What’s with the photo? Did trump just promise them unlimited porn star visits?
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I love it.
We can go from song to song, Stormy Weather to Hello, Shutdown my old friend.
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“When Republicans lose the majority in the House and Democrats have the House, and they use the House to impeach Trump and ramp up the Russia investigations, we’ll look back to this moment, and this is the moment that it turned,” a GOP aide told CNN following the call."
Bingo! There is the reveal. They know they are facing a huge wave election, but they are also aware that blaming it on Trump will result in months of angry tweets. So they are starting to construct a narrative that gives them another goat to blame…DACA/immigration legislation.
But beyond that…just consider what this aide is saying. He does think Trump has committed impeachable acts (otherwise how could the House be used to impeach him?), and he does think there is much more to the Russian investigations, (otherwise, how could they “ramp up”?). He is unwittingly pulling back the kimono and showing us exactly what they are about on these issues.
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But as the senators boast to reporters about their bipartisan bonhomie and progress toward a deal, a fear hangs over the negotiations: that conservatives in the House of Representatives and a mercurial President advised by immigration hardliners will shoot down whatever they manage to produce.
Of course we already knew this before Chuck Schumer fell for the Lucy-with-the-Football gag yet again. A real genius, that one…
Dems can agree to tRump’s wall as part of the DACA package. Protection and a path to citizenship. The wall can be built as soon as the money arrives from Mexico.
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It’s even worse than that. A moderate bill probably would have the votes of the majority of the Republican caucus, since the hardliners are definitely in the minority. The way this has been reinterpreted is that no bill comes to the floor unless the Republicans can pass it without any Democratic votes. That gives that minority hardliner caucus veto power over damn near everything.
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then there’s this, obviously the correct melanin concentration plays a factor, that and the “pres” is a russian stooge
In Moscow, it’s a status symbol to have a Miami-born baby, and social media is full of Russian women boasting of their little americantsy.
as the Daily Beast first reported, condo buildings that bear the Trump name are the most popular for the out-of-town obstetric patients
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/birth-tourism-brings-russian-baby-boom-miami-n836121
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Let’s go bigger: General Amnesty.
If DREAMers support the bipartisan, 1994 Commission on Immigration Reform’s (CIR)* recommendations, reform birthright citizenship, change the law to expressly make it a 3rd degree felony to be in the U.S. illegally, place the question of “citizenship” back on the 2020 census, assess penalties to municipal authorities who harbor illegal aliens, close the Child Tax Credit loophole, establish English as the official language, help fund the border wall with either a 25% fee on remittance sent back to their country of origin or assess a fee of $3,000 per amnesty applicant, extend permanent residency requirement from five to twelve (12) years along with terminating all legal immigration for the next decade,** a pathway to U.S. citizenship for the first 11 million registered illegal aliens living and working here at a time certain can be achieved.
- Source: http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1439&context=lawreview
** With the exception of agricultural and merit-based immigration.
THIS story needs to be on the front page of every newspaper until the midterms! Meet it with pure Democratic outrage and get the stupider GOP House members to run with the ball! Call it a “Russian Invasion”!
Come ON Dems and media rabble rousers, this isn’t that hard!
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No, they’re too busy winning ACTUAL battles and not the Battle of the Words that many progressives want. But when they talk about the need for messaging, they don’t mean saying words that convince Republicans to back down or provide cover for Red State Democrats. What they mean are the words that make them feel better about being a Democrat. But since those words are powerless in this battle, what’s the point?
In the meantime, Congressional Democrats continue to do the best they’ve got with the limited hand they have, partly because they don’t waste all their energy fighting a messaging war with Republicans. Truth is, most people already know what they think about the issues and if they don’t, they’re not paying attention at all. The problem isn’t that Democrats aren’t using the right magic words. The problem is that everyone’s already heard all the words and has made up their minds; so messaging battles are mostly pointless.
So Republicans spend all their time on messaging, and still couldn’t pass Trumpcare, or the Wall, or Trump’s terrible infrastructure plan, or anything else last year, and had to limit what the Trump Taxcuts could do because they could only get 51 votes in the Senate. Explain to me exactly what words are supposed to do again?
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I agree except on one point: gerrymandering. The smart long term move for Democrats in 2021 is to back nonpartisan districts. While a gerrymander can be reversed, as you recommend, nonpartisan districts are irreversible. Voters wouldn’t want to get rid of this. If districts are drawn in a nonpartisan way, Democrats win.
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Like I said, the Child Molester Rule.
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Yes, it is. The reason Republicans can do this is because they control a giant chunk of media real estate, which is just an echo chamber that gets orders from above. When one source says something, they all repeat it so it gives the appearance that it’s the most important thing ever; when it’s basically just one person telling them all what to say.
Democrats have nothing like that and I hope they never do. TPM and Think Progress are the leftiest websites I’ll read, and spend most of my time reading nonpartisan news and the occasional rightwing site to see what the other half says. I’ve found that people who spend most of their time in the small leftwing echo chamber are often misinformed about what’s going on, which is one reason they think we can insult our way to victory if we say that Republicans are racist enough times. But I’d rather lose with a legitimate free media that reports what it wants than “win” with the Soviet-style propaganda Republicans use.
The reason Republicans win elections is because Democrats don’t vote in midterms, Republicans gerrymandered our country to pieces, and the far-left hates the Democratic Party and will do anything to tear it down. But then Republicans win office and can barely get anything done because they spent so much time on messaging in their echo chamber that they don’t have real policies that are popular. As I said above, the Trump Taxcuts were the only major piece of legislation they passed last year and it barely got done with 51 votes. Why does anyone think we should copy them?
The biggest problem for Democrats is that most people don’t like politics and therefore don’t vote. And the reason they don’t like politics is because they see it as mudslinging and fights. They want solutions, not a flame war.
Any time a Democrat insults Trump or Republicans, it only reinforces the message that we’re just as bad as them and have no real solutions. It works as affirmation for people who already agree with us, while turning off millions of people who refuse to vote at all and won’t listen to anything we say.
This is why Obama was so popular, because he never insulted anyone or engaged in flame wars. It wasn’t because he was too nice, but because he knew that insults are counterproductive and turn off non-political people. When they go low, we stay high. That’s the message that Democrats need to reinforce. Fight fire with water, not fire. They want us to get in the mud with them, but it only makes us dirty every time.
thank you. 2010 and 2014 are the worst examples (2010 especially because it was a census/redistricting election). When we did, 2006, we were able to start the cycle that led to Obamacare etc.
Respectfully disagree. Republicans have nothing substantive to offer but have turned the map almost totally red because they message to (1) their base, and (2) the culture at large. Clinton and Obama were vote winners because of messaging. They had no policy ideas that were not already out there. And there are magic words, ‘chain migration’ being the most recent example. ‘Dreamers’ being another.
Democrats in congress have won nothing. The electoral victories in 2017 were delivered by Democratic grassroots who communicated very effectively with each other, not with the mythic nonpartisan moderate of good faith. At the very least, Congressional Democrats need to communicate with the very people who are driving the Blue Wave. So far, zip.
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First off, Bill Clinton didn’t get 50% of the vote in either election and most likely only won due to a third party siphoning votes from two Republicans who weren’t very popular. I’ve never understood why people think he was a great politician, since he barely won either election and achieved almost nothing, and didn’t even try to pass any liberal policies in his second term. That’s why progressives hated him at the time and you’d have been laughed at if you said he was good at messaging back then. It’s only in hindsight that lefties have embraced him, due to his popularity. But I remember having to defend Clinton from both the left and right, and only the lefties had valid complaints.
And it’s funny that you say Obama was good at messaging, because I remember distinctly how many progressives insisted that he couldn’t beat McCain because he was too nice. And once he was in office, he was constantly attacked by lefties for not being strong enough with his words. He wasn’t beating up Republicans or reciting talking points. He spoke to the American people like they were adults and remains the most popular Democrat in the country.
And sure, if you want to believe that grassroot Democrats did all the work to stop everything Republicans wanted besides the Trump Taxcut, go for it. I disagree. I think grassroot liberals are definitely important to the equation, but couldn’t have done it without Democrats in Congress. Moreover ,the reason we were able to stop Trumpcare was because it was such a terrible idea, not because liberals had good messaging while Democrats in Congress sat with their thumbs up their butts.
Again, you can believe what you want, but I don’t find your words remotely persuasive. And that demonstrates my point. Words just don’t have much power and people rarely change their minds even when they’re wrong. And what you’re wanting are Democrats to affirm your beliefs, not change anyone’s mind. But unless we have words to make Republicans back down or give cover to Red State Democrats, our words are of limited use. That’s why Republicans have amazing messaging, but have almost nothing to show for it.
Democrats are going to have to let the GOP throw the dreamers under the bus. This is like negotiating with terrorists. Ending DACA was done intentionally to gain leverage. I bet you Trump didn’t even know what DACA was two days before he ended it. Trump and the far right GOP truly HATE immigrants and there is no way we’re going to get any kind of good immigration deal out of this. The only way for meaningful reform is for Dems to have a majority in the House, super majority in the Senate and the presidency.