Predictable and regrettable.

Last edited Tue Jan 28, 2020, 02:50 PM - Edit history (1)

Last edited Tue Jan 28, 2020, 06:14 PM - Edit history (1)

From The Hill article (emphasis added):

But people are gonna do what they do.

Thanks for the thread DanTex.

Any actual evidence of this?

"Stacking with centrists" means "nominating a lot more centrists than progressives." That's obviously and non-controversially true, the nomination lists are public.

By "anti-Bernie" I mean, for example, a guy who thinks we should "put the knife" in Bernie. Or a guy who calls Bernie "holier than thou" and wrote an article stating "why progressives shouldn't support Bernie". Or a guy who calls Bernie arrogant and asked "when is he getting out of the race" right after Bernie joined the race in early 2019. And so on.

Let's be honest, now. Not like it's a secret how these people feel. Centrists might be able to try to deny this among themselves, but again, I'll ask you, how do you think this looks to non-centrists?

1. Join the Party apparatus and get appointed to the DNC (by getting appointed to the State Committee which is appointed by the County Committes, which are appointed by the local Committees).

2. Prove that you can actually elect leftist candidates in something other than safe Blue House seats.

I get that progressives don't control the party machinery, and I get why. That doesn't excuse the centrists that do control it for making bone-headed moves that will hurt party unity and thereby make Trump more likely to get re-elected.

Unless Bernie gets the nomination, that is, in which case it shouldn't matter much. Maybe the DNC is really confident in those prediction markets.

You want all of the benefit and none of the labor.

No thanks.

Put in the time. Or don’t whine about committed choices.

I'm opposed to things, like this, that make it less likely that our nominee defeats Trump.

You’ve started has basically defended Bernie and attacked the awful centrists. I haven’t seen one defending any other Democrat. Or posting anything Positive about any of those awful centrists.

You can post what you like. But don’t say you want unity when your threads are all about the new awful thing a centrist has said or done.

Seems to be intentional misremembering.

So I expect tough questions. But I’m open in my support.

The threads I see posted are from those claiming undecided status, but seem to only support Bernie while trashing everything else the DNC or another candidate does.

If you are supporting Bernie, be open and proud of it. If you want unity, then be unifying of all candidates. Not just the one you favor.

had opposite stances the last cycle.

are more interested in Bernie becoming the Democratic Party nominee above anything else.

....DNC Chairman has done. Why should he kowtow to people who can't even bother to join HIS party and support it for more than a few months every four years?

I nearly hit a guerilla on the way to work this morning.

and not trustworthy to be on a committee.

who don't support BS "centrists" is just an insult propagated all over the INTERNET.. and has nothing to do with reality.

Again.. if you think you're helping your candidate with insults.. you're sadly mistaken.

the Democratic Party, dantex? Which is where the whole thing Started.

80% social issues and 20% economic issues.

But since he's a couple small blocks away from Sanders on the grid it's pretty obvious Joe is really a reich-wing fascist.

Like AOC and Rashida Tlaib, Joe Biden is a hard-core liberal.


Joe Biden is a Hard-Core Liberal.

https://www.ontheissues.org/Joe_Biden.htm

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Amy Klobuchar is a Populist-Leaning Liberal.

https://www.ontheissues.org/Amy_Klobuchar.htm

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Ilhan Omar is a Populist-Leaning Liberal.

https://www.ontheissues.org/House/Ilhan_Omar.htm

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Rashida Tlaib is a Hard-Core Liberal.

https://www.ontheissues.org/MI/Rashida_Tlaib.htm

These aren't absolute values. Joe's liberalism is "hard-core" (an appropriately awkward phrase, I would add) compared to who?

Whatever the case may be, it's the 20% on economic issues that has people upset.

Therefore, centrist Third Way neoliberal status quo elite non-progressive who will stop at nothing blah blah blah rigged. Who even falls for this, it's so old.

I, for one, am tired of the gaslighting.

then they are anti-Bernie of course!

I was so embarrassed by the way the BS people behaved I swore I would never attend another one until he was no longer a player in our party. They had so much control over the platform it was silly considering he was not the nominee.

I agree with a great many of his ideas, I HATE the methods his supporters use to ram them through even when we know they will get in the way of electing a president. I also just don't like him, he is sullen and bullies people who don't agree with him. He also is not good at getting his supporters to support the ticket. I don't want that person as the leader of my party.

BTW you say you are "undecided", I have to wonder about that, it sounds like you are a pretty strong BS supporter. At least I put who I support on my posts.

I will vote for the nominee of our party, like most DEMOCRATS. Polls have shown that over 50 percent of BS supporters will either stay home or vote for someone else. Sorry that is nuts.

I'm no expert but I think a closer look at the issues is probably a better way to pick a president.

I worked for McGovern, really hard, and it was awful when he got smacked down. Now that I am older and wiser I understand what is important to me may not be important to the masses. I have yet to see how he intends to pay for all of these things he wants to give people. That coupled with his "demeanor" which I find that of a bully is what I have used to make my decision.

It's issues that people want to hear.

BTW, I find it very interesting that folks are having to go back to the 1970s to find a losing progressive. Not that we've had many (any?) who won the nomination of course.

Just think of all the losing moderates we've had in the span of years since then. Funny how we don't seem to hear about them very much.

....talking about the changes to the platform HE made, which wasn't true.

He took credit for many of the planks that already were there.

I mean, if Bernie is not the nominee, does Tom Perez really think having the stick-the-knife-in-Bernie guy on the convention committee is going to help avoid repeat 2016?

over well.

Who later openly said he voted for Jill Stein. You okay with that?

vote doesn't knock out over 3 million votes. Jill Stein runs in almost every presidential election and gets nowhere. Along with about 30 other third party candidates that run every 4 years.

I'll take the guy who votes for the actual Democratic nominee every damn time. And twice at conventions.

Instead, directly following the last Presidential election he said this:

and one really doesn't need to go into what Sirota has been saying and has said.

good to know.

committee after saying we should "stick the knife in" Bernie. John Lewis, his cat and Sirota have nothing to do with the DNC committee choices.

until he fixes his. He has one person who called a civil rights icon a cat killer and another who routinely posts tweets so bad he had to clean up his account when he got the job.

The way I see it if Bernie is the nominee we will get trounced. raising taxes on the middle class is a loser every time. Nobody will care about his reasoning.

Conversely, if Bernie is not the nominee we will have huge swaths of voters who will be disgruntled.

A few months ago I was very sure of our chances in 2020. Now I’m not so sure. If Bernie wins he’ll lose 35 states and if anyone else wins, the Sanders people are going to stay home. Not a good scenario. Maybe the only answer is a Biden/Sanders ticket? I wouldn’t like it but it may be necessary.

Nor are the things that people like Podesta, Sellers, Frank, etc. have said about Bernie.

The 2016 convention was a disaster. There were actually people booing the speakers. I think some people might even have booed when Bernie gave the nomination to Hillary. That is the opposite of what we need to beat Trump. We need to be united behind the candidate, regardless of whether it's Bernie or Biden, or whoever. I don't care who it is, really, what I care about is beating Trump.

Which is why having a guy who said we should "stick the knife" in one of the leading candidates on the committee is a bad idea. Regardless of which candidate he wanted to stick the knife in.

"Here, Hillary, you take it. I don't want it"

A small group that thought being loud meant they were more numerous.

That's not who runs a convention, nor selects the candidate.

The Clinton campaign warned her delegates of these stunts

How could she DO such a thing?

Something happen since yesterday to change your mind about this?

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287448159#post140



Doesn't do much for the validity of one's point, does it.

But I'll bite - When was the nomination ever Bernie Sanders' to give? It is the Democratic voters alone who give the nomination, and they gave it to Hillary by more nearly 4 million.

Nt

I was there for this bad conduct.

.. ever think of that?

this is the primary.. not everyone wants your candidate to be the nom.

posting negative stuff about the DNC/Democrats. On a daily basis, over and over and over again. They attack the the Dems more than they attack trump and his cult members.

Was it like this in 2016? If so I'm glad I missed it. Where is your proof that they're "stacking" against anyone?

I can see the attack/excuses blaming the Democratic "establishment" when he loses. And then they'll go vote for trump and the cycle will start all over again.

But the time the convention comes, the primaries will be over. This is about bringing the party together at the convention.

Do you really think that having a guy who said we should "stick the knife" in Bernie on the convention committee is a good idea for party unity? I mean, how about a guy who said we should "stick the knife" in Biden. Or "stick the knife" in Warren. Or "stick the knife" in Mayor Pete.

Why not just avoid people who talk about sticking knives in candidates altogether?

that the disruption is coming from bernie supporters. On Twitter they're pretty aggressive and abusive to anyone who disagrees with them. Party "unity".

Here's a candidate who comes to the Democratic party only when it's convenient for him every 4 years. And then his supporters are mad because the party does not bend over backwards to accommodate his every whim? Come on.

Bernie and his supporters remind me of a guest who comes to your house and complains about the food, the drinks and about the living room's temperature.

Party unity is the last thing bernie or bust supporters want.

Yep, though I would argue it was a lot worse in 2016. That being said, it's a lot of the same evidence-free assertions. Same constant bashing of the majority of Democrats and the party. Same complaints about how the primaries were being rigged. It's always the establishment's fault, when in reality the actual voters just prefer someone else.

Some of the posters are even the same, most notably the ones who spent months bashing Nancy Pelosi for how she was handling impeachment. They seem to have gone mostly quiet, however.

that the DNC rigged it against them. Exactly.

In Sanders' view -- it's always about him getting screwed. And this year we're getting started before we get a chance to cast any votes!

(If you had a neighbor that was this dyspeptic -- you'd go out of your way to avoid him. And you sure as hell wouldn't be looking here for leadership.)

Already started.

through their careers should have precedence over those who haven't. The DNC is supposed to help all the candidates running as Democrats, not just the few who follow the temporary leader. Just because someone occasionally joins a party doesn't mean they get to run it.

of Democrats you'd be crowing that majorities on the committees represented "the people." The very fact that the liberal majority is smeared as "centrist," ideologically somewhere over by Republicans, is proof that truth's been discarded.

Here's gold-standard Pew's relation of the house member ideology and # of Facebook followers, but note the strong separation of Democrats and Republicans, to the point of being dysfunctional. More detailed graphs show a very few points hanging alone and lonely in that great rift where this dishonest article insists most Democrats are.



The senate's much the same but the divide's not as strong because senators are elected by whole states, not little districts, and in many states have to appeal to a broad range of people.

I'd want party unity, which means having committees that reflect the same centrist-progressive mix we see in the candidates and the primary electorate.

And I definitely wouldn't want people who say things about "sticking the knife" in one of the leading candidates on there. No matter which candidate it is. That's just plain inflammatory and dumb.

That there are almost no centrists in congress is a sign of the current grave dysfunction in our democracy. The ideological chasm between is severe.

As for the "mix" that should be on committees, take a GOOD look at that blue cluster. Those people are all sent to congress by their constituents, and the committee mix should represent their numbers and wishes. Here's an ideology graph that shows Sanders on the far left in the senate:



Way over on the left margin. Not alone, but something this graph doesn't show is that ALL the others on the far left are LIBERAL DEMOCRATS. Sanders himself considers them very different from him ideologically, as when he said, "I am not now, nor have I ever been, a liberal Democrat." That, DanTex, indicates he's over there alone.

I said putting people on the committees that have said things like "stick a knife" in one of the leading candidates is an obviously skull-headed move if we actually want to unite the party and win in November.

How is anyone even denying this? What possible good could come from alienating a chunk of the electorate?

There are both kinds of voters in the Dem coalition. It's ironic that the centrists want a "big tent" and then they go and build a small little centrist tent that excludes progressives.

And, obviously, anyone who wants to "stick a knife" in one of the leading candidates shouldn't be there. Can we at least agree on that?

We are not the Democratic Socialists of America party or the Socialist Workers Party.

We are the Democratic Party.

One doesn't really have a clear view of the Democratic party of the definition of either of those words.

Most members are strong progressives

http://www.progressivepunch.org/scores.htm?house=senate

Even if they were pro-marijuana legalization when Sanders was still in Burlington, and were right there with NARAL and Planned Parenthood on every issue, even on the steps of SCOTUS when he REALLY had no skin in that game.

Sanders was noticably absent.

But Barney can't possibly be a 'real' progressive....

Again... can you quantify the actual % you are talking about, and what that means in real numbers?

Atttacking Biden for Voting for the same thing that BS VOTED for...

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

What are the % of each, and what are your sources.

Are you simply calling anyone who doesn't support the nomination of Sanders as "centrist?"

the wrong way.

Not acknowledging the hypocrisy of what your candidate is doing but blaming it on those who don't want BS to be the nom.

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Replicating any schism into convention committees will just lead to more infighting. A party is such that everyone gets a hearing but at the end of the day party is more important than runners up. Compromises are made along the way - platform, rules - but number one, especially this year, is to produce a winning ticket. Roiling party machinery makes for a divided party. And how you get a part-time party member to lead a party where half the members are reluctant is beyond me.

Seems divisive, doesn't it?

And it seems to me that your posts are divisive. But you do you.

And there are a "chunk" of people talking about how to do that.

How does that help us defeat Trump?

be rewarded this election any more than last for trying to divide committees. That pleased ONLY his base who refused to vote Democrat and loudly claimed victories to cover defeats by majorities.

As it is, once again most of Sanders' current supporters are with him only as long as they see him running as a Democrat. He'd lose probably 2/3 if he went third party, they'd wave him off and turn to their Democratic choices.

I'm still hoping he has almost no delegates to act out on the committees before they take off in a rage again, though. We have much more important things to tend to.

"Suppose they had a convention and no war came?"