General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDemocratic Socialists Need to Take a Hard Look in the Mirror
New York TimesThat outcome saddens and disappoints me. Like many admirers of Ms. Walton, I believe she was terribly mistreated by the New York Democratic Party, which largely fell in line behind Mr. Brown, even though he was not running as a Democrat. It’s not fair that Ms. Walton had to run against him twice, with the weight of a lot of centrist Democrats and Republicans behind him in the general election, and that he enjoyed the support of several prominent labor unions and much of the city’s and state’s larger party infrastructure. (Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand did endorse Ms. Walton.)
Nevertheless, I am willing to say something far too few leftists seem willing to: Not only did Mr. Brown win, but he won resoundingly (the race is not officially over but stands at roughly 59 percent for Mr. Brown to 41 percent for Ms. Walton); it’s time for young socialists and progressive Democrats to recognize that our beliefs just might not be popular enough to win elections consistently. It does us no favors to pretend otherwise.
What too many young socialists and progressive Democrats don’t seem to realize is that it’s perfectly possible that the Democratic Party is biased against our beliefs and that our beliefs simply aren’t very popular.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
TygrBright
(21,362 posts)
In It to Win It
(12,650 posts)
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)that many people who call themselves democratic socialists haven't invested in learning what they're part of. Believing an influencer's schmoozing that it's "like what Europe has" is a grave mistake many make.
The problem, though, isn't the ideology itself (though definitely different, enough to require genuine "revolution," does incorporate some liberal and democratic ideals). The Democratic Party is an alliance of many factions, including different ideological factions, that come together and cooperate to achieve common goals, and the party commits to helping members of all get elected.
The problem with the "socialists"/"democratic socialists"/"Only True Progressives" factions is that many of their leaders have anti-Democratic Party agendas and use ruthless radical, even extremist, tactics to work against Democrats instead of as part of and with. Those leaders need Democrtic voters, so they claim to support the goals of the Democratic Party and that they want to make the party better, while they actually work to subvert belief in the party itself and engineer electoral failures. This of course also makes them valuable to large enemies foreign and domestic.
This is why some state and local Democratic Party leaderships take a dim view of this movement and see electing them to their own delegations as problematic. Those who think it's a good thing can take this as recognition that they've had sufficient success in this dangerous period to constitute a threat. With electoral margins as razor-thin as they often are, hostiles of all kinds are able to cause grave damage to Democrats and destroy progressive achievements before we can make them real.
question everything
(52,132 posts)
elleng
(141,926 posts)Mr. deBoer is the author of “The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice” and publishes a daily newsletter.
question everything
(52,132 posts)
DinahMoeHum
(23,604 posts)"Mr. deBoer is the author of The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice and publishes a daily newsletter." - NYT
https://fredrikdeboer.com/
https://www.amazon.com/Cult-Smart-Education-Perpetuates-Injustice/dp/1250200377/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1HBWDGX8CWD9K&keywords=the+cult+of+smart+by+fredrik+deboer&qid=1637110413&qsid=142-9094118-6758760&s=books&sprefix=the+cult+of+sm%2Caps%2C911&sr=1-1&sres=1250200377%2CB08CVG44CJ&srpt=ABIS_BOOK
PTWB
(4,131 posts)It is to change the outdated conservative, centrist, and corporate beliefs. The answer is to push harder to the left.
mahatmakanejeeves
(69,850 posts)I mean, that's noble and stuff, but it also elects a lot of Republicans.
Source: https://history.nebraska.gov/tags/custers-last-stand
PTWB
(4,131 posts)If we elect conservatives, corporatists or centrists … we lose.
We might as well have discourse about progressive ideas and policies while losing in order to get those ideas seen as mainstream so that we can advance them in the future.
Remember when issues like gay marriage were considered radical leftist and a losing platform? It was not long ago.
mahatmakanejeeves
(69,850 posts)No, I don't. That had more backing from libertarians than any other group I can imagine.
PTWB
(4,131 posts)mahatmakanejeeves
(69,850 posts)Libertarians, yes, but hardly anyone else.
Wanting to be married was, for gays, quite the conservative notion. House in the suburbs, picket fence, new Buick in the driveway -- establishment, man.
{edited: on the other hand, there are a lot of things I can't recall anymore.}
PTWB
(4,131 posts)mahatmakanejeeves
(69,850 posts)Okay, elucidate me. Who were the leftist groups in favor of the gays settling down?
The groups marching in the immediate aftermath of Stonewall weren't thinking much about marriage.
AZProgressive
(29,929 posts)It was mostly progressives that were in favor rather than party centrists. There was a mending fences thread for a reason.
Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)a majority, we are not losing. If we elect Republicans we lose period. Now this was a long term mayor who was kicked out of the primary on some technicality. Walton ran as a Democrat but joined the party in order to run…I don’t like third party candidates like Nina Turner using our. Party.
Sgent
(5,858 posts)to support anything like a gay family was Dick Cheney. I'm surprised he's considered a radical leftist.
mahatmakanejeeves
(69,850 posts)Of gays in the military, Goldwater said, "you don't have to be straight to shoot straight." His grandson, or one of his grandsons, is gay.
Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)that our beliefs have merit. We have to win elections and pushing left may not accomplish this. Time to do the heavy lifting and win hearts and minds.
leftstreet
(40,677 posts)She supported charter schools FFS
iemanja
(57,757 posts)
Poiuyt
(18,272 posts)If people would take a serious look at the policies of Democratic Socialists, they'd probably support them. But they don't. Any title with "socialist" in it will be defeated.
As usual, it's all about marketing.
WHITT
(2,868 posts)Nonsense.
She was essentially running unopposed, so she did no real campaigning and spent almost no money, as she was considered a 'shoo-in'.
muriel_volestrangler
(106,208 posts)who combined to stop her. As pointed out in a thread some days ago, the guy who stood against the official Democratic candidate is, shamefully, a DNC official, and they haven't fired him. So it's the party establishment the Democratic Socialists have to fight against, not the Democratic voters.
brooklynite
(96,882 posts)...in a practical sense, a vote count of 11,000 doesn't sound like her progressive message had a strong resonance.
muriel_volestrangler
(106,208 posts)You should go on the stage. "In a legal sense, the Democratic Party chose her, as she got the most votes..."
Are you Andy Borowitz, moonlighting?
brooklynite
(96,882 posts)...as was shown in the results of the General Election.
muriel_volestrangler
(106,208 posts)and continue to hold DNC posts. And that "practically", you're fine with a nominal Democrat taking funds from Republicans, and running as the right wing candidate (the Republicans didn't stand a candidate) to defeat the Democratic nominee.
When you say "practically", I read "financially". There's money for the centrist who works with Republicans while ignoring the Democratic vote, so that's "practical" to you.
brooklynite
(96,882 posts)THIS article is an analysis by a progressive to the effect that progressive left candidates should consider how popular their ideological positions actually are.
As New York magazine’s Sarah Jones put it over the summer, “Should Democrats mount a cohesive critique of capitalism, they’ll meet many Americans where they are.” We are held back, the thinking frequently goes, not by the popularity of our ideas but by the forces of reaction marshaled against us.
But the only way for the left to overcome our institutional disadvantages is to compel more voters to vote for us. Bernie Sanders’s two noble failures in Democratic presidential primaries galvanized young progressives and helped create political structures that have pulled the party left. They also helped convince many of a socialist bent that only dirty tricks can defeat us. In the 2016 primary, the superdelegate system demonstrated how undemocratic the Democratic Party can be. Mr. Sanders won every county in West Virginia, for example, but the system at the time ensured that Mr. Sanders did not receive superdelegates in proportion to his vote totals (many superdelegates defied the wishes of the voters and supported Mrs. Clinton). In 2020, it was widely reported that after Mr. Sanders’s victory in Nevada, former President Barack Obama had an indirect role as the minor candidates in the primary rallied behind Joe Biden to defeat the socialist threat. There is little doubt that the establishment worked overtime to prevent a Sanders nomination.
But the inconvenient fact is that Mr. Sanders received far fewer primary votes than Mrs. Clinton in 2016 and Mr. Biden in 2020. He failed to make major inroads among the moderate Black voters whom many see as the heart of the Democratic Party. What’s more, he failed to turn out the youth vote in the way that his supporters insisted he would.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/opinion/democratic-socialists-india-walton.html?smid=tw-share
FWIW - The progressive-left is facing the same outcome in 2022: Zephy Teachout losing to Daniel Goldman for AG, and Jumaane Williams losing to Governor Hochul.
muriel_volestrangler
(106,208 posts)which smacks of "we in the party establishment know what's best, not these inconvenient Democratic voters".
What I've seen of DeBoer struck me more as left libertarian than progressive.
brush
(61,033 posts)issue with the writer equating socialist with progressive. I'm a progressive, a pragmatic one, but do not call me a socialist. I know better than to call myself that and expect to win an election in 99 percent of the electorates in this nation.
It's toxic. Why haven't allegedly smart people learned this by now? We saw what losses we had in the 2020 House elections after AOC and the Justice Dems tried to export socialism to districts hundreds of miles away from her deep, deep blue district.
Again, it just doesn't play well in most of the nation. Run as a Democrat and if you win, install progressive policies when and where you can. Be smart.
Walleye
(44,803 posts)
comradebillyboy
(10,955 posts)There are very good reasons why there are no socialist states in Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. Many here at DU have told me that those folks who identify as socialists or "democratic" socialists aren't really socialists. But I'll take those folks at their word that they are what they say they are.
Politically speaking the socialism label is the kiss of death and the Democratic party needs to shun it.
brush
(61,033 posts)empedocles
(15,751 posts)succeed' - Abraham Lincoln
[Time tested wisdom. Disrespected in Dem primaries].
Celerity
(54,407 posts)of socialism.
Nothing in their entire platform is radical (except in corporate gaslit USA), nor 'actual socialism'. The average core EU country has had most of their platform in place for decades. People here in Sweden and most other EU core nations would literally laugh in an American's face if they tried to assert that Sweden (or any EU state) is a socialist nation and/or that Sanders, AOC's etc platforms were socialist.
America is shattered political ideology-wise. It is so artificially slid to the right that a borderline hard RWer (over here he would be the rightest of mainstream right or beginning hard RW) like Manchin is considered a centrist or moderate or moderate conservative.
haele
(15,398 posts)Typified by the Northern European countries and some localized co-operative communities across the world with varying levels of regulated capitalism and social safety nets. Some even have monarchies or theocratic figureheads with representative governments running the bureaucracy -the legal and economic day to day part of the country.
Democratic Socialists policies tend to lead to a centralized government run by populists who get elected as socialists. In my experience, they have never lasted long, because some narcissist or sociopath will co-opt the Socialism through "democratic" means.
Though I am a borderline Trotskyist, I have never seen socialism itself work successfully as a system of governance.
I have, however, seen Keynesian economics work wonders within a representative government. And I'll back any positive action rather than chuck it out for not being "pure" enough.
Haele
Cha
(319,067 posts)sentence.
It's who's running as a "socialist" too.. I haven't liked any of them.. broad brushing insults at our Democratic Party.
For instance Nina Turner in the Ohio 11 Primary.
Thank Goodness Shontel Brown WON!
Link to tweet
mcar
(46,056 posts)Who will work together with her fellow Democrats to actually make progress,
Rather than voting against progress to make some kind of point.
Cha
(319,067 posts)Brown is the Progressive one like Rep Lauren Underwood. 
multigraincracker
(37,651 posts)They are Democrats, so have to hold my nose and vote for them.
betsuni
(29,078 posts)well-qualified person for president who happened to be ____, would you vote for that person?' In 2015 and 2019, they asked about candidates who were Black, Catholic, Hispanic, a woman, Jewish, an evangelical Christian, gay or lesbian, Muslim, an atheist, and a socialist. Americans grew more tolerant of 9 out of 10 categories. The one category that didn't budge was 'socialist.' ... It really is a little bit crazy for Democrats to call themselves the most unpopular term in politics without knowing what it means, and a lot of them are doing that right now." Steven Stoft
Justice Democrats types seem stubbornly attached to certain words and slogans and give them new meanings that nobody else knows. Then get mad when they lose and blame the establishment/centrists for ignoring the Will of The People. They're really in love with the silly insult "corporate Democrats" which doesn't mean anything except another way to call the party corrupt, but they repeat it in every sentence.
Celerity
(54,407 posts)typical of American politicians and tbh, Americans in general, far too often as well.
It is a strawman because there are no socialists, democratic or otherwise, in any Congressional seat.
But that strawman only exists because of false and politically suicidal (in reactionary America) self-labelling by a few who think (here comes the hubris and arrogance) that they can just snap their fingers and rewrite definitions that have been accepted both academically and in every day life since the 1800's or longer.
They are bog standard social democrats, NOT democratic socialists. None wants the state to expropriate the means of production. Bernie himself has said no to that for decades.
Also, all the people who have advocated against the progressives for months now were also tossing Biden under the 'false socialist label clusterfuck' bus, as all the progs have done is try to pass BIDEN'S agenda. They compromised ages ago on it all.
India Walton was a one off, Buffalo is a machine city, and she is hardly a solid foundation to build a 'retreat! retreat! klaxon call to moderate left neoliberalism and/or foolish 3rd way revivalist attempts.'
The author of the OP article is a self identifed Marxist btw.
OilemFirchen
(7,288 posts)You excoriate the naïve for self-identifying as Democratic Socialists - which is entirely appropriate - and then use a convoluted, self-contradictory term like "moderate left neoliberalism".
What the ever-loving fuck is that?
betsuni
(29,078 posts)Just calling everyone "establishment" was so much simpler.
OilemFirchen
(7,288 posts)Though I still refer to "them" as "The Man".
betsuni
(29,078 posts)Celerity
(54,407 posts)https://www.vox.com/polyarchy/2019/6/11/18660240/democrats-neoliberalism
The fallout from the 2016 election has created many surreal moments for historians of American politics and parties, but surely one of the oddest has been the introduction of the term neoliberal into the popular discourse. Even stranger still is that it has become a pejorative largely lobbed by the left less at Republicans and more at Democrats. As neoliberal has come to describe a wide range of figures, from Bill and Hillary Clinton to Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates, its meaning has become stretched thin and caused fuzziness and disagreement. This muddle of meanings creates an opportunity to seek a more precise understanding of what I call “Democratic neoliberalism.”
It is actually not the first time Democrats have been called neoliberal. In the early 1980s, the term emerged to describe a group of figures also called the Watergate Babies, Atari Democrats, and New Democrats, many of whom eventually became affiliated with the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). In this iteration, the term neoliberal was embraced not as opprobrium. Rather, it used a form of self-description and differentiation to imply that they were “new Democrats.” In 1982, Washington Monthly editor Charles Peters published “A Neo-Liberal’s Manifesto,” which aimed to lay out the core principles of this group; two years later, journalist Randall Rothenberg wrote a book called The Neoliberals that sought to codify and celebrate this cohort’s ascendency.
The DLC and its allies have largely received attention from political historians for their electoral strategy instead of their policies. Yet, even more than electoral politics, this group had an impact on shaping the ideas and policy priorities of the Democratic Party in key issues of economic growth, technology, and poverty. They also created a series of initiatives that sought to fuse these arenas together in lasting ways. The realm of policies is where parties can have an impact that reaches beyond elections to shape the lives of individual people and intensify structures and patterns of inequality. It thus points to the importance of expanding the study of US political parties writ large, beyond simply an examination of political strategy and electoral returns and instead thinking about the ways in which parties come to reflect and shape ideas and policy. It also demonstrates the importance of treating neoliberalism less as an epithet and more as a historical development.
Unlike their counterparts in fields like sociology and geography and even in other historical subfields, historians of the United States were long reluctant to adopt the term “neoliberal.” Many still argue that the neologism has become, in the words of Daniel Rodgers, “a linguistic omnivore” that is anachronistic and potentially “cannibalizing.” In the past few years, scholars of 20th-century American political history, however, have increasingly embraced neoliberalism and sought to understand its historical evolution. Building and drawing on the work of influential theorists like David Harvey, these inquiries have been important in the efforts to understand the relationship between capitalism and politics and the power dynamics with them. Yet these accounts have largely depicted the rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s as inextricably intertwined with conservative ascent and the Reagan Revolution, and situated the Clinton era and the rise of the New Democrats as a piece of a larger story about the dominance of the free market and the retreat of government. This approach flattened and obscured the important ways that the Clintons and other New Democrats’ promotion of the market and the role of government was distinct from Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman, and their followers.
The principles and policies Clinton and the DLC espoused were not solely a defensive reaction to the Republican Party or merely a strategic attempt to pull the Democratic Party to the center. Rather, their vision represents parts of a coherent ideology that sought to both maintain and reformulate key aspects of liberalism itself. In The Neoliberals, Rothenberg observed that “neoliberals are trying to change the ideas that underlie Democratic politics.” Taking his claim seriously provides a means to think about how this group of figures achieved that goal and came to permanently transform the agenda and ideas of the Democratic Party.
From Watergate Babies to New Democrats..........
snip
A Neo-Liberal's Manifesto
By Charles Peters; Charles Peters is the editor of The Washington Monthly.
September 5, 1982
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1982/09/05/a-neo-liberals-manifesto/21cf41ca-e60e-404e-9a66-124592c9f70d/?utm_term=.ce3a69efb8e6
NEO-LIBERALISM is a terrible name for an interesting, if embryonic, movement. As the sole culprit at the christening, I hereby attest to the innocence of the rest of the faithful. They deserve something better, because they are a remarkable group of people. The best known are three promising senators: Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Gary Hart of Colorado and Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts. The ones I know best are my fellow journalists, including James Fallows and Gregg Easterbrook of The Atlantic, Michael Kinsley and Robert M. Kaus of Harper's, Nicholas Lemann and Joseph Nocera of Texas Monthly, and Randall Rothenberg of New Jersey Monthly. But there are many others, ranging from an academic economist like MIT's Lester Thurow to a mayor like Houston's Kathy Whitmire to a governor like Arizona's Bruce Babbitt. There's even a cell over at that citadel of traditional liberalism, The New Republic.
While we are united by a different spirit and a different style of thought, none of these people should be held responsible for all of what follows. Practicing politicians in particular should be presumed innocent of the more controversial positions. When I use the first person plural, it usually means some but not all of us, and occasionally it may mean just me.
If neo-conservatives are liberals who took a critical look at liberalism and decided to become conservatives, we are liberals who took the same look and decided to retain our goals but to abandon some of our prejudices. We still believe in liberty and justice and a fair chance for all, in mercy for the afflicted and help for the down and out. But we no longer automatically favor unions and big government or oppose the military and big business. Indeed, in our search for solutions that work, we have come to distrust all automatic responses, liberal or conservative.
We have found these responses not only weren't helping but were often hampering us in confronting the problems that were beginning to cripple the nation in the 1970s: declining productivity; the closed factories and potholed roads that betrayed decaying plant and infrastructure; inefficient and unaccountable public agencies that were eroding confidence in government; a military with too many weapons that didn't work and too few people from the upper classes in its ranks; and a politics of selfishness symbolized by an explosion of political action committees devoted to the interests of single groups.
snip
A Neoliberal Says It’s Time for Neoliberals to Pack It In
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/03/a-neoliberal-says-its-time-for-neoliberals-to-pack-it-in/
My fellow neoliberal shill Brad DeLong has declared that it’s time for us to pass the baton to “our colleagues on the left.” As it happens, I agree with him in practice because I think it’s time for boomers to retire and turn over the reins to Xers and Millennials, who are generally somewhat to the left of us oldsters. Beyond that, though, there’s less here than meets the eye. DeLong says there are three reasons he thinks neoliberals should fade into the background:
But this is old news. Charlie Peters, the godfather of political neoliberalism, conceded it publicly long ago. For at least the past decade, there’s been no reason at all to believe that the current Republican Party would ever compromise with Democrats no matter how moderate their proposals. Anyone who has believed this since George W. Bush was president was deluding themselves. Anyone who has believed it since 2009, when Obamacare was being negotiated, is an idiot. There’s nothing about this that separates neoliberals from anyone else these days.
So this is nothing new either. The question is, does DeLong intend to go along in areas where his neoliberal ideas are in conflict with the AOC wing of the Democratic Party? He plainly does not.
But has the world really changed? I don’t think so—not yet, anyway. I’ll bet DeLong still believes in these two things, but now understands that Republicans will undermine them at every opportunity. That makes it Job 1 to destroy the current incarnation of the GOP, and the best way to do that is to have unity on the left. But if and when that’s been accomplished, I’ll bet he still thinks the Fed should be primarily in charge of fighting recessions. We just need FOMC members who agree.
At the risk of overanalyzing this, I think DeLong is still a neoliberal and has no intention of sitting back and letting progressives run wild. He has simply changed the target of his coalition building. Instead of compromising to bring in Republicans, he wants to compromise to bring in lefties. Now, this is not nothing: instead of compromising to the right, he now wants to compromise to the left. But I suspect that this simply means DeLong has moved to the left over the past couple of decades, just like lots of liberals.
snip
Third Way
The Third Way is a position akin to centrism that tries to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of some centre-right and centrist economic and some centre-left social policies. The Third Way was created as a re-evaluation of political policies within various centre-left progressive movements in response to doubt regarding the economic viability of the state and the overuse of economic interventionist policies that had previously been popularized by Keynesianism, but which at that time contrasted with the rise of popularity for neoliberalism and the New Right. The Third Way is promoted by social liberals and some social democratic parties.
Major Third Way social democratic proponent Tony Blair claimed that the socialism he advocated was different from traditional conceptions of socialism and said: "My kind of socialism is a set of values based around notions of social justice. [...] Socialism as a rigid form of economic determinism has ended, and rightly". Blair referred to it as a "social-ism" involving politics that recognised individuals as socially interdependent and advocated social justice, social cohesion, equal worth of each citizen and equal opportunity. Third Way social democratic theorist Anthony Giddens has said that the Third Way rejects the traditional conception of socialism and instead accepts the conception of socialism as conceived of by Anthony Crosland as an ethical doctrine that views social democratic governments as having achieved a viable ethical socialism by removing the unjust elements of capitalism by providing social welfare and other policies and that contemporary socialism has outgrown the Marxist claim for the need of the abolition of capitalism. In 2009, Blair publicly declared support for a "new capitalism".
The Third Way supports the pursuit of greater egalitarianism in society through action to increase the distribution of skills, capacities and productive endowments while rejecting income redistribution as the means to achieve this. It emphasises commitment to balanced budgets, providing equal opportunity which is combined with an emphasis on personal responsibility, the decentralisation of government power to the lowest level possible, encouragement and promotion of public–private partnerships, improving labour supply, investment in human development, preserving of social capital and protection of the environment. However, specific definitions of Third Way policies may differ between Europe and the United States. The Third Way has been criticised by certain conservatives, liberals and libertarians who advocate laissez-faire capitalism. It has also been heavily criticised by other social democrats and in particular democratic socialists, anarchists and communists as a betrayal of left-wing values, with some analysts characterising the Third Way as an effectively neoliberal movement.
snip
OilemFirchen
(7,288 posts)What a curious rebuttal, with the first paragraph of the first cite containing the money quote:
Yup. Just as some on the left have moronically "redefined" socialism to describe traditional liberal policies, decades ago a few centrist Democratic influence-peddlers of no consequence "redefined" neoliberalism to comport with their occasional unsuccessful flirtations with market-based solutions. They appropriated the name of a well-defined political philosophy, either out of ignorance or opportunism. Of course, those few are long gone from our political discourse and, to the best of my knowledge, no members of Congress then or now identified themselves as such.
Neoliberals are Republicans, Libertarians and their ilk. Period. Oddly, the most recent example of neoliberalism is from Ms. Walton herself, stumping, as has been observed elsewhere on this thread, for charter schools. Doesn't make her a neoliberal, though, any more so than stumping for the unfortunately-monikered "Medicare for All" makes her a socialist.
You still haven't defined "moderate left neoliberalism", BTW. Stuck on the edge of your Mobius Strip?
Celerity
(54,407 posts)Fail. And at the most simple, basic level of political science, the study of ideology and political philosophy.
I just showed you there are both left and right types, and of course you still deny and play sea lioning games.
I am not the one on a Möbius strip. That would be you, futilely trying to reclaim your false narrative.
Done here.
OilemFirchen
(7,288 posts)Buh bye.
iemanja
(57,757 posts)It's a slur and nothing else. And that is exactly how you meant it.
Celerity
(54,407 posts)cinematicdiversions
(1,969 posts)They are an honest to goodness embarrassment.
iemanja
(57,757 posts)Fiendish Thingy
(23,229 posts)You know the ones…they are/were part of the agenda Joe Biden, that radical socialist, ran on and promoted in his BBB plan.
Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)Voting issues from the yeah yeah I agree sort. The 2020 House race made clear our problems.
brooklynite
(96,882 posts)...and being clear that he was a mainstream Democrat.
Fiendish Thingy
(23,229 posts)brooklynite
(96,882 posts)AZProgressive
(29,929 posts)But the establishment put more effort & not to mention money into defeating Nina Turner & India Walton than they do their own races like McAuliffe in Virginia. Bryon Brown had a lot more name recognition locally though.
Most things I support are unpopular at first but become popular down the road like cannabis legalization. It wasn’t the same 20 years ago.
brooklynite
(96,882 posts)He had plenty of cash (including some of mine). No, Terry McAuliffe didn't have a compelling message.
iemanja
(57,757 posts)Your post assumes she is entitled to rule. She is not.
AZProgressive
(29,929 posts)Then came the endorsements & the Super PAC money and she ended up with 44% of the vote and lost.
India Walton won her primary back in June and not sure of all the specifics but money poured into the race for Bryon Brown and have seen more negative campaigning in those races than I do in races vs Republicans.
June was a good month for me politically but not personally. Aside from those 2 races the coronavirus was going away until the Delta Variant spread after the July 4th weekend. It also looked like we were getting both infrastructure bills soon. I thought things were getting better but I guess not.
iemanja
(57,757 posts)She had more money, not less. Turner was ahead in the polls until voters got to know her and her opponent. Her position was largely based on name recognition, as early polls always are. I get some want the corporate media to pick candidates rather than actual voters, but that isn't how it works. She also happened to be a candidate who compared voting for Joe Biden to eating a bowl of shit. Many voters found that and much else about her to be objectionable. Their votes indicated as much.
India Walton obviously fell short as a candidate. Somehow all that money you refer to didn't keep her from winning the primary.
Then, your claim that Democrats weren't as interested in winning the VA Governor's race is absurd. That race was inordinately expensive.
https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/verify/virginia-election-2021-glenn-youngking-terry-mcauliffe-hala-ayala-winsome-sears-campaign-contributions-highest-in-twenty-years/65-4a5c4c97-3d42-41e3-8495-7b37662636a3
Your argument is premised on entitlement. You see votes and campaign contributions to Democrats as interfering with what would otherwise be the social democrats' natural place in elected office.
AZProgressive
(29,929 posts)I like that she reached out personally compared to most campaigns. I was just a small donor. I was referring to the Super PAC money and dishonest mailers.
I know the quote that many DUers are upset about but there were Super PACs with smear campaigns. When it comes to some they punch the left harder than Republicans.
Bryon Brown had 15 years of name recognition and he was fear mongering like a Republican when it came to his opponent. I think he had GOP donors but I’m not sure of the specifics in that race. India Walton did have last minute endorsements from Schumer and Gillibrand though.
iemanja
(57,757 posts)Right after the election, Turner lied by claiming Brown had outspent her and their her loss was due to money.
Even considering the money that came in from pacs, Turner had substantially more money. I expect most of that came in from outside her district. She handled her campaign funds like she would have handled public office--incompetently.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-shontel-brown-beat-nina-turner-ohio-primary_n_6116e717e4b01da700f5cb85
Then she blamed money because to her voters are sheep too stupid to make up their own minds. And of course she believes herself entitled to hold office.
As for the Intercept, they are as reliable as Fox News.
treestar
(82,383 posts)that they should not have to convince anyone. Notice how "unfair" the regular election process is. It's just so unfair to be absolutely right and be disagreed with, and have to try to convince others. They should just think the right way, dammit!
iemanja
(57,757 posts)Democratic or otherwise, they should run on their own merits, not seek the Democratic nomination. They aren't members of the party, so why should they qualify for party funds and support?