The Democratic primaries are gonna be such a sh*tshow

[Mr. Smith]

The Bernbots Establishment are mental. I can only imagine the stuff they'll dig up about people like Harris Warren, Booker Tim Ryan, Gillibrand Ellison, Cuomo Bullock, etc.

The thing is they could actually make some major progress if they toned it down and try to build relations with the Democratic base (aka POC youth). Bernie No one yet seems to get this...maybe Harris is getting there, but some of their hardcore supporters are being obtuse.

You want to change the Democratic party then win over POC Youth and keep them engaged. ****talking prominent black young politicians who don't like donor-pha&*()ing and Midwestern white politicians in general and calling everyone who disagrees with you a racist, sexist, or baby is good way to marginalize yourself.

FTFBOY

And P.S.: sidelining Ellison just because he went for Sanders takes out that high ground argument anyway, who ftr went to Sanders last year if under 30.

[Mr. Smith]

The Bernbots Establishment are mental. I can only imagine the stuff they'll dig up about people like Harris Warren, Booker Tim Ryan, Gillibrand Ellison, Cuomo Bullock, etc.

The thing is they could actually make some major progress if they toned it down and try to build relations with the Democratic base (aka POC youth). Bernie No one yet seems to get this...maybe Harris is getting there, but some of their hardcore supporters are being obtuse.

You want to change the Democratic party then win over POC Youth and keep them engaged. ****talking prominent black young politicians who don't like donor-pha&*()ing and Midwestern white politicians in general and calling everyone who disagrees with you a racist, sexist, or baby is good way to marginalize yourself.

FTFBOY

And P.S.: sidelining Ellison just because he went for Sanders takes out that high ground argument anyway, who ftr went to Sanders last year if under 30.

The Democratic base isn't young people. It is POC, mainly women.

Jesus, you guys don't even know who the main constituents are of the party you want to take over.

Young people are also disproportionately people of color; the overlap between the two groups shouldn't be ignored.

Exactly.

[Mr. Smith]

I'm not holding my breath though.  Despite what Shadows says, I'm not really sure how ugly it'll get.  For a couple reasons; first, I think there is less ideological distance between the factions in the party than the GOP, and most of the distance is based on messaging, tone, and what issues to focus on. Second, all of the D candidates in the pipeline are sorta... milquetoast.

That's not true. The biggest divide between Clinton and Sanders supporters was concerning trust in civic institutions. Source. Never forget that Hillary Clinton adopted 2/3's of Sanders platform yet millions of his most ardent supports didn't show up to vote for her and attacked her throughout the GE. Why? Because they didn't trust her when she said those things.

If the Democrats nominate somebody who progressives don't trust to follow through on their promises (and instead see them as being subservient to big money interests), then they will attack them in the GE and not vote for them.

Yes, I agree trust was at the heart of it, but where does trust comes from Timmy?  Messaging.  What issues to focus on.  Rhetoric.  How a candidate presents himself.  Optics.

I don't dispute that Clinton, in her heart of hearts, is certainly more of a neo-liberal than Sanders.  But how different are their respective platforms, really?  For all the talk of Sanders as a socialist, he's more of a reformer than an outright socialist.  He has more historical similarities with the early 1900s progressives than he does with say, Eugene Debs.  Sanders wants to break up banks and reform, to promote real market competition and prevent collusion.  He doesn't want to consolidate banks and then nationalize them.  Again, that's more progressive "trust-busting" than Eugene Debs.  Not to mention that both candidates actually moved closer to each other as the primaries went on.  Sure, Clinton had to take up some Sanders issues, but also consider that Sanders practically abandoned his former criticism of illegal immigration once the SJWs were let loose on him.

Fact of the matter is, TT, there is an overton window in the D party, and while Sanders may be on one side of it, and Clinton on the other, they are still very much within that window.  And Clinton could've easily moved leftward in that window with a few changes- e.g., fewer meetings with Goldman Sachs, more campaigning like she did in '08.

At the end of the day, we are a neo-liberal country and all of our candidates, D and R, fall within a certain range.  There is some evidence of that fraying- Trump was the first protectionist Republican in I don't even know how long, and Sanders is probably about as left-wing as a politician can be in the US.  But irrespective of that, both are still within the overton window of standard neo-liberal policies TT, and the Reagan system has not been seriously disrupted, at least yet.

No, no, no. It's not just about just messaging. You can spend millions on a marketing firm and you will still come up short with progressives. There's a large segment of the Democratic Party that fundamentally believes that politicians who take large donations from Big Pharma, Petroleum industries, Wall Street, etc. are paid off and will do nothing to help regular people. That's a deeply held belief in A LOT of people. Trump was so successful in part because he bragged about how he was self funding his campaign and how he wasn't beholden to donors the way Jeb and others were. That's part of the reason why no amount of attack ads could take him down during the primary; voters saw these attack ads were coming from people like Jeb and Cruz and figured they were empty suit politicians that didn't have their good in mind.

The other biggest difference between Sanders and Clinton supporters is concerning the question of "Has the Democratic Party been a force for good in the world?" And one side answers Yes while the other says No. The discussion progressives have have nothing to do with "pushing he Party to the other side of the Overton Window" and has everything to do with taking over the Party entirely (think of Goldwater's hostile takeover of the GOP in 1964 and multiply that by 2).

The DNC voted to keep accepting corporate donations and to have Perez over Ellison as the chairman and they haven't let up one bit on attacking Perez since then. And the corporate funding that folks like Schumer, Pelosi, and Perez oversee is seen as a fundamental threat to our democracy by much of the progressive base. This is a deep seething visceral hatred of the current Party establishment. And no amount of improved messaging is gonna take away the fact that anybody can just do two clicks on the internet to find out who's donated to a particular person.

Watch 2020 very carefully and you'll see the sh!tshow unfold. Don't just toss it aside as a slightly different perspective on ideas and LOOK for the attacks concerning trusting a specific candidate. You're already seeing this unfold with Harris and Booker (I suspect Cuomo might be next). This isn't something that can be easily reconcilable and it will not be reconciled cordially.

Except even self-funding isn't necessarily good. Look at California's attitude with Governor's and how Gray Davis still won just because Bill Simon was seen as trying to buy the election. In 2010, when Meg Whitman spent $120 million of her own money, or 2014 with Kashkari. Hell, part of the demise of the GOP there is partially because of this.

Whereas the populist GOP base may not care much for big wigs and connections, they have a respect for self-funders who don't seem beholden.

The Progressive base sees that "unbeholden" rich guy as someone who'll simply serve himself then over everyone else.

The way then is to promote the Bernie way of the small donations and send a message that everyone's included. Ossoff got where he did in part because of those small donations...too bad he 180'd in the last few weeks and started going on about budget balancing.

[Mr. Smith]

Based on how things are shaping up so far, I don't expect to vote in the 2020 GE.

Is there anyone currently speculated about right now that you would vote for?

He said he'd vote for Franken and Brown I know that (I'm gonna guess that includes Sanders and Warren).

^^ Yep. I didn't close the door on voting in 2020 (I certainly plan to vote in the primary), but I'm not going to vote for another liberal like Clinton. I sucked it up and took one for the team in 2016, despite very strongly disliking her, but not again. Brown, Franken, Sanders, and Warren are all good options; maybe someone else too, if their campaign persuades me. But I don't expect the party to pick anyone good, honestly.

I can't imagine the party to do what they did in 2016 again during the primaries, and I find it unlikely that they'd nominate another candidate as weak as Clinton.

What did they do? Nominate the candidate who got the most votes in the primary? What monsters.

They cleared the field entirely so that someone with such baggage and such a big Achilles Heel would get nominated in the first place. Last time that happened, it was Al Gore Time, we see where THAT went.