from: Admiral Yi on June 16, 2025, 11:22:45 PM"It's just a car. Unclutch your panties. "
This one.
lol that's odious? Jeebus, how Languish has fallen. Somehow I think HVC's Piri Piri ass survived my repugnant attack.
While I did survive your attack unscathed your use of casual racism is less appreciated. I might have to go burn something to make myself feel better.
And Yi while I do appreciate your efforts I don't think you'll get anywhere with the keyboard warrior.
If this counts as racism, then I'm not sure what to call what I've had to read about French people on this forum for the past 20 years.
Jesus you folks are getting crusty in your old age.
Yi, go suck a dick.
HVC, the Leafs will always suck ass.
Quote from: HVC on June 17, 2025, 12:44:42 AMAnd Yi while I do appreciate your efforts I don't think you'll get anywhere with the keyboard warrior.
As I already said, he's not my audience. He's a prop I'm using to show nice guys like you that they don't have to be bullied into silence. And to show the nutjob adjacents what it is they're risking their own sense of self defending.
Quote from: Zoupa on June 17, 2025, 12:47:29 AMIf this counts as racism, then I'm not sure what to call what I've had to read about French people on this forum for the past 20 years.
Jesus you folks are getting crusty in your old age.
Yi, go suck a dick.
HVC, the Leafs will always suck ass.
That's not a very progressive attitude. You might have to return your membership. Using ethnicity in a disparaging manner is racist. Trying to come up with a new racial slur doesn't make it not a slur. I mean I'm not crying and gnashing my teeth, so you don't have to worry about feeling smug, I just find it ironic.
And yes I know the leafs suck. they have done so my whole life :D
Quote from: HVC on June 17, 2025, 12:53:48 AMAnd yes I know the leafs suck. they have done so my whole life :D
Things will be different next year!
Quote from: Zoupa on June 17, 2025, 12:47:29 AMJesus you folks are getting crusty in your old age.
All those years of Dubya and now Trump are breaking my brain.
They seem to have broken the brains of many yanks, most worryingly the press. I can't even wrap my head around these headlines.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GtqzRjBWAAAwEPF?format=jpg&name=large)
When did sheilbh start writing for CNN? :P
:lol:
Please, like I'd think ethics "reforms" would, to nick a Vice-President's phrase, be worth a bucket of warm piss :P
Quote from: Valmy on June 17, 2025, 02:32:16 PMQuote from: HVC on June 17, 2025, 12:53:48 AMAnd yes I know the leafs suck. they have done so my whole life :D
Things will be different next year!
The long suffering Seattle Supersonics fans finally got a chip after 46 years. :hmm:
Andrew Cuomo is running third party now after losing in the primary by a wide margin. Ugh. It's the repeat of India Walton in Buffalo and I am pissed. So much for that whole, "Blue no matter who" bs, eh? I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a repeat sexual harasser doesn't understand the concept of "no means no" though. :glare:
Yeah. Kind of a dick move by Cuomo to oppose his own party's nominee but not unprecedented. Joe Leiberman did it back in the day.
Be interesting to see if the party supports its own nomination in this case.
At least to the people who complain about elections being a choice between two shit options, NYC shows that it can be a choice between four shit options. Cuomo, as shit as he is, may well be the least shitty of the four.
Quote from: DGuller on July 14, 2025, 10:24:10 PMAt least to the people who complain about elections being a choice between two shit options, NYC shows that it can be a choice between four shit options. Cuomo, as shit as he is, may well be the least shitty of the four.
Zohran seems pretty good. The only decent criticism of him I cam see is the one of being an outsider on the centre left and his odds of winning with the public at large being low (in theory. In reality.... Let's see)
As somebody who's quite left of center, I think some of Mamdani's proposals are a bit counter productive. Public supermarkets won't work, rent control won't work. There is some smarter stuff in there though - like his plans to increase house supply, rehabilitation, etc...-, although not sure how easy it can be implemented. My impression with NYC - back when I lived there - is that there just isn't enough money to do all the investment required to rehabilitate public services.
But the alternatives are a machine politician and probable sexual harasser, a corrupt major who's turned to Trump to escape justice action, and the GOP is running somebody who seems to run a vigilante group? Hot damn, New York. Yeah, I would vote Mamdani on a hearthbeat.
IIRC the public supermarket proposal is to have one in each borough. Don't really see the harm or the benefit. Seems like a showpiece.
Rent control OTOH is an act of policy vandalism.
I agree that the choices weren't great. Lander was also calling for a rent freeze.
Cuomo's harassment issues were just the tip of the iceberg. Apple fell far from the tree.
GOP had a real opportunity to steal one here but went for the unintentional comic relief candidate instead.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on July 15, 2025, 07:39:36 AMGOP had a real opportunity to steal one here but went for the unintentional comic relief candidate instead.
It seems like anybody who isn't a clown is being ejected from the GOP. Is that really that surprising? They can only get away with it because the Democrat brand is so bad.
Quote from: DGuller on July 14, 2025, 10:24:10 PMAt least to the people who complain about elections being a choice between two shit options, NYC shows that it can be a choice between four shit options. Cuomo, as shit as he is, may well be the least shitty of the four.
Well obviously we have a fundamental disagreement here. I want a return to the spirit of the New Deal and bold new ideas to address issues. That is why I think guys like Yang and Mamdani are preferable to business as usual. But I get it, it is risky and some of their ideas will fail. We disagree, reasonable minds can disagree.
But if Cuomo had won the primary, how shitty would it have been for Mamdani to refuse the verdict of the Democratic voters and hop in as a third party candidate? It is outrageous for a man who failed to win over the voters to betray his own party like this. You lost by double digits man, you have to at least pretend to care about the will of the voters. But no lets us refuse to accept the verdict and go in to try to undermine the party in the general. This looks really bad after refusing to allow a real Primary against Biden and then just anointing Kamala Harris. Come on Democrats, at least try to appeal to your own voters from time to fucking time.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on July 15, 2025, 07:39:36 AMIIRC the public supermarket proposal is to have one in each borough. Don't really see the harm or the benefit. Seems like a showpiece.
Rent control OTOH is an act of policy vandalism.
But here is the deal man. Those issues, food and shelter accessibility, MUST be solved. By any means necessary. How bullshit is it that after decades of all this supposed efficiency and economic growth we somehow do a shittier job at stuff like this than we did 50 years ago? That is a basic failure of the market. And all over the country now food deserts are developing where people just don't have access to grocery stores.
Now granted New York City certainly isn't one of those places, so I assume this has something to do with costs. And yes that proposal sounds like a pilot project instead of a real solution, so I hope it is just one avenue that would be pursued. Government pilot projects rarely ever seem to get scaled up even if they are shown to be successful. I don't know.
But radical solutions need to be considered. Status quo isn't going to work.
Quote from: Valmy on July 15, 2025, 01:22:11 PMQuote from: DGuller on July 14, 2025, 10:24:10 PMAt least to the people who complain about elections being a choice between two shit options, NYC shows that it can be a choice between four shit options. Cuomo, as shit as he is, may well be the least shitty of the four.
Well obviously we have a fundamental disagreement here. I want a return to the spirit of the New Deal and bold new ideas to address issues. That is why I think guys like Yang and Mamdani are preferable to business as usual. But I get it, it is risky and some of their ideas will fail. We disagree, reasonable minds can disagree.
But if Cuomo had won the primary, how shitty would it have been for Mamdani to refuse the verdict of the Democratic voters and hop in as a third party candidate? It is outrageous for a man who failed to win over the voters to betray his own party like this. You lost by double digits man, you have to at least pretend to care about the will of the voters. But no lets us refuse to accept the verdict and go in to try to undermine the party in the general. This looks really bad after refusing to allow a real Primary against Biden and then just anointing Kamala Harris. Come on Democrats, at least try to appeal to your own voters from time to fucking time.
I don't think I'd blame the Democrats as a whole for Cuomo.
Quote from: garbon on July 15, 2025, 02:11:09 PMI don't think I'd blame the Democrats as a whole for Cuomo.
Why not? His behaviour is in line with the sort of thing the party has been pulling whenever the left wing of the party gains some ground, or might potentially do so.
Quote from: Neil on July 15, 2025, 02:15:07 PMQuote from: garbon on July 15, 2025, 02:11:09 PMI don't think I'd blame the Democrats as a whole for Cuomo.
Why not? His behaviour is in line with the sort of thing the party has been pulling whenever the left wing of the party gains some ground, or might potentially do so.
This. Plus, they all seemed to line-up behind him in the primary and haven't said a thing about his declaring a third party run. I guess we'll see if it is a Democrat issue if/when Schumer, Gillibrand, Hochul, and the rest of the entrenched Party folks support him, support the Democratic Party candidate, or hedge their bets and stay silent. Which is saying something by not saying something.
Quote from: Valmy on July 15, 2025, 01:22:11 PMWell obviously we have a fundamental disagreement here. I want a return to the spirit of the New Deal and bold new ideas to address issues. That is why I think guys like Yang and Mamdani are preferable to business as usual. But I get it, it is risky and some of their ideas will fail. We disagree, reasonable minds can disagree.
The spirit of the New Deal was generated by 25% unemployment. We're sub 3% right now.
Well, Sophie and Valmy have a point. I guess we should support the racist.
I find the outrage over Cuomo going independent for the general election to be a bit much. I get the attitude when a vote split could bring a victory to GOP, but Sliwa's odds are currently between nil and zero.
Whoever of the three other candidates wins will still be a Democrat, Cuomo is just giving voters another option. I suspect that's really the problem here, that people thought Mamdani was already the mayor because he won the primary, but now Cuomo is trying to usurp the results of that election.
I get what you mean on the party point.
But surely there were also people who objected to Cuomo's candidacy at any point? It seems to me that you could easily have an issue with Cuomo as a candidate, for very similar character reasons that you might oppose Trump holding any high office.
I don't know what Cuomo did that was inappropriate.
For a starter:
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/26/cuomo-sexual-harassment-doj-00138140
I think it does reflect a strategic challenge for Democrats, which is that they come across as hypocritical in a lot of attack lines you might want to run on Trump and his administration.
It's tough to run a populist, anti-billionaire campaign when senior figures in the party are billionaires (or married to them) and have voted against banning Congressional stock trading (despite numerous examples of what looks suspect at best). It's tough to run on personal capacity when you spend until June of an election year arguing that not only has Joe Biden not lost a step, but that it's disgraceful to imply he has. Frankly, it's tough to go hard on Epstein when you chose to give Bill Clinton a slot at the DNC - and more generally it is challenging to go after all the men in Trump's administrations with allegations of sexual misconduct (it almost appears to be a minimum requirement) when senior figures like Clinton and Clyburn endorse someone like Cuomo.
I think here we all get there is a difference (and I think there is) between the Democrats and Trump, and would dismiss most of those arguments as whataboutery. But I don't think it's unreasonable for an average person who doesn't pay much attention to politics to come to the conclusion that the Democrats don't really mean any of it and they are all the same.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 15, 2025, 08:57:04 PMI don't know what Cuomo did that was inappropriate.
5 seconds of googling:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cuomo#Controversies
Zoupa, I meant in re harassment.
"The justice department found Cuomo "repeatedly subjected" women in his office to non-consensual sexual contact, ogling and gender-based nicknames. Top Cuomo staff "were aware of the conduct and retaliated against four of the women he harassed," the DOJ concluded."
From Shelf's link.
What is ogling? What is a gender based nickname? I have an idea what non censensual sexual contact is: grabbing ass, pussy or tits. Rubbing your dick on someone. Is that what Cuomo did?
Cuomo id just following in the (successful) footsteps of Trump: "democracy is okay unless the election goes against me."
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 15, 2025, 09:36:11 PMZoupa, I meant in re harassment.
"The justice department found Cuomo "repeatedly subjected" women in his office to non-consensual sexual contact, ogling and gender-based nicknames. Top Cuomo staff "were aware of the conduct and retaliated against four of the women he harassed," the DOJ concluded."
From Shelf's link.
What is ogling? What is a gender based nickname? I have an idea what non censensual sexual contact is: grabbing ass, pussy or tits. Rubbing your dick on someone. Is that what Cuomo did?
From wiki:
Attorney General James's five-month investigation concluded with the release of a report on August 3, 2021.[11][299] This report concluded that during Cuomo's time in office, he sexually harassed 11 women: Boylan, Bennett, Ruch, Liss, Brittany Commisso, Kaitlin, McGrath, event attendee Virginia Limmiatis, an unnamed New York State trooper and two unnamed state entity employees.[300][287] The investigation concluded that Cuomo's behavior included unwanted groping, kissing and sexual comments, and also found that Cuomo's office had engaged in illegal retaliation against Boylan for her allegation against him.[301][302]
There's also several other scandals. They're in the link.
Yes. I'm trying to understand what specific acts are considered sexual harassment by the DOJ.
"unwanted groping, kissing and sexual comments". I'm not sure why you need to know the exact details.
Quote from: Zoupa on July 15, 2025, 10:33:09 PM"unwanted groping, kissing and sexual comments". I'm not sure why you need to know the exact details.
So I can know what behavior to avoid.
:yucky:
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 15, 2025, 10:39:11 PMQuote from: Zoupa on July 15, 2025, 10:33:09 PM"unwanted groping, kissing and sexual comments". I'm not sure why you need to know the exact details.
So I can know what behavior to avoid.
The hint is in the "unwanted" part of the phrase.
Yi, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make? You wouldn't know that unwanted groping and kissing of (multiple) employees is wrong unless Cuomo got in trouble for it first?
Quote from: HVC on July 15, 2025, 11:24:39 PMYi, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make? You wouldn't know that unwanted groping and kissing of (multiple) employees is wrong unless Cuomo got in trouble for it first?
Grope is a magic word that by definition is wrong. I want to know what the line is between a grope and innocuous contact between a man and a woman. Cuomo's defense at the time was that he came from a hugging culture.
UNWANTED
"What do you mean by 'unwanted'? How do you define 'wanted'? How do you define 'un'?" - Jordan Peterson
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 16, 2025, 12:08:55 AMQuote from: HVC on July 15, 2025, 11:24:39 PMYi, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make? You wouldn't know that unwanted groping and kissing of (multiple) employees is wrong unless Cuomo got in trouble for it first?
Grope is a magic word that by definition is wrong. I want to know what the line is between a grope and innocuous contact between a man and a woman. Cuomo's defense at the time was that he came from a hugging culture.
Grope has a pretty clear definition. Well I guess two, but unless Cuomo's eyesight is a lot worse then I know of and he's blindly reaching out to oopsy assault someone :D But fine, let's be generous, how many instances of innocuous nonconsensual incidents does one allow? I could in good conscience allow one hug of someone you thought you were closer with than you actually were. When you can no longer count said incidents on one hand does it seem suspiciously like a flimsy excuse? Blaming culture is weird. Granted i'm a few decades younger, but I come from a touchy culture too. Cheek to cheek hellos and all. Doing that at work would be really out of line with college and down right creepy with subordinates.
And that ignores kissing someone, don't know how you accidentally do that because of your culture :P
Regarding hugging, I remember when I came to the US. Well, I am also wired to be a hugger, being Southern European and all, but I quickly realized it made people uncomfortable over there - also you're supposed to hug your acquaintances, not random people you meet. It was one of those, "damn, you're not in Kansas Spain anymore". So I stopped doing it outside of people that found it endearing.
It's not so hard, and I wasn't even born in the US like Cuomo.
Same with touching, kissing, etc... we are a more physical culture, but you know, even over here you get with whom you can do it and with whom you can't. Also, Cuomo held a position of power.
Quote from: Syt on July 16, 2025, 01:23:58 AM"What do you mean by 'unwanted'? How do you define 'wanted'? How do you define 'un'?" - Jordan Peterson
:D
Reminds me of this:
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GsEXlzgWEAA3sNE.jpg)
Quote from: HVC on July 16, 2025, 01:36:00 AMGrope has a pretty clear definition. Well I guess two, but unless Cuomo's eyesight is a lot worse then I know of and he's blindly reaching out to oopsy assault someone :D But fine, let's be generous, how many instances of innocuous nonconsensual incidents does one allow? I could in good conscience allow one hug of someone you thought you were closer with than you actually were. When you can no longer count said incidents on one hand does it seem suspiciously like a flimsy excuse? Blaming culture is weird. Granted i'm a few decades younger, but I come from a touchy culture too. Cheek to cheek hellos and all. Doing that at work would be really out of line with college and down right creepy with subordinates.
And that ignores kissing someone, don't know how you accidentally do that because of your culture :P
But we don't know if he groped or kissed women, or if he did kiss them what kind of kiss it was. All I've got is sexually harassed and unwanted sexual contact. I want to know what Cuomo did to get those labels.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 16, 2025, 02:26:55 AMQuote from: HVC on July 16, 2025, 01:36:00 AMGrope has a pretty clear definition. Well I guess two, but unless Cuomo's eyesight is a lot worse then I know of and he's blindly reaching out to oopsy assault someone :D But fine, let's be generous, how many instances of innocuous nonconsensual incidents does one allow? I could in good conscience allow one hug of someone you thought you were closer with than you actually were. When you can no longer count said incidents on one hand does it seem suspiciously like a flimsy excuse? Blaming culture is weird. Granted i'm a few decades younger, but I come from a touchy culture too. Cheek to cheek hellos and all. Doing that at work would be really out of line with college and down right creepy with subordinates.
And that ignores kissing someone, don't know how you accidentally do that because of your culture :P
But we don't know if he groped or kissed women, or if he did kiss them what kind of kiss it was. All I've got is sexually harassed and unwanted sexual contact. I want to know what Cuomo did to get those labels.
Okay, perv.
Also as the report is public, why don't you read it yourself. Here's from early page of the complaints:
QuoteAs described in greater detail below, over time, the Governor's behavior toward Executive Assistant #1 escalated to more intimate physical contact, including regular hugs and kisses on the cheek (and at least one kiss on the lips), culminating in incidents where the
Governor grabbed Executive Assistant #1's butt while they took a selfie in the Executive Mansion, and where the Governor, during a hug, reached under Executive Assistant #1's blouse
and grabbed her breast.
From the wiki link zoupa provided. Two separate victims.
QuoteBoylan further elaborated on her accusations in February 2021, claiming Cuomo goaded her to play strip poker with him while on a flight in 2017 and forcibly kissed her on the mouth in his Manhattan office.
QuoteAfter the aide told him it would get him in trouble, Cuomo then shut the door and said "I don't care." He then returned and groped one of her breasts over her bra by reaching under her blouse.
I just searched for "kiss" and "grope" so there might be other incidents. That's pretty hardcore for hugging culture :D . One or even two incidents can be thrown away as misunderstandings I suppose, or even vindictive lies if one is so inclined, but once you get to 11 the room is pretty Smokey to claim there's not a fire.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 16, 2025, 02:26:55 AMBut we don't know if he groped or kissed women, or if he did kiss them what kind of kiss it was. All I've got is sexually harassed and unwanted sexual contact. I want to know what Cuomo did to get those labels.
He got the "unwanted sexual contact" label because the women involved did not want sexual contact. Why is this so hard to understand.
Quote from: Zoupa on July 16, 2025, 02:44:23 AMHe got the "unwanted sexual contact" label because the women involved did not want sexual contact. Why is this so hard to understand.
Because I did not know what the unwanted sexual contact consisted of. Now I now.
If being Mr. Touchy-Feely doesn't get Cuomo on your bad side what about fiscal malfeasance? He used state resources to write his book. Then claimed his employees just wanted to help him out on government time (and pay)
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 16, 2025, 02:47:20 AMQuote from: Zoupa on July 16, 2025, 02:44:23 AMHe got the "unwanted sexual contact" label because the women involved did not want sexual contact. Why is this so hard to understand.
Because I did not know what the unwanted sexual contact consisted of. Now I now.
Got it, so you were just too lazy to look it up?
Quote from: celedhring on July 16, 2025, 02:06:44 AMSame with touching, kissing, etc... we are a more physical culture, but you know, even over here you get with whom you can do it and with whom you can't. Also, Cuomo held a position of power.
You missed your chance to feel up some pretty American girls guilt and prosecution free, Oh well, live and learn :P
Quote from: garbon on July 16, 2025, 02:51:23 AMGot it, so you were just too lazy to look it up?
Why are you such an angry little man?
Quote from: HVC on July 16, 2025, 02:48:08 AMIf being Mr. Touchy-Feely doesn't get Cuomo on your bad side what about fiscal malfeasance? He used state resources to write his book. Then claimed his employees just wanted to help him out on government time (and pay)
I'm not playing the popularity game. I'm not trying to decide if I like him or dislike him. I'm trying to understand what he did.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 16, 2025, 02:54:07 AMQuote from: garbon on July 16, 2025, 02:51:23 AMGot it, so you were just too lazy to look it up?
Why are you such an angry little man?
I mean, I provided the wiki which you were too lazy to read... It's not even that long dude.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 16, 2025, 02:55:17 AMQuote from: HVC on July 16, 2025, 02:48:08 AMIf being Mr. Touchy-Feely doesn't get Cuomo on your bad side what about fiscal malfeasance? He used state resources to write his book. Then claimed his employees just wanted to help him out on government time (and pay)
I'm not playing the popularity game. I'm not trying to decide if I like him or dislike him. I'm trying to understand what he did.
Gotcha. I misunderstood it as a defence of Cuomo.
Quote from: Zoupa on July 16, 2025, 02:56:04 AMI mean, I provided the wiki which you were too lazy to read... It's not even that long dude.
Does the article explain why garbon is such an angry little man? I read the first paragraph and it looked like it was all about money.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 16, 2025, 02:58:30 AMQuote from: Zoupa on July 16, 2025, 02:56:04 AMI mean, I provided the wiki which you were too lazy to read... It's not even that long dude.
Does the article explain why garbon is such an angry little man? I read the first paragraph and it looked like it was all about money.
You're obviously curious about the subject. Do you prefer having posters do the research and point out things instead of looking for it yourself? I'm genuinely curious.
Quote from: Zoupa on July 16, 2025, 03:16:43 AMYou're obviously curious about the subject. Do you prefer having posters do the research and point out things instead of looking for it yourself? I'm genuinely curious.
I prefer people who already know the answer to my question to tell me. Just as I am happy to pass on any knowledge I have. If your panties get bunched up because i had a question not directed at you personally, that's on you, not me.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 16, 2025, 03:27:53 AMQuote from: Zoupa on July 16, 2025, 03:16:43 AMYou're obviously curious about the subject. Do you prefer having posters do the research and point out things instead of looking for it yourself? I'm genuinely curious.
I prefer people who already know the answer to my question to tell me.
But why? Your question is quite easily answered with a 5 seconds google search, followed by maybe a 3 minute read.
Quote from: Zoupa on July 16, 2025, 03:37:19 AMBut why? Your question is quite easily answered with a 5 seconds google search, followed by maybe a 3 minute read.
I enjoy pleasant company.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 15, 2025, 10:27:17 PMYes. I'm trying to understand what specific acts are considered sexual harassment by the DOJ.
By Trump's DOJ? Probably none.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 16, 2025, 02:54:07 AMQuote from: garbon on July 16, 2025, 02:51:23 AMGot it, so you were just too lazy to look it up?
Why are you such an angry little man?
Im not angry. I simply don't know why you wanted to outsource ehat was quick work to learn. I doubt many of us still recall the exact details of Cuomo's precise objectionable behavior so it was always going to involve looking them up. Seems weird to quibble vs. taking the two seconds to look them up.
I'll not take umbrage with the little though I think my height is average.
Quote from: garbon on July 16, 2025, 05:30:48 AMIm not angry. I simply don't know why you wanted to outsource ehat was quick work to learn. I doubt many of us still recall the exact details of Cuomo's precise objectionable behavior so it was always going to involve looking them up. Seems weird to quibble vs. taking the two seconds to look them up.
I'll not take umbrage with the little though I think my height is average.
You're full of shit. All that blah blah blah to rationalize calling me a pervert.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 16, 2025, 05:52:45 AMQuote from: garbon on July 16, 2025, 05:30:48 AMIm not angry. I simply don't know why you wanted to outsource ehat was quick work to learn. I doubt many of us still recall the exact details of Cuomo's precise objectionable behavior so it was always going to involve looking them up. Seems weird to quibble vs. taking the two seconds to look them up.
I'll not take umbrage with the little though I think my height is average.
You're full of shit. All that blah blah blah to rationalize calling me a pervert.
Oh calling me angry was just you projecting?
It felt odd that you needed to know the exact specifics of how he sexual harassed women.
Yi is no more passive-aggressive in this thread than he normally is in the forum. No one should be surprised or upset. That's just the way he rolls.
Nothing wrong with noting every time he does it, other than it taking up space in every thread he posts in.
He asked a question, you all felt compelled to answer it. While awesome for activity of this forum, you did not have to do it. Remember at least that when you all call him out.
Yi plays dumb, or at least I hope he is not so hopelessly ill informed as his questions suggest. It's a bad imitation of a Socratic dialogue.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 16, 2025, 03:43:25 AMQuote from: Zoupa on July 16, 2025, 03:37:19 AMBut why? Your question is quite easily answered with a 5 seconds google search, followed by maybe a 3 minute read.
I enjoy pleasant company.
This is obviously not true, given that you're here :lol:
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 15, 2025, 08:57:04 PMI don't know what Cuomo did that was inappropriate.
How about the time he set up a commission to probe corruption and then quickly disbanded it when it issued subpoenas to his allies? Does that count as inappropriate?
For a NY politician I'd be more worried if he wasn't corrupt :P
Quote from: garbon on July 16, 2025, 06:12:45 AMOh calling me angry was just you projecting?
It felt odd that you needed to know the exact specifics of how he sexual harassed women.
No, me calling you angry was me expressing an opinion.