I mean there's a certain amount of perverse logic to funding Ted Cruz to run from Trump's right. Roger Stone used to collude with Al Sharpton for the same purposes to attack Democrats and assist Republicans. Ted Cruz can be our useful idiot in 2020 if he wants.

The 'left' that immediately starts bleating about the need to genuinely celebrate 'moderate' Republicans and empower them are the clueless fops that really deserve our scorn. In the rush to defeat Trump and prove their bipartisan bonafides they ensure that there can only be two winners, Trumpism or moderate establishment approved Republicans. The people that run around boot licking McCain, Sasse, Lindsey Graham, David Frum, Bill Kristol et al are just such short-sighted knaves and/or seattlelou types that just want things absolutely perfect for them instead and get literally everything they want instead of most of what they want.

To elaborate and make it clear, when they fund Ted Cruz they will do so on a platform of "Returning Dignity to the Presidential Race", praising him as a principled conservative and a worthy opponent who deserves our respect.

Not that they will see him as a rat****ing agent, they are going to make him a moderate(which, natch, will crater his ability to rat**** Trump). Any anti-Trump anything from the GOP gets you promoted to honorary #Resistance member, and after a few attack ads they will start treating him as a moderate they can work with.

Sasse is an absolute ****ing ghoul, for example, and you see how they treat him.

don't worry guys the democrats have the best ideas.

$15 is too high and that's not what a vulture capitalist is, although I like the play on words.

That's nonsense.

Voters have always been fickle.

yea i mean if voters cared that much about integrity/honesty/delivering on promises, they sure as **** wouldn't have voted for donald trump, nor would they vote for him again

not as big a problem imo as district gerrymandering, hyperpartisanship/treating politics like a team sport, and racism

I'm confused. It seems like some people itt thought the catch phrase was all that was coming. The way I read it was that it was a precursor to the release of a new platform. Obviously changes were coming if someone bothered to read more than it's a single tweet or headline about the topic. Not sure why there was a belief that this was just some empty phrase describing nothing.

Over the long arc of history, sure we'll probably get to the point where Hispanics will be seen as 100% Real Americans the way the Irish, Germans, Poles, etc. have been folded into the ingroup.

On the other hand, things can shift backwards in the short run and the old bigotry can come back into style. I think several posters itf have said they never experienced firsthand antisemitism until Trump came to power. If Trump gets us into a real shooting war with North Korea I think it's possible there might be an anti-Korean backlash. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the old anti-Catholic bigotry came back; you can imagine the evangelicals and the alt-right neckbeard atheists teaming up and making hay over all the priest sex abuse scandals.

You don't seem to be aware of populist rage which leads to the pendulum swinging right and left every so often.

Who is this "Better Deal" stuff aimed at? Populists clamoring for real change.... and Chuck Schumer? Or i guess people who think Hilary would have won if she was just more boring, on topic and less inspiring.

^^ if Dessin hates it, it can't be all bad.

The White House has gone Bush I > Clinton > Bush II > Obama > Trump because voters get pissed at which ever party the president belongs too. All the while idealists like you were making proclamations that one side was done for. Which every time has turned on not to be true.

There are more non-progressive people in this country than progressives. So you're lines about turning over the keys is something you wish happens, but may or may not be the best thing in actual reality.

Some of you guys should try being pragmatic for a change.

I'd put dessin higher up the totem pole when it comes to taking realistic views than a lot of you even if he isn't as nice. He's probably grouchy like me.

I'm totally fine with it. Sounds like something the dem elite had already written for Hillary et al. to say in July 2009 if Obama lost.

If trump does not make someone pragmatic nothing will.

For sure. My post was not one of hope or optimism. In fact the opposite. Chips Ahoy argues that white supremacy in America is terminal due to demographic shifting. I agree one way that might not be true is that things shift backwards for sure. In fact this moment right now IS a transparent shift backwards, the ascendancy of a lot of racial animosities starting to foment up from backwaters into the public space.

But they may simply drift 'sideways' such that white supremacy regains some demographic and numerical heft by evolving (e.g., Hispanics are let 'in' and eventually considered 'white' but blacks, Muslims, whoever else remain as outsider groups). As you note, that's a common story in our social history. Which is why I think white supremacy or associated phenomenon may prove surprisingly durable.

You make a good (depressing) point.

I wonder if greater polarization could help. Make the middle a WW1 no mans land and then it's harder to slide over.

I think what I would say is that white supremacy has ebbed and flowed and I would agree the medium to long term future is of a more broadly constructed white supremacy relative to the status quo.

That is, if we can fade really bad outcomes like super aggressive right-wing state sponsored violence against minorities and we continue with some measure of democratic elections -- I can sign on to the fact that the future of being white in America is necessarily probably a larger tent sort of construct relative to how we currently understand it.

So I don't think you were like hideously far off Chips. What I would say is that the way whiteness as currently constructed is far too narrow to be demographically and politically viable after say 2040. That I could buy into as terminal. My only point is that America has hit these sorts of points before and simply opened the door of whiteness; and then white supremacy marched on from there.

Also, if you broaden out social history and take in places we're familiar with, like Europe -- you can easily examine broader discussions about in-groups and out-groups. About how important religion was after the Protestant Reformation in how European states saw themselves and treated their people between say the 16th century all the way up to the 19th centuries. Or in China, if we examine how the Han Chinese have treated ethnic minorities, or complex ethnic relations in India and how northeast Indians from the Seven Sister States face discrimination through today -- you're just confronted with the fact humanity remains deeply tribalist and the urge to dominate and humiliate and draw stark divisions will be with us likely forever.

It might be sort of like the balloon effect, where if you squeeze a balloon -- the air is moved but never disappears. I don't know that making the middle a no-man's land would cause latent racism and bigotry to emerge but the whole project may be hopeless because humanity is largely hopeless.

after reading pelosi's article in the post yesterday, it's clear she still doesn't have her hand on the grassroots beat of the party. there is no urgency in her tone, and this milquetoast platform of incrementalism is never going to motivate an already apathetic base to vote in the record numbers needed to win in 2018.

so far, there are three proposed ideas:

ok, everyone likes more jobs, but what kinds of jobs? be inventive! call for programming jobs, stem jobs, solar jobs. target environmentalists and call for a 'green new deal'. target the working class and call for jobs for teachers, nurses, electricians. be specific. 10 million just comes off as some generic number that average people can't even relate to.

• why not simultaneously advocate for the $15 minimum wage? the party wouldn't even have to come up with a slogan, they could just adopt “fight for $15.” people all across the country are marching in the streets for this and would certainly come out to vote for it in 2018.

this obviously sounds great and is certainly something the american people can get behind, but-- why would dems crack down when coporations act as some of the party's biggest donors? realistically this plank just comes off as a generic trumpian platitude.

• why not instead just publicly announce an end to all giant corporate donors? bernie's primary campaign was an example of how grassroots donations can equal those of their corporate counterparts. let republicans have the corporations. and again, dems wouldn't even have to come up with a slogan, as the “$27” average donation catchphrase is already well-established.

hmm... if the party was on board with this then why did they vote to kill bernie's low-cost prescription drug amendment? it's hard to believe there will now be unity when the party couldn't even come together to pass a simple amendment. again, corporate money.

• why not instead just call for medicare-for-all? it's the only realistic path toward controlling costs while also ensuring people don't go bankrupt just because they need healthcare. plus 55+ million people already use medicare, so dems could just say they are working to extend an already well-liked program to the rest of the nation. they could even brand it as a 'healthy new deal.'

otoh the most debatable part of this 'better deal' plan is that all the ideas it contains are already ideas that the democratic party is supposed to represent. nothing is really new here, although the employer tax credit for training and hiring new workers is good; however, i don't see democrats drawing 30k people out to parks all across the country for speeches on employer tax credits.

the reality is that 2018 is right around the corner and aorn i just don't see any of this new platform motivating anyone to go hard in the paint for the midterms. my guess is that these three bland ideas likely end up drowning in the trump news cycle and will mostly be forgotten in a week by anyone who doesn't follow politics.

She absolutely would've won if she had run with the platform outlined by Schumer there instead of the Mike Morrell endorsement plan.

Unlikely, I'd say. Catholicism is actually pretty hot right now among the alt-right, even though atheism also is. See Yolo Minneapolis, for example.

There are more non-MAGA people in the US than MAGAs, too. Trump won anyway. Being pragmatic isn't 'a change', it's the old **** that just lost to Trump.

I mean, they elected a centrist. I'd hardly call that blowing things up.

Because jacking the minimum wage to $15 is stupid policy and so it shouldn't be part of the platform.

This seems to contradict your previous point.. if any "anti-corporate" measure is going to look like a platitude due to corporate donors, why would you believe them if they said they supported $15 minimum wage?

There exists no platform that does this.