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> You keep making the same mistake. The party doesn't think the SATs are racist. Weirdos on Twitter and in elite college administrations do. The party opposes d

> You keep making the same mistake. The party doesn't think the SATs are racist. Weirdos on Twitter and in elite college administrations do. The party opposes defunding the police. They're not ascendant; they're laughingstocks. If that's the case, they're not doing a great job of telling that story. The "weirdos on Twitter and in elite college administrations" seem to have the louder voice by far. If the party wants to tell that story, it probably need to be in terms of loud, clear, and frequent denunciations; not awkward handwringing trying have it both ways and a "clarifying" point on page 97 of the platform.

tptacek 4y ago
The mistake here is believing that whoever has the loudest voice on the Internet best represents the party. The opposite is true, and, of course, the logic doesn't work anyways: it's always easier to be louder than it is to be persuasive. It's a strange thing to admit that you're willing to concede your personal understanding of some issue to whoever says the loudest, dumbest things about it. It cuts both ways! We have a two-party system in the US for almost mathematical reasons, and both sides have tons of incentive to play at a politics of disqualification. There are sane, fundamental differences of policy opinion between Democrats and Republicans that have nothing do with eldritch hierarchies of grievance or unhinged conspiracy theories; the R's and D's have different preferred solutions to important problems everyone agrees exist, and neither party can claim always to have the best answers. Democrats who don't want to confront the difficult issues of, say, out-of-control public sector unions and unsustainable pension liability would much rather cast Republicans as the party of attempted coups. We need level-headed, persuasive, rational Republicans and Democrats so we can work out the real policy issues, and get the approaches of both parties on the table. But in this thread, I'm not attempting to DQ Republicans; I'm saying that there's no win to have from DQ'ing either party. Rayiner can't say the same thing; he's --- for reasons I don't totally understand --- abandoned that principle, because he believes the Democratic party is dedicated to a mission of creating a new American caste system. In that, he shares the faults of Democrats who, for instance, believe that if we can just raise enough money we can pull Clarence Thomas off the court. Those people are unserious. But it's fun to pretend they're not, so, here we are. There's a trivially easy way out of this mess for him. He could just confine his critique to the far-left wing of the Democratic party. I'd even give it to him if he chose the term "progressive" as a shorthand for it. But to do so would be to surrender the disqualification card he's time and again trying to play on the entire Democratic party. Someday soon I'll probably slip up and do the same thing with the Republicans, and when that happens, I hope he calls me out too (maybe less indulgently and with fewer words than I'm burning on this).
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > The mistake here is believing that whoever has the loudest voice on the Internet best represents the party. The opposite is true, and, of course, the logic doesn't work anyways: it's always easier to be louder than it is to be persuasive. It's a strange thing to admit that you're willing to concede your personal understanding of some issue to whoever says the loudest, dumbest things about it. It's not unreasonable through. There's an element of economy there, an element of trust, and an element of movement. People don't have infinite time available to search for some needle you claim is there. Then let's say you found that needle on page 97 of the platform or a comment in some speech: can you trust it, or is it insincerity fishing for some extra votes? It's also not like the party is standing still: today it might be officially against X, but very soon it might be for it or something like it. That's why it's important to be loud. As an outsider, if the loudest voices on an issue in your coalition are unrepresentative but not put in their place, it makes it hard to trust the official position is true or will be maintained when it matters. If those voices are loudly and officially rebuked, the consequences and implications of that can build some trust in the official position, as well as making it easy to discover.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    What "needle"? On Rayiner's side of the argument, there are loud people on the Internet and in leftist think tanks. On my side of the argument, there is the almost unbroken record of moderate/liberal Democrats defeating progressives in primaries, and the recall of leftist politicians in (of all places) San Francisco. The party rejects this stuff, because ordinary voters reject it, and, contrary to Rayiner's belief, the Democratic party responds primarily to its voters, not to The Groups.
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      > What "needle"? Honestly, anything a voter has to work to find out. > On my side of the argument, there is the almost unbroken record of moderate/liberal Democrats defeating progressives in primaries, and the recall of leftist politicians in (of all places) San Francisco. Then they should attack those ideas in their ads, in their stump speeches, and write lots of strident op-eds about them. > ...and the recall of leftist politicians in (of all places) San Francisco. > The party rejects this stuff, because ordinary voters reject it... IIRC, that recall was led by people from outside the normal party structure.

tptacek 4y ago

The mistake here is believing that whoever has the loudest voice on the Internet best represents the party. The opposite is true, and, of course, the logic doesn't work anyways: it's always easier to be louder than it is to be persuasive. It's a strange thing to admit that you're willing to concede your personal understanding of some issue to whoever says the loudest, dumbest things about it. It cuts both ways! We have a two-party system in the US for almost mathematical reasons, and both sides have tons of incentive to play at a politics of disqualification. There are sane, fundamental differences of policy opinion between Democrats and Republicans that have nothing do with eldritch hierarchies of grievance or unhinged conspiracy theories; the R's and D's have different preferred solutions to important problems everyone agrees exist, and neither party can claim always to have the best answers. Democrats who don't want to confront the difficult issues of, say, out-of-control public sector unions and unsustainable pension liability would much rather cast Republicans as the party of attempted coups. We need level-headed, persuasive, rational Republicans and Democrats so we can work out the real policy issues, and get the approaches of both parties on the table. But in this thread, I'm not attempting to DQ Republicans; I'm saying that there's no win to have from DQ'ing either party. Rayiner can't say the same thing; he's --- for reasons I don't totally understand --- abandoned that principle, because he believes the Democratic party is dedicated to a mission of creating a new American caste system. In that, he shares the faults of Democrats who, for instance, believe that if we can just raise enough money we can pull Clarence Thomas off the court. Those people are unserious. But it's fun to pretend they're not, so, here we are. There's a trivially easy way out of this mess for him. He could just confine his critique to the far-left wing of the Democratic party. I'd even give it to him if he chose the term "progressive" as a shorthand for it. But to do so would be to surrender the disqualification card he's time and again trying to play on the entire Democratic party. Someday soon I'll probably slip up and do the same thing with the Republicans, and when that happens, I hope he calls me out too (maybe less indulgently and with fewer words than I'm burning on this).

tablespoon 4y ago
> The mistake here is believing that whoever has the loudest voice on the Internet best represents the party. The opposite is true, and, of course, the logic doesn't work anyways: it's always easier to be louder than it is to be persuasive. It's a strange thing to admit that you're willing to concede your personal understanding of some issue to whoever says the loudest, dumbest things about it. It's not unreasonable through. There's an element of economy there, an element of trust, and an element of movement. People don't have infinite time available to search for some needle you claim is there. Then let's say you found that needle on page 97 of the platform or a comment in some speech: can you trust it, or is it insincerity fishing for some extra votes? It's also not like the party is standing still: today it might be officially against X, but very soon it might be for it or something like it. That's why it's important to be loud. As an outsider, if the loudest voices on an issue in your coalition are unrepresentative but not put in their place, it makes it hard to trust the official position is true or will be maintained when it matters. If those voices are loudly and officially rebuked, the consequences and implications of that can build some trust in the official position, as well as making it easy to discover.
- tptacek 4y ago
  What "needle"? On Rayiner's side of the argument, there are loud people on the Internet and in leftist think tanks. On my side of the argument, there is the almost unbroken record of moderate/liberal Democrats defeating progressives in primaries, and the recall of leftist politicians in (of all places) San Francisco. The party rejects this stuff, because ordinary voters reject it, and, contrary to Rayiner's belief, the Democratic party responds primarily to its voters, not to The Groups.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > What "needle"? Honestly, anything a voter has to work to find out. > On my side of the argument, there is the almost unbroken record of moderate/liberal Democrats defeating progressives in primaries, and the recall of leftist politicians in (of all places) San Francisco. Then they should attack those ideas in their ads, in their stump speeches, and write lots of strident op-eds about them. > ...and the recall of leftist politicians in (of all places) San Francisco. > The party rejects this stuff, because ordinary voters reject it... IIRC, that recall was led by people from outside the normal party structure.