I disagree with this. The two of them aren't diverging on one or two issues or votes. It's like every time the GOP needs a couple votes from Dems it's them.

But, it's not like I'm going to call for the expulsion of eyebooger now for defending conservative democrats.

I posted that article earlier, a few posts back.

Honestly, if he had left the selfie up and said nothing else it would have been bad, but see the tweets Fly posted where he made some claim that people were wrong to be upset about the IDC and refused to explain why. That is indefensible by him.

As far as the reporting goes, we will see, as this is going to continue to fester, especially with the most recent tweets. I do think that when you stand so strongly for a cause, and premise your entire viewpoint around a particular issue (no corporate/corrupt money), you have an obligation to come out and speak when one of your most prominent figures gives a tacit endorsement to someone who has gleefully lied to her constituency to take money from Republicans and decisively blocked a progressive agenda.

Agreed with the thing regarding nitpicking. It's just that the IDC is SINGLE-HANDEDLY responsible for blocking healthcare, immigration, wage, etc. reform in New York. It's a huge ****ing deal that affects millions of lives. Ellison has the power now to help change that, and this is doing the exact opposite. It's more than some small thing.

Also, re: Bernie, is that guns? That's absolutely my biggest issue with him and, frankly, something that made it hard for me to embrace him in the primary.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com...s-trump-score/

Yes Heitkamp and Manchin are the highest democrats in how often they vote for Trump's agenda at 56.1% and 58.5%. But that is still significantly different from 87.8% which is the lowest republican. In fact the other senator from ND and WV are at 100%. If there is even a prayer at getting the senate back in 2018 democrats need both of their seats, and getting the senate in 2018 might hold the SCOTUS from going far right.

Vermont has some of the most lax gun laws in the nation. I imagine being pro gun control would be a complete non-starter for a politician there.

Sort of. It's a $1.5 trillion* killing machine. The F35. It's a project that Bernie would protest if it weren't for some business and jobs in Vermont.

*protected costs for real. $400B spent so far.

Ha, I didn't know that and yeah that's unfortunate.

People don't talk about it as much (it is less money, relatively), but building a new aircraft carrier that is completely pointless is even worse.

I guess we could go on forever finding wastes of money on defense spending that could to supporting science/climate/medical research instead (the irony being that such research would likely improve our country's defense more than buying some new planes).

Not an excuse, IMO

Ellison doing this bull**** just goes to show why the vast majority of us didn't see a problem with Perez . There are no perfect politicians or even close. It's kind of infuriating that they can't do the right thing but this is the world we live in. So many intellectually dishonest people on the far left who don't apply the same standards to their heroes as they do to other dems. Bernie has a **** load of warts on his record. His foreign policy was absolute trash when all he had to do was say something vaguely non interventionist .It is what it is. The ******s who pretended Perez was so bad but Ellison is so good ( I like both ) are annoying as hell

Honestly not pointing this at anyone in particular in this forum mostly people on Twitter . While the LGM blog commenters can be annoyingly centrist I think the link fly posted is great and I visit it daily the authors are very good

Whoa, whoa. Let's not let facts and figures get in the way of a good Overton Window narrative.

ITS LIKE EVERY TIME.

Yeah, this is exactly the point I was trying to make.

We can either have WV and ND senators voting with Trump 50-60% of the time, or voting with Trump 90+% of the time. These states are not getting a Gillibrand or Merkley type Democrat in the near-future.

Leave Heitkamp/Manchin/Donnelly alone. We desperately need them.

If you really want to primary a Democrat, get ****ing Feinstein out of there.

On a similar note, Bernie's view is pragmatic. The F-35 is a reality. If they weren't in Vermont, they'd be in South Carolina or something. There's no third option of them not existing at all.

I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that the Democrats may get rewarded long term for losing an election to Donald Trump. I don't think I'll ever willingly call myself a Democrat again. The level of incompetence that directly caused my blood pressure to stay high for the last 6 months (and the next 3.5 years possibly shortening my lifespan) has not been forgiven.

Oh, here we go again, more whining from BS.

Again, what did they do wrong? They gained 6 seats in the House, 2 in the Senate, and won the popular vote by 2.9m. She's not the President now because of lines drawn on a map that led to 3 razor-thin losses in one section of the country that stupidly chose to buy Trump's jobs-and-economy rhetoric.

In case you missed BoredSocial Episode 1. He basically cried that he never received any benefits from Democrats and didn't care Democratic policies did help others.

So Warren is making the rounds promoting her new book. Listened to both her TYT and Pod Save America interviews (for both the Bernie and Hillary perspective). She's still leagues better than most, but she's not the straight talker she used to be, that's for sure.

So, she's probably running for president?

Also, that post reminds me - in 2011 I went and saw Glenn Greenwald speak in SF. There was a Q&A session at the end and one person asked him about Liz Warren, who at the time was an up and coming progressive star and had just announced she would run for the Senate. The question was something like, do you think if she wins she'll be able to shake things up and would it give you hope for the future?

Glenn basically said - no, it doesn't, the Senate is designed to be a place immune to being shaken up, all the rules and structures are set up so that you have to conform to be given a seat at the table, and he doesn't think she'll be able to change much from the Senate.

Seems like he was right.

yep--and probably will be the best candidate to do so, FWIW

Probably.

Sure, but part of the problem here is the opaquely populist sort of nature of the question. What does it mean to "shake up the system" and how would one do it from the Senate? Underlying the question *seems to be* the sort of rube-ish "Trump is going to shake up Washington" desires, only to see him basically fall into a lot of orthodox behavior. Well, duh. Our political system isn't really designed for these bull-in-a-china-shop stories and frankly guys like Trump are the best approximations of it, and it's often a really bad characteristic. It's not a surprise that the most effective political norm-breaker of our generation is a pretty deeply unpopular authoritarian self-aggrandizing narcissist like Trump.

I'm not asking anyone to conform for the sake of confirming, not asking anyone to normalize the elite structures simply because they exist, not asking anyone to forgive the bad collective behavior of the Senate. You don't have to like it, and it's valid to be upset by it.

But the ideal isn't coherent and lots of systems are designed precisely so that a few actors can't upend it through sheer force of will. I think anyone who seeks to become a Senator consciously enters into it knowing that the other members and a lot of its rules exist to thwart drastic and sudden changes, to respect seniority and traditions for their own sake. It's a job you take knowing that any systemic changes will be long and arduous and most meaningful and practical actions are probably simply buffering the edges.

tl;dr summary: hoping that one Senator is going to forcefully disrupt norms and the traditions of the body is naive. I say this both partly defensive of Warren; it's not rational to will someone to be a Senator then be disappointed they haven't met vague standards of wide ranging political disruption. But partly as a criticism of the left (or right) who can only think of political agency and changes to the system in like the top 1% of offices in federal government. That if Elizabeth Warren, Senator, can't shake up the system, well we have no hope for the future and there's nothing to be done. That's ultimately a very, very cynical and lazy view of politics imo. Don't sit around waiting for the Senate to "shake things up." That's a naive, almost silly wish.

Al Franken's serenity prayer is something like:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot legislate
the courage to legislate the things I can
and the patience to explain the difference to donors.

OTOH, the House and Senate are ****. It's not some fantastic feature of a wise republic that keeps individual Senators from doing things like being able to write a bill and have it voted on without the approval of the one key party or committee leader. It's just protecting entrenched power and interests. It's incredibly undemocratic and gives an insane amount of power to long time incumbents.

Sure, fine. As I said: you don't have to like it. I often don't. The results are bad!

But let's put on our best faux tough guy, R. Lee Ermey Facebook meme voice and admit it's sort of a snowflake baby mentality to sit there whining that the United State ****ing Senate, gasp, is beholden to entrenched powers and elite interests. No ****. Elizabeth Warren didn't solve that? No kidding. I think Greenwald is exactly right, although he might have expressed it in a rueful tone too. All I'm saying is, Greenwald is exactly correct (the Senate is designed to be a place immune to being shaken up, all the rules and structures are set up so that you have to conform to be given a seat at the table) and -- why expect any different?

We should stop sitting around pining for political celebrities to waltz into a political body known principally for its fealty to pointless traditions and established order and radicalize it. That's not how the world works, and everyone who puts their hopes on just that is bound to wind up disappointed.

In other words...

Valid: the Senate sucks and is full of a bunch of entrenched elites who merely exist to perpetuate the status quo
Invalid: the Senate sucks and is full of a bunch of entrenched elites who merely exist to perpetuate the status quo, and this one person I like hasn't completely dismantled the status quo from within the Senate for shame

Like everything after the comma strikes me as completely naive. Also related but periphery is that the kind of dynamic forceful personalities who often can walk into a structure and turn in into a radical madhouse are people with personality disorders like Trump. Or raging *******s like Ted Cruz if you need a corollary in the Senate, who often prove themselves ultimately very ineffective at accomplishing anything precisely because they rode in and laid waste the old guard. That the old guard GOP Senators are still holding a grudge at Cruz because he called McConnell a liar on the Senate floor is probably one tangible (albeit likely small) factor in why Trump is President. Were we rooting for Elizabeth Warren to walk into the Senate and take to the floor and call Chuck Schumer a tard, or what? Or like the One True Shaking Up the System where you work with everyone to produce magically great and drastically different outcomes than the status quo, but everyone loves you for it?

Now you can take on the bull-in-the-china-shop pose and say well I just want troll everyone and cause chaos but as I said, that's ultimately the sort of Trumpian chaos-for-its-own-ends mentality and I'm not confident we really want to cheer that on either.

I'm totally willing to listen to a case the whole things needs to be burnt to the ground and rebuilt but I maintain trying to light the fuse from the Senate is basically nonsensical, or at least like the path of maximum resistance.

Well, I'm not partial to the Great Man version of anything. The Senate won't change because of the force of will of one Senator unless somehow it aligns with the force of will of either enough people or enough money.

For example, and perhaps I'm naive and giving him too much credit, I think Obama would have done universal health care, eliminated gitmo, ended private prisons, eliminated mandatory minimum sentencing, decriminalized drugs, raised taxes on the very rich......and a lot more if he could have. Maybe even bailed out homeowners at least as much and banks and cut back on the military. It's hard to know the real constraints and pressures from the outside. So, imo it's too much to expect even the POTUS to shake things up that much.