Mega-Thread: Democratic 2020 Primaries

[Xirrohon]

Are you all ready for your Bloomberg - Clinton overlords?

[zealo]

I'm even more shocked that it's person posturing as a Belgian is so bad at this particular history. I'm thinking the Treaty of Westphalia was a mistake now.


Speaking for the Art History crowd. The Middle Ages clearly ended when Pieter Bruegel the Elder snuck the world's first dick pic into his Procession to Cavalry. /joke

Treaty of Westphalia was anything but a mistake. Aside from it's legacy in the development of nationstates and defence of non-catholic christianity, it brought one of the deadliest wars in European history to a definitive end. 8 million dead as a result of nearly 3 decades of fighting is no small figure.

[ati87]

Are you all ready for your Bloomberg - Clinton overlords?

Personally I think that right-wingers all got a wetdream when he story broke that Bloomberg camp is looking at H. Clinton for VP.
Everybody else however just did a Picard facepalm.

[Moe Szyslak]

Treaty of Westphalia was anything but a mistake. Aside from it's legacy in the development of nationstates and defence of non-catholic christianity, it brought one of the deadliest wars in European history to a definitive end. 8 million dead as a result of nearly 3 decades of fighting is no small figure.

Would assume he was joking.

[Draco-Onis]

Are you all ready for your Bloomberg - Clinton overlords?

The drudge report is as accurate as the gossip pages.

[Endus]

They should have done more than complaining about the rules. They are wilfully engaging in a conflict with an opponent who they know won't follow the rules or cares about the rules, nor needs to follow them. Complaining about the rules then seems extremely folly. It is fighting an assymmetric war willingly when -nobody- is even expecting you to handicap yourself.

It is only good if you want to go down as setting the good and forgotten example. With emphasis on down and forgotten.

"If the enemy's gonna use mustard gas on our civilians, we're gonna do it right back!"

If both of you are breaking the rules, both of you are the "bad guys", and nobody should be picking a side in that fight to begin with. If you want to be seen as "better" than the Republicans, you have to be better, and what you're talking about is choosing to stoop to their level of malfeasance.

[Endus]

If you want to -win and survive- you are going to need to break the rules to level the playing field. The victors write history, you can pretend you followed the rules -after- you won. Just like the Republicans are doing right now.

Nobody remembers the good guys that didn't survive.

I know it is not ideal, but it is what needs to be done.

We aren't in a position where survival is in question, to begin with. This is just emotional hyperbole. This is exactly the bullshit Trump and the Republicans use to inflame their base and get them to overlook their crimes.

I'm not falling for that bullshit in the name of blind partisanship.

[Skroe]

You do realise it's incredibly unfair to put the entire failure of the American system on a party that needs to win the popular vote in excess of 6-10% to even keep parity with the opposition, yes? And that's just in the House.

Here's the simple truth: the American system of government was set up by wealthy white men principally to benefit their own interests and as they did not deem their own social class even remotely capable of producing a Donald Trump (a laughable notion even at the time) they left no real safeguards in place to prevent it. Nor did they ever really have a vision of the United States as a unified country in the post-Vienna and post-Bismarck senses of the term, and the government they designed is thus hamstrung at performing the basic functions of a central government - and I'm not even getting into bells and whistles like universal healthcare, I'm talking about shit like infrastructure.

It's one thing to complain about having unrealistic goals, but this line of thinking just erases the systemic problems and puts the entirety of the problem at the feet of people who are, Constitutionally speaking, the least empowered people to do anything about it.

And it's also kinda mystifying to me why there's this insistence that we need to return to a traditional method of governance when there's a very, very solid argument to be made for the fact that the role you wish America to perform internationally is fundamentally irreconcilable with the way its domestic political structures are set up.

So no, the Whackobins are actually extremely correct in having identified the cause of America's woes as being systemic.

You know, for people who, frankly, can't shut up about health care, it's rather amazing to me that the clear medical analogy of our situation just keeps going right over your head.

This is a moment for triage. We have to stop the bleeding. The longer term, massive undertaking of fixing the underlying condition? Not only will that take multiple presidencies, but it simply won't work as triage. In fact, attempting to triage our situation with long-term fixes may worsen the situation.

The entirety of the next Presidency will be spent reversing Trump's reign of error, and then in a handful of ways reversing the broader problem of Presidential powers. The big structural things you want? They don't come into play. They are longer term fixes. There isn't a political consensus on much of it. How do you plan to push it through without it? The triage though? There is a very good consensus on that. You can win on triage and govern effectively on triage.

This is entirely unfair. But it's also up to the Democratic Party to eat that and save the United States. The mortal threat to the US isn't healthcare or infrastructure or minority rights. It's a Congress that's gotten very comfortable delegating power to the executive that has few means to reign it in, an executive protected by a phalanx of bullshit legal justification to enable a President to do pretty much anything, and an incestuous orgy of money, lobbyists, advisers, and lawyers who have broadly advanced corrupt ends. Most of all, it's the American people frankly being absolutely horrid democratic republicans (small d and r) in their acceptance of these anti-Constitutional abuses of power. That is what the next President will be consumed in dealing with.

There will be no infrastructure bill.
There will be no healthcare bill.
There will be no education bill.

Or they can not. And I and many others have been wasting our time for the past 3 years, and you'll learn the McGovern lesson when Bernie Sanders loses 44 states because your ideas are so fucking important to you, that you've misdiagnosed the moment and the path to victory.

This is not a policy election. Policy is irrelevant. And nothing any Democrat does or says will change that. Donald Trump very much wants it to be a policy election, because he'll wipe the floor with a Democrat - any Democrat - against an electorate that has _proven_ it can be bought by a good economy.

[Skroe]

To cut through this bullshit - Bloomberg was a big proponent of stop and frisk. And yes, it lowered crime. So did Giuliani's dumb as shit "broken windows" policy, but that didn't make it any less racist and short-sighted.

Addressing crime in a city like NYC doesn't need racist, bandaid solutions that only address the symptoms and not the causes (like broken windows and stop and frisk). It needs substantive progressive reform. Which de Blasio is trying, but is of course, stifled on a bit by holdovers from Bloomberg and even Giuliani. And NYers tend to be impatient. I was a temporary one, for 6 years (4 years off true NYer status), so I know at least that much.

Also I learned in this post I'm probably like 2 degrees of separation from Skroe. I know a shit ton of ADAs in DANY, and even a few who were in Special Prosecutions (which is what DANY called its white collar bureau, which is now split into a bunch of different units like Public Corruption). I clashed with them often working for LAS in Manhattan, though I did have some friends "on the inside," so to speak. Back in the 00s and early 10s, Democratic lawyers who wanted to go into politics always went into the DA's office to be "tough on crime."

I honestly don't know why I have to keep saying what I am about to say.

So many of your Democrats are concerned with what's right. I get that. I get the need to do that. I truly do. But to choose that as the hill to die on in THIS election is logically inconsistent and insane.

First and foremost, this field, broadly speaking, is trash. We have a 78 year old man who just had a heart attack who is also a non-Democrat with zero political success to his name. We have a 79 year old former Vice President who is out of touch. We have a 70 year old Senator from Massachusetts who screwed her own campaign. We have a 38 year old ex-small city Mayor who is Gay (and that won't fly in places Democrats need to win). We have a Senator from Minesota who has had a whopping 2 good weeks to an otherwise failed campaign.

Field's trash. This has "Republican 2012 primary" written all over it.

The ideas are hilaruously off base too. Most progressives in this forum, never mind out there turtle up and suddenly go deaf when confronted with the fact that
(A) there is no majority in the House for M4A
(B) there is no majority int he House for the far less ambitious "public option".
(C) there is not even 30 votes in the Senate for M4A.
(D) there is likely not even 40 votes in the Senate for a "public option".
(E) there will be no cut to the defense budget, which goes deep into Democratic held states and districts, isn't that right Senators Warren and Harris?
(F) there will be no tax increases because Mitch McConnell walks the earth.


Meanwhile the combined voter share of the progressive candidates in the primaries are outstripped by the centrists.

Progressives have ideas. Beautiful ideas about what is right and good. But they forgot the most important component - the actual sales job.

You have a problem with stop and frisk and all that? You think that's wrong. That's your prerogative. I won't argue that. But what I will argue is that the politics of arguing its wrong is a winning argument. It isn't. It's a stupid argument. Not enough Americans care, and certainly not enough Americans in the right places (remember: this is about Wisconsin and Central PA mostly... aka lands of white people, not urban Blacks). Michael Bloomberg, being a non-idiot, surely understands this point. So why should he recant his previous position? How does it serve his immediate goal of becoming the most electable versus Trump. And electable doesn't mean "progressives get a veto". Progressives generally don't live in the right places. All things being equal, if Democrats want to win they'd go with whatever nominee the most centrist elements of the Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Arizona, North Carolina and Pennsylvania democratic parties go for.... fuck the rest of the primary process.


I want a Democrat to win. The way to win is not through ideas. It's through anti-Trump messaging. That is the unifying element between a vast coalition of Democrats and independents - that Donald Trump must go. The progressive agenda is not selling even WITHIN the Democratic Party, much less outside of it. So this insistence on what is right and good and fair, past, present and future, as the road to victory in 2020 is the biggest of goddamn traps.

You beat Trump by reminding the American people they generally hate the fucking man. You lose against Trump when trying to tell people their aversion to stop and frisk was wrong, as is their aversion to M4A over their employer provided healthcare. You lose against Trump by telling the American people the things in their gut is wrong and they should listen to reason instead. You win by telling the American people that the thing in their gut about Trump - he's an amoral, un-American monster at the head of a criminal enterprise that has hijacked this country - is absolutely correct.

I gotta be honest, I increasingly doubt Democrats have the ability to do this obvious thing, which is why I think Trump will probably be re-elected, not that I won't stop working and donating to prevent that. But I do think the end result will be defeat on our part. And it's because the CONSISTENTLY weakest part of the anti-Trump front - the Presidential candidate field (something that needed to be among the strongest) is failing to capitalize the advances that other fronts make against Trump.

[Gestopft]

"If the enemy's gonna use mustard gas on our civilians, we're gonna do it right back!"

If both of you are breaking the rules, both of you are the "bad guys", and nobody should be picking a side in that fight to begin with. If you want to be seen as "better" than the Republicans, you have to be better, and what you're talking about is choosing to stoop to their level of malfeasance.

And I would argue that it’s more important for the Democrats to be better, because as the party that actually believes in government doing things, being shitheads isn’t a good look. But for Republicans, who have spent decades claiming that government is the problem, dysfunction and corruption in government only reinforces their narrative.

And gonna @Rochana in this: it sucks, but Democrats actually do have to be better. That doesn't preclude things like statehood for DC/Puerto Rico, and other things to tilt the scales away from the GoP's advantage, but stooping to the GoP's level only makes the Dems look worse.

[Endus]

I honestly don't know why I have to keep saying what I am about to say.

So many of your Democrats are concerned with what's right. I get that. I get the need to do that. I truly do. But to choose that as the hill to die on in THIS election is logically inconsistent and insane.

First and foremost, this field, broadly speaking, is trash. We have a 78 year old man who just had a heart attack who is also a non-Democrat with zero political success to his name. We have a 79 year old former Vice President who is out of touch. We have a 70 year old Senator from Massachusetts who screwed her own campaign. We have a 38 year old ex-small city Mayor who is Gay (and that won't fly in places Democrats need to win). We have a Senator from Minesota who has had a whopping 2 good weeks to an otherwise failed campaign.

Field's trash. This has "Republican 2012 primary" written all over it.

The ideas are hilaruously off base too. Most progressives in this forum, never mind out there turtle up and suddenly go deaf when confronted with the fact that
(A) there is no majority in the House for M4A
(B) there is no majority int he House for the far less ambitious "public option".
(C) there is not even 30 votes in the Senate for M4A.
(D) there is likely not even 40 votes in the Senate for a "public option".
(E) there will be no cut to the defense budget, which goes deep into Democratic held states and districts, isn't that right Senators Warren and Harris?
(F) there will be no tax increases because Mitch McConnell walks the earth.


Meanwhile the combined voter share of the progressive candidates in the primaries are outstripped by the centrists.

Progressives have ideas. Beautiful ideas about what is right and good. But they forgot the most important component - the actual sales job.

You have a problem with stop and frisk and all that? You think that's wrong. That's your prerogative. I won't argue that. But what I will argue is that the politics of arguing its wrong is a winning argument. It isn't. It's a stupid argument. Not enough Americans care, and certainly not enough Americans in the right places (remember: this is about Wisconsin and Central PA mostly... aka lands of white people, not urban Blacks). Michael Bloomberg, being a non-idiot, surely understands this point. So why should he recant his previous position? How does it serve his immediate goal of becoming the most electable versus Trump. And electable doesn't mean "progressives get a veto". Progressives generally don't live in the right places. All things being equal, if Democrats want to win they'd go with whatever nominee the most centrist elements of the Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Arizona, North Carolina and Pennsylvania democratic parties go for.... fuck the rest of the primary process.


I want a Democrat to win. The way to win is not through ideas. It's through anti-Trump messaging. That is the unifying element between a vast coalition of Democrats and independents - that Donald Trump must go. The progressive agenda is not selling even WITHIN the Democratic Party, much less outside of it. So this insistence on what is right and good and fair, past, present and future, as the road to victory in 2020 is the biggest of goddamn traps.

You beat Trump by reminding the American people they generally hate the fucking man. You lose against Trump when trying to tell people their aversion to stop and frisk was wrong, as is their aversion to M4A over their employer provided healthcare. You lose against Trump by telling the American people the things in their gut is wrong and they should listen to reason instead. You win by telling the American people that the thing in their gut about Trump - he's an amoral, un-American monster at the head of a criminal enterprise that has hijacked this country - is absolutely correct.

I gotta be honest, I increasingly doubt Democrats have the ability to do this obvious thing, which is why I think Trump will probably be re-elected, not that I won't stop working and donating to prevent that. But I do think the end result will be defeat on our part. And it's because the CONSISTENTLY weakest part of the anti-Trump front - the Presidential candidate field (something that needed to be among the strongest) is failing to capitalize the advances that other fronts make against Trump.

Really, this can be boiled down to the difference between a conservative, and a progressive.

You're clearly a conservative. I don't think I'm rustling any feathers there, no? Thus practical, traditional, conservative approaches are naturally what you prefer. Thus your post, which is an inherently conservative perspective.

It doesn't speak to progressives, at all. It's based on assumptions and premises that progressives flatly deny to be true, because they are just ideological preferences, not some objective truth.

Nor is claiming that it's some natural, rational path in any way reasonable; progressivism is just as rational, and progressive views have managed to secure lasting change in many nations and systems, given the opportunity.

You might be right in your not-quite-overt description of the average American voter as an ignorant, easily-led fool, but that doesn't really mean anything. It defines how these issues should be approached, not that new ideas should not be presented at all.

If there's a problem with progressivism in the USA, it's that they're largely cowards. They compromise and hold back and try and push for minute changes, concerned that the voters will rebel. When conservatives just flagrantly say shit like "PIZZA PARLORS ARE HIDING DEMOCRAT PEDO RINGS" and it gets traction. Because, as much as I'll condemn the Republicans for a lot of shit, one thing they are not is cowards. They'll lie boldly, brazenly, and say "fuck you, stop me." And Democrats won't. They won't throw down. The bully gets to keep bullying because his victims never pop him one in the mouth when he pushes them too far.

And it bears pointing out that you're arguing that progressives should be even greater cowards. That they should surrender and tuck tail, because they've already lost, before the fight really begins. And I'm saying, fuck that. Fight this fight. Actually step up, and bring the big guns to bear. Backing down is why they keep losing.

So sure; you've explained why a conservative doesn't like progressivism, and thinks the progressives need to be more conservative.

That doesn't speak to anyone but conservatives, though. You're preaching to the choir, and this is an atheist's convention, so to speak.

[Gestopft]

Field's trash. This has "Republican 2012 primary" written all over it.

An Obama adviser (Dan Pfeiffer) recently made this comparison in Politico

Rather than obsess over 2016, Democrats should focus on 2012—the last year a challenger took on an incumbent president. There are more parallels than you’d think: Barack Obama was a president hugely unpopular with the opposing party, but the economy on the upswing; the Republicans had a big field and took a while to coalesce around a consensus choice. In the end, that choice was Mitt Romney—and his campaign misread and misplayed the election in ways that the Democrats desperately need to pay attention to now.

I'll also add "the opposition party took over the House in the previous midterms" to that. Now, I'm sure there are some ways the comparison doesn't fit, but I don't think the author's comparison is unreasonable.

I want a Democrat to win. The way to win is not through ideas. It's through anti-Trump messaging. ...

You beat Trump by reminding the American people they generally hate the fucking man.

Pfeiffer disagrees (and so do I):

First, do not make this election solely about Donald Trump. The idea that the challenger wants a campaign to be a referendum on the incumbent rather than a choice between two candidates is a staple of political conventional wisdom. It is also a mistake. From the very beginning, Romney’s primary goal was to make the race all about Obama. His campaign ran virtually no ads that introduced Romney to voters. He rolled out very few policies. All of his messaging firepower was focused on Obama. This was a fundamental misunderstanding of the contours of a modern presidential campaign and a fatal strategic error. Romney left a vacuum of information that the Obama campaign, and other Democratic groups, were more than happy to fill with information about Romney’s far-right positions, his pro-corporate policies and his long career of carrion capitalism. Remember the Obama campaign ad with Romney singing “America the Beautiful” that featured his record of shipping jobs overseas and using off-shore tax havens?

Running on a campaign of anti-Trump (which Hillary already did) gives Trump the chance to define you. When November comes around and all the shit has been flung, the candidates will be defined by how well they stand out against all of the shit plastered to them. If a candidate doesn't define themself well enough, they're just going to look like all the shit Trump and his allies flung on them.

Not enough Americans care, and certainly not enough Americans in the right places (remember: this is about Wisconsin and Central PA mostly... aka lands of white people, not urban Blacks).

Not enough people in the right places cared about Trump being a pathetic excuse for a human being the first time around. You keep accusing us of thinking there's some 'magical city' of progressives somewhere in Wisconsin, but your entire strategy seems to be based on a 'magical city' of people who just need to hear enough that Trump is bad, as though everyone in this country doesn't already have an opinion on him.

[Rasulis]

Are you all ready for your Bloomberg - Clinton overlords?

Not going to happen. You don’t become the mayor of New York for three terms by being stupid.

One thing for sure, all the advertising venues are salivating at the idea of Bloomberg vs. Trump. The GOP & Trump raised over 0.5b in 2019. Bloomberg spent more than that in the last quarter in 2019. He also donated 3.8b to charities in 2019 and still managed to increase his net worth by 11b -12b.

His campaign is totally self-funded. Even if you want to, you can’t donate to Bloomberg’s campaign right now. Try it. His campaign items are sold at cost. Weird concept.

On the other hand, the first thing you get when you go to Trump’s website is a big red “Donate Now” button in the middle of your screen. His campaign item prices ...... who the hell pay $50 for a hat which probably cost a buck each gross?

If it ended up Bloomberg vs. Trump, I recommend people buy FB stocks because their revenue is going to skyrocket.

[Skroe]

Really, this can be boiled down to the difference between a conservative, and a progressive.

You're clearly a conservative. I don't think I'm rustling any feathers there, no? Thus practical, traditional, conservative approaches are naturally what you prefer. Thus your post, which is an inherently conservative perspective.

It doesn't speak to progressives, at all. It's based on assumptions and premises that progressives flatly deny to be true, because they are just ideological preferences, not some objective truth.

Nor is claiming that it's some natural, rational path in any way reasonable; progressivism is just as rational, and progressive views have managed to secure lasting change in many nations and systems, given the opportunity.

You might be right in your not-quite-overt description of the average American voter as an ignorant, easily-led fool, but that doesn't really mean anything. It defines how these issues should be approached, not that new ideas should not be presented at all.

If there's a problem with progressivism in the USA, it's that they're largely cowards. They compromise and hold back and try and push for minute changes, concerned that the voters will rebel. When conservatives just flagrantly say shit like "PIZZA PARLORS ARE HIDING DEMOCRAT PEDO RINGS" and it gets traction. Because, as much as I'll condemn the Republicans for a lot of shit, one thing they are not is cowards. They'll lie boldly, brazenly, and say "fuck you, stop me." And Democrats won't. They won't throw down. The bully gets to keep bullying because his victims never pop him one in the mouth when he pushes them too far.

And it bears pointing out that you're arguing that progressives should be even greater cowards. That they should surrender and tuck tail, because they've already lost, before the fight really begins. And I'm saying, fuck that. Fight this fight. Actually step up, and bring the big guns to bear. Backing down is why they keep losing.

So sure; you've explained why a conservative doesn't like progressivism, and thinks the progressives need to be more conservative.

That doesn't speak to anyone but conservatives, though. You're preaching to the choir, and this is an atheist's convention, so to speak.

You've been saying this for some time - progressives need to fight. You've badly analyzed the battlefield. You're smarter than that, so I don't quite understand as to why though.

We do not have a parliament. We have a Congress and a Senate. Democrats control the House exclusively because they managed to win back districts (or similar districts) they lost in 2010 with centrist candidates in Trump-voting areas. Progressives did not bolster overall Democratic numbers in the House. They won only where Democrats always win.

In the Senate, Democrats are in the minority, and even there are not in a sharper minority only because they have conservative Democrats in certain seats. Cutting out the conservative democrats would easily give Republicans 60 votes. Doug Jones goes down in November. Manchin will probably be done after 2024 (due to age) and that seat will go red. Don't be surprised if by mid-next decade what happened to Ohio happens to Wisconsin, and it goes from light blue to purple to light red.

this isn't about ideology. It's about math. Democrats are only able to hold their existing numbers by doing pretty much the exact opposite of what you say. Your route, reliably, would see the math go against them. Even in Presidential contests. Once again, this year, it's not New York or California or Massachusetts that will chose the President. It's largely White people in Wisconsin, Michigan, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.

Your approach would be logical if we had a system more like Canada's. We do not. Our political system strongly favors a kind of regionalism, and the fact is, few regions in this country have strong - or modern - progressive traditions. The reasons the right have more success is simply because far more regions have strong and modern conservative political traditions... or just inclinations.

So you can handwave your way through me by saying "progressives have to fight" and nonsense like that. But the fact remains, there is no where near a majority in the House for M4A or a public option. And they may have half as many Senators as required, or less, for either proposal int he Senate. The problem isn't in the fighting. And it certainly isn't in the Presidential candidate. THe problem is that regionally, progressives are weak compared to Centrists and conservatives. They simply do not exist in sufficient numbers.

We see this in New Hampshire. That is in fact, an excellent example. In order pass the progressive slate of legislation, a progressive President would need complete support from Democrats from New Hampshire in the House and Senate. And what did we see in the primary? Centrist Democratic voters - what some here have laughably called "conservacrats" - substantially outnumber progressives. Bernie won, but Bernie+Warren at 103,711 votes was far narrower than Buttigieg+Klobochar+Biden at 156,174. 53,000 votes is enough to swing an election. A big election.

There's progressives problem when it comes to "fighting. They put two bonafied progressives - Warren and Bernie, and they lose by 53,000 votes, over half the progressive total. If progressives can't sell within the Democratic community, how the hell can they hope to sell to independents, or the center-right in swing states that _will_ be necessary to get 60 votes in the Senate to pass the progressive slate.

I'm going to be frank - I don't think there is anything progressives can do. I think, regionally speaking, their numbers have largely topped out. Oh sure they may replace someone like Chuck Schumer with someone more progressive, but that gets then nothing, because Schumer would vote Democratic on any bill regardless. They need to drive up their numbers in places where progressives *do not* live right now, and there is no evidence of that happening. In fact, the reverse is true. Former (historic) progressive strongholds like Minnesota and Wisconsin are turning red. Democrats hope to offset this with parts of the South - Arizona, North Carolina and maybe Texas one day - turning light blue, but those places will be won with, you guessed it, centrist Democrats and not progressives.

I want to make something clear before you respond. You may see this as self-justifying ode to the supremacy conservativism or cenristism. It most certainly is not. I don't give a rats ass about my personal political ideology anymore. America's problems are Constitutional in nature right now. I'm far, far more concerned with the powers the Presidency has accumulated since World War II, the delegation of powers by Congress and the breakdown of various processes within the legislature, the wall of protection that has been built around the executive branch by lawyers over the past 50 years, the failure of the War Powers Act, the unresolved issues relating to prosecution of a President and firing of executive officers, campaign finance and electoral reform and so forth. I believe these issues are existential threats to our democracy and if we keep waling down this road much longer, we will become truly a New Rome of sorts, an empire with an elected emperor. I think these dwarf concerns about the economy and healthcare and infrastructure. I think the greatest threat to America is a political philosophy of sorts - the unitary executive theory and all its horseshit, and not dinner table issues like jobs.

So I don't care to advance my personal beliefs about the size of government and the role in our lives or abortion or what should be in the budget or that sort of thing. I say policy is irrelevant. I mean that to myself as well. My policy agenda is irrelevant. I would be badly misreading the moment to want to talk about the role of morality and government promotion of it, when we have a President who just solicited foreign assistance to cheat in an election, and got away with it. Like for real - THAT JUST HAPPENED AND WE WANT TO TALK ABOUT FUCKING HEALTHCARE? Sorry to lose my temper but what the fuck is wrong with everybody? Are the lot of progressives, like the Trump cult, so desperate to grab at scraps for the present to lay at the altar of their ideology, they don't pay attention to the epochal threat that is a Presidency that is above the law? What if Tom Cotton becomes President some day? Or Ted Cruz? With the way things are now? And folks want to talk about Medicare for all? Fuck them and fuck that. The American idea is more important than their fucking healthcare hobby.

That's my ideology right now - protecting our inheritence, one contemporary Americans are woefully unworthy of. The American idea. I look forward to the moment we can argument about Healthcare but it is not this moment. This is the moment whereby we decide how much further we want to slide into autocracy or not. We will have to dig ourselves out eventually.

In fact, that is a concern of mine. That some Democrats, particularly on the Bernie Sanders side of things - will fail in curtailing Presidential power when they take power, because they relish the chance to sidestep Congress, sidestep the constitution and the process, to advance their agenda. They will see Trump as opening a door for them to walk through, not opening a door that they should not just close, but wield shut.

So let me be clear. If I thought the progressive agenda was the way to beating Trump, I would say so. Because I don't care about that level of the fight anymore. Beyond the fact that Mitch McConnell will stop anything dead in its tracks, my only concern is beating Trump. The reason I call the progressive agenda a trap and Bernie sanders a trap is because I do not believe it will beat Trump. I believe it will empower him. Witness the failure of Bernie to get out voters in numbers he expected in two contests now. There is no political revolution. There is an over-financed / under-performing campaign with a loud mouth, and that's it.

Democrats win THIS TIME by making Trump eat his words and reminding Americans they truly hate Trump. Not by selling their own ideas. The regional failure of that hasn't been addressed, nevermind nationalizing progressivism. Progressives want to skip to the end where they have a progressive President ready to sign progressive bills without doing the incriminetal work first.

Surrender? Never surrender. But fight smart. I am telling Democrats how to fight smart. The real question is, how much do progressives enjoy jerking off to their beliefs in public, because right now, that's not the winning strategy. Concealing them and making Trump eat his own shit is.

- - - Updated - - -

Not enough people in the right places cared about Trump being a pathetic excuse for a human being the first time around. You keep accusing us of thinking there's some 'magical city' of progressives somewhere in Wisconsin, but your entire strategy seems to be based on a 'magical city' of people who just need to hear enough that Trump is bad, as though everyone in this country doesn't already have an opinion on him.

My strategy is intrinsically superior and here's why:

Your approach requires people to change some fundamental policy beliefs. Move from independence (and perhaps skepticism of government) and centricism to liberalism / progressivism. You are trying to make a rational argument about what is better (your policy ideas) and, on the merits of it, win more votes that way... with the better argument. Your approach will fail because people are not rational, especially in this political evironment where negative partisanship dominates. They are emotional. They vote with their hearts rather than with their heads. This is the classic liberal mistake - to think you can appeal to people rationally. You can't. Most people are opportunistic, prejudiced, egocentric, insular, contradictory, and most of all, highly irrational.

But the short problem with your approach, and why it will fail, is that you have to convince a LOT of people that things they believe - ideas - were wrong, and they should rationally try what you offer.

My approach is better because it sidesteps all that. It puts all of it on Donald Trump. Maybe the argument can be Donald Trump lied. He duped the average Wisconsinite or Pennsylvanian. The jobs never came back. He becomes someone to blame. We therefore don't require people to change their ideas at all. We just get them EMOTIONALLY worked up to the point they blame Trump and now vote against them. It doesn't require them questioning their beliefs or changing their opinions about the role of government or anything about that. It doesn't require a rationale argument. It requires an emotional one: "Donald Trump played you for a fool, and disgraces the country as President. Doesn't that make you mad?". It plays to all the worst qualities of Americans, that often comes out during elections. Most of all their egocentrism. Your approach requires Americans to care about their fellow man. Most Americans do not. My approach requires Americans to care about themselves, which they do quite well.

And most of all, my approach requires a fraction of the voters who voted in 2016 to change sides. A few tens of thousands. I think my approach makes that a far easier sell than your approach, because in mine, voting against Trump is an expression of their dissatisfaction with him. Negative partisanship. With yours, you're aiming for an affirmation vote - a vote for the Progressive slate. Far harder, and will likely need far more voters when Independents who aren't for that slate decide to vote for the "devil they know".

That's why your approach is doomed to fail and mine will succeed. Your approach requires Americans to be better than they are. My approach anticipates them being what we know them to be, and most of all that is extraordinarily egocentric and irrational, and makes it work for the strategy.

But you know what the funny part is - I'm going to call it now. If Bernie is the nominee and they chose your approach, when Bernie loses all the states Hillary lost in 2016, plus Virginia, New Hampshire, Nevada, Minnesota and Colorado... you'll blame other Democrats for not coming out and anti-Trump independents for not voting. You won't blame your ideology, which does not command anything close to a mass following in the United States. You will not blame the campaign, because Saint Sanders does no wrong. And you will not blame the approach, because nearly 20 years of being politically active have taught me that progressives will simply never accept that egocentric Americans simply don't want what they're selling.

The bellwether for this? The Nevada Culinary Union. Heaven forbid a union says that they don't give a rats ass about Healthcare for non-union members. The fact that Bernie Sanders supporters don't understand why and are incapable of coping with their position (instead, hoping to shit talk the union to changing its position), shows simply do not understand the political motivations of their own countrymen.

[Elegiac]

I'm far, far more concerned with the powers the Presidency has accumulated since World War II, the delegation of powers by Congress and the breakdown of various processes within the legislature, the wall of protection that has been built around the executive branch by lawyers over the past 50 years, the failure of the War Powers Act, the unresolved issues relating to prosecution of a President and firing of executive officers, campaign finance and electoral reform and so forth.

This segment in particular illustrates why you don't fundamentally understand the left wing position, as I said earlier.

All of the concerns you listed have to do with preserving the legitimacy and integrity of the existing system, when doing so is not a given to the left given how bad the previous system was at actually furnishing welfare for, as I said, most people outside of a demographic minority. And as we're seeing, it's also increasingly not a given to the right either since as it turns out a surfeit of hyperpatriotism neither puts food on the table nor provides you with a meaningful existence in a post-industrial economy. In short: a crisis of political legitimacy.

You're demanding people give blood for a system that has already either bled them dry or actively engages in oppression against them with the promise of returning to a state of affairs that was not working for them at the time, with every indication that once the common enemy has been defeated there will be continued and concerted opposition to addressing any actual left wing concern.

I'll say this: as much as Trump lies, cheats, and bullshits, at the very least he seems to understand that political movements need to be fed with meat, not just dressing. The progressive argument is much the same; you cannot build any political movement, even one for "triage", on empty abstractions because most people do not care about higher principles when they are struggling in practice, so the Democrats must provide a reason why the American system is in fact worth saving beyond vague threats of Chinese authoritarianism.

And while I shall go through the motions of civic participation and do my duty, I will also I'm of the increasing belief that the US' systemic problems are insoluble and that its current geopolitical manifestation is unsustainable. It cannot fundamentally reconcile its claim to liberal democracy with the realities of its political biology.

[d00mGuArD]

You won't blame your ideology, which does not command anything close to a mass following in the United States. You will not blame the campaign, because Saint Sanders does no wrong. And you will not blame the approach, because nearly 20 years of being politically active have taught me that progressives will simply never accept that egocentric Americans simply don't want what they're selling.

We saw that happening in UK, they blame anything and everyone except the ideology for the abysmal results. They even stole Trump's tactic of blaming the evil media. (you know you failed when you have to steal a tactic from Trump in order to deflect blame). They did blame the leader in the UK, but in the US it is more likely to blame racism or privilege or other meme words. But never the ideology!

[starlord]

i don't think any one approach would be the magic bullet for trump. data shows that most people have made up their mind about him one way or another.

yes its important for candidates to have a concrete agenda for their time in office, but right now the political system has been fundamentally broken by a handful of people. those people need to be removed before any meaningful progress can be made, and the system reformed.
everything else can only come after.

[Elegiac]

i don't think any one approach would be the magic bullet for trump. data shows that most people have made up their mind about him one way or another.

yes its important for candidates to have a concrete agenda for their time in office, but right now the political system has been fundamentally broken by a handful of people. those people need to be removed before any meaningful progress can be made, and the system reformed.
everything else can only come after.

Nah.

At this rate, metapolitefsi is going to take some level of domestic crisis that actually starts causing civic unrest like we saw in Chile.

[Gestopft]

My strategy is intrinsically superior and here's why:

Your approach still relies on changing people's minds: specifically it relies on convincing people that don't already care about Trump that they should care enough to actually get up and vote against him.

There are people who are already anti-Trump. That's us. We'll vote for anyone or anything that has a D on it in order to get Trump out. No need to convince them.

There are people who like Trump. We're not winning them over; it's a cult over there.

There are people who don't like Trump, but are willing to look the other way when he shits on Twitter and wipes his ass with the Constitution because (judges, Roe v. Wade, tax cuts, immigration, etc). These people aren't gettable either.

Then there are people that don't care enough about Trump either way to want to come out to vote for or against him. These are the targets, and the idea (yours) that after nearly five years of 24/7 Trump media saturation, even more Trump is going to suddenly rouse them to action? No. People who aren't already motivated to vote against Trump need different reasons to come out and vote. And to add on to @Elegiac, people in your income bracket have the luxury of thinking about these things in philosophical terms. People who are struggling and concerned about their futures need more than philosophy on the ballot.

[Edge-]

Why the fuck do you have these laws if none of them are enforceable?

They are, they just take time. There's a legal process to go through, and one that would have made subpoenaing Bolton in particular kinda pointless given the timelines they were looking at for impeachment.