The Libertarians couldn’t “spiral into complete irrelevance”, because they started there and never left.
Before they decided to concentrate on who was most ideologically pure, they might have become to the Republicans as the Progressives now are to the Democrats. All that took hind tit to ideological purity and they are now a joke.
If they weren’t ideological purists, they wouldn’t have formed a third party in the first place. They would have gone the route of Rand Paul and Bill Weld and , like, actually won some nonzero number of elections.
No. Joe Crowley didn’t spend any of that money to fend off AOC. He didn’t think she had a chance to win (not many in the media did) until it was too late. He spent the money to get more name recognition to get more funds because he wanted to gain Steny Hoyer’s seat. He was number 4 in the House. He wanted to be number 2. You could tell he didn’t think she had a chance of winning because in his debate with her, he tried to get her to support him.
Crowley got his campaign money in large part from real estate developers, financial institution executives and insurance executives. This is his campaign contribution breakdown from Opensecrets.org.
He then used that money to vote for the interests of people close to him and his donors and against the interests of the majority of his constituents who were mostly poor people from the Bronx and Queens.
How People Close to Joe Crowley Have Gotten Rich While the Queens Boss Has Risen in Congress
If he hadn’t voted in the interests of the local big institutions, they would not have contributed to him, so the $3M wouldn’t have existed as campaign contributions for anyone else.
People in AOC’s NY district knew this, which is why they voted for an unknown challenger with no political experience.
You seem to be suggesting that once an incumbent wins, they should never be challenged, leaving the incumbent free to never be held accountable for their voting record. That doesn’t sound very democratic.
** Thing Fish **
How much money has Beto taken from oil companies? (Serious question, I have no idea). If it’s a nontrivial amount, that’s a legitimate criticism, regardless of what he might “constantly talk” about.
I was responding to you, originally. So, yes, even if it is a non-trivial amount it is not a legitimate criticism, it is a Purity test.
Those were examples, we are talking a hypothetical, arent we? 
But that’s the point- without a legislative agenda or even coherent message, there’s nothing for Democratic politicians to really do BUT infight.
And that’s the problem as I see it- on one side, you have an organized, if rather harsh and heartless party with a clear agenda and goals, and on the other, you have a considerably more shambolic party without a clear goal, and whose main pastime seems to be grumping about Trump, and trying to prove to each other why THEIR pet agenda is the best.
If people are on the fence, some proportion of them are going to vote for the party that looks the best prepared to govern.
:dubious: ISTM that this is a political cliche left over from a very different era. Like the political cliche that “Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility”.
Yeah, these were slogans that came across to many voters as reasonably plausible at some point, even if they were never anywhere near as true as their proponents liked to claim, but they bear no relation to today’s reality. In what way could you possibly describe the Trump Administration as being, or even looking, “the best prepared to govern”?
The previous Congress, the Republicans did basically nothing beyond a tax reduction to the rich to be paid for by our children. They failed to do anything about trade or healthcare or any other agenda because they couldn’t agree to anything among themselves when they were in the majority. That is what an incompetent party incapable of governing looks like.
The Democrats in the current House have been passing bills doing exactly what they ran on. Their agenda is clear. And unlike the Republicans who fell apart when they had both houses and presidency, the Democrats will actually pass their agenda when they regain the presidency and the Senate. And the Republicans are going to tell their constituents exactly that: Democrats are going to enact their agenda when elected.
So you’re now contradicting what you said a few hours ago, that above some undefined arbitrary amount it would be a legitimate criticism?OK…
So why, when I asked you how much Beto had taken from oil companies, didn’t you answer the question, or say you didn’t know? Instead you started talking about how he shouldn’t be rejected based on some hypothetical $500 standard, which nobody in this thread had mentioned before you brought it up. You accuse unnamed “Bernie Bros” of making baseless accusations against Beto, but can’t even quote a single example of such accusations when asked to do so.
So how would you feel about a Democratic candidate taking money from, say, the Russian government? We know GOP voters don’t seem to have a problem with that sort of thing…does that make it OK as far as you’re concerned?
Oil companies have spent billions of dollars obfuscating the science on climate change, sacrificing the future of our world for their short-term profits. They are as much the enemy of the American people as Putin or ISIS are.
Oh yeah, still waiting for that cite of someone connected to the Sanders campaign using the phrase “creepy pedophile” in regard to Biden.
Does $10,000,000+ from Saudi Arabia to the Clinton foundation count? https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/us/politics/hillary-clinton-presidential-campaign-charity.html
Well, your own cite says that the Foundation decided that if Hillary Clinton won the election, the Foundation would no longer accept foreign or corporate donations.
Heh. Remember back then when it was considered normal and necessary for a sitting President to cut any possible financial ties with business or foreign governments that might personally influence the President’s policy choices? Seems so quaint these days.
Wwo, the GOP still hammering on Hillary, eh?
She didnt get a nickel of that. :rolleyes:
It’s a charitable foundation.
That would be pointless, wouldn’t it? But that’s not, I believe, what Obama was talking about. It’s certainly not what I’m talking about. The problem is when the far left of the party gets full of self-righteousness and declares that any position slightly closer to the center is (fill in the blank: misogynistic, reeks of white privilege, corporate sellout, etc.). Take national health care for instance. I generally advocate for a less transformative, patchwork method of making sure everyone has basic coverage. Universal coverage by filling in the gaps. But still universal! The reaction I inevitably get from the Medicare For All crowd is invariably the same: intense hostility, combined with strawmanning my position as though I’m saying people who don’t have the money to pay for their own health care should be thrown in the street to die. There’s no nuance, no flexibility.
Worst of all, there is no recognition that “hey, we may love our principles and proposals, but we are in the minority so we need to work with a coalition of interest groups and compromise”. They think they are the white knights in shining armor, who have the perfect solutions to every issue, and anyone with a slightly different view is either stupid or corrupt.
Okay, but if a candidate from Texas gets a good number of contributions from people who work in the oil industry, that’s just to be expected because it’s a big industry in the state. It’s a very conspiratorial “Manchurian Candidate” notion to think it means there’s a secret plan for him to support the fossil fuels agenda, when he makes it clear that his position is the opposite.
In 2017, in reaction to Trump’s pulling out of the Paris climate accords, Beto wrote the following:
Beto’s lifetime League of Conservation Voters environmental score is 95 percent:
(Bernie’s is 92 percent.)
I don’t mind if a lot of working and middle class people who happen to work in the oil industry support him. If he has taken large sums from the oil companies themselves— and again, I don’t know if he has or hasn’t— that’s a problem. Not necessarily an absolute disqualifier, but a serious problem.
It’s actually a Good Thing. Especially if the candidate is a known voted to reduce Global warming. Remember, Oil companies spend billions on solar, etc now.
But let us say it comes down to Beto vs Trump- who would you rather win?
I hope it’s Beto.
But without massive campaign funds, Beto (or any other Dem candidate) can’t win. **Period. No chance. ** Hobbling them by a Purity test is a certain way for Trump to win.
I want to see Oil companies donating to the guy working to end Global warming.
Yes, it’s illegal* for corporations to donate to political candidates. The only partial loophole is “corporate PACs” that pass money on to candidates, but even then, the corporation can only donate to cover the costs of operating the PAC; donations to candidates must not exceed the amount of money given by qualified donors. Lots of Democratic candidates have recently started pledging not to accept money from corporate PACs, but I don’t know who has made that pledge this time around.
I’m not sure if you are being disingenuous here or if you actually believe that American law substantially restricts corporations from donating to their preferred candidates. Anyway, you’re wrong, and getting into a detailed discussion of campaign finance law would derail this thread.
Of course I will unconditionally support ANY Democratic candidate against Trump, and I hope you can say the same.
I think you are being very naive about the motives of Big Oil, and are overvaluing the importance of massive campaign funds. Clinton outspent Trump by a huge margin, and it didn’t help. Not going to look it up right now but IIRC Trump also made fools of several better funded Republicans. Sanders funded his campaign entirely through grassroots contributions; he didn’t win, but I haven’t heard anyone arguing that he would have won if he’d only had a few more tens of millions to spend.
Many voters today regard a refusal to accept corporate donations as a badge of honor, and That trend IMO is a very good sign for our democracy.
In fact, I’m not sure, but I believe Beto is refusing corporate PAC donations for his Presidential run.