Category: Demexit

Let a Hundred Angry Progressive Postmortems Bloom!

18/11/2016

This is getting kinda fun. Progressives are telling the Democratic Party, "Change or die."

Let's begin with not-so-young-any-more Turkish-American Cenk Uygur. A few days before the election, Uygur announced in a Young Turks segment that, he would be voting for Hillary Clinton, despite his sympathy with the Green platform and his residency in a "safe" Blue state (California). A week after the election:

So, what should real progressives do now? They should tear that house down. The DNC is not misguided; it is guided exactly as it is supposed to be. We have to start all over again. The party of Hillary Clinton and Evan Bayh are never going to win over the American people. Voters couldn’t have been clearer in this election—they can’t stand the establishment. But the DNC will never get that message because they are the establishment.

Like many progressives, Uygur wobbles between Democrat, Green, and independent (maybe Socialist too, but I've never heard him say so). Policy is more important to him than party identity. Like most Americans, when push comes to shove, he doesn't want to back a loser, and Clinton was the presumed winner when Election Day began. His announcement seems aimed more at swing-state than himself, urging them to do whatever they can to stop The Donald.

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GPUS Convention 2016, DBC Blog 0

8/8/2016

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This past Saturday afternoon, in case you haven't heard, the world changed.

The Green Party of the United States officially nominated Dr. Jill Stein and human rights advocate Ajamu Baraka as its presidential ticket.

About 500 people packed into the theater at the University of Houston's student center, with a few dozen more watching the livestream in the overflow room.

Dr. Cornel West delivered the keynote address for the convention.

Julian Assange of WikiLeaks appeared by video conference from his refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

The many disaffected Sanders supporters who registered as observers got some sincere love from Jill and other speakers.

And not a single fucking balloon fell from the rafters.

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City of Brotherly Facebook Love

27/7/2016

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While I'm not really given to describing for the public what my partner and I do in bed, I am perfectly willing to divulge this:

Last night, through the miracle of smartphone technology, we watched video streaming of Jill Stein addressing a crowd at FDR Park in Philadelphia.

It was an intimate moment that we shared with a couple thousand other Facebook users. A torrent of thumbs-up and heart icons flowed right to left across the screen of the phone. The majority of comments scrolling by were not just supportive, but filled with ALL CAPS love.

You can peruse some of the Philadelphia videos on Jill's Facebook page.

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#DemExit Not Yet Reflected in Polls

19/7/2016

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Even with the news of Bernie Sanders endorsing Hillary Clinton's candidacy, and the resulting stampede of Sanders's supporters toward Jill Stein and the Greens, the latest NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll shows Stein still hovering in the vicinity of 5% nationwide.

Any bets as to whether that number increases substantially, and how much, in the next few weeks?

The NBC/SM poll is notable for having a considerably larger sample size, and thus a smaller margin of error, than most of the academic polls like Quinnipiac and Monmouth. That sample does skew affluent and white, since, per conventional wisdom, actual voting does as well. About 8% of the respondents identified as "Black," and about the same as "Hispanic/Latino," whereas both of these ethnicities compose nearly twice that percentage of the total US population.

As we have noted previously:

Five percent nationwide will be enough to qualify the Green or Libertarian Party for federal funds for 2020.
Five percent statewide is sufficient to guarantee a minor party a ballot line in Texas for the next even-year election.

Sadly, these wankers at UT neglected to include "The Green Jill Stein" in their presidential preference questions. So we in Texas may have to wait to find out whether Stein is even close to 5% here. The good news is that the "Someone Else" column is at 14%, about twice the number for "The Libertarian Gary Johnson."

Mystery & intrigue, y'all. Could Dr. Stein be that "someone else" for, say, 7% of the voters?

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Sandernista Stampede?

12/7/2016

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My imagination is getting a workout.

Senator Bernie Sanders has a reputation as a person of integrity: When he said months ago that he would support the Democratic nominee, I took him at his word. Today he went and did it.

Imagine if Sanders endorsed former Senator Hillary Clinton today with the ulterior motive of showing the Democratic Party and world how many of his supporters would vote Green rather than stay in the Democratic fold?

I use that word "fold" because, since Sanders entered the race, progressive analysts and cranks have bandied about the term "sheepdogging" to describe Bernie's purpose to the Democratic Party: attract a huge herd of Progressive sheep, then drive those sheep toward the inevitably less-progressive nominee, playing on fears of the Republican wolves. See also Kucinich, Dennis; Dean, Howard; Brown, Jerry; and Jackson, Jesse.

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Let a Hundred Angry Progressive Postmortems Bloom!

GPUS Convention 2016, DBC Blog 0

City of Brotherly Facebook Love

#DemExit Not Yet Reflected in Polls

Sandernista Stampede?

DBC Sez...

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