US Politics

Raoul said:
If they win, the Dems would still have to deal with disparate factions within the party.

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Taking a brief look at Ojeda's platform, which includes weed legalisation, green energy, a public option, public rather than charter schools, pathway to citizenship, and DACA, it might be easier for him and AOC to agree rather than, say, AOC and a typical corporate Dem who might contest green energy, public option, and public schools.
 
Raoul said:
If they win, the Dems would still have to deal with disparate factions within the party.

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Basically the exact same thing that's happening to republicans.

No one is crossing party lines so moderate repliblicans won't vote with dems even if they want to. Moderate dems won't vote with republicans . Then nothing gets done
 
berbatrick said:
Taking a brief look at Ojeda's platform, which includes weed legalisation, green energy, a public option, public rather than charter schools, pathway to citizenship, and DACA, it might be easier for him and AOC to agree rather than, say, AOC and a typical corporate Dem who might contest green energy, public option, and public schools.
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Not sure about this Ojeda guy but the Dems will run into some problems if they have people like Cortes on one wing and centrist types like Conor Lamb on the other. They need to narrow their platform a bit to incorporate a bit more homogeny this year so that its sorted now and won't require them to spend time dealing with it in 2020.
 
ChaddyP said:
Basically the exact same thing that's happening to republicans.

No one is crossing party lines so moderate repliblicans won't vote with dems even if they want to. Moderate dems won't vote with republicans . Then nothing gets done
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I think the Dems are static on policy because they think they can get both leftists like Cortes as well as crossover independent Trump voters from 16 who have since soured on Trump. Perez keeps walking a fine line on issues like single payer and others for this reason.
 
ChaddyP said:
Basically the exact same thing that's happening to republicans.

No one is crossing party lines so moderate repliblicans won't vote with dems even if they want to. Moderate dems won't vote with republicans . Then nothing gets done
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Corey Robin has written that though it seems so strong, the GOP is internally divided. For me the relevant part is that they are united on the most frightening things - cutting social spending, restricting voting rights, stuffing the courts with extremists.
I wish the Dems could unite over a similar core set of issues (healthcare, anti-war).
 
This tripe is proving very popular with America's right.



I think it's objectively hilarious in it's drama but sadly I lack the faith in humanity required to think it won't suck in some people.
 
Raoul said:
Not sure about this Ojeda guy but the Dems will run into some problems if they have people like Cortes on one wing and centrist types like Conor Lamb on the other. They need to narrow their platform a bit to incorporate a bit more homogeny this year so that its sorted now and won't require them to spend time dealing with it in 2020.
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The likes of Conor Lamb will be an insignificant minority going forward. The Republicans are pushing hard on their right shift. I see the Democrats doing the same in the near future.
 
adexkola said:
The likes of Conor Lamb will be an insignificant minority going forward. The Republicans are pushing hard on their right shift. I see the Democrats doing the same in the near future.
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The Dems as a party may be heading left but they still need people like Lamb to keep their numbers to retain the house. There are districts that lean right throughout the country where centrist Dems are going to do better than progressives at the moment and Lamb is the poster child for that sort of thing. Just like there are moderate districts where centrist (not right wing) Republicans have done well in the past.
 
Raoul said:
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Schadenfreude is incredibly strong right now. Not a nice subject to be point scoring over but seriously, feck this guy.


I can’t help but think that these stories come out because people watch him in high profile situations like the one with Rosenstein and it triggers a memory/emotional reaction from the victims. They see him acting like that and just think “This guy is an absolute piece of shit and it’s time he had his c’nuppins”.
 
Democrats should cancel their primaries and just give it to Bernie Sanders or whomever that wing of the party picks. After crying a ton (I'm including myself in this category) about not uniting under Clinton for defeating Trump, it would be pointless to manoeuvre centrist politics this time around. It failed last time, let's just give it to the progressive wing. If anyone of the bloody centrists cry about voting for hard left after spending 4 years of shitting on hard left for failing to vote for them, then both groups are hypocrites
 
Kavannagh must be a closet Souter since the right wingers all seem to be lining up against him

 
Been off the grid a few days...

Democracy is dying for sure, Trump with yet another SCOTUS pick and after Obama was unconstitutionally robbed of his selection. This is why this particular vote was the most important in years - potential SCOTUS nominations. And people better get out and vote this cycle or it's really fecked.
 
Out of the Wilderness
BY
BRANKO MARCETIC

Radical candidates. “Crazy” platforms. Shocking upsets. The history of US conservatism holds lessons for the Left about how the impossible can become the inevitable.

But if anyone doubts the potential effectiveness of the strategy left-wing activists have been following lately — challenging establishment Democrats directly through primaries, and aggressively taking the party establishment to task over its centrism — they can look to a perhaps surprising example: the conservative movement of the twentieth century.

The resurgence of conservatism is a story bigger than just a few elections; it encompassed a wholesale shift in values, beliefs, and narratives. It featured everything from tireless grassroots organizing to the creation of an alternative, conservative media landscape.

But when we marvel at how the GOP has transformed itself into a disciplined, rigidly ideological force that has stubbornly yanked society closer to its ideal, a big part of that story involves the way conservative activists took on the GOP establishment in the chaotic 1960s.
...
It’s hard to overstate just how defeated conservatism, particularly in its free market form, was following the Great Depression. That crisis birthed a decades-long “liberal consensus,” ushered in by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal — perhaps more accurately thought of as the “long exception” to American politics’ history of pro-business orthodoxy.

The Republican Party wouldn’t return to the Oval Office for two decades, while free market, small-government ideas were broadly discredited in the eyes of much of the public. “Their number is negligible and they are stupid,” Dwight Eisenhower, the man theoretically meant to be the standard-bearer for the Right, said about conservatives looking to roll back the New Deal.
...
Part of the right-wing war on the GOP was fought from within. Public relations consultant F. Clifton White and William Rusher, the publisher of the National Review from 1957 on, had spent the 1950sfirst taking control of the New York City Young Republican Club, then pushing the national Young Republicans to the right by bringing in a flood of new, conservative members and spreading their influence to the organization’s machinery. White and Rusher’s group of conservatives, known as “the Syndicate,” aimed by 1963 to take over the 400,000-strong national Young Republicans, then one of the country’s largest political organizations.

It was Rusher and White who spearheaded the “draft Goldwater” movement, using their institutional ties to build a movement to push the reluctant ultraconservative into running in 1964, and working behind the scenes to get him the necessary delegates. The group knew his chances were slim, but with Nixon bowing out and Rockefeller a seeming lock for that year’s nomination, they feared that “the advancing cause of conservatism will sustain a setback from which it might not recover for a generation.” Goldwater would have to run as a spoiler to save it.

The other key initiative was “Operation Takeover,” the name given to conservatives’ plan to wrench control of the California Republican Assembly (CRA) from moderates. It started with a Republican splinter group called United Republicans of California (UROC), a self-defined right-wing vanguard that grew to 20,000 members by 1964, and pledged fidelity to conservative principles over the “whims of the people.” It ended with the state’s Republican Party falling to conservatives, as the CRA endorsed Goldwater over Rockefeller and delivered the California primary for him.

The Republican establishment was none too happy, griping in a subsequent report about the “rather vociferous persons” who had taken over Republican volunteer organizations. CRA president William Nelligan complained that “fanatics of the Birch variety have fastened their fangs on the Republican Party’s flanks and are hanging on like grim death.”

Goldwater’s capture of the nomination was also assured by grassroots organizations like Watchdogs of the Republican Party, a mostly female grassroots group that pressured Republican leaders, delegates, and the public to support the senator. Goldwater’s general election campaign ended in a disastrous defeat, but in retrospect it’s viewed as a key political watershed that set the stage for the Right’s subsequent dominance.
...

Perhaps the most famous of such quixotic campaigns was National Review editor William Buckley’s 1965 bid for mayor of New York under the Conservative label, which saw him siphon off the votes of disgruntled “backlash” Democrats. Buckley’s unsuccessful campaign — covered nationwide with the same intensity as Ronald Reagan’s similar but victorious gubernatorial campaign in California a year later — was a considerable stepping stone in the realignment of national Republican politics.

Those in the firing line of mid-century conservatives were understandably unhappy. Buckley’s GOP opponent labeled him “an assassin from the ultraright.” The GOP tried to gut the Conservative Party through rule changes, insisting it would only help liberal Democrats win elections. Republicans regularly complained about the “extreme” elements trying to take over the party.

But the conservatives had the last laugh. It was ultimately their political vision that would triumph thanks to these efforts — not just within the GOP, but in politics as a whole, a process set in motion by an unruly group of activists who were fed up with the party that represented them and decided to do something about it.
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https://jacobinmag.com/2018/07/conservatism-gop-elections-republican-party
 
Dems in decent shape in the Senate races.

Manchin and Tester up bigly. Mckaskill up slightly. Rosen leading Heller in NV and Sinema leading everyone in AZ (both would be pickups).

No word of Heidtkamp or Nelson

 
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