Strategic Failings of the Democratic Party: Where Complicity Meets Ineptitude

Politics & News
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In this thread, we’ll discuss the non-stop strategic blunders of the Democratic Party. Sometimes it will be because they’re complicit, others because they’re morons, others because they’re playing scared, and sometimes it’ll be up for debate.

We start off with this week’s response to mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton. I think the response to this was very obvious:

  1. Have Pelosi call the House back into session for like two days. Pass the background check bill AGAIN, as well as the following:
  • An assault weapons ban.
  • A bill to expand mental healthcare and protect it within the ACA.
  • A bill to use legislative power to reinstate the Obama EO on mental health and guns.
  • A bill to fight white nationalism by funding task forces within the FBI and empowering them with new laws regarding material support for white nationalist terror. Essentially put it on the same footing as our fight against foreign terror.
  • A resolution condemning Trump’s racist, dehumanizing rhetoric.

  1. Hold a press conference announcing that the House Democrats have passed a series of measures to help protect Americans from white nationalism and mass shootings, and it only took them two days because it’s all so obvious. Call on McConnell to call the Senate back to vote on these measures. Announce that Dems in the Senate will support them.

  2. Pressure him constantly on these issues. When he doesn’t call the Senate back, call him a coward and re-up the pressure. Wait a couple weeks, call the House back and pass them all AGAIN. Democrats don’t do this type of grandstanding, and it’s silly in a way, but it does drive media coverage an d keep the pressure on.

The key here is that you put the pressure on Republicans and you put them in a lose-lose-lose. Either they pass bills they don’t want to pass, they bring them up for a vote and go on the record against popular measures or they cowardly avoid a vote. When you have the opposition in an uncomfortable position based on public sentiment, you apply pressure. You draw attention to it. You make a big deal of it. Remind people that Obama had an EO to keep guns away from the mentally ill and Trump reversed it.

And then keep applying pressure to Moscow Mitch, Do Nothing Donnie and the rest of them and come up with nicknames that will piss them off. Mitch hates “Moscow Mitch,” and Trump is trying to claim to do something on guns. Don’t let that nonsense fly.

Democrats are playing scared, as usual. It’s not going to work well for them. I’m sure in the next couple of years we’ll have plenty of other topics to rip them to shreds on. We root for a team that is the worst of the Bad News Bears and the Washington Generals put together.

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Not going after his financials was imo the democratic party’s biggest mistake, as it is obvious that’s what worries him the most and has obvious tax avasion in his tax returns pre M. Cohen + making sure what court/state has standing on the Emoluments clause.
Add in investigation of Qatar and KSA + Israel and Kushners dealings with them + the Trump foundation and anything else that was obvious Curruption.

And advertise his trail of debt to the State’s he’s held rallys in everyday etc.

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Pelosi acts like she thinks winning in 2020 is inevitable and she’s hunkered own into a prevent defense strategy where she doesn’t want anything to change. This ignores the dynamic nature of society where change happens.

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https://twitter.com/seungminkim/status/1159835305358217221

I think the issue more often than not isn’t that Pelosi is scared or weak, it’s that centrist Dems are closer ideologically to Republicans than to AOC, thus her hands are tied. Throw in pressure from corporate money, and for good measure throw in the fact that these centrists are more likely to come from swing states/districts which amplifies their perceived importance, and you have a recipe for the inability to take any meaningful action.

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And who picked those centrist Dems to run? Who taught them to live in fear of the NRA?

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These are old people whose formative experience was watching Carter get turned into a 1 termer and then Mondale getting absolutely curb stomped. This was after the 70’s which weren’t exactly a great time to be a liberal. They’ll be scared the rest of their miserable lives.

Their entire lived experience is one humiliating defeat after another mixed with a lot of very nice dinners and trips with their lobbyist friends.

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Which is why we need new leadership.

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In general, the poker player in me says that Dems are too risk-averse and won’t maximize EV because they are afraid of the worst-case scenario.

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Yeah that sure has gotten great results hasn’t it? I’d really like to know how we aren’t living out the worst case scenario right now as a direct result of their ineptitude.

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This might be the thread for it.

I posted this on 22 last year.

I live in NY and got to meet Chuck last year at the NYS Fair. I shook his hand and told him he needs to move left and stop compromising with Republicans. He told me no they need to win elections.

What should I tell him this year if I accidentally run into him on purpose?

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Tell him AOC’s coming for his seat if he doesn’t focus more on policy wins instead of maintaining the status quo.

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We have a winner… except she’s probably coming for him sooner or later either way.

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Basically the Hillary strat.

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We very clearly are and it getting worse is a heavy favorite.

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By the way, here’s another way Dems are failing on guns. Every time the GOP says the gun issue is a mental health issue, the Democrats should fist-pump snap-call.

D: “That’s part of it, we agree, and we would love to work with Republicans to include mental health background checks and fund mental healthcare through single payer healthcare! We actually passed a bill to do just that, and we’d love to see it brought for a vote in the Senate.”

R: “Well, we already have background checks and that’s socialism.”

D: “What about some advertising to de-stigmatize mental health and some federally funded mental health clinics around the country?”

R: “That sounds expensive, we can’t afford it. No way we’d raise taxes or increase the deficit!”

D: “So, uhh, what do you want to do? Have you guys, like, written any bills or come up with any ideas?”

The answer is nothing, but make it fucking obvious. Call them on it. Make them show their hand, they’ve got air. This is just their run out the clock strategy every single time.

Slight chance the GOP response is something like, “Throw the nutters in the looney bin,” and no it won’t be any less offensive of a phrasing than that. Dems can then ask them how, and it’ll be something absurd… Like they’re going to do, what, have a national background check that if you fail you are committed? But not a universal gun background check including mental health checkups, because that infringes upon our liberties based on the 2A. Because fuck life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, those aren’t in the 2A now are they?

The GOP in 2019 holds bullshit positions on almost every issue, and the Dems continually trip over their own shoelaces in trying to point this out.

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And that tripping over own shoelaces is because they are complicit. Like this is really obvious collusion to maintain a duopoly. They don’t want to beat the GOP, they want to keep the status quo going because the status quo is absolutely just as awesome for ‘moderate’ Dems as it is for GOP politicians.

I’m sorry but nothing about this political meta is sustainable, and we need to primary most of the Democratic Party. Their “incompetence” is more and more obviously intentional as time goes on. It doesn’t pass the smell test anymore. AOC really opened my eyes to this by pulling no punches and actually trying to win.

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I agree in general, and on many issues - especially relating to wealth distribution and anything tangential to that (including healthcare).

But on issues like guns and social justice, I think that most Democrats in Congress would actually like to win on those issues, so I think it’s more likely to be ineptitude on those.

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Yeah for some reason they seem to really want to compete on gay rights, abortion rights (after Roe lolz), gun control, and other social justice stuff. You know… issues that are maximally divisive and lousy for actually winning elections, gaining power, and then being responsible to actually do something about issues that their donors would prefer to see nothing done about.

I’m sorry but picking these issues to put front and center is part of them intentionally throwing. And if you point that out they’ll claim you’re anti gay, pro life, a gun nut, or w/e. It’s all part of the scam.

I’m not against any of the things they run on to be clear, I’ve been supporting Dems for a long time… but I am starting to get super suspicious about the strategic choices they make.

The ‘both sides suck’ argument is largely true, and is a direct result of Democratic politicians throwing on behalf of the military industrial complex and our corporate overlords. At this point their range is super polarized between truly extreme incompetence and collusion… and at this point I have a really hard time buying the former argument.

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I don’t think they’re putting those issues front and center. They’ve largely ducked putting guns front and center, for example. They ducked gay rights until polling showed it was safe. I think they want wins on those issues, and they want to look like they’re putting up a fight for the majority of Americans while taking care of the 1% almost as well as the GOP does.

I just think they’re awful at politics even when they’re trying to win.

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They want to look like they are putting up a fight sounds about right.