A couple of new blogs of note
I’m glad Cassandra, Delaware Dem, and Pandora have opened up a new front in the war on insanity with BlueDelaware.com. The problems facing this country, and this state, are much too big to spend time arguing with each other about strategy. I’m sure knowing those guys that it will have a big impact, and I have no doubt that I’ll be linking to their stuff frequently.
Also…Donviti has a blog aptly called “Wornoffnovelty”
“The problems facing this country, and this state, are much too big to spend time arguing with each other about strategy.”
Yeah, I still don’t believe this, and I never will. Al From, the genius who gave us the DLC, was back in print yesterday, saying populism isn’t the way to go. The Tea Party had to fight the Republicans who held power to get what they wanted, and progressives will have to do the same thing to power-holding Democrats if they are to succeed.
The “pragmatic” approach of telling people how they must think about social issues while giving in to conservatives on economics is failing on its supposed merit — it’s not pragmatic, because it didn’t produce results. And, rather than answer for their failures, this blog’s crack team of scolds has run away.
It’s exactly what I expect of Democrats. Well done, crew.
@Anonymous–A second to that–I’ve been arguing for years that liberal and progressive Democrats need to adopt a modified Tea Party model if they want to take control of their own party. Now is the perfect time: they are as out of power as it is possible to be and still be legally considered a major party. Fracturing the Democratic Party into corporatist and liberal wings won’t make things any worse at all–it cost the GOP eight years of Obama, but now they have run the table and are back in control, and poised to make everything that happened in those eight years evaporate.
In terms of process, divided between Tea Partiers, old-line GOPers, Trumpers, and the emerging alt-right they actually look more like the old Dem “big tent” model than the old lock-step GOP. Moreover, by chance or intention, Trump executed his own equivalent of Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” which realigned power for decades. He might–like Nixon–get impeached along the way (haha), but it’s a good idea for the Dems to start planning right now on 8 years of this guy in office. If there’s not a nuclear war by then, 8 years ought to be enough for even Democrats to rebuild their party.
How much political capital is in the account of the corporatist wing of the Democratic Party at the moment?
Like, is this a good idea?
https://newrepublic.com/minutes/139603/dnc-really-shouldnt-staff-trump-war-room-former-clinton-aides
@Steve N.: I’m loathe to predict anything at this point, because we really don’t have the full picture yet.
Remember that the MSM as currently constituted depends upon access to people whom they can quote, as it reports not much on what people do and excessively on what they say (this is why DT’s constant lying presents a “problem” for them, as they like to pretend that what a person says represents what he actually thinks and intends to do).
So we’re gotten a steady stream of stories that either 1) originate with Congressional/Senate offices 2) parse his cabinet choices and 3) leap off from his tweets. If you pay attention to the press (I swore off cable TV long ago), you’d think this was all somehow co-ordinated. It’s not.
Notice what’s missing? We haven’t heard much of anything from Steve Bannon. The last thing I heard from that quarter was his November meeting with Congressional Republicans, at which he told them that it wasn’t Reagan’s party anymore and tax cuts were no longer the top priority. That doesn’t jibe well with what Ryan, McConnell and crew want.
Bannon is far smarter than any of the elected Republicans, and he’s been very smart up until now by keeping his mouth shut. But there have been lots of signs that score-settling is going on at the state level, with Trumpkins ousting establishment types in state after state.
In short, I think the Congressional Republicans are making the same hubristic mistake Trump’s primary opponents and the Democrats did — thinking that because he’s ignorant and undisciplined about policy, they’ll have no trouble manipulating him.
Maybe they will, but if they do I’ll be shocked, because of the three groups — primary opponents, Democrats, Congressional Republicans — I think the third group is by far the least competent.
Trump (or Bannon, assuming he’s actually going to wield power in the WH) needs these people for at least as long as it takes to get his cabinet confirmed, so I don’t know when or over what the break will come, but come it will. Insider Republicans are, I think, about to make the same mistake the Democrats were prepared to make — they think that winning will paper over their differences.
@REV: They maintain control over the remnants of the party structure, and they have, or at least think they have, some corporations on board (let’s see how eager they are to back a party with no standard-bearer).
Our job is in the streets. I’m staying with friends in the Beltway area for the long weekend. He’s a lifelong Republican whose expensive German car sports a Bernie sticker; he’ll be marching in protest with my wife and me, plus (if we can find him) a friend from New Orleans.
I strongly agree with what Shaun King wrote the other day: I am not seeing the number of outraged people we need to make our point. Give the women credit — 150,000 is a lot of people, so they’re doing their part. Where are the rest of us?
If all we get is 150,000 people, it’s just another big-protest weekend. We need millions — and if people were as outraged as they claim to be by this campaign and election, we’d have them.
8 years of Trump, really? He’s 70 and denial or not the presidency will weigh upon him heavily, at some point “words, jus words folks” will fail and people will demand answers. Suspect that point is here already with his famed Putin bromance. I’m all for rebuilding the Democratic party and flushing the corporatists from the nest. Should be noted that the Republicans essentially flushed the Tea Party when they had served their purpose. Agree about Bannon, he’s in stealth mode and bears watching, if we’re allowed to do so.