Tag: DNC

Closing Thought–29Nov17

The Elephant And The Donkey

For as long as I can remember the symbols of each party has been used in news stories, cartoons, everywhere…..but have you ever wondered where that symbolism came from?

Well in case you care….I can help out…..

It all started with an insult. During Andrew Jackson’s 1828 presidential campaign, his political opponents labeled him a “jackass.” Stubborn as he was, Jackson co-opted the insult and began putting a donkey on his election posters. For the rest of his career and even into his retirement, newspapers and cartoonists continued to represent Jackson either as a stubborn ass or struggling to control one.

Almost 40 years later, the donkey was used to represent not just Jackson, but a larger group of Democrats. In 1870, Thomas Nast, the German-born political cartoonist who gave us the versions of Santa Claus and Uncle Sam we know today, drew a cartoon for Harper’s Weekly titled “A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion.” The donkey was a stand-in for “Copperhead Democrats” (the Northern Democrats that opposed the Civil War), and the lion represented Edwin M. Stanton, Abraham Lincoln’s recently deceased Secretary of War. Nast thought of the Copperheads as anti-Union and believed the Democratic press’s treatment of Stanton was disrespectful.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/23805/how-did-donkey-elephant-become-political-mascots

See a history lesson is not all that bad…….

Tomorrow and I will return with more stuff…..chuq

Are Dems Moving In The Right Direction?

The round of recent elections have found Dems in the cat bird seat……but does this mean that 2018 will go their way?

Personally , I think that the Dems are reading too much into their recent wins…..The LA progressive has seen this phenom pretty mush as I have……

The base is critical to victory — and it wants to move left. If you’re a Democrat, there’s a name for that unfamiliar emotion you were feeling last Tuesday night. It’s called happiness. But there is a serious risk that the party will draw the wrong lessons from last week’s results.

Here are seven important lessons from the November 7 results that a lot of Democrats seem to have missed.

https://www.laprogressive.com/democrats-misread-election-results

The DNC has done yet another autopsy and their findings are not all that encouraging…..

• Aggregated data and analysis show that policies, operations and campaign priorities of the national Democratic Party undermined support and turnout from its base in the 2016 general election. Since then, the Democratic leadership has done little to indicate that it is heeding key lessons from the 2016 disaster.

• The Democratic National Committee and the party’s congressional leadership remain bent on prioritizing the chase for elusive Republican voters over the Democratic base: especially people of color, young people and working-class voters overall.

• After suffering from a falloff of turnout among people of color in the 2016 general election, the party appears to be losing ground with its most reliable voting bloc, African-American women. “The Democratic Party has experienced an 11 percent drop in support from black women according to one survey, while the percentage of black women who said neither party represents them went from 13 percent in 2016 to 21 percent in 2017.”

There is more….read on below……..

https://democraticautopsy.org/executive-summary/

The Dems in my opinion still do not have a message other than “not Trump”……I think it will take more to win a deciding victory in 2018 other than “Not Trump”

Thoughts?

Democratic Party Fraud

North Korea is chest thumping…ISIS is being handed their butts in Iraq and Syria…the president is on another international trip……and Twitter is all a bloom with this or that….in other words there is lots in the news but some interesting stuff is not making it into the headlines or the evening news…..

I know that the 2016 election is over and Trump has won….but there is another story about that election other than reliving it or dissecting it ad nauseum…..

The DNC is facing a couple of lawsuits…….

The mainstream media—perhaps not surprisingly—is virtually ignoring three pending lawsuits against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Commission on Presidential Debates, all of which cast a glaring light on the bald corruption eating away at the current political process. But they should not be ignored. More than just footnotes to the tumultuous 2016 election, these are legal battles that could have broader implications on third-party and independent political movements in U.S. elections going forward.

Thanks to disclosures from WikiLeaks, it became obvious late last year that the Democratic National Committee privately colluded to block Bernie Sanders from winning the presidential nomination. These were damning exposures that eventually cost then-DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz her job. The worst of course, was the revelation that former DNC chair, Donna Brazile, secretly provided Hillary Clinton with the topics ahead of CNN’s televised debates.

Source: Democratic Party Fraud | The American Conservative

Plus the Democratic Party is hitting a dead end in their search for an agenda that will return them to power in the Congress.

By playing for centrist and neoconservative votes, national Democrats have left the party floundering with no coherent political message and creating a daunting challenge for democracy,

The most encouraging trend in the otherwise bleak landscape of Western politics is the success of the “new kind of politics” unveiled by Bernie Sanders in the U.S., Jeremy Corbyn in the U.K., and parallel movements, parties and candidates in other countries.

In their recent campaigns, Sanders and Corbyn laid out specific progressive policies to address the real-life problems facing their constituents and their countries and to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations to fully fund healthcare, education and other vital public services. This represents a dramatic U-turn from the vague, deceptive talking points of “center-left” Democratic, Labour and Socialist politicians of the past generation, under cover of which they quietly sold out their constituents to corporate, plutocratic and military-industrial interests.

Source: The Democratic Party’s Deadly Dead-End – Consortiumnews

The Party need lots of work……maybe the lawsuits will give it a jump start in finding a solution to their electoral problem….

Thoughts?

What Happened To Country First?

Country and its people use to come first with politicians….that has slipped from the collective memory of the voter….now we vote along lines….partisan crap and the country takes backseat to party politics…..

Our strength use to be political debate without the insulting and division…an op-ed says it better than I could……

Source: EDITORIAL: Civil political discourse used to be our strength – News – Tuscaloosa News – Tuscaloosa, AL

For many decades the US had a substantive debate on policy…now it is just plain silly….both parties were part of the discussion……now it is just sniping at each other from the TV cameras.

Back in 1944 FDR, a Dem, offered up an Economic Bill of Rights……

Among these are:

  • The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
  • The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
  • The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
  • The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
  • The right of every family to a decent home;
  • The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
  • The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
  • The right to a good education.

Keep in mind that was in 1944……then 12 years later the GOP platform had a familiar ring to it……and the candidate won the presidency…..IKE.


That was in 1956…the national platform of the GOP…….
Politicians have always been for sale just not so readily back in the days I reference.
Now compare the two and you will see they are similar with similar goals……those days are gone….but what a great country this would be if we all worked for a similar cause and effect.
Could we return to those days when our politicians had similar goals but their approach was slightly different?……those days are gone….now it is about division and insults and total stupidity.
The hate spewed these days makes a great country out of reach…….and the “new” era is only 6 months old…..a long long row to hoe.
Comments?

No Change, No Way

Since the Dems had their butts handed to them by Trump in the last election they have been running around looking for their moral compass with the hope of returning to their spot in the limelight…..they say that the leadership of the DNC is their first place to start and will build from there…..

Dems proved Saturday that they are the same spineless toads they have always been……by electing a Clinton-ite to DNC chair…….

Tom Perez was elected as the new chair of the Democratic National Committee on Saturday, replacing interim chair Donna Brazile, Politico reports. Perez, who served as Labor secretary under Barack Obama and is a former civil rights lawyer, won during the second ballot after falling a single vote shy in the first round of voting, according to Yahoo News. Perez’s victory ends a four-month race during which he campaigned on returning to organized labor as the central economic message of the Democratic Party.

Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, finished second in the race for DNC chair. Despite having a similar message to Perez, Ellison was backed by Bernie Sanders while Perez was backed by members of the Obama administration and was seen as the establishment choice, the Hill reports. He’s now faced with reuniting those two opposing factions of the party. NBC News tweets that Perez’s first move as chair was to make Ellison deputy chair. Ellison then told his supporters to “give everything you’ve got” to help Perez succeed, MSNBC tweets.

This is not new leadership…just more of the same…..

If they win next time around it will not be because of new leadership…..but rather a hatred of the leadership from the White House.

Are Dems Capable?

The Dems were handed their asses in 2016….and being true to form they have promised to learn their lesson and do a better job for the people of this country…….I call CRAP! on their promises.

They have learned nothing….but they could…..not in the direction they are traveling these days….

The Dems are still trying to embrace Clintonism….a trajectory that lost them an election…..

Last January, in his surprising endorsement of Senator Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich made an astute observation which bears repeating following Donald Trump’s victory on November 8th.

“I’ve known Hillary Clinton since she was 19 years old, and have nothing but respect for her,” he wrote in his blog. “In my view, she’s the most qualified candidate for president of the political system we now have. But Bernie Sanders is the most qualified candidate to create the political system we should have, because he’s leading a political movement for change.”

Despite the many theories circulating as to why Clinton lost the election, that quote says it all.

Source: The Democratic Establishment Is Doubling Down on Clintonism as Her Cronies Fail Upward :: Politics :: Features :: Democrats :: Paste

The Dems are pushing that the DNC will be the change needed……again….I don’t think so….

The seven leading candidates to serve as the next chair of the Democratic National Committee gathered at George Washington University on Wednesday night to dodge key questions about party reform and pander to the 447 insiders who will elect the next Democratic leader.

At a debate sponsored by The Huffington Post, contenders repeatedly called for “unity” and made vague calls for better “organizing” while sidestepping important issues about how the DNC should govern its future affairs.

Source: The DNC Contenders Are Not Interested In Your Populist Moment | The Huffington Post

Lots of drama around who will lead the DNC forward….my problem is the ones running are the ones that are the problem…..the people may be populist…leaders are NOT!

If they truly want to return to prominence then maybe they should take a look around……

The election of Donald Trump is part of an ongoing surge of right-wing nationalism across the globe, from Brexit to Hungary to the Philippines.

This presents a thorny problem for the left. Belligerent nationalism has caused many of the worst atrocities in modern history, from the Black Hand in Serbia to Nazi Germany. Yet the basic political instincts behind nationalism cannot simply be ignored or wished away.

If it is to defuse the more destructive aspects of nationalism, the left must admit the need for national fellow feeling — and ensure that, unlike the eurozone, any supranational institutions are created on a democratic basis.

Source: How liberals can learn to stop worrying and love nationalism

As much as I disliked the Tea Party…I will admit that they were successful…all the hate and vitriol was a success….maybe the Dems should take a page out of the playbook…..

Donald Trump represents a grave threat to liberal democratic values. On Capitol Hill, Republicans are falling in line and some moderate Democrats have signaled a willingness to cut deals. But ordinary Americans have the power to resist. We know this is true because we have seen local, grassroots organizing take hold before.

Eight years ago, two of us worked as congressional staffers and the other in immigrant rights organizing. President Obama had taken office with large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress and seemed poised to enact many of our shared priorities. Another force was taking shape, however, that would eventually bring federal policymaking to a halt.

Source: How to Stop Trump: Lessons From the Tea Party | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community

The Dems can return to the top of the mountain but it will take real work and real change…..as it is today….I do not see anything new on the horizon.

We need to dump the status quo…..we need an alternative to this nationalistic rise…..

A clash of two insurgencies is now shaping the west. Progressives on both sides of the Atlantic are on the sidelines, unable to comprehend what they are observing. Donald Trump’s inauguration marks its pinnacle.

One of the two insurgencies shaping our world today has been analysed ad nauseum. Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen and the broad Nationalist International that they are loosely connected to have received much attention, as has their success at impressing upon the multitudes that nation-states, borders, citizens and communities matter.

Source: We Need an Alternative to Trump’s Nationalism. It Isn’t the Status Quo | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community

The winds of change are blowing….but how hard?

Should We Go Left Or Right?

After the dismal showing in the EC by Clinton the Dems are scrambling trying to find a way to reclaim their lost glory.

Some think that they should embrace a more progressive tact…..while others are thinking of returning to the days of the “Blue Dogs”.

In case you are so damn young that the term “Blue Dog” means nothing to you then maybe I can help….

The Blue Dogs are the political descendants of a now defunct Southern Democratic group known as the Boll Weevils, who played a critical role in the early 1980s by supporting President Ronald Reagan’s tax cut plan. The Boll Weevils, in turn, may be considered the descendants of the “states’ rights” Democrats of the 1940s through ’60s. “Blue Dog Democrat” is derived from the term “Yellow Dog Democrat.” Former Texas Democrat Rep. Pete Geren is credited for coining the term, explaining that the members had been “choked blue” by “extreme” Democrats from the left. The term is also a reference to the “Blue Dog” paintings of Cajun artist George Rodrigue of Lafayette, Louisiana; the original members of the coalition would regularly meet in the offices of Louisiana representatives Billy Tauzin and Jimmy Hayes, both of whom had Rodrigue’s paintings on their walls.[citation needed] Tauzin and Hayes later switched to the Republican Party. The Blue Dog Coalition was formed in 1994 during the 104th Congress to give more conservative members from the Democratic party a unified voice after the Democrats’ loss of Congress in 1994.

Basically they are conservatives in Dem clothing…..they became popular when Bubba Clinton was prez along with his group the DLC.

Now that is out of the way…the question remains….should the Dems move Right or Left?

Believe it or not I read the American Conservative and they have some ideas for the Dems (not that any of them would listen)…..it is an excellent op-ed that deserves thought from the Dems…..

Ross Douthat’s latest column asks whether the Democrats have the capacity to move to the right in response to the election results:

That kind of movement is often part of how political parties recover from debilitation and defeat — not just by finding new ways to be true to their underlying ideology, but by scrambling toward the center to convince skeptical voters that they’ve changed. It’s what Democrats did, slowly but surely, after the trauma of Ronald Reagan’s triumphs; it’s what Bill Clinton did after his 1994 drubbing; it’s what Rahm Emanuel and Howard Dean did, to a modest degree, on their way to building a congressional majority in 2006. And it’s also what Donald Trump did on his way to stealing the Midwest from the Democrats this year — he was a hard-right candidate on certain issues but a radical sort of centrist on trade, infrastructure and entitlements, explicitly breaking with Republican orthodoxies that many voters considered out-of-date.

Source: Do The Democrats Have To Move Right? Or Left? | The American Conservative

While I do not agree with the conclusions, most of the conclusions, it still has merit…but since they, the Dems, are sticking with Pelosi as leader I do not see much change coming.

Me?  I say more progressive!