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'17 Specials & '18 Midterms Thread

“DC Democrats” are idiots. We know this. They’re playing the wrong game and have been for years. Without efforts from outside of the establishment, President Sarah Palin would be in her 10 year in the Executive Branch.
 
The local Democratic party endorsed him because he promised to spend a ton of his own money. Which seems like a pretty bad mis-read of 2018.

It may be a race where the down ballot elections could help. All four of the state senators in the county are Republicans up for re-election in 2018, and they all have challengers. (Two of the challengers are backed by flippable and Sister District.)

Josh Hawley released an ad focusing on the Supreme Court, with culture-war "our way of life is being threatened" language. But I got distracted at the end by his logo:

hawley-logo.png


I feel like he could've done a little more with that.
 
PhDeac said:
“DC Democrats” are idiots. We know this. They’re playing the wrong game and have been for years. Without efforts from outside of the establishment, President Sarah Palin would be in her 10 year in the Executive Branch.
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With the exception of Bill Clinton's two victories in 92 and 96, Establishment, Wall Street Dems have a terrible record of winning elections over the past 24 years. The great 1994 GOP wave in Clinton's first term ended 40 straight years of Democratic control of the House, and devastated Democrats at state and local levels around the country. From 1994 to 2018, Democrats have clearly controlled the House and Senate for only 4 of the past 24 years (they did briefly control the Senate for part of the 2001-2003 term, but lost control by the end of that session). The GOP more or less set the agenda for Congress for the first six years of Dubya's Presidency. Under Obama, who upset the Establishment favorite, Hillary, but then governed mostly as a centrist, Wall Street, Establishment Democrat, the Dems suffered even greater losses in 2010 and 2014. Basically, Establishment Dems have four presidential victories (Clinton and Obama twice), and lots and lots of losses elsewhere, since 1992. I realize that progressive candidates can't win everywhere, but you can certainly argue that Establishment Democrats don't have the best track record over the last quarter-century either.
 
Highland Deac said:
With the exception of Bill Clinton's two victories in 92 and 96, Establishment, Wall Street Dems have a terrible record of winning elections over the past 24 years. The great 1994 GOP wave in Clinton's first term ended 40 straight years of Democratic control of the House, and devastated Democrats at state and local levels around the country. From 1994 to 2018, Democrats have clearly controlled the House and Senate for only 4 of the past 24 years (they did briefly control the Senate for part of the 2001-2003 term, but lost control by the end of that session). The GOP more or less set the agenda for Congress for the first six years of Dubya's Presidency. Under Obama, who upset the Establishment favorite, Hillary, but then governed mostly as a centrist, Wall Street, Establishment Democrat, the Dems suffered even greater losses in 2010 and 2014. Basically, Establishment Dems have four presidential victories (Clinton and Obama twice), and lots and lots of losses elsewhere, since 1992. I realize that progressive candidates can't win everywhere, but you can certainly argue that Establishment Democrats don't have the best track record over the last quarter-century either.
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Not really. Over the last 50 years, only 2 Dem presidential candidates have been from the party's left wing, McGovern and Mondale. I don't know quite what Dukakis was other than just a lousy candidate. Carter wasn't establishment but was a centrist, won 1 and lost 1 (largely due to Iran). Bubba and Obama were establishment centrists and won twice. Gore and Hillary were establishment and had horrible personalities and won the popular vote but lost the EC. Kerry was a weak establishment candidate, who might have won had the election been a year or 2 later after a lot more folks had soured on the Iraq War. If you want to go back further, Kennedy, Johnson and Truman were establishment centrists. Hell, Truman was hand picked by party mucky mucks because they knew Roosevelt was dying, and that Henry Wallace would have been a disaster who wouldn't have stood up to Stalin. So while establishment centrists have not won all their contests, they've fared better than the party's left wing. And I still gotta say that neither Bernie nor Warren are strong GE candidates and that the strongest candidate the Dems could field is Tester.
 
Obama was a centrist but not establishment.
 
cville deac said:
Not really. Over the last 50 years, only 2 Dem presidential candidates have been from the party's left wing, McGovern and Mondale. I don't know quite what Dukakis was other than just a lousy candidate. Carter wasn't establishment but was a centrist, won 1 and lost 1 (largely due to Iran). Bubba and Obama were establishment centrists and won twice. Gore and Hillary were establishment and had horrible personalities and won the popular vote but lost the EC. Kerry was a weak establishment candidate, who might have won had the election been a year or 2 later after a lot more folks had soured on the Iraq War. If you want to go back further, Kennedy, Johnson and Truman were establishment centrists. Hell, Truman was hand picked by party mucky mucks because they knew Roosevelt was dying, and that Henry Wallace would have been a disaster who wouldn't have stood up to Stalin. So while establishment centrists have not won all their contests, they've fared better than the party's left wing. And I still gotta say that neither Bernie nor Warren are strong GE candidates and that the strongest candidate the Dems could field is Tester.
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No doubt the older historical stuff is true, but I'm mainly talking about the period since Bill Clinton became president, and "the Clintons" and their allies became the dominating force in the party, at least until Hillary's 2016 loss, which may finally have ended their grip on the party apparatus. I'd say that Hillary clearly was the "Establishment" favorite in 2008, and one reason Obama beat her for the nomination is that he was seen as the clear outsider, even though, once elected, he governed as a basic centrist, establishment-type Dem for the most part. I also wasn't necessarily arguing that the Dems need to go left to find candidates, only that the track record of Establishment, Clinton-type Democratic candidates (especially below the presidential level) hasn't been very good since 1994. When you've only controlled Congress for 4 of the past 24 years (minus the brief period of Senate control in 2001-2002), and have been decimated at the state and local levels across the country, it's pretty clear that Establishment, centrist Dems have been doing something wrong. What the fix is, I don't know, but it does seem clear that continuing on the same path is likely to lead to the same results: more losses, and continued minority party status most of the time.
 
Highland, I saw Obama as more of a centrist alternative to Hillary. Edwards was the left wing challenge that year. And I look at 2008 and 2016 and conclude that Hillary was pretty much a sui generis type of bad candidate. And in 2016, the Clintons and their allies elbowed all of the other potentially legit candidates out of the way so that Hillary could be crowned president. But she ran another poor, tone deaf campaign and was a damaged candidate to begin with.

As for congress, that's a different animal. The Dems lost in 2010 largely due to that backlash against the ACA. And let's face it, the ACA had its problems, which resulted in significantly higher premiums for those who weren't entitled to a subsidy. And the Dems originally lost the House in 1994. Part of that was Foley's corruption, but a larger part, I believe, was changing demographics as more southern and rural districts continued to go red over the 80s and 90s. I don't see the answer for the House as being all Dem candidates have to meet some monolithic ideology test. I say let the party locals determine who best represents their districts. For example, a MD liberal type wouldn't win a similarly suburban district in VA as they would in MD. But the Dems here have a good chance to knock off 3 sitting Pubs in VA-2, 7 and 10, which would result in VA being 7-4 in the Dems favor. And they're doing that with 3 centrist type candidates, 1 with a CIA background and 1 with a military background. Ironically, the major issue that is likely going to give the Dems control of the House this year is health care. Had the Pubs passed a repeal and replace bill last year that would have reduced most premiums, they may have gotten some kudos, but they didn't and don't appear to realize that that is the biggest issue here to VA voters, as it was last year when the Dems almost took back the general assembly by picking up an unheard of 16 seats. I don't see the Dems being competitive in rural districts, but those lily white suburban districts and the ones that are ripe for the picking over the next 2 election cycles, and the issues the Dems need to run on are those bread and butter economic issues. Gerrymandering is the other issue that has really killed Dems in state legislatures and in the House over the last couple of decades. Getting control of more state legislatures would be big for 2020.
 
True story -- couple friends ran into Biden at the Philly airport. Said he was really nice and he sat with them for a half hour shooting the shit. One of them was in the army so they talked about that, and Beau, for awhile. guy in the army called Trump a motherfucker during the conversation, so he was pretty happy about getting that in there. Anyway, Biden told them he was thinking about running. So, there you go - straight from the horse's mouth. Bank it.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
Well you said it, there. You're wrong though.
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We've been over this before. The oppo research on Bernie would tear him apart. And as much as I like Warren, she is too much of a northeastern school marm to win nationally. If you want someone from the left wing of the party, Sherrod Brown would have a much better shot. And we wouldn't even be talking about this had Biden run and gotten the Dem nomination.
 
cville deac said:
...We've been over this before. The oppo research on Bernie would tear him apart.
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You've repeated that, yes. I'm not really interested in having that Bernie debate again. As Republicans have thoroughly demonstrated, political dominance extends much further than the presidency. The current topic here, I believe, is the Democrats national messaging on immigration; Should it be tempered to assuage the moderates? Or should it be extreme to energize the activist movement?
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
You've repeated that, yes. I'm not really interested in having that Bernie debate again. As Republicans have thoroughly demonstrated, political dominance extends much further than the presidency. The current topic here, I believe, is the Democrats national messaging on immigration; Should it be tempered to assuage the moderates? Or should it be extreme to energize the activist movement?
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Sure, the Dems should also hit the administration on Trump's immigration policies. Centrist Dems and pro business groups like the Chamber of Commerce have been for comprehensive immigration reform for a long time, as have the Tuesday Morning Pubs. It's the tea bagger, evangelical base that's with Trump on immigration. As for Bernie, didn't he oppose the McCain/Kennedy immigration bill that McCain later had to disavow?
 
cville deac said:
It's the tea bagger, evangelical base that's with Trump on immigration.
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Trump has 90% support from Republicans. There is no need to parse it. 9/10 self identifying Republicans support this.

What would be the purpose in tempering the language of "Abolish ICE" to "Reasonable immigration reform"? Both messages will be spun by the right as "open borders for MS-13" You know this. Just like every Democrat opponent will be a socialist with San Francisco values. Just like Maxine Waters is "calling for attacks on Republicans".

Rather than playing this stupid fucking game AGAIN of compromising and expecting good faith messaging from Republicans, we should be attempting to energize Democrat voters with strong, inspiring partisan messaging.
 
Republicans pull endorsement of New Jersey candidate, citing ‘bigotry’

In one video, Grossman answered a question about how Republicans could reach more diverse groups of voters by saying “the whole idea of diversity is a bunch of crap, and un-American,” having “become an excuse by Democrats, communists, and socialists, to say that we’re not all created equal.” In a Facebook post, first uncovered by the liberal watchdog group Media Matters, Grossman linked approvingly to an article at a white nationalist website that argued African Americans “are a threat to all who cross their paths, black and non-black alike.”

“Oy vay!” wrote Grossman. “What so many people, black, white and Hispanic, whisper to me privately but never dare say out loud publicly.”
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This is the NJ district where the incumbent Republican is not running for re-election, and the Dem party backed a Dem state senator that has an A rating from the NRA and is against gay marriage. The district went to Trump by 5 pts.
 
Newenglanddeac said:
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Good riddance. Drew was going to win anyway. The interesting thing to me is that real progressive Tanzie Youngblood would have been in a good place had she won the Dem primary
 
Ocasio-Cortez won as a write-in candidate in another NY district. She's going run in the first one.
 
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