I have had furious board fights with Shayna.
But I think this sentiment is misplaced.
Ideological from your point of view, a point of view that you did not explicitly share, but forced others to guess at around the shadows of your implications. Besides, I actually am not a fan of ideological views. I am a pragmatist. I take the practical view. Not what will advance my ideology, but what will advance my goals. One of my goals is to live in a peaceful, prosperous country that affords me opportunities for economic and personal fulfillment, in a social and civil structure that encourages and enables others to also take advantage of those opportunities.
Denying the right to vote to minorities does not work toward that goal. Any step in that sort of direction I see as harmful to society and civil discourse, and therefore, not in my best interest, even if it were to further my own, short sighted and short term interest.
The pit isn’t welcoming. I admit that I do not read all your threads ever. I’m a fan of your in some ways, sure, but not a stalker. So it is entirely possible you are right. But you do have to admit, your methods and goals do often align with those of admitted and sometimes even proud bigots, so while you are under no obligation to explain why your reasons for wanting the same thing as those who are rightfully deplored, it is reasonable to see how you would get lumped in with them.
I’ll condemn gerrymandering on both sides. On all sides in fact. Politicians should not be the ones picking their constituence. What the best solution to the gerrymandering problem is is a good and complicated discussion that may be a bit more of a sidetrack than we are already on, but I’ll leave it at this: It is bad when either side does it, and I will join you in condemning partisan use of distrciting powers.
Sorry, I was busy. But if you are going to complain that you can’t have a reasonable conversation with anyone, because you can’t have a reasonable conversation with everyone, then we (royal we, even, and the personal) can never make any progress towards the goals we share, or compromise on the goals that divide us.
I will join you in saying that this is not the place for mocking or derision. Though I will say that the place for that sort of behavior is the pit, and you know that, so you really shouldn’t take things too seriously there. Outside the pit, I’ll agree, while jokes at the expense of your political opponent can give you a few seconds chuckle, it is not conducive to productive conversation. So with all my power of a mere anonymous unpaying poster on the board, and hoping not to draw ire as acting as a junior moderator, I could ask… please knock it off? That’s the best I can do for ya.
This remark of yours contains snark. Remarks of others also contain comments that are not meant in the best interests of furthering conversation. Personally, I kinda skim over them, I don’t really count them as part of the conversation, but as part of the background. Now, that background can color the conversation, and can influence it’s level of civility, but for the most part, it is only useful to engage with those who are looking to be part of the conversation, and to only engage with those parts of others posts that further that conversation. (Once again, the pit is a different matter, where the object is actually to score points on viciousness and invective over pursuing serious topics, so seriously, prolly shouldn’t carry grudges from there.)
These are different things for alot of reasons.
The abortion debate rages on. It is something that both sides have fought over for decades, and will probably continue to fight over for more to come. The ball may swing in your direction, and your opponents will redouble their efforts and maybe get it swung back. While the democrats don’t want to lose the battle, it is a battle that they are expecting and prepared to fight.
We thought both sides had settled the argument about civil rights of women and minorities by now, and thought we were tightening up the loose ends on gay rights, and that’s all at risk in an unexpected and frankly terrifying way.
Also note, that in your hypothetical, and I assume real life example, you defend your position against the perception, rather than just taking the position, and telling others to guess why as you do on here.
I also also see from your example that you too discover that it is sometimes difficult to get through to the single issue voter. You voted for Clinton because, even though you didn’t share her ideology, you could clearly see, from being open to information outside of the bubble reinforcing your single issue position, that even if it did not further your immediate goals on issues that you may feel are important, it did fuhrer your greater overall goals.
But you do have to be willing to enable him to further his goals, in order to achieve the goals that you want. If you know what his goals are, then you have to weigh them against yours. Are the things that he will do make things worse overall, even if the single issue that you care about is achieved, or will they not necessarily further your personal interests in the better interest of the overall society in which you live?
I believe that you made the right choice, even as conflicted as you were about it, in voting for Clinton, because you weighed those values correctly.
Do you see why we may frustrated, or even disgusted, with those who weighed them differently?
Some definitely voted for him because they share his attitudes. Some voted for him because they only think about one or two issues (I’ve spoken on the one, I’ll let you guess the “second”). But the frustration is those who voted for him, even if they disagreed entirely with the first two groups, out of a self interest that is not only short sighted and short term, it is also likely not to come true. But they voted on the dream that trump promised, even though they should have known that the only parts he will likely deliver will be the nightmare.
I will argue that the majority of trump voters did not do nearly as much weighing as you did. It wasn’t values that they voted on, it wasn’t a plan for success, it was snake oil, sold by a bigot enabling salesmen, and I argue that there should not have ever been a need to weigh the arguments, his should have simply been rejected immediately, as soon as it was tinged with the sorts of bigotry that he has played to. The fact that such views did not immediately disqualify him from the consideration from the minds of voters is what we found baffling.
If you are saying you might as well call the other side names, because your side is going to lose anyway, I would respectfully disagree.
That’s the point. CBS, and everyone inside the bubble, and all the pollsters, and even I, thought Hillary was going to win even though nobody was “catering to” the other side, in the sense of not calling them names or sneering at them and not taking anything they said seriously, until they stopped saying it. And stepped into the polling booth and spoke in a way that nobody could ignore.
In 2016 that has morphed into “I’d rather be self-righteous than President.”
If you prefer to identify everything the other side says or thinks as sexism, racism, homophobia, etc., that’s your choice. As long as you don’t mind doing it from outside the White House fence.
Regards,
Shodan
I fully agree with you and was trying to make the same point. But I could’ve done it better. I realize my BFD comment may likely have come across as snarky, which was not intended. It would’ve been better if I did not include that.
Hillary. Clinton. Is. Not. A. Progressive.
Not by any stretch of the imagination.
She and her husband turned the Democratic Party into Republican Lite and are responsible for more right-wing-favored legislation than Republicans thought they could accomplish in their wettest of wet dreams.
They destroyed the Welfare safety net in cahoots with Newt Gingrich. Hillary called poor women receiving it deadbeats who had no dignity. But I should be afraid of Trump’s racist rhetoric. Pfff
They deregulated the banks and destroyed the separations Glass-Steagall baked in for our safety, which was a direct cause of the 2008 economic collapse everyone blames Bush for. Screw them.
They deregulated the media to get a stranglehold on manipulating the public for power.
They obliterated much of the black community with their heavy-handed crime law, which Hillary supported because we had to bring Superpredators to heel like dogs before we could figure out what “made them that way.” But I should worry how the black community will suffer under Trump? I’ve seen how they suffered under her racist policies. She barely acknowledged Black Lives Matter and promised to implement only a small few of the changes they’re recommending.
If you were paying attention, you’d know she wants to turn Social Security into a means-tested Welfare program, which absolutely spells the end of it. But I should worry more about blatant attempts by Trump Democrats will most certainly block and not about backdoor efforts her sycophants would certainly green light? I hardly think so.
She favors the democracy-destroying TPP and it’s corporation-friendly **secret **world court, opposes a living federal minimum wage, opposes single-payer health care, would work with Republicans to place a constitutional ban on women’s reproductive rights in the third trimester of pregnancy (that should make Bricker happy to know), she’s more pro war than Dick fucking Cheney, loves and respects war criminal Henry Kissinger, called for a dangerous no-fly zone over Syria which means war with Russia, is in favor of dirty oil pipelines and fracking, tapped a climate change denier to help her fill her cabinet and a corporate shill as her vice president. What the fuck is Progressive about any of that?
Look, you’re free to delude yourself all you want, but facts don’t change just because you refuse to see them. She’s a proud Goldwater Girl. Always has been; always will be.
Hillary Clinton’s Ghosts: A Legacy of Pushing the Democratic Party to the Right
Yes, I think Progressive values stand a much better chance of being implemented with an out-in-four-years asshole who Democrats in Congress will oppose and fight tooth and nail, than a right-wing faux Democrat whose horrifying war and banking policies would have been cemented permanently after eight years of a corporate power grab.
I was too late to edit to add:
I voted against her because of all of that and more, not because she said mean things.
That was an illustration of how shitty her outreach was and how little she gave a crap about wooing the voters she’d need to win. If you don’t get how badly that hurt her and why, you’re part of the problem.
Ok, on #1 I phrased that badly. Should have been Obama had the last 8 years. And he did and things haven’t gotten better for a lot of people that were promised things would get better. (One would think that since we are discussing the presidential election that would have been clear but I did phrase it badly)
For #2
Go read. Get a clue as to what people are thinking. I didn’t say thing haven’t gotten better, I said things haven’t gotten better for the people Clinton needed to win the election. Here are some starting points.
Most Say Government Policies Since Recession Have Done Little to Help Middle Class, Poor. Link
The money shot:
Another from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The Middle Class May Be Under More Pressure Than You Think. Link
There are a bunch more studies/polls/etc pointing to the fact that the middle class feels squeezed. This shouldn’t be surprising at all.
#3 This is trivial. No one has a crystal ball though I am sure that some policies would have helped the middle class more than others. What happened happened and the middle class feels left out and is pissed off.
I am not sure how you cannot understand this. It isn’t hard. Candidates always promise that things will get better. Obama did. 8 years later, things are better for some but a whole bunch of people are worse off, by subjective and objective standards and they are pissed off.
Trump getting the Republican nomination is proof of this. Clinton losing is proof of this.
Slee
Well Shayna, I do take it that you did not vote for Trump also no?
I’m surprisingly not so upset as others because I do take it that you are going to be more involved so the protest vote is indeed a protest one no? Because for all the bad that you listed about Clinton there, Trump is willing to do worse than that.
If that is the case, that you are not in Favor of Trump at all, then I do point out that I think I was correct: the Republicans that think that they got a mandate are even more wrong, because it is clear to me that a lot of the ones that gave us the result we got are not going to let the Republicans go south with no effort or opposition.
What I’m trying to say here is that we have to become more involved and not just protest in a way that leaves nothing to show for.
I am pleased at the prospect of overturning Roe, to be sure. Not only do I disfavor the result, but I regard it as badly reasoned law.
I don’t agree with this summary.
The only reason you’re not eating a warning for this is that I’m having trouble understanding you. And writing unclearly isn’t a warnable offense.
Insulting others, however, is. Come no closer to that line.
Of course I didn’t vote for that piece of shit Trump. I live in California, so my vote was going to be irrelevant to this election even if it had gone to Hillary. I voted for Jill Stein for two reasons: 1. She best represents my political ideology, and 2. It was a strategic vote in an attempt to help the Green Party become eligible for federal funding and automatically be on the ballot in all 50 states without signature-gathering campaigns and financial hurdles. Unfortunately, even that didn’t happen. So basically I got nothing I would have wanted out of this election.
As for being active, I’ve worked in politics for 16 years, including inside campaigns as paid staff. I’m not going anywhere.
Sanders supporters who didn’t vote Clinton … man, is that an epic fail - instead you get 4 years off off the chain social policy lunacy.
It’s not like we didn’t say that about Nader in 2000.
And while others may give you flack I have to tell you that I think that you are OK, because you did it in California, others that did so in battleground states deserve just about a raspberry. 
Really, not much more is needed to tell others that some democrats are blaming them for the defeat (they will have to answer for their choice to a higher power, and I’m an agnostic ). Because while there was dissent we need now to get more organized and join forces to counter the ones that are thinking that they got a mandate and do think that a dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier.
I do think that many of those Green Party voters and the ones that were complacent will come back to vote Democratic when a better candidate comes.
Returning us to the good ol’ days of the '50’s. Yeah, that’s gonna work in a modern world.
Really? I wonder what all those dangerous, children-molesting transgenders in NC think about that? Or perhaps all the gay people living in states trying to pass laws that businesses can refuse service based on their sexual orientation? Or any woman who might want to get an abortion after Trump’s SC bench enforces religious views on the part of the nation that doesn’t happen to follow its god or do so in the way that pleases them?
How about the party that at every turn trenchantly and deliberately refused to cooperate with anyone across the aisle anytime the other side was in power for over 25 years? Or maybe your favorite flavor is the numerous attempts at gerrymandering and voter ID designed specifically to maintain control of a population slowly growing past it in any other way. That caters to a hateful and completely anti-American minority just for their votes…or votes for a clinically insane man not only to be its leader but that of the free world.
I’m not saying Dems are lily-white, but when it comes to any positive change whatsoever, Pubs are by contrast about as dirty as it’s possible to imagine.
Well, it seems to a week for a lot of us to gain some humility. I absolutely agree with this. I don’t think I ever insulted Bernie supporters on line, but I certainly insisted they (as a group) were unrealistic. And I certainly defended Sec. Clinton vigorously and quite bluntly. And I damned sure didn’t do enough -or more honestly hardly anything- to try and build any bridges to get support from that group. So from that point of view, I can empathize with what many Sanders supporters might have perceived as the attitude from the Democratic Party.
Having said that, it would be nice if they could see the real bridge building attempted by both Clinton and Sanders after the primaries, and the real effect the Sanders campaign had on the final platform. I wish I’d done better, and I wish all of us had done better.
Okay, so this is going to be my last post in this thread, as it keeps making me angry, and I really don’t need that right now.
When you have such a tight result, any argument that tries to repudiate the Democrats or liberals entirely is clearly false. Any claim that there is some massive problem that needs to be fixed is false. If this really was about resentment of being called racist, we would have lost by a whole lot more. As you guys admit, it happens a lot.
We do not, BTW, decide to identify something as racist. It just is or isn’t. If your action causes disproportionate negative results to people of color, then that action is racist. Measuring whether something is racist is an objective fact–are people of color disproportionately negatively affected? Then, yes, it was racist. There is nothing we can do to pretend this isn’t true.
There is and has always been a problem with outreach. A problem getting people to stop seeing calling out racism as an attack on them personally*, and to just see it as something they need to fix. Everyone has racism in them. I found out that I instinctively associate white faces with good things and black faces with bad things. The thing is, I know this, so, when I see a racist result of my actions, I fix it. I am happy when someone points it out, as I know I can ignore my own racism.
And I’m part of the fucking “working class uneducated whites.” If I can do it, others can, too. The problem is getting through all the misinformation used to try and prevent the necessary change.
Finally, Bricker. The fact that you used policy does not in anyway prove that what you proposed is not racist. For one, the policies themselves can be racist–which I admit was not the case for you. But, two, the results can negatively affect people of color disproportionately.
Just like the racist policy of poll taxes or literacy tests. On paper, those are just policies. But they adversely affected black people. And we rightly call them racist.
You have previously proposed an ID system that tried to fix the racism problem with current ID laws–one based on fingerprinting. You just need ID to register (as you always have) and then you can use fingerprints to verify it’s that person, with a database to make sure someone with that fingerprint hasn’t voted elsewhere.
So you have a non-racist solution that accomplishes your policy goals. Hence the current solutions are unnecessarily racist. That’s not a value judgement. That’s just fact–they affect people of color more, so they are racist. If I could figure out another way to say that, I would. But I can’t. So that’s what you get.
*And, yes, in the Pit, people blur the line between person and action. But that’s because the Pit is the place where people go when they are so angry they want to explode. Anger causes exaggeration. It causes incrimination. Trying to have actual policy discussions there without people blowing up at you is a fools errand.
I’ve been called racist in the Pit, for goodness sake.
People can erroneously blame me all they want. I can’t fix stupid.
I think you’re wrong about getting #DemExit folks back until the DNC has been rid of every corporate toady and Superdelegates are abolished. I know thousands who’ve left after decades and who have no intention of going back without massive, major changes.
We’ll see, won’t we.
Thank you.
P. S. It was not a perception, it was a reality. I will return with screenshots.
Didn’t see this post before my last one up above, but it wouldn’t have changed my feelings about abuse and recrimination.
Nor does that screed change my opinion about Hillary Clinton. But it does illustrate a similar problem to the one Democrats face with many voters who think they know what ‘the liberals’ stand for. There is no way anyone will ever penetrate Shayna’s beliefs about the evil done in this world by the Clintons. In that way she is precisely as amenable as many Trump voters to any candidates likely to be nominated by the only major party which is willing to affect any of the changes she wants.
Calling her names is not a winning strategy for Democrats, and her purity requirements are not a winning strategy to gain the party she envisions. The only way forward I can see for Democrats is the one that enraged many Sanders voters who accused HRC (and presumably the Obama Administration) of the strategy: we have to have a coalition that does not try to cater to her because we can’t do that and maintain a broader tent. Shayna and insistent progressives will either follow along or they won’t, but if they couldn’t live with the absolutely most progressive platform a Democratic Presidential candidate has ever run on, then I don’t think the party can live with them in any steering capacity.