"Pinned Tweet."
Oh yeah, recruit the most bitter dudebro losers to this weekend of convincing each other they could've been contenders. pic.twitter.com/Egbtpgavku
— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) April 26, 2017
‘Our Revolution’, it appears, will be carefully curated:
The People’s Summit is a conference with a goal. To express a set of ideas, values and priorities that reflect our political vision. So instead of a ‘first come, first serve’ registration process, we’re deliberate about who we want to attend. With that in mind, we’ve crafted an application process that allows us to get to know you better before we seal the deal.
We’re looking for organizers and activists, thinkers and doers, grassroots and grasstops. And we know that simply opening the doors to whoever can buy a ticket will result in a space that is too white, too old, too local (also too Chicago and nearby areas), too many paid staffers, and too many consultants.
So we’re asking for personal information about people who want to come not to exclude anyone – but to make sure the balance reflects who we want to be. Our movement is leaderful, accessible, safe, and reflects the diversity of our country.
We have a finite number of seats to fill. Most of them have been allocated to our partner organizations, who are recruiting from their memberships and constituencies. Over 700 are for ‘Unaffiliated’, reflecting that our coalition is nowhere near as large as we want it to be, and many wonderful people – friends – aren’t active with one of our partners. Everyone who applies is eligible for a low cost ticket and/or a travel stipend; there is no preference for those who are with partner organizations. Everyone attracted to the Summit should apply. And no one should feel that cost is a barrier…That being said, we do also have a physical limitation of space at the Summit! In the end, not everyone will be accepted. Please be patient and understanding as we make some difficult decisions.
My emphasis, of course.
Al Giordano’s twitter feed also introduced me to an interesting idea from Jeremy Fassler, at Medium:
Within the last week, DNC chair Tom Perez has embarked on a Unity Tour with runner-up for the Democratic nomination and independent Senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders. The tour, to put it mildly, has been a disaster…
It’s easy to blame Perez for misreading the tea leaves, as many Democratic leaders have before him. But what if this is a set-up for Bernie to fail so he can kick him to the curb?…
… Throughout the primary, we saw how Bernie’s campaign morphed from standing for bold new policies into the character assassination of his opponent when he realized he could not win the nomination. Congressional colleagues like Barney Frank insisted that he did not work well with others; John Lewis criticized him for not being enough of a civil rights advocate. And, in a damning interview with The New York Daily News, he could barely articulate how he would get his proposals through Congress. Many Hillary supporters who had welcomed his quip about being sick of her “damned emails” regretted their niceties by the time he had begun calling her “unqualified.” These errors bely an impetuous man with a short temper and unmistakable condescension when people don’t agree with him 100%. All these qualities were revealed before, and they’re being revealed again on the tour, to disastrous effects…
…[G]iven the outcry from women of color who feel their voices aren’t being heard, what if the first thing Perez does when this is done is to kick Bernie out and bring in someone like Maxine Waters or Kamala Harris?…
Sounds good to me! (Not Kamala Harris, though; I’d like her to run for the Senate.)
@AlGiordano @SenWarren "Progressive" has become a brand. Bernie's TM. Like Trump's or Ivanka's.
— @FemocratsRising (@femocratsrisin1) April 26, 2017
Exactly. Progressivism as a product to be consumed, primarily by a white male demographic group. The producers are selling purity like soap. https://t.co/g0sjpktQJ8
— Al Giordano (@AlGiordano) April 26, 2017
(To be continued)
Big R
Anne,I am about to blow your mind with some good news.
Villago Delenda Est
Oh, these purity pony assholes can all find a fire to die in.
amk
so another nutroots convention then?
Keith P.
So that’s not a real video link, right? I clicked everywhere, because I really wanted to see a video of Bernie-as-Hulk (I have Hulk Hogan’s album, and it’s f’n hilarious, in an absolutely horrible way)
Anne Laurie
@Keith P.: As far as I can tell, ‘The People’s Summit’ has (belatedly) set its twitter feed to Private — only curated individuals are allowed to read & share its bounty.
(SAD!)
Montanareddog
Oh, for dog’s sake!
amk
leaderful? wtf does it even mean?
sounds pretty calvinesque and that kid is way smarter than these whacko clowns.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
So “the people’s summit” includes Russia apologists Glenn Greenwald and Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Assad apologist Tulsi Gabbard, RoseAnn DeMoro who very recently thought Donald Trump would be the one to bring us single-payer, and Van Jones, who declared Trump his president when he exploited a soldier’s widow and lied about the Yemen raid.
Leaderful indeed.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Big R: I’m still laughing…
NotMax
Putting the con in conference.
Ah, a quota system.
(It’s the 21st century; buy the info in bulk from their ISPs.)
Cosima
I was just moments ago reading a piece about this blight on the Democratic party landscape.
He’s a legend in his own mind, and the mind of his die-hard supporters (would those perhaps approach a number close to 27%?). Quite similar to someone else (resembles a bloated cheeto). Any attempt to appeal to B’s ‘better’ nature to advance the agenda & interests of the Democratic Party (and the majority of the US) will fall on deaf ears.
https://rantt.com/bernie-sanders-has-always-sacrificed-pragmatism-for-idealism-but-now-its-hurting-democrats-da6a21bca163
Elizabelle
@Big R: LOL. Thank you! I love to wake up to a good laugh.
gene108
And what exactly is the end game here?
To hijack the Democratic Party?
I don’t get what the Sanders supporters hope to accomplish. They were boorish at last year’s DNC, booing Democratic speakers.
I don’t see how they plan to win friends and influence people in the Democratic Party with this, or pretty much with anything they’ve done so far.
They have a lot of bridges to mend (see last year’s DNC) and I don’t see this secret meeting of the select few as helping.
Cosima
And while we’re defining progressives (within parameters proscribed by the Bros), can we get some clarification as to where/who paid speeches may be given (to)?
I, personally, think that any serving politician should not be allowed to give a paid speech, unless said payment goes to a fund that benefits a charity/cause/etc. However, President Obama is no longer an elected politician/individual, so why are we caring if he charges Wall Street to listen to him speak, while giving free speeches at universities?
Dennis
Al Giordano is creating quite an echo chamber over there at Twitter. I was blocked by him after one perfectly polite but sarcastic response.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
BWHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHHAHHAHAHHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Their whole spiel is ALL non-democrats should be allowed to vote in a Democratic primary (even registered republicans).
Yet the stoopid hippies won’t even let the public read their twitter feed.
Mary G
As an older white woman, I have had my feelings hurt by this microaggression.
Baud
@Big R: Finally, we need some good news.
Baud
@gene108:
To bargain, the way a labor union bargains with management.
Hal
How much of the Democratic party is actually the “Sanders wing”, a term I have heard here and there? A man who hates the party, thinks there is no substantive differences between the two parties, and on a regular basis can’t be bothered to endorse a candidate until others point out his impetuousness is the party leader?
Feathers
Another post Giordano made last night pointed out that even the term Progressive harkens back to a time when white men ran the political scene and spoke for everyone else.
Marc
Bernie Sanders is quite popular (his current approval rating is 57-32), even if AL and Giordano have an obsessive hatred of the man. At some point I hope that Dems can go beyond relitigating the primaries and accept that we’re in a coalition where we don’t all agree on everything.
Or you can continue the repeated hategasms against the treacherous Sanders supporters, on the theory that insulting people repeated ly will persuade them. Up to the folks here, but I see more benefit behind door#1.
NobodySpecial
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: ‘People’s Summit’ does better in focus groups than ‘Maskirovka Foundation’.
amk
@Marc: It’s a very good advice. Especially, to bs bots & bs himself.
Chyron HR
@Marc:
“…and admit that BERNIE WOULDA WON! BERNIE WOULDA WON!”
SFAW
The country would be better served if, instead, they were clueful.
Either that, or give them a one-way ticket (en masse) to Palookaville.
@Marc:
You are SO right, because the recent Perez/Sanders tour has demonstrated that Bernie has put all that “the fucking Demonrat Party sucks” stuff behind him, and is trying to heal wounds.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Marc: @Marc: You know who else was popular at this point in the election cycle:
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Marc:
Plus, and oldie, but goodie:
You’re always popular until the corporate media goes after you with a blow torch and a pair of pliers
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Marc
Does no one remember how the war loving corporate media tore fellow vermont politician Howard Dean to shreds, once he became the frontrunner?
SFAW
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Aided and abetted by a 20-plus year campaign of hate by Rethugs, plus the Rethug Congress inventing conspiracies to “investigate” for three or four years.
And even after all that shit, she was still pretty popular (across the board) as late as 2015 or perhaps early 2016.
kindness
During this last election I thought most of the really horrrible BernieBro posts around the web were trolls trying (all to successfully) to whip up fights amongs would be Democratic voters. Souring the milk so to speak. No doubt there were many that were. What dismayed me then (and now) is those I knew who weren’t trolls but took the bait and ran with it.
As a nation I propose we don’t do what Maine did twice in electing LaPage.
Anya
@Marc:
Great advice. But don’t you think this should be directed at Bernie and his supporters. They refuse to get over the primary wars, and they want to decide who should be considered a “progressive”. To the best of my knowledge that includes anyone, as long as they hate bankers, corporations, millionaires & billionaires, are for legalizing marijuana, oppose US intervention in the Middle East, hate the DNC, dislike HRC and Obama, and suported Bernie. You can be an apologist for a genocidal maniac who’s gassing his own people. You can even be anti-LGBTQ and anti-women’s reproductive rights.
msdc
@Cosima: “the first time I voted was in the state of Vermont, probably for myself”
That just about sums him up.
Tokyokie
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: +1 for the reference to Charley Varrick.
Cosima
@msdc: And more than likely the only votes that he’s subsequently cast have been for himself.
Quinerly
@Cosima:
I agree with you 100% @#14.
rikyrah
I support Perez, but he better be collecting receipts. Was not against the tour in theory-he should go out again with someone people want to see. I would pay to see Maxine Waters or the Castro brothers,or the.guy who lost the Senate seat in Missouri. These are the people that the base should be seeing.
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
PHUCK OUTTA HERE with THAT group
Another Scott
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: It seems to work here. E.g. Jeremy Corbyn would win the election if only people under-40 voted!!1111.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
@Marc:
They don’t have an obsessive hatred for the man. They see him for the phony piece of shyt that he is, and see nothing good from his so-called involvement with the DEMOCRATIC Party, which he refuses to join. Muthaphucka should have been shown the curb a long time ago. As someone who is part of the TRUE base of the Democratic Party, I am past the point of being tired of him.
Mike in DC
That guest list is a who’s who of Fuck-all-the-way-off.
But her emails!!!
@Marc:
Sounds good. As a show of good faith, I’ve already arranged for Democrats to stop booing Bernie at his appearances and for top Democrats to stop slagging Bernie’s organization. Now, in return can you stop Bernie’s supporters from booing the DNC chairman and Bernie from slagging on the Democratic Party in every stump speech and media appearance? K. Thanks.
But her emails!!!
@rikyrah:
I admit that it would be nice to see Kander on that sort of tour. He knows who to stick the knife into.
different-church-lady
In other words, he fits the zeitgeist precisely.
Chyron HR
@But her emails!!!:
No, see, B-Sizzle and his supporters are explicitly not Democrats. It’s only Democrats who need to stop “relitigating the primaries”, a set of behaviors which apparently includes criticizing the things a sitting US Senator says every day on TV and at his rallies.
rikyrah
Why does nobody bring up the fact that Sanders’ campaign head is knee deep with Russian ties???
Kay
I’m not a vision person so I wouldn’t go.
Maybe I’m wrong but I’ve been active in local and state Democratic Party “official” goings-on and I feel like Perez is off-track with this, Bernie aside. It was my understanding Perez’s role was more operational- find candidates, set up infrastructure, that stuff.
I’m unhappy with how the Democratic Party works, as in “functions”. It’s not ideological. It hasn’t been my experience that they promote “centrist” candidates and stop more progressive candidates. It’s much more likely that they do nothing at all.
There seems to be this idea that they are “command and control” top-down but that isn’t true at all. It’s like people were vaguely unhappy with them so settled on what sounded like a “progressive” objection which was “not bottom up enough” but that isn’t really the problem. That COULD be a problem with an organization that doesn’t work very well and it’s appealing to latch onto but that isn’t the problem with this organization. What they much more often are is ineffective, not helpful.
I’ve thought about this a lot and I think they settled on an organizational style or culture that is better suited to a private sector entity. This happened in the 1990’s so by now it’s a stale private sector entity approach- it doesn’t even succeed as “fake private sector”.
They don’t need to meet with activists- I have been an activist and all we’ll do is demand resources and attention to our various causes and that’s not the problem. We know how to do that. They need to meet with their employees and figure out what it is they do. What are they? Are they a steering org or a rowing org or maybe neither? Maybe they’re a national organization with loosely affliated state and local entities so their entire role is as kind of administrators?
kd bart
I don’t which I find sadder on Twitter. Sally Albright’s inane series of tweets or the Bernie Bros who feel compelled to reply to each and everyone because St Bernie must be defended at every opportunity. ALL, LET IT GO ALREADY AND MOVE ON!!!!!!
FlipYrWhig
@Hal:
The Sandersites will try to make you believe it’s like 40% because of the primary results. IMHO it’s like 20% at most because half the people voting for Sanders chiefly hated Hillary Clinton and latched on to Sanders as the handiest instrument for killing the devil-woman. And I think, push come to shove, that it’s probably more like 8% who think there must be no gods but Bernie for Bernie is a jealous God, and the other 12% of the 20% would be perfectly fine with someone who wasn’t Hillary Clinton, at least until they were told by some anointed messenger that something something Wawl Shtreet, after which they would explode in righteous vehement rage.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay:
Are you saying that “the left” makes up conspiracy theories and excuses in an attempt to conceal the fact that vast numbers of people don’t like them and they don’t much feel like working to change that? o.O
efgoldman
@Villago Delenda Est:
Are any of the organizers or potential attendees even Democrats? Letttem blather all they want, and talk to each other. Maybe they won’t bother us.
Fuckem
Kay
I haven’t witnessed this finely-tuned Democratic machine that effectively excludes progressive candidates and slots in centrist candidates. It is NOTHING like that. In some ways I wish it were like that because that’s a defined problem that could be fixed or changed.
I have been involved with House candidates ranging from a former minister who was anti-abortion to an out and out labor candidate- he was basically “the candidate the Steelworkers gave us”. I didn’t discern the slightest bit of difference in how these two people were “supported” by the “national Party”. I put “national Party” in quotes because I feel like it’s almost an exaggeration to give them that much influence in these races.
It doesn’t matter because as I said I’m not in Bernie’s “movement” and even if I were I hate visioning sessions, but looking at it from the outside I think it operates from a flawed assumption- that The Problem is a command and control centrist Democratic Party. I have never seen evidence of this coordinated effort to hold down progressives. I don’t think it exists. They’re organized around a problem that isn’t the problem, doesn’t exist. For some reason Bernie people LIKE this problem, this is the one they want to solve, but you don’t get to settle on the problem you want to have and then pretend it’s the central issue and solve that.
It’s easy for Perez to accommodate them on the problem they’re presenting him with because it doesn’t exist so he doesn’t have to change anything.
kd bart
@FlipYrWhig: Agree. I know quite a few people who would’ve gladly voted for Biden in the primary if he had ran and his record is to the right of Clinton’s. A significant portion of Sanders vote in the primary came from people who just hated Clinton on a personal level.
efgoldman
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
And until you actually get on the ballot.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay:
Because they enjoy believing that they were THISCLOSE to winning and got robbed by The Establishment. They enjoy this to a disturbingly erotic degree.
Kay
Here’s maybe an example of what I’m trying (and failing!) to say. I don’t run the Democratic Party but I do run this office so if the people who work here came to me and said “the problem is you’re holding us down because you have an agenda” – well, that isn’t true- there are whole days where I don’t work in this office- the vast majority of the time I don’t manage them at all so maybe the problem is I’m not helping them do their jobs. I still don’t know what the problem is. I know they’re mad but I’m pretty sure they’ve come up with something that they like but isn’t the issue.
But I could take their problem they presented and “solve” it because I wasn’t doing it anyway so it’s fine with me if I “stop” doing it.
sherparick
@Cosima: By the way, that statement is not true about Bernie “always sacrificing pragmatism for idealism.” He did not become Mayor of Bennington, then Vermont’s Congressman, and finally a Senator for Vermont without being plenty “pragmatic” along the way. (Bernie became a favorite Democrat of the NRA because of his support for pro-gun measures – because being pro 2d Amendment was popular in Vermont. Likewise, milk price supports, that keeps milk expensive for kids in the inner city has been something Bernie has always supported. And I don’t get all upset with Bernie on these positions or appreciated Clinton’s “gotchas” on this (which came back to hurt her some in rural Northeast and Midwest). What gets me upset is Bernie’s smug dismissal when a Democrat in Georgia or Illinois or Connecticut takes a similar “pragmatic” position to adjust to local values or protect the hometown business and is deemed insufficiently progressive. Finally, there is nothing “people” about this as is mostly white, upper class, super educated elites at this thing (no unions, which are by far the most “people” institutions we have in the U.S.)
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: Do you think it’s an honest complaint? IMHO it’s not an honest complaint, it’s a just-so story that justifies an article of the faith.
efgoldman
@Kay:
You live in OH, a state where the STATE party has waved the white flag and run away with its tail between its legs. TX is another. That’s not the national committee’s function or problem, and it’s got little or nothing to do with the bernibots, either.
Tripod
The idea is to Corbyn the US.
Refusing to account for such a different political society, system and history makes it DOA.
different-church-lady
@Kay: To me it sounds like the problem is nobody wants to own the problem collectively.
Or maybe the problem is that it’s easier to blame someone else for failures than it is to acknowledge the reality of how low the odds of success really are. Politics is not an area where one unit of effort leads to one unit of success, and it’s hard for people with any kind of work ethic to accept that.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
This is the basic message of the Green Party and has been for years, in Ohio anyway. “You wuz robbed” by the Democrats.
I get it from an organizer’s perspective. There are X number of liberals, total and if the Green Party want to grow they can either attract non-voters or attract Democrats and almost no one wants to attract non-voters because they’re hugely labor intensive but the premise is not true. It’s a little bit true and if you look you can find examples but it is MOSTLY just not true. John Kerry didn’t contest the Ohio results in 2004 because the woo-woo theories about vote flipping or whatever were not true. The truth was much more boring. The election was poorly run. It was administered poorly which wouldn’t have mattered or even have been noticed if it wasn’t so hotly contested and “close”. “Close” doesn’t even mean the same thing in Ohio as it does other places because it’s always “close” – that’s almost the defintion of swing state. But the Greens seized on that as proof of how Democrats robbed Democrats because that is anopportunity for them to build their list.
Labor unions call it “slice and dice” but the key word is “slice”. It’s not a “growth” approach- it’s a take one from A and add it to B. It doesn’t increase the total so in that sense it’s cynical organizing.
FlipYrWhig
@different-church-lady: It’s also not an area where zero units of effort and infinity units of feeling deserving lead to success.
Another Scott
@kd bart: Yup. “Anybody But Clinton” was a huge part of the reason why the race was close enough to “steal” (i.e. to be flipped by a tiny number of votes in 3-4 states). I continue to think that misogyny was a big part of that, as well.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@efgoldman:
Okay but be clear that House candidates are different than state candidates. The most powerful national politician in NW Ohio as far as finding candidates and influencing the national Party support of those candidates is Marcy Kaptur, not the “state Party”. Marcy Kaptur is a populist liberal and has been for 30 years. She’s the king.
Bernie people can’t tell me that Marcy Kaptur and Sherrod Brown are throwing a wrench into populist politics in NW Ohio because in no sense is that true. They are liberals who are very sophisticated politicians and they’re powerful w/in the Democratic Party.
msdc
@Kay:
Good point. I thought the tour was a good way to mollify Sanders and his supporters by making them feel included and listened to.
The problem is that Sanders is doing ongoing damage to the party through his purity politics.
divF
@Tripod: To elaborate on this point, the “radical left” (I don’t really know what to call it) has seen what the radical right in the US has done over the last 40 years to take over the GOP, and is thinking that they could do the same to the Dems. They are willing to pay the price of the Dems being an ineffective minority party for decades in order to achieve the desired ideological purity. There are many problems with this program – they don’t have the big-money backing, and they haven’t gotten enough of the Democratic base to buy in. In addition, such a strategy would in the process immiserate a huge number of people by taking us back a century or more in social and economic progress, which is why the Democratic base is not buying it.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
It’s a really good point and maybe explains a lot of the frustration and the searching for “reasons” that always seem to lead to “they didn’t spend enough” – I don’t think spending is a good measure of “effort” or “commitment” or “winning” but political media use it so we’ve all adopted it as a truth.
Cosima
@sherparick: I agree with you. My own take on his actions would be that he’s been sacrificing active idealism for pragmatism to keep himself in a job. He is all hat, no cattle when it comes to actively effecting the positive change that he talks about — he’s had decades to do it, nothing to show for it. The article I linked is excellent, the title not so much.
sherparick
@Feathers: It is very interesting how “liberals” started calling themselves “progressives” in the 1970s. I remember quite distinctly Carter ran as a “moderate” not a “liberal” in 1976 and Mo Udall insisted on being called “a progressive” not a “liberal.” This was just after Watergate and the 1974 off-year Democratic landslide when one would expect “Liberals” would be riding high. But as Rick Perlstein points out in his histories of this period, there was a strong backlash running in the country against both the Anti-War movement and the Civil Rights movement, movements that the word “liberal” had been strongly associated with in voters minds, and which the then nascent, but growing, Conservative Infotainment Complex was doing its best to associate the word with being Anti-American, Anti-Capitalism, and Anti-Law and Order (also known as the American way of keeping people of a certain skin hue in their place.)
Betty Cracker
@Kay:
Thisity-this-this-THIS! I like Perez, and he has a successful track record of running large organizations with a focused agenda. So I’m still giving him the benefit of the doubt, hoping that the week-long “unity tour” was an attempt to lance the boil before getting down to the business of defining the party’s role.
Jack the Second
@Marc: See, here is the problem.
The election is over. I no longer care about the candidate I supported, Hillary Clinton, nor her most credible primary opponent, Bernie Sanders. They don’t matter anymore. What matters are the goals and purpose of the Democratic Party, a whole laundry list of great causes.
Come the next election, I’ll support whoever best forwards those goals, be it Gillibrand or Warren or even Sanders. Fuck, put Joe Manchin on the ticket in 2020 and I’ll vote for him.
My problem with the Bernie movement has only a little to do with Sanders. My problem is primarily the extent to which the movement is about Sanders; politicians don’t matter, policy does. I’ll happily sacrifice politicians for policy. I’m reasonably happy to have traded the Democratic majority in Congress for the ACA, though I wish we could have had both. I’m happy we traded Democratic control of the South for the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.
Furthermore, to the extent the Bernie movement isn’t about Sanders, it’s about a subset of issues the Democratic Party cares about, while being apathetic or even hostile to other important issues.
That’s my problem with the Bernie movement; simply telling me how great Sanders is does not reassure me.
sherparick
@Kay: As side topic off of this subject, the election administration problem in Ohio shows the importance of winning the down office races. For Democrats in 2018 and 2020, that means wining the races for Governors, Secretary of State, and Attorney General, as well as Supreme Court seats. This is where the Republicans and the plutocrats have been putting their resources the last 25 years. It will be hard to flip gerrymandered state legislatures, even if a Democratic turn out swamps Republicans, but the statewide races can be won on a straight state wide popular vote. The Governorships in particular are important in 2018 and 2020 so that a Democratic Governor can veto Republican gerrymandering of state legislature and Congressional districts.
Siding back to your main topic, it would be interesting if the Greens (and the pro-Putin, anti-Democrats like Greenwald and the other Bernie Bros), would try to poach Republicans. They could tell them, “we hate the Democrats too; and we think you are right “all lives matter” and the Democrats do emphasize to much race and women’s rights. But the Republicans take you for granted to and only help their rich backers. We also resent those rich and lazy city folk. We will shift resources to your concerns and cut your taxes by (shifting that burden to the rich).
hedgehog mobile
Leaderful? Curated? Just what we need, artisinal dudebros. Pass.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
leaderful: adj., full of leadershit.
Seriously, Perez never should have agreed to cart Bernie around with him unless Bernie agrees to continue running as a Democrat rather than an independent, which he’s not. He’s not in the party so don’t bring him along on party functions. The DNC could have ended his candidacy very, very early if they’d wanted to. He didn’t register as a Democrat in time to qualify for the New Hampshire primary. Imagine the headlines if looney leftist Bernie Sanders is too disorganized to get on the ballot in the first in the Nation primary in the tiny State next door to his tiny State. The press would have killed him right then and there. Instead they bent the rules for him giving him an opportunity for his first big primary win. Yet he’s still bitter and throwing them under the bus every chance he gets. Cut the guy loose. He’s not the future of the party.
sherparick
@sherparick: I put this out there because, although I am sure it would outrage the Greens, they have never tried to attract minority voters. Or for that matter white working class voters (there platform has a lot of things I think would be great, but is pretty silent on the questions of how to keep large factories in places like Akron or Youngstown or to redevelop these areas when factories leave. And buries unions in the small print.)
Also, I am kind of tired of relitigating the 2016 primaries with Benito Cheeto is sending J.B. Sessions storm troops through the land. The Democrats spent much of the post 1968 period relitigating that campaign, and the ended up getting buried by Nixon in 1972 election, an election that still scars Democrats who were born 20 years after that catastrophe.
O. Felix Culpa
To Kay’s excellent point(s), I don’t see the DNC exerting much – or any – control over local and state-level races. Elections are unpleasant, expensive processes, so it’s hard to get anyone to run. I’m considering running for county commissioner, a decidedly unsexy role with major policy oversight over land use, economic development, housing, public safety, health care services, etc., BUT I’m counting the cost to my personal life and finances first. I’m taking the summer to talk to people and do research and think really, really carefully before throwing my hat in the ring.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Jack the Second: Thank you.
It’s about emotion rather than reason, feeling rather than planning. Our emotions can give us the energy to plan and accomplish, to think and reason about what we want changed and why but they can’t be the end of things, only the starting point, and with this lot all I see is a mass of people stumbling around at Point A, complete unwilling to even look at a map (how old-school!) to figure out where Point B is and which is the best route to get there.
Captain C
@Chyron HR: Because the Rethugs totally would never have gone negative on him.
Ian
@Another Scott:
That is not the whole picture. If we lost b/c of ‘anyone but Clinton’ why did she run ahead of Murphy in Florida, Feingold in Wisconsin, and McGinty in Penn?
The whole national Democratic brand got a beating. It was not just ‘anyone but Clinton’.
maryQ
Sometimes I wish Bernie had been the nominee. We’d still have Trump as President, but I would not have to listen to all those bitter Dudebros calling me privileged and blaming me for losing the election by supporting the losing candidate.
maryQ
@Jack the Second: Thank you.
Miss Bianca
@maryQ: yeah, I’m with you. I mean, I *don’t* really wish that, of course, but…it would have been very eye-opening to a lot of people to see Bernie’s Soviet connections, among other things, become a HUGE FREAKING PROBLEM as a Democratic nominee, while Trump’s Russian mafia connections, among other things, continued to get a huge pass.
les
@Marc:
Only a fool, completely naive about political process, thinks this is about “relitigating the primary.” In other words, a hapless Bernie Bro. This is about St. Sanders sabotaging the Dem Party today.
Which group refuses to play unless others all agree with them? Which group has private curated conferences? Which group boos speeches by others?
If you want respect and inclusion, maybe quit trolling?
Sab
@sherparick: Yeah!
Sab
@Kay: Shit. Excuse my language but I wholeheartedly agree with you, as a Democrat in OH since 1970. I am SO frustrated, and my grandchildren are actually in tears.
Marc McKenzie
@Tripod: Yep. And Corbyn is pretty much a radioactive mess in England right now–the Labor party has gone down the tubes with him in charge.
Remember all those smart-alecks who were crowing how awesome it was that Corbyn and Sanders were so similar?
Marc McKenzie
@sherparick: I put this out there because, although I am sure it would outrage the Greens, they have never tried to attract minority voters. Or for that matter white working class voters
Put it out there. And yes, it is true. And never forget that the Green Party candidate for President, Jill Stein, spent her time slamming Hillary while giving Trump a pass. Supposedly Hillary was a “warmonger” and Trump was going to be a peaceful guy and not as corrupt as Killary.
Of course, Stein was dead-wrong. And to make it even worse (or better, depending on how you see it) she’s mentioned in the infamous dossier as being part of the Russian’s plan to siphon votes off Hillary during the election.
So yeah, she was a pawn of Vlad, just like Trump and company.
TenguPhule
@Marc McKenzie:
Be fair, he won because the rest of the candidates were a joke. And the attempts to unseat him instead actually trying to work together did not help. He’s in power because he was the least bad of the options for leader and the labor voters are opposed to the Blairism that the party elites want to return to (and which got them into so much trouble in the first place). So its completely unfair to blame Corbyn for the mess that he didn’t make in the first place.
He’s done his best to salvage and fix what he could, but too many idiots dig in their heels and act like Tories on his bench. He can’t even risk stepping down because that would really destroy labor as a party.
Personally, I blame the idiots in labor who declared a Civil War within the party right when the Tories shot themselves in the foot.