I mean, for God’s sake, if your point is that being a centrist hack is the way to win elections, you could at least quote Bill Clinton or something. This is like if I posted a link saying “Check out this brilliant advice George McGovern has for the Democrats!”
Held my nose and actually read the article and yep, that seems to be exactly his point. That and that we shouldn’t have opposed the Vietnam War. And I love how he talks about how we need to defend the ACA, which he opposed in the first place. Fucking douchebag.
Too bad RTFirefly’s post snuck in there. You mighta set a record.
I will go a step further: Rahm is the one who’s the exemplar here of a party trying to eat its own, with his baseless attacks on more progressive Democratic candidates.
I see you are all responding to the headline about Obama. How about the extensive portion I quoted, which doesn’t mention the former president once?
That was stuff he was saying to support his bullshit argument since he couldn’t actually quote what anyone had said that was so awful.
Besides, once I know a guy is lying his ass off, why should I give a Rahm’s ass what else he has to say?
I’ve made eight posts about the article so far, and only one or arguably two had anything to do with Obama.
Well, I’ll address the lead off: Obama proposed something that couldn’t pass Congress. ACA is what you got out of it instead.
To respond to the substance of Rahm’s column:
Rahm makes the claim that Democrats effect change “brick by brick” right after explaining how Lyndon Johnson ruined the Democratic electoral chances by pushing for domestic reforms that were too radical. The problem is that by Rahm’s theory, in the last few decades of civil rights not being radical someone should have come along with incremental legislative successes, and really the only thing we’ve had is the ADA.
There was no major follow up to the VRA in terms of legislation, voting rights were protected for racial minorities by people using the VRA or using the 15th Amendment in executive actions and court cases. There wasn’t a Clinton follow-up that allowed the Dems to really get the voting rights laws they wanted
I don’t know if incremental progress would have worked for the VRA, but the reality is that it became law because of people who were considered radicals at the time raising hell, and then a Democratic President and Congress ramming through legislation that was not intended to compromise with racists (who were mostly in their own party at the time) in the slightest.
While Nixon and Reagan absolutely had electoral success due to the Southern Strategy, which was only possible due to the Dems embracing civil rights, in the long-term the Dems expanded their based to a demographic that propelled both Clinton and Obama into the White House.
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Rahm also misrepresents FDR, who was probably the most radical president since Lincoln. We now look back at social security and economic stimulus as normal, but in US politics at the time they completely went against the economic orthodoxy, and FDR took them to the absolute extreme. The reason these programs discriminated was not a shrewd calculation by people who wanted to expand it to everyone, it was because FDR was just as racist as the rest of his contemporaries.
Additionally, FDR’s policies were so radical because there was a crisis and if he tried to promote incremental change (as Hoover did previously) the hordes of angry, destitute people were going to vote him out of office. He had to make Social Security big enough to actually serve it’s purpose at the time and remove old people from the workforce. He had to fully embrace Keynsian economics because people who were unemployed and starving weren’t going to appreciate his “brick by brick” approach if he didn’t do something about their situation by the time reelection rolled around.
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Lastly, Rahm conveniently ignores that for all the infighting the Democrats experienced during the civil rights and Vietnam era, they managed to keep a stranglehold on the House of Representatives almost continuously from that time up until Newt Gingrich.
Thanks to conservative Southern Yellow Dogs.
I find the A+ rated Monmouth Iowa pollto be much more important.
The good news for Biden. His lead among those likely to attend the caucuses is basically unchanged since two months ago. And he dominates among those say they will caucus online or over the phone prior to the official February 3rd date.
Warren has even better news. Now a solid second there. And gaining.
Sanders has dropped like a rock. Harris is third.
Still waiting for a new Selzer …
Wait, you can caucus online or over the phone, prior to the date of the caucus? Doesn’t that, like, make it a primary rather than a caucus? Is this a new thing?
Yes it is new. But not like a primary.
How will it play out? No one knows!
Cite? :dubious:
Part of the last rule changes were a requirement to make it possible to early/mail in voting. Maybe that’s part of the compromise. At the time, I thought the Sanders crew let one slip past them on that. Makes the caucuses much less vulnerable to insurgency.
Yeah, Nate Silver’s pollster ratings are a big deal, AFAIAC. My only complaint is that I think he’s a little too willing to give a mediocre pollster a gentleman’s C, because the pollsters I’m familiar with who are in the C range are generally pretty unreliable. Basically I only look at the pollsters that are in the A and B ranges - those ratings really mean something.
Like with this Monmouth poll. Like you, I’d still like to see a new Selzer poll, but in the meantime, Monmouth is still pretty damn good.
IIRC, those attending in person will count 90%, and those phoning it in or participating online will count 10% total. So crushing it among those who don’t physically show up is at best somewhat helpful to a candidate’s chances.
Fortunately for Biden, he’s still got a lead among those who plan on showing up in person.
Whether or not he wins, Biden’s not my ideal candidate at all. Of course he wins over Trump, but the man’s age seems to be catching up with him more than ‘The Bernster’… Unfortunately. He’s out of touch with today’s youth and ‘political climate change’.
I honestly, in my heart of hearts think that Bernie has the best chance of beating Donald Trump considering the youth vote, AND of the Independents. Those who don’t like Bernie but hate Trump will begrudgingly vote for him over Trump, because they turn out to vote.
Even though I think he’s the best candidate personally, I don’t think we should do what Bill Maher says and count on people’s fatigue of Trump in order to have a “revolution.” If we just count on people’s fatigue of Trump we’re counting on the lowest of reasons to vote for anyone.
I’m not as sure that it’s impact would be only somewhat helpful. As the director of Monmouth polling said: “the importance of Iowa really is about momentum more than delegates”.
Iowa results will be reported three ways: the number of delegates won; the number each candidate received as initial preference; and the number as final preference.
Let’s imagine a scenario in which Biden wins or loses the delegate count to Warren by a very narrow margin, but received a whomping majority of the total votes cast, of people who previously would not have participated who now did in the virtuals.
No question that Warren doing well would be part of the narrative, especially if she won the delegate count. But I’d WAG that the total vote solid win count would drive the momentum narrative more. Especially in a party which feels that the way Trump and Bush lost the popular votes but won the electoral colleges were unfair.
But really, I’m not sure.
Completely agree that an outlier result by a C pollster is not worth looking at. Warren doesn’t need that outlier point to be feeling good about where she is sitting right now. She has an impressive on the ground organization in Iowa, and has had it place for a long time. Even a narrow loss to Biden there places the narrative as down to the two of them. A win there would be of similar impact to Obama’s '08 win. Not because of delegates won but because the narrative is key.
Lamoral, the reason that “the polls failed” in 2016 was precisely because there were so many people who ignored the polls in favor of their intuition. The lesson we should be learning from 2016 is that our political intuition is worth shit.
This is probably a decent place to drop a reminder about margins of error in polling reports. The media is mostly doing it’s usual demonstration and fostering of ignorance about statistics…and we’re just getting started. I hauled up two old bookmarks to reread earlier in the week and thought I would share.
An accessible look from a Pew senior research methodologist that gives some important reminders.
If you want lots of messy details and math after that try this.