I am from Missouri, and if you had a national standard for Democrats, based on California or New York standards, you will only win California and New York. The democrats must understand that candidates must follow the issues of their district. Alabama and PA showed that if the Democrats show their support for local issues, they can win, but not if every Democrat must pass a liberal litmus test, they will lose. All the Republicans have to show is Pelosi’s face with your standards rolling on the TV screen and the Republicans will laugh all the way to Congress.
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He is a Democrat in name and that gives Democrats one more vote for a majority in the House.
Take what you’re given and try again next time.
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I’m from KY, so you’ve either misunderstood my point or gotten me grossly confused with someone else if you think I support this party purity nonsense. I want Democratic asses in seats. If that means the hearts and minds attached to some of those asses are too the right of me on some issues then so be it. You can’t run a true liberal in every district, but it’s a shame that a truly liberal district couldn’t nominate a true liberal.
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Can’t be said often enough.
When I lived in Pennsylvania, you could change parties, but had to sit out one primary before you could vote in you new party. Made complete sense.
She lost “despite,” not “in spite.”
It is not at all clear that it was Ds who elected Lipinski. It was almost certainly Rs in a stupid open primary.
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You are wrong about this, in every conceivable respect.
What is your definition of a liberal. Is it just pro-choice? Or pro universal health care, universal free college, lower taxes for individuals, jobs for all, minimum wage of $15 per hour. So, if a person is not pro-choice, he/she is not liberal even if he/she is for everything else. Wouldn’t that place the liberals in the same position as the religious right, who willing to accept anyone even Trump, just because of a Supreme Court appointment to support pro-choice, even when there are so many other issues that impact more lives. For what it worth, I sometimes hope that the Supreme Court stops abortion, I am sick of the issue. I am old enough to be in college when the decision was made, and I saw how good liberal people could not accept that decision. I think Trump has shown that these people voted to stop abortion, to the determent of their Christian souls. The abortion fight would be in each state government, not federal government. I am sometimes curious about what good things these Christians could do, if they just didn’t have that issue pulling them to the Republican party in national elections.
You’ve got to be joking.
Are you truly unaware of the number of court and state legislative cases and bills that have been presented AND passed in the last two decades that are all about taking down Roe v Wade, brick by brick? They number in the hundreds. HUNDREDS. Another GOP led state just passed another draconian anti-choice bill last week. They have never stopped, and will never stop. Yet another reason why every single vote in every single election counts. Because GOP led state houses are the majority in the US. This fight has never ended.
You leave the issue of a woman’s reproductive rights up to the states entirely with no federal jurisdiction, Roe is gone and so are women’s rights. Period. Welcome back to the dark ages of coat hangers and back alleys.
Women’s reproductive rights do NOT deserve to be shunned as though they are not also a civil rights issue. They are also an economic rights issue. The sooner people who dismiss it as background noise ( cough BernieSanders cough ) understand that, the better.
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I agree with you, at least in part, but a DINO won’t help the Democratic agenda, be it liberal or centrist if they want to hold things up by voting contrary if your “majority” is in name only as well. DINOs are not beholden to the Democratic Party, so you really can’t make them vote your way. Or am I missing something?
Referring to Lipinski’s win as simply a function of the “Democratic Machine” completely ignores the core issue of open primaries.
I think Rep. Lipinski is a dinosaur. But it wasn’t only Democrats who voted him in here. Recognize that for what it is, and try to fix the REAL problem.
Also recognize that the entire Illinois primary yesterday had such poor turnout numbers across the board that you can also safely and confidently state that you get the government you vote for, or in this case don’t bother to vote for. Maybe they need to work on GOTV and ground game efforts there too.
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Again, you’re misunderstanding what I’m saying, and then leaping to the nearest conclusion based on that misunderstanding. Lipinski is Conservative on several issues. Abortion is only one. He voted against O’care, he’s against even a $12/per hour minimum wage. As near as I can tell he’s not particularly liberal on any issue, but his
district is. That’s why it’s a shame that the more liberal candidate, the one with views that better suit the district, didn’t win. On the other hand, I’d be happy to see him win a district in Eastern KY where he’d be a vast improvement.
Judging by the fact that the religious right has abandoned almost every single moral principle they’ve claimed for the last several decades while pledging fealty to PP, I don’t hold out even a glimmer of hope that they’d change their voting habits in the slightest if Roe v. Wade were overturned. They’d just move on to try to outlaw the medical procedure in states where it’s legal and the fight would then move to upholding the anti-choice ruling and ensuring it remains intact.
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This is where taking back the House with enough of a majority to render a DINO vote toothless on some issues becomes important. Even having a DINO in that seat is better than a Republican, because while they aren’t going to vote with you 100% of the time, they are not going to vote AGAINST you 100% of the time either.
It’s a numbers game. So GOTV efforts become important to swing the House. Give Nancy Pelosi enough votes to whip then Lipinski becomes the outlier she doesn’t have to convince…and in the meantime, start working on GOTV efforts in that district so that an actual Democrat can win. /mytwocents
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Except that’s not true. DINOs, more often than not, put us over the edge to not only capture the majority, which allows us to bring up legislation for a vote in the first place, they tend to vote with the party on most other issues than the handful they disagree with. It’s simple, a DINO might vote with the party 70+% of the time while a Republican may vote with Democrats 10% of the time.
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That’s why I love local grassroots movements doing the heavy lifting in elections, which is what the Blue Wave is all about. They understand their local constituencies and automatically have a level of trust and insight that the DCCC can’t match. My favorite example is the transgender candidate who beat the anti-transgender bigot in VA–by talking nonstop about potholes. We have a lot of sensible liberals out in red country; they just need support on their terms and the absence of nutty electoral handicaps like the one Newman had to face.
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Support for Trump from evangelicals has risen 6% since January. Stormy Daniels is a plus in their eyes. Christian fanatics simply have to be outmaneuvered at this point. They cannot be placated.
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I agree with you, but when the majority of white women voted for Trump, sometimes, I think they should get what they voted for, the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Then if they don’t like what they got, they can fight it in state legislatures or by state referendum. If a state bans abortions, then we could have organizations to help these women travel to a pro-choice state.
It can feel good to make this argument, but following it to its logical conclusion leads to the “makes the whole world blind” scenario and I think we ought to be better than that. Just because people “deserve” something, doesn’t mean they should suffer those consequences. There are less retributive mechanisms to achieve the same ends.
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Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of non-white women voted for Clinton, and we’ve suffered enough due to the stupidity of a majority of white women. We don’t deserve to be further punished because of their actions.
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I don’t consider it “punishment”. I just think sometimes, that there should be consequences for your actions and your votes. One of the consequences is the reversal of Roe v. Wade, So be it. Deal with it. If not in this election cycle, it will happen. My thought is that it would change the entire political arguments on the national level. What could the Republican run on, if they didn’t have the Supreme Court as an issue for their religious base?