Democrats Still Don't Understand What They're Up Against

It's chock full of good sense, quotable too.

You are welcome.

It's a degrading broad brush of a title.

Exactly which part of the big Democratic tent is the author referring to?
Just asking

rationalists, and believe in civil discourse. If you want us to speak out more strongly, make the case for the instead of bashing Democrats.

when I read published pieces like this I'm instantly suspicious of the intent, as in depress the voters, depress the vote.

The vast majority of Dems know or are certainly growing aware of what we're up against. This is make or break time. November is critical to the welfare of not simply the Democratic Party but the country at large. An article like this at Huffington does nothing to move the ball forward. Rather, the dark, ominous tones convey a sense of despair and futility.

Fuck that!

November is our moment. Let's not waste time or energy on brooding, please.

The Republican Party has gotten much out of this arrangement: a compliant press; an intractable base, and a consolidation of power heretofore unseen in U.S. politics. What benefits have accrued to the Democrats from all their pleasantry and open-mindedness? They have received nothing but scorn. Republicans have spent years savaging Democratic constituents, attacking their cities, towns and cultures, denying them resources and abrogating their rights.

To further reinforce their contempt for anything other than their own power, Republicans have pursued the contemptuous myth of voter fraud, attacked the margins in elections they do lose (and win, apparently) and promoted narratives that delegitimize Democratic-run government. Despite the explicit warnings as to what Republican strategies would be, Democrats have continued to accept this treatment, normalizing attacks on some classes of American citizens and inflicting no consequences for damaging norms in pursuit of power.

Edit to add emphasis

I agree with the central theme - the time for civility is long past over. When we receive accusations of being "unhinged," it means we are doing it right.

We understand perfectly well what we're up against, including narratives like the one she's spinning.

CNN. Pelosi: Impeachment is not a 'policy agenda' 5/23/2018

I'd say any notion that there is a bipartisan way forward on impeachment shows a fundamental misreading of the situation. But maybe that's just me.

I think that if there is any fundamental misreading of the situation, it is not on the part of Nancy Pelosi. She knows exactly what it would take to get impeachment through the House. There's a reason why she never lost a vote she ushered to the floor.

It didn't stop them from holding hearings and pursuing the charges.

Pelosi seems to be conceding the fight before it is started.

are not necessarily the same thing. I trust her judgement on this more than that of the armchair pundits like Kaitlin Byrd.

Furthermore, waiting to act until it can be done from a position of strength is not is not the same thing as prioritizing Republican voters at the expense of Democratic constituents.

Sorry, but I don't accept the narrative that Leader Pelosi cares more about Republicans than she does about Democrats.

His popularity rose significantly due to it.

Let's not make that mistake with Trump. Until the GOP is willing to jettison him, we need to tie him like a boat anchor around every single one of their necks.

...and kept both Houses of Congress in 2000.

Gore's re-election campaign was damaged because he felt compelled to distance himself from a popular president.

I don't know if it's still out there, but in the mid 2000s, blogger David Swanson (who's become a major jackass, of late) wrote a column about the party that impeaches, wins. He wanted the Pelosi-led house elected in 2006 to go hard after the Bush war crimes.

For 150 years. Basically, since before we were the liberals.

But you are basically correct.

And he did get reelected after taking over for FDR

Truman used the power of the Presidency against the GOP congress. Dewey put forward all these plans and promised about what he was going to do, and Truman was able to call bullshit. He brought the GOP Congress into special session and challenged them to actually pass a bill (which they couldn't because none of their numbers added up). When they didn't, he "do nothing"-ed them all through campaign season.

That's how he held on.

Couldn't have done it without being President. And even then, a lot of the press thought he was toast. Hence the newspapers making the famous mistake.

"If you're taking flak, it means you're over the target."

This is what it means to give good-faith scoldings about civility when the barest hint of power is turned against those who constantly wield it as a weapon. This paradigm renders civil disobedience in the face of abuse outside the bounds of society. It civilizes lying daily for the purpose of obfuscating the sins and crimes the federal executive is committing against his own population. That the previous sentence makes sense is a tragedy, yet it is a greater calamity that both national parties are defending the order of a world in which it is true.

To some degree one can blame how the corporate media covers the parties. Or did, I hope that is changing. They have been pushing the false equivalency for decades now already, that both parties are equally moral, ethical, and patriotic, both parties want whats best for the average Joe and Jane. Its just that they each have different ways to get there. The MSM promote that in order to not offend viewers of the Republican bent into believing they are not biased. Even when its transparently obvious that one party is abusing that charity to the tenth degree.

But Democratic politicians have no commercial interest with advertisers like the corporate media shareholders do. They don't even have that excuse. Its not that there is no fight coming from them, but its so pale, so 'civil', that its actually working against them.

My gawd, where is Hillary? And Obama for that matter? I would have liked to see Hillary defying all the anger from not only brainwashed deplorables, but Democratic voters who thought she, and/or the DNC, didn't do enough to win. Really, how much more garbage can they heap on her? IMO the right, and voices like InfoWars etc... can create a much more menacing monster from a vacuum, than if there is an actual living speaking intelligent person not only defending herself, but laying charges against the current administration. Who cares if deplorabes hate watching her on TV. It wouldn't be done for their pleasure.

Her expressing her anger at being cheated from the presidency, and her dismay at what the American public is now enduring would go a long way to the base. She should have come out steaming mad like an opposition leader under house arrest after an election was stolen like in many third world countries, and called the election a sham. Every stupid self-serving decision by the Orange Dotard should have had a reaction from her about how she would have made a different decision, including an explanation about why. Continuously remind Americans how much saner she would have been.

on multiple fronts for decades using simultaneous but carefully separated and orchestrated parallel battle fields:
1. The face we see with their suits and ties in speeches in Congress and in campaign ads, which appeal to emotions and pump-up people's level of fear.
2. The faces we don't see hidden behind the curtain of legislation and regulatory changes they carefully mask-over regarding harms to the public.
3. The enormous right-wing media machine funded by hard-right billionaires that pumps out lies and deception 24/7.
4. Encouraging the mechanisms by which our main-stream media companies have become profit oriented concerns, which discourage them from bucking corporate (Republican) interests. Therefore, everything political must be normalized back to the relatively civil and "working across the isle" style of the 50s and 60s.

It is instructional to observe how Republican politicians play their theatrical games, using each of those four mediums to their advantage. They create a fog of disinformation to keep the public's heads spinning at all times - a method straight our of Russia's master playbook.

We're facing an extreme uphill battle to return to economic and political equality, as well as to educate our public on how they're being played.

What are you doing to act on it?

Your "thanks" are noted.

Its a valid question.
Thanks for trying to broaden the discussion beyond the message of the author's opinion piece.

that Democrats are

“Fox News Lies” is I think the best message for red states.

Because currently the GOP wants to pretend everything is fine. And the best strategy for Dems is to show outrage.

So wear a shirt or display a bumper sticker that shows OUTRAGE. Make apolitical Americans see that Dems have had enough.

And register voters.
And GOTV.
And join Indivisible - and help them. Show up. Work hard.

I think letting them off (Cheney was even mouthy about it afterward), set the country up for the battle we are in now.

..and Obama should have let the too-big-to-fail banks burn to the ground in 2009 and gone harder after the fraudsters. I mention this because the deeply Republican farm belt will come begging for a bailout once these tariffs take hold.

....businesses, but without a viable banking system businesses of all types would have failed with them - businesses in manufacturing, distribution, farming, service, etc.

Albeit on a much smaller scope and scale. I refer to the Savings and Loan debacle.

https://www.thebalance.com/savings-and-loans-crisis-causes-cost-3306035

(Which didn't happen.)

Doing so seems to have worked out fine for Iceland.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-03-31/welcome-to-iceland-where-bad-bankers-go-to-prison

They are a sovereign nation. We are a sovereign nation. We could have done the same thing

It probably would have been far worse than the Great Depression.

Trump is a backlash to obama and other good things.

America's racists saw Obama as the last straw.

compared to now.

Like Gore not making a stink. A reasonable thing to do in normal times, and he couldn't have known he was sending us down the rabbit hole.

But we are way past that now. And have been for a long time.

But maybe Putin saw what Bush and Cheney did, and started his evil coup plan.

As great a leader as Obama was, he made a terrible mistake choosing to forgo torture prosecutions.

Just askin.

Been a lot of those lately as the midterm election draws near, go figure.

We do need to get off our high horses, take off the gloves, and mix it up. We need to be human. That will restore the half of our strength that comes from our non-angelic side.

We haven't been "betrayed." That's just another self-canonizing framing. We're the good guys (but only most of the time) and we are being mugged, not betrayed.

I do see signs that we are getting in the game. There's no reason smart, good people have to handicap themselves by trying to be sweeties all the time.

Public good versus private enterprise

We can't pretend our elections are still normal - not anymore.

Text the Vote: https://www.buildthewave.org/text-the-vote

Postcards for Voters: https://postcardstovoters.org

Swing Left: https://swingleft.org

Sister District: https://www.sisterdistrict.com

Flippable: https://flippable.org

Indivisible: https://www.indivisible.org



Or go find your local state or county organization.

Dem swag is important too- because it makes us and our ideas VISIBLE.


Mad Dog PAC - https://maddogpac.com/ “Resist” and “NRA is a terrorist organization” “Impeachment now”

“Fox lies”; “Deport Rupert Murdoch”; “Avoid rightwing propaganda” — https://weprotectthetruth.com

Way to go!

N/T

I want to live in a civil society. I don't want a bunch of people chanting "shame, shame" at people of a Democratic administration in a restaurant. That does not mean I will compromise my values.

We should take a couple of pages out of their playbook. Where is our "Federalist Society"? Should we have one? And where the hell are we during midterms AND perhaps more importantly, in local races. Tip O'Neill was right: All politics are local. Gerrymandering is done at the state/local level. We wouldn't be in this mess if we had shown up for state legislative races.

I want to belong to a party that fights like hell without carrying Tiki Torches.

Very interesting.

Elected representatives, party leaders, etc

I do it all the time

So do lots of people

dems need to politicize advwertising on political talk radio and democratize it

it just got very easy and cheap to transcribe talk radio - the left can use it to let advertisers and ad agencies know if they advertise on RW/trump talk radio they may be asked if they support him.

Artificial intelligence could spell the end of Trump talk radio before November

it wouldn't take much activism for the ad industry to get the message - it is very easy to list all advertisers on talk radio for any station - getting their contact info - web sites, phone numbers etc, without having to listen to it

in that situation no FD is needed to destroy the monopoly and open up new stations to liberals - then it would be easy

imo since RW talk radio is a well protected 20-1 monopoly it does not deserve to be considered part of the free speech spectrum in a democracy. but even if you do, there is no excuse for allowing it to do what it does without yelling back at it in terms of challenging it with other free speech. waiting for an FD or rich liberals to buy up radio stations is what the cons like us to wait for, and that's why we're here.

and here are 88 universities that are good places to protest anything trump

Ratings are falling across the board on radio as internet streaming becomes more popular. So fewer ears listen; but as radio gets less profitable, more stations are going either Christian or RWNJ (or sports, of which I approve )

but as long as the idiot collective left ignores it it will continue to make trillions in deregulation, war, tax breaks for billionaires, global warming denial, fascist supremes,

it won't fail on its' own before the planet burns up.

it is still the only major medium for politics that's free and easy in 40 states with 80 senators and the idiot left will again let it intimidate a few red state dem senators and 'moderate' repub senators to vote for another unqualified puppet for the supremes

ignoring it continues to be the biggest political mistake in history

I agree with this completely. I'm tired of playing nice with heartless, bullying THUGliCONs.

cast in stones sacred ideas, our cherished thoughts on helping all and the mechanisms to do so are under attack everywhere.

We're mobilizing, we're coming up w/ hundreds of good candidates, we're chatting up storms right and left (DU is a good example), and we're on MTP and the like, constantly standing up for our beliefs.

Believe me, there is an overwhelming anti-rump sentiment in quite a few areas that I'm aware of. After all, why the hell is rump going to some county in the middle of nowhere for his rallies? Because rump supporters
know that they can control the narrative more easier then anywhere else.

The rump facilitators know that they can mode their propaganda and enhance voter feelings more easier when there are fewer people in the area versa tens of thousands as there would be in the suburban areas /urban areas /cities protesting rump's every tweet, every move/action, everything. Cowards know where to show their true colors because they are surrounded by other like them, bullies and the like, who think nothing of poking an elbow into one's face.

If you're so weak-willed and addle-brained that a few lies on the internet can change who you are going to vote for then turn off your freaking social media and cable propaganda until it's time to vote.

Interview
Madeleine Albright: ‘The things that are happening are genuinely, seriously bad’
Andrew Rawnsle
Sun 8 Jul 2018 05.00 EDT

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/08/madeleine-albright-fascism-is-not-an-ideology-its-a-method-interview-fascism-a-warning


I think her book will be a good read for those of us that could use a refresher on how we got where we are and the perils we're facing today.

.........

Long live supremacy!

bluntly, and constantly about the constant lying, cheating, stealing, an d slander issuing from this administration and their Republican enablers.

You don't make nice with Nazis.

all of us, have been utterly betrayed."
News Flash! We have been betrayed. By our fellow citizens. A bunch of Nationalist traded us all for a red hat.

I just have no idea about all those silly politicians doing their politickin, being a Democrat and all.
Adding the obligatory