Justice Democrats

[Shake]

I see this hasn't been brought up here, so I'm throwing it out there for your consideration/discussion.

You can watch the video below where Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk makes the announcement, which is over an hour in length, in which he discusses how and why the group was formed as well as introducing the platform. But to summarize, a group of Democrats, Bernie campaign staffers, etc., got frustrated enough with Bernie's treatment in the primaries as well as the corruption of both the DNC and Hillary Clinton, not to mention the horrible campaign she ran, not being able to beat a, "reality star buffoon," (to use Kyle's words) with a 60% disapproval rating on Election day. The idea is to push for the progressive values which a majority of Americans actually support such as universal healthcare (HR 676), a living wage, ending the drug war, and perhaps one of the biggest issues, getting money out of politics. The contention is that the Democrats ceased being a party of the people when they started following the GOP model and taking contributions from big money donors like the corporations, which then made them beholden to such donors, doing their bidding rather than that of the people. The founders of Justice Democrats considered starting a 3rd party, but realized what an institutional bias there is against 3rd parties here in the US and so it would be better to reform the party from within and be able to use the existing infrastructure to accomplish its goals. Speaking of goals, they include of course kicking out the corrupt GOP members of Congress, but also to primary establishment Democrats who are only working for their donors, not the people.

Bernie showed it was possible to run a major campaign on "$27 at a time." Justice Democrats are committed to such an effort, pledging to take no corporate money to run election campaigns. Which brings me to the how of getting the goals accomplished. They started out asking people to come to the website and at least just sign up to show support. Those who were willing were asked to volunteer to run for the US Congress as a Justice Democrat. They would be vetted and trained by the aforementioned former Sanders campaign staffers. Representative Ro Khanna (CA-17) has already pledged support and there are already several candidates who have announced their bids for certain Congressional seats.

Justice Democrats consider the recognized 3rd parties who are working for the same progressive policy points as allies. They have also teamed up with Brand New Congress in order to achieve their goals. National Nurses United is also an ally.

The tl;dr version is, again in Kyle's words, "this is the Bernie wing staging a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party."

[youtube]rj_95Ld2g9I[/youtube]

 

[prideandfall]

on the one hand: cool - hope something comes of it, it would be very interesting to see the progressive equivalent of a tea party type situation come up and maybe inject some passion into the democratic party which is sorely lacking that right now.
also, the dearth of what i call "dick liberalism" is really disheartening and this whole passive mewling democratic party that's been going on for the last 20 years is really old.
(dick liberalism: being liberal and not ashamed of it, having progressive political stances without apologizing for it, basically having the same pride and aggressive determination in your political position as the conservatives have but for liberal views)

on the other hand: liberalism in the US generally is shackled with a strong streak of passivity, or at the very least of being quiet about it and not raising much of a fuss.
it seems almost oxymoronic to have passionate young progressives actively participating in the established political process and changing it for the better, that just appears to be fundamentally at odds with what it means to be passionate and young and liberal.

so overall i'd say "that would be awesome if it actually happened, but it won't, so whatever"

 

[J842P]

on the one hand: cool - hope something comes of it, it would be very interesting to see the progressive equivalent of a tea party type situation come up and maybe inject some passion into the democratic party which is sorely lacking that right now.
also, the dearth of what i call "dick liberalism" is really disheartening and this whole passive mewling democratic party that's been going on for the last 20 years is really old.
(dick liberalism: being liberal and not ashamed of it, having progressive political stances without apologizing for it, basically having the same pride and aggressive determination in your political position as the conservatives have but for liberal views)

on the other hand: liberalism in the US generally is shackled with a strong streak of passivity, or at the very least of being quiet about it and not raising much of a fuss.
it seems almost oxymoronic to have passionate young progressives actively participating in the established political process and changing it for the better, that just appears to be fundamentally at odds with what it means to be passionate and young and liberal.

so overall i'd say "that would be awesome if it actually happened, but it won't, so whatever"

The US has a *long history* of very active and aggressive progressive movements. The issue is that the `Boomers have been shackled by decades of Anti-Soviet propaganda. But the Millennials don't really give a shit about that. I think you will have to adjust your perceptions of what could happen, given two very different populations.

I think the problem is that many Americans perceive "traditionally American" to be essentially equivalent to "how shit was in the 1950's", i.e. howw shit was when the baby-boomers were growing up, which is a very different thing than "traditionally American". The 1950s was a radically different era that which preceded it.

 

[SimpleDon]

I would welcome this if they promised to end the liberals' fondness for identity politics. It is as if liberals want to continue to bask in the glory of the civil rights era forever, there is no overt recognition that they should be fighting a class war now. That they should be fighting for all of the poor, black, white, brown, whatever.

This has always been the purpose of the racial divide in the US, to pit the poor whites against the poor blacks so that neither would have the time to realize how badly they are being screwed by the rich. Divide and conquer, Strategy 101.

 

[ZiprHead]

There's also Indivisible. Inspired by the TEA Party tactics.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

I would welcome this if they promised to end the liberals' fondness for identity politics. It is as if liberals want to continue to bask in the glory of the civil rights era forever, there is no overt recognition that they should be fighting a class war now. That they should be fighting for all of the poor, black, white, brown, whatever.

This has always been the purpose of the racial divide in the US, to pit the poor whites against the poor blacks so that neither would have the time to realize how badly they are being screwed by the rich. Divide and conquer, Strategy 101.

This is why I call myself a progressive. Progressives have long been notable for arrempting to point out obvious problems and solving them. Liberalism has drifted into "triangulation" or identity politics.

Obviously the GOP hasn't a clue.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I support most of what the Justice Democrats say that they are about. Almost all of it actually, so I support them. But my quandry is how to stop the likes of The Young Turks (who are founding members of this) and other regressives from hijacking this noble movement into another leg of the identity politics thing.

- - - Updated - - -

I would welcome this if they promised to end the liberals' fondness for identity politics. It is as if liberals want to continue to bask in the glory of the civil rights era forever, there is no overt recognition that they should be fighting a class war now. That they should be fighting for all of the poor, black, white, brown, whatever.

This has always been the purpose of the racial divide in the US, to pit the poor whites against the poor blacks so that neither would have the time to realize how badly they are being screwed by the rich. Divide and conquer, Strategy 101.

Yes, very well said indeed.

 

[J842P]

I support most of what the Justice Democrats say that they are about. Almost all of it actually, so I support them. But my quandry is how to stop the likes of The Young Turks (who are founding members of this) and other regressives from hijacking this noble movement into another leg of the identity politics thing.

- - - Updated - - -

I would welcome this if they promised to end the liberals' fondness for identity politics. It is as if liberals want to continue to bask in the glory of the civil rights era forever, there is no overt recognition that they should be fighting a class war now. That they should be fighting for all of the poor, black, white, brown, whatever.

This has always been the purpose of the racial divide in the US, to pit the poor whites against the poor blacks so that neither would have the time to realize how badly they are being screwed by the rich. Divide and conquer, Strategy 101.

Yes, very well said indeed.

Oh come now, the Young Turks are hardly the worst offenders when it comes to this. Anyway, say what you will about Cenk, but he is pretty consistent about these vis a vis corporate money.

 

[Harry Bosch]

I see this hasn't been brought up here, so I'm throwing it out there for your consideration/discussion.

You can watch the video below where Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk makes the announcement, which is over an hour in length, in which he discusses how and why the group was formed as well as introducing the platform. But to summarize, a group of Democrats, Bernie campaign staffers, etc., got frustrated enough with Bernie's treatment in the primaries as well as the corruption of both the DNC and Hillary Clinton, not to mention the horrible campaign she ran, not being able to beat a, "reality star buffoon," (to use Kyle's words) with a 60% disapproval rating on Election day. The idea is to push for the progressive values which a majority of Americans actually support such as universal healthcare (HR 676), a living wage, ending the drug war, and perhaps one of the biggest issues, getting money out of politics. The contention is that the Democrats ceased being a party of the people when they started following the GOP model and taking contributions from big money donors like the corporations, which then made them beholden to such donors, doing their bidding rather than that of the people. The founders of Justice Democrats considered starting a 3rd party, but realized what an institutional bias there is against 3rd parties here in the US and so it would be better to reform the party from within and be able to use the existing infrastructure to accomplish its goals. Speaking of goals, they include of course kicking out the corrupt GOP members of Congress, but also to primary establishment Democrats who are only working for their donors, not the people.

Bernie showed it was possible to run a major campaign on "$27 at a time." Justice Democrats are committed to such an effort, pledging to take no corporate money to run election campaigns. Which brings me to the how of getting the goals accomplished. They started out asking people to come to the website and at least just sign up to show support. Those who were willing were asked to volunteer to run for the US Congress as a Justice Democrat. They would be vetted and trained by the aforementioned former Sanders campaign staffers. Representative Ro Khanna (CA-17) has already pledged support and there are already several candidates who have announced their bids for certain Congressional seats.

Justice Democrats consider the recognized 3rd parties who are working for the same progressive policy points as allies. They have also teamed up with Brand New Congress in order to achieve their goals. National Nurses United is also an ally.

The tl;dr version is, again in Kyle's words, "this is the Bernie wing staging a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party."

[youtube]rj_95Ld2g9I[/youtube]

Sounds good. So far. However, I would just urge caution that this has wiffs of a complicated Russian scheme! The Russians helped to get Trump elected by fooling people into thinking that Bernie got hosed. It's bull shit. He ran a great campaign. But he lost. He had fewer votes. Sure some of the democratic leaders favored the long term front runner (which is typical). But nonone was hosed. This "hosing" crap stifled democratic turnout and was a factor in getting Trump elected.

Totally cool to push to push progressive issues and try to sway the party left. However, if the democratic party isn't fully united on election day in 2020, we'll get our asses kicked again.

 

[whichphilosophy]

I see this hasn't been brought up here, so I'm throwing it out there for your consideration/discussion.

You can watch the video below where Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk makes the announcement, which is over an hour in length, in which he discusses how and why the group was formed as well as introducing the platform. But to summarize, a group of Democrats, Bernie campaign staffers, etc., got frustrated enough with Bernie's treatment in the primaries as well as the corruption of both the DNC and Hillary Clinton, not to mention the horrible campaign she ran, not being able to beat a, "reality star buffoon," (to use Kyle's words) with a 60% disapproval rating on Election day. The idea is to push for the progressive values which a majority of Americans actually support such as universal healthcare (HR 676), a living wage, ending the drug war, and perhaps one of the biggest issues, getting money out of politics. The contention is that the Democrats ceased being a party of the people when they started following the GOP model and taking contributions from big money donors like the corporations, which then made them beholden to such donors, doing their bidding rather than that of the people. The founders of Justice Democrats considered starting a 3rd party, but realized what an institutional bias there is against 3rd parties here in the US and so it would be better to reform the party from within and be able to use the existing infrastructure to accomplish its goals. Speaking of goals, they include of course kicking out the corrupt GOP members of Congress, but also to primary establishment Democrats who are only working for their donors, not the people.

Bernie showed it was possible to run a major campaign on "$27 at a time." Justice Democrats are committed to such an effort, pledging to take no corporate money to run election campaigns. Which brings me to the how of getting the goals accomplished. They started out asking people to come to the website and at least just sign up to show support. Those who were willing were asked to volunteer to run for the US Congress as a Justice Democrat. They would be vetted and trained by the aforementioned former Sanders campaign staffers. Representative Ro Khanna (CA-17) has already pledged support and there are already several candidates who have announced their bids for certain Congressional seats.

Justice Democrats consider the recognized 3rd parties who are working for the same progressive policy points as allies. They have also teamed up with Brand New Congress in order to achieve their goals. National Nurses United is also an ally.

The tl;dr version is, again in Kyle's words, "this is the Bernie wing staging a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party."

[youtube]rj_95Ld2g9I[/youtube]

Sounds good. So far. However, I would just urge caution that this has wiffs of a complicated Russian scheme! The Russians helped to get Trump elected by fooling people into thinking that Bernie got hosed. It's bull shit. He ran a great campaign. But he lost. He had fewer votes. Sure some of the democratic leaders favored the long term front runner (which is typical). But nonone was hosed. This "hosing" crap stifled democratic turnout and was a factor in getting Trump elected.

Totally cool to push to push progressive issues and try to sway the party left. However, if the democratic party isn't fully united on election day in 2020, we'll get our asses kicked again.

Just like in Europe parties are simply a consensus with several disparate views on individual topics. The Democrats should be focusing on a the next election where infighting is normal rather than blaming the Russians for last one.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Sounds good. So far. However, I would just urge caution that this has wiffs of a complicated Russian scheme! The Russians helped to get Trump elected by fooling people into thinking that Bernie got hosed. It's bull shit. He ran a great campaign. But he lost. He had fewer votes. Sure some of the democratic leaders favored the long term front runner (which is typical). But nonone was hosed. This "hosing" crap stifled democratic turnout and was a factor in getting Trump elected.

Totally cool to push to push progressive issues and try to sway the party left. However, if the democratic party isn't fully united on election day in 2020, we'll get our asses kicked again.

Just like in Europe parties are simply a consensus with several disparate views on individual topics. The Democrats should be focusing on a the next election where infighting is normal rather than blaming the Russians for last one.

As an aside, it's too bad that the Russians didn't hack the republican leadership during the last election. I'll bet that they were far more vicious trying to beat down Trump and afraid of his primary win.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Oh come now, the Young Turks are hardly the worst offenders when it comes to this. Anyway, say what you will about Cenk, but he is pretty consistent about these vis a vis corporate money.

He is excellent on money out of politics. That is what drew me to him. He is horrid on identity politics. That is what pushed me against him.

 

[Shake]

The Russians helped to get Trump elected by fooling people into thinking that Bernie got hosed. It's bull shit. He ran a great campaign. But he lost. He had fewer votes. Sure some of the democratic leaders favored the long term front runner (which is typical). But no one was hosed. This "hosing" crap stifled democratic turnout and was a factor in getting Trump elected.

And the above has hints of Hillary apologetics and not taking responsibility for just assuming the White House was hers for the taking and then just running a shitty campaign. She ignored her base and I feel she only adopted some of Bernie's policy positions because he did so well against her. She realized after a while that she wasn't just going to be handed the Democratic nomination, and he put up more of a fight than the DNC had expected. That's why they had to work hard to suppress his campaign and backstab him. Actually, as for the policy issues, who knows if she would have actually adopted any of them, but was instead simply pandering to Bernie's supporters in an effort to keep them from voting for Trump. I don't have time at present to go look them up, but Kyle did two separate videos on the election, one called, "Why Trump won," and the other called, "Why Hillary lost," which deal with the election from different angles. He discusses what Trump did right and what Hillary did wrong (such as not even visiting the Rust Belt) in great detail. He points out that only about 25% of her ads focused on "policy substance" while the rest were all, "clichés and platitudes."

Early on, Kyle was doing video updates about how Justice Democrats were doing. He's largely stopped that now, except to draw attention to fundraising ("we're at an institutional disadvantage" not being able to tap super PACs or large donors for large sums of money) and to highlight newly vetted candidates and who they're going to face in 2018. The last true update I saw, he said they'd had over 1,000 people volunteer to run for office, and had raised over $1M, all from small donations. Now, that's not a lot of money, but this was still early, within the first month of their existence.

I've signed on in support: I'm a Justice Democrat, and I have high hopes for us and for the American people. The way things look right now, the GOP will likely not retain control of Congress after the 2018 election. Let's make sure to swing it farther even than they fear!

 

[lpetrich]

It's actually good that they recognize the reality of  Duverger's law and not try to fight it. They also seem willing to work in the primaries, so that one can get more than the lesser of the two major evils. Bernie Sanders had an impressive showing in 2016, and we ought to build on that.

 

[Harry Bosch]

The Russians helped to get Trump elected by fooling people into thinking that Bernie got hosed. It's bull shit. He ran a great campaign. But he lost. He had fewer votes. Sure some of the democratic leaders favored the long term front runner (which is typical). But no one was hosed. This "hosing" crap stifled democratic turnout and was a factor in getting Trump elected.

And the above has hints of Hillary apologetics and not taking responsibility for just assuming the White House was hers for the taking and then just running a shitty campaign. She ignored her base and I feel she only adopted some of Bernie's policy positions because he did so well against her. She realized after a while that she wasn't just going to be handed the Democratic nomination, and he put up more of a fight than the DNC had expected. That's why they had to work hard to suppress his campaign and backstab him. Actually, as for the policy issues, who knows if she would have actually adopted any of them, but was instead simply pandering to Bernie's supporters in an effort to keep them from voting for Trump. I don't have time at present to go look them up, but Kyle did two separate videos on the election, one called, "Why Trump won," and the other called, "Why Hillary lost," which deal with the election from different angles. He discusses what Trump did right and what Hillary did wrong (such as not even visiting the Rust Belt) in great detail. He points out that only about 25% of her ads focused on "policy substance" while the rest were all, "clichés and platitudes."

Early on, Kyle was doing video updates about how Justice Democrats were doing. He's largely stopped that now, except to draw attention to fundraising ("we're at an institutional disadvantage" not being able to tap super PACs or large donors for large sums of money) and to highlight newly vetted candidates and who they're going to face in 2018. The last true update I saw, he said they'd had over 1,000 people volunteer to run for office, and had raised over $1M, all from small donations. Now, that's not a lot of money, but this was still early, within the first month of their existence.

I've signed on in support: I'm a Justice Democrat, and I have high hopes for us and for the American people. The way things look right now, the GOP will likely not retain control of Congress after the 2018 election. Let's make sure to swing it farther even than they fear!

I'm not shifting blame. HRC lost the election. She ran one of the least inspiring elections in history. My only point is that the only way to defeat republicans is to come together and vote. The republicans have a smaller bar. They can win with fewer votes. We cannot.

 

[untermensche]

In human events movements need leaders.

Humans unfortunately follow "leaders", not ideas.

Trump is an obnoxious rude ignorant prejudiced fool.

But so are many Americans, especially white males who associate with the Republican party, and they can really relate to that stuff.

Trump is their leader. As sad as that is.