Wendy Davis' New Organization - Deeds Not Words

[Cheerful Charlie]

Wendy Davis, who ran for governor of Texas is back with a new organization. Deeds Not Words. She aims to organize and energize millennial women voters nationwide.

https://www.texasobserver.org/wendy-davis-deeds-not-words-sxsw/

"Wendy Davis launched a new “online engagement initiative” called Deeds Not Words at Austin’s annual SXSW Interactive tech festival on Monday. The former Texas state senator and 2014 Democratic gubernatorial candidate said her new venture is geared toward giving millennial women “toolkits” and a communication platform to make change in their communities.
Davis said she envisions a country where women no longer face barriers to economic equality and accessing health care, and she sees millennials playing a critical role in closing the gap between theoretical rights and reality."

Whoop it on 'em Wendy!

 

[Underseer]

In before the usual woman-haters claim this somehow counts as "persecution" of men.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

This seems to be one step towards progressive organization to challenge the right nationwide. Hopefully it may in time bear fruit.

I suspect the enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders by many may open the eyes of the Democrats. Accommodate progressive voters or suffer the consequences at the polls.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

This seems to be one step towards progressive organization to challenge the right nationwide. Hopefully it may in time bear fruit.

I suspect the enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders by many may open the eyes of the Democrats. Accommodate progressive voters or suffer the consequences at the polls.

I think that's going to depend on turnout this November. If the Sandernistas stay home and Clinton wins anyways, they'll stick to her strategy of sticking to the center and trying to peel off causal Republicans while giving the progressives lip service which they never intend to follow up on, since the blocs that bother to vote are the only ones who need to be catered to. The revolution will fizzle and die since the people outside of it will always care about it even less than the people inside of it and if that latter group demonstrates that they don't care, nobody else will give a shit either. Clinton will be pragmatic and work with the GOP congress to get as much done as she can and this year's Democratic primary will be a historic oddity that meant nothing.

If they do come out and vote then Clinton will be pragmatic and work with the Dem congress in order to get as much done as she can and that congress will need to cater to the progressive agenda in order to maintain their majority in the same way that the GOP needed to cater to the Tea Party and gave that end of the political spectrum more influence than its numbers warranted.

There's only a consequence at the polls if progressives are part of the voting base. If they're not, they'll be ignored in favour of groups that are.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

You have it right. Progressives need to be an important part of election and need to claim support for that reason. On the other hand, DCCC has a habit of abandoning progressives when they win primaries. How do we penalize the establishment Democrats for such doings?

 

[Elixir]

You have it right. Progressives need to be an important part of election and need to claim support for that reason. On the other hand, DCCC has a habit of abandoning progressives when they win primaries. How do we penalize the establishment Democrats for such doings?

I think that the punishment will be automatic, should HRC win without significant Bernie supporters coming out. She'll be a one-term wonder, and back we go to Republican regression. All the 'pugs need to do is nominate someone who is at least borderline sane, can focus on one thing for more than thirty seconds, and can read and write more than 140 characters at a time. (That hilarious note from mommy signed by his gastroenterologist, is evidence of Trump's abysmal writing skills.)
Even if Hillary wins with the support of Bernie's contingent, the possible emergence of a charismatic player who can express Bernie's views with some eloquence, would be a threat to her second term. She's going to have to win, then carry water for the progressive movement if she dreams of an 8-year tenure.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

You have it right. Progressives need to be an important part of election and need to claim support for that reason. On the other hand, DCCC has a habit of abandoning progressives when they win primaries. How do we penalize the establishment Democrats for such doings?

Vote in the general election. It's not a two step process.

It's a large country and the Democrats have limited resources to put towards campaigns. They need to make choices and focus those resources on where they'll get the most bang for their buck. If they have a choice between spending their time and money focusing on an issue which is important to a bloc of potential voters which has a 50% participation rate in the election or they can focus on an issue which is important to another bloc of potential voters which has a 25% participation rate in the election, then they get a much higher ROI by focusing on the first bloc because every percentage swing in support from that group gets twice as many people actually voting for them as with the first group. Sure, the subset of the second group which voted in the primary may have been more engaged and got the resources devoted to them during that as a result, but there are different demographics to be appealed to in the general election.

Once the election is done, the Dems are going to pour over the demographic data and see where they need to put their focus. When they look at that, they can say "Hey, 50% of young progressives voted. We need to devote our time and resources to policies which appeal to them and see if we can keep that number up and maybe even raise it to 52 or 53% in the next election" or they can say "Well, only 25% of young progressives voted. It would be nice to devote our time and resources to policies which appeal to them, but we need to focus our efforts on other groups where we're not just throwing that money away. Let's assign some junior staffers to look into what can be done to appeal to this group and maybe we'll glance at their results next year when we have some free time". They may want to do as much as they can to appeal to every potential demographic, but they can't afford to.

Politicians are a bunch of whores. You're not going to change that. What you can change is whether they're whoring themselves out to you or whoring themselves out to someone else. They don't give a shit either way and it's up to you to make them care about you and there's only one way to do that - show the fuck up and vote.