Sorry to step on TaMara’s post, but I thought this would be of interest:
Democrats elect Tom Perez as national party chairman https://t.co/43gbNhka3P pic.twitter.com/TxMAQ9VYyA
— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) February 25, 2017
Right away, Perez moves to appoint Ellison DNC deputy chair. Perez supporters start chanting "Unity!" Round of applause from Keith fans.
— Ruby Cramer (@rubycramer) February 25, 2017
UPDATE at 4:16 PM EST:
Newly-elected DNC chair Tom Perez begins term by appointing Rep. Keith Ellison as Deputy Chair. https://t.co/XePfktYfSK pic.twitter.com/T6UxRJR2DX
— ABC News (@ABC) February 25, 2017
Carry on.
Major Major Major Major
Glad this is over with, hopefully this is a satisfactory enough ending.
In the spirit of unity, I will keep the schadenfreude of reading the Berniebrats’ twitter meltdown to myself :)
NotMax
Made me smile. Wanly, but a smile is a smile.
Donald Trump’s CPAC speech, deciphered for humans
Unknown known (formerly known as Ecks, former formerly completely unknown)
Hot take: Well, um. Good. I s’pose.
Mnemosyne
This seems like a perfectly good compromise to me — and it will allow Ellison to keep his House seat — but of course the purity ponies are already whining because they didn’t get their way.
pamelabrown53
Glad it’s over. After reading too many pissed peeps at GOS, I worry that the call for “Unity” will be undermined.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
I knew you were gloating! Hence my comment to you downstairs!
SPLITTER !!!
germy
Ken
@Mnemosyne:
They have a point. Look where continual infighting and whining has got the Republicans.
Ahasuerus
What? No bloodshed? No dolchstoss? No Berniebros vs. Hillbots? No 3am toilet tweets? No bragging about the size of one’s … caucus? Just unity and cooperation? I am SOOOOO disappointed!
cosima
This is excellent news (for John McCain, right?)! Truly, though, I am happy to see this news. Best of both worlds. Enthusiasm + experience.
Aimai
@Mnemosyne: right! This is obviously a great solutiin. So naturally it will be opposed by the cluster B personality disorders that are the berniebros. Its always about “splitting” and purity of essence with these guys.
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
Took ’em long enough//
pamelabrown53
@germy: #7.
Thanks for the tweet, germy. Ellison is behaving like a class act.
XTPD
I could not possibly give less of a shit about who could or should have won the chair, but to those who see this as a Democratic purity test, I say this:
PftthtpbbththtpbbbhththtbthttppffthtffthThththffthtfththththththththpppbbfftthtbbbtpppth
Clearly, this sentiment had never before been made without such maturity or such care.
Major Major Major Major
@XTPD: neoliberal whore!
Suzanne
Based on the piece in TNR this week about how the establishment Dems got Perez to run essentially to stick it to the Berniebros, I don’t know if this was a strategically smart outcome.
Like it or not, we don’t get to 50% + 1 without the far left, unless we want to kiss the asses of the rural dipshits who voted for Trump. I would much rather make a coalition with Berniebros than the people who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.
wasabi gasp
Four more years!
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne: Which makes me want to round up the purity ponies and sell them off to the Dothraki.
Mnemosyne
@pamelabrown53:
It must be so weird and frustrating for Ellison to have become this weird avatar of “the resistance,” because the guy is a lifelong and rock-solid Democrat.
Villago Delenda Est
@Suzanne: TNR needs phony drama as much as any other Villager rag.
germy
Maybe we should have elected GoBlue72 as DNC chair. He’s a teambuilder!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Wilmer issued a snotty press release about what Perez and the Democrats need to do, keep the door open for workers and young people. How is that fucking door closed?
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
Perez is the chair and Ellison is the deputy chair, so it’s not like the Berniebros got shut out. Perez and Ellison are going to work together.
If the Berniebros are unwilling to work with other Democrats, that’s a whole other problem.
Oatler.
I ho[e this means the Dems can keep their sturdy commitment to Republican values?
indycat32
Does this mean we’re stuck with Dershowitz?
Mnemosyne
@indycat32:
I have an ice floe with his name on it.
greennotGreen
With Perez’s first move appointing Ellison, we at least have two people leading the party who see unity as being the best weapon against the oligarchs. An auspicious start to 2018!
trollhattan
How the hell is the former Secretary of Labor supposed to appeal to working-class voters?
Anyway, glad that’s settled, now on with the task at hand.
Aimai
@Suzanne: the non voters sre not far left. That is nonsense. The non voters are apathetic, and ill informed, or blocked frim voting. But they are not all closet socialists.
germy
@indycat32: Ellison as deputy chair may be impossible for Dershowitz to stomach.
Michael Bersin
Was there something going on today that has any impact on the 2018 midterm elections? Oh, yeah, a bunch of grassroots organized protests and town halls in congressional districts across America (absent frightened republican Representatives or Senators).
That’s a good day.
Anything else of consequence going on?
Villago Delenda Est
@indycat32: That might be a downside.
Goku
@Major Major Major Major:
But but but… donors!1! The democraps have shown what centrist neoliberal whores they are by electing someone with experience AND progressive cred. Everyone knows those two can’t go together!
And Ellison is a cuck- I mean neoliberal, for agreeing to be co-Chai! They have told activists (only the white dudebro ones that matter) to go pound sound. Prepare to lose forever, libs. Now please excuse me while I put out the fire on my head.
/Goblowme72
Villago Delenda Est
@germy: Here’s hoping that’s true!
Suzanne
@Villago Delenda Est: The piece makes a solid case that Ellison and Perez are ideologically and operationally similar, but that giving the chairmanship to Ellison would have been a better unifying move from a strategic perspective. I don’t really care who won—I went to the Future Forum and I thought both of them, plus some of the other candidates, were all very solid. If Ellison and Perez can truly unify the entire coalition, then this is a good outcome.
I just want to kick GOP ass moving forward.
Ruckus
@germy:
He’s so pure he’s the type to try to build an actual shithouse with bricks made with, yes you guessed it.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Bankers already nailed the door shut, donchano.
Aimai
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: ah wilmer!
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
recount! recount!
I demand a recount!
Villago Delenda Est
@greennotGreen: Oh, stop being so damn positive. You’re spoiling goblue72’s conniption.
Iowa Old Lady
Honest to god, I’m sick of relitigating the primary. There are real problems here. We are in trouble. Stop nursing old wounds and get to work. (Not directed at anyone here. Just in general.)
Adam L Silverman
Just added this up top:
CaseyL
Class acts, Perez and Ellison both.
As for the BernieBro Butthurt Battalion, let me repeat my comment from previous post:
A BernieBro on my FB feed is already out the door, saying Dems “didn’t learn anything.”
What lesson were we supposed to learn, that people who hate us should make our important decisions for us?
That people who can’t be counted on to vote in off-year elections are the ones we should be sucking up to?
That people who can’t be counted on to vote against neo-fascism if their precious feelings are hurt are the most important people in the universe?
Every time the BernieBros pop their heads out of their asses enough to join the conversation, I despise them more and more.
They keep saying they’ll go off and form their own Party. I wish to hell they would.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
ELLISON HAS SOLD U OUT!!111!
debbie
@Suzanne:
Everyone is going to have to stop bitching about the other “side” before we can even start to do that.
Tripod
Well, I’m all for gratuitous hippy punching, but in a post CU world…. WGAF?
germy
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Mail a check to Jill Stein; if she raises a million bucks she’ll look into it.
efgoldman
@Suzanne:
How do you do that with people who won’t take yes for an answer? It’s not like HRC didn’t run on the most liberal platform since at least LBJ.
Kyle
@NotMax: That’s a great translation.
It’s sad that they weren’t doing that before the election. I doubt it affected the election (Maclean’s is a Canadian magazine), but take a look at their last cover before the US election. They decided to make “the case against Hillary”, demonstrating the exact same pathologies that the US media displayed.
debbie
@Iowa Old Lady:
I agree. Both the primary and the election. Forward is the only way.
Ruckus
@Aimai:
I’ve been wondering what color the sky is in wilmer’s world. From every account I’ve seen it must be something other than what most of us see.
Jim
Seems like a win-win if they can get along well. Ellison can remain in Congress, which he wouldn’t have if he’d won. But he can be an effective voice as deputy DNC to the extent his work schedule allows. Prob is less in the DNC itself and more in the arguments among supporters.
Suzanne
@Aimai: Agreed.
My point is that I really don’t want to try to bring the rural and Southern working-class voters who historically went Democrat but who went for Trump this time back into the party. I would really prefer to say goodbye to racists and those who are willing to destroy the climate to keep their shiny coal mines open. I would prefer that the Dems make a coalition with the far left. I think we should actively lean in to our coastal/urban status.
@Mnemosyne: I agree. Giving them Ellison may have been an olive branch we may regret not extending, however. But we’ll see.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Suzanne: Sticking it to voters is pointless. Making sure that a non-Democrat doesn’t have his man in charge of the party was important.
Zam
@germy: Ha, having worked in Field for the last 8 years, I can tell you anyone that took today’s vote as being “told to go pound sand” is not actually an activist, they are the assholes who make activists life shit by lecturing people who actually do work about how they aren’t good enough for them. They come into campaign offices and scream at the overworked staff and make all kinds of threats about how we are going to lose because we don’t listen to their screaming. It doesn’t matter if you are on a moderate dem or a far left dem’s campaign these people will act like this every single fucking time.
Major Major Major Major
@Suzanne: the BernieBros won’t take yes for an answer. They don’t understand how coalitions work.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
¡ƖƖƖ¡¡┴∩O ∩ p˥OS S∀H NOSI˥˥Ǝ
Miss Bianca
May I just say that I am delighted by this news? Almost enough to make me forget my achin’ tailbone!
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
Better get him out on it pretty quickly. With a week of February high temps in the Northeast in the 70s and 80s, it won’t last long.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
OCCUPY!
japa21
@Suzanne: If the “far left” see Perez’s election as tossing them out and saying they aren’t wanted, then the “far left” have a real problem. The problem is that they would be acting as 2 year olds throwing a temper tantrum because they did’t get their way.
This is not a rejection of the left. There were three highly qualified candidates, on of which won. You can be sure that if Ellison had won and more moderate Dems complained and said they were kicked to the curb, there would be denials of that, and if there weren’t then the Dems would be doomed.
Major Major Major Major
@Suzanne:
The constitution is clearly written so that this kind of majority cannot govern.
Ruckus
@Zam:
Sounds exactly like 5 yr olds who are going to hold their breath till they get what they want.
Emerald
@Suzanne:
I don’t think the far left amount to all that many folks. A good 95% of Wilmer supporters are already with the party. The BernieBrats are a very loud, small minority who are unreliable allies at the best, and a toxic presence in the party at worst. We are better off without them.
Anyhoo, as Al Giordano pointed out the other day, if Ellison had won the Brats would have begun attacking him as soon as he did anything reasonable, such as work for whole party instead of turning it over to the Brats.
Good riddance. Although I mourn that we indeed do seem to be stuck with Dershowitz.
Aimai
@Suzanne: the problem with this argument is that it assumes unity comes frim capitulating to outsiders who will never work in coalition with ddmocrats. This doesnt pull the party to the left as much as it mskes the cnc chair a bad conduct prize for egotistical lone rangers like bernie. Bernie never respected the legitimacy of hillarys voters–he counted the passion of his fans as more significant than her millions of actual voters. there isnt one right way to be a democrat or to fight for the country–we dont need a perfect, righteous, leader. But we do need someone who is willing to work in coalition with others. Its extortionate (as usual) for bernies little trolls to demand. Control of everything or they won’t fight for the dems–but insist that if their guy got in everyone else should suck it up or be accused of being sore losers or insufficiently anti trump. I would oppose trump and his policies regardless of who was dNc chair and I’m sick of hearing about how if we don’t cater to bernies asshole supporters they won’t fight trump. Fuck them.
Suzanne
@efgoldman: I don’t know yet. But I do know that “the white working class” (who aren’t really working class) who went Trump this time around aren’t any better members. All the people who voted for Trump because they didn’t think he’d actually do anything he said he would do but they were pissed off at the black dude in the White House and didn’t like the shrill lady and they wanted to rage…..fuck those people forever,
So which contingent of awful do we decide to tolerate? We need to pick one.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@trollhattan:
Exactly as much as Michael Steele, Reince Priebus and Romney McDaniel.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
wHA┴’s tH3 fЯquency keИn3th?
Xantar
@japa21:
Actually, if Ellison had won, the very first thing that would have happened is he would make some action which would undermine his purity credentials and the Berniebros would have called him a sellout.
There’s no point in chasing those who can never be satisfied.
ruemara
@Suzanne: I think I’ll stick to the Mother Jones article that says that hot take was bs since Perez was wrapping up job duties first. And I’ll work on helping those who are dealing with voter suppression, not on allying with people hoping to bully me into doing what they want.
Baud
Congrats to our new leaders!
FlipYrWhig
@Suzanne: If there’s anyone who constantly talks about forging coalitions with working class white people, it’s Sanders. And I agree that it’s foolhardy.
efgoldman
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
OK smartass. How did you do that?
msdc
@Suzanne:
The problem with that is the coasts and the cities don’t have enough districts between them to retake Congress or the state legislatures. (And there are a lot of people in those red states who need the protections of liberal policies, as the ongoing struggles over Obamacare and LBGT rights make clear.) We have to make some inroads into the interior or we won’t get anywhere. That doesn’t mean catering to Trump voters, but we can’t retreat to the cities either.
japa21
@Xantar: Agreed
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
They got Ellison. Ellison is the deputy chair now. He and Perez are going to work together, plus Ellison keeps his seat in the House.
See other people’s comments above about Berniebros being unwilling to take “yes” for an answer.
Aimai
@Suzanne: What on earth makes you think a HISTORIC secretary of labor under BARACK OBAMA would mean a retreat to pursuit of white southern males? Also–you may have missed this–but Bernie’s whole shtick was a rejection of race based identity politics in favor of a focus on the sad/angry white working class. He was explicit about this before and after the campaign. You are serioysly misinformed on just sbout every point you are msking. As everyone else has pointed out while I was hunting and pecking this out.
Major Major Major Major
@Xantar: most likely he would have made Perez deputy chair. Bet you five bucks that was the plan for whoever won.
PsiFighter37
Preferred that Perez wins, so that is good. The fact that it will make Bernie mad is an added bonus.
MisterForkbeard
@CaseyL: So far, all my BernieBro friends and relatives are pretty silent on this. And the voted-for-Bernie-over-Hillary-but-still-happy-with-Hillary contingent think it worked out well.
I’m honestly surprised anyone CAN get angry with this.
Shalimar
If I were Bernie, at this point I would be embarrassed that the BernieBros are named after me. The ones who didn’t listen to him when he told them to vote for Clinton and aren’t listening to Ellison when he says to support the DNC aren’t worth a glass of warm dog drool.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Yep. Perez and Ellison have worked together before and like each other. They probably see themselves as unifying the party. Unfortunately for them, the Berniebros are constitutionally incapable of accepting any sort of compromise, no matter how valid. Either they win everything they want or they make sure we all lose.
Msb
This is excellent news. Glad to hear it. The more I find out about Perez, the better I like him. And I’m sure the usual suspects can get their heads to explode because Dems have a Muslim Deputy Chair, Just as much as they would have if he’s been elected Chair.
Suzanne
@FlipYrWhig: The point of the piece is that DNC Chair is not really that important from a policy-making perspective, so it may have been wiser to give the Berniebros this little nugget so that they would sit down and STFU and keep the truly important business for the rest of the Dems. I don’t know if it would have worked. I am a pragmatist, very much a half-a-loaf person, so I can’t judge whether or not this would have been a wise move.
I don’t care about Bernie. I just do not want to kiss the asses of coal miners and people in factory towns whose lives were made better by Democratic policies but then betrayed the party.
Redshift
@Major Major Major Major:
Yep, that was my first thought, too.
I was very happy a week or so ago when some in the Bernie wing on Twitter were freaking out because Perez and Ellison were spotted having lunch together, and they both tweeted “Relax, we’re friends. It’s okay.”
Aimai
@Shalimar: this is balloon juice. Arent most of the posters here pro dig drool?
Adam L Silverman
I’ll just leave this here:
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: Perspective!
Adam L Silverman
@Aimai: Are you okay? Are you typing on a teeny tiny keyboard? Has your autocorrect gone all wonky?
efgoldman
@Zam:
And I’ll bet they’re all white guys who know what’s best for minorities and women, because those folks couldn’t possibly have any idea what’s in their own self interest.
zhena gogolia
@Adam L Silverman:
This person has read my mind.
Zam
@Xantar:
Pretty much exactly what would happen. The people who have gotten a little too invested in the DNC chair race really don’t have any clue what the DNC does. From the various comments I’ve read on facebook and twitter it seems they wanted the DNC to be picking candidates, specifically their candidates, in every race out there. This is of course the same thing they accused the last chair of doing, but it’s literally not what they do. The official party does not endorse candidates in contested primaries unless the candidate is the incumbent and in good standing with the party, or the only opponents are insane or completely unqualified. Unfortunately some of Ellinson’s supporters were hoping he would just throw it all behind progressive unicorns, and this is simply something he would not have done. So yea, they would have declared him a sellout the moment he refused to primary whatever person most recently displeased the almighty progressive Jesus.
Suzanne
@Aimai:
Because a loud contingent of Bernie supporters (and others) chose to support Ellison over Perez, stating that they wanted a more left-wing direction for the Party than they had under Obama. Obama won a contingent—not large, but large enough—of rural and southern racist douchebags. If we are going to focus on rebuilding the Obama coalition, then that includes some of these people.
Shalimar
@Aimai: Pro-dog, definitely. Dogs are awesome. Pro-drool, hell no. Drool is an unfortunate messy side effect that comes with all the good things.
I have to replace a door because a dog sat next to it moaning to get out for so long that the bottom of the door got drool-logged and now doesn’t close. That is a metric ocean of drool, which is why it is on my mind.
Aimai
@Suzanne: Stop already. The DNC chair has nothing to do with your personal fantasy of revenge on coal miners or southern whites or people who have dissapointed you today. Any fifty state strategy is going to result in the DNC chair recruiting and running blue dog democrats in red states. No amount of hand waving changes that ewuation for ellison or perez. The self proclaimed purists of the bernie side are noisy but uninformed and ultimately useless.
Zam
@efgoldman: You would be correct,
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Worse than Bush!
Bush’s 3rd term!
dr. bloor
@Mnemosyne:
Probably not much of a problem, though. Chasing Berniebros is like trying to get the mythical Reagan Democrat back into the fold. They’re not getting under the tent for a price that’s worth paying.
martian
@Major Major Major Major: I wondered on the last thread if this was the plan in the making when Ellison and Perez got caught out on their date night. Seems obvious.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@efgoldman: by using The Force
Aimai
@Adam L Silverman: not having a stroke! Bad autocorrect on iphone! Also:incandescent rage. So fucking sick of bernie extortion and whining. We are in a knife fight and they are bitching about the coffee spoons.
schrodingers_cat
@Suzanne:
But that’s exactly what the Senator from Vt wants to do. He wants to cooperate with T. He even had an op-ed in WashPo saying so.
MisterForkbeard
@MisterForkbeard: I take this back. The NPR article is full of angry Dems who’ve decided Perez is corrupt and the entire party is lost and corrupt because their guy is only vice chair instead of chair.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: I get that Berniebros suck. Purity trolls suck. I just also think parts of the Obama coalition suck. So how do we get to a winning status without making any overtures to people who suck?
As someone who lives in red state, it makes me sick watching Dem politicians in my state kiss the asses of these right-wing pig fuckers, who then go and vote GOP the vast majority of the time anyway. But there’s no other way to win for a Dem here now.
schrodingers_cat
MSM will keep this story alive because they have to go back to both-sides-are-bad. Ignore them.
Redshift
@Suzanne:
I would find that argument more compelling of it was accompanied by a single instance where the Berniebros responded that way to being given an olive branch in response to a threat to take their marbles and go home. (And I’m talking specifically about the Ellison-or-bust types, not all Bernie supporters.) From what I’ve seen, their response to a partial reward when they don’t win (getting a lot of stuff in the platform, for example) is to complain bitterly that they didn’t get everything (even though they lost) and threaten again to take their marbles and go home.
trollhattan
@Adam L Silverman:
Hey Adam, in case you’ve not seen it, LGM’s Dan Nexon has begun plowing through Gorka’s dissertation. It’s, um, well….
Gelfling 545
@Mnemosyne: In the long run it’s probably good for Ellison. You know that by tomorrow afternoon some who see him as the face of the resistance today would be tweeting their “disappointment” because he hadn’t renamed the party the People’s Autonomous Collective or some such bs. And he is needed in Congress.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Latino Jimmy Carter!
Josie
@Suzanne: It is not a little nugget. Our most important job as a party is to bring in all the prospective voters whose votes were suppressed in a variety of ways. This will involve organizing on a massive scale, a job for which Perez has the best experience. He really is the best man for the job at this point. That is the reason Democratic activists, who know what is what, voted for him.
MazeDancer
Thinking half of the DNC-bashing purity ponies on Twitter are actually Russian trolls. They came out en masse. Like the Russians only hired them for today for the DNC vote.
The vitriol, the insanity, the tear-it-all-down stance all feel the same as the Pepe trolls. Some of the worst Bernie Bros during the election had to part of the paid Russian Hate Hillary e-army trying to destroy our elections. Continually bashing the Democratic Party, trying to keep Dems from uniting, would certainly benefit the Bannon/Putin strategy.
chopper
@pamelabrown53:
the kos kidz are, of course, goin nuts.
efgoldman
@Suzanne:
Our solution is the same as it’s always been: get our natural constituency off their asses and to the polls. There are more of us there there are of them – but they vote, and we go to the mall.
There are a ton of gerrymandered districts that are fairly narrow R. We can certainly get some of them if we can get out the damned vote.
Shalimar
@MisterForkbeard: If you search hard enough, eventually you will find the whiny assholes who support the narrative you want to create. Witness NPR. The number of BernieBros who won’t listen to Ellison and move on has got to be relatively small.
ETA: and those assholes would have found fault with Ellison soon enough. They’re not Democrats. End of story.
MisterForkbeard
@Suzanne: I’m not going to disagree with you, but I think putting their guy into the #2 position in the party is a pretty good overture. Especially since Ellison is a good, solid Democrat and fairly progressive.
Suzanne
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t support Bernie. I think that if Ellison and Perez can genuinely work together, then this is a good outcome,
@Aimai: I see no reason to bring back Obama voters who went to Trump this time into the fold, either. They are just as unreliable, just as unreasonable, and just as dangerous.
Aimai
@Suzanne: demography is sgainst you. Dems need a coalition to get back in. no one cares what makes you sick. The so called Bernie voters do not represent minority, women, immigrant or coastal voters. They talk like they do but they don’t. They didn’t during the primary and they don’t now.
schrodingers_cat
@Suzanne: Obama coalition won the presidency twice, so they have a better track record of winning elections. When BS can repeat that feat, I will take him more seriously. Till then they can stop being Putin stooges and STFU.
CaseyL
@MisterForkbeard: My FB “friend” is very angry at the DNC’s electing Perez over Ellison.
Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept seem to be his (the FB guy) info source of choice, and now he’s puzzled because I brought up a bunch of articles of Greenwald pooh-poohing Trump’s Russian connections as being much less important than Clinton’s utter total evil.
efgoldman
@Mnemosyne:
Fuckem
Aimai
@Suzanne: you are very confused about who is going after what votes.
MisterForkbeard
@Shalimar: NPR had a real hard-on for hillary-hating bernieBros during the election, and the die-hard Bernie-Or-The-Highway people tend to show up in weird amounts in their comments sections. But I agree that the number of people who won’t move on is pretty small… and it would be nice the media actually acknowledged that or challenged any of the “this is a slap in the face” narrative that occurs.
Redshift
@Suzanne:
Er, what southern racist douchebags were part of the Obama coalition? Obama won Virginia twice, which Hillary also won. He narrowly won North Carolina once.
martian
@Redshift:
Hey, that reminds me – remember when Cornell West got to sit on the actual Dem platform committee and, then, after the convention, fucked off and endorsed Jill Stein? Good times.
schrodingers_cat
@MazeDancer: While T was Putin’s shooting the moon strategy. Splitting the dems using BS from Vt was the more mundane strategy.
Suzanne
@efgoldman:
If we could win without either of these groups of douchebags, then that would be great. But I don’t think so. Millennials didn’t turn out in the quantity we needed. And Dems won big states by large margins, and the popular vote, and yet that didn’t mean anything. We have to grow the coalition a bit. The problem with that is that now we have to make some overtures to people I’d rather not.
Or change the rules, so that our coastal/urban status didn’t keep fucking us over.
skerry
Hot off the press. This pleases me.
sharl
I would LOVE to have been a fly on the wall near where Ellison and his press secretary Isaiah Breen (twitter) have been discussing this DNC business. Breen has a very close – and AFAICT genuine – online affinity with leftie Dems and DSA people; gonna watch what he does now. If he stays with Ellison, that bodes
wellbetter for chances of Ellison & Breen helping on the unity front, though making that process work will likely accelerate the aging process of both of those guys.Hopefully Ellison can at least help Perez with faster and slicker responses to difficult question, such as what Israel is doing to its subjugated Palestinian populace; not that it is an issue for most Dems, but a lot of politically active leftie Youngs – at least in absolute numbers; dunno about percentages – interact with other Youngs online who are elsewhere in the world. They actually see the furriners as human; imagine that!
However, since the DNC chair has traditionally gone about his/her business largely away from public interest and observation, getting back to that status may be the best thing to be hoped for here.
In the meantime, this will be a real boost to further recruitment by DSA, which saw a 2.5x growth in membership between and after the primary and general election campaigns, and where chapters are being established in “flyover country” locales that my Boomer brain never anticipated. Nothing close to Dem Party membership of course, nor do I expect it will ever be.
You can dismiss them as angry privileged young white folk, but that might be perilous, given the interest I see from youngs in general – black, latino, asian, etc. – in what is basically an anti-capitalist movement. Who knows, maybe young socialism-curious black folk have discovered the old socialist black folk at Black Agenda Report with whom they have a lot of politics in common.
I have nothing but anecdotes – polling information for millennials is probably out there, though its quality might be suspect – but among politically active Youngs, the intensity and frustration is very real. One specific anecdote: the politically oriented podcast Chapotraphouse just became the #1 subscriber-supported thing on Patreon, and its 25-35yo hosts are now bringing in an unusually high income, given their age and what they do; a fact which (amusingly) causes them some occasional bewilderment and discomfort. Note that I would NOT recommend CTH for most folks who comment here, lol – listening to them puzzle through things (while having lots of social/entertainment references soar over my head) is accompanied by a lot of f-bomb–adorned anger along with the jokes.
Ah, young people…whatareyagonnado?
MisterForkbeard
@CaseyL: I STILL see some of my liberal friends talking about how WikiLeaks and GG are just so awesome and Hillary was the problem all along. They can’t point to anything she actually did wrong or any actual corruption, and don’t appear to care that both WL and GG are full-on Trump apologists at the moment. It’s weird.
@skerry: It’s face-saving. I think it’s pretty clear that big chunks of the press weren’t going to show up or were going to be hostile. This way, he gets to look “strong” unless the media frame it as Trump running away.
It’s true, but it’ll be a hard sell. The right hates the media in general and loves Trump, and the left thinks the Dinner is kind of an abomination anyway. There’s no group that will want to listen to them.
Steve in the ATL
I’m feeling good about the culling I did in my FB feed. The only comment I’ve seen on this was from a fraternity brother who is a third generation coal/oil/gas lawyer in WV. He predicts at least two cycles of loss for Dems. He is also a passionate defender of Pete Rose, so that tells you all you need to know about him.
A cousin posted the article about trump banning news organizations from the WH press conference. I commented that it’s ironic that he would ban CNN and the FTFNYT since they did so much to help him become president. Another cousin posted “yeah! and they didn’t cover Wilmer enough either”.
TL; DR: I am so fucking sick of fucking WilmerBro assholes. Please just go away.
chris
@Aimai: Pleased to hear you’re OK, typos are so not you. Comic relief.
different-church-lady
Disarray just ain’t what it used to be.
Kelly
Just coming into the thread. I’m happy to keep Ellison in the House. The remote chance of a 2018 wave election that gives us the House seems to me to be well worth keeping every Dem seat we can. Trump is imploding beyond my wildest dreams. It made me nervous when Obama appointed sitting Senators and Governors to his cabinet and I felt the same way about Ellison. He’s a good man and a long term asset to our cause right where he is. Plenty of good people without seats to fill other roles.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@MazeDancer:
This is actually, true.
You can tell by their relentless defense of Putin and mother russia thoughout their twitter stream.
The others seem to be genuinely dysfunctional (lefty Pautards).
Omnes Omnibus
Perez was in charge of the very aggressive Civil Rights division at Justice (they were awesome on voting rights under him) and then did a great job at Labor. Ellison is a very good liberal congressman who appeals to younger lefties. They should make a great team.
Adam L Silverman
@Aimai: Okay, just wanted to know if I needed to try to alert EMS!
efgoldman
@CaseyL:
Anybody that takes Greenie seriously must also believe that the moon is made of caviar.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: And since Ellison gets to keep his house seat, it’s the best of all outcomes.
Suzanne
@Redshift: I wish I could find the link in the NYT to a piece I just read this morning, profiling a white woman in Florida who voted for Obama twice, then for Trump, and now is scared that she’s going to lose her healthcare. She voted for Trump because she liked the America First rah-rah shit, and she thought all that stuff about repeal and replace was just bluster! I have read/watched/heard many pieces about these people, and FUCK THEM ALL with spiky acid-tipped dicks. If we have to keep people like this in the coalition in order to win…..that sucks.
efgoldman
@MisterForkbeard:
But that’s not good clickbait.
different-church-lady
@skerry: Heat. Kitchen. Incompatibility. All that all that.
Suzanne
@sharl:
If we could get these people to the damn polls, and then we can kiss the Berniebros and the fuckin’ turncoats goodbye, that is the best possible outcome.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@skerry: Of course not. He knows he would be compared to Obama’s prior performances and he knows he could never match Obama’s effortless sense of humor and comic timing.
This is way of saying: NO MÁS!
Baud
@Suzanne: The question really isn’t who is in and who is out of the coalition. It’s what do to attract the outliers. If we try to attract them by undermining our values, that’s bad. If we try to attract them by attacking GOP policies, that’s fine. We aren’t going to say no to any votes, but we are not going to sell out our own people to win them over.
Baud
@skerry: That is good.
schrodingers_cat
@Suzanne: I know that NYT and MSM loves the stories of Dems who vote Republican but are people like that woman profiled in Vichy Times statistically significant? I have my doubts.
efgoldman
@Suzanne:
Without knowing anything else but what you wrote, I’ll bet her congresscritter is a RWNJ Republiklown, and she never even pays attention to that ballot line.
Suzanne
@Baud: The issue I can’t get over is that the Dems made so many people’s lives better…..who then turned around and voted for Agent Orange. Read the fuckin’ “Hillbilly Elegy” book….we fought for them to get benefits and healthcare, and clean air and unpolluted rivers, and then they said FUCK YOU.
We are losing even when we do a better job for more people.
louc
@Suzanne: Here you go.
? Martin
@Suzanne: Perez is pretty far left.
different-church-lady
@schrodingers_cat: I do remember that wonderful “White women are going to stay home from the Women’s March because a black person on the interwebs said whites need to listen more” front page article they featured back at the start of the year. Which involved, as far as i could tell, and anecdotal sample size of one in order to draw such conclusions.
efgoldman
@Suzanne:
We lost the EC by 77k votes in three counties.
With significant numbers of people staying home. or choosing one of the third-party assholes. It’s not like we need to turn out seven million more.
Baud
@Suzanne: It’s frustrating as hell, especially in contrast to where the GOP is. White identity is a hell of a drug.
Baud
@efgoldman: But we also need to do better in states and Congress.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
.@schrodingers_cat: exactly. the garbage Vichy Times never-ever print profiles on republicans voting for dems.
? Martin
@different-church-lady: Well, when you’re comparing it to a well oiled machine…
Suzanne
@schrodingers_cat: HRC lost states and counties that Obama won…..and they nearly universally happened to be rural, southern, and Rust Belt. So they are very statistically significant. And if we want to ever win again, we have to get these people back, or bring in some new people.
I personally lean toward bringing in new people, because the people we lost are people that we did a good job for, insofar as is possible……and then they went for Trump anyway. What would have kept them? Enacting their rage? At globalization? Black people? No thanks. Not worth keeping them in at that price.
So who are the potential new people that we could reach? The only new people who I think we have a shot at are Millennials or the far left.
Doug R
@Kyle: Maclean’s is a Canadian magazine which is run by Barbara Amiel, the wife of convicted fraudster Sir Conrad Black. Right wing and of course it gets money from the Canadian government from the Canadian Periodical Fund, so of course it’s right wing. I guess they figure it’s safe to attack Trump, at least in a satirical way.
Comrade Luke
https://newrepublic.com/article/140901/establishment-democrats-just-won-needless-proxy-war
Good to see you all supporting a continuation of what has resulted in a complete route of the party, at every level.
Keep fucking that chicken, people. Keep. fucking. that. chicken.
Redshift
@Suzanne: The media are drawn like flies to people who voted for idiotic reasons. Sorry, those anecdotes do nothing to show that southern racist douchebags are an important part of the Obama coalition, nor that “give me what I want or I quit” Berniebros are numerous or, more important, in the right places to make up for the missing voters.
The 2016 election was close enough that there were lots of things that could have tipped the balance. One thing that is well established is that Trump voters (including the aforementioned idiots) correlated with animus against minorities and immigrants, and there’s some evidence that the Obama voters who switched were with Obama as long as he didn’t remind them that he was black (like identifying with Trayvon Martin.) I suspect your are the same sort of people who would have trouble voting for a woman.
I agree that those are things I’m not willing to compromise on to get them. But I disagree that throwing bones to the Berniebros is an effective alternative. I’d rather focus on fighting voter suppression, appealing to the minorities the GOP has driven away, and doing better voter ID and GOTV among all of our natural constituencies.
zhena gogolia
@skerry:
That m– f–ing a–h–le.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I think there’s still room to do better with minorities. And some people will come back just do to Trump fatigue.
I’m not sure there really is much room left on the far left, however. Those that aren’t with us probably never will be. We just need to keep pace to where the party is moving.
Omnes Omnibus
@Redshift:
QFT
sharl
@Suzanne:
I agree.
I need to check on whether good post-election polling and analyses have come out on people who didn’t vote but would have likely voted Dem if they did, especially information that is actionable. Specifically, how much a factor was played by government-led voter suppression (“voter ID”, broken voting machines in urban precincts, etc.), media suppression (NYT’s e-mail drumbeat, pro-Trump + anti-Hillary crap on FB, long term effects of the Arkansas Project plus follow-on rightwing media propaganda), and need for better messaging and/or message delivery from Dems, e.g., stuff like this:
Looking at successes is worth it as well I think, e.g., the victory of the Dem in the NC governor’s race in the same election that Hillary lost.
germy
@Baud:
Yes. Making sure they don’t lose their voting rights.
Suzanne
@? Martin: Agreed. I like Perez and Ellison both. I am not arguing that Perez is a bad choice. Ultimately, this is a strategic question, not an ideological question. The TNR piece, which Greenwald linked to in The Intercept, makes a case that, because they are ideologically similar, making Ellison chair would have been a way to make a unifying gesture to the people who really wanted him.
As I think they are both capable, then I don’t really have a preference. If making Ellison deputy Chair is enough of a unifying gesture, then IDGAF. I want to move on to winning real elections.
dr. bloor
@Baud: True, but Berniebros are the difference between winning California by 43 rather than 40 points. I don’t see a nickel’s worth of difference between Ellison and Perez’s approach or ability to tip red districts and particularly red states blue, even if the former could have convinced every one of the hardcores to get on board (he couldn’t have).
If you want some of those red states back, you’re going to have to find common cause with a lot of folks you’d rather your sister not date.
Baud
@germy: Priority 1.
Major Major Major Major
@Comrade Luke: You seem nice.
Baud
@Suzanne: I reject the premise that there is a we that needs to unify with them. That’s a bad dynamic to agree to.
Baud
@dr. bloor: Agree. We’ve never come to consensus about whether to be a broad based party or an ideological one.
Suzanne
@Redshift:
I am not sure that that gets us to winning, as Major-4 correctly points out that we are at some structural disadvantages. But if it does, then all the better.
I live in a red state, and I watch our Dem politicians bend themselves over backward to prove to anxious racists who hate Mexicans that it’s okay to vote for Dems. And we get our asses kicked over and over and over. It sucks.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@sharl: that is a depressing article
Gravenstone
@Zam: so you’ve met NR and GoBlue, I take it?
chris
@Doug R: Eh? Say what? Babs as we used to call her is listed as a contributing editor and hasn’t contributed anything since ’15. Also did not know the Periodical Fund was biased, I thought it paid for postage.
patroclus
I, for one, welcome our new galactic overlords.
Emma
You know, in a previous thread I was all “meh” and “we need to concentrate on defeating Trump,” but after reading some of the Bernie-left here and at LGM, I’ve come to realize something (and how I missed it the first time round I’ll never know). They are the behavioral equivalent of the Trump fanatics. They want what they want when they want if and if they don’t get it they are going to blow up the world. They can’t be reached except by abandoning everything the Democratic party has stood for and adopting their world-view wholesale.
Please don’t bother to tell me you voted for Sanders and then Hillary. I know that and I am not talking about you. I’m talking about our own version of the 27%.
efgoldman
@Baud:
G O T V
Heavier vs lighter voting is a pretty good predictor of party success. The more people who vote, the better Dems do.
Kansas is a very red state, but Brownback was re-elected last time with only 24% of the electorate voting for him.
dr. bloor
@Suzanne:
“I’ll take ‘anyone comfortable voting for a woman’ for eleventeen thousand, Alex.” If HRC was Mister rather than Madame Secretary, I have little doubt the rust belt would have stayed on board, and we’d all be bitching about McConnell’s pledges to block SCOTUS nominees until the 22nd century. Of all the factors that are acknowledged as having led to her defeat (some her fault, most not), the latent misogyny in the electorate is probably the biggest in my mind.
Suzanne
@Baud: Agreed. But we are in a bad place right now. If Perez can help in getting us out of it, then that’s good. But I have my doubts….but I have my doubts about anybody being able to do it. For better or worse, the Democrats are a coalition party and have been for decades. The other side is more ideologically united than we are.
@dr. bloor: Yeah. I know. It’s not a good position to be in. The Berniebros are unreasonable assholes, but we also lost some unreasonable assholes that we had in our tent previously.
? Martin
@Suzanne: HRC also won counties that Obama lost. We’re looking to flip 4 house seats on that dynamic.
Millennials are the group Dems need to win and they adore Obama, so running to the left is not necessary. But someone who can speak to millennial may be necessary, and Clinton wasn’t strong there. She tried, so no criticism, but she was the wrong vehicle.
One mistake I think the Dems make is they spend a lot of time focusing on Medicaid and TAMF and so on. The GOP routinely baits the Dems into elevating these to be high priorities and pointing out how many rural whites rely on these programs. Unfortunately, that only helps get Republicans elected, because nobody wants to be on those programs because they’re seen as a sign of failure for the recipient. Dems need to shift their message to more consistently and more strongly be that the first priority is providing a living wage to everyone, and until that happens, we need to preserve these programs. It’s still important, but it’s the fallback. That would help. Perez is a good choice to carry this message. Ellison is as well, but Perez has a bit better resume here.
Immigration is an EC burden, but one the Dems need to carry. I think they’re in okay shape on the rest. They need to come out more strongly on voting rights. Those strongly target college students, and they know it.
Dems should absolutely grab the American Exceptionalism mantle right now. Trump has abandoned it entirely, and Dems can take it and shape it – exceptionalism not due solely to military power but also to moral courage, defense of democratic values, voting rights and so on. That’s basically what Reagan did.
Baud
@efgoldman: I agree in theory. GOTV is hard for our side. If Perez/Ellison can fix that, give them Medals of Freedom.
socraticsilence
OT: But President Snowflake just announced on twitter that he’s skipping the Whitehouse Correspondents Dinner
Ruviana
I haven’t read the whole thread but here’s a way of thinking about the role of the party and the activists. And here’s another link to Charlie Pierce’s place. The stuff about sister precincts is very interesting and did remind me of Swing Left, but pay particular attention to the comments by MoC Barbara Lee. We need it all, the party, the voters, the party workers, and the activists. We should be fired up, ready to go.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Suzanne: the irony is the junior senator from vermont isn’t a liberal.
If I told people there was someone running for president who voted to keep GITMO open, who voted for numerous wars, who had been a creature of Washington for a quarter of a century, who voted for the infamous crime bill, who repeatedly voted against immigration reform, who went on the racist Lou Dobbs show and scapegoated immigrant labor for hurting wages of WCW, who opposed gay marriage, who loves the F-35 and drooooooooonze, who is a gun nut and gave the NRA terrorist organization blanket immunity from victim law suits, people would say, “oh, not another blue dog”.
But too often, projection wins over reality
Omnes Omnibus
@dr. bloor:
I disagree. Fighting voter suppression and motivating turn out in rust belt states would win the presidency back* Trump won WI by 22,748 votes. We can find another 22749.
*I know we need more than just the presidency.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@socraticsilence: President Snowflake is easily “triggered” and constantly needs a “safe space” which he wouldn’t get at WHCD
Suzanne
@? Martin:
Agreed. But they also adored Bernie. And then they didn’t turn out. I agree with Baud. If Perez can get them to turn out, then I will bake him cookies every week for the entire term.
? Martin
I will add another variable to this.
I believe that Brown and the Dem legislature are why California lurched hard left this year, rather than Clinton/Trump. The state led on the kinds of issues that we want the Democratic party to lead on, so when the presidential race came along, we were all comfortable with a more progressive vision of the future. We don’t fear muslims and immigrants here, we aren’t anti-abortion, etc. The state did a lot of the heavy lifting the Clinton needed, and the fact that the GOP has captured so many state legislatures I think is why so many states ran right.
So if you want the 2020 candidate to face a better EC map, win the states governments back now.
Baud
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Didn’t Vermont just elect a Republican governor? And we have GOP governors in solid blue Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Illinois. I don’t know why people believe the American voter is going to vote for a democratic socialist agenda?
Baud
@Suzanne:
A fact that doesn’t speak well of Bernie, truth be told.
? Martin
The other variable people need to at least remain open to is that it’s possible in 2020 that Trump either doesn’t run or doesn’t win the primary.
? Martin
@Baud: Correct.
sharl
OT. Whether or not they realize it, the Giant Ravenous Orange Raccoon did DC journalists and “journalists” a major favor here:
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
I didn’t know he was at DOJ. That needs to get more attention.
schrodingers_cat
@Suzanne: I need more proof than a mere assertion. Thanks.
I have seen analysis that T managed to turn out many first voters too. The margin of victory in the Midwestern states and Pennsylvania was fairly slim. I have not seen any conclusive evidence that the margin can be entirely explained by women like the one covered in Vichy Times.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodingers_cat: The MSM all need to sit in front of Drogon and get some barbecue.
Villago Delenda Est
@socraticsilence: He’s a coward.
Chris T.
@Ruckus: Marmalade.
Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@debbie: Adam Serwer reposted a story he did when Republicans were trying to block the corporatist neoliberal Perez from taking the Ciivil Rights Division
Gravenstone
@socraticsilence: since that tweet is rather well composed, you know some poor staffer had to translate Twitler rant to English.
schrodingers_cat
@socraticsilence: They can roast him without his being in the room. He is unfunny and he knows it.
Another Scott
@efgoldman: luʇɿɘbnow ɘboɔinU ƚ’niɒ – ƨiʜƚ ɘʞi⅃?
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
? Martin
@? Martin: I’ll add that the reason my focus is so strongly on protecting CA for the next 4 years is that a Democratic roadmap needs to come from somewhere and there needs to be a state ready to fight for that roadmap, and California has to be that state. We are the laboratory for the Democratic party in almost every regard – immigration, LGBT rights, abortion, labor, voting rights, wages, worker protections, climate change, energy policy, healthcare.
Fair Economist
@MisterForkbeard:
Am I the only one who suspects a lot of those “BernieBros” are posting from .ru internet addresses? Seriously, even among the loony lefties, how many real people can object to this enough to be trying to raise a ruckus?
sharl
I hope y’all are staying away from leftie/socialist millennial twitter and similar social media right now. They’re in a bad place. Here’s one of the more gentle tweets (from a journalist; a pretty good one IMO):
Ruviana
@sharl: Your description of the podcast and the younger activists and voters reminds me of Martin’s discussion with local UCR students the other night.
hovercraft
@socraticsilence:
He’s afraid, of the reception he’ll get from the villagers, the lack of A-listers in attendance, and Obama was one hell of a stand-up comic, and his performance at the Al Smith dinner was so bad that he knows he will once again be found lacking.
Thanks Obama !!
Doug R
@chris: I mentioned the periodical fund because of the right wing/government teat angle. And any magazine that gets taken to the Human Rights Tribunal for Islamophobic articles and calls a Canadian city “too Asian”, well, what can you say?
JPL
@Villago Delenda Est: Say it loud!
sharl
@Ruviana: I didn’t see that; sounds interesting! Do you have a link or estimate of date/time when Martin posted that – if convenient? Otherwise I’ll track it down when I have some time.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
I think I see the problem right there. You can’t bend over backwards and convince anyone that you have a spine. Those racists hate people for lots of reasons, and people they don’t agree with waving in the breeze like a willow branch are never going to convince them to change. How many people are pissed that their republican rep won’t hold a town hall? It isn’t that they necessarily disagree with the reps position, but their rep is a chicknshit. People don’t like to have people who are representing them be chickenshilts. I just isn’t the picture they had in their minds when they voted for them. And I’d bet a lot of them would prefer a dem who at least doesn’t act like a chickenshit to any one else who does.
low-tech cyclist
Glad this is settled.
Now can we PLEASE stop relitigating last year’s Democratic primary, and organize to make life miserable for the Trumpublicans? Thx.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@MazeDancer: I think I’m seeing increased evidence of Russian trolls here (including this very thread) and at Wonkette too. Looks like Putin reactivated the Ministry of Trolls. Maybe we can be a little less gullible this time. Fool me once…
Villago Delenda Est
@Fair Economist: NPR is worthless. “Nice Polite Republicans”. Give a venue for scum like Brooks and Roberts.
Fuck them.
rikyrah
Yeah for Tom Perez ????
Mnemosyne
@skerry:
“I didn’t want to come to your stupid party anyway!”
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Thanks. The antis should read this:
SFAW
@Ruviana:
??
U Cal Rerkeley?
Shalimar
@Suzanne: Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. She was very close to winning the electoral vote. What do you define as ” getting us close to winning”?
We need to do much better in state and local elections, but that isn’t a national strategy of appealing to this group or that. It is better organizing at a local level and letting the local people determine what it takes to win in their specific areas.
Feathers
I think the demographic this thread is arguing about, which includes the WWC and far too many totebaggers, is the “I’m not a racist, just realistic” crowd. I think many of them genuinely prefer not to be racist, but see themselves as “forced” into it by various policies, positions, and Clintons. They are never going to be “woke,” but can and will vote for Democrats if offered a positive reason to do so. The problem is the constant drip, drip, drip of demonization which the WWC stews in and the everyone-is-corruptism of the totebaggers and future totebaggers (can we call them the FTA – Future Totebaggers of America?).
The answer lies between pandering and fuck them. Keep their needs in mind, sell them on the positive benefits to them of Democratic policies, and really point out that the problem is automation, not immigration. The Fight for Fifteen has the right idea.
Interesting article, apologies if it has already been linked to here: Bill Gates – The Robot That Takes Your Job Should Pay Taxes. Namely that there should be some sort of tax on automated factories to replace at least the lost income tax which would have been paid by the workers replaced.
ruemara
@Emma: Thank you.
Suzanne. We don’t have to reach out to either group. We need to unite in fighting voter suppression tactics. Those states flipped because they had years of bad faith actions to prevent voting. The fake revolution of Sanders can go pound sand. Call me when you win 5 seats. Local. Any state. Until then, how about a little help with the voting instead of reaching out to people who keep slapping you upside the head?
philadelphialawyer
@Suzanne: Jesus H Christ!
Just can it already. No, the berniebros don’t get their way b/c if they don’t they will take their ball and go home. Anyway, they already got their way when DWS was dumped. Fuck them if they won’t stay on board.
And, as has been pointed out to you already, it is your boy Bernie who is all about sucking up to the racist white working class voters in East Podunk. If you want to “lean into” our bi coastal, multi racial, multi everything coalition, then the Obama/HRC wing is where you ought to be, not with the wing that is almost exclusively white, male, hetero, cis, and even more exclusively totally full of shit.
SFAW
@Feathers:
I am reminded of NPR’s multiple interviews with the “common clay” (alleged) Dem voter (they were tracking her, to see if her sentiments changed over time) who wanted to be given a positive reason to vote for Hillary “but without mentioning Trump or the Supreme Court.” As I said, she was one of those “common clay” voters, and if she needed someone to tell her that Hillary would personally guarantee everyone a $100K/year (minimum) job, and a pony, then she’s too fucking stupid to walk and chew gum simultaneously.
“Well, sure, Trump is a racist, misogynist, fascist, and probable anti-Semite, a businessman who’s had twice as many bankruptcies as wives, a person with the emotional maturity of a not-yet-potty-trained two-year-old, and a grifter and deadbeat who has no fucking idea how government should work — but that Hillary, well, I just don’t know.”
As efgoldman sez: Fuckem
You can’t fix stupid, which is part of the reason the Rethugs have systematically tried to destroy public education in this country.
Suzanne
@Shalimar: Getting close to winning means that we have to win in states that Obama won that HRC lost. That’s it. So we have to look at why that is. Some of it is voter suppression, some of it is Millennials who loved Obama (and Sanders) who didn’t like HRC for whatever reason (misogyny, emails, CDS, etc) and so they didn’t turn out. And some of it is people who voted for Obama and then went for Trump because they’re assholes.
So if we can make up the margin in those states by fighting voter suppression, a different candidate more appealing to Millennials, etc….then great. But voter suppression has been a problem for a long time, and young people have been shitty about voting for a long time. The variable that seems the most pertinent to me is the Obama-to-Trump people, simply because we had them before and now we don’t. Quite frankly, I hate these people. We did a really good job for them in terms of making policy that improved their lives, and they didn’t just get bored and stay home, they actively went out and voted against the other guy.
So. If combatting voter suppression and getting a more inspiring candidate than HRC will get us to wins in those states, then I will gladly shut up about this. I am skeptical that it will—but I would love to be wrong.
@ruemara: I got my ass out nearly every weekend this election season canvassing and raising money and publicity for my local Dem branch and my local candidates. I walked for miles. I got chased off one of my neighbor’s front lawn by a crazy man yelling anti-Jewish slurs at me. We managed to elect Dem state senator, state House, Sheriff, and Congresscritter. I registered minority voters and taught Mexican immigrants how to get to their polling places and did weeks of GOTV in the Arizona heat. I fucking help.
Suzanne
@philadelphialawyer:
Okay.
What do you propose to do about the other people who didn’t stay on board?
FlipYrWhig
Whoever it was that managed to turn Tom Perez into THE ESTABLISHMENT, something astoundingly implausible on its face, should win the Nobel Prize for Alchemy.
Ruviana
@sharl: You’re probably gone but it was here, comment 155.
@SFAW: UC Riverside.
philadelphialawyer
@Suzanne: “Getting close to winning means that we have to win in states that Obama won that HRC lost. That’s it.”
Actually, you are wrong. That is not “it.” Cuz, you see, there are States that Obama did not win that we can win in the future, like Arizona and Texas. Also, there are other gettable votes out there, in every state, besides the fucking “millenial” prima donas. And, in any event, next go round it is not going to be Hillary versus Sanders, so the whole thing is bullshit anyway. There is no reason on Earth why Perez cannot appeal as much to the millenials as Ellison can. Just cuz king asshole Sanders wants to make the DNC chairman race all about him means nothing in the long run. Sanders will soon be dead. Hill will not be running again.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
The problem is that most of the Obama to Trump people voted for Trump because he successfully aroused their fear of the Other. People I know in Michigan say that their white friends voted for Trump because they were pissed about Black Lives Matter.
That, unfortunately, is the crux of the matter. Trump appealed to the white supremacist side of ordinary white people, and way too many people fell for it.
FlipYrWhig
@Suzanne: Maybe a party chair whose last name ends in Z, and with a background in voting rights protection, might have a few ideas for how to increase Hispanic/Latino involvement in the Democratic Party.
Another Scott
@Suzanne: Politics, as you know, is often a messy business. Look at Jimmy Carter:
It’s clear what the GOP does and will do whenever it gets power – it will try to ram through all kinds of horrible policies. Any seat that can be kept in Democratic hands these days, even if those hands are someone like Manchin, is a victory, because that is the only way to preserve and extend progress.
A Democrat winning in a red state/district is difficult, and pretty much the only way that can continue to happen is if they’re blue dogs. But those blue dogs will (usually) vote for Democratic leadership, and those are the folks that set the rules, decide the committee membership, and set the agenda. That’s a huge reason why blue dogs are valuable even if they aren’t 100% on board with the party policies.
Cheers,
Scott.
philadelphialawyer
@Suzanne: I don’t propose to do shit about it. But if we want to get into crude, “identity” politics, Perez is Hispanic, and there are lots of Hispanic non voters and even many Hispanic GOP voters. African Americans, like Ellison, are already almost uniformly Democratic voters. And Ellison might conceivably turn off some Jewish voters as well. That Ellison is Sanders’ choice does, and should, mean, jack shit. That a few internet cos play revolutionaries think it does, again, means nothing in the long run.
SiubhanDuinne
Just got back from today’s MET Opera in HD (extraordinary everything, more later!) so haven’t scrolled through the comments yet, but heard that Trump has “broken with tradition” and will not attend this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Good, say I. It’s turned into a ridiculous spectacle, notwithstanding Obama’s great gifts as a speaker/Comedian in Chief. This will give them a chance to get back to their actual mandate, which is acknowledging great journalism of the past year, providing scholarships to promising young journalists, and highlighting strong defence of the First Amendment press protections.
Apparently this is the first time a sitting POTUS has declined the WHCA invitation since Reagan in 1981, and he had an excuse: he was recovering from an assassination attempt. So I’m thinking Tangerine Twitler can’t face the prospect of sitting at the head table listening to other people poking even mild fun at him. Of course he’ll justify his decision as showing those liberal lefty fake news types just who is boss. Can’t wait to hear the WH spin on this.
Steve in the ATL
@Fair Economist:
In my personal experience, it’s a personal lawyer in Mississippi and a crotcheter who lives off the grid in Vermont. Everyone else, at least the limited number who care, is pretty happy about it.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: The other thing I suspect was more of a factor than typically acknowledged is fear of Muslim immigration to places like Dearborn MI and Minneapolis MN. IMHO we tend to interpret the upper Midwest in terms of heavy industry, but it’s also where new kinds of brown people (as it were) started to show up in the 21st century.
Suzanne
@philadelphialawyer: I live in Arizona. We haven’t gone blue since 1996. That is a steep fucking climb. You cannot count on this state in the blue column for at least 20 years. As is Texas. If you want to win without those places, we have to make that up somewhere. Please propose where. To me, the logical place to look is states we won last time.
@Mnemosyne: Agreed. The Obama-to-Trump people are assholes. I would prefer not to kowtow to them. I would prefer to make a winning party without them.
Steve in the ATL
@Another Scott: CARL SANDERS WAS A LIBERAL???!!!???
This is why I don’t use Wikipedia.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
Don’t forget that MN also had a very divisive police shooting with Philando Castile. But, yes, the presence of Somalian Muslim refugees in MN may have contributed to Hillary’s smaller margin of victory there.
Also, as I’ve been saying, I think people underestimated the message of the Republican con: Both parties are the same, so it doesn’t matter who you vote for. Way too many people convinced themselves that it was okay to do a protest vote because what could it hurt?
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne:
So he’s a bigger coward than W? Ouch!
philadelphialawyer
@Suzanne: States change over time. Some did in this very election, no? It can be done. With Hispanic votes, for one thing, in the Southwest. Nevada used to be red. Colorado used to be purple. In any event, name me a State where you can show that the tiny fraction of “millenials” who care about Ellison versus Perez would make a difference in the future. Oh wait, you can’t.
And again, I don’t have to “propose” shit, despite your repeated, ridiculous demands that I do so. I am fine with Perez. The burden is on you to prove why choosing him was a mistake. So far, you have posted umpteen times and have yet to prove a damn thing.
As for the Obama to Trump assholes, it is your boy Bernie who is all about pandering to them, not HRC. So, WTF are you talking about?
Suzanne
And for everyone who’s looking for data about people and places that were Obama-to-Trump, here’s a nice visualization.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
Molly Ivins was talking about Southern liberals, but I think it holds true for all white Americans: “Once you figure out they’re lying to you about race, you start to wonder what else they’re lying to you about.”
But how do we convince white people in a racist society that they’re being lied to about race? They found Trump’s lies so comforting that they voted for him, and the ones who couldn’t bring themselves to do that voted third party or left the line blank.
Omnes Omnibus
@philadelphialawyer: From where are you getting the idea that she is a Sanders supporter?
philadelphialawyer
@Suzanne: A county switching from Blue to Red doesn’t necessarily mean all, most or even a lot of voters actually switched. The switch is at the margins, which means most people probably voted the same way as in the past, or chose not to vote at all, or died, or moved, etc. And other folks may not have voted at all in the past, but just came of age now, or just moved in, or decided to vote for the first time.
philadelphialawyer
@Omnes Omnibus: From her endless flogging of the Sanders side of the DNC chairmanship race. Duh.
Suzanne
@philadelphialawyer: I’m not a Berniebot. I did election work for HRC. And I don’t know if Perez was a mistake. I live-posted on this blog from the DNC Future Forum and repeatedly said that I thought both he and Ellison were good choices.
I was commenting on a piece in TNR and The Intercept that said that Ellison got in the race in November, and got support from Sanders and others, and then establishment Dems got Perez to enter the race in December, despite the fact that they are ideologically similar. The piece asserted that they got Perez in the race in order to essentially stick it to Sanders and his supporters. I am wondering if that is strategically wise, considering that we need them in the coalition.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
Here’s another problem: people in Republican-controlled states in counties with high unemployment blamed … the Democrats. Not their Republican governors or legislatures, but the Democratic president.
Again, how do we fight that? People are being directly hurt by Republicans and Republican policies in states that are totally controlled by Republicans and they blame the Democrats.
philadelphialawyer
@Suzanne: In short, you are on the Sanders/Ellison bandwagon. Just as I said.
SiubhanDuinne
@skerry:
I knew I’d find it if I only scrolled through the comments long enough!
Mnemosyne
@philadelphialawyer:
No, she read a piece in TNR that got her worried. Not the same thing.
FlipYrWhig
@Suzanne: But reading it as anything having to do with ESTABLISHMENT DEMS is textbook begging the question. Greenwald’s band of nincompoops wants to see everything in those terms because they love making enemies. I think the whole frame is just dumb and wrong.
Applejinx
@philadelphialawyer:
This. I’m reserving judgement for reasons much like why I voted for Hillary. To assume this guy, apparently a fierce civil liberties lawyer (handy!) is going to be a big progressive disaster is jumping to conclusions. HE did not vote to throw out the ban on corporate lobbyists: the DNC did, just before the chair election! He could be a status-quo disaster in terms of corporate ownership of politics and still be a huge help w.r.t voting rights, stuff like that.
Nothing is ever perfectly simple.
I wanted to believe Hillary would be a great President, reading the mood of the electorate and getting in front of it. Ellison nearly won (deja vu much?) in what became a relitigation of the primary, rather against his wishes. He had a bunch of guys turn and endorse him at the last moment, and that was fairly close: if the Ellison wing of the party all went home, the Dems would go to shit immediately and be chopped nearly in half.
I see lots of people I know saying ‘welp! I’m done! see ya!’ and I’m not one of them but I don’t know what to say to them anymore. If it’s that important to kick the hippies until they shut up, so important they can’t have a largely ceremonial position with no real power, then maybe they really should give up and go home. And if enough of them do, and it’s really clear that they’re not welcome, I’ll be gone as well, and good luck ever winning anything again.
BUT.
Assumes facts not in evidence. Ellison had 200 hard votes IN the DNC. That’s probably more support than ‘Wilmer’, as you folks like to call him.
At some point you gotta quit excising chunks of electorate you see as threatening, or you’ll end up the Black Knight. “Come back and fight!”
Omnes Omnibus
@philadelphialawyer: Whoosh…..
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: Tell your despairing friends that they’re stupid assholes, who are friends with another stupid asshole who imagines stupid things with stupid significances only he sees, i.e., you.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: I don’t know how to fight it. Part of the reason I’m so over the Obama-to-Trump people is because we have done good work for them and they shit on Dems anyway. That may be why I’m more likely to see young people and the far left as the allies I’m (slightly) more comfortable living with.
I guess I just see Bernie as a lowercase-A asshole and the Manchins and Heitkamps, etc, as capital-A assholes.
Suzanne
@FlipYrWhig: I agree that it’s dumb. But symbols matter to a lot of people. Shit like “blah blah superdelegates” and that fucking purity petition that someone asked all the DNC candidates to sign pledging to turn down every corporate donation.
The problem is that, with only thinking people, we don’t have a majority.
philadelphialawyer
@Mnemosyne: Why bother to flog it in post after post, if she didn’t agree with it? Somebody, somewhere, thinks not kissing Bernie’s ass yet again is a “mistake.” That’s nice. But not news.
Johnnybuck
@Applejinx:
“bye”
philadelphialawyer
@Omnes Omnibus: Is that the sound of meaningless rhetoric flying by? Or was it a concern troll zephyr?
philadelphialawyer
@Applejinx: Why is it that the HRC wing candidate winning means we are “hippy punching,” but if the Sanders wing candidate won it would not be women punching or Hispanic punching? Again, unless the oh so special berniebros are fellated at every turn, somehow, we are “kicking them out of the party” or “punching” them. Please. Enough already.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@SiubhanDuinne: Dolt45 doesn’t do weekends. Weekends are for golf.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne:
That dog won’t hunt no more.
I really wonder how many Obama to Trump voters there really are, I really think it’s a really small number.
Suzanne
@philadelphialawyer: This is the only post I’ve been in today. And I’m discussing it because it’s pertinent and is a viewpoint worth considering as we try to rebuild this party. I am capable of considering things that I don’t necessarily agree with or have an opinion about. Personally, IDGAF who won this race. I am concerned with winning real elections. I think we need to enlarge our coalition in order to win those elections, and the writer of the TNR piece argued that Ellison may have been better positioned to do that, even though it’s not really for good reasons. That causes me to pause, since we’re already losing some of our coalition. We can’t be purity ponies, either.
Applejinx
@Johnnybuck:
But what if I want them to, like me, think: “To assume this guy, apparently a fierce civil liberties lawyer (handy!) is going to be a big progressive disaster is jumping to conclusions.”
What then? Learn 2 politics. The last thing I want to say, the last message I want to send is ‘bye’. Firstly because I’m not wholly confident in the Democrats after the shitshow of the Presidential election, which we should have won with a crushing majority smackdown. Secondly because that’s no way to influence people.
SiubhanDuinne
@Steve in the ATL:
I haven’t verified that myself. It’s what the President (or senior spokesperson) of WHCA said on, I think it was CNN, might have been MSNBC. Was in the car, can’t remember.
philadelphialawyer
@Suzanne: OK, great. Your very important, non committal “Pause” is duly noted.
Me, I’m glad that Perez won. And am totally on board with Ellison as his deputy. Maybe that will help us win some elections, whereas the chin stroking at TNR definitely will not.
Suzanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I posted a link above to a data visualization about it. There’s no way to be really precise, but there are many pieces in lefty publications acknowledging that they were a statistically significant part of the 2016 loss. Maybe not as much as caused by voter suppression or by young people failing to be adequately inspired, but then we are fucked, as Obama was a once-in-a-lifetime candidate. And voter suppression efforts will also be difficult to undo.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: You’re talking to disillusioned Sandernistas liberals in Vermont. There’s no way to make them have human thoughts or feelings. They are an insane doomsday cult.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Applejinx: Why don’t you tell them to grow the fuck up and pull their heads out of Bernie Sanders’ ass?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Suzanne: I’m a numbers guy; I’ve not yet seen any numbers, just speculation.
Suzanne
@philadelphialawyer: Jesus. I’m on a fucking internet blog discussing the topic at hand.
SiubhanDuinne
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Nope. I’m betting that he’ll wangle himself a high-profile foreign state visit or something that the (fake, enemy of the people) media will be obliged to cover, to the detriment of coverage of the WHCA dinner. He can’t stand to be out of the spotlight; he just doesn’t want it to be that particular spotlight, because he knows he’d come out looking weak and pathetic.
(Edited gently to provide clarity.)
philadelphialawyer
@Suzanne: Yes, and either taking the side of a bullshit argument or just blowing smoke. Either way, I am on a fucking internet blog telling you I don’t like it.
Suzanne
@philadelphialawyer: Judging by the Twitter meltdown today, it appears that the Berniebros are indeed pissed. Whether or not they are pissed enough to cause significant harm remains to be seen. I hope they are able to suck it up and follow Ellison’s gracious lead.
philadelphialawyer
@Suzanne: “Judging by the Twitter…” No need to read beyond that.
Berniebros gonna do what they do. No matter how many cookies they are given, they will always want more, and will bravely go on Twitter and demand them! And TNR will be right there to “validate” their hurt fee fees.
But, again, for the umpteenth time, your heartfelt, if somewhat lukewarm, concern is duly noted.
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
As long as they keep him from the Queen…
debbie
@Suzanne:
I have to commend you on your patience. I know I don’t like people putting words in my mouth, especially when they’re so misguided. You’d think they could take a moment or two to roam the archives and see your pre-election posts. Easier, I guess, to just troll.
philadelphialawyer
@debbie: She posted re the “mistake.” If she didn’t agree with that assessment, she can say so. Instead, she is trying to have it both ways. On the one hand, she argues again and again for why it is a “mistake.” But when she is called on it she retreats to merely being concerned. I don’t give a damn what she said pre election. She is concern trolling here and now. And actually relitigating the primaries.
Suzanne
@philadelphialawyer: Again: they are assholes. But, as dr. bloor noted above, to get to 50% + 1 (and more than that for us, since we are at a structural disadvantage), we have to get the votes of some people we don’t like or who aren’t reliable.
Omnes Omnibus
@philadelphialawyer: You are a fucking moron.
philadelphialawyer
@Omnes Omnibus: Thanks. That kind of insult really means a lot to me.
@Suzanne: Sorry, not going to pander to assholes. Rather try to get the votes from good people.
Applejinx
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Because I still agree with Bernie Sanders a lot more than I agree with, say, you (or Whig).
Suzanne
@philadelphialawyer: It doesn’t matter what my viewpoint is. I’m a reliable Democratic voter. Short of eating babies on the floor of the convention, every Democratic politician on my ballot gets my vote.
What matters is getting enough people to hang together long enough to win and then to enact policy. I am prepared to make some concessions in order to do that. I don’t know if the Berniebros are worth the trouble, but I am freaked out that we don’t have enough voters on our side. It is a hard question, since everybody saying “We just need to turn people out!” is overlooking that there was a historically terrifying candidate on the other side and that didn’t turn out enough Dem voters.
NR
@FlipYrWhig:
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Comments like these show just how clueless the so-called “moderate” left is. You guys really haven’t learned anything from repeatedly having the crap kicked out of you by the Republicans.
That said, I’ll give Perez a chance, but if we don’t see major changes in the way the Democratic party does things, the party is headed for permanent minority status.
Suzanne
@philadelphialawyer: There aren’t enough good people if you want to win.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Applejinx: you admit you knew nothing about Perez except Bernie! told you to support the other. You’re a stupid fucking child in a cult of personality
I’m sure he’s hugely relieved to know that.
You ridiculous little asshole.
Another Scott
@Steve in the ATL: I was just a kid back then, so I can’t tell you how accurate the article is. But this AJC remembrance doesn’t disagree with it.
The main point is that politics continues to be messy. Sometimes good people have to run on horrible platforms and do devious things in order to win – which then let’s them change the system and the laws for the better. Sometimes it’s overt, sometimes its a wink and a nod. Sometimes it’s telling people what they expect to hear and going through the motions (eating crappy food and bowling, for instance).
It’s easy to say that the country would be much better off if there were 70 liberal Democrats in the Senate – and I agree. But that’s not going to happen, and we need to make incremental progress when we can. If that means re-electing Manchin and people like him in red states, then we need to do that.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Also too: Being a member of the Senate isn’t a real job as they only work 100 days per year.
Goku
I’m sure Perez really gives a shit what you think. Pretty sure Perez and Ellison know what they’really doing unlike morons like you.
Goku
@NR: I’m sure Perez gives a shit what you think. He and Ellison know what they’re doing and have bigger fish to fry.
NR
@Goku: We’ll see.
Loneoak
When exactly did the Balloon Juice commentariat become hippy-punching headquarters? It’s used to be distinctly anti-hippy punching.
Shantanu Saha
@Loneoak: Well, if the hippies are going to show their asses and beg to be punched, who are we not to oblige them?
FlipYrWhig
@Loneoak: The change was right around the time a lot of whiny idiots started calling themselves hippies on account of always being so eager to be punched.
Loneoak
Sure that makes a lot of sense, it’s very principled.
No One You Know
@CaseyL: Word!
@Thoroughly Pizzled: Yep. Because if you won’t dance with who brung ya, who ya gonna dance with?
@efgoldman: Bernie Brats are one with the GOP legislators and the President in that regard. Hell’s bells, they may have more in common with them than the Tea Party, at this point.@MisterForkbeard: Well, Nice Polite Republicans prefer passive-aggression, of the “Let’s you and him fight” sort…it’s much more genteel. Which I think is your point.
No One You Know
@No One You Know: Lost the initial entry to Casey: “Word!”
J R in WV
@Emerald:
I will continue to hope that Dershowitz decides to leave the Democratic Party because the Deputy Chairman is the Honorable Keith Ellison. As well as all the Weiner-or-busters. Go away, soonest, please, folks!
Back to Russia, forward to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, down to Antarctica, anywhere, just go.