saw on NPR they expected the election to be close.
15 point swing is a really positive sign.
The Montana special election is being held by mail in order to save money - but, horrors, if more people vote Republicans are at a disadvantage
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In case you’ve forgotten who benefits the most when people try to turn the Democratic Party into a circular firing squad, this hamfisted attempt to fan the flames will remind you:
Fuck off, Donnie.
Straight up cunt that sucker is. Simple and plain · Mother fuck him and John Wayne
So weird seeing people ascribe powers to a group that consists of the loose membership and amorphous duties as the DNC. (And by people I mean: “holy shit, what the fuck has become of DailyKos in the last 4 months?”).
Let’s be clear:
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If you are on the school board in a community of 50,000 or more, you now wield more political clout than the DNC, and probably Tom Perez.
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The DNC is not a monolith. It is elected officials and former elected officials, only a fraction of whom pay any attention to it at all.
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The DNC has two jobs. The biggest of these is raising money. The second of these is working with state parties to set their primary or caucus dates by providing them with a list of possible times and rubber-stamping the state party choice.
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Raging at the DNC about the way California election boards handed out primary ballots or about New York state requiring people to declare party affiliation six months before the primary is like raging against Ronald McDonald on your TV set when your local drive thru shorts you an order of fries. If you’re pissed about certain states doing caucuses over primaries, states doing open vs closed primaries, ballot distribution instructions to local election boards, etc., let me type this as clearly as I can: blame either the state legislatures of those areas, or the state party apparatus. Other than helping coordinate the dates, the DNC has zilch to do with those contests. Primaries and caucuses are local events.
The wounds are still fresh!
That was already quoted above, eh?
In a way despite being on the Bernie side of things, I’m ok with Perez winning, as long as they don’t repeat DWS’s antics I’ll be ok with things, and hopefully I have a bit of say in it in the future the path I am going- at least locally.
Whatever one thinks of the power/influence of the DNC, this leadership election has certainly highlighted the “circular firesquad” state of the party as HumanTon so aptly put it. NPR’s Morning Edition asked Leslie Wimes of the Democratic African-American Women’s Caucus in Florida if she thought that Perez’ selection of Ellison as Deputy Chair would help heal the party’s wounds. Her Response: “What’s he going to do? Get his coffee?” I wouldn’t expect things to get better any time soon.
Circular firing squads are nothing new and certainly not party-centric. We saw the same thing with Republicans after Barry Hussein Obumer won in '08 and '12 and I recall the GOP infighting was composed of the crazies versus the not-quite-as-crazy-as-the-crazies. Unfortunately for the country third time proved to be the charm for the crazies. I hope the fallout from the Trump administration decimates the GOP to such a degree that the crazies are cast out and replaced with sane people who care about things like science and not shitting all over the poor.
That was the message I took away from the [i]New York Times[/i]'s reporting on the story.
[quote=Jonathan Martin]After Mr. Perez’s victory was announced, Mr. Ellison’s supporters exploded in anger and drowned out the interim chairwoman, Donna Brazile, with a chant of “Party for the people, not big money!” When Mr. Perez was able to speak, he immediately called for Mr. Ellison to be named deputy chairman, delighting Mr. Ellison’s supporters.
Taking the microphone from Mr. Perez, Mr. Ellison pleaded with his fervent backers: “We don’t have the luxury to walk out of this room divided.”[/quote]
My first reaction to this story was despair. My second reaction was to think of this thread. Participation and voting is the path to progress, but throwing tantrums when elections don’t produce the desired outcome is not really productive, and letting those tantrums disrupt party-building events is counterproductive.
You realize that Republicans are saying the same thing about people protesting in general and specifically the democratic party doing anything against Trump’s position? Those protesters shouldn’t throw tantrums when they didn’t win, right?
Understand that the Perez victory is basically the DNC establishment telling progressives in the party to fuck off. Perez is not a unifier of the party at all and this was further reinforced by the imagery of Donna Brazile being the one to announce it. The only thing missing was debbie wasserman schultz.
I was happy that Perez made his token move of making Keith Ellison the “Deputy DNC Chair” but it is only a token effort and a token effort made after doing something they knew people would not like. This token needs to be backed by actual action, actual change, or it means nothing.
The real test will be in four years. How is someone like Perez going to convince progressives to come out? How are we to have faith that this primary season will not happen again next time?
Would an Ellison victory have been the DNC progressives telling the establishment to “fuck off”? Isn’t it Donna Brazile’s job to announce the winner, whoever it may be?
Look, just look at it from a purely strategic angle:
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Are chants about how the majority who just voted for the guy who Obama endorsed are traitors who have betrayed the common people a good way to convince said traitors of the merits of progressivism?
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Is the best time to engage in divisive political activism before or after an election?
I personally preferred Perez, but I would have tactically voted for Ellison because I’m absolutely terrified that the BernieOrBusters will spend all their time and energy attacking Democrats. I’ve had enough of that with Clinton in 2016.
So great. In 2017 Trump will be undoing all the worker protections put in place by Perez and we’ll see whole bunch of people super mad at Perez for not being progressive enough. They are already organizing efforts to knock out Democrats like Manchin and McCaskill for not voting strongly enough against every Trump cabinet position. Those are bright red states. We are not going to get super progressive Senators in those states. We’ll end up with 30 progressive Senators… and the Republicans with a Super Super Majority.
Going to a rough 4 to 8 years.
I’m of the belief Perez deserves a chance to prove he isn’t a crook like DWS.
That said, a lot of Bernie crowd are the folks volunteering now to be part of county Dem organizations- to make sure DWS doesn’t happen again. I’m going to be interested to see how the county convention shakes out, I’m curious if the minority districts have a different opinion.
If they do, then we have a racial divide in the Dems between minorities and whites, and that’s dangerous.
Tom Perez cleans house.
Isn’t that pretty much SOP when a new guy comes in?
Yes. This isn’t big news AFAIK.
Perhaps, but if you read the article, it is making the right people happy within the progressive wing of the party, which makes it newsworthy.
Right. Politics has never and will likely never be solely about facts. Perception is important.