The Democratic Party Has Entered Its No Bullsh*t Phase

[babylonsister]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-democratic-party-has-entered-its-no-bullsht-phase?ref=home

The Democratic Party Has Entered Its No Bullsh*t Phase
Democrats are not, in fact, in disarray. Not this year, at least.
Sam Stein
08.07.18 5:04 AM ET

snip//

That was Netroots Nation then: less a conference than a public airing of political grievances.

Two years, later, at this year’s confab in New Orleans, there were no proxy wars over microphones or walks outs when headliners like Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) spoke. It was, instead, bizarrely civil and very much mission-oriented around a burning, almost existential, desire to win back power.

"All the chips are on the table,” said Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA) during his Netroots panel. “We have never had a greater opportunity to enhance progressive values."

Later in the panel a middle-aged woman stood up to ask the governor a question. Only, as is often the case in these confabs, she prefaced it with a bit of biography. “I’m actually from Virginia,” she proclaimed. “And I can tell you, [Inslee] is correct. The number of people in Virginia, when I was out helping the campaign this last year who said, ‘I don’t care who is running for the Democrats, if he has the D, I’m voting,’ the number of people who said that was crazy.”

The notion that a political party is bound together by a hunger for electoral success may seem painfully obvious. Winning elections, after all, is their primary point of existence.

But those even remotely familiar with the Democratic id know that this hasn’t always the case. The party’s various factions are often in a perpetual state of annoyance with one another, over everything from ideology to strategy. ‘Dems in disarray’ may be an overused trope. But, like many tropes, it has an element of truth to it.

But the Trump era seems to have, at least momentarily, convinced Democrats to put grievances with party leadership over things like communication strategies and policy priorities on the backburner.

The agenda at Netroots was filled instead with strategy sessions geared towards getting out from under Trumpism: hyper-localized organizing of youth voters; elevating black women's groups; using peer-to-peer texting; optimizing earned media, tips on bird-dogging and building small donor fundraising networks; protecting campaigns from getting “rat**ked” and securing them from foreign infiltrators; utilizing digital tools to turn out voters; and so on.

more...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-democratic-party-has-entered-its-no-bullsht-phase?ref=home

[honest.abe]

1. Well its about time.

I've been there since the Bush era.

[babylonsister]

2. Where, Netroots? You attend? nt

[honest.abe]

3. The no bullshit phase.

[babylonsister]

4. Crucial times call for unity. nt

[betsuni]

5. So no more bullshit about calling Democrats "establishment" and "corporatists" and so on?

No more lies? No more bullshit that because there are a few conservative Democrats that the whole party is just like Republicans? Great!

[Kaleva]

6. Or the attacks against Sanders and AOC endorsed Democrat candidates.

It does seem that some want to sow division. It does not matter to me if the Democrat candidate this fall is a conservative Dem or a Dem endorsed by Our Revolution. As long a the candidate has a D next to their name, I'll vote for him or her.

[betsuni]

7. Quoting what people say isn't attacking them.

[Kaleva]

8. There's numerous posts that don't qoute the candidates. They just attack them.

Do you prefer unity or do you prefer division? Will you vote for the Democrat regardless of who they may be?

[betsuni]

9. Attack them because of things they say, quotes.

It's not about me.

[R B Garr]

13. When you listen to people attacking Democrats regardless of who they may be,

then you realize they aren't too much into unity themselves.

[Kaleva]

14. One should be suspicious of so-called Dems who spend a lot of time attacking Dems

[R B Garr]

15. Exactly, so she (and he) should quit doing it. nt

[Kaleva]

16. Candidates for office do compete with other candidates. I'm talking about those who say they are Dem

And spend a great deal of time attacking Dem candidates but say next to nothing about any candidate they may support. It makes one wonder ehat their agenda is.

[R B Garr]

17. You should read the news and you will see how Democrats

were targeted by the Russians. Read the news and you will see that your attempts at turnabout are misguided and uninformed. Read the Mueller indictments. Criticizing other Democrats running for office in primaries is exactly what should be called out. She has the option of competing against the Republicans instead of attacking Democrats.

[R B Garr]

12. The article states that there were no walk-outs when Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren

spoke. Who would walk out when Booker or Warren spoke??

Talk about sowing division. This article states one thing, and you want to twist it into something else.

[alarimer]

18. We should call them as we see them.

Right wingers need not apply.

[Hortensis]

10. VOX: Elizabeth Warren "early favorite for 2020" at Netroots.

She's someone we could all get behind.

* She works from within the mainstream/establishment of the party and the Democratic leadership is bringing her along as a rising power.

* She's strongly progressive, yet overall one of the more economically conservative senators in the Democratic Party.

* She's an activist, and dissident progressives and Social Democrats are eager to claim her for their own.

Whatever, what she's been doing works. Keep it up, Liz!

[msongs]

11. this year no "independents" trying to sabotage the democratic party nt