(Butting in on someone else’s conversation) There is this to keep in mind when analysing the relative “base position vs party position.” People with money tend to have disproportionate impact, both as ability to be donors and discressionary time to be involved in party organization and policy determination. On the right, the base (the real base) is the wealthy. On the left, the base is largely less wealthy, so spend more time and effort just to stay fed and housed, with the result being that the more wealthy dems, of which there are many, have a disproportionate influence as opposed to the less wealthy on the right. Just a thought.
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There’s, what, like 46 mediocre white guys who’ve declared themselves Democratic candidates so far? Hopefully events like these will quickly weed out the crappy centrists and focus down on who’s actually worth paying attention to.
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I think some of those guys will go down pretty quick once the primaries actually start happening. No one wants them or their ideas, as the boos suggest. I’m only hoping Biden goes down also - the way Jeb did in the last republican primary: an assumed front runner with name recognition who tanks once the debates start because his ideas are way behind the moment.
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Again, no one is restricting anyone from joining the GOP either. That’s how our political parties work, but both have a tightly controlled central organization that has a lot of power over how national politics play out, which is the real problem in both cases.
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Any huge organization will have central leadership, the devil is in the details as to how that leadership is chosen and decisions get made. The GOP is somewhat democratic, at least by comparison with pretty much all of the third parties, but the centrality of the control is far greater than the DNC. For example, in the GOP the “executive committee” is quite small, with several members appointed by the chair, and a hard upper limit on the number from the regional parties. The DNC executive committee is larger, with none appointed from above and a strict lower bound on the number from the local parties represented.
If you want a true idea of the extent to which the DNC central leadership exerts control over the local party as opposed to the other way around, just follow your idea of dipping your toes into the local party for a while. You can always quit, unless you aren’t careful and find yourself made an officer.
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A thread to go with that:
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weirdly, the 22 year old picture-reader book that my sister-in-law gave my daughter depicts Bernie Sanders trying to move the Democratic party to the left…
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That campaign was the same one where Biden thought his dad was a Welsh coal miner, and where he claimed (falsely) that he graduated in the top half of his law school class. I think Biden’s long-term problem with the truth is a fundamentally bigger issue for him than his racism and sexism, because his records on the latter might have been (politically) wiped clean by his time as VP.
The attack on detailed policy platforms in the earlier election was a blatant attack on Dukakis. just as his bringing it up this year (with much of the same language) is an attack on Warren and Sanders. I don’t know why Biden’s people think that rhetoric that didn’t work the last time(s) he ran will suddenly work now. His campaign manager, Greg Schultz, seems kind of stupid to me.
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Some mixed news… It looks like, according to this poll, Biden could beat Trump at this moment and most of the progressives, not so much… I know this is early in the race and maybe meaningless, but considering how unpopular Trump is, I find this irritating as F to suggest people would still vote for him…
https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000016b-28da-dc80-a3ff-fbfedc700000
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… in Texas. That’s a pretty key demographic detail.
Some other notes: the older, whiter, more male, and richer you are the more you are invested in the primary in this poll. The results obviously follow suit.
And boy to old people want this to be Biden vs. Trump, the sample primary had Biden getting half the nominations in the 50+ crowd.
And Biden’s biggest bump in votes is from Republicans (a 6 point swing) that would vote him over Trump, which is a loser’s gamble in an actual election.
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Bernie talked a bit about socialism in this Daily Show segment from a few days ago
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The DNC isn’t against debating climate policy, just a debate limited to that:
In a statement, the DNC said climate change would remain a top priority during the debates but that it hoped to ensure “vigorous discussion” on all important issues to voters like the economy, climate change and health care.
“While climate change is at the top of our list, the DNC will not be holding entire debates on a single issue area because we want to make sure voters have the ability to hear from candidates on dozens of issues of importance to American voters,” the DNC said.
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If all the madness is going to start this early why not go issue by issue. I’d watch.
So why are they threatening candidates with being barred from DNC debates if said candidates choose to engage in a climate change-specific one that’s not being hosted by the DNC? Past debates have illustrated quite capably that the moderators aren’t going to bring up climate change unprompted, so I have no faith in the DNC to actually bother with putting the issue front and center.
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