The “it doesn’t matter” argument cuts both ways. If party members doesn’t matter, what’s the harm in joining the party which you wish to nudge in one direction or another?
I’m not sure what kind of political reality you live in, but Obama, the Clintons, Gore, and so forth are mainstream liberals in our country. To the extent that you criticize them for not being sufficiently liberal, maybe the word “radical” isn’t the best choice, but I’m pretty sure the folks you want to see elected aren’t within the general mainstream of politics at this time.
Yeah, and Jerry Brown did fairly well running against Bill Clinton. He still had no chance.
Great. Join the party. Problem solved. After all, it isn’t like any other American political party has embraced more out-of-mainstream political ideologies and become a flaming mess because of it. What could go wrong?
What the hell are you talking about, that “they” fought Obama tooth and nail on a bill that got passed with 60 votes in the Senate?
A few accomplishments of the Democratic Party in the last couple decades: two Presidents restoring economic growth after painful recessions. The first government surpluses in ages. Health care, including for millions of kids. First African American President. A government bureau whose only purpose is to hold corporations accountable for screwing consumers. Osama bin Laden dead. End of dependence on foreign oil and the beginnings of a green energy sector. Ended torture. Committed the US to tackling climate change. End of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and first moves to extend Federal benefits to same sex couples.
What have they done? Good things. What has Jill Stein done, huh?
It would be easier to accept as principled and considered Sanders’ decision not to be part, even at a minimal level, of an organization whose support he wanted for the Highest Office in the Land if he’d ever stated his reasons. Or if his holdout acolytes on the Internet could offer something, either.
No organization is obliged to subsidize a non-member’s ego trips. That should be obvious, one might think.
But GIGObuster… the claim that Hilary started the “Obama is a Muslim” meme has just the right amount of truthiness. And in the end, isn’t that all that matters?
Minor, minor quibble. You can’t praise them for getting rid of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell without mentioning that they also started it because Bill Clinton didn’t have the nads to stand up to the Joint Chiefs (like Truman did for integration).
You think Obama, Clinton and Gore were liberals? Obama liked to joke that by European standards, he was a conservative.
They did pass some good laws. I liked Clinton’s 1993 tax bill, that was a lasting legacy.
But they aren’t liberals. Also liberal agendas are not unpopular with the public. I think the public respects strength, not wimpy begging for friendship like the democrats do. The democrats need to start playing hardball and be shameless about it. If they win the senate in 2018, block every judge until we have a democratic president. Use the hell out of reconciliation. Push for statehood for DC and Puerto Rico. Pass a massive new voting rights bill. Rebuild the labor movement. Put Trump and his family in prison where they belong.
I really don’t understand your argument. The public are low information voters for the most part. The vast majority of people barely understand any of the issues. You really think they understand or care about whether a democrat is liberal or moderate?
No question, I agree. But we also can’t discount how far the American public has come on gay rights in the last generation.
So what? They are liberals. The definition of “liberal” is not “left enough to get your support.” And yeah, a lot of liberals in this country would be centrists in European countries. That’s neither here nor there.
Sure, in opinion polls, a lot of liberal positions have support. But for reasons I’m not sure I fully understand, Americans don’t really like voting for candidate who are more liberal than the politicians you say are whimpy European moderates.
I’m with you on those issues, but if “playing hardball” means doing things like exercising the nuclear option (as Reid and McConnel have done) then I disagree with that kind of hardball – because it will come back to bite us in the ass when Republicans are in charge.
My argument is that acting like a progressive version of the Tea Party is bad for the country, and that it is inherently reasonable for the Democratic Party to insist on having Democratic candidates be Democrats. I should add that I don’t much care for this “most voters are too dumb to understand how great progressives are” line of argument that you’re implying.
Most voters barely pay attention. I don’t agree with the myth of the rational voter. The myth of the rational voter has cost democrats elections. Treating voters as if all of them have a nuanced understanding of the complexities of policy doesn’t work. I don’t know what voters respond to, but nuanced policy arguments don’t seem to be it. Voters seem to respond to values.
My point is that treating voters as if they are cerebral and vote based on an intellectual understanding of policy is a waste of time. For the most part people vote based on in-group/out-group dynamics and various moral values like fairness or the importance of tradition, safety and authority.
Also I’m unsure why you feel you speak for all 70 million democratic voters in saying who they will and will not vote for. I don’t speak for them either, but this isn’t the 1980s and we aren’t in the Dukakis years. Literally half the people who voted in 1988 are dead and have been replaced by younger voters. Liberals now make up half of democratic voters, up from just a third even a decade ago.
I don’t like playing hardball, but if the GOP does and we do not, we lose.
Dems have also won elections by voters being rational, such as turning against crazy Republicans in Senate races in Missouri, Indiana, Nevada and other states in recent past. Not to mention voters twice overwhelmingly voting for the black guy, even though there are many reasons why lots of smart people thought that dumb voters would not do so for many decades later.
And I’m not telling anyone who to vote for, so if that’s what you think I’m doing, you’re on some different planet. I’m saying that the candidates you seem to prefer generally haven’t done very well in past elections. If you want to vote for them, knock yourself out. But if people vote for spoiler candidates in a general election, as they did for Jill Stein and Ralph Nader, and fuck up the country in the process, you’re damn right that I’m going to say that they are part of the problem.
There is somehow the assumption that if Bernie was the candidate in 2016 he would have won. These all ignore the fact that if Bernie were the candidate, the GOP/Russian lie machine would have been trained on him instead of Hillary. He would have been an out of touch leftist radical who was a sexual deviant, soviet sleeper agent, who isn’t afull American and should be locked up along with his wifefor fraud. This is, of course, all bullshit but then again so were the allegations against Clinton.
Note that the main difference between the Obama win and the Trump loss was the lack of turnout of black voters. These are the voters who supported Hillary much stronger than Sanders. So it unlikely that putting Sanders in Hillary’s place would correct this. A Sanders candidacy would put us in exactly the same place we are today, we would all be bemoaning the fact that the Democrats once again shot them selves in the foot. Rather than a moderate tried and true candidate like Clinton, we chose a radical like Sanders who was the one person that Trump could beat, as evidenced by all the people who voted for Trump because “at least he wasn’t Sanders”. The conclusion would be that America was clearly not ready for a progressive and we should concentrate on just getting elected.
The choice wasn’t “don’t ask don’t tell” vs “full acceptance of gays in the military”, it was between “don’t ask don’t tell” and legislative action outlawing gays in the military. Once again revisionist historians demanding that the perfect become the enemy of the good.
Yes, certainly, and it wasn’t a matter of “standing up” to people over whom he had authority to issue orders, but dealing with the opposition(ist) party in Congress.
Hillary Clinton wasn’t old enough to vote when she was a Republican. I’m fine with forgiving people for actions in their teens. Sanders was a complete failure as an adult until he finally managed to get himself elected mayor of the metropolis of Burlington, VT.
The Democratic Party certainly doesn’t need ‘allies’ such as Sanders. Take any Sanders stump speech during his failed primary run:
Sanders: “The Democratic Party…” pause
Audience: 'BOO!!!"
