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On April 24 2017 14:23 ChristianS wrote: The electability thing is innately the problem I'm talking about. He says we should have realized because of email server and Benghazi and w/e else that she wasn't actually more electable. Putting aside whether that's even true, it's completely centered around issues peculiar to Hillary. The whole thing boils down to: one of the candidates tried to make the case during the primary that people should vote for her because she'd have a better chance in the general. That's it. Nevermind that every other candidate also tried to make that case because that's what you do in a primary. It's now his whole raison d'etre to remind everyone that she tried to say she was electable, but didn't get elected. Of course now the LL bat signal is up so we can expect another tirade about her delectable electability.
But fair enough, you (@GH, if that wasn't clear) don't bludgeon us with your homebrew meme all day. I think it was about a day ago I was lumping you in with LL, but at the time I was criticizing the practice of strawmanning anybody who talks about Russia, Comey, Wikileaks, etc. as important factors in the election by claiming those people don't think Hillary's campaign also made mistakes (a_flayer in particular was constructing this strawman explicitly). As far as I can tell everyone ITT is at a place of "clearly the Dems made mistakes for the election to get that close, let's try to identify those mistakes and correct them." There's probably some disagreement about what those mistakes are, and it doesn't help when someone who defends some action on the part of the Dems gets caricatured with "lol you just don't get it, you still think it was just Russians and Comey that went wrong."
But okay, if you don't think you're strawmanning people like that I'll point it out when I think it's happening and in the meantime retract the criticism.
Thank you.
Thoughts on Democrats being 10 points behind Trump in "in touch" with the concerns of most Americans (Do we all appreciate how unbelievably bad this is btw)?
Fair to say when comparing the Democrats and Bernie (the most popular politician in the country) that we should probably give more credibility to what Bernie says Americans want/care about than the Democratic party?
I don't have many thoughts on it. Not very exciting, I know, but I'm not very familiar with this type of polling and what it's actually a measure of. It seems like both the DNC and the RNC usually have lower approval ratings than specific Republicans or Democrats, which sorta makes sense given that you don't need to sell people on voting for the RNC, you need to sell them on voting for specific Republicans. 28 still seems pretty low, and it's hard to say what people are even basing that on right now. Democrats are doing a Unity Tour snd stuff, but I doubt that messaging even has enough penetration for people to be deciding based on that stuff. I guess a lot of it is probably just residual sentiment from the election?
I'm happy to listen to what Bernie thinks Americans want/care about. I won't just take his word as gospel, but I certainly value his opinion.
This is better than usual but still pretty bad. PEOPLE DON'T LIKE Democrats period.
Okay, once you accept that the American public generally dislikes Democrats more (or close to) Trump, this should be an obvious sign that what Democrats are saying/doing is TERRIBLY unpopular. What's not unpopular though are the things they support that overlap with what Bernie supports.
The most basic takeaway is that Democrats need to be more like Bernie, not that Bernie and his supporters need to be more like Hillary/Democrats/Republicans/Trump. We're still waiting for Democrats to recognize that, are you there yet?
This thread moves too fast.
This all feels a bit condescending, but I'll try to take you at face value. I like Bernie, and agree the Democrats should move their platform and messaging in a populist direction. "Be more like Bernie" feels a tad low resolution for a political strategy though, and I'd be able to have stronger opinions on a per-issue basis. Like, greater emphasis on an economic policy that improves conditions for ghe working class seems clearly like a good idea. I'm not certain if mirroring Bernie 1 to 1 is the best way to do that. It might be, but I'd figure they oughta do focus groups and figure out what tack plays the best. Bernie's rhetoric can get a tad "soak the rich" sometimes, which can be unnecessarily divisive. You might be able to argue for the exact same policies but go for "pay their fair share" type messaging, and pick up more votes.
I'd respond in somewhat more detail but I gotta go back to work.
If you get a chance you can see I gave some specific examples to Tendocs (Healthcare, and campaign finance reform). So I wouldn't be someone who considers "Be more like Bernie" the full picture, but just a basic sentiment that many in the Democratic party still aren't ready to concede.
If all the Democrats here have "gotten there" then I would consider that a significant shift and victory. Still have a while until all of the pundits and spinmasters get there though I imagine.
EDIT: All polling indicates the way Bernie is approaching issues is more popular than anyone else's strategy.
Much like Trump, Bernie talks about solved problems rather than solutions to problems. Maybe Democrats need to learn to dumb it down for the Facebook age.
Thats too easy. The "smart" vote barely ever won anywhere, you have to be a crowd pleaser or you are going to have problems (see hillary).
On April 25 2017 03:47 Plansix wrote: There is a middle ground between promising people the moon and “telling people like it is”. Obama found that middle ground and did instill with a feeling that our best days are before us. But we are seeing the problem with promising people the moon unfold in government right now. I would love to see tones down, more fiscally realistic versions of Bernie’s that could make it through congress.
Getting closer, but not there yet I see. Bernie isn't promising anyone the moon, although I understand why Democrats support that narrative.
This whole faux outrage about Bernie and the Mello Mayor is a good example. DWS supporting predatory lenders and Hillary fully supporting her (this after she resigned from the DNC) was supposed to be fine, but Bernie supporting Mello is terrible is a great example of what's wrong with the Democratic party.
On April 25 2017 03:47 Plansix wrote: There is a middle ground between promising people the moon and “telling people like it is”. Obama found that middle ground and did instill with a feeling that our best days are before us. But we are seeing the problem with promising people the moon unfold in government right now. I would love to see tones down, more fiscally realistic versions of Bernie’s that could make it through congress.
Getting closer, but not there yet I see. Bernie isn't promising anyone the moon, although I understand why Democrats support that narrative.
This whole faux outrage about Bernie and the Mello Mayor is a good example. DWS supporting predatory lenders and Hillary fully supporting her (this after she resigned from the DNC) was supposed to be fine, but Bernie supporting Mello is terrible is a great example of what's wrong with the Democratic party.
My attorney and I talked about that this morning. She is a long time democrat and avid supporter of the right to choose. That pretty much mirrored the other four female attorneys I work with. Faux outrage isn’t the description I would use for that discussion. But I can see why Bernie supporters would want to believe that narrative.
Now lets skip to the end where you and I go back and forth doing this for like 20 posts and then one of us goes to bed. DSW sucked and so does Mello Mayor. I will hold my nose for both if we get a majority in the house.
On April 25 2017 04:09 Velr wrote: If you just could stop sainting bernie up, maybe people would listen to you again. At thus point you are just a broken record.
I don't "saint Bernie up" and have plenty of problems with him.
On April 25 2017 03:47 Plansix wrote: There is a middle ground between promising people the moon and “telling people like it is”. Obama found that middle ground and did instill with a feeling that our best days are before us. But we are seeing the problem with promising people the moon unfold in government right now. I would love to see tones down, more fiscally realistic versions of Bernie’s that could make it through congress.
Getting closer, but not there yet I see. Bernie isn't promising anyone the moon, although I understand why Democrats support that narrative.
This whole faux outrage about Bernie and the Mello Mayor is a good example. DWS supporting predatory lenders and Hillary fully supporting her (this after she resigned from the DNC) was supposed to be fine, but Bernie supporting Mello is terrible is a great example of what's wrong with the Democratic party.
My attorney and I talked about that this morning. She is a long time democrat and avid supporter of the right to choose. That pretty much mirrored the other four female attorneys I work with. Faux outrage isn’t the description I would use for that discussion. But I can see why Bernie supporters would want to believe that narrative.
Now lets skip to the end where you and I go back and forth doing this for like 20 posts and then one of us goes to bed. DSW sucked and so does Mello Mayor. I will hold my nose for both if we get a majority in the house.
I'm sure they were just as outraged at the dozens of other pro-life Democrats supported by leadership, and want to replace Nancy Pelosi too.
GH, I’ve been there for a long time. I dislike Nancy Pelosi back in 2008 and voiced my opinion to my local rep at the time. I thought she was a terrible speaker than and a terrible minority leader. I still dislike her, but she keeps winning and my influence and energy for the subject is limited.
On April 24 2017 14:23 ChristianS wrote: The electability thing is innately the problem I'm talking about. He says we should have realized because of email server and Benghazi and w/e else that she wasn't actually more electable. Putting aside whether that's even true, it's completely centered around issues peculiar to Hillary. The whole thing boils down to: one of the candidates tried to make the case during the primary that people should vote for her because she'd have a better chance in the general. That's it. Nevermind that every other candidate also tried to make that case because that's what you do in a primary. It's now his whole raison d'etre to remind everyone that she tried to say she was electable, but didn't get elected. Of course now the LL bat signal is up so we can expect another tirade about her delectable electability.
But fair enough, you (@GH, if that wasn't clear) don't bludgeon us with your homebrew meme all day. I think it was about a day ago I was lumping you in with LL, but at the time I was criticizing the practice of strawmanning anybody who talks about Russia, Comey, Wikileaks, etc. as important factors in the election by claiming those people don't think Hillary's campaign also made mistakes (a_flayer in particular was constructing this strawman explicitly). As far as I can tell everyone ITT is at a place of "clearly the Dems made mistakes for the election to get that close, let's try to identify those mistakes and correct them." There's probably some disagreement about what those mistakes are, and it doesn't help when someone who defends some action on the part of the Dems gets caricatured with "lol you just don't get it, you still think it was just Russians and Comey that went wrong."
But okay, if you don't think you're strawmanning people like that I'll point it out when I think it's happening and in the meantime retract the criticism.
Thank you.
Thoughts on Democrats being 10 points behind Trump in "in touch" with the concerns of most Americans (Do we all appreciate how unbelievably bad this is btw)?
Fair to say when comparing the Democrats and Bernie (the most popular politician in the country) that we should probably give more credibility to what Bernie says Americans want/care about than the Democratic party?
I don't have many thoughts on it. Not very exciting, I know, but I'm not very familiar with this type of polling and what it's actually a measure of. It seems like both the DNC and the RNC usually have lower approval ratings than specific Republicans or Democrats, which sorta makes sense given that you don't need to sell people on voting for the RNC, you need to sell them on voting for specific Republicans. 28 still seems pretty low, and it's hard to say what people are even basing that on right now. Democrats are doing a Unity Tour snd stuff, but I doubt that messaging even has enough penetration for people to be deciding based on that stuff. I guess a lot of it is probably just residual sentiment from the election?
I'm happy to listen to what Bernie thinks Americans want/care about. I won't just take his word as gospel, but I certainly value his opinion.
This is better than usual but still pretty bad. PEOPLE DON'T LIKE Democrats period.
Okay, once you accept that the American public generally dislikes Democrats more (or close to) Trump, this should be an obvious sign that what Democrats are saying/doing is TERRIBLY unpopular. What's not unpopular though are the things they support that overlap with what Bernie supports.
The most basic takeaway is that Democrats need to be more like Bernie, not that Bernie and his supporters need to be more like Hillary/Democrats/Republicans/Trump. We're still waiting for Democrats to recognize that, are you there yet?
This thread moves too fast.
This all feels a bit condescending, but I'll try to take you at face value. I like Bernie, and agree the Democrats should move their platform and messaging in a populist direction. "Be more like Bernie" feels a tad low resolution for a political strategy though, and I'd be able to have stronger opinions on a per-issue basis. Like, greater emphasis on an economic policy that improves conditions for ghe working class seems clearly like a good idea. I'm not certain if mirroring Bernie 1 to 1 is the best way to do that. It might be, but I'd figure they oughta do focus groups and figure out what tack plays the best. Bernie's rhetoric can get a tad "soak the rich" sometimes, which can be unnecessarily divisive. You might be able to argue for the exact same policies but go for "pay their fair share" type messaging, and pick up more votes.
I'd respond in somewhat more detail but I gotta go back to work.
The rich are the problem to begin with, any serious solution to the myriad of problems afflicting the USA involves taking control and wealth from rich people by leveraging populist outrage. That is why Bernie talks about the banks, it is because they are the villains and they need to be defeated, for instance by being criminalized and defunded. You can't deal with the financial industry without revealing them as the villains they are, because otherwise it is too easy for them to sabotage any reform. You can think of this as a simplistic and divisive narrative, but if you look at the facts you can see it is true: banks to a large extent are leeches on the economy with vast power whose employees are mostly deeply corrupt sociopaths.
On April 25 2017 03:47 Plansix wrote: There is a middle ground between promising people the moon and “telling people like it is”. Obama found that middle ground and did instill with a feeling that our best days are before us. But we are seeing the problem with promising people the moon unfold in government right now. I would love to see tones down, more fiscally realistic versions of Bernie’s that could make it through congress.
Getting closer, but not there yet I see. Bernie isn't promising anyone the moon, although I understand why Democrats support that narrative.
This whole faux outrage about Bernie and the Mello Mayor is a good example. DWS supporting predatory lenders and Hillary fully supporting her (this after she resigned from the DNC) was supposed to be fine, but Bernie supporting Mello is terrible is a great example of what's wrong with the Democratic party.
This seems like a possible case of "ambiguous they." There might be individuals who are outraged by one and not the other, and those individuals should explain what they think the difference is, but does the Democratic Party as a whole take that position? I got the impression the DNC supports Bernie's current moves, and individual voices on the left are complaining.
I don't think I'm disagreeing that Democrats who are complaining about Mello are wrong-headed and should accept allies even if they might not agree on everything. Your "are you there yet" stuff continues to feel pretty condescending though. That mode of discourse seems to assume that your ideas and opinions are the gospel truth and everyone else can be grouped into "agrees with you" or "hasn't seen the light yet." That's a bad way to have a discussion.
Incidentally I thought it seemed like a pretty GH move to want to purity test Mello. Care to talk a little about why that kind of purity testing is bad, but purity testing Manchin is a good idea despite Nate Silver's analysis?
One more aside before my lunch break ends: about the abortion debate, I am also skeezed out by a bunch of white men making decisions about what is and isn't a reasonable burden on women seeking abortions. To Falling's points I don't think that should have much bearing on the larger question of whether abortion should be legal in the first place. But once we're into the particulars it feels very off to have a bunch of white guys sitting around saying "should she have to get an ultrasound? That doesn't sound like too much of a burden to me." Especially when a lot of hurdles are being added just to make it harder or "make sure she's taking it seriously."
When President Barack Obama announced the “one-time gesture” of releasing Iranian-born prisoners who “were not charged with terrorism or any violent offenses” last year, his administration presented the move as a modest trade-off for the greater good of the Iran nuclear agreement and Tehran’s pledge to free five Americans.
“Iran had a significantly higher number of individuals, of course, at the beginning of this negotiation that they would have liked to have seen released,” one senior Obama administration official told reporters in a background briefing arranged by the White House, adding that “we were able to winnow that down to these seven individuals, six of whom are Iranian-Americans.”
But Obama, the senior official and other administration representatives weren’t telling the whole story on Jan. 17, 2016, in their highly choreographed rollout of the prisoner swap and simultaneous implementation of the six-party nuclear deal, according to a POLITICO investigation.
In his Sunday morning address to the American people, Obama portrayed the seven men he freed as “civilians.” The senior official described them as businessmen convicted of or awaiting trial for mere “sanctions-related offenses, violations of the trade embargo.”
In reality, some of them were accused by Obama’s own Justice Department of posing threats to national security. Three allegedly were part of an illegal procurement network supplying Iran with U.S.-made microelectronics with applications in surface-to-air and cruise missiles like the kind Tehran test-fired recently, prompting a still-escalating exchange of threats with the Trump administration. Another was serving an eight-year sentence for conspiring to supply Iran with satellite technology and hardware. As part of the deal, U.S. officials even dropped their demand for $10 million that a jury said the aerospace engineer illegally received from Tehran.
And in a series of unpublicized court filings, the Justice Department dropped charges and international arrest warrants against 14 other men, all of them fugitives. The administration didn’t disclose their names or what they were accused of doing, noting only in an unattributed, 152-word statement about the swap that the U.S. “also removed any Interpol red notices and dismissed any charges against 14 Iranians for whom it was assessed that extradition requests were unlikely to be successful.”
Funny that you choose to bring up Iran right now, because I just read an interesting piece.
“Mankind faces a crossroads,” declared Woody Allen. “One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”
The point is simple: In life, what matters most isn’t how a decision compares to your ideal outcome. It’s how it compares to the alternative at hand.
The same is true for the Iran deal, announced Tuesday between Iran and six world powers. As Congress begins debating the agreement, its opponents have three real alternatives. The first is to kill the deal, and the interim agreement that preceded it, and do nothing else, which means few restraints on Iran’s nuclear program. The second is war. But top American and Israeli officials have warned that military action against Iranian nuclear facilities could ignite a catastrophic regional conflict and would be ineffective, if not counterproductive, in delaying Iran’s path to the bomb. Meir Dagan, who oversaw the Iran file as head of Israel’s external spy agency, the Mossad, from 2002 to 2011, has said an attack “would mean regional war, and in that case you would have given Iran the best possible reason to continue the nuclear program.” Michael Hayden, who ran the CIA under George W. Bush from 2006 to 2009, has warned that an attack would “guarantee that which we are trying to prevent: an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon.”
...
If you believe American power is limited, this agenda is absurd. America needs Russian and Chinese support for an Iranian nuclear deal. U.S. officials can’t simultaneously put maximum pressure on both Assad and ISIS, the two main rivals for power in Syria today. They must decide who is the lesser evil. Accepting that American power is limited means prioritizing. It means making concessions to regimes and organizations you don’t like in order to put more pressure on the ones you fear most. That’s what Franklin Roosevelt did when allying with Stalin against Hitler. It’s what Richard Nixon did when he reached out to communist China in order to increase America’s leverage over the U.S.S.R.
I don't agree with all of it, but I did find their general perspective interesting: that the Obama administration made a deal with Iran that kind of shows the limits of what the US is capable of accomplishing abroad.
Which sort of reminds me of a paper that I read a while back, which I tried but wasn't able to find again, which discussed Bush and how he floundered an opportunity to take advantage of an even better deal, while the US was clearly the top dog and didn't have much opposition to worry about - because he thought Iran's regime would collapse and he could get even more than just the nuclear program.
There's a lot to criticize about the Iran deal, that is true. The unfortunate reality is that it was a compromise that the US would have preferred not to have to make, that looks kind of shitty and gives Iran a lot more than it would like, and involved having to turn to other countries to help force Iran to negotiate. The US doesn't really have as much leverage as it would like in the region, though, and so not agreeing to the Iran deal, or even worse, withdrawing from it, is going to be a pretty straight loss for the US. It's what happens when reality tempers national ambitions.
“Mankind faces a crossroads,” declared Woody Allen. “One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”
The point is simple: In life, what matters most isn’t how a decision compares to your ideal outcome. It’s how it compares to the alternative at hand.
The same is true for the Iran deal, announced Tuesday between Iran and six world powers. As Congress begins debating the agreement, its opponents have three real alternatives. The first is to kill the deal, and the interim agreement that preceded it, and do nothing else, which means few restraints on Iran’s nuclear program. The second is war. But top American and Israeli officials have warned that military action against Iranian nuclear facilities could ignite a catastrophic regional conflict and would be ineffective, if not counterproductive, in delaying Iran’s path to the bomb. Meir Dagan, who oversaw the Iran file as head of Israel’s external spy agency, the Mossad, from 2002 to 2011, has said an attack “would mean regional war, and in that case you would have given Iran the best possible reason to continue the nuclear program.” Michael Hayden, who ran the CIA under George W. Bush from 2006 to 2009, has warned that an attack would “guarantee that which we are trying to prevent: an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon.”
...
If you believe American power is limited, this agenda is absurd. America needs Russian and Chinese support for an Iranian nuclear deal. U.S. officials can’t simultaneously put maximum pressure on both Assad and ISIS, the two main rivals for power in Syria today. They must decide who is the lesser evil. Accepting that American power is limited means prioritizing. It means making concessions to regimes and organizations you don’t like in order to put more pressure on the ones you fear most. That’s what Franklin Roosevelt did when allying with Stalin against Hitler. It’s what Richard Nixon did when he reached out to communist China in order to increase America’s leverage over the U.S.S.R.
I don't agree with all of it, but I did find their general perspective interesting: that the Obama administration made a deal with Iran that kind of shows the limits of what the US is capable of accomplishing abroad.
Which sort of reminds me of a paper that I read a while back, which I tried but wasn't able to find again, which discussed Bush and how he floundered an opportunity to take advantage of an even better deal, while the US was clearly the top dog and didn't have much opposition to worry about - because he thought Iran's regime would collapse and he could get even more than just the nuclear program.
There's a lot to criticize about the Iran deal, that is true. The unfortunate reality is that it was a compromise that the US would have preferred not to have to make, that looks kind of shitty and gives Iran a lot more than it would like, and involved having to turn to other countries to help force Iran to negotiate. The US doesn't really have as much leverage as it would like in the region, though, and so not agreeing to the Iran deal, or even worse, withdrawing from it, is going to be a pretty straight loss for the US. It's what happens when reality tempers national ambitions.
Isn't that precisely what most levelheaded people were saying at the time?
On April 25 2017 05:03 LegalLord wrote: Funny that you choose to bring up Iran right now, because I just read an interesting piece.
“Mankind faces a crossroads,” declared Woody Allen. “One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”
The point is simple: In life, what matters most isn’t how a decision compares to your ideal outcome. It’s how it compares to the alternative at hand.
The same is true for the Iran deal, announced Tuesday between Iran and six world powers. As Congress begins debating the agreement, its opponents have three real alternatives. The first is to kill the deal, and the interim agreement that preceded it, and do nothing else, which means few restraints on Iran’s nuclear program. The second is war. But top American and Israeli officials have warned that military action against Iranian nuclear facilities could ignite a catastrophic regional conflict and would be ineffective, if not counterproductive, in delaying Iran’s path to the bomb. Meir Dagan, who oversaw the Iran file as head of Israel’s external spy agency, the Mossad, from 2002 to 2011, has said an attack “would mean regional war, and in that case you would have given Iran the best possible reason to continue the nuclear program.” Michael Hayden, who ran the CIA under George W. Bush from 2006 to 2009, has warned that an attack would “guarantee that which we are trying to prevent: an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon.”
...
If you believe American power is limited, this agenda is absurd. America needs Russian and Chinese support for an Iranian nuclear deal. U.S. officials can’t simultaneously put maximum pressure on both Assad and ISIS, the two main rivals for power in Syria today. They must decide who is the lesser evil. Accepting that American power is limited means prioritizing. It means making concessions to regimes and organizations you don’t like in order to put more pressure on the ones you fear most. That’s what Franklin Roosevelt did when allying with Stalin against Hitler. It’s what Richard Nixon did when he reached out to communist China in order to increase America’s leverage over the U.S.S.R.
I don't agree with all of it, but I did find their general perspective interesting: that the Obama administration made a deal with Iran that kind of shows the limits of what the US is capable of accomplishing abroad.
Which sort of reminds me of a paper that I read a while back, which I tried but wasn't able to find again, which discussed Bush and how he floundered an opportunity to take advantage of an even better deal, while the US was clearly the top dog and didn't have much opposition to worry about - because he thought Iran's regime would collapse and he could get even more than just the nuclear program.
There's a lot to criticize about the Iran deal, that is true. The unfortunate reality is that it was a compromise that the US would have preferred not to have to make, that looks kind of shitty and gives Iran a lot more than it would like, and involved having to turn to other countries to help force Iran to negotiate. The US doesn't really have as much leverage as it would like in the region, though, and so not agreeing to the Iran deal, or even worse, withdrawing from it, is going to be a pretty straight loss for the US. It's what happens when reality tempers national ambitions.
Isn't that precisely what most levelheaded people were saying at the time?
More or less, yea. Though seldom with such brutal honesty.
To be fair this article is from two years ago on the eve of the deal.
If you are not willing to go to war and unwilling authorize the use of prolonged force, your political base on the threat of force is limited. The era of US influence through military might ended with Bush and Iraq. It is just that Congress is slow to get the memo and loves to heckle. Because its is easier to bitch about the abuse of executive power than do something.
On April 25 2017 04:09 Velr wrote: If you just could stop sainting bernie up, maybe people would listen to you again. At this point you are just a broken record.
I don't think GH is sainting Bernie up. I think he is making some very correct comparisons between Democrat messaging and Bernie messaging. Bernie wasn't about promising the world. He was about fighting for the world and setting goals as what they should be. Bernie's stubbornness seems to be more about what we strive for rather than what we anticipate. I don't think Bernie campaigned thinking "I bet you I can get basic income within 3 years of being elected". But I think he intended to start the fight for things like a $15 min wage day 1. And I think he'd fight that fight with messaging. Effective, pointed, popular messaging.
AP: Can I ask you, over your first 100 days — you’re not quite there yet — how do you feel like the office has changed you?
TRUMP: Well the one thing I would say — and I say this to people — I never realized how big it was. Everything’s so (unintelligible) like, you know the orders are so massive. I was talking to —
AP: You mean the responsibility of it, or do you mean —
TRUMP: Number One, there’s great responsibility. When it came time to, as an example, send out the 59 missiles, the Tomahawks in Syria. I’m saying to myself, “You know, this is more than just like, 79 (sic) missiles. This is death that’s involved,” because people could have been killed…Every decision is much harder than you’d normally make. (unintelligible)… This is involving death and life and so many things…So it’s far more responsibility. (unintelligible)
lol. lol. lol. Pre-existing conditions makes this dead in senate. Whatever, these guys have no idea what they are doing.
edit: Well, I guess senators from purple states can vote for it being a state thing because they say "Well of course we'll keep it here! Fuck Kansas lol!"
On April 24 2017 14:23 ChristianS wrote: The electability thing is innately the problem I'm talking about. He says we should have realized because of email server and Benghazi and w/e else that she wasn't actually more electable. Putting aside whether that's even true, it's completely centered around issues peculiar to Hillary. The whole thing boils down to: one of the candidates tried to make the case during the primary that people should vote for her because she'd have a better chance in the general. That's it. Nevermind that every other candidate also tried to make that case because that's what you do in a primary. It's now his whole raison d'etre to remind everyone that she tried to say she was electable, but didn't get elected. Of course now the LL bat signal is up so we can expect another tirade about her delectable electability.
But fair enough, you (@GH, if that wasn't clear) don't bludgeon us with your homebrew meme all day. I think it was about a day ago I was lumping you in with LL, but at the time I was criticizing the practice of strawmanning anybody who talks about Russia, Comey, Wikileaks, etc. as important factors in the election by claiming those people don't think Hillary's campaign also made mistakes (a_flayer in particular was constructing this strawman explicitly). As far as I can tell everyone ITT is at a place of "clearly the Dems made mistakes for the election to get that close, let's try to identify those mistakes and correct them." There's probably some disagreement about what those mistakes are, and it doesn't help when someone who defends some action on the part of the Dems gets caricatured with "lol you just don't get it, you still think it was just Russians and Comey that went wrong."
But okay, if you don't think you're strawmanning people like that I'll point it out when I think it's happening and in the meantime retract the criticism.
Thank you.
Thoughts on Democrats being 10 points behind Trump in "in touch" with the concerns of most Americans (Do we all appreciate how unbelievably bad this is btw)?
Fair to say when comparing the Democrats and Bernie (the most popular politician in the country) that we should probably give more credibility to what Bernie says Americans want/care about than the Democratic party?
I don't have many thoughts on it. Not very exciting, I know, but I'm not very familiar with this type of polling and what it's actually a measure of. It seems like both the DNC and the RNC usually have lower approval ratings than specific Republicans or Democrats, which sorta makes sense given that you don't need to sell people on voting for the RNC, you need to sell them on voting for specific Republicans. 28 still seems pretty low, and it's hard to say what people are even basing that on right now. Democrats are doing a Unity Tour snd stuff, but I doubt that messaging even has enough penetration for people to be deciding based on that stuff. I guess a lot of it is probably just residual sentiment from the election?
I'm happy to listen to what Bernie thinks Americans want/care about. I won't just take his word as gospel, but I certainly value his opinion.
This is better than usual but still pretty bad. PEOPLE DON'T LIKE Democrats period.
Okay, once you accept that the American public generally dislikes Democrats more (or close to) Trump, this should be an obvious sign that what Democrats are saying/doing is TERRIBLY unpopular. What's not unpopular though are the things they support that overlap with what Bernie supports.
The most basic takeaway is that Democrats need to be more like Bernie, not that Bernie and his supporters need to be more like Hillary/Democrats/Republicans/Trump. We're still waiting for Democrats to recognize that, are you there yet?
This thread moves too fast.
This all feels a bit condescending, but I'll try to take you at face value. I like Bernie, and agree the Democrats should move their platform and messaging in a populist direction. "Be more like Bernie" feels a tad low resolution for a political strategy though, and I'd be able to have stronger opinions on a per-issue basis. Like, greater emphasis on an economic policy that improves conditions for ghe working class seems clearly like a good idea. I'm not certain if mirroring Bernie 1 to 1 is the best way to do that. It might be, but I'd figure they oughta do focus groups and figure out what tack plays the best. Bernie's rhetoric can get a tad "soak the rich" sometimes, which can be unnecessarily divisive. You might be able to argue for the exact same policies but go for "pay their fair share" type messaging, and pick up more votes.
I'd respond in somewhat more detail but I gotta go back to work.
The rich are the problem to begin with, any serious solution to the myriad of problems afflicting the USA involves taking control and wealth from rich people by leveraging populist outrage. That is why Bernie talks about the banks, it is because they are the villains and they need to be defeated, for instance by being criminalized and defunded. You can't deal with the financial industry without revealing them as the villains they are, because otherwise it is too easy for them to sabotage any reform. You can think of this as a simplistic and divisive narrative, but if you look at the facts you can see it is true: banks to a large extent are leeches on the economy with vast power whose employees are mostly deeply corrupt sociopaths.
This, for instance, is a narrative that I think is easily written off as radical French Revolution extremism and ignored. I think a milder approach wins votes more easily.
We're in a funny time right now. A lot of economists that would have been staunchly free market a decade ago now figure it's not a question of if but when we should implement a UBI. That gives the opportunity for a fairly broad support for some economic measures that would have been unthinkable not too long ago. But to do this right, progressives are going to need well-crafted messaging and a good sense of timing.
If it passes the House but fails in the Senate Repulicans can claim to have done something and blame its failure on the Democrats. No idea if that's the intent, but it's a likely outcome.
I honestly don't get the preexisting condition part of the debate. You either cover for it and then force everyone to buy insurance, or you get rid of that rule and make insurance optional. Doing both removing the individual mandate, and keeping the coverage of preexisting conditions = ???
EPT
