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Northern Ireland23957 Posts
On December 04 2020 04:21 FlaShFTW wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2020 22:16 Stratos_speAr wrote:On December 03 2020 10:39 Zambrah wrote:On December 03 2020 10:08 FlaShFTW wrote:On December 03 2020 08:44 Zambrah wrote:On December 03 2020 05:39 FlaShFTW wrote:On December 03 2020 05:10 Ciaus_Dronu wrote:Man who ran on 'yes we can' says snappy slogan is not a good plan. This is a dumb game you can play with any slogan. It's a slogan, not a detailed policy description. From the article "The slogan refers to reallocating funding for police departments to social services for minority communities." Still not very specific, but there's a little more there. Imagine comparing "Yes we can" which, on it's face, literally is just about working together to achieve a goal, to "Defund the police". Are you actually serious about this comment, or are you just a troll? To achieve what goal? "Yes we can" is an utterly meaningless slogan, Obama's time post-presidentially has indicated he never actually believed in anything, every time hes in the news I get more and more suspect he ever cared about accomplishing fuck all. Jesus christ you've missed the point so hard. At least "defund the police" actually indicates that we should defund the police, obviously its very hard to articulate all of a policy via three words, but its the important part of the general goal to defund the police and fund various social programs to help prevent people from falling into criminality. There is no slogan that will completely convey this idea and also get away with not being attacked by Republicans as "THEY WANT ACTUAL VIOLENT ANARCHY!" Ok but again, not the point. Yes, of course a slogan doesn't articulate the entire point of the policy proposed, but it has to be at least approachable. No one is going to care about the important part of the goal if they're already off-put by the slogan. Again, you've missed the point of the use of slogans. Criticizing slogans is just lazy, its the way people go about easily dismissing everything without having to engage with it, and someone as intelligent as Obama should do better. You're also assuming that the average American is smart enough to read past the slogan that would translate into votes or supporters of said slogan. The average American is really, and I mean REALLY, dumb. We are incredibly intellectually lazy, and these people that you're trying to convince to vote for you/side with you, need these things heavily simplified and if that simplification isn't properly highlighting your important goal and it communicates, or appears to communicate, a totally different idea, then what's the point? Those people aren't going to see your "important goal", they're going to see something else and get mad at it. And let's not act like this is just Republicans screaming about the slogan, you've got people from solid always-Democrat voters all the way to the right saying the same thing. To call this criticism lazy shows that you have both missed the point and also don't understand how policy actually gets pushed through and how to convince voters. This is typical progressive style thinking which leads to them being laughed at and not taken seriously. This is the core of my problem, Obama is not the average american, Obama is PRECISELY the kind of person that needs to be doing MORE than just reiterating slogans, he is a popular politician who is gifted at articulating things in a way that Americans are capable of understanding, Obama is precisely the kind of person with a responsibility to take these slogans and make the policy behind them understood by Americans. When the people in Obama's position spend their time purely criticizing framing and ignoring the issue behind the framing we're left with an endless shitshow about why whatever slogan sucks. They all suck, they're all reductive. Its like rioting, rioting is bad, noone WANTS to be in a situation where people are rioting, but criticizing the rioting is often used to ignore the reason why people are rioting. Slogans and catchphrases and shit are crappy and I wish we lived in a society where we could count on each other to trust our politicians to communicate clearly (and more importantly, communicate honestly) and trust each other to hold politicians to their word, to their stated policy be it on a website or be it from their mouths. No slogan will ever get the goal of "stop the police from murdering people, black people in particular, so flagrantly" Defund the Police has its set of problems, but any slogan will, the fact that we're so focused on criticizing the phrasing of a slogan that we ALL know has a root belief of "STOP THE POPO KILLING BLACK PEOPLE" reads to me like the typical way of deflecting acknowledging whats causing these problems so we dont feel compelled to change anything. We'll spend the entire public attention span debating the slogan and then it'll fade away from public consciousness with nothing having actually been done. I think a big issue with your take is that you refuse to acknowledge that progressive messaging is simply terrible. Pretty much everyone agrees on most points of the "defund the police" movement, but the issue is the messaging. Progressive activists seem really good at pretending that everything they say is 100% true and extremely popular when their messaging is in fact really unpopular. I think that stereotypes about democrats being out-of-touch elites are pretty disingenuous, but a huge issue is that the party's messaging has been completely controlled by the educated, "woke" activists that focus on issues and messaging that doesn't actually resonate with your average person. "Defund the police" is very divisive, even in minority communities. Regardless of the ethical correctness of the issue, the political strategy is an extremely poor one and progressives dont want to admit any fault in their political strategy. Zambrah wishes to be in a more idealistic world where people simply ignore those slogans and talk about the issues. In a vacuum, that's a great idea and certainly should be the end goal, but we don't live in that world and the average attention span these days is like 10 seconds. The whole reason we're having this discussion is so that we don't have it in the future. If slogan/messaging gets better, we won't need to argue if the slogan/message is good or bad, divisive or unifying. No one talked about "Yes We Can" because there wasn't anything to criticize it on. Everyone talked about the policies Obama had and certainly would argue if those were good or bad, but no one focused on the slogan. Make America Great Again wasn't the point of contention, but rather the policies that were attached to the slogan. MAGA is actually a fine slogan to have, but it became bad because of Trump's incredibly poor policy choices. If MAGA was used by a moderate or some random advertising company before Trump for some benign reason, no one would bat an eye. Defund the Police on the other hand, is a discussion stopper. We actually HAVE to care about the slogan which prevents us from talking about the policies. Defund the Police itself, in a vacuum, is controversial because no one knows what defund means in this context and therefore causes division. Here's an example from Cardboard Crack (a Magic: the Gathering comic series). A player wanted better, more powerful cards for the color that he plays (White). Guess what his "slogan" became? "White Power". It's a joke obviously, but it demonstrates that what we hope to achieve (getting stronger white cards in Magic) must have an acceptable and proper slogan behind it, otherwise you're going to get a lot of people mad at you and no one is going to care about your actual goal. Who's going to see "White Power" and want to stop and listen to how you want better white cards in Magic?
Sure but nobody has come up with something snappier.
‘Defund the police, refund social services’ or something rhymes a bit and sorta takes it into the domain of policies actually being demanded. More of a chant than a slogan. I suppose a lot of the progressive sacred cows are a bit harder to sell because they’re trying to deal with complex issues, sometimes changing interconnected things and yeah some people will just go ‘BUT IF THE POLICE ARE DEFUNDED WHO WILL PROTECT ME?’ and not engage whatsoever in what’s actually being proposed.
Considering a lot of people have an issue with a slogan like ‘black lives matter’ perhaps progressive messaging isn’t really the issue here.
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Canada11279 Posts
On December 04 2020 10:19 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On December 04 2020 09:57 Falling wrote:
What about the main thrust of it?
One could drop that part and not materially change the NYT's argument. If they're going to willingly include weak arguments in their case then I'm going to argue against those. If they didn't believe those arguments were worthy of defence then they shouldn't have included them. They included them and therefore they're open to attack on those.
You can attack them sure, for the other side should not have made use of a weak example (I expect it was an emotional appeal to the cultural relativist, but if you don't believe in cultural relativism, it holds little sway.) However, if you latch on to a tertiary point, then certainly you will score points. But if it is not essential to the main argument, then in scoring a couple points you will have missed the heart of the matter.
perhaps progressive messaging isn’t really the issue here.
No, if you don't intend to literally take money from the police, then I think in this particular case messaging absolutely is at issue. Demilitarize the police is about as pithy and certainly has more broad appeal than 'defund the police, but we don't actually mean defund the police, except those guys who do, but don't worry, they are in the minority.'
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On December 04 2020 10:20 Zambrah wrote:
Yes, if theres one thing we've learned its that strict reliance on polling is a strong and intelligent way to go about winning elections in the US.
What, you think there's a 30-some point polling error that justifies the political strategy that you cling to so dearly?
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Im saying we just experienced a major election cycle where Democrats did the bare minimum when they were polling to have massive gains.
Stop relying on trying to find out what people might think popular policy is and start electing politicians who will CREATE policy that is popular and hold accountable those who refuse to.
Democrats dont want to put any actual work into this, they want to support the-easy-to-support-based-on-polling solution.
I rail on Obama for his comments because he was the president, he was and is popular, and he is a gifted orator with a way with words, he is the PRIME candidate to take something like "defund the police" and deconstruct it for popular digestion, that he instead chooses to waffle about whether or not its the best three words is a dereliction of what I believe someone in his position's responsibility is.
Our politicians should be telling us what they believe is right, why they believe it is right, and what they can try to do to make what they believe in happen, I'm tired of politicians trying to figure out what we believe so they can pretend to believe in it and then do nothing with it because they either don't understand, or don't care.
Democrats come off as ivory tower elitists because they don't actually understand/don't care about the problems facing many Americans, its a complete failure on their part, and I believe its because they try too hard to develop their beliefs based on some fictional moderate swing voter instead of actually believing in something themselves.
Anyways, progressive political strategy is the one winning it's elections right now, you can come rub it in my face when Progressives run a campaign like the ones Democrats ran this go around and fuck it up as spectacularly. 'til then, Democrats ran that campaign and we should be criticizing their strategy, but I guess theyre not doing anything wrong, after all they only barely lost the house when they were projected to gain seats and are desperately praying to cling onto an even senate when they were looking to actually win it back. Yeah, thats some winning strategy right there, polling is REALLY paying off for the Democrats!
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Re: 'unfair' restrictions on religion -- there is significant statistical evidence that churches are much more likely vectors of coronavirus spread than any other business or leisure facilities. I already posted several links to studies detailing this which have gone ignored in this thread, but the argument that restrictions on churches have 'no reasoning' behind them is nonsensical. If you are genuinely trying to limit the spread of coronavirus, restrictions on religious services make perfect sense and it has nothing to do with state interfering in spiritual matters or discriminating against religious people or anything of the sort. For one, religious services do not have to be held in person -- no one is going to die if they are forced to pray on skype rather than in a fancy building for a while. If it was statistically proven that coronavirus spread is significantly more likely in, say, sushi restaurants but not any other restaurants, would you be genuinely arguing that either all restaurants should be restricted in the same way or no special restrictions should be made for sushi places? I don't think so, and that argument would be nonsensical. The same goes for restrictions on places of worship in a state where state matters are truly separate from matters of the church. If you look at the data, this isn't a baseless witch-hunt on the church goes or the state depriving people of their rights -- it's a matter of sound public policy during a national crisis.
In a multivariable analysis, a history of SARS-CoV-2 infection was negatively associated with strict social distancing (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] for outdoor social distancing, 0.10; 95% confidence interval, .03–.33). Only public transport use (aOR for >7 times vs never, 4.3) and visiting a place of worship (aOR for ≥3 times vs never, 16.0) remained significantly associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection after adjusting for strict social distancing and demographics.
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1313/5900759
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On December 04 2020 05:11 FlaShFTW wrote:Show nested quote +On December 04 2020 04:49 Nevuk wrote:
A few things can be true at once here.
Defund the police is a bad slogan for getting elected on a national level. Period.
That doesn't mean it's a bad slogan, however. It was extremely successful at getting the conversation moving and having action begin to be taken at the local level. Defund the police is a threat to police : behave better or lose funding.
Most of the activists using defund the police are from areas where the police are truly terrible and deserve to be reformed structurally (Seattle, LAPD, MSPD, NYC).
That it's being misused by Republicans in Ohio and Florida when it's being said by Democrats in NYC and Seattle isn't really a surprise. I personally don't believe that "Defund the Police" did more to cause the changes we saw at local/state levels than the protests and the news already did themselves. I don't think public officials are going to see people chanting "defund the police" in the streets and particularly care. And quite frankly, most cities have done tiny little bandaid solutions that are only meant to appease the mobs so that they'll go back to their homes until the next police brutality event happens. Defund the Police will not substantially bring about REAL change, at least, not yet it won't. And part of that, I believe, is because police will see how people react to it, the moderates, Republicans, even establishment Dems, and realize "hey this movement is actually unpopular overall, why do I have to cater to it?" And who determines if it's being "misused"? What does "defund the police" mean? It means so many different things to so many different people. And I'm not talking about Republicans, I'm talking about the people like us who actually subscribe to "Defund the Police". But even among people who believe in it, our views are so dramatically different from each other. It goes back to what I've said before: the left can't unite, they're too busy cannibalizing themselves to unite around one solid message and would rather be spread thin.
It was definitely effective at a local level in getting change in Seattle and LA. It prevented increases of funding for sure in LA. It also helped focus people's energy in an actually useful direction. Getting pissed at the police is something we do every few months and it rarely changes anything. Actually threatening their funding is more effective at forcing behavioral change than the slaps on the wrist given to even the worst offenders.
I will say that I doubt the protests changed anything. They've literally never had an effect in western democracies. The largest protests ever were against the war in Iraq before it happened. I think the riots, as they always do, had more of an effect.
I will say, that as a national effort, I don't think it's worth keeping as a slogan anymore. We can make the case for the actual effects, but we tried it as a slogan and it just hasn't worked. It's the sort of thing that works better as an informal name for a plan than an actual policy.
It is is pretty... hypocritical? strange? of Obama to call it out when he dealt with the same controversy about "radical islamic terrorism" and him refusing to say it for forever (the exact same arguments for him saying it could be applied to dropping the slogan).
While polls can be off, 30% is too large to be ignored. It's important to remember statistical confidence intervals here : a poll is going to be off by 5-7% at least 1/20 times, more than 8-10% 1/50,12-13% 1/100, and so on. Past 20% and you start to get into the crazy 1/100000 chances instead (after 10% I'm just guessing as I've never seen it broken down). It is entirely possible that Defund the police is only 20% negative, but that's still too far down.
On the whole, the polls were pretty good this year. A little worse than average (and worse than 2016, where they were only off by 2 points), but we're talking 4 points off instead of 3.7. That's actually pretty impressive considering we're in the middle of a pandemic, we shattered records for voting, some Trump voters have stated they lied to pollsters, and that many people voted by mail. The occasional outlier poll (like the one showing Biden up 17 points in MI) is fine. Take them as a group, not in isolation.
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On December 04 2020 10:53 Zambrah wrote:
Im saying we just experienced a major election cycle where Democrats did the bare minimum when they were polling to have massive gains.
Stop relying on trying to find out what people might think popular policy is and start electing politicians who will CREATE policy that is popular and hold accountable those who refuse to.
Democrats dont want to put any actual work into this, they want to support the-easy-to-support-based-on-polling solution.
I rail on Obama for his comments because he was the president, he was and is popular, and he is a gifted orator with a way with words, he is the PRIME candidate to take something like "defund the police" and deconstruct it for popular digestion, that he instead chooses to waffle about whether or not its the best three words is a dereliction of what I believe someone in his position's responsibility is.
Our politicians should be telling us what they believe is right, why they believe it is right, and what they can try to do to make what they believe in happen, I'm tired of politicians trying to figure out what we believe so they can pretend to believe in it and then do nothing with it because they either don't understand, or don't care.
Democrats come off as ivory tower elitists because they don't actually understand/don't care about the problems facing many Americans, its a complete failure on their part, and I believe its because they try too hard to develop their beliefs based on some fictional moderate swing voter instead of actually believing in something themselves.
Anyways, progressive political strategy is the one winning it's elections right now, you can come rub it in my face when Progressives run a campaign like the ones Democrats ran this go around and fuck it up as spectacularly. 'til then, Democrats ran that campaign and we should be criticizing their strategy, but I guess theyre not doing anything wrong, after all they only barely lost the house when they were projected to gain seats and are desperately praying to cling onto an even senate when they were looking to actually win it back. Yeah, thats some winning strategy right there, polling is REALLY paying off for the Democrats!
It doesn't really seem like it's worth continuing to entertain discussion with you when all you want to do is straw man your opponents so you can argue against what you want.
None of us in this thread are saying that establishment Democrats are doing things right. In fact, I don't think anyone in this thread could even be seen as a solid, establishment-type Democrat. We're criticizing your child-like naiveite when it comes to the world of politics.
The bolded part exemplifies this perfectly. You can't just wave a wand and magically elect the politicians you want. You have to win those votes first if you want to make the change we're all pursuing.
Also, evidence that current progressive campaigning won't work in a widespread manner? The fact that "Defund the Police" has become such a political albatross. Not only this
I will say that I doubt the protests changed anything. They've literally never had an effect in western democracies. The largest protests ever were against the war in Iraq before it happened.
This is patently false and historically short-sighted.
The goal of protests isn't to cause direct political consequences. That's what campaigns and voting are for.
The goal of protests is to empower social movements that then put pressure on the political apparatus. Defund the Police is absolutely a perfect example of this. Also, several progressive candidates lost elections in not-so-safe districts.
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Northern Ireland23957 Posts
On December 04 2020 10:27 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On December 04 2020 10:19 KwarK wrote:On December 04 2020 09:57 Falling wrote:
What about the main thrust of it?
One could drop that part and not materially change the NYT's argument. If they're going to willingly include weak arguments in their case then I'm going to argue against those. If they didn't believe those arguments were worthy of defence then they shouldn't have included them. They included them and therefore they're open to attack on those. You can attack them sure, for the other side should not have made use of a weak example (I expect it was an emotional appeal to the cultural relativist, but if you don't believe in cultural relativism, it holds little sway.) However, if you latch on to a tertiary point, then certainly you will score points. But if it is not essential to the main argument, then in scoring a couple points you will have missed the heart of the matter. No, if you don't intend to literally take money from the police, then I think in this particular case messaging absolutely is at issue. Demilitarize the police is about as pithy and certainly has more broad appeal than 'defund the police, but we don't actually mean defund the police, except those guys who do, but don't worry, they are in the minority.'
But they do mean defund the police, least by and large far as I can tell and reallocate that money into holes the police are filling that they are ill-equipped for. So there is that inconvenient hurdle to overcome in terms of messaging.
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United States10059 Posts
On December 04 2020 11:22 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On December 04 2020 10:53 Zambrah wrote:
Im saying we just experienced a major election cycle where Democrats did the bare minimum when they were polling to have massive gains.
Stop relying on trying to find out what people might think popular policy is and start electing politicians who will CREATE policy that is popular and hold accountable those who refuse to.
Democrats dont want to put any actual work into this, they want to support the-easy-to-support-based-on-polling solution.
I rail on Obama for his comments because he was the president, he was and is popular, and he is a gifted orator with a way with words, he is the PRIME candidate to take something like "defund the police" and deconstruct it for popular digestion, that he instead chooses to waffle about whether or not its the best three words is a dereliction of what I believe someone in his position's responsibility is.
Our politicians should be telling us what they believe is right, why they believe it is right, and what they can try to do to make what they believe in happen, I'm tired of politicians trying to figure out what we believe so they can pretend to believe in it and then do nothing with it because they either don't understand, or don't care.
Democrats come off as ivory tower elitists because they don't actually understand/don't care about the problems facing many Americans, its a complete failure on their part, and I believe its because they try too hard to develop their beliefs based on some fictional moderate swing voter instead of actually believing in something themselves.
Anyways, progressive political strategy is the one winning it's elections right now, you can come rub it in my face when Progressives run a campaign like the ones Democrats ran this go around and fuck it up as spectacularly. 'til then, Democrats ran that campaign and we should be criticizing their strategy, but I guess theyre not doing anything wrong, after all they only barely lost the house when they were projected to gain seats and are desperately praying to cling onto an even senate when they were looking to actually win it back. Yeah, thats some winning strategy right there, polling is REALLY paying off for the Democrats! It doesn't really seem like it's worth continuing to entertain discussion with you when all you want to do is straw man your opponents so you can argue against what you want. None of us in this thread are saying that establishment Democrats are doing things right. In fact, I don't think anyone in this thread could even be seen as a solid, establishment-type Democrat. We're criticizing your child-like naiveite when it comes to the world of politics. The bolded part exemplifies this perfectly. You can't just wave a wand and magically elect the politicians you want. You have to win those votes first if you want to make the change we're all pursuing.Also, evidence that current progressive campaigning won't work in a widespread manner? The fact that "Defund the Police" has become such a political albatross. Not only this Show nested quote +I will say that I doubt the protests changed anything. They've literally never had an effect in western democracies. The largest protests ever were against the war in Iraq before it happened. This is patently false and historically short-sighted. The goal of protests isn't to cause direct political consequences. That's what campaigns and voting are for. The goal of protests is to empower social movements that then put pressure on the political apparatus. Defund the Police is absolutely a perfect example of this. Also, several progressive candidates lost elections in not-so-safe districts.
Thank you for getting it. People are so tied up in idealistic and what they perceive as how the world should operate. That's great, and you should strive and fight to reach those goals, but that's simply not how the world operates. You don't play by a different ruleset simply because you don't believe in the current rules. It's like Idra getting mad when people cheese him and he bitches saying how cheese shouldn't be a thing. People who go about this strategy will never achieve anything because no one is going to listen to them. Play within the rules, and stretch those rules to push society to the point where your ideal world now intersects with society.
On December 04 2020 11:38 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On December 04 2020 10:27 Falling wrote:On December 04 2020 10:19 KwarK wrote:On December 04 2020 09:57 Falling wrote:
What about the main thrust of it?
One could drop that part and not materially change the NYT's argument. If they're going to willingly include weak arguments in their case then I'm going to argue against those. If they didn't believe those arguments were worthy of defence then they shouldn't have included them. They included them and therefore they're open to attack on those. You can attack them sure, for the other side should not have made use of a weak example (I expect it was an emotional appeal to the cultural relativist, but if you don't believe in cultural relativism, it holds little sway.) However, if you latch on to a tertiary point, then certainly you will score points. But if it is not essential to the main argument, then in scoring a couple points you will have missed the heart of the matter. perhaps progressive messaging isn’t really the issue here. No, if you don't intend to literally take money from the police, then I think in this particular case messaging absolutely is at issue. Demilitarize the police is about as pithy and certainly has more broad appeal than 'defund the police, but we don't actually mean defund the police, except those guys who do, but don't worry, they are in the minority.' But they do mean defund the police, least by and large far as I can tell and reallocate that money into holes the police are filling that they are ill-equipped for. So there is that inconvenient hurdle to overcome in terms of messaging.
I think almost everyone who supports "defund the police" means for the funding of the police to at least be reduced. How much it should be reduced is where the narrative splits in the left-leaning groups. Radicals want the police abolished, moderates and lean-left individuals only want a little bit of defunding. More progressive want a significant defunding. It just depends if you view the definition of defunding as an absolute or a sliding scale that allows for subjective interpretation.
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+ Show Spoiler +On December 04 2020 11:22 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On December 04 2020 10:53 Zambrah wrote:
Im saying we just experienced a major election cycle where Democrats did the bare minimum when they were polling to have massive gains.
Stop relying on trying to find out what people might think popular policy is and start electing politicians who will CREATE policy that is popular and hold accountable those who refuse to.
Democrats dont want to put any actual work into this, they want to support the-easy-to-support-based-on-polling solution.
I rail on Obama for his comments because he was the president, he was and is popular, and he is a gifted orator with a way with words, he is the PRIME candidate to take something like "defund the police" and deconstruct it for popular digestion, that he instead chooses to waffle about whether or not its the best three words is a dereliction of what I believe someone in his position's responsibility is.
Our politicians should be telling us what they believe is right, why they believe it is right, and what they can try to do to make what they believe in happen, I'm tired of politicians trying to figure out what we believe so they can pretend to believe in it and then do nothing with it because they either don't understand, or don't care.
Democrats come off as ivory tower elitists because they don't actually understand/don't care about the problems facing many Americans, its a complete failure on their part, and I believe its because they try too hard to develop their beliefs based on some fictional moderate swing voter instead of actually believing in something themselves.
Anyways, progressive political strategy is the one winning it's elections right now, you can come rub it in my face when Progressives run a campaign like the ones Democrats ran this go around and fuck it up as spectacularly. 'til then, Democrats ran that campaign and we should be criticizing their strategy, but I guess theyre not doing anything wrong, after all they only barely lost the house when they were projected to gain seats and are desperately praying to cling onto an even senate when they were looking to actually win it back. Yeah, thats some winning strategy right there, polling is REALLY paying off for the Democrats! It doesn't really seem like it's worth continuing to entertain discussion with you when all you want to do is straw man your opponents so you can argue against what you want. None of us in this thread are saying that establishment Democrats are doing things right. In fact, I don't think anyone in this thread could even be seen as a solid, establishment-type Democrat. We're criticizing your child-like naiveite when it comes to the world of politics. The bolded part exemplifies this perfectly. You can't just wave a wand and magically elect the politicians you want. You have to win those votes first if you want to make the change we're all pursuing.Also, evidence that current progressive campaigning won't work in a widespread manner? The fact that "Defund the Police" has become such a political albatross. Not only this Show nested quote +I will say that I doubt the protests changed anything. They've literally never had an effect in western democracies. The largest protests ever were against the war in Iraq before it happened. This is patently false and historically short-sighted. The goal of protests isn't to cause direct political consequences. That's what campaigns and voting are for. The goal of protests is to empower social movements that then put pressure on the political apparatus. Defund the Police is absolutely a perfect example of this. Also, several progressive candidates lost elections in not-so-safe districts.
The bolded part exemplifies this perfectly. You can't just wave a wand and magically elect the politicians you want. You have to win those votes first if you want to make the change we're all pursuing.
Fucking obviously, but my entire point is that the Democrats way of winning votes is shit, and their way of winning votes is trying to tailor make their message to match what they think people want, which is their problem with "Defund the police," how is that not clear? When Obama criticizes Defund the Police as a slogan hes not criticizing the ideas or engaging with them in any meaningful way, hes doing the same shit Democrats do, they want to chant slogans Americans agree with, whereas I believe we should be taking these slogans and breaking them down and educating Americans about what they mean. The slogan is just a cry for help, we can complain that its not perfect, which to reiterate ITS NOT PERFECT, or we can have our politicians say, "Hey, this is what people are trying to get at when they say "defund the police," black people are being killed by police for no reason and it has to stop, we should be diverting funds away from the police and into things like social services." instead of "We should pick a new slogan, this one is unpopular."
I think a big issue with your take is that you refuse to acknowledge that progressive messaging is simply terrible.
Ive stated all slogans are flawed
The problem is that you are so emotionally vested in your ideology that you refuse to acknowledge any problems that it has in the system that we're dealing with.
Again, I've stated that all slogans are flawed, including Defund the Police, I acknowledge that progressivism isnt literally pure popularity that everyone loves, I acknowledge that it isn't some free win for politics, however there is plenty to learn from the way progressives are campaigning and interacting with their constituents, and given Democrats strategies seem shit maybe we should take a look at changing it up, looking at what we can learn from progressive victories.
I know you seem to have some incredibly optimistic belief in the mental and ethical capacity of the population at large
I've been extremely vocal in this thread about Americans being stupid and needing to have policy dumbed down for them.
I've stated Americans are generally idiots and cant understand nuance, my ENTIRE POINT is that politicians should be there to explain nuanced policy in a way that Americans can understand. When Americans are out there protesting, shouting "DEFUND THE POLICE!" politicians shouldnt say, "our focus groups have indicated this is not appealing to the midwesterners" they should be listening, trying to understand the root of the cry for help from the people being abused, to formulate possible policies, and explain this to their constituents in such a way that they can understand it.
This is not idealism, its a request to hold our god damn politicians to some god damned standards, why does this have to be idealism? Why is demanding politicians make an effort to help explain things so that America at large can get a grasp on them so controversial?
@Flash
Heres how the world should work in my opinion
We have an idealized version of the world
We try to make that idealized version of the world happen
Noone is advocating playing by some special new ruleset, appealing to people and trying to inform them in terms that they can understand shouldn't be idealism, it should be considered political strategy, forgoing strict reliance on polling in favor of grassroots organization that actually talks to people, explains issues to people, tries to change minds. Democrats have been trying to change their own minds to match what they think people are thinking, lets try the other way for once?
Theres no reason that new political strategy has to be considered fantastical and pie-in-the-sky, if Democrats got off their asses, got down to work, really went in on building relationships with their constituents they'd be so much stronger in elections.
Instead we get interactions like Diane Feinstein telling kids off, and Eliot Engel saying he wouldnt give a fuck if he didnt have a primary coming up.
These are not the actions of a party striving to keep in touch with it's voter base, these are the interactions of pricks who don't care.
Democrats are running against the Republicans, a remarkably callous party whose last president was a literal clown with more moral failings than most people can properly conceive, they shouldn't be in a position where things are as close for them as they are. Their strategy is bad, there are other strategies to try, we shouldn't be anchored to old ways of doing things, especially when those old ways don't exactly look like they're holding up.
EDIT: Hell, even copying the morally bankrupt Republican strategies would probably be better for Democrats than their current track of alienating progressives and letting Republicans control the overall narrative.
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On December 04 2020 11:20 Salazarz wrote:Re: 'unfair' restrictions on religion -- there is significant statistical evidence that churches are much more likely vectors of coronavirus spread than any other business or leisure facilities. I already posted several links to studies detailing this which have gone ignored in this thread, but the argument that restrictions on churches have 'no reasoning' behind them is nonsensical. If you are genuinely trying to limit the spread of coronavirus, restrictions on religious services make perfect sense and it has nothing to do with state interfering in spiritual matters or discriminating against religious people or anything of the sort. For one, religious services do not have to be held in person -- no one is going to die if they are forced to pray on skype rather than in a fancy building for a while. If it was statistically proven that coronavirus spread is significantly more likely in, say, sushi restaurants but not any other restaurants, would you be genuinely arguing that either all restaurants should be restricted in the same way or no special restrictions should be made for sushi places? I don't think so, and that argument would be nonsensical. The same goes for restrictions on places of worship in a state where state matters are truly separate from matters of the church. If you look at the data, this isn't a baseless witch-hunt on the church goes or the state depriving people of their rights -- it's a matter of sound public policy during a national crisis. Show nested quote +In a multivariable analysis, a history of SARS-CoV-2 infection was negatively associated with strict social distancing (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] for outdoor social distancing, 0.10; 95% confidence interval, .03–.33). Only public transport use (aOR for >7 times vs never, 4.3) and visiting a place of worship (aOR for ≥3 times vs never, 16.0) remained significantly associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection after adjusting for strict social distancing and demographics. https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1313/5900759
Thanks for posting that. Unless I missed it I don't see this point addressed in the NYT article.
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On December 04 2020 12:13 Zambrah wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On December 04 2020 11:22 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On December 04 2020 10:53 Zambrah wrote:
Im saying we just experienced a major election cycle where Democrats did the bare minimum when they were polling to have massive gains.
Stop relying on trying to find out what people might think popular policy is and start electing politicians who will CREATE policy that is popular and hold accountable those who refuse to.
Democrats dont want to put any actual work into this, they want to support the-easy-to-support-based-on-polling solution.
I rail on Obama for his comments because he was the president, he was and is popular, and he is a gifted orator with a way with words, he is the PRIME candidate to take something like "defund the police" and deconstruct it for popular digestion, that he instead chooses to waffle about whether or not its the best three words is a dereliction of what I believe someone in his position's responsibility is.
Our politicians should be telling us what they believe is right, why they believe it is right, and what they can try to do to make what they believe in happen, I'm tired of politicians trying to figure out what we believe so they can pretend to believe in it and then do nothing with it because they either don't understand, or don't care.
Democrats come off as ivory tower elitists because they don't actually understand/don't care about the problems facing many Americans, its a complete failure on their part, and I believe its because they try too hard to develop their beliefs based on some fictional moderate swing voter instead of actually believing in something themselves.
Anyways, progressive political strategy is the one winning it's elections right now, you can come rub it in my face when Progressives run a campaign like the ones Democrats ran this go around and fuck it up as spectacularly. 'til then, Democrats ran that campaign and we should be criticizing their strategy, but I guess theyre not doing anything wrong, after all they only barely lost the house when they were projected to gain seats and are desperately praying to cling onto an even senate when they were looking to actually win it back. Yeah, thats some winning strategy right there, polling is REALLY paying off for the Democrats! It doesn't really seem like it's worth continuing to entertain discussion with you when all you want to do is straw man your opponents so you can argue against what you want. None of us in this thread are saying that establishment Democrats are doing things right. In fact, I don't think anyone in this thread could even be seen as a solid, establishment-type Democrat. We're criticizing your child-like naiveite when it comes to the world of politics. The bolded part exemplifies this perfectly. You can't just wave a wand and magically elect the politicians you want. You have to win those votes first if you want to make the change we're all pursuing.Also, evidence that current progressive campaigning won't work in a widespread manner? The fact that "Defund the Police" has become such a political albatross. Not only this Show nested quote +I will say that I doubt the protests changed anything. They've literally never had an effect in western democracies. The largest protests ever were against the war in Iraq before it happened. This is patently false and historically short-sighted. The goal of protests isn't to cause direct political consequences. That's what campaigns and voting are for. The goal of protests is to empower social movements that then put pressure on the political apparatus. Defund the Police is absolutely a perfect example of this. Also, several progressive candidates lost elections in not-so-safe districts. Show nested quote +The bolded part exemplifies this perfectly. You can't just wave a wand and magically elect the politicians you want. You have to win those votes first if you want to make the change we're all pursuing. Fucking obviously, but my entire point is that the Democrats way of winning votes is shit, and their way of winning votes is trying to tailor make their message to match what they think people want, which is their problem with "Defund the police," how is that not clear? When Obama criticizes Defund the Police as a slogan hes not criticizing the ideas or engaging with them in any meaningful way, hes doing the same shit Democrats do, they want to chant slogans Americans agree with, whereas I believe we should be taking these slogans and breaking them down and educating Americans about what they mean. The slogan is just a cry for help, we can complain that its not perfect, which to reiterate ITS NOT PERFECT, or we can have our politicians say, "Hey, this is what people are trying to get at when they say "defund the police," black people are being killed by police for no reason and it has to stop, we should be diverting funds away from the police and into things like social services." instead of "We should pick a new slogan, this one is unpopular." Show nested quote +I think a big issue with your take is that you refuse to acknowledge that progressive messaging is simply terrible. Ive stated all slogans are flawed Show nested quote +The problem is that you are so emotionally vested in your ideology that you refuse to acknowledge any problems that it has in the system that we're dealing with. Again, I've stated that all slogans are flawed, including Defund the Police, I acknowledge that progressivism isnt literally pure popularity that everyone loves, I acknowledge that it isn't some free win for politics, however there is plenty to learn from the way progressives are campaigning and interacting with their constituents, and given Democrats strategies seem shit maybe we should take a look at changing it up, looking at what we can learn from progressive victories. Show nested quote +I know you seem to have some incredibly optimistic belief in the mental and ethical capacity of the population at large I've been extremely vocal in this thread about Americans being stupid and needing to have policy dumbed down for them. I've stated Americans are generally idiots and cant understand nuance, my ENTIRE POINT is that politicians should be there to explain nuanced policy in a way that Americans can understand. When Americans are out there protesting, shouting "DEFUND THE POLICE!" politicians shouldnt say, "our focus groups have indicated this is not appealing to the midwesterners" they should be listening, trying to understand the root of the cry for help from the people being abused, to formulate possible policies, and explain this to their constituents in such a way that they can understand it. This is not idealism, its a request to hold our god damn politicians to some god damned standards, why does this have to be idealism? Why is demanding politicians make an effort to help explain things so that America at large can get a grasp on them so controversial?
First off, it seems like you're going to have an aneurysm if you keep pushing this conversation.
Second, "holding politicians to a standard" is a meaningless phrase in this context and is divorced from the topic at hand. The precise problem is you keep insisting that having politicians dig through the nuance of why their policy positions are good is somehow a winning strategy when it has been shown otherwise (isn't this policy wonk stuff what both Clinton and Warren were known for?).
Third, you keep going on about how the centrist Democrat way is crap. This is you creating a straw man, because no one said that this centrist political strategy is the way to go. I explicitly laid out that progressives should be making a hard turn into economic and healthcare messaging because the social/racial justice messaging simply hasn't worked.
Finally, you keep framing this as if the problem is that non-progressive Democrats simply failed to properly motivate their base and move Democrats to vote. The entire paradigm from which your argument stems from is undermined because this election had some of the most incredible turnout in living memory. The problem wasn't that centrist Democrats didn't properly frame progressive policies to their base and we didn't get enough turnout. The problem was that we had basically the best turnout that we could hope for an still a massive swathe of the country actively chose to support a party built on racism and lies. In other words, the Democratic political strategy failed to adequately capture racist or
(and this is the important part) race apathetic voters. Democrats lost Florida because of their failure with the Cuban Latino vote. They failed to turn Texas blue because of their underperformance with the Latino vote there. They severely underperformed in the senate race in Maine and failed to flip the NC senate race (or win the presidential race there), both of which relied on winning non-urban white voters. Most importantly, they failed to win state-level elections basically everywhere. I'm willing to bet that an extremely strong, laser-focused economic and healthcare message from progressives could've performed much better with these groups and possibly won them more races.
One other thing; you seem to have this odd idea that politicians should push particular ideas until you convert people to said ideas. That is, honestly, pretty absurd, as it is not only not how people work (people are remarkably inflexible when it comes to ideology), but it's simply not how politics work. It's important to have politicians that are principled and not complete opportunists, but, at the same time, the entire idea behind democracy is that the people pick representatives that represent their interests. So yes, parties should be tailoring their message to what is popular with the people. That is the definition of a healthy system. You shouldn't have two parties that embody wildly extreme ideologies and then constantly try to force the electorate into one of the two camps. This is how Republicans are remarkably successful; I don't think that many people here genuinely believe that Republicans hold the cultural ideals that they espouse (many people here have explicitly said as much), but rather that they tailor their party message and capitalize on conservative cultural grievances to win support, even if their ideology is bogus and severely harmful to all except the rich capitalist class.
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+ Show Spoiler +On December 04 2020 13:01 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On December 04 2020 12:13 Zambrah wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On December 04 2020 11:22 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On December 04 2020 10:53 Zambrah wrote:
Im saying we just experienced a major election cycle where Democrats did the bare minimum when they were polling to have massive gains.
Stop relying on trying to find out what people might think popular policy is and start electing politicians who will CREATE policy that is popular and hold accountable those who refuse to.
Democrats dont want to put any actual work into this, they want to support the-easy-to-support-based-on-polling solution.
I rail on Obama for his comments because he was the president, he was and is popular, and he is a gifted orator with a way with words, he is the PRIME candidate to take something like "defund the police" and deconstruct it for popular digestion, that he instead chooses to waffle about whether or not its the best three words is a dereliction of what I believe someone in his position's responsibility is.
Our politicians should be telling us what they believe is right, why they believe it is right, and what they can try to do to make what they believe in happen, I'm tired of politicians trying to figure out what we believe so they can pretend to believe in it and then do nothing with it because they either don't understand, or don't care.
Democrats come off as ivory tower elitists because they don't actually understand/don't care about the problems facing many Americans, its a complete failure on their part, and I believe its because they try too hard to develop their beliefs based on some fictional moderate swing voter instead of actually believing in something themselves.
Anyways, progressive political strategy is the one winning it's elections right now, you can come rub it in my face when Progressives run a campaign like the ones Democrats ran this go around and fuck it up as spectacularly. 'til then, Democrats ran that campaign and we should be criticizing their strategy, but I guess theyre not doing anything wrong, after all they only barely lost the house when they were projected to gain seats and are desperately praying to cling onto an even senate when they were looking to actually win it back. Yeah, thats some winning strategy right there, polling is REALLY paying off for the Democrats! It doesn't really seem like it's worth continuing to entertain discussion with you when all you want to do is straw man your opponents so you can argue against what you want. None of us in this thread are saying that establishment Democrats are doing things right. In fact, I don't think anyone in this thread could even be seen as a solid, establishment-type Democrat. We're criticizing your child-like naiveite when it comes to the world of politics. The bolded part exemplifies this perfectly. You can't just wave a wand and magically elect the politicians you want. You have to win those votes first if you want to make the change we're all pursuing.Also, evidence that current progressive campaigning won't work in a widespread manner? The fact that "Defund the Police" has become such a political albatross. Not only this Show nested quote +I will say that I doubt the protests changed anything. They've literally never had an effect in western democracies. The largest protests ever were against the war in Iraq before it happened. This is patently false and historically short-sighted. The goal of protests isn't to cause direct political consequences. That's what campaigns and voting are for. The goal of protests is to empower social movements that then put pressure on the political apparatus. Defund the Police is absolutely a perfect example of this. Also, several progressive candidates lost elections in not-so-safe districts. The bolded part exemplifies this perfectly. You can't just wave a wand and magically elect the politicians you want. You have to win those votes first if you want to make the change we're all pursuing. Fucking obviously, but my entire point is that the Democrats way of winning votes is shit, and their way of winning votes is trying to tailor make their message to match what they think people want, which is their problem with "Defund the police," how is that not clear? When Obama criticizes Defund the Police as a slogan hes not criticizing the ideas or engaging with them in any meaningful way, hes doing the same shit Democrats do, they want to chant slogans Americans agree with, whereas I believe we should be taking these slogans and breaking them down and educating Americans about what they mean. The slogan is just a cry for help, we can complain that its not perfect, which to reiterate ITS NOT PERFECT, or we can have our politicians say, "Hey, this is what people are trying to get at when they say "defund the police," black people are being killed by police for no reason and it has to stop, we should be diverting funds away from the police and into things like social services." instead of "We should pick a new slogan, this one is unpopular." I think a big issue with your take is that you refuse to acknowledge that progressive messaging is simply terrible. Ive stated all slogans are flawed The problem is that you are so emotionally vested in your ideology that you refuse to acknowledge any problems that it has in the system that we're dealing with. Again, I've stated that all slogans are flawed, including Defund the Police, I acknowledge that progressivism isnt literally pure popularity that everyone loves, I acknowledge that it isn't some free win for politics, however there is plenty to learn from the way progressives are campaigning and interacting with their constituents, and given Democrats strategies seem shit maybe we should take a look at changing it up, looking at what we can learn from progressive victories. I know you seem to have some incredibly optimistic belief in the mental and ethical capacity of the population at large I've been extremely vocal in this thread about Americans being stupid and needing to have policy dumbed down for them. I've stated Americans are generally idiots and cant understand nuance, my ENTIRE POINT is that politicians should be there to explain nuanced policy in a way that Americans can understand. When Americans are out there protesting, shouting "DEFUND THE POLICE!" politicians shouldnt say, "our focus groups have indicated this is not appealing to the midwesterners" they should be listening, trying to understand the root of the cry for help from the people being abused, to formulate possible policies, and explain this to their constituents in such a way that they can understand it. This is not idealism, its a request to hold our god damn politicians to some god damned standards, why does this have to be idealism? Why is demanding politicians make an effort to help explain things so that America at large can get a grasp on them so controversial? First off, it seems like you're going to have an aneurysm if you keep pushing this conversation. Second, "holding politicians to a standard" is a meaningless phrase in this context and is divorced from the topic at hand. The precise problem is you keep insisting that having politicians dig through the nuance of why their policy positions are good is somehow a winning strategy when it has been shown otherwise (isn't this policy wonk stuff what both Clinton and Warren were known for?). Third, you keep going on about how the centrist Democrat way is crap. This is you creating a straw man, because no one said that this centrist political strategy is the way to go. I explicitly laid out that progressives should be making a hard turn into economic and healthcare messaging because the social/racial justice messaging simply hasn't worked. Finally, you keep framing this as if the problem is that non-progressive Democrats simply failed to properly motivate their base and move Democrats to vote. The entire paradigm from which your argument stems from is undermined because this election had some of the most incredible turnout in living memory. The problem wasn't that centrist Democrats didn't properly frame progressive policies to their base and we didn't get enough turnout. The problem was that we had basically the best turnout that we could hope for an still a massive swathe of the country actively chose to support a party built on racism and lies. In other words, the Democratic political strategy failed to adequately capture racist or (and this is the important part) race apathetic voters. Democrats lost Florida because of their failure with the Cuban Latino vote. They failed to turn Texas blue because of their underperformance with the Latino vote there. They severely underperformed in the senate race in Maine and failed to flip the NC senate race (or win the presidential race there), both of which relied on winning non-urban white voters. Most importantly, they failed to win state-level elections basically everywhere. I'm willing to bet that an extremely strong, laser-focused economic and healthcare message from progressives could've performed much better with these groups and possibly won them more races. One other thing; you seem to have this odd idea that politicians should push particular ideas until you convert people to said ideas. That is, honestly, pretty absurd, as it is not only not how people work (people are remarkably inflexible when it comes to ideology), but it's simply not how politics work. It's important to have politicians that are principled and not complete opportunists, but, at the same time, the entire idea behind democracy is that the people pick representatives that represent their interests. So yes, parties should be tailoring their message to what is popular with the people. That is the definition of a healthy system. You shouldn't have two parties that embody wildly extreme ideologies and then constantly try to force the electorate into one of the two camps. This is how Republicans are remarkably successful; I don't think that many people here genuinely believe that Republicans hold the cultural ideals that they espouse (many people here have explicitly said as much), but rather that they tailor their party message and capitalize on conservative cultural grievances to win support, even if their ideology is bogus and severely harmful to all except the rich capitalist class.
Second, "holding politicians to a standard" is a meaningless phrase in this context and is divorced from the topic at hand. The precise problem is you keep insisting that having politicians dig through the nuance of why their policy positions are good is somehow a winning strategy when it has been shown otherwise (isn't this policy wonk stuff what both Clinton and Warren were known for?).
Let me say this for the umpteenth time,
DIGESTIBLE TERMS. My guy, I repeat this ad nauseum. Do you believe that every American is literally mentally handicapped and incapable of being talked to? That they are literally incapable of learning, even if things are broken down in terms that they can begin to understand? Politicians should break. the. stuff. down. Break it down. Make it understandable. Make it able to be comprehended. Simplify it as best as possible.
I have not ONCE, not a SINGLE TIME, advocated for Clinton style policy wonking, for someone accusing me of strawmanning you can't seem to stop assigning things I have specifically not advocated for to me.
Holding politicians to a higher standard is integral to this if you understand my viewpoint that they have a responsibility to articulate their policies to their constituents so that they can understand it. Its precisely why Hillary's policy wonking is a failure, but not because she tried to sell policies, but because of the way she tried to sell policies. If we had someone like Obama out there making these things comprehendable to the general populace we might have the ability to actually start swaying people, but since we only seem to focus on whether or not the slogan is good enough we cant get there, and given no slogan will ever properly articulate policy well enough it becomes a deathspiral of nothingness.
These people are our leaders, they're the ones we need to speak to us and organize us, that they consistently fail to do this does not lessen my belief that they should be doing it. They're capable of directing the country's dialogue, they're high profile, they're powerful, they're educated and sometimes even intelligent, they're in a unique position to be doing better than "Defund the Police is a bad slogan." They should engage with the ideas behind Defund the Police, not just dismiss it because the slogan is divisive.
Third, you keep going on about how the centrist Democrat way is crap. This is you creating a straw man, because no one said that this centrist political strategy is the way to go. I explicitly laid out that progressives should be making a hard turn into economic and healthcare messaging because the social/racial justice messaging simply hasn't worked.
Trying to craft a political slogan that is appealing to everyone somehow IS Centrist Democrat political strategy. Its trying to have a message that aligns to as many people as possible, and it does not work out for Democrats. This insistence on talking about the phrasing of the slogan is exactly the kind of crap strategy Centrist Democrats insist on engaging with, instead of trying to turn it around and make something popular, the conversation is about how to pick something that might already be theoretically popular.
Progressives are doing fine in their races, they're not dominating the political scene from the get go, but Progressives are doing fine, they're not completely forgoing Economic and Healthcare stuff, I dont know why youre even bringing this up, that hasnt suddenly disappeared because they also support BLM and Defund the Police.
Finally, you keep framing this as if the problem is that non-progressive Democrats simply failed to properly motivate their base and move Democrats to vote. The entire paradigm from which your argument stems from is undermined because this election had some of the most incredible turnout in living memory. The problem wasn't that centrist Democrats didn't properly frame progressive policies to their base and we didn't get enough turnout. The problem was that we had basically the best turnout that we could hope for an still a massive swathe of the country actively chose to support a party built on racism and lies. In other words, the Democratic political strategy failed to adequately capture racist or
(and this is the important part) race apathetic voters. Democrats lost Florida because of their failure with the Cuban Latino vote. They failed to turn Texas blue because of their underperformance with the Latino vote there. They severely underperformed in the senate race in Maine and failed to flip the NC senate race (or win the presidential race there), both of which relied on winning non-urban white voters. Most importantly, they failed to win state-level elections basically everywhere. I'm willing to bet that an extremely strong, laser-focused economic and healthcare message from progressives could've performed much better with these groups and possibly won them more races.
Biden actively decided that Latino votes weren't in his path to victory, Democrats opted to neglect the Latino vote overall, in FL they likely were hopeless given how Democrats seem to have any and all claims of communism and socialism stick regardless of the old white Strom Thurmond eulogizing conservative. Overall latino vote was 100% winnable with some actual reachout in states like Texas, sure it requires a lot of hard work on the ground, but theyre important votes that are possible to get. These are the kinds of failures that frighten me, this is picking the candidate based on predicting Republican attacks and believing that they somehow wont levy their attacks at literally anyone, and that a fair segment of the population is inclined to buy it. Its also ignoring a sector of the voting populace entirely, and one that is perfectly likely to flip Republican entirely given the general conservativism inherent to Latino communities. Republicans would be a serious force if they could move away from the racist bullshit and get Latinos on board, and if Democrats don't do better that might actually happen in the future.
Progressives have shown solid strength in building some campaign groundswells, Charles Booker put up one hell of a fight against McGrath, and by extension the Democrat funding machine, if we could have Progressives receive the support campaigns like McGrath receive we'd be stronger, not just because of policy, but because the methods Progressives use to campaign are better. They're better at grassroots organizing and they're better at using new media, its a solid strategy thats making gains, even if its not always winning against DNC money, its putting up some good fights against pretty brutal odds.
Universal healthcare, increasing the minimum wage, making the mega rich pay their fair share, they will be continue to be core to progressive movements. You can never completely dodge issues though, I'd rather have a strong simple belief to work through rather than pull a Flip Flop and undermine every other policy youre proposing. We can't brush racial injustice under the rug, best we can do it articulate why the ideas behind Defund the Police are good in as simple a way as we can and keep pushing for the overwhelmingly popular Universal healthcare and fair taxation and wages stuff.
One other thing; you seem to have this odd idea that politicians should push particular ideas until you convert people to said ideas. That is, honestly, pretty absurd, as it is not only not how people work (people are remarkably inflexible when it comes to ideology), but it's simply not how politics work. It's important to have politicians that are principled and not complete opportunists, but, at the same time, the entire idea behind democracy is that the people pick representatives that represent their interests. So yes, parties should be tailoring their message to what is popular with the people. That is the definition of a healthy system. You shouldn't have two parties that embody wildly extreme ideologies and then constantly try to force the electorate into one of the two camps. This is how Republicans are remarkably successful; I don't think that many people here genuinely believe that Republicans hold the cultural ideals that they espouse (many people here have explicitly said as much), but rather that they tailor their party message and capitalize on conservative cultural grievances to win support, even if their ideology is bogus and severely harmful to all except the rich capitalist class.
Yes, people pick their politicians, thats why I believe politicians should have to clearly articulate their policies, so we know who and what we're voting for. Parties shouldn't be tailoring their message, you have it backwards, the people who are elected should be elected because what they believe in is tailored to what the American people believe in. We shouldnt elect randos with no principles and try to assign them principles based on guessing at what Americans want, we should elect people that have principles that are popular. Obviously thats not how it works now and its going to take work to change that, but I fundamentally disagree that parties should be messing with their message in house to try and mold their ideals into the amorphous blob of theoretical american approval.
Progressivism can and generally is capitalizing on the economic grievances though, they're doing what the Republicans are but seem to actually believe in the things they're proposing, and that genuineness is part of the appeal of progressivism. Bernie wasnt popular exclusively because of policy, but a big part of his appeal was he had a record that said he believed in the things he was saying, we can merge Republican populism with actual intent to follow through on the policy, the problem is Democrats fight them tooth and nail in order to keep propping up their Joe Bidens. I pray to shit that this election learned them that maybe their strategy is failing but given my own House reps behavior during the DNC call I'm skeptical.
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The interviewed an overseer of a bunch of hospitals on the newshour and she talked about how short they are running on trained staff and the strain it is putting on caretakers. They had six staff suicides in the last 3 months. I wish people so concerned with their personal liberties could just inconvenience themselves for a few more months until the vaccines are widely implemented. It's really heart breaking too to think how all those thousands who are dying have to do so alone in the hospital, unable to see their families. The newshour takes time on Fridays to share pictures and stories sent in by families of covid victims and it's sad to see the faces behind the numbers.
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Slogans work best when they are positive rather than negative. 'Defund the Police' is a negative slogan and can come across as an attack on the police. If the policy is to move some of the funding from the police into social services then why not have a slogan which focuses on that increased funding for the social services?
It is unnecessary to take funding from the police to increase funding for these other programs, and if/when these other programs work the police would no longer be performing those roles in society and isn't that ultimately the goal?
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Police budgets are overinflated and often spent on serious militarization, including a lot of military surplus, regardless of slogan their budgets need serious adjustments and almost certainly to see a lot less funding.
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So you would be in favor of reducing police funding even if that isn't combined with increased funding for social care? If so, 'Defund the police' seems a bit unfocused. Part of it is about increasing funding for social care, while another part is about reducing the police force. These two things are connected, but apparently also not. Having one slogan for two partly separate ideas seems challenging to me.
On a side note, it seems to me that you and FlashFTW are mostly in agreement. You both believe in the same policies and you both agree that you need effective messaging to get the public to vote for these policies. Where you disagree is in the level of details required in this messaging. FlashFTW (and Obama for that matter) believe that you can't go without a good slogan. Your point appears to be that we should ignore the slogan for now and go for more detailed, yet still easily digestible, messaging. Why not do both?
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My problem with putting too much attention on a slogan is it, firstly, is just like diverting a brand, theres a reason Coke's logo has been the same for so long, when you change something's branding you're inherently confusing it, and which is really only a minor point overall. Secondly, I have a deep concern for where the slogan engineering ends, I don't believe any slogan will ever properly encapsulate the greivances people have with the police while also explaining the desired solutions, given this perceived futility it seems like the energy spent arguing about what specific words used will only wind up shifting alienation onto another group. Thirdly, that all of it will lead to nothing being done to actually solve the issue, that we'll spend all of our time arguing about a vaguely divisive slogan and it'll lead to more and more black people being brutalized by the police. Time is of the essence with police brutality, the slower we make changes the more black people are going to be beaten and shot and killed.
I can't imagine black people will find the shift away from focusing on defunding their community's source of terror particularly satisfying, and obviously sheltered white people are afraid of not having any police around, but theres always going to be a push-and-pull when tailoring a message thats going to to push some away and pull others in. I'd argue it'd be a better use of time if we instead tried to make the message behind the slogan more appealing and well understood, but obviously thats a very intense task to take on.
However I think it's doable, and I wouldn't likely believe that if progressives hadnt been gaining in popularity through their grassroots efforts. I'll never say its a sure thing, or that its easy, but I think its the kind of change American politics can stand to go through given our system is ripe for another Trump.
Oh, and yes, I would be in favor of reduced police funding, they 100% dont need their weird tanks and all of their battle armor, I'm hardly a fiscal conservative but I have a hard time viewing what the police have as necessary or positive in any capacity to the good of the American people, so in my eyes its a pure unadulterated waste of money that could, and hopefully would, be spent on things that do have the capacity to be good for the American people a la the traditional pairing of increased social care funding.
And also yes, I'd imagine I agree far more with the people I'm arguing with than disagree, but arguing about stuff is fun, and I enjoy arguing with people whose core beliefs generally align with mine rather than trying to argue with someone who doesnt even share a basic foundation for what we want out of society. 
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On December 04 2020 10:40 JimmiC wrote:
They do mean to fund less of the policing of crime and instead fund the prevention of crime.
You could go with "stop crime instead of catching criminals" but that is still pretty wordy.
Defund the police would work if people would ask "what does that mean" instead of just angry assumptions. But that is just not what many people do these days.
Slogans often speak to some lofty, largely unatainable goal, and both "yes we can" and "make america great again" both do this well. "Yes we can" doesn't mean "Yes we can some stuff but not others", and "make america great again" doesn't mean "make america somewhat great again".
The issue is that "defund the police" is that it's not in this category of "lofty unatainable goal", because most people don't want to eliminate the police even in an ideal scenario, and as a policy slogan it fails because "defund some but not all of the police" (what -most?- people answer when asked "what does that mean") is a straight contradiction with "defund the police".
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EPT
