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[Bishman]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/us/democrats-dnc-chairman-trump-keith-ellison-tom-perez.html

WASHINGTON — Reduced to their weakest state in a generation, Democratic Party leaders will gather in two cities this weekend to plot strategy and select a new national chairman with the daunting task of rebuilding the party’s depleted organization. But senior Democratic officials concede that the blueprint has already been chosen for them — by an incensed army of liberals demanding no less than total war against President Trump.

Immediately after the November election, Democrats were divided over how to handle Mr. Trump, with one camp favoring all-out confrontation and another backing a seemingly less risky approach of coaxing him to the center with offers of compromise.

Now, spurred by explosive protests and a torrent of angry phone calls and emails from constituents — and outraged themselves by Mr. Trump’s swift moves to enact a hard-line agenda — Democrats have all but cast aside any notion of conciliation with the White House. Instead, they are mimicking the Republican approach of the last eight years — the “party of no” — and wagering that brash obstruction will pay similar dividends.

Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, vice chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, said there had been a “tornado of support” for wall-to-wall resistance to Mr. Trump. Mr. Inslee, who backed a lawsuit against the president’s executive order banning refugee admissions and travel from seven majority-Muslim countries, said Democrats intended to send a stern message to Mr. Trump during a conference of governors in the nation’s capital.

“My belief is, we have to resist every way and everywhere, every time we can,” when Mr. Trump offends core American values, Mr. Inslee said. By undermining Mr. Trump across the board, he said, Democrats hope to split Republicans away from a president of their own party.

Among rank-and-file Democrats, however, it is far from clear that the rhetoric of heated opposition is unwelcome. A survey published on Wednesday by the Pew Research Center found that nearly three-quarters of Democrats said they were concerned the party would not do enough to oppose Mr. Trump; only 20 percent were concerned Democrats would go too far in opposition.

A handful of liberal groups have already sprung up threatening to wage primary challenges against incumbent Democrats who they see as insufficiently militant against Mr. Trump, raising the prospect of the same internecine wars that plagued Republicans during President Barack Obama’s administration.

“Part of what I think the Bernie campaign taught us, even the Trump campaign taught us, and now the resistance is teaching us, is just ditch the consultants and consult with your conscience and constituents first,” said Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, warning his fellow Democrats that “it’s a fool’s errand to try to plan this out like it’s a traditional political operation.”

Democrats are realizing the old playbook doesn't work anymore.

 

[NYCmetsfan]

"bow to voters"

isn't that how its supposed to work?

 

[Skatterd]

Good.
There is no room to reason with them anymore.

 

[Dylan Sexbang]

High road failed us, (and many other aspects). Time to go low while you still can.

 

[BigAT]

"bow to voters"

isn't that how its supposed to work?

 

[Big Blue]

"bow to voters"

isn't that how its supposed to work?

I was thinking the same thing.

 

[UnemployedVillain]

"bow to voters"

isn't that how its supposed to work?

Yeah, the article words it as if elected officials shouldn't be representing their voter's desires

 

[ShadowSwordmaster]

Good to hear.

 

[RustyNails]

Article headline makes it seem like Superman is being forced to kneel before Zod.

 

[Ithil]

They don't compromise. So why bother trying?

 

[wandering]

Speaking of Jay Inslee, he just signed an EO forbidding Washington state agencies from participating in immigration raids or inquiring about immigration status.

http://www.thestranger.com/slog/201...-federal-immigration-raids-religious-registry

 

[Mariolee]

"bow to voters"

isn't that how its supposed to work?

For real though.

 

[Trouble]

They don't compromise. So why bother trying?

Exactly. Republicans have repeatedly said they want to compromise, then stabbed dems in the front the first chance they get. We are way past the point where deals can be struck with good faith.

 

[whitemex88]

But the only reason the Republicans were able to dick Obama all the time is because they controlled the house. The only hope the dems have is are the next year's mid-terms. I mean I'm all for this approach I just don't expect much to really come of it. The right will just call them whiny baby snowflakes and dismiss any of what they have to say.

 

[Emperor_Uriel]

"bow to voters"

isn't that how its supposed to work?

Only amongst politically-active, educated groups.

Outside of them, it's more "elect someone who represents your values and will do the hard thinking for you."

 

[ZealousD]

Yeah, the article words it as if elected officials shouldn't be representing their voter's desires

Because the traditional playbook said that they should be representing the desires of corporate donors and lobbyists.

Honestly, our national media has become saturated enough that I do think that the presidential election is much more resistant to pressure from big donors and advertising, but I don't know how well this is going to play on the local level. Corporate advertising can still be pretty effective there.

 

[PantherLotus]

This is the best news since November 7th.

NO MORE QUARTER. NONE.

 

[lastplayed]

"bow to voters"

isn't that how its supposed to work?

In functioning democracies, sure.

 

[NYCmetsfan]

we'll i mean we are talking about dems.

I could care less how cynically republicans view their voters, because I'm not a republican voter and won't be unless they radically change their platform and stop trying to burn the world

 

[RPGCrazied]

The left gets its tea party?

Lets crush Trump.

 

[Violence Jack]

I want to know who's dumb enough to try and to compromise with Trump? You don't make a deal with the devil.

 

[old manatee]

Wow it's sad that they have to listen to the voters. At least they exhausted every other option first.

 

[The Last Wizard]

"bow to voters"

isn't that how its supposed to work?

The problem with government, they forget who their bosses are.

 

[Ithil]

But the only reason the Republicans were able to dick Obama all the time is because they controlled the house. The only hope the dems have is are the next year's mid-terms. I mean I'm all for this approach I just don't expect much to really come of it. The right will just call them whiny baby snowflakes and dismiss any of what they have to say.

The more the right ignores angry voters with bullshit excuses like "paid protesters" and "snowflakes" the angrier they get and the more likely it is the right gets blindsided by a surge in 2018.

 

[jviggy43]

I'll wait to see it before I believe it.

 

[Bowler]

Is this some hocus Pocus reverse physiology swamp draining?

 

[the_sun_king]

Time to give these un-American bastards a taste of their own medicine.

 

[BeesEight]

"bow to voters"

isn't that how its supposed to work?

I mean, to a point. If the people were screaming, I don't know, "Lock her up!" you wouldn't just bow to them blindly. There's more to the job than simply doing what voters say.

That said, this is about taking a scorched earth mentality towards Trump so nuance isn't really necessary in this case. Oftentimes voters are wrong and should be ignored. I'm unconvinced this is one of those times.

 

[Carnby]

Letthemfight.gif

 

[Fracas]

I think this is the way to go. Obama extended an olive branch for 8 years and got nothing but the middle finger in return.

"bow to voters"

isn't that how its supposed to work?

To be fair, voters got us in this mess to begin with

 

[Kayhan]

bu bu the billionaire donors.....

 

[dragonfart28]

"bow to voters"

isn't that how its supposed to work?

I fuckin hope not.

Voters can be pretty stupid.


It's a representative democracy for good reason.


What voters want and what's actually in their best interests are two different things.

 

[SapphiCine]

"bow to voters"

isn't that how its supposed to work?

Not exactly. We have a representative democracy which is to give our representatives some agency. Otherwise we would just have pure democracy.

 

[Rentahamster]

Effective if they make it issues based. Not so effective if it's identity based. Time will tell, however.

 

[Zophar]

So long as the courts and our democratic rights to vote stay in place, this nightmare might only last two years at max.

 

[RPGCrazied]

So long as the courts and our democratic rights to vote stay in place, this nightmare might only last two years at max.

Yeah. If we have to suffer 4 years of Trump, we have to take seats back in 2018 to gain control and cripple his Presidency.

 

[Goro Majima]

I don't think this begins and ends with Trump.

Voters were angry with Congress and career politicians before the election and I don't see why that would change now. Trump has certainly accelerated the left's voting base to galvanize in a call for change after they had already built on the Sanders platform last summer.

I guess the hope would be for the blue states to push further left and to use Trump as an opportunity to pick up seats in red states via centrist candidates.

 

[wildfire]

In Virginia, Tom Perriello, a former congressman seeking his party’s nomination for governor, apologized after calling Mr. Trump’s election a “political and constitutional Sept. 11.”

As a New Yorker sensitive to invoking 9-11 I wouldn't have apologized if I thought of this remark myself.

Trump has proven himself time and again to be huge threat to our society and so far it's the lawsuits as well as the incompetence, of his team and his own ability, preventing his worst announced plans from being implemented properly.

 

[kirblar]

I don't think this begins and ends with Trump.

Voters were angry with Congress and career politicians before the election and I don't see why that would change now. Trump has certainly accelerated the left's voting base to galvanize in a call for change after they had already built on the Sanders platform last summer.

I guess the hope would be for the blue states to push further left and to use Trump as an opportunity to pick up seats in red states via centrist candidates.

Here's the trick: they are always angry.

The Dem's hopes lie w/ Clinton's strategy of flipping R voters in Urban areas. The strategy actually worked, it just didn't make up for those losses in rural areas in those few states that ended up mattering.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/...-house-control-is-following-the-sun.html?_r=0

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-09/the-democrats-new-base-romney-voters

As a New Yorker sensitive to invoking 9-11 I wouldn't have apologized if I thought of this remark myself.

Trump has proven himself time and again to be huge threat to our society and so far it's the lawsuits as well as the incompetence, of his team and his own ability, preventing his worst announced plans from being implemented properly.

VA was also hit on 9/11, making the remark really stupid.

 

[PeakPointMatrix]

As a New Yorker sensitive to invoking 9-11 I wouldn't have apologized if I thought of this remark myself.

Yep, New Yorker here too and my first thought (I even wrote it here day of) was I hadn't felt this emotionally shook, saddened and hopeless since the day I came home from school and saw the looping footage of the planes slamming into the towers on the news.

It was just total emotional shock.

 

[GK86]

I'm sure the Dems will fuck this up.

 

[Mentosrock]

I'll see who the DNC chooses to lead them to get a better sense of which direction they're really going to go in. Seeing a bunch of sources highlighting Tom Perez as the front-runner is already an indication that they're not going to put their money where their mouth is.

 

[wildfire]

VA was also hit on 9/11, making the remark really stupid.

Not stupid at all. Are you going to sit at your keyboard and say Trump didn't immediately make moves that are beginning to upend the world order in addition to what's going on within our own border?

People didn't die but lives are being changed very fast at the moment and the incoming pain is obvious.

 

[Shake Appeal]

Yeah, the article words it as if elected officials shouldn't be representing their voter's desires

Well, it's the New York Times of 2017. They're as confused by what's happening around them as the Democratic Party is.

 

[Carpe Carnim]

I would love to see Perez work the levers of power, because I think he is really good at it, but I think the more strategic play is to elect Ellison, who is better positioned to get the attention of rightly frustrated Midwestern Lefties. This is going to be a rebound job. Whoever takes that role next either needs to be the next incarnation of Phil Jackson in MJ's prime, or expect to step-aside after the wheels get put back on the Dem's cart.

At some point, something has to give. There will be a violent action, or one will be Breitbart'ed into existence, justifying the inevitable change in language, and tone. Declaring media companies 'enemies of the people' and glibly hand-waving away pissed off voters as 'made-up' or 'professional agitators', is bound to rile up both sides. We have a gaggle of ham-fisted, Mayberry Machiavellians puppeting a doddering, old racist with a Twitter addidction. It's the Gaslighting of the entire globe, in real-time, with emoji.

Everything is fair-game, I'm pretty sure that's the conclusion GOP Legislative leaders came to, right about 2009. Now comes the hard part: playing chicken with powerful narcissists

 

[Boney]

Yeah, the article words it as if elected officials shouldn't be representing their voter's desires

But they don't?

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites...testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

 

[Abstrusity]

I will not REST until Republicans fear using the term 'Demorat' because the last time they did, we dragged them under the mud and held them there 'til the bubbles stopped.

The name of the game cannot be "When they go low, we go high," it has to be "when they go low, we get even."

I want to destroy the GOP as an institution. I want them to fear leaving their homes. I want them to quietly, meekly, mutter their worthless ideas and insipid phrases with a stutter borne from fear of awakening the beast again.

They look like Biff used to be in Back to the Future. I want to make them like Biff is at the end of it.

And we're not going to do that unless we fight. Every step will be downwind of their bullshit, and we're going to have to keep going until their toxic ideology is gone.

To quote Sean Connery in The Untouchables, "If you open the ball on these people, you must be prepared to go all the way. They won't give up the fight until one of you is dead."

The second part of it, that I won't quote here for risk of being misconstrued as calling for violence, rings true as a metaphor. They want to fuck with us, hit them back harder. Escalate. Push them to the brink then blame them for doing it.

For too long have they called us slurs, reported to their people how bad we are, all while knowing we'd never stoop to that level -- we'd never be able to convince people otherwise.

I don't want to convince them otherwise. They're already convinced that we're the worst imaginable.

Let's show them that their tiny worldviews couldn't even begin to conceptualize how bad it can get.

I want war.

 

[whyamihere]

Yeah, the article words it as if elected officials shouldn't be representing their voter's desires

It's a weird headline their editor chose.

 

[Bishman]

The survey NYT cites:

http://www.people-press.org/2017/02/22/in-trump-era-what-partisans-want-from-their-congressional-leaders/

 

[Ithil]

I will not REST until Republicans fear using the term 'Demorat' because the last time they did, we dragged them under the mud and held them there 'til the bubbles stopped.

The name of the game cannot be "When they go low, we go high," it has to be "when they go low, we get even."

I want to destroy the GOP as an institution. I want them to fear leaving their homes. I want them to quietly, meekly, mutter their worthless ideas and insipid phrases with a stutter borne from fear of awakening the beast again.

They look like Biff used to be in Back to the Future. I want to make them like Biff is at the end of it.

And we're not going to do that unless we fight. Every step will be downwind of their bullshit, and we're going to have to keep going until their toxic ideology is gone.

To quote Sean Connery in The Untouchables, "If you open the ball on these people, you must be prepared to go all the way. They won't give up the fight until one of you is dead."

The second part of it, that I won't quote here for risk of being misconstrued as calling for violence, rings true as a metaphor. They want to fuck with us, hit them back harder. Escalate. Push them to the brink then blame them for doing it.

For too long have they called us slurs, reported to their people how bad we are, all while knowing we'd never stoop to that level -- we'd never be able to convince people otherwise.

I don't want to convince them otherwise. They're already convinced that we're the worst imaginable.

Let's show them that their tiny worldviews couldn't even begin to conceptualize how bad it can get.

I want war.

"When they go low, we kick em in the head" or "When they go low, we step on them".

They sound good to me.