OK, first of all I think it’s a bit disingenuous to act as though the squad is just four backbench members representing four out of 435 congressional districts. If that were really what they were all about, they could restrict their interaction to constituents only. This is actually how it generally worked not long ago: to email someone in Congress, you had to use the House or Senate site, and it would verify that you were within the correct state or congressional district before allowing you to contact them.
But AOC and her squad are all about reaching out to millions of people on social media. Which is fine, but then as I say you can’t have it both ways.
Secondly, I support House leadership vigorously pushing back on bigoted comments Trump makes about any member of the caucus. But I don’t expect them to defend the squad’s left wing positions. If the members who swung red districts blue, and gave Democrats the majority, ask Pelosi to express public disagreement with some of those fringe positions, I expect leaders to listen to them a lot more than to the squad’s Twitter followers.
I want them to continue to make a case for their own hard left policy proposals. I want them to refrain from saying or insinuating that other Democrats who don’t support some parts of their agenda are racist, corrupt, part of a rigged system, etc. Just say “My friend Mr. Jones and I do not see eye to eye on this policy. Here is why I think it would be the best approach: [list benefits] And here are some limitations or flaws I see in the amendment Congressman Jones has submitted: [list non-hyperbolic drawbacks]”
And TBH, when it comes to my fellow Minnesotan Ilhan Omar, neither am I. We need to thank our lucky stars that Trump did not focus his tweets only on her. If he had, we would now be spending multiple news cycles dissecting what Omar has said and done, and looking at her life story and how arguably ungrateful she has been. By foolishly bringing in three other women of color who were born in the United States (two of whom are not even the daughters of immigrants), he fucked up and took the focus away from what could have been a murkier and politically more problematic terrain for Democrats.
Before Trump’s bigoted tweetstorm, Pelosi was absolutely doing the right thing in making sure that voters knew the squad does not represent the House caucus overall. She needs to go right back to doing that in a week or two, after the dust settles a bit.
…so your problem isn’t the “far left” agenda, its that the “far left” hasn’t explained themselves well enough?
This is why your position is confusing. You complained about the “purity police”. Your solution doesn’t fix the alleged problem with “the purity police.” Your position concedes that the “far left” have gotten things right, and the solution to the Democrats woes is for them to travel to grassroots areas and to “push them further left.”
How is that congruent with your statements earlier in the thread? How does that match up with what Thomas Friedman said, which was “But please, spare me the revolution! It can wait”? Have you changed your mind? The revolution can’t wait now?
Don’t you think winning the grassroots is the responsiblity of the Democrat Party, and party leadership? Shouldn’t they be travelling to these areas and shouldn’t they be trying to win the “hearts and minds?” Who are the politicians in those grassroots areas? Why aren’t they stepping up?
Obviously. If you truly hold the belief that the only way to defeat Trump is leave all the responsiblity for defeating Trump in the hands of four women people of colour then of course Trump is going to get re-elected.
But that isn’t how to defeat Trump. If you want to defeat Trump you have to get your hands dirty. “Someone else” isn’t going to save you.
…not disingenuous at all. The world is different now. Trump & Co understand that: thats what makes them so dangerous. AOC and her squad can and do reach out to millions on social media. They have a command and an understanding of how the social media landscape that the rest of the Dems simply don’t have. We are in a propaganda war with the Trump administration. What AOC and her squad do very very well on social media is they deconstruct the lies. They are at the forefront of combating the propaganda machine. Anyone who thinks that all they do all day is “post memes” haven’t spent any time reading what they say.
So yes they reach millions of people. But that doesn’t mean they are either responsible or even able to reach the people that Kolak of Twilo seems to thing they should be trying to reach. There are over 20 people running for President. The Democrats must have a strategy to reach these people. This isn’t the job of the squad. There would probably be zero benefit flying them around the country for some sort of nebulous goal.
Nobody expects House leadershop to defend the squads left wing positions. They do a good enough job of that on their own.
Jake Tapper posted this today.
So lets be quite clear here: this is what the squad have to deal with **from their own party. **The difference is that these cowards don’t have the guts to put their names on this disgusting rhetoric. If you are in favour of free speech then you should be standing behind Omar and Tlaib. The attempts by many (including many democrats) to take away the right to boycott was about as anti-freedom as you can get.
We have the House Democrats privately whining off-the-record about the squad. They lied about what Omar has said, and Tapper did not correct the record.
If you want the squad to stop pushing back (and lets be honest here: they’ve barely pushed back at all, and that push-back has been blown out of all proportion) then these people should come on the record and have the courage of their convictions. If you want them to stop pushing back then tell the House Democrats to get their house in order as well.
“Math” doesn’t decide elections. If it all boiled down to “math”, we wouldn’t be having this conversation because it would’ve been very straightforward for Hillary to win.
Understand that you are talking about winning hearts and minds that have been poisoned against the Dems for * decades *now. The very fact that Trump is letting his racist xenophobic flag fly high in the sky and yet the independents you’re wringing your hands over likely are unbothered by it is a testament to what the Dems are up against. And they are unbothered by a lot more other things, worse things. Acting as though any independent really at risk of voting for Trump at this point can be sold on Dems just as long as they don’t act too lefty (whatever that is) is quite delusional. “Leftist” is not real; it’s whatever Fox News says it is. It’s become the go to slur to marginalize anyone who doesn’t mince words about the status quo. Validating it’s usage helps others divide and conquer us.
I don’t really see the Democrats at risk of being too lefty, and I kinda think that Trump may be misplaying the race card a bit. Some of the political pundits I’ve seen the last few days have suggested that Trump wants to make The Squad the face of the Democratic party, and to do that, he needs to amp up the racism by suggesting that they’re anti-American. That will work with the racists in his base, but I’m not sure that’s what would crack up the independents, many of whom probably find his attacks distasteful.
In short, I don’t think the real damage of this ‘strategy’ (a debatable term, I reckon) has really been inflicted yet. The real damage is yet to come. The real threat that this approach poses comes from the potential of splitting Democrats bitterly in terms of how to respond, and which of its constituencies to favor when responding tactically. We saw this a few weeks ago when Democrats started sniping at each other over border wall funding. And we caught another glimpse of this yesterday when Rep. Green’s impeachment resolution was rejected, but with a growing party split. The question I have is, how much longer are the activist Democrats going to tolerate the center?
The danger doesn’t come from Trump merely characterizing the Democrats as a party hijacked by the Squad; the deeper danger, the real one, is the possibility that the party itself could be taken over by perceived radicalism. And if that happens, then they would put independents in the position of asking themselves if the Democratic party is necessarily any better than voting for the Republicans. If the progressives get nasty and personal with their own party’s centrist and moderate factions, then not only do they become less attractive to moderate Democrats, but they also become less attractive to independents as well. Trump can’t win a conventional race against a conventional candidate coming from a conventional Democratic party; he’s trying to make it so that he doesn’t have to compete in that kind of race.
I don’t think Sanders would do that. But I fear the Berniebots are going to throw a tantrum and stay home unless he gets the nomination.
“Mistakes were made” is an understatement. She ran on “me! me! me! Make ME the first woman president!” “I’m with her” was a lousy campaign slogan, it stated that it was all about HER. She chose a running mate that added no value to the ticket, no excitement at all. And she tried to run up the score by campaigning in AZ of all places while completely ignoring the rust belt.
But let’s all tune into the news at 11 am today. The judge in the Cohen case is going to release all of the material in the case. It will be explosive. Why do you think the government tried to prevent its release? Why was the case dropped weeks after Barr became Donald’s personal lawyer? Inquiring minds are going to find out in less than three hours.
This is personalizing and insulting. You may believe that it is “crystal clear” that you are not being insulting, but multiple posters saw it as insulting, so I question your perception of crystal clarity.
The following is not explicitly insulting; it could have been written to be less hostile. The perception of hostility would have been less if you had not already made this post personal.
This is a silly rewrite of 2016. The campaign slogan was “Stronger Together”. Clinton had more policy positions on her website than Warren (who people are rightly saying has plans for all sorts of things) has right now. The vast majority of her speeches were policy based, especially stressing healthcare. (and how exactly is the “I’m with Her” campaigning buttons any worse than “I like Ike”?)
Virginia was supposed to be a potential battleground state, so she picked a well liked Senator. What Vice Presidents tended to be until pretty recently.
The AZ criticism is fair, but that was due to the polling that was being done at the time that showed that it could flip, but the rust belt was secure. With hindsight it looks silly, but most people (yes there were a few lone voices saying the rust belt were week, but very few) thought it was fine at the time.
Indeed my point is fairly obvious. It is therefore even more significant that so many seem to forget it. Or at least ignore it, as you seem to do.
As to the fight between relative moderates and those quite farther Left … I agree to a point. Disagreements exist and we cannot pretend they do not. We obviously do have decide what the party is going to promote as its national message and who will carry that message. And we must do that with some respect for each other. Unfortunately I hear calls for unity and solidarity from the progressive side as meaning that they should be able to call more established leadership whatever name they want and be immune from any criticism, unity to them comes off as meaning doing it their way or they’ll blow the place up. Debate the ideas without insults and in ways that prepare the ground for circling the wagons as the primary season gives its voice of the plurality (if not the majority) decision.
Not voting against “our generation’s version of Hitler” (as horrific as he is that Godwinizing is frankly offensive and worse yet silly, but sure go with it), because you don’t feel the alternative adequately cares about you, is morally repugnant. As the cliche goes: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” And women. And those of fluid identities.
Math 100% DOES decide elections. Some people though can’t add, or minimally count the wrong numbers.
While I am notoriously as big a political hack as anyone, I do think from time to time we have to stop and think what exactly we are saying when we complain that Hillary went to Arizona and did not go to the upper Midwest enough. This has zilch to do with her qualifications to be president, or or the manifest unfitness of her opponent. If at least 55-60 percent of the electorate possessed a lick of sense and/or basic decency (as I erroneously believed in October 2016), she would not have needed to campaign at all.
Hillary lost because the math in the EC didn’t work out in her favor. That’s the math I’m talking about. The Democrats could pick up millions of votes in CA, IL, NY, MD, NJ, OR, WA, etc and they would still lose if they don’t pick up some of the states Trump carried in 2016. The only math that matters is the math in the Electoral College.
I am pretty certain Trump won’t be able to resist going on about The Squad at future rallies. Watching last night it was clear he loved it when the crowd started doing that chant. And I am hopeful it will blow up in his face. I agree it is likely most independents will be uncomfortable with that.
I agree this is totally where DJT wants this to go. And centrist/moderates need to avoid getting nasty and personal with the progressives as well. A debate can be had without it being ugly.
Let me spell out what I meant by taking a dump on your “Do the math” comment: Reducing this to math is absurd oversimplification. And it’s naive. It ignores the fact that we are talking about human beings, many of whom have been severely bombarded with anti-liberal propaganda since they were old enough to watch TV. Many of whom are also uneducated, misinformed, and irrational. By talking in terms of numbers and math, you miss all of this.
We don’t need to sell our souls and values down the river just to placate a few hundred thousand ethically-challenged fence sitters whose brows would barely furrow if Trump killed someone tomorrow. What we need to do is stick up for what we believe in, be strong and assertive, stop the in-party divisiveness, and campaign like hell. Focus our efforts on bringing out the vote, not attacking those within the party who are already being attacked by Fox & Friends.
I’m picturing an oncologist yelling at another one who is dutifully calculating the right dose of the chemotherapy agent … “Math? This is a human being who is being tormented by cancer! By talking about math you miss all that!”
Yeah, we cannot forget the socioemotional impacts of the disease that Trump is both a manifestation of, and a part of its pathophysiology. Still, the treatment, and maybe even we hope, the cure, requires paying close attention to the math.
Remember how we used to say the same thing about the Tea Party Congress? Remember how Michelle Bachman ran for President after just six years in the House?
Why can’t these people just be quiet like they’re supposed to?
Every thread about presidential elections must include multiple people pointing out the Electoral College as if the rest of us hadn’t heard of it before.
I don’t buy the analysis in the NYT article. I think the truth is much more simple: Republicans always vote no matter what, Democrats vote when they’re motivated. There has never been more motivation for Democrats then there will be in 2020.
The significance is self-evident and relevant to the ongoing debate of who is important to target and how that is informed by that math that you dump on. By the math of that article high turn out of a broadly defined base may result in a big popular vote win and still lose the election. Winning the states that matter does not necessarily happen with a larger national popular vote win. Doing less poorly with those other than the base is needed.
Again, how to target them and whether they can be targeted in ways that do not work against also maximizing the various portions of the base, is a separate and very important item. But the math means they have to be held as important.