That’s just silly. Of course it’s not.
This is what happened to me in 2016. I was a full blown centrist ‘things will improve gradually’ dude. I figured it would slowly accelerate as we figured out how to do things well and we’d get there in time even if we cut it way closer than I would like.
Then we decided to spend 4 years going the wrong way on the road entirely and I realized that doing it the optimal sane way that I usually do everything was no longer going to get it done and we were going to have to make a mess.
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Protests need to be socially disruptive and white moderates need to be made socially uncomfortable.
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Then what would you call it?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with “black lives matter” as a message. It’s been painted badly because you live in a deeply racist society.
I mean. “Anti fascist” got the same treatment.
If it was “please sir, don’t use excessive force on people when they are innocent” fox would be screaming about the PSDUEFOPWTAI terrorists coming to rape suburban woman.
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You mean abolishing the police and not replacing it with anything?
Maybe that works in Canada but in a country with more guns than people like America, they’d be replaced with makeshift militia which would probably be led by the cops who were made unemployed when the police were abolished. With a properly reformed police system, they can be trained and held accountable for fuck ups. As roaming militias, they’d probably be even more abusive and since there’s nobody to arrest them they’d have carte blanche to do as they please.
That is until the BLM groups have had enough and start up their own militia to fight back against the abuse.
So, remember when we were worried that Republicans would vote because the virus is fake, but dems would take it seriously and maybe not vote? Yeah, kind of seems like that happenned. Repubs turned their people out better than dems:
https://mobile.twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/1327693568912265217
Still possible that 2020 is a bit of an aberration and not evidence of some long term trend that the GOP is suddenly such a great party.
There is some evidence that Dems not knocking on doors until the very end had a real influence.
That said, if that fucking tool in NC didn’t cheat on his wife we maybe win the NC Senate seat, but the others really weren’t close. Collins / Ernst / Graham and the rest all won by a ton. So in terms of the balance of power, it really didn’t matter. May have cost us some House seats, though.
I do think the ACB thing really hurt us in Senate races.
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I will always think of it as the RBG thing. She should have stepped down when Obama could have safely replaced her. Instead we got this.
Breyer needs to step down soon. I guess there is probably an optimal time depending on what cases happen to be pending, but it absolutely needs to be in 2021.
I sorta agree that there’s little difference between it being 6-2 vs 6-3 in the court, then again let’s see how the ACA vote goes. If it’s 5-4 against repeal with Roberts and Bart Drunkenaugh joining the three libs, makes sense for Breyer to stay. If he steps down or dies in 2022 you best ship it that the Rs are going to run on keeping the SC seat away from libs for another 3 years (and probably win).
Mitch.
How many people does Joe Biden have to let out of cages to be better than Donald Trump? How much better does his pandemic response have to be? How much better will he be just by condemning racism?
Stop being willfully stupid.
Which is, by the way, me. I’m a white dude hoping for single payer. I was not knocking on doors expecting that, I was knocking on doors so there will be fewer kids in cages, less racism, less sexism, more immigrant-friendly policies, etc, etc.
And it’s not some selfless act either, I won’t even pretend. I have friends who have been directly and severely impacted and I’ve spent four years fucking furious at myself for not knocking on doors for HRC. I lost countless hours of sleep berating myself for that and worrying about friends and strangers who I let down as a privileged white guy.
Yeah, I want better health insurance, but I’ll go to the back of the line for that if it helps all the people that are far more screwed in far more unjust ways.
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Author does not comprehend how polarization works. “Hey the country is more polarized, fight harder for the middle!”
His good point is that we need to win the Senate. But he has no real clue how we do it. It’s complicated and it does involve messaging that a lot of us would be pissed at, but not exactly the way he thinks.
Both of these things were extremely popular among voters who would ever even consider voting for Donald Trump and almost universally opposed by everyone else. Hence they work well in a highly polarized meta.
In a bunch of states, we should be running pro life white male candidates who promise to increase police funding but also support single payer healthcare, $15/hr, HR1 and decent climate change policy.
If they win, you take care of the stuff they support, then make a calculation on twisting their arms on criminal justice reform vs waiting to win in DC and PR.
If you have a chance to nominate justices you put pro choice justices on obviously and twist their arms if needed. You coach the justices to dance on the issue in the hearings. Basically play the same game the GOP has Collins and Murkowski play.
Basically we need to run more Manchins and Testers who are farther left economically.
Well the eDems are the elites and they’re holding down the progressives trying to fight them, so…yeah.
It’s true in some Senate races.
It was underblown, if anything.
Redacted for privacy.
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lol, they are all just trying to get noticed by the fuhrer
Anna Khait is a born-again Christian conservative. Anna worked undercover for Project Veritas and her investigation was successful in getting multiple communists in the Department of State fired. Secretary Pompeo even commented on her video.
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She was nice/friendly at the table, I’ll say that. She had a very “cool” vibe/demeanor, but it was extremely inauthentic imo… As many tend to be at the poker table in a casino.
I don’t necessarily agree with this. People don’t want nuanced policy being shoved down their throats, they want one sentence summaries and values.
But values don’t have to mean what we normally think of. GOP values are flags, God, authorities, country, individualism.
Allegedly. They’re mostly bullshit.
Our values could be:
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An honest week’s work for an honest week’s pay
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Anyone working 40 hours a week deserves food on the table, a roof over their head, good healthcare, heat/hot water/etc and enough left over to save for college for their kids.
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Party of economic freedom: universal healthcare = freedom to change jobs, freelance, start a business
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Party of the American Dream: making it just a little easier to rise up the ranks, because it shouldn’t be this hard, and that includes immigration
Then pair it up with good progressive policies like single payer, GND, $15/hr, free college.
But it’s also absolutely essential to offer up both and then microtarget. That’s one thing effective for Trump. He throws all kinds of shit as the wall and then people get microtargeted with specific parts.
We should have policy ads and values ads and microtarget. Both belong in the stump.
But I think being the party of boosting the average person up and rewarding hard work is really essential to overriding this SOCIALISM BAD messaging. Like if all you do is talk about how people working 40 hours a week deserve free healthcare, it doesn’t stick so much that you are giving it away to the lazy moochers.
Then just do it for everyone anyway, you didn’t lie you just sold it the way the country was willing to buy it.
Note that none of the above is directly engaging the right on their own professed values, but rather offering a different narrative for our side.
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Yeah as I was saying then, pull the GOP move on healthcare. Pass it every day if you have to. Dominate the news cycle and cement it in people’s heads. Dems Pass Stimulus Again. Every. Damn. Day.
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Yeah I got dragged for saying it when it first started, but that slogan was political trouble. Reform the Police would have been powerful, and could have included reducing funding.
The problem is defund can mean completely or partially, and the right basically made it stick that we wanted to abolish the police.
You could even go farther and on the stump or in debates not say “reduce funding” even though it’s in your plan. Just say you want social workers or mental health professionals to respond to certain calls so the police can focus on serious crime. Then shift the funding accordingly.
I mean it went like 4->16->8 give or take. Wouldn’t be surprised if like a week into the Biden presidency there’s a press release like WTF it actually went 4->20->12 and they cooked the books.
Cut taxes on the first $25K of income to $0, and increase taxes on $1M+ by whatever is needed to offset it. Sell it as the biggest tax cut in US history, affecting every American worker.
Then let them try to hit you on tax increases. Let them try to attack you for being against a tax cut ever again.
Reform the Police is the top line messaging. The policy is exactly the same as what we ran on. Most people will hear “reform” and fill in the blanks as they would themselves. They’ll choose their own adventure so to speak.
Again we can change messaging and values without compromising on policy.
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Our reaction to this should be the same as if they attacked our candidates for fornicating with farm animals. Derisive laughter. We should also frame messaging such that it’s way harder to make it stick.