DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus The stunning political power of AOC

Your math is what isn't adding up. I never said anything about Europe.

What does that have to do with her being a viable candidate for President?

So if progressives support the same programs they have in Europe, they're communists. But if Europe has those same programs they are not communists?

A child of five can see through this charade.

Right. That's why I am not going to waste my time with your blabber. If I had a balloon, I'd give you one.

And this is where the rubber meets the road. Let's face it, they see how you have to win a presidential election. They can make all these claims about progressive values and how progressives are becoming greater in numbers.

The problem is when you ask them to show you how a progressive candidate can win the electoral college. As of now they simply can't. Will that change at some point in the future? Maybe, but it's a lot further off than they make it sound.

I'm not against many progressive ideas and programs they support, but that's not really the point here. The point is they need to realize that's not a package you can sell on a national level to win the presidency.

You would just fill that balloon full of crap and tell me it was candy.

If the worst thing that Pit is a centrist dem, that’s okay. A centrist dem is a lot better than being someone who endorses misogyny and advocates for poll taxes.

Right...

If you want, I can pull receipts from when you’ve made misogynistic statements and talked about how only tax payers should be able to vote.

So again, feel free to tell me I’m wrong. I have receipts to support my statements.

I am sure I have, I probably remember many to some degree of accuracy. Lot's of things have been said in this forum and I have said my fair share. It isn't so important to me to keep notes.

AOC for President in 2032, let the attractive Republicans fight for weapons

It’s the Cold War ingrained defense mechanism I referred to in another thread.

.

I’m not kidding either, AOC has a whole lot going for her, tons of potential. I’d like to see her debate one female representative from Colorado.

It’s time we stop hiding behind our guns.

What? Ask yourself this,, Did you or anyone you know that Obama was a Viable Candidate until he was? Nope.

Same with Clinton... Hey,, What about Carter.

Yet you named two very centrist candidates. Remember Sesame Street? "One of these things is not like the other."

the point was nobody thought they were viable until they weren't!

So you totally wish to dismiss the ideology of the candidates as a part of the equation when it comes to what helped make them viable? The viability of a candidate has a lot to do with their platform which is what attracts voters. It wasn't a magic song or their picture that made them viable.

When you are a virtually unknown candidate the #1 method of garnering support is your political platform.

Now, why would you put words in my mouth... I was speaking to the viability of candidates...

Then let's discuss what makes a candidate viable. There are reasons why unknown candidates become viable. It isn't due to some magic spell. What you did was bring up two very centrist candidates with totally different political leanings than an AOC or Bernie to make such a comparison.

I pointed out the huge contrast between your examples and AOC. Bernie wasn't a viable candidate until he was.... And then he wasn't.

The two you brought up as a comparison have totally different platforms than AOC. If you wish to discuss how an unknown candidate becomes viable, you can't just say that it's happened before and make no comparison between the candidates.

Well I guess you can because you seem to think so.

Some people just say, "It's happened before" and leave it at that. Then there are those who say, "Let's look at why and how it happened."

What ever,,, someone that wasn't considered viable until they became viable....you can dress it up anyway you want.

Yeah, the why and how it happened means nothing. Their platform means nothing. Their message means nothing.

Farce.

When polls steadily show progressive platform ideas have 50-60-70-80 percent national support, the problem isn't the platform. The real problem is the "red scare" tactics used by the establishment corporatists on both sides to continue selling out America for donation bribes. American socialism is part of the fabric of our society dating back to Ben Franklin's fire department and public libraries. Yet the corporatists, MSM, and far right (because they've been lied to) decry socialism at every turn. Even solid American centrist corporatists ideas like a quality infrastructure can't get done in that atmosphere.

And the crazy anti education movement in this country kills any actual good ideas that ANYONE tries to get done. If the political landscape isn't super emotionally charged, most americans ignore it. Decent things like treating those with different sexual preferences the same as hedrosexuals is somehow taboo? Turning that into an attack on religion... smh. I bet Jesus never worried about who loved who in his world. His relationship and probable secret marriage to Mary Magdalene would have been scoffed at today too. smh. And you can't tell me none of his followers were gay. I don't recall him refusing them food, housing, medical care, or a seat in church for that... Oh and Jesus was a huge socialist if he was real at all... but that fact gets overlooked too. An educated electorate would be able to see things as they are and not as they are told they are... hence the dumbing down of America and the increasing extreme tribalism in our politics. If people understood how the draconian rules (not laws) in the Senate are used to stop popular legislation, they would not stand for it. If they understood that many of these rules were created to ensure white dominance in our society, they would not stand for it. If they understood how much money we give to corporations and spend to protect corporate interest while allowing them to struggle to make ends meet, they would not stand for it. And all of this plus many more ridiculous reasons from both sides are why we can't have a government and systems that work for all of us instead a select few.

So no Pit, it has little to do with platform and much more to do with sheep following their corporate masters and regurgitating the lies embedded in the political landscape to atack and to prevent those in power from losing their grip on that power. Any idiot can see the polls showing how popular progressive ideas are and how they are gaining traction into the mainstream but most can't see why those popular ideas don't become American realities because they can't connect the facts and mindlessly swallow the BS they are fed by the powers that be, PERIOD.

You want to know how Progressives have to win? By fighting like hell everywhere this sheepish ignorance rears its head and telling it like it is. Unlike Bernie, AOC does that in spades. I don't know if it will happen in your lifetime boomer, but she will most likely be POTUS in mine.

Wow, about ten minutes after my rant this was published:

Democrats near pressure point on nixing filibuster

The Senate is threatening to box in President Biden and congressional Democrats, who pledged to enact a bold agenda if given power.

With the House passing a slate of big bills and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) vowing to give them a vote on the floor, Democrats are quickly barreling toward a pressure point on whether to nix the legislative filibuster.

Without structural changes in the Senate, progressives warn that many of Biden’s big campaign promises are effectively doomed.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), asked about the progressive criticism, acknowledged, “There’s truth to it.”

“Unfortunately, we've reached that point. And if enough members in the Senate agree, we’ll change the rules,” Durbin said.

The filibuster has come back in the spotlight after the parliamentarian ruled recently that an increase of the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour didn’t comply with rules governing what could be included in the coronavirus legislation.

But there are bigger tests awaiting Senate Democrats as the House sends them a growing number of bills that likely can’t pass with the filibuster intact and wouldn’t meet the requirements of being squeezed into reconciliation.

Just this week, the House passed a sweeping election and ethics reform bill and police reform legislation — neither of which can get 60 votes in its current form. Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has lambasted the first, known as H.R. 1, and the second gets rid of a legal shield for police officers, known as qualified immunity. That’s considered a non-starter for most Republicans.

Schumer has also put the Equality Act — a sweeping civil rights bill that expands protections in education, housing, employment and more to LGBT people— on the Senate calendar, a first step to giving the bill a vote.

Schumer, during a weekly press conference, pledged that the Senate would no longer be a “graveyard,” but asked if he was willing to nix the legislative filibuster if Republicans blocked bills, he demurred.

“The bottom line is ... we're going to come together as a caucus and figure out a way to get the bold action the American people demand. But we will put bills on the floor. That's the huge difference between McConnell and us,” Schumer said.

Part of the problem for supporters of nixing the filibuster is that they don’t currently have the votes among Senate Democrats to do it.

A handful of others senators are viewed as wary of nixing the legislative filibuster. Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) are on the record against getting rid of it, positions they both reiterated as recently as this week.

But Democrats are betting the calculus within the caucus changes as they bring up big priorities for the party and Republicans block them from getting the 60 votes needed to overcome initial procedural hurdles.

“When they come to understand the futility of what we're engaged in. We can't even consider serious issues because of the Senate rules, and they have a different point of view,” Durbin said, asked what it would take to get Manchin and Sinema to a different position.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who is viewed as a key vote on potentially nixing the filibuster, told HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” that the filibuster was now being used to “stonewall” legislation rather than promote bipartisanship.

“I think we do need to go back and take a look at it. But I think we ought to give this Congress a chance to screw up before we change it,” he said.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who hasn’t explicitly come out in favor of gutting the legislative filibuster, predicted that if Democrats try to bring up bills and Republicans routinely block them, that will change the dynamic within the caucus.

“I think if you have an abstract discussion about should we change Senate rules, there’s a lot of people that just aren’t particularly passionate about that discussion. But if we start to get faced with a situation that bills we have repeatedly promised to our voters ... and then we find that Republicans want to block it, then we’ll have to ask ourselves what’s more important, keeping the promises that we made or some artificial Senate rule?” Kaine said.

Kaine added that if the bills were blocked and never passed because of GOP opposition and the Senate rules, it would be Democrats who would face backlash from voters in 2022.

“I think voters — I think they will hold it against the majority, if the majority doesn’t do what we said we would do,” he said.

There’s growing support within the caucus, even as recently as this week, for nixing the legislative filibuster in order to pass key priorities, building pressure on Schumer and Biden.

“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and to be honest I started out believing we should keep the filibuster. ... But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the filibuster has long been the enemy of progress. In fact, it’s been a highly effective tool to thwart the will of the people,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) wrote in a Facebook post this week.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who had previously expressed an openness to cutting the filibuster, also told Mother Jones after the House’s passage of H.R. 1 that “I would get rid of the filibuster.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who has long supported filibuster reform, said during an MSNBC interview that while the caucus didn’t currently have the votes to get rid of the filibuster, it could potentially reform it.

“One of the reforms we’re thinking about when it comes to the filibuster is just going back to the old days and saying if you want to stop something from passing then you actually have to sit on the floor, you actually have to give speech after speech,” Murphy said.

But to nix or reform the filibuster, Democrats would need every senator in their 50-member caucus and Vice President Harris. It’s not clear if growing support from colleagues or even the prospect of entrenched opposition will sway the caucus’s biggest opponents to getting rid of the rule.

Manchin, during a series of interviews on Sunday, reiterated his opposition to getting rid of the filibuster altogether.

But in remarks that quickly caught the attention of reform advocates, Manchin signaled an openness to making it more “painful” to use the procedural roadblock, including potentially looking at talking filibusters that require opponents to be physically on the floor.

“If you want to make it a little bit more painful, make them stand there and talk. I'm willing to look at any way we can,” Manchin told “Meet the Press.”

"But I am not willing to take away the involvement of the minority," he added. "I've been in the minority."

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/542017-democrats-near-pressure-point-on-nixing-filibuster

That sums it up right there.

At one time in the past, and at some point in the future, each party has been or will be in the minority. If you totally eliminate their voice, there is no reason to even show up for votes.

I have been against this in the past when some republican tried to float the idea.

No, not in this case.

What policy has 70-80% support? You could offer people a free cheeseburger with zero financial, environmental, etc negative impact and you probably still couldn't get a 2/3 majority vote.

Ooops

I'll be curious to see where AOC's career goes. I do think she's riding a wave of support with policies that have become more popular with the younger half of Gen Y, of which she is a part of, and largely across the board with Gen Z.

As the generations begin to shift, I could see more progressive ideologies weave their way into the mainstream of the Democratic party IF (and that's a big if) the Democratic powers that be stop trying to pull a full court press to contain it. Not saying that I agree with progressives here, but looking at 2016's primaries, and looking at how Pelosi works, Dems, and specifically the DNC have employed a top-down approach to button up their side. A mutual enemy in Trump has helped at that.

If they keep trying to make progressives fall in line, I could eventually see a hostile takeover like the RNC experienced in 2016, where the "expected" candidate(s) were steamrolled. I think some of that depends on whether the Republicans - Trump supporters specifically - stop galvanizing the left.

My memory could be off, but 20 years ago, I felt like it was Ralph Nader and not much else driving a very progressive agenda, and he was never really considered viable. Now, you have Sanders - who I think has more of a voice than Nader - along with a rising number of Progressives in the House of Reps. I imagine at some point they - probably AOC first - will make an attempt to cross over into a Senate seat. If they can pull that off, and still keep their presence in the House - or grow it, even - then I think they could change the landscape.

I agree with you that, right now, they are not viable candidates because they are not centrist enough. As times and generations change though, I think "centrist" might change as well, but I can't even pretend to have foresight into that.

The funny thing to me is that I do see this huge youth movement on the left, but don't really see much on the right, in terms of viable candidates in their 30's. Kinzinger is 43, which surprised me. Dan Crenshaw is the only one I see - who doesn't disgust me and/or scare the hell out of me, at least.

I can't really think of too many centrist Democrats that are up-and-coming either. Tulsi Gabbard, I suppose.

That's a convenient position after showing unwavering support for Trump as he was blatantly partisan for his entire presidency. GOPers always expect dems to do the right thing while they cheat like hell... they count on it because they think being fair and decent is a dem weakness. I say steamroll the GOP insurrectionists and fix America for working people.

I'm not one for steamrolling, and I get the logic of preserving the filibuster.

However, I do have to say that after the way McConnell conducted himself as majority leader, it would be hard to pass judgment on the Dems for "stepping up the shrewdness" so to speak.

I think throwing the filibuster out isn't a good move, but more to your point it definitely needs to be looked at and adapted. It's clearly being abused and warped into something bad and not what it was intended to be.

One thing to keep in mind with AOC is her district. Where she is now, she and her platform are relatively safe as she was elected from a very progressive area of NY. In terms of 'electability' (however we decide to define that), I think that needs to be taken into account when she tries to advance beyond her house seat and start to represent a broader swath of people.

Someone in office said it has to be more "painful" and I agree with that. I'd be all for the following procedure being put into place:

If it's a Republican filibuster, the member must take the podium and read the script of "The Birdcage" while doing accurate impersonations of each character's voice.

If it's a Democrat filibuster, the member must take the podium and recite arguments about which pickup truck is best for off-roading in Mississippi and why.

Yeah, I totally agree with that. If she's ever able to pull of a Senate seat in NY, then I think it means the goal posts have/are starting to shift.

I think goal posts are already moving, based on her being elected at all (she took out a bigtime Dem). But expanding beyond a notoriously progressive district to a larger seat (much less the presidency) is a whole 'nother ballgame.

There's only a couple of years difference between us. She will most likely never be president in your lifetime either.

You may not be a boomer but you are very boomeresque.

You sound like the lefts version of a crazy conspiracy theorist.

As per usual OCD rather than man up and admit a progressive can't even win the Democratic nomination for president much less the general election, you make excuses and rant.

I don't know. Both parties have use the filibuster for a long time. I think it is being used exactly as it was intended.

I don't think it is being abused. It's not like every bill that hits the senate floor dies a filibuster death.

What may not happen as much is both side trying to cut a deal.