Agreed. These guys will make all of the excuses for it but they will go hard on leftists not winning every single race imaginable. Their angle is clear.
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Bernie and his army are losing 2018
- Thread starter LinktothePastGOAT
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Fox News, CNN, ABC, NBC, etc. Different agendas - one motivated by party agendas and one motivated for financial agenda inc outside the news network. Either way, neither is going to let news affect their agenda be delivered.
Do you really think having news funded/owned by corporations in a Corporatocracy is a good idea?
I really don't understand why anyone would watch any of those networks where they can watch something like BBC or CBC.
I think the notion there is not a decisive set of voters who will come out on the condition the candidate is running on leftwing policies is likely true. Or maybe it'd be better to say that I don't think that the lack of a sufficiently leftwing platform is what lost 2016. Honestly it is hard to tell what conversation people are usually having when it comes to this stuff, or what their electoral beliefs and strategies are. But I am under the impression there is a non-negligible amount of DSA types who believe that there are a large amount of voters who are amenable to their policy positions in the medium to long-term, but may not be fully educated on the debate. Their primary strategies are to do basic campaigning that involves spreading their message as much as possible, as well as creating an emotional resonance with voters through direct action. Another thing about many of the DSA people is they seem to still be holding back their power-levels. I've been to a couple of meetings before in Houston, and most of the regulars are much harder left than what policies they focus on promoting. Which is to say there is still a "pragmatic" element to their beliefs about politics that is different to a couple of the other hard left organizations that literally promote revolution or bust.
So when they see articles that talk about losses or anything like that the objective fact of a loss doesn't deter them, and they feel like this measurement of their political project on the basis of short term wins and losses is subversive/missing the point because their goal is to fundamentally change the electorate, either through expanding it or moving its opinions leftwards. Which, aside from just an emotional lashing out, is the main reason I hear expressed for distaste for these articles. It's considered FUD rather than productive, maybe because the goals and/or understanding of how to achieve them are just different.
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The term "identity politics" has become a flat out dog whistle for me.
Thank goodness, though I wouldn't be surprised to see that change in 2020 depending on what the primary field looks like.
It's like people are forgetting how the democratic lost the senate, the house, many governorships during the Obama years. People focus on the losses of the "far left" when the moderate wing of the party has been doing a bang up job of losing political power.
There's only two parties here. And only one of them is an actual viable party for anything close to moderate politics - the other one is completely reactionary. It's insane to want to support and basically reinforce this system like it's a good thing. Whatever country you have in mind, I'm sure they do a million things better in their electoral system than the U.S. And all of those million other things are more important than whatever it is that you're suggesting.
Not viable. Why even do that when you can transform a different party? It's not like the Democratic Party's ideals are set in stone.
Bernie got beaten badly in the primaries and that was *with* a massive Russian campaign trying to help him win (and Hillary lose) the nomination.
Most people in America don't have access to those, that's why. Even if they stream online there's a lot of people that don't know how to do that, particularly the older you get. It's easier to turn on the TV and flip to channel 32 or whatever channel CNN/Fox News/MSNBC/etc is on.
Now PBS news, who knows why more people don't watch it but there really isn't an excuse there.
Or Hillary fans crying about everything (and taking responsibility for nothing).
2016-2018 saw an influx of people with zero political knowledge deciding they know everything about everything. On the Bernie side this resulted in people who think the entire country would support faux socialism if only "centrists" would get out the way. It doesn't matter how many elections they lose. Hell, after the loss they take their ball and go home, hoping democrats lose in order to "prove" their point. Because at their heart, these people are losers. I'm in Michigan and have already seen some supporters of Sanders' favored governor candidate declare they won't vote in November because their guy got trounced last night.
The reality is that midterms are driven by opposition to the party in power. People are voting moreso based on opposition to Trump than anything else. Meanwhile republican turnout is depressed. The result will be a blue wave of mostly regular democrat winners...because they make up most of the candidates. Idealogy and positions matter but anti-Trump sentiment is driving this train. Just as anti-Obama sentiment drove it in 2010, anti-Bush sentiment drove it in 2006, anti-Clinton sentiment drove it in 1994, etc.
Well that makes sense, PBS News doesn't have the level of funding that BBC and CBC News do from the government. If your government had protected laws (i.e. protected from party politics) funding into PBS on that level, people might.
You also have the "echo chamber" and "entertainment" culture issue so you would need to create regulations that prevented news not funded by government.
Decade? It's been a half-century of GOP dominance. I wonder what happened in the '60s to piss off the white majority.....
So we are going to gloss over the fact that the DNC put their finger on the scale for Hillary at every turn during the primary.
Yeah sure. I was just referencing the brief period of time when the Dems held some power under Obama and then squandered it all, due in no small part to Obama and the parties need to constantly "reach across the aisle" on basically fucking everything.
It's not surprising that less connected, less experienced candidates aren't winning. Bernie and his "army" have certainly had an effect on dems in general though, and that was a large point of his campaign. Not just a more leftward shift on policy, but also stuff like Beto and others running without super PACs and being primarily funded by smaller donations -- these things help give democrats are more positive image in general.
Tad Devine wasn't given immunity and there's nothing to suggest he was in on the shady stuff Manafort was doing. You're just spreading conspiracy theories.
Tad Devine wasn't given immunity and there's nothing to suggest he was in on the shady stuff Manafort was doing. You're just spreading conspiracy theories.
Wow it sounds like "leftist" candidates should have no problem beating them then.
The problem is that the readership of places like Jacobin don't have enough folks to swing an election, so their advocacy is literally speaking to the choir
Eeeeh. That's not really true. The GOP as a whole have only dominated since the 90's. The Clinton years. It's also when they full in on brainwashing the people.
The problem is that the readership of places like Jacobin don't have enough folks to swing an election, so their advocacy is literally speaking to the choir
If you can't get votes you deserve to lose. Why on earth he ignored black people in the south is beyond me, but he decided he could do it.
The most undemocratic thing about the 2016 Dem primaries was the caucuses, as always.
Anyhow, the point is Bernie isn't as popular as a lot of people think he is. He benefited from the amplification by Russian bots.
More progressive candidates are challenging for seats, some are winning and some are not. I don't understand why this is so upsetting to some people. I think it's pretty cool that a couple of DSA members will be in congress in the coming class, especially given how young the movement is relatively speaking.
If you respect Sanders' principles and ideas then you would do anything you can to prevent the GOP from winning the November elections.
Nixon's Southern Strategy and Reagan's landslide elections say hi. Change at the local level from Dixiecrats leaving the party was slower.
You guys can't even agree on your differences and it shows in this very topic. Republicans are always consistent with their hate. Why can't Democrats pick a few topics and hammer it home repeatedly? You are always all over the place.
Keep fighting and disagreeing amongst yourselves and the Republicans will have another win, or you get lucky if Trump is impeached.
Keep fighting and disagreeing amongst yourselves and the Republicans will have another win, or you get lucky if Trump is impeached.
One thing I hate about those liberal posters is that they always threaten us with Trump but never ask how they can do better.
2016-2018 showed me that we need to vote for politicians who don't take corporate money, we should raise the minimum wage to at least 15, provide some form of free college, improve health care, and overall increase taxes on the rich and corporations to pay for other things we need.
2016-2018 also showed me that Bernie and his flunkies are not the people we should be depending on to get these things done.
2016-2018 also showed me that Bernie and his flunkies are not the people we should be depending on to get these things done.
When Bernie originally ran, I supported him because I wanted someone to push Hillary further to the left. I don't know why so many people thought he could or would win - I suspect it's because a lot of them didn't pay attention to politics before they got invested in Bernie. But I really don't get people who see no value in a leftist opposition. Look at New York and Cuomo's race. Do I think Cynthia Nixon will win? No. But how can you ignore the issues she has brought up like the subway system, the IDC, marijuana legalization, etc. And pretend like her being in the race had no effect on Cuomo's shifts.
And then there's the fucking conspiracy theorist dumb-dumb liberals who have a violent and conspiratorial reaction to anything slightly to their left.
Yeah because winning elections is so easy from the left when the actual voting population is so entrenched in its conservative and moderate views.
I wish people would stop with all the Russian-bot stuff. Yes, it had an effect but it's becoming a parody when I see far too many being accused of being Russian-bots when they have opinions people don't agree with.
I really really wish Bernard hadn't made a lot of people think that socialism = any government program or service. It's not.
Bernard is a social democrat, a label that could describe a great deal of the Democratic base and Congressional caucuses, with whom Bernard aligns on 95% of issues. He only makes himself the "outsider" because he's staked his entire career on the being the sideline sniper bitching about the Democrats even though he largely agrees with them. He can also use being "independent" as an excuse for why he has no accomplishments. His entire movement/campaign/whatever stemmed from ego, not ideology.
But he's used that ego to convince a lot of ignorant people that Democrats are milquetoast centrists when in reality we are a progressive party that is fairly unified on most issues.
That message doesn't resonate with people who want to feel special and enlightened by calling the Democrats centrist corporatists, though.
Bernard is a social democrat, a label that could describe a great deal of the Democratic base and Congressional caucuses, with whom Bernard aligns on 95% of issues. He only makes himself the "outsider" because he's staked his entire career on the being the sideline sniper bitching about the Democrats even though he largely agrees with them. He can also use being "independent" as an excuse for why he has no accomplishments. His entire movement/campaign/whatever stemmed from ego, not ideology.
But he's used that ego to convince a lot of ignorant people that Democrats are milquetoast centrists when in reality we are a progressive party that is fairly unified on most issues.
That message doesn't resonate with people who want to feel special and enlightened by calling the Democrats centrist corporatists, though.
Socially progressive <> Economically progressive.
Democrats are socially progressive but economically centrist.
How many democratic senators condemned Israel killing Palestinians? Surely our minority leader in the senate took a stand against it, seeing as dozens were killed in the past few months.
Im not sure how you can say this, when that is literally how U.S politics go.. Not the secretly far left part, but the fact that people from the left typically do not vote if they don't have a candidate they deem worth voting, its partly why there was a surge in votes for Obama.
Which, by your (flawed), should balance out to a nice center-left party.
Unless you're going to argue that economic issues carry more weight than social ones, or that solving the former also solves the latter.
Which is absolute horseshit because you can increase people's wages and strengthen unions all you want, it won't cause them to stop hating women and blacks and gays.
Which means that those issues are important in and of themselves and even outside the economic spectrum in some ways.
But I know you wouldn't make that argument.
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