Dem Post Mortem

[Harry Bosch]

I disagree with some of Zohran ideas.

Also, which ones?

Please elaborate.

Also, please elaborate on whether you disagree with them because you think they are politically too "difficult", because that difficulty is being created by your belief in the difficulty, if so.

It's amazing that people seem not to realize that accepting certain beliefs makes them become true, and rejecting them sufficiently makes them false.

Defunding the police; anti business; anti home ownership, rent control, and etc. He’d bankrupt the city.

 

[Jarhyn]

I disagree with some of Zohran ideas.

Also, which ones?

Please elaborate.

Also, please elaborate on whether you disagree with them because you think they are politically too "difficult", because that difficulty is being created by your belief in the difficulty, if so.

It's amazing that people seem not to realize that accepting certain beliefs makes them become true, and rejecting them sufficiently makes them false.

Defunding the police; anti business; anti home ownership, rent control, and etc. He’d bankrupt the city.

New York city police as they exist today are a racket that operates on traffic ticketing.

Businesses need to pay taxes and they won't leave just because they have to because there isn't anywhere else for them to go with those businesses they own there.

Anti-multi-home-ownership maybe, and rent shouldn't exist because it is pure parasitism; I would support a land value tax to end the profitability of rent seeking in general.

Get fucked with the idea he would bankrupt the city with policies that have never once bankrupted any of the cities that implement them, and get double fucked with your rent seeking and empowering the already-powerful.

I would say you are everything wrong with "enlightened centrism" but then we have an "enlightened centrist" here that has done nothing but claim racism doesn't exist, attack people's rights to choose with their own bodies, and then held up those same people's bodies as an excuse to deny other people the rights to their bodies, so you're certainly not the worst "definitely not a nazi" around here, but you're definitely right along the rear of the folks who like their Trains Running On Time™.

He would end a large amount of corruption that Cuomo is complicit in, and that I suppose YOU are now complicit in, as a tacit supporter of it?

Rent seeking and corrupt NYC police... Great policy planks you have there.

 

[Swammerdami]

Anti-multi-home-ownership maybe, and rent shouldn't exist because it is pure parasitism; I would support a land value tax to end the profitability of rent seeking in general.

What is the goal here? To induce landlords to sell their properties cheaply? Do you support this country-wide or just in NY City?

It sounds like your views are to the left of Zohran's. Is your support for him a compromise due to political necessity?

Get fucked ... and get double fucked ...

 

[Jarhyn]

What is the goal here? To induce landlords to sell their properties cheaply? Do you support this country-wide or just in NY City?

It sounds like your views are to the left of Zohran's. Is your support for him a compromise due to political necessity?

Not really, more, I pick the candidate I want most in the primaries of any election, and then I expect the winner of the primary to take on the loser's issues to the extent the loser challenged them. If the winner cannot do that, and cannot be bothered to run a "fair" primary against their opponent in the first place (indicating that they have no intent on picking up their primary opponent's platform to the extent they performed in that primary), I make an informed decision whether to vote at all.

Until now, I have always voted in the general, but I suspect many are far less able to stomach that than I am. Cuomo is a "defeat from the jaws of victory" candidate at this point.

You know damn well you would vote for Zorhan over whatever jackass the Republicans run, but there are a LOT of folks who are just plain done with that corrupt shitheel Cuomo.

 

[Swammerdami]

A newsletter appeared in an in-box. I was saddened to read that young people preferred Trump over Harris.

According to numbers provided by [David] Shor’s group, in this year's presidential election 75-year-old white men supported Kamala Harris by 14 points over 20-year-old white men....
Among all 18-year-olds, women of color are the only group Harris won. Trump even won nonwhite men in this age group by a narrow margin.
...

the lower your political engagement, education level or socioeconomic status, and the less engaged you are in politics, the more Trumpy you are. And that just wasn’t true four years ago.

... It’s easier on the ears to listen to a blowhard like Trump stroke you, than it is to really plow into who the hell it is who put you in this predicament in the first place …

Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous (2024) campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not.

“… the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing …”
If that doesn't explain young, male voters — among others — I don’t know what does.

 

[Derec]

A newsletter appeared in an in-box. I was saddened to read that young people preferred Trump over Harris.
According to numbers provided by [David] Shor’s group, in this year's presidential election 75-year-old white men supported Kamala Harris by 14 points over 20-year-old white men....
Among all 18-year-olds, women of color are the only group Harris won. Trump even won nonwhite men in this age group by a narrow margin.

Dems have neglected men, especially young men.
For example, remember when Obama administration mandated that colleges must use the lowest possible standard of proof to expel young men accused of sexual misconduct? That led to innocent men being expelled, as we discussed on here many times. Also, Kristen Gillebrand (D-NY) championed the false accuser Emma "Mattress Girl" Sulkowicz from Columbia, even going as far as inviting her to the SOTU.
Another example: Biden excluded anybody who is not white and male for consideration for SCOTUS and running mate. Note that Dems have not put a man on SCOTUS since 1994, over 30 years ago!
No wonder many men conclude that Dems do not care about them. Of course, Dems disregarding men does not mean Trump is a good choice (I voted for both Biden and Kamala Harris), but it makes it more difficult to animate them to vote for you.

the lower your political engagement, education level or socioeconomic status, and the less engaged you are in politics, the more Trumpy you are. And that just wasn’t true four years ago.

That is certainly true. Many young people get their news from TikTok which is filled with misinformation, a lot of it straight from Russia and China.

Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous (2024) campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not.

Does Bernie really think that Dems lost in 2024 because Kamala was not left-wing enough? She was one of the most left-wing Senators and in her run for 2020 she contested the same left lane as Bernie and Warren. Remember her position that fracking and off-shore drilling should be banned?

 

[Derec]

Not really, more, I pick the candidate I want most in the primaries of any election, and then I expect the winner of the primary to take on the loser's issues to the extent the loser challenged them. If the winner cannot do that, and cannot be bothered to run a "fair" primary against their opponent in the first place (indicating that they have no intent on picking up their primary opponent's platform to the extent they performed in that primary), I make an informed decision whether to vote at all.

Why exactly do you think that the winning candidate should take up the losing candidate's platform and issues?

Until now, I have always voted in the general, but I suspect many are far less able to stomach that than I am. Cuomo is a "defeat from the jaws of victory" candidate at this point.

No, he is a "we have to stop Zohran because he'd be a disaster as mayor" candidate. Yes, he is very flawed, but NYC cannot afford somebody like Mr. Cardamom at the helm.

You know damn well you would vote for Zorhan over whatever jackass the Republicans run, but there are a LOT of folks who are just plain done with that corrupt shitheel Cuomo.

Eric Adams is also running as an independent, and Cuomo might do the same if Mamdani wins the primary. It would not just be Zohran vs. Silwa.

 

[Derec]

New York city police as they exist today are a racket that operates on traffic ticketing.

Traffic enforcement is only one part of what NYPD does. And in any case, traffic laws need to be enforced as well.

Businesses need to pay taxes and they won't leave just because they have to because there isn't anywhere else for them to go with those businesses they own there.

Of course taxes are necessary. Massive tax hikes necessary to fund Mr. Cardamom's socialist agenda are a different matter. And while his tax hikes would not lead to an exodus of businesses, it would impact business competitiveness and new business creation within city limits.

Anti-multi-home-ownership maybe, and rent shouldn't exist because it is pure parasitism; I would support a land value tax to end the profitability of rent seeking in general.

Rent should not exist? Then where should people who can't afford to buy a home, or do not want to own a home at this stage of their lives live? Public housing for everybody?

Also, re "rent seeking":

Renting out real estate is not what "rent seeking" means.

Get fucked with the idea he would bankrupt the city with policies that have never once bankrupted any of the cities that implement them, and get double fucked with your rent seeking and empowering the already-powerful.

What cities have successfully tried the policies that Mamdani is advocating?

I would say you are everything wrong with "enlightened centrism" but then we have an "enlightened centrist" here that has done nothing but claim racism doesn't exist, attack people's rights to choose with their own bodies, and then held up those same people's bodies as an excuse to deny other people the rights to their bodies, so you're certainly not the worst "definitely not a nazi" around here, but you're definitely right along the rear of the folks who like their Trains Running On Time™.

Who is the centrist you have in mind here?

Besides, what's wrong with trains running on time? Is competence itself a hallmark of fascism in your world view? If Mayor Cardamom makes the NYC subways unreliable, is that a sign of his righteousness somehow?

He would end a large amount of corruption that Cuomo is complicit in, and that I suppose YOU are now complicit in, as a tacit supporter of it?

You have mentioned this supposed corruption before, without elaborating what actions you mean specifically.

Rent seeking and corrupt NYC police... Great policy planks you have there.

You still keep using that word, and you have still not elaborated about the supposed corruption. Neither by Gov. Cuomo nor by NYPD. All you have is generic and vague aspersions you keep casting about.

 

[Jarhyn]

The funniest part is that MAGA is supporting Cuomo. I guess that DOES make them electable.

I would rather have a candidate that MAGA would vote against, though.

 

[Derec]

The funniest part is that MAGA is supporting Cuomo.

[citation needed]

I guess that DOES make them electable.

Having more appeal to independents (not MAGA!) generally makes somebody more electable than somebody who solely appeals to the base. Take the Buffalo, NY mayoral election in 2021. Socialist India Walton won the partisan primary against the incumbent Byron Brown. He ran as a write-in candidate in the general and won 59%-40%.

I would rather have a candidate that MAGA would vote against, though.

Do you really think our only options are MAGA on one hand, and a Democratic Socialist rapper who wants to open government grocery stores and to globalize the Intifada on the other?

 

[Emily Lake]

Ex-AOC chief of staff going after the most powerful woman in Congress

I think he's got at least one thing spot-on:

“The Democratic Party is so underwater right now ... the only way voters are going to trust it again is ... if a whole new movement takes over.”

 

[Emily Lake]

It's amazing that people seem not to realize that accepting certain beliefs makes them become true, and rejecting them sufficiently makes them false.

This is profoundly wrong. Accepting or rejecting a belief does not alter the nature of reality; facts are immune to beliefs.

 

[southernhybrid]

And now even more of what I mean:

Currently the DNC is going balls to the walls to get Cuomo elected in NYC over Zohran.

They are literally pushing the boundaries of the spending limit to boost corporate Democrats over progressives.

I also saw another article posted today detailing that 2/3 of the Democrat party is active in calling for a leadership change.

But let's sit and wait now to see all the corporate shills and Nazi sympathizers tell us why we need to sit tight with corrupt Cuomo and why we he is "electable".

Between this and seats on committees being handed to corpses with all the vigor of a particularly spicy *slime mold*, it's clear why it happens, except I suppose to those with all the vigor of said slime mold.

As long as you parrot the statements whispered by Republicans that progressives are unelectable, you will be the reason for this and I will criticize you rightly for it, for being the anus out of which the DNC has collectively shit out their spines.

Why do you keep claiming that moderates are Nazi? Channeling Barbos??! I disagree with some of Zohran ideas. How does that make me a Nazi?

I would never vote for crooked Cuomo if I lived in NY City, and I would vote for a progressive even if I didn't agree with all of their positions. I usually vote in the primaries for the candidate I think can beat the Republican candidate. Luckily, I don't live in NYC.

I wasn't a big fan of Warnock, but after reading all the data on the candidates, I voted for him in the primaries because I believed he was the only Democrat who could win in Georgia. As an atheist, It was hard voting for a pastor and I was disappointed when he didn't even give up his work as a pastor after he was elected, but considering the alternative, I had no problem voting for him in the general. We will never get everything we want and calling people Nazis because they aren't as progressive as you is not based on reality.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

As long as you parrot the statements whispered by Republicans that progressives are unelectable, you will be the reason for this and I will criticize you rightly for it, for being the anus out of which the DNC has collectively shit out their spines.

Your eternal insistence that they are electable doesn't make it so. And even if you did it wouldn't make a difference because they couldn't get anything through.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Businesses need to pay taxes and they won't leave just because they have to because there isn't anywhere else for them to go with those businesses they own there.

Yet another variation on the infinite pool of money theme. It comes in so many guises, they're always wrong.

Businesses without at least quasi-monopoly positions are inherently constrained in their profit margins. If what they are doing makes appreciably more than the risk-adjusted profit it produces more players will enter the game, driving down the price until profit returns to market. All businesses will on occasion fail, if the industry is not producing an adequate risk-adjusted profit replacement players will not show up. In both cases profit will in time return to market. No government thumb on the scale can possibly change this, although government thumbs can create monopoly situations that throw it out the window.

You raise taxes, it's passed along to the consumer and prices go up.

Anti-multi-home-ownership maybe, and rent shouldn't exist because it is pure parasitism; I would support a land value tax to end the profitability of rent seeking in general.

This provides no market incentive to build tall. Thus people will not build tall, you'll get LA type sprawls or worse.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What is the goal here? To induce landlords to sell their properties cheaply? Do you support this country-wide or just in NY City?

It sounds like your views are to the left of Zohran's. Is your support for him a compromise due to political necessity?

Not really, more, I pick the candidate I want most in the primaries of any election, and then I expect the winner of the primary to take on the loser's issues to the extent the loser challenged them. If the winner cannot do that, and cannot be bothered to run a "fair" primary against their opponent in the first place (indicating that they have no intent on picking up their primary opponent's platform to the extent they performed in that primary), I make an informed decision whether to vote at all.

Except this produces a candidate that doesn't work in the general.

And an "informed decision" not to vote is an oxymoron. If you know enough to make a decision you know enough to decide which outcome would be better. Congratulations, you fell for the conservative disinformation and elected a Nazi.

 

[Jarhyn]

Except this produces a candidate that doesn't work in the general.

Says who? Does it mean YOU won't vote for them? Does it mean Higgins or Swammer or Whoever else won't?

And an "informed decision" not to vote is an oxymoron

You can make this claim, but the other thing has been tried all my life, and until the gerontocracy falls, maybe we need to try other stuff, ya?

We tried it your way and now we have Trump because the Dems shit their spines out some time in the 80's.

This provides no market incentive to build tall. Thus people will not build tall, you'll get LA type sprawls or worse.

Tall doesn't need to be that tall, and the incentives to do so don't need to come from the market; rather they shouldn't, because like healthcare and other services, some things the market only ruins.

You raise taxes, it's passed along to the consumer and prices go up.

Bullshit.

It depends on who and what you tax, and to what extent, and how the laws are written.

We know damn well that the sales tax laws were written in the US, for example, to prevent the obviousness of the cost of taxes, to make it not seem like the company gouging even more.

And now even more of what I mean:

Currently the DNC is going balls to the walls to get Cuomo elected in NYC over Zohran.

They are literally pushing the boundaries of the spending limit to boost corporate Democrats over progressives.

I also saw another article posted today detailing that 2/3 of the Democrat party is active in calling for a leadership change.

But let's sit and wait now to see all the corporate shills and Nazi sympathizers tell us why we need to sit tight with corrupt Cuomo and why we he is "electable".

Between this and seats on committees being handed to corpses with all the vigor of a particularly spicy *slime mold*, it's clear why it happens, except I suppose to those with all the vigor of said slime mold.

As long as you parrot the statements whispered by Republicans that progressives are unelectable, you will be the reason for this and I will criticize you rightly for it, for being the anus out of which the DNC has collectively shit out their spines.

Why do you keep claiming that moderates are Nazi? Channeling Barbos??! I disagree with some of Zohran ideas. How does that make me a Nazi?

I would never vote for crooked Cuomo if I lived in NY City, and I would vote for a progressive even if I didn't agree with all of their positions. I usually vote in the primaries for the candidate I think can beat the Republican candidate. Luckily, I don't live in NYC.

I wasn't a big fan of Warnock, but after reading all the data on the candidates, I voted for him in the primaries because I believed he was the only Democrat who could win in Georgia. As an atheist, It was hard voting for a pastor and I was disappointed when he didn't even give up his work as a pastor after he was elected, but considering the alternative, I had no problem voting for him in the general. We will never get everything we want and calling people Nazis because they aren't as progressive as you is not based on reality.

I'll call people "Nazis" who seek to prioritize "trains running on time" over "keeping those trains from shipping people off".

That doesn't make me extremist, because *Nazis are exactly the people who prefer the trains running on time*.

It is absolutely based on reality, because we have a demonstrated world war, against Nazis, wherein their power arose from a lack of cultural zeal to choose "keeping those trains from shipping people to camps" over "trains running on time.

Germany took reasonable measures to identify and disempower such movements since, but we sit here in America letting it happen here.

Until people realize their priorities are messed the hell up, that their priorities are empowering Nazis, what would you have me do?

Over a hundred Democrats in Congress sided against impeachment proceedings FFS.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's amazing that people seem not to realize that accepting certain beliefs makes them become true, and rejecting them sufficiently makes them false.

Got an example of something of the sort? Because this certainly sounds like you think people can alter reality by wishing it is so. It's the sort of thing I expect from the right, not the left.

 

[Jarhyn]

It's amazing that people seem not to realize that accepting certain beliefs makes them become true, and rejecting them sufficiently makes them false.

Got an example of something of the sort? Because this certainly sounds like you think people can alter reality by wishing it is so. It's the sort of thing I expect from the right, not the left.

So, I've posted numerous times about the concept and provided numerous examples. "Tinkerbell effect" is the search term. Use it.

THere are specific and narrow circumstances where the mere wishing of something being so makes it true, especially when this belief is distributed.

If everyone believed a conflict was stupid and should be over and they should all just accept each other for who they were, merely saying this were so and acting on that belief would make all the people involved in whatever conflict find themselves suddenly not involved in a conflict anymore.

People believing that the market is tanking, en masse, constitute a run on the markets, which makes the market tank.

People believing something that they may want more is unattainable leads to them not making actions to attain it.

A recent reddit post I saw today said something along the lines of "the Republicans talked about their dreams of ending abortion long before they ever even got close, even before they had the votes; that's how you build towards a political goal. The Democrats, by not setting goals and working at those goals tirelessly as a force, make themselves incapable of attaining those goals."

This is what resonates with folks like me, and if the Corporate Democrats want to treat Business like it's more important than the whole constituency, I believe that the corporate Democrats will start losing elections and they will be forced to concede political capital to the people who will set directions and push in that direction tirelessly, rather than on the fickle winds.

My own parents, as I was growing up, didn't vote for Democrats and the reasons were because they didn't seem to actually stand for anything! And they don't. They stand for whatever polls best rather than any sense of strong conviction.

I'm sorry, but we need to stop electing fucking boomers.

 

[Politesse]

Of course not! To win a national election in this ignorant racist commie-hating country, we have to appeal to the commie-haters. Yes, there are DemSocs winning elections. They are NOT winning in the many districts where ignorant commie-haters are a majority.

"We" will never appeal to ignorant racist commie-haters. No matter how much we concede to them. They want our deaths, not our vague and inconsistent support. It doesn't matter what someone says they are "considering thinking about", they simply do not want gay Mexican urban planners in office, and no amount of "signaling" that we are "listening to their concerns" is going to make a queer foreigner from the city more attractive to their sensibilities than a Nazi ditz from an affluent rural suburb.

Wrong. There are different degrees of ignorance, racism, and commie-hating. There were MANY people from America's huge "redneck" Middle who aren't completely racist (Obama was elected twice), and who watch CNN regularly, and who DID have severe misgivings about the pussy-grabbing fraudster; but who DID choose Trump as (what they thought to be) the lesser of two evils.

Reducing these many millions of slightly racist centrists from America's heartland to caricatures -- or calling them "deplorables" -- is a good way to turn them off, and make them believe that Trump, despite his many faults that they are well aware of, might be "the lesser of two evils."

More succinctly, the anger and bitterness that you and Jarhyn represent is part of the PROBLEM and NOT part of the solution.

Anyone who has, seven years into the madness, looked at Trump and concluded that he is the lesser of two evils, will not be lightly dissuaded of that opinion. Especially not by the means the Democratic Party is accustomed to using, vague and whiffy language like "honoring differing perspectives" and "listening to what is being said" and declaring an unofficial holiday here and there. It works on minorities because at the end of day the choice for us is "Democrats or death". Suburban whites are under no such pressure.