4 ms·

> 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 Dem

> 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
No, they shouldn't, unless their constituents actually think it's a real issue. Republicans don't all have to run on repudiating Sandy Hook trutherism, either. The Republican party nominated an actual Nazi --- a guy who stands on streetcorners in a uniform handing out fliers, like, a non-rhetorical Nazi --- for an Illinois congressional seat, and I make fun of people who try to paint the GOP with that, too.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > No, they shouldn't, unless their constituents actually think it's a real issue. Then they've decided to suffer an account of what those "weirdos on Twitter and in elite college administrations" say, and I guess that's their call. People can be forgiven for assuming what the "party" thinks is what their coalition members are loudly saying.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    They're not coalition members, any more than the Nazi who got nominated for the GOP candidate for the IL-3rd is a GOP coalition member. Follow them on Twitter and you'll learn they're almost the opposite of coalition members.
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      > They're not coalition members, any more than the Nazi who got nominated for the GOP candidate for the IL-3rd is a GOP coalition member. Follow them on Twitter and you'll learn they're almost the opposite of coalition members. I'm not so sure about that. If they weren't, wouldn't be easier to throw them under the bus than it seems to be?
      - tptacek 4y ago
        We've done almost nothing but throw them under the bus.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  > I make fun of people who try to paint the GOP with that, too. In the most literal sense: I have no dog in this fight. But I don't think there is anything funny at all about having a major political party with Nazi's in it. We have a couple of those clowns here in NL in politics as well and fortunately for now the mainstream parties are staying well clear of that. But there may come a day that they will embrace it and then - as far as I'm concerned - all bets are off because it means that the mainstream and the fringe no longer care about being seen together. Note that the actual Nazi's came to power on somewhere between 10 and 15% of the electorate. You may be a lot closer to that than you think.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    Nobody thinks it's funny. But what happened is subtle. It's not that GOP voters in the Illinois 3rd are sympathetic to Nazis. It's that a stray dog wearing a Democratic party sweater would have a better chance of being elected in that district than a Republican, so no serious Republican will run for the seat (when you run in a district, lose, and then try to run somewhere else, you're tarred as a carpetbagger). So the only people that run for these ultra-safe seats are lunatics. But most people don't actually know that! You have to be a political nerd to follow stuff like this. To normal people, the specifics of a congressional candidate are as opaque as the Cubs starting shortstop is to me (is shortstop a thing? is that one of those differences between the NL and the AL?). You take my point. So really, they're just voting for the party, and not for the candidate, and this particular Nazi took advantage of it.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      That's precisely my point: Nazi's will take advantage of party politics to gain positional advantage. And when it happens in enough places suddenly you get an avalanche of crap that is very hard to put back into the bottle. That is why we have what's called a 'cordon sanitaire' around the parties that are enablers of Nazism, the one thing that sets the US apart from NL right now is that we still have the luxury of doing so. But the moment VVD/CDA/SP/D66/GL would accept one of the fringe that difference would be erased. Now the jerks have to first find a way into a mainstream party that will not kick them out or (alternatively) find a way to 51% of the vote (highly unlikely, for now, though things are very dynamic and it could well change to that at some point). This is a pretty scary development, in ordinary times people would be expected to protest against a party that allowed Nazis to run under their banner by punishing them elsewhere, you'd expect that enough swing voters would see this as distasteful enough to guarantee that a party that had a single Nazi on their roster could not be expected to win the house/senate/presidential elections. But that's not the case any more (if it ever was). This normalized 'Nazi's in the house' for parties that may well end up in government. And that should have never ever happened.

tptacek 4y ago

No, they shouldn't, unless their constituents actually think it's a real issue. Republicans don't all have to run on repudiating Sandy Hook trutherism, either. The Republican party nominated an actual Nazi --- a guy who stands on streetcorners in a uniform handing out fliers, like, a non-rhetorical Nazi --- for an Illinois congressional seat, and I make fun of people who try to paint the GOP with that, too.

tablespoon 4y ago
> No, they shouldn't, unless their constituents actually think it's a real issue. Then they've decided to suffer an account of what those "weirdos on Twitter and in elite college administrations" say, and I guess that's their call. People can be forgiven for assuming what the "party" thinks is what their coalition members are loudly saying.
- tptacek 4y ago
  They're not coalition members, any more than the Nazi who got nominated for the GOP candidate for the IL-3rd is a GOP coalition member. Follow them on Twitter and you'll learn they're almost the opposite of coalition members.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > They're not coalition members, any more than the Nazi who got nominated for the GOP candidate for the IL-3rd is a GOP coalition member. Follow them on Twitter and you'll learn they're almost the opposite of coalition members. I'm not so sure about that. If they weren't, wouldn't be easier to throw them under the bus than it seems to be?
    - tptacek 4y ago
      We've done almost nothing but throw them under the bus.
jacquesm 4y ago
> I make fun of people who try to paint the GOP with that, too. In the most literal sense: I have no dog in this fight. But I don't think there is anything funny at all about having a major political party with Nazi's in it. We have a couple of those clowns here in NL in politics as well and fortunately for now the mainstream parties are staying well clear of that. But there may come a day that they will embrace it and then - as far as I'm concerned - all bets are off because it means that the mainstream and the fringe no longer care about being seen together. Note that the actual Nazi's came to power on somewhere between 10 and 15% of the electorate. You may be a lot closer to that than you think.
- tptacek 4y ago
  Nobody thinks it's funny. But what happened is subtle. It's not that GOP voters in the Illinois 3rd are sympathetic to Nazis. It's that a stray dog wearing a Democratic party sweater would have a better chance of being elected in that district than a Republican, so no serious Republican will run for the seat (when you run in a district, lose, and then try to run somewhere else, you're tarred as a carpetbagger). So the only people that run for these ultra-safe seats are lunatics. But most people don't actually know that! You have to be a political nerd to follow stuff like this. To normal people, the specifics of a congressional candidate are as opaque as the Cubs starting shortstop is to me (is shortstop a thing? is that one of those differences between the NL and the AL?). You take my point. So really, they're just voting for the party, and not for the candidate, and this particular Nazi took advantage of it.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    That's precisely my point: Nazi's will take advantage of party politics to gain positional advantage. And when it happens in enough places suddenly you get an avalanche of crap that is very hard to put back into the bottle. That is why we have what's called a 'cordon sanitaire' around the parties that are enablers of Nazism, the one thing that sets the US apart from NL right now is that we still have the luxury of doing so. But the moment VVD/CDA/SP/D66/GL would accept one of the fringe that difference would be erased. Now the jerks have to first find a way into a mainstream party that will not kick them out or (alternatively) find a way to 51% of the vote (highly unlikely, for now, though things are very dynamic and it could well change to that at some point). This is a pretty scary development, in ordinary times people would be expected to protest against a party that allowed Nazis to run under their banner by punishing them elsewhere, you'd expect that enough swing voters would see this as distasteful enough to guarantee that a party that had a single Nazi on their roster could not be expected to win the house/senate/presidential elections. But that's not the case any more (if it ever was). This normalized 'Nazi's in the house' for parties that may well end up in government. And that should have never ever happened.