Roger That!
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I didn’t know this until this morning, but it turns out the DNC sued Nixon civilly for the Watergate break-in as well - and won! They had to wait until after Nixon’s pardon, but they were awarded a pretty significant sum of $750,000 - about $4 million in today’s dollars.
I 100% support this current DNC lawsuit, regardless of any other more criminal proceedings. This also was a break-in. It just was with computer, and with the burglars outsourced thanks to the global information economy.
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Well, that was a feature of the 1982 reform: if there was an established clear favorite (eg the incumbent Carter in 1982) then s/he was supposed to get a relatively uncontroversial ride. In hindsight it is easy to see that this becomes a problem when the favored candidate is contentious…and Clinton was unusually contentious for some genuine and also many stupid reasons, something which the then-leadership of the DNC couldn’t see, blinded as they were by their own fundaments.
all I see is a hapless organisation that will win seats in the 2018 primaries only because so many GOP rats are abandoning a ship that’s become too toxic even for them.
The 2016 election wasn’t all that long ago by the standards of political time, and honestly the last 16 months have been a chaotic time for anyone in politics. This year I’m afraid all that matters is local election politics. The real test of the DNC will be after the midterms, when they have to make some concrete decisions about 2020.
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Federalism didn’t stop FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, Carter, Bill Clinton, or Obama from being elected President. Those seven men accounted for 48 out of the 84 years from 1933 to 2017.
One thing that stopped Hillary Clinton from being elected President was her misunderstanding of how federalism worked, i.e. campaigning in California and ignoring Wisconsin. In that sense you might have a point.
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Did you read Donna Brazile’s book? She has a very different take. Here’s a summary:
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I was more than 50 years old before I ever heard anyone make the claim that “Democrat Party” was pejorative. I commonly hear members of the party use that term without any such intention. While I respect your opinion and have no objection to you informing others that they should not abrev. in that fashion, to use your own dislike of the phrase to derail discussion is unworthy of a person of your intellect and accomplishment. Seriously.
The above to @d_r is about as vituperative as I get, and only when I am provoked, eh? Sharp words are more commonly a problem than a solution. That’s part of my point. Framing!
I’m about to go offline for the weekend, but I’m proud to say I talked a “crisis actor” nutcase noticeably closer to sanity this afternoon. It can be done, but you don’t do it by with sharp words; it takes compassion and sincere engagement. Anyone you can beat into becoming a member of your tribe isn’t going to be a valuable ally, but anyone you can convert will be.
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You might just not have been paying attention. It has been a known epithet in political circles for over 50 years. It was used intentionally and explicitly as an this way in the 1968 Republican convention, and the discussion of the use was a topic of debate at the 1984 convention. Russell Baker and Hendrik Hertzberg have traced its nasty use back to Joseph McCarthy.
This secret fundraising “bombshell” was already publicly known in 2015, when the Washington Post reported on it. Brazile herself seems to disagree with the “rigging” spin; here’s a Wapo article a few days after the one you linked:
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What about those of us who are trying hard not to be a member of any tribe? says the guy who voted for Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Jill Stein.
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Well that’s a first for me right now. Seems to me freaking out about that particular thing is playing into the whole LIBERAL BAD AND UN-AMERICAN thing.
Yeah and it doesn’t seem to have any currency at the moment. And like I said. We shouldn’t really be playing into anything that makes left wing politics a dirty word.
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Sure it does. I only used older examples because @Medievalist suggested it was something new. I don’t see any reason to embrace a slur out of fear that objecting to it will offend the people using it.
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How about because accepting that its objectionable furthers the impression that all associated politics are also objectionable?
You’re pointing out that “democrat party” was the term used by the right to smear the left in the past.
For a decade or longer they’ve been using “liberal” to do the same. Currently a decent part of the left has drank the koolaid on that. Nearly as long as they’ve been pushing “liberal = unamerican” they’ve been trying to turn “progressive” into a pejorative. Same deal with the alt/reactionary right wants “social justice warrior” and social justice in general to be bad bad things all good Americans fear.
So how about. We stop letting them do that. And instead point out that these claims are either pointless invective. Or actively counter to American Values. I mean fuck. At its origins “Liberal” referred to those who wanted the populace to have a voice in government. Rather than restricting it to certain hereditary families. America is at base. And in origin. A liberal nation.
The more you let simple descriptives or variations on a political descriptive get turned into dirty words. The more some one else is setting the terms.
I’m also not super OK with your repeated descriptions of it as a “slur”. Cause. Well. That’s a term with a lot of weight behind it. And most of that weight is probably not all that concerned with a variant pronunciation of a prominent political party.
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That is a good read. The word I call all the rewriting of word meanings is fascism. I’m sure that’s the technically wrong word, but it’s my word-fascist word for fascists! Because who would fukkin do that? Fascists. The propaganda wing of the fascists.
The difference is that there never was a party called the “Democrat Party.” So it’s not a case of the political opposition taking a perfectly good word and making a pejorative out of it, it’s a case of the political opposition purposely using a term they made up as a pejorative instead of referring to the Democratic Party by its actual name.
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Democratic is an adjective and a description of a principle. Democrat is a proper noun and refers to people… whom they detest… It has now morphed into “damned liberals” as the preferred pejorative.
By why does it matter? There’s nothing wrong with being the “democrat” party over being the “democratic party”.
Its purposely made up as a pejorative term specifically with the purpose of making the whole ideology seem invalid. He’s a Democrat. She’s a Democrat. Take it one step grammatically further and OOOOOO its the worst thing ever. They demonize people for being Democrats. They demonize people for being SJWs. They demonize people for being liberal. And the reaction from those of us where those things actually describe is HOLY SHIT MAN I’M NOT THAT THING.
And why? Cause those are good things.
All that does is validate that the left wing position is very much a bad thing. We need to stop doing that. Its offense number one in letting the other side dictate the conversation.
Ain’t nothing wrong with being liberal. Or progressive. Or a 'crat (something I’ve seen far more often as invective the last decade).
Reclamation! Let your freak flag fly. I’m dirty, pinko, commie scum. And that’s a god damn good thing. And a damn site more American than undermining the right to vote.
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Because refusing to refer to a person or organization by their proper chosen name is an intentional act of disrespect. You’re perfectly within your rights to do that, of course, but it’s akin to saying “B. Hussein Obama” or refusing to refer to a person using their preferred pronoun. A dick move that shows you have no intention of engaging in respectful dialog.
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More accurately, they have been using it for many years as an intentional in-your-face insult to attack a party whose name they know full well.
The more you let simple descriptives or variations on a political descriptive get turned into dirty words. The more some one else is setting the terms.
So, are you ready to use the same argument with other pejoratives, like racial and ethnic slurs? Because I’m sure the hell not.
I’m also not super OK with your repeated descriptions of it as a “slur”.
That’s exactly what it is, whatever your feelings about it.
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And that act of disrespect sank in long ago. We’re well beyond that point. When active left wingers are bitching to me at the bar about shit eating liberals.
Well its well past time to stamp your feat on the subject.
And again I’m gonna say I’m fairly unhappy with the way a discussion about how to describe a political party is borrowing from thought about actual slurs.
AND there we go.
There is a world of fucking difference between “They pronounced the name of my organization wrong to spit in my face” and actual ethnic slurs. There is a world of difference between political partisanship, and the chip on your shoulder about it. And actual bias. Between being an actual minority. Ethnic and Racial minority. And feeling that your political opinions have been disrespected.
And you just callously dismissed that disparity as “feelings”
So yeah.
It’s so easy to be casually dismissive of things others find offensive!
OK, Let’s try another approach. Consider a schoolkid named Daniel, who encounters (in order) classmate Alice, schoolyard bully Butch, and a stranger.
Alice says “Hiya, Daniel!”
Butch says “Hiya, Dickhead!”
Stranger says, “Hiya, Dickhead!”
Alice is evidently a normal person. Butch is a jackass trying to get a rise out of him, Daniel is used to this but that doesn’t make him feel any better, and anyone who thinks he should start answering to “Dickhead” has a screw loose.
Now, how should Daniel interpret the stranger’s greeting? Obvious reactions are (a) stranger is also a jackass, like Butch; (b) stranger is Butch’s buddy and learned it from Butch; or (c) stranger thinks that “Dickhead” is actually Daniel’s name, maybe from watching Butch on FOX-TV.
The last case is forgivable, but the real test is when Daniel tells him his real name: does stranger apologize and start to use “Daniel”, or does he double down and lecture Daniel on how he should put up with the name-calling?
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