shrewd political operator

Could mean he knows how to get things done. Could mean that he has little to no ideological consistency. Usually a mixture of both but mostly the latter.

incremental progress

Usually 1 step forward when already 5 behind the rest of the world. Incrementalists are usually willing to trade 3 steps back to fascists negotiating in bad faith in the name of holy bipartisanship.

a progressive who is not willing to let perfect get in the way of good.

You mean a Neoliberal incrementalist trying to pretend to be a progressive while continuing to work for billionaires and their corporations against the working class?

Source: was well connected

I bet you were!

Sounds like you’re describing a carbon copy of Jeffries. There’s already way too many of those kind of politicians in Dem leadership. That’s why they lost every part of government to fascists.

Speaker House Minority Leader Jeffries

Is the last person to talk about billionaires and other things that shouldn’t exist:

Ben Wikler, Wisconsin Dem Party Chair who’s a front runner for DNC chair

Another hypocrite pretending to be against oligarchy while being backed by oligarchs

Ken Martin, Minnesota DFL Chair, also a front runner for DNC chair

This guy looks promising, but there’s little to no donor information readily available on him, so grounds for cautious optimism at best.

James Skoufis, NY 42nd District State Senator

Again little to no public donor disclosure, which is very ominous for a state Senator from NY of all states…

TL;DR: Dem leadership consists mainly of hypocrites who are as beholden to billionaires as their (much worse in almost all other aspects) fascist colleagues.

Democrats and the media need to stop acting like anyone cares about “muh norms”

That’s the thing, though: the Dem leadership and the billionaire owned establishment media care about 3 things above all else.

In ascending order of priority: norms, institutions, maximizing their own wealth and influence.

They pretend to care about truth, justice, fairness, dismantling the orphan crushing machine, and all that, but that’s mostly just a performance to gaslight the poors.

You’re 100% right about everything else, though.

Mere hours after Speaker Nancy Pelosi backed off the public option in a 2009 interview with CNN, a top UnitedHealthcare lobbyist sent out an email to various Washington insiders inviting them to a $2,400-per-person “event with Speaker Pelosi at my home.”

And people keep insisting on pretending that the Dem leadership cares about the working class 🤦🤬

Dem committees have an uncanny knack for confirming what everyone has known for a year and a half and then doing effectively nothing about it.

Still faster than the Garland DOJ, though.

True. Betty White was hilarious until the end. Schumer, on the other hand, has never been known for great wit…

Maybe. Should still step down, though.

If he thinks 93 to 3 and 76 to 20 is close, it’s probably time to step down and let someone who’s not a 74yo shill for fossil fuel interests get a say…

I mean, it’s a defamation case. If not for his own words defaming them, what WOULD they use to advance their case? Puppets?

That being said, I’m crossing everything except the streams that he’ll finally see some consequences for one of the many crimes he’s bragged about or, as in this case COMMITTED while on live national TV 🤞🤞

Could be… If not for the fact that any sane Republicans still left are going to be gone by spring.

Nope. Probably be an incommensurate rise in drug testing and other harassment of low wage workers, though.

Whoa there!

The world would be a much better place if that (and the inverse) was true…

Seems that they only counted slaves from the South. I bet that including New England slave owners would take it from “many” to “most”, if not even “almost all”.

While not on an industrial scale like in the South, there was still a lot of slavery in the original colonies and their successor states, which played a big part in enabling generational wealth for any family rich enough to buy a slave at the time.

Such as insisting on doing a bunch of reprehensible things that your base hates while you’re running for public office?

Yes, exactly! That is a counterproductive action. And I levy my criticisms regarding that action to the actors themselves, in my direct communication to them.

You have a direct line of communication with the president and vice president of the United States? That’s impressive, but I don’t. Hence the need to express my critiques to peers in stead.

Two things can be true: it is in the best interest of the DNC to more effectively court their base, and it is in the best interest of leftists for the lesser evil of the duopoly to win until we can break the duopoly.

Yes, but I have at no point argued that the lesser evil shouldn’t win.

That’s what you keep refusing to understand: I want them to change their actions both because the actions are themselves atrocious AND because I wanted them to win and those actions were causing them to lose.

That’s why my correspondence with my representatives is focused entirely on their failings

First of all, I still don’t have a direct line of communications to the white house. Second of all, I guarantee that, if I had, my complaints and warnings would not be heeded. Like those you pretend to have made were.

and my correspondence with other voters is focused entirely on their virtues.

Well that’s just obsequious serf bullshit. Pretending in public that “your team” is always perfect and can do no wrong doesn’t convince anyone. It just makes you a bootlicker whose perspective only fellow bootlickers will relate to.

It’s amazing how you keep holding the meaningful actions of the most powerful people in the most powerful country in the world to a much lower standard of responsibility than me, a regular poor person, expressing a reasonable opinion.

I hold them responsible for their actions,

No you fucking don’t! You claim that you have a private line where you get to discuss all your concerns with the White House, but we both know that that’s bullshit.

You may leave a message for your congressperson and/or senator to ignore, but that’s it. That’s the extent of your options for expressing dissent ay we both know that won’t stop the support for genocide any more than me voicing my displeasure in a public forum. If anything, it’s LESS effective, as public dissent is much harder to ignore.

and I hold you responsible for yours

My actions of checks notes making my opinion on committing the most heinous crimes against humanity and (correctly, it unfortunately turned out) warning that continuing to ignore the people could cost the election and lead to the fascists taking over

Ooh, such transgression! Ever heard of the first amendment to the US constitution? It has a few sentences specifically about this kind of thing.

It’s not that my standard for them is lower, my standard for them is irrelevant to the actions of others.

That would normally make sense, but in the specific case of arguing that it’s wrong to ever criticize the Biden administration in public, that’s absolute counterfactual nonsense.

Be better and demand better from the people supposed to represent you, please.

You are allowed to be counterproductive, it’s just a stupid thing to do.

Such as insisting on doing a bunch of reprehensible things that your base hates while you’re running for public office?

It’s amazing how you keep holding the meaningful actions of the most powerful people in the most powerful country in the world to a much lower standard of responsibility than me, a regular poor person, expressing a reasonable opinion.

Do you REALLY not see how ass-backwards that is??

There’s a time and a place for criticism, a close race between bad and worse is not that time,

The only reason why the two overlapped at all was because the ones aiding and abetting genocide have been refusing to even acknowledge any wrongdoing for over a year!

A blindingly obvious example of this “not listening to their base” problem I mentioned.

online leftist spaces are not that place

Where else would you suggest?

Far right places like Truth social where everyone will agree for the wrong reasons, wrongly thinking that it’s about making sure that Trump wins?

“Centrist” places where everyone will automatically disagree, wrongly thinking that it’s about making sure that Trump wins?

Just admit that there’s no time and no place where you would actually take constructive criticism from the left seriously and pretending that there is is a pretense for making people sit down and shut up.

Every leftist voter who chooses to abstain contributes to the fascists’ margin.

Again with the classics bootlicker role reversal.

It’s the job of politicians to earn the confidence and thus the votes of the people.

It’s NOT the job of the people to meekly go along with politicians with ethically and morally compromised politicians with bad ideas unquestioningly, even IF they’re still the least bad option.

The politicians failed the people, not the other way around.

The difference is that you don’t control the DNC’s strategy, you do control your actions.

The irony of telling the that I’m only allowed to voice dissent at specific times and places where it would be ignored and then saying I’m in control 🤦

Newsflash: the people is SUPPOSED to control the DNC’s strategy! They’re public servants paid through public means to enact the will of the people FFS! That’s literally what they’re there for!

Thanks, I will now that I’m hopefully done with your nonsense for the day.