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...I'm not going to lie, the grammar there threw me off for a second. I thought they'd arrested someone doing fundraising. XD
I was pretty tired, sorry.
Anyway, have no idea if this is true or not, but
Standing Rock Will Be Raided Today
I'm afraid with everything else going on, I haven't had much chance to follow the DAPL news of late.
I bet if you asked most people who Debbie Wasserman-Schulz is/was and what responsibilities the DNC chair has, a lot of them wouldn't be able to tell you.
It's like arguing over the 3rd base coach of the Cleveland Indians and expecting that to significantly change the outcome of the World Series.
I bet if you asked most people who Debbie Wasserman-Schulz is/was and what responsibilities the DNC chair has, a lot of them wouldn't be able to tell you.
It's like arguing over the 3rd base coach of the Cleveland Indians and expecting that to significantly change the outcome of the World Series.
I'll start off by stipulating that I could be grossly underestimating the importance of the 3rd base coach; in which case I have read your statement incorrectly.
I think this is closer to "people don't know how powerful / influential party bosses are," rather than, "no one has heard of this particular party boss nor can they tell me what they actually do; therefore they are not very powerful."
The second option there is a complete non-sequitur, and it is very close to your analogy.
If I may offer a different analogy. It is more like the Lt. Governor of the state of Texas. Most people in Texas couldn't tell you who that guy is or pick him out of a line. Even less could describe his job and scope of power. But he is arguably the most powerful person in the State of Texas, even beyond the Governor. The Governor gets to appoint state positions, and declare emergencies, and sign laws, but the Lt Governor gets to write law and preside over the Texas Senate. That means he sets the agenda and creates the content. He is in a position to pull all the strings.
That is much closer to the party boss. No one can tell you who they are or what they do, but when it comes to brass tacks; that person has ALL the power.
They also get to set ground rules for caucuses and primaries, have a lot of influence on where the fundraised money gets spent and oversee the broad campaign strategy (50 state strategy/focus on battlegrounds)
DNC Chair Candidate Tom Perez’s Bank-Friendly Record Could Kneecap the Democratic Party
From The Intercept.
I don't think this is by any means about a single individual. This is about the future of the Party. If Democrats stay the course, and remain the party of wealthy bankers, they are going to sputter out of existence. Hopefully sooner rather then later! If they get on board with progressive policy, rather then just talk, they will dominate American politics. Bernie was their most recent major opportunity, and they totally blew it. I think this is essentially their last chance, and I think it is a real long-shot that they will make the right choice.
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The whole "Damn the Democratic party, let the neoNazis have the country if we can't get the purity we want" attitude is as much to blame as anything the party has done.
I can't speak for anybody but myself, but I don't think it's necessarily 'purity' we're looking for. Just people who stand up for progressive interests the majority of the time, and don't back corporate interests over those of the common people so often. As President Truman famously said, "The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time."
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And your attitude here is a good part of the problem. The whole "Damn the Democratic party, let the neoNazis have the country if we can't get the purity we want" attitude is as much to blame as anything the party has done.
It was the Democratic Party who handed this country to Trump on a silver platter. Trump was a dumpster fire on a roller coaster, and even though Democrats outspent him by like 2:1, they still got beat! If the Democratic Party sucks so bad it can't beat a Trump, then it needs to be altered, or replaced. As you have convinced me over the years, this is a TWO Party system. If the democrats can't succeed, they need to be replaced with something that can.
And yes. My attitude is as much to blame, as anything the Democratic Party has done in the past election. Anything. I happily take full responsibility for my part.
The whole "Damn the Democratic party, let the neoNazis have the country if we can't get the purity we want" attitude is as much to blame as anything the party has done.I can't speak for anybody but myself, but I don't think it's necessarily 'purity' we're looking for. Just people who stand up for progressive interests the majority of the time, and don't back corporate interests over those of the common people so often. As President Truman famously said, "The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time."These ain't those Republicans.
When we reach the choice between a neo-Nazi and a Republican in Democratic clothing and the people choose the neo-Nazi and a pathetically incompetent one at that, I think we've got something else going on.
Yeah the DNC runs a bunch of closed primaries despite the fact that a decent chunk of their ideological constituency is registered independent or some other party. If the goal is to find out who could win a national election, they're going to need to stop doing that.
No, you're right, they're not the same as the Republicans of that era. But they're still Republican in all (or most) of the ways that matter to Republican voters. The things they hang their hats on. Or at least they do a VERY good job of making the case that they are. The Democrats, in my estimation, are no longer Democrats in many of the ways that matter to me, and probably to many others. It doesn't help that Democrats and Independents tend not to be single issue voters, and so can approve of much of what a politician does, but disapprove of enough to feel kinda gross voting for them.
And your attitude here is a good part of the problem. The whole "Damn the Democratic party, let the neoNazis have the country if we can't get the purity we want" attitude is as much to blame as anything the party has done.It was the Democratic Party who handed this country to Trump on a silver platter. Trump was a dumpster fire on a roller coaster, and even though Democrats outspent him by like 2:1, they still got beat! If the Democratic Party sucks so bad it can't beat a Trump, then it needs to be altered, or replaced. As you have convinced me over the years, this is a TWO Party system. If the democrats can't succeed, they need to be replaced with something that can.
And yes. My attitude is as much to blame, as anything the Democratic Party has done in the past election. Anything. I happily take full responsibility for my part.The part you're missing is that Trump was a dumpster fire on a roller coaster and a scary number of people actually liked that.
I thought he was the worst possible candidate for the Republicans. I was wrong.
He would have been against almost any other candidate
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The part you're missing is that Trump was a dumpster fire on a roller coaster and a scary number of people actually liked that.
While I won't disagree that a "scary number of people liked that" -- scary number can be for example 100k people -- it's important to remember that there's a huge amount of people who didn't like it, but grudgingly voted for him nonetheless. The people who *liked* Trump are people the Democrats are never going to have. Never. It's only the people who voted for Trump and hated it that we should focus on. They're the only ones who we have any chance of pulling over to our side.
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How do you run an election, talk to people, and convince them of anything when as far as arguments go, facts just don't matter at all?
He would have been against almost any other candidateAnd your attitude here is a good part of the problem. The whole "Damn the Democratic party, let the neoNazis have the country if we can't get the purity we want" attitude is as much to blame as anything the party has done.It was the Democratic Party who handed this country to Trump on a silver platter. Trump was a dumpster fire on a roller coaster, and even though Democrats outspent him by like 2:1, they still got beat! If the Democratic Party sucks so bad it can't beat a Trump, then it needs to be altered, or replaced. As you have convinced me over the years, this is a TWO Party system. If the democrats can't succeed, they need to be replaced with something that can.
And yes. My attitude is as much to blame, as anything the Democratic Party has done in the past election. Anything. I happily take full responsibility for my part.The part you're missing is that Trump was a dumpster fire on a roller coaster and a scary number of people actually liked that.
I thought he was the worst possible candidate for the Republicans. I was wrong.
Counterfactuals are hard to prove.
I'm not nearly so sure. Trump had an appeal I really didn't expect even outside of his base. I'm far from sure it was all anti-Clinton.
Its not the sole determinant no, but it played a major major role. Both in motivating republicans to vote, and depressing the enthusiasm of the progressive wing of the american political system. Even the polling groups that had him winning had sanders performing against him better than she did.
Once the internal email snark came out...kiss of death. Just look at the resistance to handing over his donor lists. Its a game of chicken, and the reality is, the longer it goes on, the worse it will be for centrist democrats, the more likely it becomes that the swinging pendulum goes way far the other direction.
They also get to set ground rules for caucuses and primaries, have a lot of influence on where the fundraised money gets spent and oversee the broad campaign strategy (50 state strategy/focus on battlegrounds)
If the DNC chair sets the rules for primaries/caucuses... why is it that each state has completely different rules? Why are there state laws concerning how they're run? This seems to directly contradict your statement.
You're right about fundraising, the DNC chair does that.
They don't set campaign strategy. Speaking as someone who worked Keith Ellison fundraisers and had a voting position in the DFL (the Minnesota state party... the people who actually determine our caucus rules), the DNC chair had very little influence, other than perhaps as one voice among very many at a high level. We barely interacted with the DNC. Contact with the Clinton campaign (after the convention) was much more common. In fact, it was almost solely contact with the Clinton campaign.
Now, I wasn't a national delegate (I was a delegate to the state convention), so I'm sure that the DNC probably holds more influence at that convention. I know the higher ups of the state party ran the show at the state convention, so I would assume the same at the national one.
Basically, very little documentation available on the internet backs up your version, and my own personal experience of being involved with the process doesn't back it up either.
By the way, being a delegate to the state convention was pretty much a gimmie. Even with about 150 people staying for the whole caucus, I don't think our precinct filled all of it's 25-30 seats (it was a year ago, don't remember exact seat numbers), meaning anyone who did want to go could have shown up and taken a seat. If an organized group had arranged that through multiple precincts across the state, it could have had a controlling block of votes at the state convention.
How do you run an election, talk to people, and convince them of anything when as far as arguments go, facts just don't matter at all?
Step 1: Don't rely on facts.
Step 2: Watch Thank You For Smoking.Step 3: Become a more convincing scumbag than your opponent.
Step 4: Use your newly acquired powers of elected office to push for...
A) Education reform
B) Education reform
C) Education reform
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The things I thought, the things many people thought would disqualify him outside of the craziness of the Republican primary base, didn't. It's not even clear how much they were a negative.
What a lot of people underestimated was how important peoples' own personal individual lives really are to them. As long as a candidate says he's going to help *you*, that's going to override almost anything else. If Trump says he's going to bring back auto factories, then the voters are going to be deaf to anything else. They want their old jobs back so bad that the need for it is totally overwhelming.
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I'm not nearly so sure. Trump had an appeal I really didn't expect even outside of his base. I'm far from sure it was all anti-Clinton.
It wasn't by a long shot. What it was was anti-status quo, which is why Trump trounced the rest of the Republican clown car. The big problem with Clinton when she wasn't preaching anti-Trump, when she wasn't making major gaffes with her "deplorables" statement, and her promise to shut down coal work in a coal state, was pretty much being a bog-standard Democrat of the status quo.
The Democrats had a candidate that could have beaten Trump at his own game. But they rigged their game to favor the status quo, because for the most part, they're beholden to it.
Because the Democrats are for the most part bought lock, stock, and barrel by vested interests which simply will not allow them to put a Bernie Sanders on the ticket. Many Sanders folks feel that what we need is a repetition of the 1850's which allowed a third party to shove aside the decaying Whigs and elect a certain Illinois rail-splitting lawyer to the Presidency when he was needed most.
As Ralph Nader and others have pointed out, the party as a whole is no longer the vehicle to progress, but it's roadblock.
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As Ralph Nader and others have pointed out, the party as a whole is no longer the vehicle to progress, but it's roadblock.
So... fiction?
Or were the Democrats not the vehicle to progress on LGBT rights... health care... global warming and environmental issues in general... basic economic sanity... and indeed every progressive issue which has advanced at all in the past 30 years?
They may be a rickety old mule drawn buggy rather than a high performance sports car, but the Democrats absolutely ARE the vehicle of progress in this country.
And Ralph Nader has been conspicuously wrong for a very long time.
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As Ralph Nader and others have pointed out, the party as a whole is no longer the vehicle to progress, but it's roadblock.So... fiction?
Or were the Democrats not the vehicle to progress on LGBT rights... health care... global warming and environmental issues in general... basic economic sanity... and indeed every progressive issue which has advanced at all in the past 30 years?
They may be a rickety old mule drawn buggy rather than a high performance sports car, but the Democrats absolutely ARE the vehicle of progress in this country.
They've not been there willingly. Remember where Obama was in the beginning of his Presidency? When he pretty much told the LGBT crowd to go sit in the corner because he had to make nice and "reach across" to the Republicans? Or how both he and Clinton were in favor of the Keystone pipeline until they realized how far south it was driving their numbers? And remember Bill Clinton and his egregious law reforms that created "workfare" and sent prison populations skyrocketing? The Democrats may be talking progressive, but that's because they had to be dragged as far as they could... kicking and screaming the whole way.
I think the point is, that you're not supposed to have to drag a leader.
I think the point is, that you're not supposed to have to drag a leader.
In a democracy yes. Yes you are. Otherwise you're just picking the guy you want to have a beer with and watch him go.
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Damn the Democrats. As for leaving the country to an alleged Neo-Nazi (he's not, but anyway); f++# that.
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Clinton Surrogate Whines About Having A Democratic Party Challenger
"On February 16, Clinton campaign surrogate, Sen. Claire McCaskill complained that she will likely face a primary challenger in her 2018 re-election campaign. 'I may have a primary because there is, in our party now, some of the same kind of enthusiasm at the base that the Republican party had with the Tea Party,' she said in an interview. 'We are seeing that same—and many of those people are very impatient with me because they don’t think I’m pure. For example, they think I should be voting against all of Trump’s nominees and of course I’m judging each nominee on its own merit.'"
"McCaskill’s tone-deaf response illuminates how clueless she and the Democratic Party are with regards to why primary challengers are running against them. It’s not about purity; it’s about serving the public, especially the working, middle class, and low income Americans. The weak opposition to President Donald Trump’s nominees—McCaskill claimed that 'some of Trump’s cabinet picks have been good'—is just one example of the Democratic Party’s ineptitude."
Man, reading The Observer is a bit of a head f@+%.
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They've not been there willingly. Remember where Obama was in the beginning of his Presidency? When he pretty much told the LGBT crowd to go sit in the corner because he had to make nice and "reach across" to the Republicans? Or how both he and Clinton were in favor of the Keystone pipeline until they realized how far south it was driving their numbers? And remember Bill Clinton and his egregious law reforms that created "workfare" and sent prison populations skyrocketing? The Democrats may be talking progressive, but that's because they had to be dragged as far as they could... kicking and screaming the whole way.
In each of those instances there were dozens of Democrats in congress who disagreed with the president and virtually no Republicans who did so.
Sure, individual Democrats can be on the wrong side of issues. The party as a whole can even be so. However, it is invariably the Democrats who get it right and move things forward. Complaining that they did not all do so from day one is the 'back seat driving of progress'. I remember arguing with gay friends that Don't Ask Don't Tell was a cowardly cop-out policy. They told me it was a sound strategy towards eventual acceptance... and history has proved them right.
Ditto the rest of the 20th century. You want progressive reforms on any issue, you have one choice and one choice only... Democrats. Republicans will never move the ball forwards on their own and all the third parties combined don't have the power to move the ball at all. That's observed reality.
If facts don't matter? Easy. Run the guy with the most charisma you can find. But... where, oh where would the Democrats find someone with charisma??? If only they had good ties in Hollywood...
Next election, what are they going to say? I really think Trump is best on the issues?
John Stamos 2020?
John Stamos 2020?
I've seen serious suggestions from democrats about drafting George Clooney into politics.
Tom Hanks comes to mind.