Still obsessed with 90s era internal Democratic Party political debates I see.

Not at all.

The mainstream Democrats are. Reading comprehension helps. But I'm happy to clarify for you. Free of charge.

Most donors want the candidate to whom they are giving money to win. Certainly the candidate receiving the money wants to win. I can't tell what exactly what you think is going on here. Are you just speculating about the state of mind of a few Democratic leaders and whether or not they are relieved about probably losing the Senate? Or are you claiming that mainstream Democrats consciously tried to blow a few Senate races to avoid pressure from progressives?

While this perception is common, it is largely false. The evidence shows that politicians generally take their campaign promises seriously. However, I'd argue that one of the reasons why simply running on the policies that are in people's self-interests doesn't always win is for the reason you bring up here - people think politicians lie, including about supporting policies in voter self-interest and whether or not it is really in voter self-interest. Trust comes first imo. And one of the reasons I voted against Bernie in the 16 and 20 primaries is that I think it hurts voter trust to run on policies that have no chance of passing if you are elected.

First of all, no they don't. People have been writing What's the Matter with Kansas style books attempting to explain why they don't for decades. Second, how is it that you propose "making it really clear" to voters that some policy benefits them? Ban Fox News and talk radio? Ban Republican politicians from giving their arguments?

I just think you are overconfident about what wins elections based on a simplistic understanding of the populace and why they vote.

I don't think this is an accurate summation. Democrats don't choose to do things via legislation to be bipartisan, they do it because new legislation is required to do the things they want. An executive order simply could not have given states money to expand medicare or create a marketplace with plans that can't drop people with pre-existing conditions. Obama did use executive orders when he could, like with DACA , but there was a limit to how much could be done with ongress.

The point there is that establishment Dems have corporate donors who often have a much louder voice and bigger priority to them then the voters do.
A tie progressive Dems have cut.

And yes, i am suggesting that perhaps the Dems are content enough with the House and POTUS and a Senate that can 'force' them to compromise to Center/Right positions.

If they win the Senate there is really no reason to compromise Center/Right and quite the opposite the pressure will be from Progressives to move Far left.


The key is making the issue clear. People understood in the mid terms that their Pre-existing conditions were at risk in a GOP win no matter what Fox and other right media said.

There is no reason to believe a simple message of X thousand dollars in your pocket, if we win, is not something they can and would deliver if they won. No reason to conflate it with pie in the sky promises when it would also make sense for the Dems to do it to help their constituents, kick start the economy and give Biden that great boost out of the gate.

So, ya I am searching for reasons why an obvious winner with voters that would serious compromise the republicans, forcing them to go against it, would not be the main tool used now.

Right now that message is buried in more 't

In what scenario do you envision a cornersack was getting you a life sentence in fed prison?

I mean to raise executive action as just one example of leverage points, although I do I think there are plenty of examples of Obama trying to do something executively (immigration and environmental reg are most prominent) that only happened after years of absolutely failed outreach to republicans legislatively. But I’m actually more worried about diluting legislative leverage points around all the must-pass stuff that, even today, are legitimate negotiations and not just McConnell wins everything. So those become questions of strategy. People actually criticized Obama in BOTH ways. Some said he should have been pressing super hard on every pressure point, using the bully pulpit to exert maximum force in negotiations. Others says he didn’t do enough to wine and dine McConnell and should have tried to work with him more. Regardless, we know how poorly attempts at reasonable compromise worked, and I worry that once again a focus on good faith negotiatiating that tries to lower the temperature by not maximally exerting pressure are going to just fail hard.


*wow my metaphors got twisted there, I gotta review my PV=nRT

Victor, innocence cant be lost, it just needs to be maintained.

I made executive actions as just an example of one of multiple leverage points. But yes, there are some at least partial trade offs in strategy, for example Obama spent literally years as I understand it trying to work with republicans legislatively on some issues (immigration and environment come to mind) before going the executive route. The basic negotiation tactic is "compromise with us on something reasonable legislatively where we can really do something important, or we are going to push as much as is possible executively". It was a reasonable strategy.

Focusing on legislative pressure points instead, the better tension to consider is between senate republicans and house democrats. There is a lot of so called "must pass" legislation and even in bitterly divided partisan times, a lot of things do get passed in some of the brinkmanship negotiations we've seen. So again there are questions of strategy. Do you try to ameliorate and wine and dine and have good faith and reasonable debates about compromise? Or do you push your own leverage points as far as possible, maximize the bully pulpit, etc because republicans have consistently shown that good faith attempts to compromise isn't something they are going to engage with? Again, different dynamcs, but 2008-2010 obama had both houses but looking back arguably wasted a lot of time trying to work with republicans that ultimately were never going to give him anything and just wanted to throw sand in the machine. These are debates about strategy, and I don't think is nearly as black or white as the loose sketch above implies, but I nevertheless have a lot of worries that going more on the good faith compromise side is just not goign to work out.

lol u clown. I've had friends get only ~10yrs for ~5grams of acid ffs another got 5 for 3or so. That was federal.

I've gotten probation for 200plants and ~25lbs back in the 90s.

If I wrote out all the crap by friends of mine who didn't get LiFe!! for a frigging gram of buds this comment would be miles long.

Ok boomer

I'm not a boomer. Stop embarrassing yourself. But I have been in that biz for well over 25yrs(own multiple/3 CA licenses as well as a decent piece of an east coast project) and have known tons of people in our scene since we were practically kids. And I've seen a ridic amount of my friends as well as myself bump up against the govt on this issue. But feel free to establish your bona fides and tell us all about all the people you know who have gotten LIfe!! sentences in federal prison for a single nug lol.

Wet work , we are both talking way past each other. Like way past each other because we mean totally different things. I did not say I knew someone who got life in prison for that. That’s for starters.

admitted hyperbole. but there are people in jail for that long for small amounts due to old statutes for 3 strikes. I think Louisiana in particular is a state that maintains that. Im not gonna look up the stories now as they are depressing and obv proly not a 15 yr old. I did just read about a guy who got life for stealing hedge clippers from someone's yard that had been left outside. he was recently released after like 30 some years.

point is, Biden helped write that crime bill that jailed a ton of people for absurd amounts of time. Godgers supports such measures which amount to simply cruelty for the sake of cruelty. there is no societal or personal positive impact from that. none at all. not for anyone. except the for profit prison system and the police. so.....

its sick. and defending it is sick. I dont think you were defending it fwiw.

Well, you were kinda snarkily defending a post and also implying you know how things were back then--which is what the post was really about. Then you took a cheap shot at my age(which is 49fwiw) as if being a little squirt back then would somehow give you more credibility

You're kinda mixing up state and federal my man--though they've been plenty capable of having a couple feds in the convoy when they want to cut thru a bunch of properties with the chipper to make things easier. I've actually been raked over the coals by the ***** feds(not about the one I listed but a more recent one) in the past and they don't tend to swoop in for single grams--hell they can cause enough trouble without even technically getting involved at all In general you have to be coloring pretty far outside the lines to really get their attention. And the only reason I even spoke up was because of the hyperbole--getting life in fed prison just really isn't close to any kind of standard outcome for dust bunnies. Having a stack of priors etc coupled with a nug>>extreme sentence is pretty far from a standard situation ime. Which is why I even said anything in the first place.

The Ds have been pretty far from perfect on this issue--but they've also mostly been the only ones willing to work with us at all over the years. And that's just reality. As much as I'm sure a lot of us would love to be able to wave a magic wand and have things be exactly the way we envision them that just isn't how things really work--other people/interests have a say too even if we may not agree with their perspective at all. The conservatives trying to hang the entire drug war on Biden's head might be one of their bigger messaging victories in recent years. Of course--they haven't been pitching in much to help change things

If this OpEd is accurate, this seems like a huge ****ing deal. What do people think the appropriate government response should be?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/o...JElUfIviMM5CBo

It's not a two party system, it's a one party system. Trump broke that up a bit, but hopefully that shift to a one man system was temporary.

There still is no alternative to a candidate backed by corporate and hedge fund money and their interests. Biden is an archetypal example. The legislation he can and has gotten passed is mostly a solid implementation of the corporatist economic agenda that has dominated the US during most of his incredibly long tenure as an elected official.

The only piece of legislation in recent memory that was at all out of the mold was Obamacare, even though it was firmly in the mold, well adapted to the interests of insurers, it was perceived as something else and getting it through took some real effort. The price Obama paid was continuing the Reagan/Bush/Clinton foreign policy and hard line on immigration.

Well, Trump appears to be on top of it:

Trump remains silent as massive cyber hack poses 'grave risk' to government

But, at least Biden will be taking over soon:

Does anyone really care ?

The Russians have been doing this since Obama at least. Nothing ever happens.

Maybe we can put Hunter on the job.

No ****in chance do I believe a single word that a George W Bush homeland security adviser puts out there. I’m going to need at least 10 people to corroborate anything he says

Trump was on it from the start of his Admin so people should not worry.

It seems unlikely that the author of the OpEd is making this up out of whole cloth. Microsoft has disclosed that it found malware on its systems. It also said that it had identified 40 of its customers that had the same hacked software on their systems. Large public companies don't make those sorts of disclosures lightly.

I have no idea whether this is a big deal or not. But it seems a little silly to say, "well my iphone still works so it must be nothing."

The current chaos that is US politics ofcourse emboldens various actors to strike directly or undertake actions that would otherwise be deterred. Chaos means less scrutiny and less clear decisionmaking.

That’s just how the world works and has done for thousands of years. I can pretty much guarantee that the last four years have been a blessing for many countries and organizations opposed to, in conflict with or competing against the US.

Of course. That's why people like Putin wanted Trump to win. A Trump presidency virtually ensured chaos.