Er… Pretty sure you’re gonna need us wypipo if you folks expect to be effective at… Well, anything.
And so your proposal to improve the Democratic party is to make it the anti-white party? Christ, if the right wing in this country ever had a political fantasy, you just sketched their centerfold for them.
I think this strategy, if employed to the fullest, is going to succeed in achieving two things:
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polarization
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convince the few remaining centrists left that the progressive left might be just as bat-shit insane as the political right.
Can’t pretend to accomplish what’s already been done.
What, “the few remaining centrists” are going to be convinced that the progressive left is bat-shit insane because we feel people shouldn’t become orca lunch while on the job??
You’ll have to excuse me for this, but I’m incredibly unconvinced.
Democrats can fight like hell - and I certainly don’t have a problem unanimously voting against Kavanaugh along party lines. But they’re not going to win. We’ve already seen how this plays out with Gorsuch.
The real lesson here is that elections have consequences. If progressive voters and moderate voters can’t see the gathering danger 2 years into a Trump presidency, then no amount of obstructionism is going to help.
Voters (and non-voters) gave us Trump, and they gave us a conservative supreme court. This is what they voted for. Don’t like it? Well, do something about it this November, and don’t complain because you don’t see your choice for a progressive all-star team in the lineup.
Exactly. And another one’s coming, and we’d better make it count.
Yeah, you’re right: nothing the Dems do between now and November can make a difference in how people vote.
Maybe they ought to just go on vacation until November 7, amirite? :rolleyes:
If the Democrats had better leadership, they would use a losing opportunity to show class and dignity to the middle of the road swing type of voters and repudiate this in your face style of confronting public officials in public.
But they won’t. Expect whinny double standards, even though Keagan was approved during a midterm election year.
Kavanaugh is a pleasant fellow, with a sharp legal mind. He’ll breeze through the process, unless there is some major skeleton in a closet that no one knows about.
Why are you unable or unwilling to recognize the difference between tactics and goals?
Why do you think Democrats can’t say “fuck you; your ideas are stupid and would hurt people” and then NOT HELP THEM DO THOSE THINGS.
Why do you think Democrats cannot stand on their principles the same way that Republicans do without somehow also copping Republican values and goals? IMO that isn’t a reasonable view.
Everyone knows there’s a difference between the two parties. The problem is that you are highlighting the wrong differences. The differences you need to highlight are this: The GOP is the party that doesn’t back down and WILL fuck you up if they get the chance while the Dems are the party that caves in on everything and has no clear policy goals of any kind.
Fix that perception differently and maybe the Dems have a chance. But compromise, capitulation, a lack of goals and/or resolve are not the way to win enough votes to stop things from continuing onward as they are.
Don’t you think McConnell changed that rule?
Well, a substantial minority did.
I disagree with the first bolded sentence and the second bolded bit is why.
Obstructionism keeps the headlines “Dems fighting for their values” and “New SCOTUS pick a jerk, say Dems” going longer, which means more eyes see them. As in music, in society repetition lends legitimacy and Dems need to use that to their advantage like Republicans have been. The more people, especially people who did not vote in 2016, that see those messages the better and it’s better if they see them closer to the elections, so obstructionism IMO is the way to go right now.
Again: it’s worked for the GOP for the past 2 decades, hasn’t it?
I understood your point the first time but I still disagree with it.
I agree that the Democrats need to do a better job. But they do not need to adopt the tactics the Republican party is using, even if those tactics are working. What they should be doing is opposing the Republicans and their tactics, not imitating them. They should be out there telling people what the Democrats are doing that’s different and why what they’re doing is better.
Mindless opposition to anything the other party does is wrong when the Republicans do it. And it would still be wrong if the Democrats started doing it. So instead of practicing mindless opposition, the Democrats should be telling people why mindless opposition is a bad idea. And when people understand that, they will choose the Democrats rather than the Republicans.
But if the Democrats go for the easy answer and just adopt mindless opposition as well then they can’t claim to oppose the Republicans for their use of the tactic. If both sides are practicing dirty politics the only issue is who’s practicing them more effectively. And the answer to that is the Republicans have a lot more experience and practice with dirty politics.
When it’s a choice between good and evil, pick good. But when it’s a choice between evil and other evil, you might as well pick the winning evil.
It worked because Republican voters are more committed for their causes than Democratic voters are.
We had a Democratic President from January 2009 to January 2017 who had more class and dignity than any President in my lifetime, including JFK.
Another great theory ruined by the facts, as my grandfather used to say.
Talk, talk, talk. If you can’t wait, don’t wait. Are you going to run for office? Do you have a plan to organize the “non-white folks” and take over at a local, city-wide, county or state level? If you want to take the party over, you have to do more then talk about a vague future-show me something real if you want my vote.
I think it depends on the tactics.
There are tactics that are just plain wrong, like spreading lies about your opponents. We don’t need to do that. Like Truman said in response to “Give 'em hell, Harry,” if we tell the truth about the GOP, it’ll feel like hell to them. Bullying and punching down is always morally wrong. Deceiving the public about issues and policy is wrong. We don’t need to do any of that.
But fighting a Presidential nomination is neither right nor wrong in and of itself. Doing away with the filibuster and blue slips and all that other procedural folderol, ditto. Really the only question about tactics like these is, can we use them effectively?
That’s the distinction I’d draw on the question of tactics.
But judges base their decisions on the law, or the law as they see it.
If Kavanaugh supports congress passing such a law, he is, in effect, saying he knows that it is not what the law is now.
Since the word is that Kennedy wants Kavanaugh, it should be considered.
We *know *we are going to get a conservative Judge. That’s just the way it is. This may be the most reasonable guy we’re likely to get.
On a side note, does Raj Shah always look like such a doofus?
About Mr. K’s opinions about reserving a special immunity for the President, so that he is not distracted by the vexations of law. All of the names on the first draft list are vetted and approved by both the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation. So, we may rest assured that they were all solidly conservative, if not reactionary.
Of that bunch, are any of them on paper as approving of Mr. K’s…extraordinary?..reading of the perks and responsibilities of executive power? Has anybody else advanced the theory that the President should be exempt from criminal investigations? Is he a very original thinker, then?
Because if he’s the only one, gotta say I would be a mite suspicious.
This is in line with a recent Dahlia Lithwick column, where she paints the Kavanaugh nomination as a strategic error, politically. All of these potential candidates were carefully vetted by the Federalist Society. God, guns, abortion - the positions on all of these issues were known and could be applied to anyone on the list; it wouldn’t have mattered which name Trump chose.
One candidate, just one, has a trail of writings that support increasing the powers of the Executive, right up to the point of putting the President above the law. Select this one candidate, and it will look like this is the reason for that selection, and that is the way it will be portrayed - over and over again through the election season. This, I surmise, is one of the reasons that McConnell opposed nominating Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh was the one selection from that list that would make it look like Trump has something to hide.
Am I missing something here?
Kavanaugh worked with the Starr investigation and has written extensively about grounds for impeachment. Aren’t his current opinions that the president should be protected from investigations diametrically opposed to his previous actions and writings?
In other words – can’t he easily be exposed as a hypocrite who’s OK with impeaching a Democratic president for lying about a blowjob but not with investigating a Republican president for potential treason?
But if he could’ve run against Trump, he would’ve won.
Uh, the classy guy, not your grandfather.
Well, maybe your grandfather, too.