Dems voting to roll back Dodd-Frank shows how centrists tie Democrats hands in MAJORITY

[JCanete]

142. Hey! What kills progressives starts before the primary, and if you pay attention

Last edited Sat Mar 10, 2018, 02:26 AM - Edit history (1)

to some of the trials candidates have regarding policies and rules seemingly designed to favor the incumbent or insider candidate, they sound pretty damn frustrating. I'm not going to declare that with 100 % certitude because at some point this shit really has just become a blur of same-old information to me and I am not putting a lot of effort into studying any specifics of the phenomena or to remember the specific affronts. That said though, I'd be willing to make a sizeable bet that if challenged on this I could make a solid case.

Add to that that money is a huge factor. What does our party apparatus get excited by? It gets energized by a candidates proven ability to fundraise. Well what does that typically mean? A whole lot of donors who spared their extra 27 bucks this month? Of course not. So yes, progressives, when they run, are likely to lose in the primary, because money is nearly insurmountable, but once money is a factor to the degree it is, its really hard to say with any confidence that its the will of the voters that put Manchin in the GE.
-
As you say, there are progressive issues that we could captivate these voters with. Of course there are some that take more time and even generations(though hopefully not at this point if done right) to move people on, but getting right down to brass tax with what we can get for people right away(which would be good for all of us-for instance, free education and a higher minimum wage just as examples aren't pandering giveaways but are paths to a healthier society), and making it crystal clear who is going to pay for it all, IS the way to wear down their anxiety driven hatred at otherness, because again, people would need to be on each other's side...because people would be far more willing to abandon deeply held prejudices if those prejudices were successfully and succinctly linked to a strategy literally propagated by an oligarchy to divide and conquer.

I mean, yeah, as I presented it, that's some flowery shit right there. Nothing is so clean or obvious in terms of its implementation or impact. I'm still not certain the party even survives it. I just don't think being the minority party perpetually is surviving(or if those at the head are surviving the rest of this organism is just..slowly bleeding out.)

-
Regarding who "we" is, I generally mean those of us who identify as democrats... so us as a party. It may be vaguer at times than it should be. If, like in this context, I'm talking about us losing, I'm talking about the preponderance of losses over a few wins, and arguing that a few wins does not mean an actual victory if in the process of procuring those pieces, we exposed our king. In chess you sacrifice pieces for the bigger win.

But to abandon the metaphor for more specificity, what I mean is if our strategy to get Manchin elected(for example) hurts our overall message and if our overall message(and record of fighting for the people on issues like the banking regulation) is ultimately so weak or ambiguous that it can't dominate Republicans on issues where we should be able to crush them, not simply limp out on top, well then what other races might we be losing because of this? What impact does an impression of a party playing too many sides, playing it way too safe, doing its level best not to offend the status-quo or the powers that be while meekly asking them to do a tiny bit more, have on the public? It convolutes. It makes it easy for corporate media to confuse voters as to who their best choice is...it makes us look like we're half-hearted or insincere about the things we purport to be selling(usually in very watered down terms).

Yes, we're far better as a party on social issues. Unfortunately, again, instead of judoing the anger that corporate media, megachurches etc. foster in their base, right back at them by making their masters the actual enemy, we continue to have a proxy war with their voters and their bought and paid for politicians only.

that's my beef. I agree that gun control can be a harder sell. I agree that even pro-choice can be. I'm not entirely ready to say that we can be flexible on pro-choice in these districts for the sake of a win, but I'm confident that the way to change minds is to inflitrate on issues that won't have red-state voters putting up a thick protective layer of impenetrable self-preserving soundproofing, at which point they won't be reachable on anything.

But its the very things that you and I agree on where we might make headway that we are not doing, and I think that is to our society's detriment, if not to our party's own(assuming second place is a cozy place to be).