Month: December 2016

The DEGOP believes it has found some secret sauce. Perhaps it has. h/t Dustyn Thompson

…from the desk of R.E. Vanella. While I sit and think, Penguin Random House sponsored a provocative discussion and posted it to YouTube. It's long and complicated. That's just the…

Jesse Singal on what Democrats can learn from the Tea Party:

[T]he most important thing progressives can do is play united defense against Trump and the GOP rather than get into squabbles about which affirmative policy proposals are best. The tea party, after all, was successful in large part because it understood itself as primarily a defensive group. It was “focused on fighting against every proposal coming out of the new Democratic Administration and Congress,” note the authors. “This focus on defense rather than policy development allowed the movement to avoid fracturing. Tea Party members may have not agreed on the policy reforms, but they could agree that Obama, Democrats, and moderate Republicans had to be stopped.” Progressives should follow the same tack, the authors argue: “[W]e strongly recommend focusing on defense against the Trump agenda rather than developing an entire alternative policy agenda,” they write. “This is time-intensive, divisive, and, quite frankly, a distraction, since there is zero chance that we as progressives will get to put our agenda into action at the federal level in the next four years.” Given the amount of left-liberal infighting that has raged since the election, it feels like important advice.

Emphasis mine. I feel that has been the number one piece of advice for us as the Opposition moving forward.

So last week, the state Democratic Party held an informational meeting in New Castle regarding the upcoming special election in the 10th Senate District to replace Bethany Hall Long. During this meeting, several candidates spoke announcing their candidacies. They are:

Jim Ryan - Retired CWA Debbie Harrington - Retired Military, DSU Trustee Dave Woodside - 27th RD chair Stephanie Hansen - Former County Council president Maggie Jones - Campaign manager for John Walsh Harry Dudlek - Committee member, IBEW member

One name stands out among all the rest, and that is Stephanie Hansen, who is currently an environmental and land use attorney at the Wilmington law firm of Young Conaway. She is also the former President of New Castle County Council from 1996 to 2001, who had previously considered primarying County Executive Tom Gordon last year before deferring. As you can see from the picture above, she is friendly with many former or current members of the General Assembly. Out of that list above, she is obviously the Party's pick and can be expected to win the Executive Committee vote on January 3.

George Lakoff on how Democrats help Trump: “Without knowing it, many Democrats, progressives and members of the news media help Donald Trump every day. The way they help him is simple: they spread his message.” “Think about it: every time Trump issues a mean tweet or utters a shocking statement, millions of people begin to obsess over his words. Reporters make it the top headline. Cable TV panels talk about it for hours. Horrified Democrats and progressives share the stories online, making sure to repeat the nastiest statements in order to refute them. While this response is understandable, it works in favor of Trump.” “When you repeat Trump, you help Trump. You do this by spreading his message wide and far.”

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt: “Mr. Trump is not the first American politician with authoritarian tendencies. (Other notable authoritarians include Gov. Huey Long of Louisiana and Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin.) But he is the first in modern American history to be elected president. This is not necessarily because Americans have grown more authoritarian (the United States electorate has always had an authoritarian streak). Rather it’s because the institutional filters that we assumed would protect us from extremists, like the party nomination system and the news media, failed.” “Many Americans are not overly concerned about Mr. Trump’s authoritarian inclinations because they trust our system of constitutional checks and balances to constrain him. Yet the institutional safeguards protecting our democracy may be less effective than we think.”