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[Ken Burch]

This message was self-deleted by its author (Ken Burch) on Mon Feb 13, 2017, 11:43 PM. When the original post in a discussion thread is self-deleted, the entire discussion thread is automatically locked so new replies cannot be posted.

[elleng]

1. On what basis do you say 'that kind of politics can still work?'

[Big Blue Marble]

2. We may not like him,

but remember the D after his name. His seat in WV
is already at risk next year. He is all we have in WV,
so we best be pragmatic about him.

He did say he will vote against Price for HHS.

[Me.]

3. What He Did For Love

I'd be willing to bet the Justice Dept.investigation against his daughter is dropped.

The yadda yadda about his state being so red is a tired song, what has he done to change it? He's responsible for the vote and will have contributed to whatever harm Sessions does. There is a point when enough is enough.

[leftstreet]

6. OMG the EpiPen CEO creep

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/22/politics/joe-manchin-epipen-hike/

Washington (CNN)Sen. Joe Manchin strongly defended his daughter, Heather Bresch, over growing criticism that her company dramatically raised prices for its life-saving medicine in order to enrich her company -- and herself.

In an exclusive interview with CNN, the West Virginia Democrat broke his silence and sharply criticized lawmakers from both parties who have seized on the rising cost of EpiPen to bash his daughter's stewardship of her company, Mylan. He said lawmakers were trying to be "sensational" by seizing on Bresch's multi-million-dollar compensation.

And he slammed an article in USA Today for questioning whether his wife, Gayle, improperly used her position in an education group to boost the drug's prices, calling it a "cheap shot" and "tabloid" journalism. He praised Mylan as a West Virginia company that saved the country $180 billion.

Forgot all about that

[Me.]

12. Yes Indeedy

[hollowdweller]

32. Don't forget WVU gave her a bogus degree also

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_University_M.B.A._controversy

[dalton99a]

43. That, too.

[MADem]

4. You said "We all know he's inevitably going to cross the aisle now anyway."

We do?

What have you heard?

[Ken Burch]

7. Because there is no way he can keep going further and further right

and still stay organizationally loyal to THIS party.

Especially since we're in the minority in the Senate and that likely won't change until at least 2022, if ever.

He got our money(national Dem donations saved him from defeat)and gave us nothing at all in return.

He hasn't done anything to help rebuild the West Virginia state Dems, which, as our only major Dem official in the state, he should have felt obligated to do.

It's just going to happen now, no matter what.

Why even pretend otherwise?

[MADem]

10. That's precisely why he can get away with it--because we need him more than he needs us.

Rather like Lieberman.

But that could change in 2018--we don't have to wait until 2022. That "if ever" remark seemed rather flippant, if I may say so. I'm not in the "Abandon hope all ye who enter here" group--sorry that you seem to be.

[crazycatlady]

46. Difference between Manchin and Lieberman is the states they represent

CT is a solidly blue state and Lieberman was replaced by Chris Murphy, who is a rising star within the party and very liberal.

[dsc]

26. WV has a Democratic governor

[KittyWampus]

5. Are you psychic? "We all know he's inevitably going to cross the aisle now anyway"

Speak for yourself.

[Ken Burch]

8. If you're that far to the right, it simply has to happen.

No one that anti-progressive ever stays loyal to this party. Not one.

And if you vote for Sessions, you're never going to vote for anything non-reactionary again. That kind of vote says that you no longer have a conscience and will never listen again.

[KittyWampus]

13. #1. Speak for youself #2. He voted against DeVos. #3. His votes says he's from a conservative

state. #4. that you don't know any of this makes your opinion cheap coin.

[Jake Stern]

14. You can't be sure that he'll switch to the dark side

but they can be 1000% sure a progressive would never get elected dog catcher in WV despite never running one.

[Ken Burch]

19. Depends on how that progressive runs.

There are a lot of people in West Virginia who would respond positively to a "the people vs. the powerful" kind of campaign.

It's a state where they connect to the idea of standing up to the bosses.

And it's entirely possible to run that kind of campaign and still be socially progressive, if you get the fight for folks on the bottom part in.

Jim Hightower was a classic example of a progressive who repeatedly won statewide races in a "red state".

What doesn't work in West Virginia is social liberalism combined with economic conservatism and "pro-business" economics.

[MADem]

15. PROGRESSIVE is NOT a synonym for liberal. There are plenty of "progressives" on the GOP team.

They're all for the working man--the WHITE working man, emphasis on MAN.

But they're plenty "progressive," for some folks, anyway.

[Ken Burch]

16. I have never been the sort of "progressive" that cares about white working men and no one else.

Neither was anyone who was involved in the primary campaign I was part of, if THAT is what you're implying.

I'm the kind who knows that we can fight racism AND corporate greed at the same time-that it never had to be "either/or" on that.

Do you still believe that we can't fight for both?

[MADem]

21. I wasn't implying anything about you at all. I was just pointing out a sad fact.

This is an ugly truth and many people just don't quite understand it.

Progressivism is NOT the same as liberalism. They can co-exist but QUITE OFTEN they don't, and this election is proof positive of that.

There are lots of so-called "progressives" who believe that black lives don't matter and that women and POC and gay people and immigrants and others who fall under the oft-derided/mocked "social justice" rubric should just shuffle to the back of the bus and sit down and shut up. Like McConnell told Betsy Warren to do.

These people believe that white men lead the way, and the rising tide of the success of the white male paradigm will eventually lift all boats. They're rather insultingly CERTAIN about this, too, and some of them purport to be on or from the left, when in actual fact they're coming from a place of privilege and selfishness. They either have theirs and want to keep it, or think they deserve to GET theirs, and they deserve to be first in line for it.

It's one of the things that the right used successfully to peel away some of those selfish and entitled morons to vote for Trump this time round. That white male privilege shit is REAL. It's running out of air, though, and the thrashing and push-back we see are the last gasps of a dying privileged sub-group of humans who've gotten away with far too much for far too long. They're going to have to compete with the rest of us and their skin/gender/suits-and-Trump Ties will be insufficient armor.

[Ken Burch]

25. If you're implying that that represents most Sanders supporterss, that's bullshit.

Yes, his support base skewed white and male...but it's not as though those who backed him WANTED it that way, or that Bernie did.

And at a certain point you're going to have to accept the fact that those who called for the party to place a greater emphasis on economic justice NEVER wanted the party to stop challenging racism, or even to challenge it less.

Before it was invented by supporters of one candidate in 2015, there was NEVER a divide on the issues between social justice and economic justice supporters. Before that, 95% of the time we were all in the same marches, fighting for the same things.

Can you please, finally, accept the fact that there is no longer any reason to perpetuate the notion that economic justice campaigners dismiss the need to fight institutional bigotry and social oppressnion? We don't now. Even if we could have communicated better in the primaries, we didn't then. And I think that some of the uglier things that were said in that time, things I condemned at the time, were driven in part by the fact that false accusations of indifference to social oppression were repeated and repeated and repeated even when they had long since been disproved.

None of us have ever argued that white men mattered more than anyone else. All we said was that there needs to be at least some common-ground battles based on class AS WELL as a multiracial movement against social oppression. We could always have had both and we can STILL have both. For the future, we NEED both, because we need to get votes we didn't get then, mainly from alienated nonvoters but also from at least some people who voted for the other major-party candidate and will come to the realization that they were played. Seeking those votes doesn't require us, as a party, to abandon anyone or anything.

Now that neither 2016 presidential candidate will ever run for president again, can we move past the primary rhetoric once and for all?

If this means people need to phrase things differently, fine.

If it means there needs to be more critique of what was conveyed in the heat of the moment, then let's have that.

But it has to happen.

And it can't happen if false accusations of indifference to bigotry continue to be spread.

In the name of the future, stop with that already.

What you did in that last post helps no one.

[dsc]

27. that is total bullshit

sorry but I grew up in this country, I know how this country behaved, and I have read history books. It is total unadulterated bullshit that there hasn't been a strain in this country that has wanted great social programs as long as blacks and other people of color didn't get to share in them. The GI bill, the FHA, and many other programs were either de jure, or de facto barred to black people. That was by design not some sort of accident that just happened. A non trivial number of labor unions refused to permit blacks in them well into the mid 20th century.

I also saw posts on this very forum that literally said that anything that wasn't economic issues was just frosting on the cake and not worth fighting for.

[Ken Burch]

29. If you're talking about the 1930's yes, I agree with you.

In that era, that was Southern Democrats insisting on that and it was despicable.

In the Fifties and Sixties that was parts of the labor movement. And THEY were wrong.

But that view doesn't reflect where grassroots economic justice advocates have been since at least the Seventies, though(the New Left never had that contradiction).

And the vast majority, the prohibitive majority of us who have been part of the economic justice movement have repeatedly condemned the handful of people who argued that class mattered and race didn't. That wasn't ever what we as a group were about.
The people who did say such things were idiots(and if I ever said anything that sounded like that's what I felt, it's not what I meant and I apologize for even sounding like that).


I respect your historical experience and acknowledge the past, but what, exactly, do you need to see from economic justice supporters(more than a few of whom are people of color) that that isn't where we are now and that you could at least consider trusting us?

We aren't in the primaries now...can't we take the next four years to have actual dialog on this rather than an endless repetition of talking points from last spring? We need each other.

[dsc]

30. a candidate who actually did something about social justice while in office

the fact is Sanders had pretty much no record of ever having done anything while in office in regards to social justice. To take one example. He was mayor of Burlington, an astoundingly liberal city, from 1981 to 1989. During that time he passed nothing, nor tried to pass anything, of substance in regards to gay rights. The entire state had a civil rights bill for LGBT in 1991. It just wasn't a priority for him. Where was he on voting rights in the Senate? Where was he on ENDA in the Senate? On economic issues he was loud, strong, impossible to ignore. On civil rights issue he was wall paper. Yes, he voted the right way but that is it. And Hillary, who largely voted the right way on economic issues we have been told repeatedly wasn't good enough because she didn't utter some combination of words or took money or what have you. One thing which might be nice is to be allowed to say that we don't think it is enough to simply vote for but not demonstrate any actual passion for our rights without being told we are not real liberals.

[Ken Burch]

35. The point is, neither of those people will ever run for office again.

Yes, the Sanders campaign didn't properly communicate its strong antiracist position. Yes, some Sanders supporters, generally when provoked by false accusations(such as the reprehensible claim that the Sanders campaign didn't WANT black votes) said foolish things.

But most Sanders people did support Hillary in the fall, and Bernie gave her his strong support in the fall.

And the campaign is OVER, with neither Bernie nor Hillary being personally responsible for the result.

This is no longer about Bernie or Hillary. Neither of them will ever seek the presidency again.

And neither of them will "control" the party no matter who is elected DNC chair.

And since neither of them will, there is no reason to pretend there is actually a split, in the MODERN era, between social justice and economic justice advocates. I believe we are all committed to BOTH justice struggles.

So can we please work for unity now...can we please accept that we all need each other, and can the conversation on justice in this party move past the talking points of a long-finished primary season?

[MADem]

31. Thank you--that was precisely my point and you articulated it beautifully. nt

[MADem]

33. YOU stop with the "implying" and "if you're" and and "stop with that" stuff.

You don't have to "argue" that white men "matter more." That's the damn paradigm. They go first, and everyone else "gets to" follow along behind. If a woman or POC rises up, there's grumbling that they've "jumped the line," or been mollycoddled, or they're "uppity."

It doesn't have to be said--it's FELT.


It wasn't just Trumphumpers who were dismissing/denigrating BLM and women's issues recently.

"In the name of the future" I'll spend my energies working towards that true equality for all Americans, immigrants and refugees--including the black and brown "future majority" of this country -- rather than fighting with someone who wants to pretend there aren't any problems in that regard and that all those white males who want theirs are equally concerned about these issues--because they aren't--otherwise they wouldn't have switched their votes so easily to an orange con-man with piss colored hair.


If you're unclear on the concept, I suggest you have a look at what happened to Senator Warren in the Senate this week (sit down and STFU) --before the So-Called President called her Pocahontas. But no, she wasn't singled out....

What you do in your posts, denying the obvious, helps no one. Here's some light reading that belies your assertions entirely:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/22/bernie-sanders-identity-politics-class-race-debate


I should have just voted to hide your post instead of giving you a chance to explain yourself. Pffft.

[Ken Burch]

37. I said some things wrong there.

There were no significant number of Sanders people who preferred Bernie to his more conservative primary opponent because they wanted white men to have privilege. The vast majority of us condemn any who did.

Sanders people oppose social oppression to the core of our beings.

And we are all with you in fighting all forms of oppression.

Sanders supporters oppose white supremacism, and sexism, and homo-and-trans phobia.

We aren't your enemies.

We are trying to work with you and find common ground.

It appears you still can't trust us on this.

It appears you still aren't interested in dialog or education(most Sanders people are in their early 20s-if nothing else, you might want to consider giving THEM at least some benefit of the doubt that if they've said things you disagree with it was out of lack of education rather than malicious intent)

What do you gain by prioritizing lashing out at us when it's the right that's the enemy?

What do you gain by continuing to turn this into an argument that the party has to choose between social justice AND economic justice rather than working intersectionally for both?

It looks as though you still want to bar essentially ALL Sanders people from any meaningful role in the party. Is that what you want? And if you succeeded in that, where would we ever get the votes to win another election? We can't win simply on demographic change...the Right will use vote suppression to make that impossible.

Why does there still seem to be this insistence that Sanders supporters renounce not only any identification with him but essentialy any common identity. How can they ever be activists for the people, against greed, against inequality and for peace ever again if they
atomize and become nothing but disconnected individuals? How could they ever stand for anything again if they simply atomized as a movement? Why force them to choose to never be politically effective again?

As to the idiots who voted Trump(a pathetically tiny sliver of people out of all who supported Bernie):

You're talking to someone who spent the fall working to get Sanders people to vote for Hillary(mostly with success, but with some bloody-minded idiots making the choice you mentioned there). Most Sanders supporters(the Bobs were a tiny fraction)can say the same.

It's simply not true that the Sanders movement was "white men who want theirs". We had our flaws, but we always fought for everyone. We were never about holding people of color, women, LGBTQ people or immigrants, and the fact that a handful of people on the Internet(which is always the place you'll see the worst specimens of human consciousness)said horrible things while claiming to support Bernie doesn't change that.

But I'll leave you with this question again...since neither Bernie nor Hillary will ever run again, why do you still insist on seeing this as Bernie V. Hillary?

(on edit)...ok, that was a link to Bernie's speech from November. Look, I'm not trying to sell you on him as a candidate. Bernie's never going to run for the presidency again. And I agree with you that he should have said more on race. But Sanders supporters are not responsible for what he said as a former candidate. It serves no purpose to go off on us for this rather than giving us the chance to work with you, which is what we want to do.

[MADem]

38. You keep doing it. Do you even read what you write?

And I won't rely on you for prognostications--you've been woefully wrong thus far.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-2020_us_5874b7f1e4b02b5f858af58a

[Ken Burch]

42. Let me put it this way: do you actually believe Keith Ellison can't be trusted to fight racism?

Just because he preferred Bernie to Hillary?

Just because he thinks the party should stop depending on corporate donations?

Keith is no one's lackey. And Bernie Sanders is not the Wizard of Oz.

Bernie will be 79 in 2020...he only ran in 2016 because Warren didn't and because a grassroots candidate was needed.

I truly believe he's not about personal power ego and would not run again at that age.

If he asked me, I'd personally advise him against running. Pretty sure Jane would do the same.

Warren is probably the front-runner now because she's now a symbol of courage, free speech and feminism, thanks to what Turtle Boy did.

[MADem]

45. Why are you posing silly strawmen questions?

That's a better question. You've invented a scenario, tried to drag me into it, when I subscribe to none of the postulates you've put forward.

No where have I suggested any such thing about Ellison, so why are you posing the question, as though I had?

That's just a total fail, there.

[Ken Burch]

48. I had a specific reason for asking that question.

The one thing that represents anything like the Sanders/HRC divide is the race to elect a new DNC chair.

Bernie and a lot of Sanders supporters happen to support Keith Ellison, although they are joined in that support by more than a few HRC supporters, most notably Amy Schumer's cousin Chuck.

Tom Perez is supported by most of those who backed HRC in the primaries.

It is alleged by a fair amount of HRC supporters that Keith's candidacy is about a plot by Bernie to "take over the party".

As far as I know, that contest is the only reason some people still see internal Dem politics as Bernie vs. HRC.

Can you name any other issues that would fit that?

And before we go any further, MADem, here's where I individually come down on some things, and where I do may surprise you:

I don't want Bernie to "take over the party". I don't want the party to be taken over by any one person.

My own support of Keith is about his backing for the idea of moving away from our dependency on corporate donations, on putting a far greater emphasis on the Democracy as an active participant in social and economic justice struggles. He is not, from anything I can ever see, a henchman for Bernie or for anyone else...he's his own man.

And I don't actually think it would be a good idea for Bernie to run for president again: we need someone younger and someone more in tune with intersectionality on social and economic justice issues, someone who is able to stand up for the best of what the Sanders movement stood for while being able to connect with those who didn't trust the movement and the candidate.

I'm about the issues...not any particular political figure. OK?

[bettyellen]

54. You are trashing HRC without using her name. Please delete this crap.

[Ken Burch]

55. I'm doing nothing of the sort. I just reject the idea that Sanders supporters are collectively evil

and should be made permanently unwelcome in this party.

Do you really see ANY critical comments about any Democratic politician as a personal attack on HRC?

I strongly supported the former SoS throughout the fall and urged all Sanders supporters to do the same. And my response to the Electoral College result was deep grief.

And the only comments I made AFTER the election were about strategy, not HRC as a person.

My actual view is that we're past the Sanders/Clinton divide.

Neither Sanders nor Clinton will ever seek the presidency again(I'd advise Bernie against it just as much as I would HRC-we need someone from the next generation that wasn't part of the '16 primaries), and I'd still like to see a future Democratic president appoint HRC to the Supreme Court.

[bettyellen]

56. Oops I'm so sorry - it was HRC supporters you were accusing of playing a race card here:

"Before it was invented by supporters of one candidate in 2015, there was NEVER a divide on the issues between social justice and economic justice supporters. Before that, 95% of the time we were all in the same marches, fighting for the same things. "


I'm not arguing a defense here because THE PRIMARY IS FUCKING OVER. I'm asking you to take a look at your own words and stop attacking people here who supported our Dem candidate earlier than you did. It's repulsive.

[Ken Burch]

59. Look...I went too far with "Never"...I know what happened in the New Deal era.

I should have said "there hasn't been a divide between at least the Seventies".

Yes, in the Thirties, New Dealers cut deals with Southern Dems to leave people of color out in the cold. And I join you in saying that should never have happened.

After the New Left and the freedom movement reshaped their debate, the post-1967 economic and social justice movements were never again in conflict...we were in support of each other and we were backing each others agendas the vast majority of the time.

And the economic justice movement, in the post-1965 era, has not argued for anything that would leave people of color out in the cold.

I agree that people of color were betrayed in the Thirties. But no one involved in that betrayal is even alive today.

Do you really hold Sanders supporters, at least half of whom were under thirty, to blame for what happened under FDR?

Do you assume those young Sanders people have the same shortcomings on race that you saw in Bernie?

I didn't mean to attack anyone. My comments were about a bogus and toxic line of argument, about an orchestrated campaign strategy. I don't think most of the people who supported HRC did so out of the belief that Bernie didn't care about racism. Most of those who did simply felt she was going to be nominated anyway and for whatever reasons they just liked her. And I accept that it was legitimate for them to do that.

I also feel Bernie didn't deserve the vilification he received on racial issues-that there was simply no reason to go there. That said, HRC would probably have been nominated even if the "Bernie doesn't care" line hadn't been spread-that she would have beaten Bernie among POC simply on the eight years she spent establishing contacts in that community. My were not about HRC supporters, but the campaign strategists who decided to demonize Bernie on those issues.

And what I want now is for there to be dialog on the social justice/economic justice thing, because in the end we basically agreed with each other on that about 95% of the time, and because there has to be a way to work strongly for both sets of justice issues. We are united in antiracism and we are united in working for an economic system that leaves no one behind and treats all with dignity.

[bettyellen]

61. Feminists and POC were alert stalked here for a full year and you call it bogus? Fuck that.

I refuse to argue about the primary- stop trying to get people to do so by slandering HRC supporters.

[Ken Burch]

63. I wasn't even mentioning it.

I don't even know why you came into this thread and started what you have started.

Critical comments about Joe Manchin have nothing to do with HRC or HRC supporters.

[bettyellen]

64. You claimed HRC supporters played some sort of race card in the above post.

You think not saying the name innoculates you somehow?
Bullshit- that's exactly what you said about us. And you know better. Or should. How dare you.

Really, do us all a favor and shut up about the primaries.



"Before it was invented by supporters of one candidate in 2015, there was NEVER a divide on the issues between social justice and economic justice supporters. Before that, 95% of the time we were all in the same marches, fighting for the same things. "

[Ken Burch]

67. To clarify, I mean the HRC campaign people who kept attacking Bernie on race

They didn't need to do that, since HRC would have carried POC largely because she'd spent eight years campaigning for their votes.

The only reason I even mentioned the primaries was that another poster, for no reason I can imagine, started accusing "progressives", by which it looked as though that poster meant white Sanders supporters, of not caring about racism and of supporting policies that only benefit white people.

Not only has that never been true, I have no idea of why that would even have been posted in this thread.

Even if Bernie himself had flaws in communications on those issues, it's not fair to assume his supporters shares the shortcomings you saw in him. I was defending those supporters, not saying anything at all about the primaries. Most Sanders supporters, like most PEOPLE in real life,, were never like the people who were here in the primaries saying awful things.

I was defending, not attacking, and I'm sorry I managed to make it sound like attacking.

[bettyellen]

68. Bullshit. Just stop w the primary crap and blaming all of us for your nonsense. Enough!

[Ken Burch]

69. There was no reason for the other poster to bring up the primaries.

I was just defending supporters of one candidate from false accusations.

That poster brought that into this thread when it had nothing to do with this thread.

Sanders supporters care just as much about fighting racism as anyone else and there's no reason they should still be being accused of racism when they never were racist.

There was no reason for that other poster to launch all of that into a thread that had nothing to do with this.

[BeyondGeography]

9. He voted against DeVos, will vote against Price

Will hold the line on Obamacare...meantime, WI and PA have Senators who might as well be from the Deep South.

What was your point again?

[ProudLib72]

11. The real question is

When will Dems get organized? I see this happening over and over. The GOP votes party line, but we can't seem to keep our party together. Pushing a Democratic party line could create some tensions with people like Manchin, might even make him cross over. Or, maybe, just maybe, having some cohesiveness in the party will make it attractive to RINOs who want to cross the aisle.

[Ken Burch]

17. That's a very good point.

n/t.

[MADem]

22. The GOP have Senators from the "liberal" end of the spectrum (to their minds)

You've got Collins and Murkowski voting against DeVos for example...

And you've got Graham and McCain--and even "Little Marco" pushing back against Trump's Russian ties.


They're not entirely "unified." It's just that they've got the advantage numerically, and hence some slop right now, and can afford to have defectors here and there.

[sarcasmo]

18. State with legalized weed are on edge now thanks to Beauregard.

[Calculating]

20. Joe Manchin is a true DINO

He's a bandwagonner who votes with whatever side is currently in control. Add in his defense of his greedy CEO daughter, and I've lost all respect for him.

[MADem]

23. I suspect he's a West Virginia Democrat. You're not going to find an acceptable Dem to his left

that can get elected there....yet, anyway. Look at whose seat he's occupying.

[JI7]

24. West Virginia is about Racism . they prefer wealthy white guys to poor black/brown/gay etc

[Tatiana]

28. We keep him until we can actually build up the WV democratic party again.

Or until we can find another Rockefeller that can run (and win) as a Democrat there.

Honestly, if we lose the seat, I won't be crushed. He's maybe 50-50 on key votes. We need a more cohesive caucus.

But, if we manage to come within striking distance of winning back the Senate, he would at least help to give us a Majority Leader and control.

[nikibatts]

34. We need to run candidates as both GOP and Dem.

[DemocraticWing]

36. If he's not expelled from the caucus, the Democratic Party does not exist in a meaningful sense.

[MADem]

40. It won't happen but the party does exist in a meaningful sense. "Big tent" and all that.

He dances with the ones what brung him, and he represents not all Democrats, but a large number of WVa ones.

They've got vestigal issues in that state.

As Will Rogers said "I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat."

We're not organized, we're Democrats. Our arc bends towards justice but we're by no means lockstep OR perfect.


It's how we've always been.

[hrmjustin]

39. You have to live in WV to have any real say in this. I find him infuriating but it is WV and their

Politics is not progressive.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

41. I am not a fan of his and owe one of my hides to harsh criticism of him.

But if I am honest with myself I have to admit he is in a tough spot. "All politics is local."

[JHan]

44. Quite a bit of slack:

There was a post similar to this which got.. hidden unfortunately. So i'll just repeat myself-

Like it or not, politicians shape shift to their environment to survive. Rather than lose whatever leverage we have these states, we have to change the environment. Gerrymandering makes it tough so the focus has to be selling the DEM platform in these states with a message suited and coded to the sensibilities of constituents in these areas - without compromising our core belief that Government is a force for good or compromising on any of our other values. It maybe a futile exercise but having a DEM in a red state is nothing to scoff at - Republicans don't scoff at the idea of winning over or having leverage in typically blue territory.

I'd much rather a Blue Dog than a Republican.

[crazycatlady]

47. Unless you count state lines as gerrymandering

Federal senators do not have gerrymandered districts. They run statewide and represent the whole state.

I'll give you that some state boundaries are strange (there was a TV show devoted to that which was great).

[JHan]

50. Thanks for the correction..

because I wasn't clear... I think at the time I was trying to make a more general point about a democrat leaning more left or to the center depending on environment and didn't make a clear enough distinction w.r.t to congressional districts.

Do you remember the name of the TV show tho?

[X_Digger]

49. You mean politicians represent their consituents, not the party? n/t

[JHan]

51. more like trying to strike a balance between the two ...

For example, I'd expect a Dem Politician in the Dakotas, or Vermont to depart slightly from the conventional wisdom among Dems when it comes to gun control legislation.

EDIT: As for the OP- since Manchin has voted for Mnuchin, I may have to dump whatever leeway I wanted to give him in the trash for good.

[JI7]

52. in a place like west virginia the best would be to try to get on local school board and other local

smaller offices.

but it is a very conservative religious state so unless i actually have someone i think can beat manchin AND actually win the senate seat i'm not going to waste too much time on it.

it's not like we have much influence that we can be ordering around on this.

just look at how in the DEMOCRATIC primary in 2012 over 40 percent voted for a prison inmate over obama. this was the DEMOCRATIC primary only.

[bettyellen]

53. Not if the "have nots" are brown or female it doesn't.

Seriously, just help find a viable candidate to support but if there isn't one leave it be. Put your energies into better things than scapegoating Dems. If you can't focus NOW on anything but ripping not Dems than you're a liability.

[Ken Burch]

57. I'm just as committed to helping the brown or female have-nots as you are.

It's not a betrayal of historically oppressed groups to ever post critical comments about ANY Democratic politician. And I'm truly mystified that you would see a thread about a supposed Dem who just voted to confirm a homophobic anti-choice segregationist is somehow a betrayal of women and people of color.

We don't need to give unquestioning support to every incumbent Dem in order to fight Trump.

[bettyellen]

58. It's timing- we need to be unified against Trump not primarying folks

Left and right. I see a segment of us always always tearing people down. Half the shit they post is from RT and Intercept. Add that to the fact they are silent in Russia? They're being used again.

That is how Manny took over GD.

[Ken Burch]

60. I'm for working against Trump, too.

My intent here wasn't to place a greater emphasis on dumping Manchin than on fighting Trump...I'm not in West Virginia and there's no way I could start a "Dump Manchin" movement even if I tried.

Critical discussion isn't tearing people down(btw, if you're against that, are you willing to stop attacking Bernie and those who support him? We need everyone on the progressive side united with us, and you can't assume that Sanders supporters share the shortcomings on attentiveness to racial issues you saw in Bernie himself). Critical discussion is about learning from mistakes and finding a way forward.

You raise some valid points about how young white progressives sometimes express themselves. The implication that they are dupes of RT is maybe going a bit too far, but there is an aggressiveness in some of them that I agree with you needs to chance. The key is that they are young. At their ages, they are capable of learning and being educated. I doubt they liked ending up in confrontation with POC, and that they would like to learn about how to change that in order to be effective and build a true coalition for change in the future.

But they need examples of what would be better communication...it doesn't work just to keep saying "you're offending us". That doesn't help if they don't know WHY they are offending you.

You could educate and change a lot of them, not by checking your anger, but by working from the thought that they acted out of lack of education and awareness rather than out of deliberate malice and hostility. We need everyone we can get, and we need the people who could be better if they were taught to be.

That's why I've talked about dialog rather than confrontation.

[bettyellen]

62. I'm not attacking Sanders, just asking people to stop ripping up Dems as a hobby...

Stop dragging everything back to the primary.
You can't whitewash the experience of many people here, and it's insulting to boot. We recall our unfortunate experiences even if you keep denying they happened. Who does that? Not allies. Just stop it. The primary is over.

[Ken Burch]

65. I'm not ripping up anyone.

Are you saying that what happened then, much of which I condemned at the time, means that no one has any right to post anything critical about any sitting Democratic officeholder today?

That any non-adulatory comments about any incumbent Democrat equates to "refighting the primaries"?

Nothing in my OP was written as an attack on HRC supporters, and I wish all HRC supporters well, including you.

And I honestly can't see how it helps us win the future to make this site or this party a dissent-free zone.

Please help me understand how that would help.

I'm not Manny.

I don't even read RT.

And I spent a lot of time in the primaries telling other Sanders supporters to clean up their acts here(I alerted on a lot of THEM).

[bettyellen]

66. You just accused HRC supporters of playing the race card.

Quite clearly:

"Before it was invented by supporters of one candidate in 2015, there was NEVER a divide on the issues between social justice and economic justice supporters."

Not talking about the primary- just asking you to stop the insults.