Mojo Hand

Damn Tulsi, that's some dark shit.

I hate when people pronounce divisive like Bennett does.

Tax the hell is a terrible look.

Kamala: I've seen people sent to prison for far less. Hell, I've sent them there for far less. For like skipping school and shit.

"I never believed it" Uh, why did you say it then?

Biden has said so many shitty things over the years.

Get him, Gilly!

There's just going to be one debate group from here on out, right?

They don't really have anywhere else to go, I suppose.

Are you betting in death pools now?

The American people work hard for a living, okay? They don't need that kind of bullshit. (Veep joke, would vote for that ticket).

I'm becoming less and less certain that the cold war ever ended, let alone that we won it.

The one thing I can't get around on this issue is the treatment of kids at the border, particularly the child separations. How can anyone accept all of that without either being a sociopath or viewing Latinos as inherently inferior human beings whose lives don't matter as much?

I don't think I disagree with any of that, in general. It just seems to me that it's something better done outside of the election process by public interest groups and by cultural efforts like getting greater minority representation in various walks of life. I don't see how you fundamentally change people like that through a political campaign. The best I think you can do is offer a positive alternative vision and hope some of them gravitate towards it.

I don't doubt your sincerity, and I'm open to the possibility that you are right. But I wonder — do you know how the folks you are talking about feel about increased immigration by Latinos and Arab Muslims?

Decriminalizing border crossings doesn't mean open borders. It means that the borders will be enforced through civil laws under which the entrants will be deported but not jailed for a crime. The crime we're talking about isn't even the primary way our borders are enforced. It's only a misdemeanor.

Sorry if I was unclear. I said "although energizing the base is important" in the post about ideologically flexible voters, and there's no question that Dems need to turn out the left. But I think that is mutually reinforcing with attracting ideologically flexible voters who want a strong vision. A strong progressive vision will do double work, energizing the base and giving confidence to the people who just want something to believe in. If we move to the center, we de-energize the base and trade vision for polling data. In my view, that will hurt turnout on the left and fail to attract those ideologically flexible voters. Also, my point here has been more about strategy than policy or ideology. That is, about embracing policies we really believe in and persuading the public that we are right, not worrying about what Republicans will say or trying to triangulate a position from polling data. There is a range of legitimate progressive policies that can be at the center of that strategy. The question should be, what do we believe are the right policies for America? By no means am I advocating that the party move further left ideologically than Sanders. I actually think that's too far. I think the right spot is somewhere between Warren's policies and Harris's stated policies. I just don't trust Harris and I think she'll move hard to the center/right during the general. And I think Warren is really establishing a bargaining position on MFA and will move towards the Pete or Harris model as a compromise when push comes to shove. Their plans are a better ending point for negotiations than a starting point. And the compromise aspect is the most important part of all of this. Nothing these candidates propose will be enacted as is. Everything in Washington ends in compromise by the design of our government. Voters know this. What I think they want in a president — what they've proven to want — is to be able to believe in a vision that will guide the president when making those compromises. If you send in Warren against the GOP, you know that she'll fight for the strongest progressive ideals and wind up with a compromise that is center-left. If you send in someone with a centrist starting point, they'll wind up with a compromise that is right of center. So it's more about the values behind MFA than the policy details at this point.

The difference is that I'm not telling you that you don't really believe what you're saying. If I've misunderstood what you're saying, that's another issue. I read you as saying that Dems should enact the health care plan that is currently polling the highest. Is that mistaken?

You don't need to convince most of the public to literally favor M4A to win or get it enacted. You just need to convince them to trust your vision, despite the reservations they might have about your policies. (And it better work once enacted.) I want the Dems to enact a great health care plan that the public loves a few years later. You want the Dems to follow the path of the ACA: enact a Republicanish plan that kind of satisfies a small majority of people in polling at the time it is enacted, but that isn't what you really believe in or think will work. And lo and behold, it doesn't really work, and then the public blames you for it even though it was really the GOP's plan, and then it leads to a complete GOP takeover of government headed by Donald Trump. The GOP consistently gets the public to trust them with their votes despite majorities against their actual policies. On issue after issue over the last few decades, Dem policies have strong majorities in public polling, but that hasn't translated into the wins it should have. That's what Dems need to change. Stand for something real, fight for it, and let the chips fall where they may.

Donald Trump won with the centerpiece of his campaign being a massive cement wall from coast to coast that Mexico would pay for. Dems need to stop being afraid of how Republicans will portray them and start pushing a strong, confident vision. Don't bow to what the public currently thinks of the Green New Deal — make them believe in it. That's what leadership is.

No. And I think the continuing stigma around the word does hurt Bernie, which is among many reasons why I think Warren is the stronger candidate in terms of likelihood of winning. But Bernie is a unique case, just as Trump was.

Yes, it's false to claim that current polls support Bernie's version of MFA. It's also false for Kamala to claim that her plan is supported by 200 economists who signed a letter in support of Bernie's MFA. Things like that should be corrected. But I don't really care about the current polling for single payer. I care about which candidate can persuade voters to give it a shot. Was the ACA a huge electoral success when it was enacted because it was net favorable in the polls? It quickly moved to strongly net unfavorable, and Dems lost the House and then the Senate and then the presidency, in no small part because Obamacare was hated by the public. And that was because Republican messaging moved the polls. You want to do that all over again. Yes, the current center is being moved left. But that isn't because of centrists. It's because of the far left. The quick progress on gay rights is entirely because of what was called the "radical homosexual agenda" by many at the time. It happened in spite of centrists and the conventional wisdom, leaving people astonished at how something that helped Kerry lose in 2004 could flip so quickly after that. And the recent progress on health care is in no small part because Bernie moved the conversation far towards the left, making the center move with him. The ACA helped not by moving people to the left, but by having so many problems (and causing so many Rs to be elected that undermined it) that the need for something better is even more desperate. Pot legalization isn't liberal; it's libertarian, and the reason it's happening is because so many baby boomers did drugs that it's an acceptable corporate opportunity. Hillary lost for many reasons. One of those reasons was that she did not inspire the left, and was hit for all of the shitty centrist policies of the 90s that she supported with Bill, as well as voting for the Iraq War. Superpredators. NAFTA. All of those things hurt her with a significant chunk of voters in 2016. More turnout from the left and working class would have beaten Trump, and centrism is one of many reasons why she didn't get enough. What do you consider the top 3 Democratic policy achievements since Bill Clinton was elected? Getting the Heritage Foundation's health care plan passed and taking the blame for its failures seems the biggest to me. With successes like that, what's the downside to going big?

Plenty of polls showed that Bernie would have beaten Trump. And you're undermining your own point by now arguing that it's the quality of the candidate that matters, not where they fall on the ideological spectrum. A good candidate that was painted as a socialist won in 2008. A bad candidate who was extremely moderate lost in 2016. And how to account for Trump winning both the primary and general when he was a terrible candidate by the same conventional wisdom you're still employing against Dems?