What party did Sanders run as, then, if not the Democratic party?
God forbid he were to run as a Progressive, and get excoriated for Nader-izing the election. Give the man credit for trying to run a campaign within the system. Tried that, got screwed, and he STILL is trying to work within the system. Which drives me crazy, but there it is.
In other words, they have no platform, no ethics, no commitment to traditional Democratic bedrock principles and … no, the only thing that matters to them is electing more of THEIR kind of Democrat. Which is to say, a Republican.
Which is why they are consistently undermining progressives, the whole point of this article.
There is no one ideological valence to the Democratic party, this is a feature, not a bug.
If you care about who the candidates are go vote in the primaries, particularly the non-presidential primaries, and bring your friends.
You know how we all complain about our votes being watered down by gerrymandering and the senate? Due to the fantastically low turnout for primaries your vote is watered way up, provided you bother to cast one.
PS: this is how the NRA controls the republican party.
The use of political terms like RINO & DINO are asinine, and do nothing but encourage the fanatical act of party-line voting, which is a really huge part of the political shitstorm that we’ve been in these last 20+ years. This sort of thinking is directly counter to intelligent political discourse and the spirit of compromise to seek the best, functional options to progress.
The only thing the DCCC understands is money. If enough liberals and progressives withhold donations to that org and give directly to Dem candidates who reject the Third Way contingent’s outmoded views then the DCCC will have to adapt (by either changing their tune or giving up all pretense that they care about non-corporate individual donors) or die.
In the second district of Virginia, the DCCC has endorsed a former Republican, Elaine Luria, who voted twice for Scott Taylor, the Republican she’s hoping to unseat on behalf of the Democrats; she’s not the only “former Republican” whose campaign you’ll be supporting if you donate to the DCCC – there’s also Nebraska’s Brad Ashford.
Of course they also promoted a “former” Republican for President, so it’s really not surprising.
Of course they have no platform, that’s the DNC’s job. The DCCC is limited to getting Democrats (re)elected to the House. The DSCC is responsible for the Senate. The DCCC has a very limited focus only on electing Representatives. So yeah, with that sort of a mandate, they are going to look at winnability above all.
The story suggests some mega-donors were behind this, and I can see that happening. Some rich dude saying “Look, I will give you this huge pile of cash if you crap all over this person.” To the DCCC, it seems like an easy choice because their pull doesn’t really kick in until after the primaries. Lose one progressive, gain enough cash to swing a few races? Sure, Mephistopheles, where do I sign?
Like I said before, avoid them until after the primaries, and even then make direct contributions instead. The DCCC should only be spillover donations, and I doubt many happy mutants have the sort of megabucks they need.
Maybe.
Yes.
Any evidence for this damns you rather than exonerating them.
The problem is that the establishment Democratic party is nowhere even remotely close to being aligned with actual good ideas, so they don’t even have to go against the party to provide votes for shitty things. There are 12 Dems in the Senate who are happily casting a vote to roll back most of the Dodd-Frank financial reform act, including fresh-off-of-defeat former Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine. Meanwhile progressive voices like Elizabeth Warren are getting drowned out because Democrats are more interested in proving that Congress can get anything done than ensuring that what does get done isn’t incredibly shitty.
You left out the part about leftmost candidates in local elections being unknown quantities. Again, I’m not argiong for or against voting for anyone based on age, just pointing out that an electorate for a local election that is older is unlikely to vote for a young unknown candidate. If that doesn’t apply to you, great, but it applies to many others, and if you want to change that the solution is to get more people voting in local midterm primaries who share your POV.
Over my lifetime the GOP has devolved from being merely a party opposed to change to a xenophobic haven for people who hate the poor, minorities, women, their neighbors, and everything that made America great. It needs to die.
I apologize for not explicitly quoting the unknown candidates element but I thought it implicit.
At this risk of irritating, I am sure that regular voters have a tendency to vote for the Devil they know rather than the Angel they dont. However surely one might just as easily reverse your argument? If you want to increase turnout among voter groups who have been under-represented maybe you should pick a candidate that might appeal to them?
One could argue recent experience in both national elections and some local elections has provided clear evidence of this. I understand that others might see it another way, but I had to push back against the idea that a candidate with name recognition will definitely be electorally more successful than a younger and inevitably less well known candidate. It ain’t necessarily so, and its way too convenient an argument for incumbent candidates who have not been representing the interests of their constituents.
Right. So they are the blameless arm of the evil DNC, merely “getting people elected”. Not choosing who, not automatically against progressives. Sure.Uh-huh. Pass the Kool-Aid.
I don’t think he “ran as” a Democrat… did he? In any official way? I’d like to know.
Yes. But that’s not why the national Democratic committees oppose them.
This is hilarious. A prep-schooled, Ivy League-educated member of the media elite (bylines in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Vogue, a regular column at Slate) who had access to the Obama White House is not an insurgent. Insurgents don’t get to promote their run for office in a series of articles for Vogue. What happened here was the attempt by Moser to parachute into a race and somehow reconcile her media bonafides with the fact that she bounced from the state as soon as she was able, and had previously thrown shade at the state in a glib article about cost of living in Washington DC. Throwing Texas under the bus as part of a defense of high urban rents was never going to be a good look, and I’m just tickled that this is what passes for insurgent in some quarters.
I think it is exactly why the Democratic committees oppose them. Or do you believe Ben Ray Luján, Chris Van Hollen, Tom Perez and Keith Ellison are Republicans in disguise?
For those of us who live in deeply blue states this is the only vote of ours that matters.
