Pierce: Democrats Know the Country's Problems Didn't Begin--and Won't End--With Trump

[mcar]

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a20717105/democrats-ignore-trump-cap-convention/

Democrats Know the Country's Problems Didn't Begin—and Won't End—With Trump
Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and others met in Washington this week to discuss what's next.

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
MAY 16, 2018

WASHINGTON—They came to the ballroom to deal in the grim business of ideas. Stems remained unwound, barns unburned, and roofs unraised. The annual Ideas conference sponsored by the liberal Center for American Progress was dedicated to sober dialogue on serious issues. Several speakers—notably Senators Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, and Kirsten Gillibrand, as well as Bernie Sanders, whose presence itself at a CAP event was remarkable—made a try at it, but it was a crowd that came to listen and not to cheer.

And, for all the punditspeak abroad in the land about how Democratic candidates shouldn’t run merely against the current president* of the United States, hardly anyone mentioned that worthy. Even Tom Steyer, who currently is running a billboards-and-commercials campaign to impeach him, referred to him only obliquely during a panel on the climate crisis. This was an earnest gathering of earnest liberals. The contrast with the annual three-day hedge fund hellion-fest that is CPAC couldn’t have been starker.

Whether the Center planned it that way or not, the entire day was a living refutation of the notion that all the Democrats have in 2018 is to be against the current president*. Almost all of the speakers, and every one of the panels, was dedicated to responding to the longterm conservative project that is now reaching its fruition in the Congress, in the courts, and even in the Executive Branch, if not necessarily in the Oval Office. It was about deregulation, and not about pussy-grabbing. It was about healthcare and criminal justice reform, and not about Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels....

Instead of endless slanging against the incumbent, the damage he has done—and that he continues to do—largely was subtext. Sanders, who, according to the program, was supposed to speak on criminal justice reform, instead gave a modified version of the stump speech he’s been giving for three years—although he did mention that, instead of throwing people in jail for weed, we ought to be sending some Wall Street types up the river. Speaking on the subject of mental health, Congressman Joseph Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, only mentioned the president* in connection with the damage his plutocrat’s budget has done in that area. Kennedy told a heartbreaking story of the woman who, when he was a local prosecutor back in the Commonwealth (God save it!), asked him to keep her opioid-addicted veteran husband in jail because they couldn’t afford to get him treatment anywhere else.

[katmondoo]

1. Run against the results to the country and to Democracy from this president

You do not even have to mention his name only what the result of his actions have done to people and to America

[mcar]

3. Say want you'll do in office

Unlike the incompetent, ineffectual Rs.

[S.E. TN Liberal]

4. mcar, saying "...what you'll do in office" is tricky.

First off, unless the rest of the Party in both the House and Senate support you, you generally have no hope of getting those things done.

Second, will the republican'ts be able to filibuster your legislation in the Senate?

Third, once you have said the words "I will..." if you don't accomplish it, your next campaign will feature an opponent running ads on TV that show you saying the words, "I will..." and then stating what a failure/liar you are.

Politicians have to play the game realizing there are many possible outcomes when stating a desire to do anything. TV attack ads kill campaigns.

[mcar]

5. S.E. TN Liberal, I'm saying that Dems are doing a good job of doing just that

Which is why they are winning. The media and others want to push the false meme that Ds are only anti-Trump.

Also, I find your post interesting, to say the least. A certain senator you support is doing just that, along with his Senate colleagues - putting forward bills that have no hope of passing. I've seen many OPs on these ideas.

[smirkymonkey]

2. K&R