PhoenixDark
Banned
Are you serious?
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PoliGAF 2015-2016 |OT3| If someone named PhoenixDark leaves your party, call the cops
- Thread starter Diablos
- Start date
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Are you serious?
RastaMentality
Banned
Yes, and the LGBT sections of her site show the same lack of color that's been typical of the movement. It's nothing that's actually wrong but just an observation.
It's the cast of Broad City (which everyone should be watching) and Amy Poehler.
Obama has already said that it would have been a lot of fun to run against Trump. In many of his speeches to donors(?) Obama has absolutely slayed Trump and the GOP.
Trump has a clear ceiling that begins and ends with a segment of republican voters, and he would be toxic as a general election candidate. I know Obama would destroy him, I'm not familiar with Hillary's approach to Trump though. I think she ridiculed him in one of the debates but outside of that, I can't recall.
(Cruz/Trump thread)
Obama is trying to maintain the dignity of the office. Paying Trump that kind of attention validates him in a sense.
PhoenixDark
Banned
I'll never understand this liberal mentality. Hillary's events have been quite diverse, her career has displayed that as well. Why there's this constant demand for constant validation for even the most minor shit is beyond me. But the constant insularity on the left, especially among younger activists, blows my mind.
j_k_redtail
Member
RastaMentality
Banned
I didn't write a think piece on it. I just made a simple comment. There's other significant issues Hillary's had with dog whistles that're much more pressing than this, clearly.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Oh my god I just now realized that Hillary looks almost exactly like a hybrid of my mother and maternal grandmother. She could be my aunt and I wouldn't blink an eye
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
So can she count on your vote? Are you with her?
j_k_redtail
Member
I should've included that quote in the original post.
What do they expect after 8 years of demonizing science/academics/education, applying hyperbolic criticism to every single thing Obama and the Administration says and does, scapegoating and finger pointing, causing fear and uncertainty, spreading misinformation, and outright lying?
You reap what you sow.
Coriolanus
Banned
They expected that Obama would blink first.
Oops.
Oops.
It's been obvious since day 1 that the sole purpose of this new wave of republicans is to NOT govern. That is their intention and their mandate from their own supporters, the people who voted them into office. They are in congress to NOT do their jobs as elected representatives. Simple as that.
Veritigo_X
Member
Some of us were thinking that Cruz was just the new flavor of the month. Trump campaign is a little more optimistic.
https://twitter.com/PatrickSvitek/status/676221179368116224
https://twitter.com/PatrickSvitek/status/676221179368116224
Someone should ask him if we should enjoy our Trump Steaks with au jus.
PhoenixDark
Banned
I agree that their agenda has nothing to do with governing and instead focuses on essentially dismantling government outside of the military. I wouldn't even compare their strategy to Grover Norquist, who certainly wants to destroy government but is smarter about doing it.
The most puzzling thing about this is the birth of the idea that Obama is some negotiating mastermind who has defeated republicans at every turn, holds firm to liberal principles, etc. Boehner and especially McConnell have been pretty effective when negotiating with Obama. The far right's anger is largely over them not getting everything they want; if you get 40-60%, depending on the hand you were dealt, that's pretty damn good. Governing is a game of inches, there are very few big touchdowns.
It'll be interesting to see this "strategy" during Hillary's term. A lot of that article makes it seem like conservatives feel Obama is some unique case of a lawless president/master negotiator. Yet when Hillary takes over they're going to do the exact same thing.
The most puzzling thing about this is the birth of the idea that Obama is some negotiating mastermind who has defeated republicans at every turn, holds firm to liberal principles, etc. Boehner and especially McConnell have been pretty effective when negotiating with Obama. The far right's anger is largely over them not getting everything they want; if you get 40-60%, depending on the hand you were dealt, that's pretty damn good. Governing is a game of inches, there are very few big touchdowns.
It'll be interesting to see this "strategy" during Hillary's term. A lot of that article makes it seem like conservatives feel Obama is some unique case of a lawless president/master negotiator. Yet when Hillary takes over they're going to do the exact same thing.
The far right can't make up their minds about whether Obama is a wimpy weak appeasing pussy or a tyrannical and uncompromising liberal ideologue.
Hate politics in this country. We'll still have nearly half the country voting for these idiots and thus stalling even more of our progress. Hell, they're setting it back and would set it back even more if they gained control of the Presidency and control of the courts.
RustyNails
Member
That scary and frustrating fact has made me a cynical bastard. I am so disillusioned with half the country voting in crazy government hating proto-humans. I just hope that the republican party gets snuffed out in my lifetime and we'll have adult discussion about issues in the congress like our European brethren instead of dipshits like Inhofe bringing in a snowball as his proof that global warming is fake.
Abinash117
Member
A quite a few Reps are elected specifically to not govern ,but to be against something. It is going to hurt them for people who want to see something get done and people who want to stop everything , because they have unrealistic expectations or ignorant on how to stop anything.
During 2015, the Republicans didn't manged to stop Obama much at all.
I wouldn't be to worried about that demographics won't be on their side and considering Rep's current attitude unintentional or not; demographics is going to be against them for a bit.
During 2015, the Republicans didn't manged to stop Obama much at all.
I wouldn't be to worried about that demographics won't be on their side and considering Rep's current attitude unintentional or not; demographics is going to be against them for a bit.
RustyNails
Member
But their feverish base will keep winning the midterm elections thereby guaranteeing gridlock. Democratic coalition, even with demographics on its side, only works during presidential elections.
Absolutely. The GOP has been running on the same algorithm since before I was born and they've only gotten more crazy these past several decades. Unfortunately, most of the electorate has either gotten crazier with them or just grown apathetic to the whole process (see most of the millennial generation).
I'm extremely frustrated that it's not going to change (for the better at least) for at least another couple Presidential cycles - definitely not till after Hillary's 2 terms are up and even that's not completely guaranteed. We literally have to wait for a decent chunk of the older electorate to die off at this point to get anywhere. It's maddening.
Abinash117
Member
And in the senate. Because of that it would be easy for the democratic president to elect judges to will rule in favor for the president for many things, if they can't get certain things legislatively, they can use the judicial branch not unlike the current republican strategy. Winning back the house would be difficult, but it is more possible to close the distance and bring over some republicans. Maybe some of the democrats have a better strategy ( I think Hillary has one), but it shouldn't be any worse than it is now as getting the senate and the president can change quite a few things.
Aaron Strife
Banned
Just need to figure out a way to boost turnout among the people who don't usually vote in midterms. If turnout was even a few points better in 2014 Democrats probably would have had the Senate.
Third Strike
Member
Although I don't think Bernie is going to be the nominee, I do think it would be great if he, and other liberal senators and representatives, can maintain the enthusiasm among his supporters, and get them to go out and vote during the midterm elections. The same with the president. They need to go all out in 2018.
Ditching Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a foregone conclusion after 2016. We need young, innovative blood in the DNC in general before those 2018 midterms roll along. Hopefully post-Presidency Obama also frees up his time in a way to go out there and energize the people as his candidacy did in '08.
RustyNails
Member
Just make Howard Dean the eternal DNC chair.
Third Strike
Member
The DNC themselves are the voting body to determine the who becomes the chair, right? Isn't her position up for reelection next year?
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
Let it not go unnoticed that on December 13th 2015 PoliGAF spent several pages of sincere concern about Ted Cruz. LOL I know y'all are bored but COME ON.
PhoenixDark
Banned
They won't. I think the last few years has proven that simply giving or promising people free stuff isn't a good way to motivate them. When you give entitlements people have little ownership or motivation to work towards continuing the process; that's true of children and it's true of this new liberal voting block.
The other major problem is that democrats haven't given their base a lot to truly be excited about. All of Obama's major domestic "accomplishments" are divisive, with opposition far more excited than the supporters. Look back at 2010. Democrats literally didn't have anything to run on. What was there to run on in 2012 outside of supporting the president? And 2014 was like 2010.
I think focusing Obamacare so much on lower working class people was a big mistake politically. Now you've got an entire middle class that barely benefits at all from the law, and thus most of them are apathetic about the law's survival. And then there are plenty of people who aren't impacted by the law at all yet see their private sector insurance premiums rise every year. While their tax dollars subsidize cheap (and often bad) plans for poorer people. That's a bad way to motivate voters.
Democrats (and I really mean Obama and his pals) and the media did Dean dirty. This guy should've been a superstar after his successes, but he got pushed to the side and snubbed by the administration on several occasions. I'd welcome him back to the main stage in any capacity.
Yeah, her term is over sometime in January of 2017, so shortly after the 2016 elections. She's 99.99999% gone. I think if you google her name, virtually every article the last 2 years is on how much they and everyone else hates her. She did herself no favors with the whole debate fiasco either.
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
Dean was and is a clown.
Retromelon
Member
You've seen the numbers in iowa, damnit! Ted Cruz isnt the shoeshine boy any longer! He's a fuckin contender for the presidency of the most powerful nation on earth! Only god and or a bill clinton dnc speech can save us now
An extremely effective and useful clown. The worst kinds of clowns are the ones like DWS who are just plain incompetent at everything and submarine their own party.
So this "pro-life is anti-sex" thing that came up in the time before Xenoblade struck me as a good example of a kind of conversation that's important but which is kind of awkward to have in an ideologically diverse group because it's about explaining positions in such a way that the people who actually hold those positions have a hard time contributing usefully.
Reasonable disagreement is plausibly not even possible in many situations. Something we seek to do when presented with what looks like reasonable people disagreeing is figure out how some of them are actually not being reasonable. Obviously this can go badly wrong if we're the ones being unreasonable, but if it's permissible to have political beliefs then it's going to be permissible to try to explain how people who disagree are coming to their political beliefs unreasonably.
So we have a lot of theories about why liberals are liberal and why conservatives are conservative. Mostly this is self-serving crap. And often people go badly wrong either right from the start or by getting mixed up and thinking that "the real reason" someone believes X is actually that person's motivation - that it's what they really think and that it's what they'd tell you or if they wouldn't tell you that it's because they're lying about their motives.
But you've still got to do this. Pro-choicers need to have a theory that explains why pro-lifers get it wrong and that points towards steps that could be taken to get pro-lifers to see that they're going wrong or at least to preventing young people who are making up their minds from making that same error. And they're going to look for evidence that supports a theory like that. Noting that it's not plausible that actually pro-lifers are consciously pretending to care about abortion in order to punish women for having sex, the priorities and the purely factual errors of the movement are the sorts of things that are going to count as evidence that this is not all coming from a place of concern for human life. One can of course explain these priorities and errors in terms of the psychology of well-meaning people with imperfect information who are nevertheless truly committed to protecting human life, but properly understood this is a bit beside the point. For almost any political movement there's going to be an explanation for it in terms of the conscious motives and beliefs and attention of its supporters and another explanation in terms of culture and sociological factors, etc. And probably more than half the time supporters of the movement would deny a correct explanation of the second type.
The uncontroversial example of this working really well (and I don't use it here to lay claim to the analogy for my side) is slavery, right? You read what defenders of the institution were saying and then you look at the pattern of the errors they made and what they were paying attention to and you come to a very different conclusion about why some people found slavery to be such a great thing. You even had people at the time saying this and defenders of slavery insisting that no that didn't make sense since they felt nothing but affection for slaves.
But to circle back, while I think it's an important thing to be thinking and talking about, obviously the people being psychologized are going to want to defend themselves and I don't really know how that ought to be handled in a thread like this.
Reasonable disagreement is plausibly not even possible in many situations. Something we seek to do when presented with what looks like reasonable people disagreeing is figure out how some of them are actually not being reasonable. Obviously this can go badly wrong if we're the ones being unreasonable, but if it's permissible to have political beliefs then it's going to be permissible to try to explain how people who disagree are coming to their political beliefs unreasonably.
So we have a lot of theories about why liberals are liberal and why conservatives are conservative. Mostly this is self-serving crap. And often people go badly wrong either right from the start or by getting mixed up and thinking that "the real reason" someone believes X is actually that person's motivation - that it's what they really think and that it's what they'd tell you or if they wouldn't tell you that it's because they're lying about their motives.
But you've still got to do this. Pro-choicers need to have a theory that explains why pro-lifers get it wrong and that points towards steps that could be taken to get pro-lifers to see that they're going wrong or at least to preventing young people who are making up their minds from making that same error. And they're going to look for evidence that supports a theory like that. Noting that it's not plausible that actually pro-lifers are consciously pretending to care about abortion in order to punish women for having sex, the priorities and the purely factual errors of the movement are the sorts of things that are going to count as evidence that this is not all coming from a place of concern for human life. One can of course explain these priorities and errors in terms of the psychology of well-meaning people with imperfect information who are nevertheless truly committed to protecting human life, but properly understood this is a bit beside the point. For almost any political movement there's going to be an explanation for it in terms of the conscious motives and beliefs and attention of its supporters and another explanation in terms of culture and sociological factors, etc. And probably more than half the time supporters of the movement would deny a correct explanation of the second type.
The uncontroversial example of this working really well (and I don't use it here to lay claim to the analogy for my side) is slavery, right? You read what defenders of the institution were saying and then you look at the pattern of the errors they made and what they were paying attention to and you come to a very different conclusion about why some people found slavery to be such a great thing. You even had people at the time saying this and defenders of slavery insisting that no that didn't make sense since they felt nothing but affection for slaves.
But to circle back, while I think it's an important thing to be thinking and talking about, obviously the people being psychologized are going to want to defend themselves and I don't really know how that ought to be handled in a thread like this.
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
(lol if nobody lols for you)
i think we all need to admit the role of the party chair is absolute nonsense at this point.
(i liked howard dean at the time, fwiw. he's clearly at his best when he's the one driving the story instead of championing another's cause)
PhoenixDark
Banned
The DNC chair doesn't exist in a vacuum. His or her effectiveness is often a product of who the president is. Bush provided democrats with a lot of grassroots energy, and Dean channeled it well. Some would argue he wasted resources for short term gains in red/purple states though.
DWS has had to deal with an aloof democrat president who doesn't seem to care about the health of his party on the state level (see: coal and the dismantling of the democrat party in rural areas/the south). She has also had to deal with an apathetic base that stopped caring about the grassroots after the first week of November 2008.
In short it's easier to rile up your base in opposition to something. And at the same time when your party doesn't have a strong leader it's hard to rally your base to his or her causes. Don't get me wrong, DWS is terrible. But I don't think anyone could have done a particularly good job with this president and this base.
DWS has had to deal with an aloof democrat president who doesn't seem to care about the health of his party on the state level (see: coal and the dismantling of the democrat party in rural areas/the south). She has also had to deal with an apathetic base that stopped caring about the grassroots after the first week of November 2008.
In short it's easier to rile up your base in opposition to something. And at the same time when your party doesn't have a strong leader it's hard to rally your base to his or her causes. Don't get me wrong, DWS is terrible. But I don't think anyone could have done a particularly good job with this president and this base.
PantherLotus
Professional Schmuck
This is the same planet in which Occupy and BLM exist and we're trying to pretend DWS couldn't rally the base because of Obama. OK!
RustyNails
Member
PhoenixDark
Banned
Neither are competent or well organized groups. One is dead. The other seems to think top down change exists, which must be why so little effort goes into actual political processes that actually impact people's daily lives (state elections, prosecutors, judges, sherrifs, school boards, etc). But yes, protest Bernie Sanders and Hillary some more...
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