EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 2877
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Sent.
Poland9108 Posts
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Stratos_speAr
United States6959 Posts
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. There were many politicians that supported the core ideas behind "Defund the Police". How did they not do exactly what you described here? When politicians campaign, they spend a lot of time on the road at rallies, interviews, small community events, etc. talking about their positions quite a bit. Again, the problem here isn't that Democrats need to win a bunch of undecided voters and motivate people to turn out. Democrats already did that very well against Trump. The problem is that the system requires Democrats to win a notable chunk of Republican-leaning voters in order to win the Senate and win various state legislatures to enact more long-lasting change. It's an ugly political reality that they need to strategize around. 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. It's incredibly disingenuous to define any type of political strategizing as "Centrist Democrat strategizing". Just because you tailor your marketing a certain way doesn't suddenly make you a centrist. I highlighted the economic aspect because, as I mentioned previously, the discussion about the Democratic party this cycle was not about their economic message. When you mentioned the Democratic platform in general political discourse this election, the first things that came up were: Anti-Trump, Defund the Police, BLM. Some Democrats tried to run on economic issues, but by-and-large this was not the case, particularly in more conservative/swing areas that Dems were either trying to win or hold onto from 2018 (I'll try to find one of the articles that I read that recently mentioned this). 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. This isn't about "brushing anything under the rug" or "flip-flopping". It's about being politically intelligent. Bernie actually seems to have done this far better than many progressives. He was seen as pretty weak on racial issues, but he still supported pretty much all progressive racial issues. The thing is that he didn't highlight them a ton. Instead, he hammered home an economic message, and it was one of his strongest suits. Do you think that if Bernie were elected he wouldn't pursue racial justice goals just because he highlighted an economic message instead of a racial one? 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. You are pretending that our democratic system operates in a vacuum, where we just sit there and have X amount of candidates come forward, present Y ideas, and then the people choose who they like more. Reality is more complicated than that. Every time an election comes around, there are already preset political party organizations that are presenting us with options because they already have support, money, and infrastructure. Like it or not, this is the system that we have, and for these political parties to function, they need to adapt to the electorate and tailor their platforms and messaging to win a large enough coalition of voters to win elections. You don't want pure political opportunists but you also can't succeed with someone who is incredibly inflexible in how they operate. Progressives have done quite well where the terrain is favorable to them, i.e. urban areas. That's great and all, but to make widespread, lasting change in this country, progressives need to be able to win things like the Senate (as a whole) and state legislatures, something that they absolutely have not proven that they can do. Case in point: as others here have mentioned repeatedly, "Defund the Police" is a very negative platform to run on and is not anywhere close to popular. Hell, it isn't even particularly popular with Black Americans. You simply can't have that be one of the biggest issues that your party advertises on and expect to have widespread wins with it. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
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. https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1313/5900759 An adjusted odds ratio with given confidence intervals is getting there. The only problem is designing a study that adequately measures that against a sufficient background sample of employees and frequenters of large stores under similar restrictions. This study would be unlikely to uncover that, having not asked about comparable big-box stores as compared to smaller retailers. As the supreme court case notes, health officials testified about New York retailers allowed to operate with actual hundreds of concurrent shoppers. How to determine relative risk against that background, when the background is poorly sampled or differentiated? The other major problem is this sampled Maryland, a state that operated churches at a 50% capacity for most of the sampling period. The case involved New York's previous requirements of 25% capacity (and typically the comparatively bigger size of Brooklyn catholic churches and synagogues). The state failed to provide evidence that 25% capacity in a church was higher risk than 25% capacity in retailers, home improvement stores, grocery outlets, etc. The churches themselves documented that no single church operating at 25% capacity had been the source of an outbreak. In short, you fail to provide evidence that 25% is not the sweet spot for transmission while respecting people's first amendment rights, whereas a government might win a suit neutrally reducing from 50% to 25% when a study showed some correlation from churches operating at 50% (maybe relating to a poor ability to enforce social distancing at that capacity or that number of people). The trouble with states not offering evidence to the court, including evidence on why the restrictions were suddenly withdrawn days before Supreme Court argument, is that they aren't tested by medical and statistical experts that are practiced in evaluating studies for the extent to their prognostication. Simply put, you fail to provide the court with relevant evidence, and nobody is forced to defend and explain the evidence in front of experts, lawyers, and judges. Hence, why somebody might raise the point about evidence. Maybe you should advise Andrew Cuomo, who certainly failed to back up your statements How really to square your thoughts about evidence and nonsensical viewpoints, when, in a major supreme court case (newsflash: here is where you show the evidence), state defending lawyers failed to provide it? For the rest: "religious services do not have to be held in person" is an opinion from the poster. The first amendment protects many things from the opinions of laypeople, such as "peaceful protests do not have to be held during a pandemic." It shouldn't go in the same paragraph detailing why the evidence is on your side. Restaurants and gyms do not have equal constitutional protections, partially because people like you aren't as likely to go after them for your own reasons, compared to your thoughts about online services. Thankfully, your opinion that it isn't necessary is no more privileged than the religious that think it is important. | ||
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Biff The Understudy
France7814 Posts
On December 04 2020 22:08 Sent. wrote: Maybe there is no issue with "defund the police". Its purpose is to keep 20something activists focused on a clear goal. Harder to do that with "yes we can" or "MAGA". "Defund the police" is much closer to "build the wall", which similarly received a lot of ciriticism, and was also targeted at the more radical groups. Yeah, but here is the thing: the people "Defund the Police" or "Socialism!" convince are concentrated in uber blue areas. The places that actually matter for the democrats are swing states, and especially their undecided voters that are absolutely repelled by such messages. Nobody serious wants to actually cut all funding for the police or abolish private property, so it's really about packaging. Those are not very savvy slogans in the current environment. Took a break from the thread the last couple of weeks, but I am quite happy to be back; the discussion is really interesting  | ||
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Melliflue
United Kingdom1389 Posts
It is hard to argue against a positive slogan. And positive slogans are more inspiring. Focus on how you want community policing done. (Or specifically on demilitarising, which is a different issue, and I don't think was the original reason behind "Defund the Police".) If you don't want the police handling so many roles within society then focus on what you want to happen instead. Give people a vision they can believe in. Talk about something like "Compassionate Communities". That makes the focus the people who would be helped. | ||
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Starlightsun
United States1405 Posts
On December 05 2020 05:13 Melliflue wrote: Slogans are important because they can cut through to people who don't pay much attention to politics. They can also be used against you by political opponents who may/probably will misrepresent what you stand for. The vagueness of "Defund the Police" allows Republicans (and Fox) to portray progressives as anti- law and order. It is hard to argue against a positive slogan. And positive slogans are more inspiring. Focus on how you want community policing done. (Or specifically on demilitarising, which is a different issue, and I don't think was the original reason behind "Defund the Police".) If you don't want the police handling so many roles within society then focus on what you want to happen instead. Give people a vision they can believe in. Talk about something like "Compassionate Communities". That makes the focus the people who would be helped. Let's not forget what the slogan was a reaction to... A cop slowly murdering a man in broad daylight, on film, with other cops stopping people from helping. Kind of hard to make a "positive slogan" out of that. Intellectually all this talk of tempering slogans makes sense but I think we are forgetting the visceral brutality we all witnessed just a few months ago (and the violent police response to protesting in addition to the murders). | ||
FlaShFTW
United States10059 Posts
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. Pretty tired of this conversation so this will be my last point on it. You simultaneously say that slogans are bad and stupid, then in the same breath are asking politicians to make their policy points broken down and simplified to be digestible... As if that's not literally what a fucking slogan is. Now you're about to give me an aneurysm. Here's a perfect clip of my view on the left. | ||
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Zambrah
United States7132 Posts
On December 05 2020 07:25 FlaShFTW wrote: Pretty tired of this conversation so this will be my last point on it. You simultaneously say that slogans are bad and stupid, then in the same breath are asking politicians to make their policy points broken down and simplified to be digestible... As if that's not literally what a fucking slogan is. Now you're about to give me an aneurysm. Here's a perfect clip of my view on the left. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMqcLUqYqrs&t=1m57s Youre off your rocker if you think theres no middle ground between being a hardcore policy wonk and chanting a slogan. I can and have explained people's fuckin' insurance contracts in ways that they are capable of understanding, its not that hard, you can, in fact, find a middle ground between reading them a bland legal document and sloganizing it down to three words. At the end of the day theres a middle ground that you seem to refuse to acknowledge. "Defund the Police" gets shit for not having the full picture because its a fucking slogan and slogans are a few words long, you can talk about things to people without using either three easy words or ten thousand complicated ones. | ||
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Sermokala
United States13754 Posts
What we bashed GH for wasn't "abolish the police" but that when asked about this his response was to replace the police with dozens of police departments by other names. The issue with the slogan isnt that its negative it's bad beacuse it's a lazy lie that's attempting to be packaged for public consumption. Its important to establish that the issues with the police are inherent with its massive amount of responsibility and duties being laid onto bearly trained militia like it's still in the days of Rome. Jesus has an arrest warrant out on him and the police of the time served it and only avoided killing him then and there beacuse jesus said that they were better armed and trained for it probably. Tell me what fundamentally changed from jesus to floyd. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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FlaShFTW
United States10059 Posts
On December 05 2020 09:36 Zambrah wrote: Youre off your rocker if you think theres no middle ground between being a hardcore policy wonk and chanting a slogan. I can and have explained people's fuckin' insurance contracts in ways that they are capable of understanding, its not that hard, you can, in fact, find a middle ground between reading them a bland legal document and sloganizing it down to three words. At the end of the day theres a middle ground that you seem to refuse to acknowledge. "Defund the Police" gets shit for not having the full picture because its a fucking slogan and slogans are a few words long, you can talk about things to people without using either three easy words or ten thousand complicated ones. No one ever said there wasn't a middle ground. Your arguments are hilariously bad strawmans. Just stop. You don't get it, that's fine. Stop trying to pretend you do. On December 05 2020 11:19 JimmiC wrote: Same song and dance, Dems pass something in congress, Reps stall it in the senate. They have attempted to decriminalize pot. I wonder what side this energizes more in Georgia? https://www.npr.org/2020/12/04/942949288/house-approves-decriminalizing-marijuana-bill-to-stall-in-senate I'd say it definitely could impact the election. Dems need to put it out front and center and say how their candidates would be able to swing the tide in favor of federal passage of marijuana laws that would allow Biden to sign the bill into law. 2 years ago when Georgia was perceived as even more conservative than today, legalization was already popular. https://www.11alive.com/article/news/local/exclusive-poll-most-georgians-now-say-recreational-marijuana-should-be-legal/85-552373483 | ||
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IyMoon
United States1249 Posts
On December 05 2020 11:19 JimmiC wrote: Same song and dance, Dems pass something in congress, Reps stall it in the senate. They have attempted to decriminalize pot. I wonder what side this energizes more in Georgia? https://www.npr.org/2020/12/04/942949288/house-approves-decriminalizing-marijuana-bill-to-stall-in-senate my guess would be Dems, even Reps like weed. With the new video out from GA though that the right wing is just drooling over I don't think anything else matters for that race though | ||
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Zambrah
United States7132 Posts
On December 05 2020 11:38 FlaShFTW wrote: No one ever said there wasn't a middle ground. Your arguments are hilariously bad strawmans. Just stop. You don't get it, that's fine. Stop trying to pretend you do. I'd say it definitely could impact the election. Dems need to put it out front and center and say how their candidates would be able to swing the tide in favor of federal passage of marijuana laws that would allow Biden to sign the bill into law. 2 years ago when Georgia was perceived as even more conservative than today, legalization was already popular. https://www.11alive.com/article/news/local/exclusive-poll-most-georgians-now-say-recreational-marijuana-should-be-legal/85-552373483 You're accusing me of strawmanning but this is your argument for christ's sake, you're literally telling me that a slogan is literally what breaking policy down into digestible terms is, asking politicians to make their policy points broken down and simplified to be digestible... As if that's not literally what a fucking slogan is A book has a title. A book has one thousand pages. A book has a small synopsis on the back. You're telling me that the small synopsis on the back is the same as the title, and Stratos was telling me I was advocating for people having to read the entire thousand page book. You have a little synopsis on the back of the book that can give you a broken down gist of the book that is more informative than exclusively relying on the title (the slogan) and less demanding than reading the entire book (policy wonking.) A two paragraph statement explaining some basic fundamental details behind "defund the police" is NOT a slogan. Communicating with the public about policy is not an impossible task accomplishable exclusively by hurling slogans. Grassroots campaigns that go door to door, or call people to talk about their candidates policy doesnt have to boil down to them going "defund the police!" at the person or reading them a ten-thousand word shpiel about the intricacies of implementing Universal Healthcare. Americans may not be educated enough or have enough of an attention span to deal with the shpiel but they're also not hopeless enough to only be able to understand four or five words at a time before their brains melt. + Show Spoiler + On December 04 2020 23:07 Stratos_speAr wrote: There were many politicians that supported the core ideas behind "Defund the Police". How did they not do exactly what you described here? When politicians campaign, they spend a lot of time on the road at rallies, interviews, small community events, etc. talking about their positions quite a bit. Again, the problem here isn't that Democrats need to win a bunch of undecided voters and motivate people to turn out. Democrats already did that very well against Trump. The problem is that the system requires Democrats to win a notable chunk of Republican-leaning voters in order to win the Senate and win various state legislatures to enact more long-lasting change. It's an ugly political reality that they need to strategize around. It's incredibly disingenuous to define any type of political strategizing as "Centrist Democrat strategizing". Just because you tailor your marketing a certain way doesn't suddenly make you a centrist. I highlighted the economic aspect because, as I mentioned previously, the discussion about the Democratic party this cycle was not about their economic message. When you mentioned the Democratic platform in general political discourse this election, the first things that came up were: Anti-Trump, Defund the Police, BLM. Some Democrats tried to run on economic issues, but by-and-large this was not the case, particularly in more conservative/swing areas that Dems were either trying to win or hold onto from 2018 (I'll try to find one of the articles that I read that recently mentioned this). This isn't about "brushing anything under the rug" or "flip-flopping". It's about being politically intelligent. Bernie actually seems to have done this far better than many progressives. He was seen as pretty weak on racial issues, but he still supported pretty much all progressive racial issues. The thing is that he didn't highlight them a ton. Instead, he hammered home an economic message, and it was one of his strongest suits. Do you think that if Bernie were elected he wouldn't pursue racial justice goals just because he highlighted an economic message instead of a racial one? You are pretending that our democratic system operates in a vacuum, where we just sit there and have X amount of candidates come forward, present Y ideas, and then the people choose who they like more. Reality is more complicated than that. Every time an election comes around, there are already preset political party organizations that are presenting us with options because they already have support, money, and infrastructure. Like it or not, this is the system that we have, and for these political parties to function, they need to adapt to the electorate and tailor their platforms and messaging to win a large enough coalition of voters to win elections. You don't want pure political opportunists but you also can't succeed with someone who is incredibly inflexible in how they operate. Progressives have done quite well where the terrain is favorable to them, i.e. urban areas. That's great and all, but to make widespread, lasting change in this country, progressives need to be able to win things like the Senate (as a whole) and state legislatures, something that they absolutely have not proven that they can do. Case in point: as others here have mentioned repeatedly, "Defund the Police" is a very negative platform to run on and is not anywhere close to popular. Hell, it isn't even particularly popular with Black Americans. You simply can't have that be one of the biggest issues that your party advertises on and expect to have widespread wins with it. There were many politicians that supported the core ideas behind "Defund the Police". How did they not do exactly what you described here? When politicians campaign, they spend a lot of time on the road at rallies, interviews, small community events, etc. talking about their positions quite a bit. Again, the problem here isn't that Democrats need to win a bunch of undecided voters and motivate people to turn out. Democrats already did that very well against Trump. The problem is that the system requires Democrats to win a notable chunk of Republican-leaning voters in order to win the Senate and win various state legislatures to enact more long-lasting change. It's an ugly political reality that they need to strategize around. Id caution against saying Democrats motivated voters, Id say the constant barrage of Trump motivated them, when Trump is shoved in your face constantly its really more of a matter of wanting that to stop than anything unique that Democrats really did, imo. I say this because it wasnt a landslide, from what I can see if we didnt have the coronavirus pandemic we'd probably have a second term of Trump. Many of the conservative democrats made efforts to distance themselves from the Defund the Police movement, and we saw tons of losses and close races, my own house rep Abigail Spanberger almost immediately after the election went on trying to say its basically political poison, but I never once saw an ad about her that either mentioned defund the police, or saw her advocate for it, hell I honestly saw almost nothing out of her other than attack ads from Nick Freitas. Abigail Spanberger basically ran as a conservative CIA mom, thats really all I was able to glean from her entire campaign's presence. I completely agree that we need to strategize around Republican leaning voters, in fact I'd say we need to go even a little deeper and try and seize on Trump voters, not all of them naturally, not the extremely proudly racist awful types, but those disaffected rural whites who feel cheated by society, live in poverty, etc. they should be bread and butter voters for Democrats. They're not though, because Democrats have been routinely failing that part of society for so long, but you said it before, economics and healthcare is a really good way to get to them, and I think thats the way forward, but we 10,000% cannot have another disingenuous Kamela Harris, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg centrist deliver that message, I don't believe an establishment Democrat will be able to break through to disaffected poverty afflicted rural whites. It's incredibly disingenuous to define any type of political strategizing as "Centrist Democrat strategizing". Just because you tailor your marketing a certain way doesn't suddenly make you a centrist. I highlighted the economic aspect because, as I mentioned previously, the discussion about the Democratic party this cycle was not about their economic message. When you mentioned the Democratic platform in general political discourse this election, the first things that came up were: Anti-Trump, Defund the Police, BLM. Some Democrats tried to run on economic issues, but by-and-large this was not the case, particularly in more conservative/swing areas that Dems were either trying to win or hold onto from 2018 (I'll try to find one of the articles that I read that recently mentioned this). Would establishment democrat strategizing be a more accurate term? I agree that not every Democrat is expressly centrist by American standards (TL has conditioned me away from the American standard so Im biased away from it a bit) but the leadership of Schumer and Pelosi over their tenure has been anything but steady, these long time establishment Democrat figures are who I believe are key in making bad Democrat political strategy. Democrats didnt really run on BLM much in areas where it wasn't relative, I know Ive seen the likes of AOC and Ilhan Omar and Cori Bush talk about it, but I honestly dont hear anything from other Democrats policy wise, most of the time what I get from them is twitter or ads or interviews and from those its usually complaining about BLM/Defund the Police. I think its unfair to consider Defund the Police as anything attached to either political party, its really more of a protest movement, its a people thing more than a party thing, the key Democrat official up for election this year spend more time denouncing riots than talking about Defund the Police. This isn't about "brushing anything under the rug" or "flip-flopping". It's about being politically intelligent. Bernie actually seems to have done this far better than many progressives. He was seen as pretty weak on racial issues, but he still supported pretty much all progressive racial issues. The thing is that he didn't highlight them a ton. Instead, he hammered home an economic message, and it was one of his strongest suits. Do you think that if Bernie were elected he wouldn't pursue racial justice goals just because he highlighted an economic message instead of a racial one? Political intelligence in the DNC has been flip flopping to whatever is publicly popular though, which is why I bring it up, I think what is and isnt politically intelligent is very much in dispute after this election in particular. I agree, Bernie is a shining example, I try REALLY hard not to bring him up often lest I wind up labeled or dismissed a Bernie Bro or what have you but I think the man did a lot right that we can and should learn from going forward. I should mention though that at his rallies (at least the ones I watched on Twitch) he absolutely did talk about racial justice every single time. He always brought up prison reform, he'd bring up the same few points each rally generally, but reforming the prison and justice systems certainly didnt seem to attach itself to him as strongly as his healthcare talk. I'm not precisely sure why it didn't seem like a key part of his platform when he brought it up so often in his rallies, but I'd imagine it had to do with media coverage focusing on things Americans at large are obviously more invested in, that being healthcare and the economy. You are pretending that our democratic system operates in a vacuum, where we just sit there and have X amount of candidates come forward, present Y ideas, and then the people choose who they like more. Reality is more complicated than that. Every time an election comes around, there are already preset political party organizations that are presenting us with options because they already have support, money, and infrastructure. Like it or not, this is the system that we have, and for these political parties to function, they need to adapt to the electorate and tailor their platforms and messaging to win a large enough coalition of voters to win elections. You don't want pure political opportunists but you also can't succeed with someone who is incredibly inflexible in how they operate. Progressives have done quite well where the terrain is favorable to them, i.e. urban areas. That's great and all, but to make widespread, lasting change in this country, progressives need to be able to win things like the Senate (as a whole) and state legislatures, something that they absolutely have not proven that they can do. Case in point: as others here have mentioned repeatedly, "Defund the Police" is a very negative platform to run on and is not anywhere close to popular. Hell, it isn't even particularly popular with Black Americans. You simply can't have that be one of the biggest issues that your party advertises on and expect to have widespread wins with it. Defund the Police isn't a platform, its a slogan, its also not something I saw Democrats run on, I fundamentally disagree that this was a key part of the Democrats political strategy this election cycle, I maintain its a protest movement that seems to obviously politically lean Democratic, but I havent seen much if any real endorsement from Democratic leadership. You bring up the political machine that operates within the country and I fully agree that its there and powerful and has to be factored in, but you also have to acknowledge its explicitly working AGAINST progressives most of the time. Progressives dont win with the good graces of the Democrats, Progressives are fighting against the monetary might of the Democrat fundraising machine, and we CANT ignore that angle. Progressives like Charles Booker can make competitive contests without DNC aid against big money candidates like Amy McGrath, and that says a lot about the inherent strength of the movement, if that was aligned with some actual backing from the DNC can you imagine how much stronger it would be? If the Democrats didnt fight tooth and nail to suppress some of these progressive candidates in favor of their more conservative establishment counterparts? We're seeing options that ARENT being presented by these political machines and they putting in a lot of work and putting up one hell of a fight. Our candidates dont exclusively have to be manufactured by the DNC, in fact it might be smarter for them to STOP manufacturing candidates, let the good ones rise to the top and then support them. Adapting doesnt need to mean shifting your beliefs into the mold of what is believed to be publicly popular, instead the DNC should be taking candidates like Booker and working with them and promoting them instead of crushing them. On December 05 2020 12:37 Stratos_speAr wrote: You're just talking in circles at this point, Zambrah. You repeatedly fail to address the very real and very thoroughly explained problems with the slogan "Defund the Police". Not only this, but you completely failed to see that my entire discussion wasn't about the slogan in-and-of-itself. It was about what the slogan meant for the party's campaigning overall. ??? I have literally acknowledged that Defund the Police is not a perfect slogan, its plenty flawed, but ANY slogan is flawed, please tell me how "Fund Social Services" address black grievances about being brutalized by the police? Its a part of slogans, they're tiny bite sized chunks that are incapable of incapsulating the complexities of a movement. The issue isnt that I dont acknowledge the very real flaws of Defund the Police, the problem is that I don't believe its a productive point of discussion to criticize a slogan when there is very real, very serious, very time sensitive reasons for that slogans existence. I've laid out the reasons why. I have consistently advocated for grassroots movements and groundwork because that is the stuff that involves talking to people and explaining policy. Its how progressives operate, a lot of phonebanking, door to door stuff (when that was a thing) and general direct communication. ...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. I know you seem to have some incredibly optimistic belief in the mental and ethical capacity of the population at large Im accused of some hopeless optimism in thinking that by talking to people about policy we can educate them about it. The only reason I can think of that people think this is that they picture Hillary Clinton as the only way people can talk about policy. You clearly have no faith whatsoever in the populace, but can you seriously say that a sentence like, "Defund the Police is a divisive slogan, but I do want to take a moment to explain its not about completely removing the police, its about refocusing on social services to take care of our communities so that the police aren't in situations where poor judgment can lead to them shooting an innocent person." Is this a slogan, or so policy wonkish that the average person cant get a basic understanding of it? Is this not a distilled basic piece of policy? This surely isnt a slogan, its too long. Its definitely not a comprehensive legislative agenda, its far too short and not remotely specific. We never started on the complex nuances of Democratic campaigning, I exclusively commented that our politicians a la Obama have a responsibility to do better at communicating policy to us and not to be dismissive about social movements because they have a crap slogan. Its branched out into this complex stuff but that isnt where it started. This goes in circles because you fuckin' people are assigning beliefs to me that I feel compelled to counter lest they wind up sticking. I don't really mind because Im obviously not particularly adept at succinctly making my views clear, and I'm happy to work through it to make it clear, but the constant "youre strawmanning!" while people tell me what I believe is silly. | ||
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Stratos_speAr
United States6959 Posts
You repeatedly fail to address the very real and very thoroughly explained problems with the slogan "Defund the Police". Not only this, but you completely failed to see that my entire discussion wasn't about the slogan in-and-of-itself. It was about what the slogan meant for the party's campaigning overall. | ||
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FueledUpAndReadyToGo
Netherlands30548 Posts
They don't even control their own conspiracy lies anymore when people like Lin Wood and Sidney Powell start being true believers in a communist takeover and wanting to boycott Georgia elections directly damaging GOP. But these nutjobs still get an audience of fanatics at their 'stop the steal' rally. What happens to those people in the audience who think this lost election is a serious as a foreign military invasion, when Trump finally has to leave? | ||
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Zambrah
United States7132 Posts
I'll start with, You repeatedly fail to address the very real and very thoroughly explained problems with the slogan "Defund the Police". I agree that Defund the Police is a flawed slogan with very real problems. | ||
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Stratos_speAr
United States6959 Posts
On December 05 2020 13:19 Zambrah wrote: Lets make this really, really easy. You give me one sentence, I will respond with one sentence as succinctly as I can. I'll start with, I agree that Defund the Police is a flawed slogan with very real problems. I don't think we need to go beyond that then. That's basically all we've been saying. Pretty much everyone in this conversation agrees on the actual desired policy. | ||
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Zambrah
United States7132 Posts
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Wegandi
United States2455 Posts
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